By Staff Writer
As people went about their normal chores or getting to work in a hot, busy morning in Apia, a young woman was walking to her My Fit Gym, smack in the middle of town, ready for another grueling gym session.
Nola Talepa Patu was off on a punishing workout for the Crossfit Open Quarterfinals 2021 competition.
The grueling quarterfinals were held during the recent General Election weekend.
Many will wonder about the importance of this Crossfit Open let alone competing at the quarterfinal level.
Firstly what is this Crossfit Open?
In the sport it is a world online competition organised by the CrossFit HQ over several weeks.
The challenge is to find the fittest male and female athletes to move on to the regionals in each selected world region.
Athletes who are into cross-fit competition at whatever level may also use the opportunity to participate and see how they measure up to the others.
Crossfit HQ organises the Open through affiliated Gyms around the world and for Samoa it is Crossfit Fatutoa where competitiors take part in a series of set workouts.
The scores each athlete receives are uploaded to an online score leaderboard. This makes it possible for all competing athletes to see how their scores rank alongside the most elite competitors in the Open.
Patu is the only female athlete living on island and in the Pacific region to reach the Open quarterfinals by ranking in the top 10 percent in the Oceania Continent Crossfit Open.
She described to Newsline Samoa her feelings at being amongst the few to reach this high ranking.
“Humbled and privileged to have made it that far,” she said.
“It wasn’t on my radar at all. I had no idea about the Open format and anything beyond the first 3 weeks.
“After the last event of the first stage my coach and some friends who knew more about the Open format figured it all out and told me that I should have qualified.
“A few days later I received confirmation from HQ. I felt quite nervous but reminded myself that I wasn’t doing this to be competitive and it helped calm my nerves…
“Qualifying came as a major shock but I do humbly recognize it as a big achievement in itself and I am content with that”.
Patu also acknowledged her coaching team at her My Fit Gym for taking her that far.
“Very proud of our super Coach Walter Imo who worked closely with me leading up to the Open and right throughout.
“Also our Les Mils certified pump coach, Phil Moore although pump may be quite different…
“I truly believe it has made a huge contribution to my performance this year”.
The 33 year old from Apia works fulltime as a Procurement Analyst for the Green Climate Fund Vaisigano Catchment Programme.
She revealed how she disliked sports growing up; she was never interested and did not take part in school.
So what made her interested in this sport?
“A friend had been doing it for a while and I noticed a huge change not only in his physique (used to be obese) but also his self-esteem.
“ Then another friend I used to do boxing-styled classes with suddenly stopped coming to classes.
“When I finally bumped into her again, she mentioned that she’d started crossfit and that she was really enjoying it.
“It made me even more curious but it was so out of the way. Then during perhaps the last week of December 2018, work had slowed down I was finally able to try out an afternoon class and the rest is history.
“Fell in love and never looked back”.
“I eventually found another gym close to both my home and place of work which offered similar training and have since been fortunate to have the best of both worlds”.
Crossfit and High Intensity interval training has gained popularity in Samoa over the years with more and more people taking it up as a workout.
The recent Fatutoa Crossfit Gym “Toa Games” proved very popular with an increase in teams participation.
Patu has taken part in two Toa Games ever since she started doing crossfit workouts.
Her advice for people joining this type of workout is to; “Start light and go at your own pace.”
“I feel so terrible for women or anyone who immediately gets intimidated by the sight of running or a barbell because they’re excluding themselves from what, in my humble opinion, is the best training programme.”
“Crossfit / HIIT / Functional Movement classes may prescribe certain weights/ distances / volume for the workouts, but they are always scalable to suit the person’s fitness level.
“ Coaches actually prefer that you scale to suit your fitness level, that way you’ll be able to enjoy your workout and most importantly, you’ll avoid injuries.”
The achievement was also made impressive by the fact that this was her first time ever competing in the Crossfit Opens.
Although she almost didn’t participate this year, some quick thinking from her husband Gafatasi Patu who signed her up for the Opens, has led to her competing and achieving this impressive result.
As far as Patu is concerns she is still learning.
“There’s always room for improvement and in my case, I have so many tools that need sharpening.
“So after a good de-load I plan on working harder on my weaknesses, especially gymnastics. Who knows what the Open format will look like next year.”
However the humble cross fitter said that she had received messages from people (men and women) who were inspired by her efforts “which in turn, makes me happy for them.
“ But all glory to Jehovah of course.”