Meet Alexis Rufus, she is a super woman when it comes to athletic performance. Her achievements in Thai boxing and CrossFit make her the perfect ambassador to support the X-Functional Training range.
Check out what she has to say about CrossFit, and why she thinks it's a great sport for everyone - especially women.
" My name is Alexis Rufus, or Lexi for short. I am a CrossFit Coach, a competitive CrossFit athlete and a former 5 x World Champion Thai Boxer. I have been in the CrossFit circle for around 5 years teaching and competing. Prior to that I was a personal trainer and a pro fighter for around 15 years.
I am super excited to be joining the Reflex Team as a brand ambassador this year. Reflex are an innovative and exciting brand whose core ethos reflects everything that I would hope for in a sports nutrition company.
Integrity is a key part of who I am, personally, professionally and as an athlete. I always try to deliver my best, on the competition floor, when I am coaching and in relationships. All we can do is give life our best shot. Find something you enjoy doing and grasp it with both hands. Dream, believe, achieve!
I started to write a blog about 5 ways women in CrossFit will inspire you. I struggled with this title for several days going back and forth on what I had written. You see, the thing that attracted me most to CrossFit when I first started, was the fact that it does not discriminate by gender, by age or by ability. It is an all-inclusive yet scalable functional training method. Whatever women do in CrossFit which inspires us, men can do too. So I have flipped this on its head and decided to tell you a bit about why and how CrossFit has inspired women."
1. LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The playing field in sports has never been even, but in the past decade more and more women are showing others how to make a career in sport. Women in CrossFit are unable to make excuses for being women. They do the same workouts, get the same coverage and receive the same prize money as men. CrossFit has made it possible for women to go out there and compete on a level playing field with men. I am so inspired to see that women are often out-performing their male counterparts, they can go just as hard and just as fast and produce just as exciting a spectacle for the fans.
2. BODY IMAGE
CrossFit has helped break down the old -fashioned ideas of body image surrounding women. Body image has always been something that women have struggled with – the pressure to look and act in certain ways to fit in with society’s norms. This has only been exacerbated by the onset of modern social media. People are bombarded with images of hopelessly unattainable perfection, ignoring the fact that these images are fundamentally not real and have been airbrushed to present something completely different from the reality that was originally pictured. I find it so inspiring to see women of all shapes and sizes in CrossFit. CrossFit has made it ok for a woman to look strong, to be strong. And by the word strong I mean this in a multitude of ways – physical, emotional and mental. CrossFit brings out the natural strength of character and tenacity in women which in turn empowers them – always striving to be the best version of themselves.
3. PERFORMANCE
CrossFit has allowed people to focus on performance rather than body image. CrossFit is a measurable sport. You can see yourself improving, getting stronger, faster, fitter.
These are facts you cannot ignore. Once you see these results, the bottom line is that most people do not want to stop feeling better. Once things in the gym start feeling better so does everything else – your energy levels outside of the gym, improved sleep, the desire to eat better, reduced stress levels. The focus shifts from wanting that perfect body shape (which doesn’t actually exist anyway), to striving to be the best person you can be. CrossFit has given women the confidence to train for performance, not just for looks.
4. EGOS
There is no place for ego in CrossFit. There is also no place for bravado. If either sneaks in they are just as quickly pushed out again. I train a lot of women from all walks of life and most of them say to me that in the CrossFit box they feel safe, welcome and equal. Many of them are engaging in sport for the first time in their lives. This is their playground to face challenges, push boundaries and do things they never ever thought would be possible. I have trained pregnant women, new mothers, women with injuries, women with extremely low self esteem. I have seen first-hand how CrossFit can help people learn to focus on what they can control, not what they can’t.
5. EMPOWERMENT
For me personally, all sports I have participated in have given me a sense of empowerment. But none more so than CrossFit. For all the reasons above it gave me a voice and a mental strength that I never knew I had. I have always struggled from a lack of self-confidence, yet when I train and when I compete I am 100% living in the moment. The present. I don’t care about what happened before or what will happen after. It is now – how many of you can honestly say you live in the moment? We live in an age where social media and mobile phones really do run our lives, constantly dragging us out of the present moment in time. With this focus comes confidence. With this confidence comes empowerment and mental strength. If the mind is strong, the physical possibilities are endless.
4 min read time
