While many teachers enjoy relaxing after a long day of teaching, DBHS chemistry and earth science teacher Malinalli Cooke puts on her workout clothes and heads to her CrossFit gym. As a high-intensity competitive fitness program, CrossFit incorporates a variety of sports and workout exercises to promote health and strength.

After three months of training, Cooke competed at  her gym, Crossfit Insurgent. She has taken part of three competitions so far.

“By nature, I am a competitive person. In college and high school, I ran competitively and in club after college,” Cooke said.

At first, it was just Cooke’s husband who competed. After a year, Cooke gave into her husband’s encouragement to try the sport, and has been training with him ever since.

Due to their busy work schedules, the couple work out separately during the week and together during the weekends.  Both of them go to the CrossFit classes together for about an hour. Cooke uses an app on her phone called SugarWOD to show her a “work out of the day”.

To prepare for her competitions, she said  that she stays away from eating anything heavy, such as junk and fried foods and attends an extra class in the weeks leading up to the competition.

In competitions, she is required to lift weights, do pullups, and other various exercises to compete with others. The competitions are based on a point system, and whoever completes the workouts the quickest gets the most points. When all the workout points are added together, the person with the highest score is the winner.

In her very first competition, Cooke competed in the beginner division on a three-person team and placed first. She partnered with her husband during her second competition and earned first place. They moved up to the Intermediate division after their second competition.

One of the biggest obstacles that Cooke has faced is her small stature. Because of this, she is yet not able to lift the weight that many of the other women are able to lift, which  is the sole reason why she couldn’t compete in the higher divisions during competitions.

Their next competition will be at the Sparta Races on Sunday. They will train as normal, as well as completing three- to five-mile runs.  

“I’m nervous. I’ve never done an obstacle-type competition before,” Cooke said. “I’m very competitive so I want to do well, even though I have no prior experience.”