FINDINGS

The interviews with these four girls and their mothers provided valuable insight to their life experiences and prodded us to think more deeply about the utility of combining the strengths perspective and hope theory for understanding the benefits of girls’ involvement in physical activity programs. The data shows that instigating events and hope-inducing relationships can lead to empowerment, resilience, and confidence, which ultimately can be pathways to self-determination. Understandably, the participants in our interviews displayed different levels of confidence, empowerment, and self-determination. Even though Marley demonstrated self-determination through self-advocacy, her story was primarily one of belonging and the role that hope-inducing relationships played in her life. Chloe told a story that focused on resilience. Naomi provided a story of confidence in which developing strength and skills allowed her to take a leadership role on her competitive dance team. Rochelle conveyed a story of responsibility and self-determination in which she chose to look outward in order to help others. The following sections examine these themes in more detail.

Instigating Events

Each of the participants identified several instigating events that were impactful in their lives and personal development. For example, Marley was first introduced to CrossFit through her mom, who started taking adult classes several years prior. Marley reported that when she was younger, she enjoyed watching her mom’s workout and began to wonder, “can I do that?” She said, “It looked fun…and I liked watching [mom] lift, and I liked watching a whole bunch of other people lift. It was cool.” Marley would occasionally participate in a few exercises during her mom’s workout session, which led Marley to join the CF Kids program and the summer camp before eventually joining the adult classes. Even though she is the youngest participant in this study, her mom reports that “everybody said it was time for Marley to start the big classes.” Marley recounted the time when she was urged to join the adults, saying “I was excited and was like YES!” She explained how this would allow her to work out more often and be challenged more.

Switching from the CrossFit Kids program to the adult classes was also an instigating event for Chloe, who told us that at first she was intimidated, but that after about a week she became more comfortable because, “I realized I could do it the same as the other people.” As with Marley and Chloe, Naomi reported that she enjoyed the adult classes more than the youth-focused afterschool program because the classes moved faster, but also the weights seemed harder. For these three girls, the adult classes were an event that provided a new challenge and led to growth.

Many of the important events in Naomi’s life revolved around her dance team, but as she described her experience with dance competition, Naomi and her mother both credited Naomi’s involvement in CrossFit with making her a stronger dancer. Likewise, Rochelle attributed her improved physical condition in her physical education classes to her involvement in CrossFit Kids, and it was evident that these CrossFit events were significant in large part because she had performed well in front of her peers, helping to bolster her confidence and pave the way for self-determination.

When we apply the strengths perspective and hope theory to these four girls’ experiences, we see that instigating events become touchstones for the girls. These memorable events represent experiences that were often linked to personal growth.

Hope Inducing Relationships

Feeling like you are a part of something is important for all people, and this is especially true for middle school girls. Membership was defined, in this study, as feeling a sense of belonging to a group. Each of these girls took part in the interviews because of their membership with CF-S&H.

In addition, the girls identified other important memberships that shaped their lives. Naomi, for example, explained that she liked to stay active and often asked her mom to allow her to join activities and groups. She appeared to be proud of her long list of memberships and shared her experiences with these different groups, often discussing how she balanced her multiple memberships. Though CrossFit played an important role in Naomi’s life, even more central was her membership with the dance team. Marley described her role as a member of her family, a cheer squad, and a soccer team in addition to CF-S&H. Marley’s mom explained that the CrossFit membership was important because Marley was around strong women of all ages and she “feels like one of the [CrossFit] girls” as they text about their own weights and the workouts. Rochelle’s mom encouraged her to get involved with school groups and afterschool program activities. Rochelle’s involvement in various groups allowed her family to be integrated into the community which provided them with additional resources to manage life in a single parent household with four young children.

Group membership is especially important because of its potential to provide individuals with hope-inducing relationships. Hope-inducing relationships were defined as quality relationships that helped the girls develop agency and pathways toward goals. Although being a member of a group does not guarantee the development of hope-inducing relationships, our interviews revealed that each girl did have hope-inducing relationships upon which they could rely.

For the four girls in our study, family relationships, and more specifically the relationships the girls each had with their mothers, were hope-inducing. For example, Marley’s mother explained that she initially brought Marley along with her to her own adult CrossFit workouts because she had nowhere else for Marley to go, but after realizing how intrigued Marley was with the activity, she encouraged Marley to participate. Because of her own close relationship with her daughter, Marley’s mother admitted that she had to learn to give Marley space at the gym and set boundaries on herself so that the coaches, rather than the parent, could inform Marley on technique. In this way, we see not only that Marley’s relationship with her mother was itself hope-inducing because it allowed Marley to develop her own agency, but that her mother was key to helping Marley develop additional hope-inducing relationships with other adults at CF-S&H. This was a pattern that was repeated with the other girls.

Not only did Marley have a strong relationship with her mother, but she developed important relationships with other women in the CrossFit box. Marley admitted that participating in adult CrossFit can be hard, but she learned that she can rely on other people to help her rise to the challenge and gave her a pathway to her goals. As Marley explained, “Sometimes I’ve been like, ‘I can’t do the WOD (workout of the day), it looks horrible’ … but now I really don’t care. I know somebody will help me. I can do it now.” In fact, Marley explained that one of the reasons she prefers the adult workouts to the CrossFit Kids program is because “everyone is there to help each other and to make each other stronger… Everyone is worried about themselves in CrossFit Kids. In regular CrossFit, they don’t care about themselves, they want to cheer each other on.” Marley’s relationships with adult women in the gym helped her gain a healthier perspective. CF-S&H hosts women’s only workouts that include time for conversations and discussions after the physical exercises are completed. Marley’s mother described a time when Marley attended one of these sessions and realized that even some of the adult women whom Marley admired struggle with body image issues. “For Marley, it was like, ‘you struggle too?’ … That opened a huge door to talk about the struggle, which is a blessing… I am thankful that she feels safe enough to talk to me about it.”

Naomi’s mother was especially resourceful in seeking out opportunities for her daughter and supporting her participation in these opportunities. Naomi explained, “I just like to stay active and stuff. It’s not hard to do anything cause I’m always asking my mom to put me in something.” Naomi’s mother shared this enthusiasm and would go out of her way to enroll Naomi in extracurricular activities, often finding ways to overcome obstacles for Naomi’s benefit. Given their household’s low-income status, Naomi’s mother opted to serve as a volunteer dance team coach in order to have Naomi’s participation fee waived, demonstrating her commitment to helping Naomi maintain group memberships and develop hope-inducing relationships with those around her. Naomi used these opportunities to foster hope-inducing relationships with adult members of the gym when she moved from CrossFit Kids to the adult workouts at CF-S&H. When talking about this transition, Naomi explained that she preferred the adult group because “it’s like more support when you’re trying to get stuff done, seeing what they can do and stuff.” Not only did Naomi appreciate the support that other CrossFitters provided to her as she is working out, she also recognized the benefit of being challenged by working alongside adults who might be stronger and faster.

Like the other participants, Chloe had a close relationship with her mom. Yet, being able to CrossFit with her mom added another layer to their relationship as they experienced workouts together and had to discover how to interact while at the gym. Chloe’s mom began to see herself in her daughter (e.g., the doubt, the intimidation, and the anxiety). But through this space, the two were able to have conversations, and Chloe’s mom was able to tell her how proud she was of her. Chloe’s relationship with her mother was hope-inducing, but she did not develop hope-inducing relationships with other CrossFit members. Chloe’s comments suggest that she did not really feel a strong sense of belonging in CrossFit. When asked about her experience moving from CrossFit Kids to the adult classes, Chloe told us that it was “intimidating because they’ve been there for a while and they’re stronger and bigger.” Though Chloe said she no longer feels intimidated by the adults, she explained that she would feel “better if there were more people my age.” One of the characteristics of CF-S&H is that fellow CrossFitters will cheer for each other as they finish a workout, but Chloe found this frustrating and did not like it when she thought that others were watching her during the workout. Hope-inducing relationships play an important role in developing resilience, empowerment, confidence, and self-determination because they provide an opportunity for the girls to develop their own agency and pathways to achieving their goals.

Empowerment

The interviews demonstrated that group membership and the hope-inducing relationships with their mothers and with adult members of CF-S&H fostered empowerment. In our interviews, we learned about situations where the girls were aware of limitations and constraints but were also empowered to identify ways of overcoming the obstacles. Chloe’s experiences within the adult classes were empowering as she realized that she could do the same workout, weights, and repetitions as the adult members. When asked to talk about the positive aspects of CrossFit, Chloe mentioned:

You get to see what your strengths are and try to improve yourself and be healthier and learn how to do workouts safely. And you learn how to keep going, you learn mental strength because it takes a lot of mental strength… At the beginning I thought it would be easier to just quit but now I don’t want to quit, I want to keep going.

Marley experienced empowerment through conquering the physical workouts, but also through the insights she gained through relationships with adult women, as previously described. Marley and her mom also talked about Marley’s internal dialogue when the workout gets hard, and Marley wants to quit. Her internal dialogue could have been a limitation, but this awareness allowed Marley to recognize what she is saying to herself and, further, allowed Marley and her mom to discuss how she can control her internal dialogue. Her mom aimed to curb the negative dialogue to something more positive and productive which can be practiced in the CrossFit setting and carried over into other aspects of her life. The ability to identify one’s limits and realizing pathways to overcome these limits resulted mostly from the hope-inducing relationships each girl had, as well as membership in other groups. Importantly, this sense of empowerment could be seen by both the girls and their mothers in other areas of their lives.

Resilience

The empowerment found through their membership and hope-inducing relationships also contributed to the girls’ resilience, or ability to persevere, when facing adversity and challenges. As an example, Chloe and her mom discussed their shared experience with CrossFit. Chloe’s mom explained, “It was hard for me when she started regular classes because I saw a lot of myself in her, she modeled a lot of my behavior when I first started, I was so intimidated.” Chloe recalled that during her first week, when she would get discouraged, her mom would yell at her to keep going. Her mom added:

I was telling her the main thing … to focus on was to finish, just to finish the workout, you know, like you can do it, it’s gonna be hard, it’s okay if you need to take a break, but just finish.

At another point in the interview, Chloe demonstrated that she had learned this lesson as she told us that CrossFit was “hard.” When asked what was hard about it, Chloe then explained, “It was hard to keep going because you want to just quit in the middle but you have to keep going.” When posed with another question of whether she ever gave in to the temptation to stop when the workout was difficult, Chloe stated, “I just stood there and rested for a second and took some water and then kept going,” adding that the reason she did not quit was because, “I wanted to finish.” Chloe explained that through CrossFit, she has gotten more mentally stronger than physically. Chloe’s mother agreed as she described a time when Chloe was behind in a tennis game and aggressively came back from behind. She normally had a defeated attitude but dealt with the situation a lot better than she would have pre-CrossFit.

Chloe was not the only girl to demonstrate the link between hope-inducing relationships and resilience. After explaining that she would find out the workouts before attending CrossFit, we asked Marley if she ever chose to skip workouts when she knew they would be hard, and Marley responded that she did not skip because she liked the challenge of finishing and the feeling of getting stronger. Later, Marley talked about not quitting in the middle of workouts because once she started the workout, she knew what it felt like and she knew that eventually it would get more comfortable. She even explained that she liked to prove to herself that she could be successful, which she described situations both in the box and in school. Marley’s mom observed that before finding success in CrossFit, Marley would have screaming meltdowns where she would throw pens because of her frustration with math. Since starting CrossFit and overcoming hard workouts, Marley no longer complained about homework and asked for help when she needed it.

Rochelle also discussed developing her resilience throughout the interview. She explained that after beginning CrossFit she was sore and complained a lot to her mom and grandmother. But then Rochelle compared her CrossFit experience to running track where the first lap was hard, but when she realized she could finish she would do a second and third and each lap got easier. Ultimately, it was largely Rochelle’s decision to continue with CrossFit and demonstrated her resilience and self-determination. Rochelle told us, “I like pushing myself to get that goal, to not give up and do the best I can,” and she shared that “since this is my first [year of] CrossFit, now I know the process, so next year I might do more difficult things that I never did before.”

Resilience was central to Naomi’s story. During the interview, Naomi talked about how hard it is to go straight from CrossFit to dance class, saying “it’s hard but you keep doing it.” Naomi often mentioned being “tired,” yet this was something in which she seemed to take pride. She offered fatigue and pain as evidence that she had put in the work needed to improve her performance. Naomi’s mother told us that Naomi “complains, but she loves every minute of it,” and at one point Naomi used a bragging tone as she stated, “everything hurts.” Naomi’s mother encouraged this resilience, reacting positively when Naomi persisted in her efforts. Naomi’s mother also modeled resilience in the way that she overcame financial obstacles to open doors for Naomi, both through the competitive dance team and membership at APfK.

Confidence

Notably, our interviews demonstrated that the development of resilience and hope-inducing relationships positively affects confidence, which we defined as increased self-assurance and positive self-esteem. For instance, Rochelle was confident enough in her own abilities to help others. Instead of boasting about being better at a movement or exercise, she chose to help her peers so they too could be successful. Rochelle explained, “If I feel like I’m stronger than someone, like if they can’t make it or something, I feel like I can help them.” This was similar to how she described working on math problems collaboratively as a member of the math team and helping others around her complete their work.

Further, even though Naomi claimed membership in numerous groups, she identified herself as a dancer and showed the most confidence in her dance abilities. Naomi’s confidence was exhibited through her willingness to try new things—both with “showing out” on the dance floor and in her willingness to try new activities such as golf, archery, CrossFit, cheerleading, basketball, and taekwondo. Her confidence and self-determination were also on display when Naomi took on leadership roles, stepping in to help others, such as by showing her dance teammates different exercises that would help them improve flexibility and strength. There were times when Naomi was not willing to be out-shone, even by adults. Naomi and her mother recalled a time when Naomi’s uncle visited the family and he was trying to impress Naomi, but instead he ended up being the one who was impressed. After showing Naomi how many push-ups he could perform, Naomi told him, “I do CrossFit” and then, as mom explained, “she started doing her pushups too and she was doing them right, and he was like, ‘Wow! … Look at my niece!’” Toward the end of our interview, after Naomi left the discussion, the interviewer’s first comment to Naomi’s mom was, “Honestly – has she always been this confident?” Mom then explained, “CrossFit has really helped her a lot with dancing. I know she’s confident. As far as exercising and showing people, she wouldn’t have done that before. [Now] she’ll be like, ‘this is how you’re supposed to do it.’” Additionally, Naomi was often picked to be the last one on the line when performing, which meant she got to do extra things for the judges and spectators, serving in many ways as an anchor for the team. Naomi’s confidence also enabled her to speak up for herself and the team by recommending routines to the coach, and she demonstrated leadership by showing her teammates stretches and moves.

Self-determination

Finally, empowerment, resilience, and confidence all impact self-determination. Self-determination is an important outcome of the strengths perspective and hope theory, and our research team spent considerable time discussing how to apply this outcome to youth participants. Typically, self-determination indicates that an individual is able to make choices for herself and has a high degree of control over her life. Full self-determination is not something we would expect of middle school youth, as their parents, teachers, and coaches rightfully guide the majority of these students’ lives. Despite this, we see evidence that even at their young ages, these girls demonstrated burgeoning self-determination.

The resilience and empowerment Marley gained as a result of her hope-inducing relationships with her mom and members of CF-S&H paved the way for self-determination. Marley’s mother explained that Marley has a history of anxiety and anger that stem from a troubled relationship with her father. Her mother related that CrossFit “has helped so much for her to feel physically stronger, emotionally stronger, and be able to say things and stand up for things that children should not have to.” Her mom explained that over time Marley’s anxiety grew “to the point that worrying about if she was away from me she would die.” However, Marley had recently been able to exercise self-determination by deciding to set the terms of visitation with her father. Marley has started to act as her own advocate. On one occasion Marley feared that her father had arrived at school to retrieve her, even though Marley had chosen not to be with him. Marley went to her teacher for help, saying, “I think my dad is here and I am not going with him and this is why” (as related by Marley’s mother). Her mother directly attributed this self-advocacy to “not just CrossFit but being around the environment and the empowering impact that has. [It has] translated into every aspect of her life.”

During our interview with Chloe, when we asked about her goals and hopes, Chloe talked about long term career goals, and she made a link between what she was doing in school and how her academic studies linked to her desired career. In this way, Chloe’s focus on school and education demonstrated her growing self-determination as she was taking the first steps to chart her course in life. Importantly, Chloe’s mother explained that Chloe has learned to apply lessons of resilience learned in the CrossFit gym to other parts of her life, such as in school, on the tennis court, and when playing basketball. Chloe’s mother told us,

I definitely see it in school … before, with math or anything, if she didn’t understand it right away it was meltdown city, it was always ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this.’ And that’s one thing I’ve noticed is that she has learned to calm herself down and be like, ‘let me take a break from this and come back to it.’

Her ability to take action on her own behalf and apply her resilience to other areas of life demonstrates self-determination.

Of the four girls we interviewed, Rochelle showed the highest level of self-determination. Likely because of her family structure, Rochelle carried more responsibility than the other participants. Being the oldest of four children in a single-parent home often meant that Rochelle had to take responsibility for herself, and it also gave her the opportunity to make decisions that would impact her family. Being an older sibling, she was patient and able to communicate with others to help them be better, as demonstrated when she would help the other children at the APfK afterschool program. During our interview, Rochelle and her mother also shared that even though Rochelle often helped the household by caring for her younger siblings, she would occasionally exert her independence by going to her grandmother’s house when she decided that she needed space. In school, Rochelle was a member of the international club and the math team. Even though her mother stated that she encouraged Rochelle to be involved in a variety of activities, it seemed clear that Rochelle was the one who has chosen to join these school clubs. Rochelle told us that she was invited to join the international club based on “leadership, achievement, and helping people.” Rochelle’s enthusiasm for helping others is on display at CrossFit, also. Rochelle tells us, “If I feel like I’m stronger than someone, like if they can’t make it or something, I feel like I can help them.” In this quote, we see Rochelle’s true strengths – helping others, demonstrating responsibility and leadership as she worked to empower those around her.