Canton Resident Tackles CrossFit in Her 50s

When Dr. Mona Shay was starting to do CrossFit workouts in 2015 and saw a rope hanging in a gym, she almost turned around and walked out. It reminded her of climbing a rope in school, and she thought she would never be able to do it — but one day she did.

“I had a really good coach that was working with me. I was able to get multiple rope climbs,” says the now-59-year-old Canton resident and certified CrossFit coach at Midnight City CrossFit in North Canton. “You start feeling this satisfaction of, Maybe I can do this. It was a challenge. It was something different.”

Shay had been an athlete all her life, starting competitive swimming at just 5 years old. She also did another endurance-based sport, running, and then played volleyball, basketball and softball in middle and high school. But she chose to go to medical school to become a gastroenterologist, and she put sports on the back burner. She competed in a few marathons and triathlons when her work schedule allowed it, and about eight years ago she was looking for a new challenge. Shay found exactly that after she read an article about CrossFit, which consists of constantly varied functional movements with high intensity.

“It can involve anything from gymnastics to running to jump roping to barbell movements — it’s the unknown,” she says.

In all her years of sports, she hadn’t done a lot of weightlifting or gymnastics-type movements, so when she first started CrossFit, she felt out of place. But accomplishing the rope climb lit a spark in her to keep going, and she eventually began to tackle more movements. She can now do a bar muscle up, where you’re underneath a bar, get on top of it and straighten your arms. She’s still working on a walking handstand.

One of her recent goals is gaining strength. She has seen the numbers she can lift triple and quadruple over time — and now she can deadlift 290 pounds!

Shay has spent so much time mastering CrossFit that she decided to get certified as a coach, and for the past two years, she’s been teaching a weekly class on Tuesdays at Midnight City. The hourlong class is incredibly demanding. Students tackle movements to elevate their heart rates, mobility, strength or skill work and a workout of the day.

During workouts, Midnight City members can record their scores on a whiteboard, and Shay says sometimes people get too fixated on numbers. She helps them shift their mindset beyond just setting records.

“Sometimes the biggest challenge of the day is just getting into the gym and doing a workout,” she says. “So your win for the day or your intention is, I’m just going to move.”

She has learned to strengthen her mental game and set intentions before each workout and competition through about five years of training with her master mindset group. Members encourage each other to develop healthy habits like getting up and journaling, staying off phones before bed, engaging in body care like massage and maintaining adequate sleep and nutrition. But talking through obstacles is equally important.

“Part of the process is just knowing that there’s always something you can improve upon, so it can be frustrating at times,” Shay says. “It comes back to developing, Why am I actually doing this? I’m doing this because I want to be fit. I want to be able to do things as I get older.”

Currently, Shay spends an average of three hours working out daily to prepare for competitions, with the ultimate goal of making it to the elite international CrossFit Games. Her effort is paying off. She made it through the CrossFit open, got to compete in the quarterfinals for the CrossFit Games in March and is in the top 40.

Previously, she has done the international Legends championship twice. The rigorous competition involves events such as doing a rowing machine, ski machine and bike and adding the total distance.

Also, she’s competed in the 29029 twice, which is an endurance event where you hike a distance equivalent to the height of Mount Everest by lapping an elevated course at a ski resort multiple times. The first one in Sun Valley, Idaho, went smoothly, but the most recent competition in Whistler, British Columbia, presented obstacle after obstacle with bad weather. There were snow, cold temperatures, blowing rain and mud. So instead of doing more climbs and taking longer breaks, she had to spend more time changing gear between fewer climbs. Her set intentions had to change.

“When the weather got really bad, I was just like, I’m going to make it to the next aid station. … It was just breaking it down,” she says. “Maybe things didn’t go the way I wanted them to so I was able to adapt, and adapting was a part of this process.”

Shay is going to continue training daily and work her way through the competition circuit. She says any older person looking to get into a rigorous fitness routine like CrossFit needs to find a great gym with good coaches who will teach movements and adapt them to prevent injury, making sure things are done correctly and that you are staying safe. She also encourages people to keep the mindset that you can’t win every competition, so you have to be satisfied with doing the work.

“It’s a passion that makes me happy. I like being able to challenge myself,” she says. “I like being fit. I like to be an inspiration.”