The Front Range CrossFit Team

Meet the Team that is Dedicated to Your Success

our founder

John San Filippo

“Be an all-american. Be a great dad. Save the world.”

My dad had asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. That’s what I told him, verbatim (or at least as verbatim as possibly apocryphal dad stories can be!) While there’s something adorable and a little bit funny about those being my childhood goals, by the time I got to Wesleyan University, it seemed like I was well on my way. After all–in high school, I’d become an All-American wrestler, placing 6th at Nationals my senior year.

When I got to Wesleyan, I decided to play football and wrestle, and my goal remained the same as it had been in high school–all-american. I wrote it on my mirror, thought about it during every terrible conditioning session, and worked towards my dream every day. My freshman year, I had been out of football for about 6 weeks, and was finally rounding into form. I had won a few varsity matches, and my proverbial number got called against our conference rival Trinity. I’m winning the match, and have my man on his back. I almost pin him, but he fights off and survives the period.

Thirty seconds later my shoulder is completely dislocated, and my season is done. In the next two years, I would dislocate my shoulder over 50 times, have two surgeries, and never came close to fulfilling my goal of becoming an all-american. I used to sit in my room and dream about having a time machine so I could go back and pin my man, avoid that shoulder injury, and chase my dreams.

Now I’m glad I didn’t finish that pin. While I wouldn’t wish surgery, or the recovery from surgery, on my worst enemy, my life would be completely different if I hadn’t blown out my shoulders. During my recovery from my second surgery, I had some questions. You see, my second surgery was much, much worse than my first. My surgeon put nine anchors into my labrum. He said (and I quote!) “I’ve never seen a labrum that looked more like swiss cheese than that one.” This is the guy who was the Nationals and Capitols shoulder guy… it was bad.

Even with all of that catastrophic damage though, my second surgery recovered much, much faster than my first. I couldn’t understand it. I reached out to a childhood friend–who happens to be one of the foremost powerlifting coaches in the world. He asked me a few questions, and then he said– “did you train differently leading up to the surgery?”

The answer to that question, dear reader, was a resounding yes. My first surgery I’d spent the days leading up to surgery feeling sorry for myself, drinking, and parting on Spring Break. I literally spent the night before my surgery sleeping on the floor of BWI air port, on the way back from Spring Break. They probably didn’t need to anesthetize me–I had enough residual tequila in me to be fine without. My second surgery, I trained my other shoulder and my lower body hard going in, since my athletic trainer had told me it improved recovery rates. Lo and behold, that discovery would lead me down the rabbit hole of training that would eventually end up with me walking into CrossFit Milford and beginning my CrossFit journey.

We don’t always know why things happen–but work hard, and stay positive, and you’ll find a way to turn even the worst situations into silver linings.

Stay tuned for part 2–my why later today!

Founder’s Why

It’s April of 2014. I’m sitting in the Athletic Training room at Wesleyan University, and I’m crying. I can’t lift a 2 pound dumbbell without excruciating pain. I’ve been sleeping in a sling, upright, for 6 weeks, and until I can lift this dumbbell I can’t progress towards the next step of my rehab plan, which also allows me to start sleeping without the sling.

For those of you that don’t know me now, you might assume that I don’t know what it’s like to be weak. I’m a big dude, and strength is my jam. 315 pound clean, 265 pound snatch, 500 pound deadlift. I’ve had people look at me and say “You don’t know what it’s like to be weak–you were born strong.” I have a lot of rejoinders to that. But, the most effective one is–I know what it’s like to be weaker than almost anyone else ever has been. 2 pounds. I couldn’t pick up TWO pounds. I couldn’t pick up a knife and cut my food–it hurt too much to saw back and forth. I remember my girlfriend at the time cutting my steak for me on our anniversary dinner.

The point of these stories isn’t to tell you to feel sorry for me, or to give myself a pat on the back for working my way back from those injuries. It’s to explain why my “why” is to help people overcome their own feelings of helplessness and inadequacy. Because I’ve been there, in that hole of despair and weakness, feeling like my own self-worth had been flushed down the toilet. The people who pulled me out? They were all coaches and trainers. The athletic trainer at Wesleyan, Laura, who held my hand and told me to be strong and sometimes talked smack when I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself. The coaches at CrossFit Milford, who cut a broke college kid a deal so he could work on rebuilding more strength than just putting his arm above his head when physical therapy ran out. The coaches and members at Front Range–when I walked in, having tried almost every other gym in the city, (Twenty six gyms in total! Front range was number 26.) who welcomed me with open arms. I lost 25 pounds my first 6 months at Front Range. I learned how to do muscle ups, how to snatch well, how to finally stop looking over my shoulder, waiting for the dislocation that I was sure was coming again.

My why is leading people to the things that they thought were impossible–because I’ve been you. Weak, overweight, drinking way too much and sleeping way too little. I did it–so can you.

Founder of Front Range Crossfit