By Nathan Prewett, For the Tribune
LEEDS – “A healthy mind in a healthy body” the old saying goes, something that fitness trainers and CrossFit Righteous owners Jared and Nina Jordan in Leeds do their best to instill in their clients.
Hailing from upstate New York, the couple ran a CrossFit affiliate for a number of years until they decided to pull up stakes and move elsewhere with their two children.
“We had a plan to move down south. It’s where we wanted to raise our kids,” said Jared. “We love the state of Alabama. When COVID hit, New York was shut down about as tight as you can get. That just kind of expedited us. So we decided to sell out in New York, and we did.”
They first made their way down south to Tennessee where they managed a remote program, but they eventually chose to move further south and into Leeds.
“We decided that it was time for us to reopen, to have another CrossFit affiliate, and we found Leeds,” Jared said. “We fell in love. It felt like home immediately and we just felt like this was a place where God brought us to do good in the community.”
The couple are level three trainers in CrossFit, a difficult to attain certification that less than 1,800 trainers in the world have, Jared said, who is also part of the seminar staff, a position that takes him throughout the country to train other coaches.
CrossFit Righteous opened its doors on Jan. 9. There are several different programs offered consisting of personal training, mindset coaching, nutrition and the regimens established by the national CrossFit brand. Righteous has programs for youths, with one for children of ages five to 11.
“Our main focus there is teaching kids how to live this healthy lifestyle,” Jared said. “And it’s how to make fitness really fun so it doesn’t feel like a job for them so as they grow older, whether it be in school, sports, or whatever it may be, it’s something that they enjoy to do. And we put it in their lifestyle as a young human and then they just carry that with them.”
Additionally, there is also a program for teenagers from 12 to 16 years old. Jared stressed the ability of fitness to impact the minds of young people.
“It’s a lot of different things at that age,” Jared said. “It’s not only building this healthy lifestyle, not only feeling confident in your own skin, but giving them the ability to hold their head up when they walk through school. We’ve got some 14-year-olds here right now that at one point were feeling low self-esteem, low confidence, and their parents come to us regularly like, ‘Their confidence has grown.’ They’re showing so many signs of growth, feeling comfortable and happy with themselves.”
Fitness is not all physical, say Jared and Nina. One’s emotional well-being is just as important as exercising the body and maintaining a healthy diet. This is especially important for the kids and teenagers that Jared spoke of, giving them the message of being strong and capable.
In addition to Nina being a fitness trainer, she is also a mindset coach.
“I just started out not too long ago with the mindset coaching and I’ve really enjoyed it,” Nina said. “And basically I take our everyday mindset of what the world has put into our brains, or minds, what we’re supposed to think and kind of pull back the curtain on that and change the focus of how we’re thinking.”
So what makes a healthy mindset? Nina explained that not giving into doubts about yourself and encouraging yourself to at least try can make all the difference in the world.
“Someone that can optimistically look at situations and think, ‘Hey, I can do that. At least I have the ability to try my best at something,’ versus telling yourself that you can’t do something or that or that’s scary or I’m not able to do whatever it is in front of you and just give yourself the benefit of the doubt because everything that you think transitions into every cell in our body and actually how you perform,” she said.
As far as nutrition is concerned, this is something that is paramount. Jared encouraged taking up a diet of whole foods as part of the training where he and Nina help people figure out what’s best for them.
“Nutrition and fitness go hand in hand,” said Jared. “Nutrition is the foundation of all the processes that happen in life. It’s like putting gas in the car. It’s like if you put water in the gas tank, it’s not going to go very far. It’s the same idea with nutrition.”
If you do a Google on CrossFit gyms, you’ll find that they often have unique names – a few local examples are “Rebellion” and “Mudtown.”
“We felt like we were led here by faith,” he said. “And we wanted to make sure that we could tie this place in with our faith. And my wife – a core value of her life is just gratitude in every aspect, whether it’s displaying that through herself or being able to share that with others, but we just didn’t feel like ‘CrossFit Gratitude’ was the right combination.”
While traveling for seminars, Jared was looking up synonyms for “gratitude” and the word “righteous” kept appearing to him. At first he wasn’t keen but it kept popping up so much that he texted Nina, who told him that this was the one for them. He said that the word embodied their values as a gym that services the people and to “share gratitude”.
Nina and Jordan will hold a grand opening on Feb. 25. They will host free fitness classes for kids, teens and adults.
The gym maintains a website at cfrighteous.com and a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/righteousleeds.
Nathan Prewett can be reached at nthomasp6@gmail.com.