How Ava Georg Balances Military Duties, Work, School, and a Budding CrossFit Career
At eight-years-old, Ava Georg’s physical education teacher proposed a new activity for her: the competitive jump rope team. She had a natural aptitude for the sport and enjoyed the unit in class, so jumped at the opportunity to get more experience.
She competed in various style, speed, and skill competitions for over four years on the team, which nobody could have predicted would be an asset to her in the future.
Until she decided on a competitive CrossFit career, that is.
- “It’s such a weird sport, nobody really knows about it,” Georg said. “But when I started CrossFit, that was the easiest thing, that was the only thing I knew how to do was double unders.”
Georg, who recently made the move to Las Vegas, Nevada to train with the Underdogs crew, placed 22nd worldwide in workout two of Quarterfinals, which featured crossovers. While she has an obvious talent for the jump rope, she’s been working seriously since her senior year of high school to get her fitness where she wants it to be: CrossFit Games level.
Georg competed in a multitude of sports throughout her childhood but always felt like there was something missing, and she often became bored when she felt like she had “beat” the sport. When she found CrossFit, though, she was instantly intrigued because there’s “constantly something to get better at.”
- “I love challenges,” Georg said. “It makes you determined and it helps you with things outside the gym because you know you can overcome things that are challenging just doing workouts every day.”
On the topic of challenges, Georg has had to balance an intense schedule, especially since moving to Las Vegas and needing to support herself financially. Besides training, her daily responsibilities include her job as a restaurant server and online college classes. Plus, monthly drill training as part of her obligations as a member of the Army, which she joined as a junior in high school to help fund her way through college.
- “If I have to work at night, I’m at the gym thinking about work the whole day, so just priortizing living in the moment and focusing on whats in front of me,” Georg said on what’s important to keeping her days less stressful.
Among the strategies to keep her busy life as calm as possible are organizing, planning far in advance, and making room for life as it comes. She says that she uses her monthly drill training weekend (or other times “life gets in the way”) as a deload from CrossFit training. With the amount of frenzy in her life, she says it can be mentally exhausting to make herself go to the gym and at times discouraging as she sees the athletes around her making progress.
- “Everyone says this, but you have to run your own race, it’s so true. There’s so many different athletes and it’s easy to look at their progress. I’m nowhere near that, and I’m here now training with good athletes,” Georg said. “But it’s like, obviously it’s possible. If you just put in the work, you can get there.”
Georg’s ultimate goal is to compete in CrossFit full time (she wouldn’t have moved across the country if she didn’t, she says). But for now, while her life is so hectic and she’s still young, she’s learning to focus on the positives she experiences daily.
- “I’m very guilty of this, I know where I want to be and I can’t enjoy where I’m at because I’m thinking of that all the time (. . . ) but it’s like, if you’re not enjoying it, why are you even doing it?”
With her 2023 season wrapping up after Quarterfinals, Georg has an entire year of training with the team at Underdogs Athletics to get herself where she wants to be.
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