Brothers opening CrossFit center on Market Street
David Smith and his brother Tristan made a big announcement recently that made waves across social media: they are opening up Clinch Valley CrossFit on Market Street in March.
“It was a pretty big response,” David said. “We’ve been preparing for a long time.”
David and Tristan both graduated from Anderson County High School, and David’s wife Lisa graduated from Clinton. They’ve lived in the area for most of their lives, and this is the first brick and mortar business they’ve had.
They each have around five years of experience in CrossFit.
When the opportunity came up to buy the old City Glass and Mirror in downtown Clinton, David said they “had to go.”
“With having two little ones, opening a business gets harder and harder as they get older,” David said.
The timing was perfect. His children are two-and-a-half and five months.
David played basketball and ran track in high school, while Tristan played soccer and football. He even played some soccer in college at Tennessee Wesleyan.
But CrossFit became a way of life.
“It changed Tristan’s life from a quality of life standpoint,” David said. “If you’re going to have a business, what better thing to do and find purpose in than fitness and nutrition. We love the games and the community part of it, and we enjoyed the sport of it.”
Tristan will be the center’s head coach.
They have seen firsthand what it does for other people. According to David, CrossFit is constantly varied, functional movement performed at a relative high intensity.
“What you would do every day, like sit, stand, squat, press something overhead, pick something up, you combine that with something like gymnastics and weightlifting,” he said. “You don’t just come in and bench press or do curls every day; it varies with every workout. You do different combinations, and you set benchmarks to see how you’ve progressed.”
Sometimes there is a stigma attached to CrossFit, according to David, that it involves going all out and killing yourself with every workout, but that’s not the case. It’s relative to your ability.
“Which means my grandmother in her 70s can do a workout relative to her abilities,” he said. “You want to push yourself, but not to where you would lose form.”
They have had many people reach out since their announcement on Facebook last week. A price list will be released on Jan. 20 and the duo is putting out free workout videos three times a week until they open.
“Those are to get people moving,” he said. “We didn’t want people to make New Year’s resolutions and just sit and wait to start.”
You can find Clinch Valley CrossFit on Facebook or, in March, at 378 Market Street, Clinton.
