Three Female Coaches Walk into a Gym

The story.

Coaches Jessie Purcell, Kelly Lum and Alex Clark purchased CrossFit Staunton last week from the previous owner, Phil Lennon. Lennon started the box in 2013 and recently changed locations into a former car dealership. That’s when the three women took the opportunity to start a new chapter not only in their lives, but for the community that CrossFit Staunton created.

Friendly faces.

The three women have been coaching at CrossFit Staunton for a number of years;  Purcell for the past four years, Lum for the past two and Clark for the past year. “The people here are one in a million,” Purcell said, who has been the general manager for the past three years. “You will not find people like this anywhere else.”

New name.

Together they came up with a new LLC, called Strong Life. “We chose Strong Life because we thought that was a good header to what we wanted to accomplish here,” Purcell said. “It’s not just strong arms, a strong squat or different things like that. We want to make people strong in life, whether it is to handle really hard situations or it’s to carry that 50 pound bag of sand from Lowe’s and not have help.”

But the same mission.

But they won’t change much else. But the three say nothing major is going to change, they will only improve on fitness, classes and community.Their vision is to not only help those who walk into the box but the entire community.

CrossFit and community make you strong, Lum said. “It’s not just making your muscles bigger, it’s getting strong. Not only strong physically, but strong spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, everything, whole body strong.”