Share your story!
My name is Tom Dedinas, I’m 42 years old. I work for an IT Manufacturer in a sales/business development role. I am a father of two children, (Lukas 10, Lydia 8), two dogs (Nora 1, and Jesse 6) and I live in the Lutherville-Timonium area with my beautiful wife Julia. Growing up, I was an active child always involved in sports like golf, basketball, soccer, track, and mountain biking. After college, I stopped almost all physical activities as I was too busy focusing on my career and not so much my health. In 2016 my lack of focus on my health was catching up with me, and I knew I needed to make some changes in my life.
At this time, I had started to get clean and sober, and began to replace some of my bad habits with some good ones. I felt that a “typical gym” wasn’t going to work for me, recognizing my mindset to need some structure in to help me hold myself accountable was needed. I kept hearing about CrossFit and seeing how people were really benefiting from the functional fitness piece as well as the sense of community CrossFit brought.
Personally, I saw a logical connection between CrossFit and my recovery. I show up and there’s no thought of, “what am I going to do today?” The workout is laid out, there’s that structure in place. I just need to show up, listen to my coaches, and do the work.
About a year into my CrossFit career where I was a member at an affiliate in Ellicott City, I relocated to the area and in June of 2017 I immediately joined Titan and have been a member ever since.
Why did you end up sticking with CrossFit?
I have seen so many changes in my life over these years, and a huge part of it has been consistently coming to Titan and focusing on just trying to improve in one aspect at a time. I’ve lost over 30 lbs while gaining lean muscle over the years. Coming to Titan regularly whether that’s at the 9am, noon, 4:30pm class or very rarely the 5:30am class, it’s a place I look forward to going and is part of my daily routine. I love Titan because every class challenges me mentally, physically and even emotionally.
What advice would you give to someone who is New Or Considering Trying CrossFit?
If you are new or considering CrossFit. I would absolutely encourage you to come in and give it a try. Along with the support from the coaches and athletes in class, I found scaling and modifying movements and weights that are written up in the workouts was a huge part of my ability to want to come back day in and day out. As much as I lack in patience — I found I had the patience to learn how to lift the weights properly, I had the patience to learn how to do a Double Under (took me about 2 years), and it’s one way to minimize the risk of injury. #scalelife
Truly grateful to be a Titan and nominated as TOTM.
