Featured CrossFitter: Jolie Gentry

"CrossFit women rock!" This sentiment resonates with both men and women. CrossFit women are redrawing the boundaries of performance and having a blast doing it. In fact, their awe-inspiring performances have been instrumental in conveying CrossFit's efficacy to the free world's military. It wasn't the male fire-breathers that did it. It was the women. As one Naval Special Warfare operator said, "It's easy to write off to genetics the performances of a CrossFit male, but it's a whole different ball game when a five-foot-nothing, high school pottery teacher at the local hippie high school cleans your clock." That statement continues to resound across the military and fitness world.

In this feature and interview, we learn a little more about Jolie Gentry, the winner of the inaugural CrossFit games. We already know she can run, lift, row, pull-up, and jerk with the best of them. Now see some other sides of her.

Jolie Interview:

1. Explain your introduction to CrossFit.
Two Santa Cruz County Deputies I met at Basic SWAT school in September 2006 talked about this guy on their team who was "a machine" and just ran circles around everyone else on their SWAT team. They said that his name was Greg Amundson, and he does this stuff called CrossFit. They knew I was interested in fitness and said that I would probably like it. After I returned from school, my teammate Darryl told me that he had just started training at One World Gym in Union City where there was a cop who ran CrossFit classes. The first day I walked in the door, I realized that the cop he was talking about was Freddy Camacho. I've known Freddy for years. In fact, he had been a student of mine in a group cardio class that I used to teach at a martial arts school.