Powell CrossFit To Host CrossFit Scholarship Program for Native American Community With First Female Navajo/Diné Coach, Alleia King

“I passed! I passed! And then I just cried.”

That’s how Alleia King described her reaction to learning she had passed the CrossFit Level 1 test and could begin coaching classes at Powell CrossFit, just a few miles north of the Navajo Nation in Page, Arizona. In doing so, she became the first Navajo/Diné woman to earn a CrossFit Level 1 Certificate.

Passing the exam had been tough for her; it hadn’t gone well the first time in 2019, and her retake on Valentine’s Day in February 2021 weighed heavily on her mind as she waited for the results. This was especially the case because King not only had aspirations to coach at her gym but was also developing an idea to create a nonprofit organization, the Native Strength and Rezilience Project (NSRP), to help fight chronic disease on Native reservations.

According to the Indian Health Service, American Indians and Alaska Natives die at higher rates than other Americans in many categories, including heart disease, diabetes, chronic liver disease, and stroke. King knows CrossFit can help fight all of these. And CrossFit Home Office is setting up a scholarship program weekend to help the NSRP.

Finding CrossFit

In 2017, King was an endurance athlete, running countless miles a week and coaching Zumba classes, all while working as a grocery-store manager just down the street from Powell CrossFit. Her Zumba classes were almost entirely Native, maybe as much as 95 percent, she said.

But she “wanted more,” King said. So when a friend invited her to try a class at Powell CrossFit, she jumped at the chance. Well, that’s not entirely true — it took some convincing, because her friend attended the morning classes and King was “not a morning kind of person.”

King’s first workout included wall balls, push-ups, and pull-ups. She was “hooked.”

“I was like crawling out of there and I was so sore, but I signed up that very same day,” she recalled.

After that first class, King began training three times a week, then five, then almost every day for the first six months. Through 2018 and into 2019, she worked to develop gymnastics skills — getting her first pull-up and handstand push-up — while moving from a training bar to heavier weights and more complex lifts, following the “mechanics, consistency, intensity” prescription.

Becoming a CrossFit Coach

After watching her progress over the course of a year and a half, Powell CrossFit owner Paul Baughman asked King if she would be interested in earning a CrossFit Level 1 Certificate and coaching at the gym.

“It was out of the blue,” King said, “out of nowhere.”

Baughman went on to explain that while King was still relatively new to CrossFit, she already had years of experience coaching fitness classes and was developing in CrossFit rapidly.

“I didn’t hesitate,” King remembered.

“I love everything about CrossFit and would love to coach,” she told Baughman.

Like many Native youth, King attended a tribally run boarding school until her sophomore year when she transferred into the public school system in Page, Arizona. She graduated in 2001.

“Public school was a totally different world,” King said. “I felt like I didn’t belong. I was raised traditionally; we were taught to speak our own language, and I spoke it fluently at home to all my friends.” She continued, “All my teachers were Navajo and spoke Navajo. … This was my first time being off the reservation.”

While King’s experience was a common one for Indigenous students, it helped prepare her for the adversity she would face in earning her Level 1.

At her Certificate Course in Las Vegas in 2019, the test didn’t go well. But, she was tenacious, and despite COVID disruptions, she studied flashcards and quizzed herself, ultimately passing the exam and earning her CrossFit Level 1 Certificate in early 2021. The achievement made her the first female Navajo CrossFit trainer.

The Native Strength and Rezilience Project

King began coaching in earnest in February 2021 and now has her sights set on using CrossFit to help fight chronic disease through the Native Strength and Rezilience Project (NSRP).

“The Navajo Reservation is the largest Native American Reservation in the country,” she said, “with little to no health and fitness resources available to them.”

The Navajo Nation has a population of just 330,000 people, about 47 percent of whom live on the reservation. One in five adults on the reservation is diabetic, and it is estimated that 75,000 are prediabetic.

The NSRP seeks to provide fitness, nutrition, and health education and training throughout the Navajo Reservation. The coaches and leaders of the organization will travel to remote parts of the community to share nutrition literature, teach foundational movements, hold group workouts, provide home workouts, and more. Native people travel to attend community gatherings, which will serve as excellent opportunities to share knowledge and inspire fitness.

As more Navajo Nation citizens begin CrossFit, the NSRP will give continuing support,  including providing dumbbells, kettlebells, slam balls, barbells, and plates.

According to King, “We’d like to eventually acquire trailers to hold the equipment, or community buildings if available. We’ll also provide them with continued support and ongoing programming and scaling-specific options for their equipment and needs.”

“Fitness is needed on our reservations. We are going to go out there and help,” she added.

While the focus is on the Navajo Nation to start, King hopes to expand the scope of the NSRP going forward.

The CrossFit Scholarship Program Comes to Powell

In early November — Native American Heritage Month — CrossFit began planning a Scholarship Program weekend at Powell CrossFit. The goal is to assist King, Baughman, and the NSRP in facilitating opportunities for Navajo CrossFit athletes to earn Level 1 Certificates so they can help in the fight against chronic disease while spreading the message of CrossFit to Indigenous communities in the Southwest and around North America.

While the date for the Scholarship Program weekend is not yet solidified, it is being planned for late February or March 2022.

Learn more about the work the CrossFit Scholarship Program has done with underserved inner-city communities in Atlanta, Nashville, and Philadelphia.

All photos courtesy of Alleia King and Powell CrossFit.