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CrossFit comes to Ghana

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Alexiglam

Alexiglam

Laila putting Ghana on the CrossFit map

Even the fittest in the world have had to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic. The annual grand event of ‘the sport of fitness’, the CrossFit Games, in Wisconsin, US, will now take place without the usual thousands of cheering fans and without much of its international contingent of contenders. This is especially heartbreaking for Laila Zangwio, who had been set to be the first person to represent Ghana at the Games. Mark Edwards reveals how the former triathlete had to have a crash course in CrossFit to make it to the Games and how losing the chance to compete on the world stage has only sharpened her desire to improve in the sport and come back stronger at next year’s event.

Laila Zangwio’s morning alarm is set for 5am. The 26-year-old never hears it, though, because she gets up at 4.58am every day and is out of bed to switch it off before it has a chance to ring. The Accraborn athlete’s body is attuned to her mission – to represent her country at the CrossFit Games – and that requires an early start to attack the day’s training regime.

By 5.30am she is at the Fitrip gym in Accra’s Dworzulu district to begin the morning’s weightlifting session alongside training partner Eugene Abraham, a Fitrip personal trainer and promising CrossFit athlete with ambitions to make the Games in the future.

Once the morning session is complete, Laila heads to her job as assistant to the athletics director at the private Lincoln Community School in the capital. By 5pm she will be back at Fitrip for more training, this time with the emphasis on conditioning and gymnastics. She rarely leaves before 9pm. This is the drill six days a week. Only on Sunday does it vary, when at 6.30am you’ll find both Laila and Eugene joining the other members of Ghana’s masochistic fitness community in running up the eye-wateringly steep Aburi hill.

Being a beginner again

Fitrip is one of Accra’s newest gyms – it opened at the start of last year – and the only one in the country to be CrossFit affiliated. It is fantastically well appointed with facilities including a squash court, an MMA and boxing mezzanine floor, a spin studio and a free weights and resistance machines area, but Laila focuses her work in the gym’s CrossFit ‘box’. Here there are climbing ropes, pull-up bars, barbells and plenty of floor space for the sport’s hybrid test of total fitness.

Laila first turned up at Fitrip in the hope of landing a job as a trainer, but the visit transformed Laila’s athletic journey. Her background is triathlons, a sport she excelled in, becoming Ghana’s female champion seven times over and coming third at the 2019 African championship and fourth at the same year’s World Championships in her age group.

Still, when Fitrip manager Houssam Hamidi introduced Laila to her first CrossFit class in June 2019 what appealed most was the feeling of being a beginner again. The innately competitive Laila relished this new challenge. The class was a testing mixture of box jumps, double-unders (an advanced skipping technique in which the rope passes under your feet twice with each jump) and barbell cleans. None of the movements were familiar to Laila, but the innate competitor in her wanted to get better straight away.

I’ve come from an endurance background,” she says. “So the long, conditioning workouts feel comfortable, but I had never done weightlifting before…”

“I couldn’t lift the weight and couldn’t do double-unders,” she remembers. “It was so tough. I went home and for the first time I felt I was challenged. I wanted to come back and ensure I could do it. I was back the following day.”

Triathlon is a solitary sport and Laila had to self-support her ambitions, becoming her own trainer and getting herself to events.

CrossFit family

By contrast, she was also immediately taken by the community of CrossFit. Everyone in her class encouraged each other and bonded in the joint effort to make it through the workout. “I really enjoy the group classes,” she says. “It’s amazing to train with people of the same mindset who support you. We are a CrossFit family.” Fitrip took Laila under its wing from the start and while she says she struggled through those early unfamiliar classes, Houssam was quick to see her potential in her sport. He found training partners to push her, devised a weekly workout routine to keep to and even took charge of her nutrition. Right next door to Fitrip is nutrition and diet centre Wholesome Crafts that prepares three meals a day for Laila to fuel her workouts.

“This is the first sport where I have a coach,” she says. “I feel supported here. I had to choose between triathlon and CrossFit. CrossFit won.”

Despite all the support and her triathlon background, getting good at her new sport has been a steep learning curve.

“I’ve come from an endurance background,” she says. “So the long, conditioning workouts feel comfortable, but I had never done weightlifting before and doing a handstand against a wall was the extent of my gymnastics, now I can do handstand walks and muscle-ups [One of the toughest CrossFit moves that involves continuing a pull up so you press your whole upper body above the bar with arms extended]. Now I do weight-lifting five times a week. It can be boring, but when I get a PR [personal record] then I love it.”

Laila saw rapid changes in her weightlifting numbers, but also in her physique as she began to add muscle to her slim triathlete’s frame. She has that defined athlete’s physique you’d think most would aspire to, but she says many women in Ghana are keen to cling on to their curves.

“I’ve gained some muscle and got a bit heavier,” she says. “Friends told me ‘You’re going to look so boyish’, which is not something that’s encouraged here.

Girls can be strong

“I’ve grown up always hearing that as an athlete. I’m looking forward to being an example for girls to go with what they can do. To believe in themselves.”

Laila has not had not long to get accustomed to the range of CrossFit movements. Just a few months after she arrived at Fitrip, the first of the CrossFit Open workouts were announced. These are a series of four workouts – a new one is released each week and athletes have a week to post their best score – which are open to anyone to attempt from the world’s elite battling for a Games place to weekend warriors who just want to test themselves against their friends.

In 2018, more than 429,000 people took part, but only 32 different countries were represented. In 2019 the rules were changed to ensure that every country that practices CrossFit sends an athlete to the Games.

Representing Ghana

Despite only having taken up CrossFit a matter of weeks before the Open, Laila posted the best scores by a woman in Ghana. Her workouts were captured on video and sent away for verification and soon word came that she was on her way to the US as a Games athlete.

“I was excited when I saw the email to get in the Games,” she says. “But a week later, I found myself in a zone where I realised how much there is still to do if I want impress when I get there. I’ve watched the Games and most of the African athletes don’t get beyond the first stage [the field is cut by half after the first event with the worst performing athletes left eliminated and the number of competitors is further cut down after each subsequent event] I’m not going there to win, but I want to leave a mark. I know I won’t come first, but I won’t be last and I want to show that Ghana came and this is what happened.”

The responsibility and pride of representing her country has driven her to up the intensity of her workouts even further with both her and Eugene testing each other to their limits.

“Eugene is hard on me and I am the same for him,” she says. “It’s friendly competition, but we always go hard. Every evening before the class I practise the movements and work on my weaknesses.”

Such commitment to ensure Laila made herself and her country proud at the Games makes it heart-breaking that the Covid 19 outbreak and the subsequent social distancing have meant it will be an almost unrecognisable Games running from July 27 to August 2 this year. It will now take place behind closed doors in California with just 30 invited athletes for the men’s and women’s competition. Laila like hundreds of other amazing athletes from around the world will not be there.

Refocus for next year

I catch up with Laila in May, just a few weeks after the changes to the Games were announced. She is disappointed, of course, but with the Open series of workouts for the 2021 Games this November, focusing on using the extra time to hone her fitness and exercise technique so she is ready to post winning numbers again and make the Games next year.

She is still able to train at Fitrip. While the gym, like all others in Accra, closed for the government-enforced lockdown it has been one of the first to reopen, making sure that members stay safe with temperature checks on arrival, a disinfectant booth that everyone must pass through to enter the gym floor and social distancing observed throughout.

Laila still never gets to hear her alarm. Getting better every day at CrossFit and becoming the first Ghanaian to compete at the Games all the wake-up call she needs.

To find out more about Fitrip and joining fees for its CrossFit box, 233 CrossFit, and the rest of the gym’s facilities, visit fitripgh.com or email info@fitripgh.com

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