From a Stroke in Utero to a Place on the CrossFit Games Podium: Amea Reyna’s Story
Amea Reyna came into the world already battling from behind — she just didn’t know it.
When Reyna’s mother was pregnant with her, Amea had a stroke. A perinatal stroke is quite rare, affecting between one in 2,500 to one in 4,000 live births in the United States every year.
It occurs when a baby loses blood supply to the brain in the late portion of pregnancy and is one of the most common causes of hemiplegia, the condition that Reyna continues to deal with.
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Amea Reyna’s Early Life
According to the Cleveland Clinic, hemiplegia is paralysis that affects one side of the body, and can affect the face, arms, legs, or all three.
“My mom didn’t notice it until I started crawling. She noticed that on my left side, I would draw my arm in and drag my left leg,” Reyna tells the Morning Chalk Up. “Growing up, I would have to wear these boots to correct my walking and heel-toe movement because I don’t naturally have that movement. When I walk, I walk very flat footed — I don’t have a lift on my toe. Also, I walk with a limp, and my left side is still very much smaller.
“The doctors initially told me that I would have a lot of trouble walking and I would have to stay small because if I ever got bigger, my body wouldn’t be able to support myself,” she says.
Reyna’s mother hoped this might go away, but they took her to a specialist, did an MRI, and discovered she had scar tissue on the right side of her brain. Reyna had experienced a stroke at some point while she was in utero, and she was going to have to deal with the symptoms for the rest of her life.
The Move to CrossFit
Reyna was 10 years old when her mother, then 41 years old, started going to CrossFit. “She can still outwork me,” Reyna says. “It’s so cool.”
Seven years later, Reyna followed in her mother’s footsteps and tried CrossFit. It wasn’t a smooth start.
“At first, I was insecure because my movements didn’t look like everybody else,” she says. “For instance, I can’t fully extend my left arm, so anything overhead is difficult and a mess. It looks like I’m not doing a full rep – it was very discouraging at first.”
Soon, though, CrossFit became more natural to Reyna.
“[The] more I did it, the more comfortable I got,” she says. “And everybody in my gym was supportive and amazed that I did what I did. According to the doctors, I shouldn’t be lifting or be able to CrossFit.”
She continued to train daily, with no goals past overall fitness, until a coach suggested she sign up for the 2023 Open.
“I told them I’d never sign up for the Open because if I can’t do half the stuff correctly, why am I going waste money and be at the bottom of the leaderboard,” she says. “Then the coach told me there was an Adaptive Division.”
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Reyna had no idea that the CrossFit Games had an Adaptive Division, so she started watching clips of adaptive athletes competing in past years.
“I was so inspired. I was gaining so much confidence because these people looked like me,” she says. “I would watch big-name athletes and think they were amazing, and of course, I wanted to be like them. But I knew that I could never perform like them, so when I saw these adaptive athletes who looked like me and performed like me it was incredible.
“It opened up this whole world of knowing I could do this; I am capable. So, I signed up for the Open with no expectations. I knew I could do it on a leaderboard with people like me,” Reyna says.
Reyna’s Open Success
Reyna did the first week of the 2023 CrossFit Open and found herself reasonably high on the leaderboard, finishing fourth place in 23.1. It was full steam ahead.
“Everything was a surprise and a first for me last year. I ended up qualifying and attending the Games, finishing in second place [in the multi-extremity division],” she says.
She had the time of her life, competing against girls who are now some of her close friends on a stage that finally celebrated what she could do physically.
Reyna is considered a multi-extremity adaptive athlete — she has impairments in two or more limbs of her body, but looking at her, it is hard to see her disability. This has caused issues for Reyna more than once in her life.
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“A lot of people are confused when I tell them I’m an adaptive athlete — they look at me and wonder what is wrong with me,” she says. “When you think of adaptive, you think you’re missing a limb or something very obvious. And for me, people told me that they can’t tell.
“To me, it’s obvious; it has affected my entire quality of life for as long as I can remember; I physically feel weaker on my left side.”
This issue causes Reyna to overcompensate with her right side, which leads to hip problems and a limp. She sometimes needs more time to recover from a tough week of training as her body can get much more tired than a non-adaptive athlete from overcompensating.
Reyna doesn’t let it faze her, and she looks forward to competing in the widened Adaptive Division in the 2024 CrossFit Games. Her season is off to a solid start, as she currently sits in fifth place overall on the moderate neuromuscular division leaderboard.
“I don’t let my disability define my quality of life — I look at things I can’t do and go into them thinking, how can I adapt and overcome?” Reyna says.
Featured image courtesy of Amea Reyna