The Groupon That Changed My Life
Lynne Steiner • September 9, 2026
Have you ever done something just to get someone off your back, and had it change the entire direction of your life?
That's what happened to me in 2012.
My then-fiance and a friend strong-armed me into buying a Groupon for a month of CrossFit Roselle membership. I didn't want it. I'd never had a gym membership in my life. I was half-heartedly doing workouts from the Nike Training app and calling it exercise. I was a very skinny, non-gym girlie who had zero interest in changing that.
I didn't have the clothes.
I didn't have the shoes.
I definitely didn't have the mindset or the athleticism.
But I showed up anyway, at 5:30am on Monday, Oct. 1, with absolutely no idea what I was doing and feeling way in over my head.
That was before I saw a CrossFit Games Regionals athlete repping out ring muscle-ups 2 feet away from me. (She’s still here, by the way. Hi Monica!!)
I should have walked out. Actually, I wanted to walk out.
Instead, after that first week, I was hooked.
I spent 4 years as an athlete before I became a coach. Then 5 years as a coach before I became a co-owner. Five years after that, my now-husband and I became the sole owners of the gym that started with a Groupon I didn't even want.
14 Years Later
This October marks 14 years since that Groupon changed everything for me. In honor of it, I'd love for you to see what happens here, and what makes it worth showing up for.
Yes, there are still athletes knocking out ring muscle-ups. That part hasn't changed.
But mostly, what you'll find are people looking to make their lives better outside the gym. Not for a podium or a scoreboard. For their actual life.
They want to mow the lawn without needing a break halfway through. They want to take their dogs on long walks. They want to play with their kids on the floor and get back up without thinking about it. They want to carry laundry up the stairs without being out of breath. They want to hike in national parks instead of watching everyone else do it.
That's what CrossFit Roselle has become for hundreds of people who walked in exactly like I did: unsure, unequipped, and pretty sure they didn't belong there.
Come See For Yourself
Join us for free workouts on Saturday, Oct. 3. Classes are at 8:30am and 9:30am.
You don't need the clothes or the shoes or the mindset either. I didn't have any of it, and 14 years later, here we are.
More Posts
Somewhere out there is a version of you that trains hard exactly twice a month. Massive effort, maximum sweat, a session so intense it deserves its own theme music. And somewhere else is a version of you that trains at a solid, unremarkable 7 out of 10, four times a week, every week, for a year. Guess which one actually changes. The Myth of the Breaking Point A lot of people believe transformation lives on the other side of suffering. That you have to find the workout that nearly ends you before your body takes the hint and changes. They chase the hero WOD, the one-time max out, the class that leaves them crawling to their car. And then they don't come back for four days. Sometimes longer. The all-out session feels like progress in the moment, but it often buys a week of soreness, poor sleep, and skipped sessions. That start-stop rhythm never compounds. A year later, the body has taken two steps forward and two steps back so many times it's basically been standing still. Meanwhile, the person doing "just okay" workouts consistently has quietly lapped everyone chasing the legendary one. Training Is Compound Interest, Not a Lottery Ticket Nobody gets rich off one lucky investment they check once a year. Wealth builds from small, boring deposits made again and again until the math starts doing the heavy lifting. Your body works the same way. It doesn't care about the one heroic session. It cares about the pattern. Call it the 2% rule. You don't need a workout that changes everything today. You need a workout that's 2% better than doing nothing, repeated until the small stuff stacks into something undeniable. Steady effort, applied consistently, quietly outperforms occasional heroics almost every time, because recovery, habit, and adherence all get to actually do their jobs. The Tip That Actually Sticks Stop asking "which workout will change my body." Start asking "which workout will I actually do again tomorrow." Pick the version you'll repeat, not the one you'll brag about once and avoid for a week. Let effort be steady most days, not maxed out every day. Trust the boring middle. That's where the actual transformation is hiding. Consistency isn't the consolation prize for people who can't handle intensity. It's the actual strategy that works, every single time it's given the chance.
Let's kill a myth right now. The person who hasn't made it to the gym in three weeks isn't undisciplined. They're not "just not motivated enough." More often than not, they're a human being who spent the day parenting, emailing, problem-solving, and holding a household together with duct tape and sheer will. By 6pm, their tank isn't half empty. It's on the warning light, dinging at them like a car that knows it's about to strand you on the highway. So when the idea of a workout shows up, it doesn't feel like an invitation. It feels like a threat. Another withdrawal from an account that's already overdrawn. The Fear Nobody Says Out Loud Here's the quiet worry a lot of people carry into a gym: what if this makes everything else in my life harder? It's a fair question. If your version of "working out" means crawling out of a class looking like you lost a fight with a bear, something has to give. And it's rarely the workout that gives. It's your patience with your kids. Your focus in that 3pm meeting. Your will to cook something that isn't cereal for dinner. That's the cost nobody puts on the whiteboard. Training Should Refill the Tank, Not Siphon It Here's the part that surprises people: the right kind of training doesn't have to be a drain. Done well, it works more like a generator than a leak. Appropriately dosed intensity. You don't need to flatline to make progress. A workout that pushes you without pulverizing you still builds strength, still moves the needle, and still lets you function as a human afterward. Programming with a purpose. Random chaos dressed up as a "workout" isn't training. It's just noise. Good programming builds you up week over week instead of testing how much punishment you can absorb on a Tuesday. Sessions that end with capability, not collapse. The best marker of a good workout isn't how flattened you feel walking out. It's whether you can still pick up your kid, carry the groceries, and have a normal conversation an hour later. Think of it like charging your phone. Plug it in wrong and it barely holds a charge, dies by 3pm, leaves you scrambling. Plug it in right and it carries you clean through the day, with juice to spare for whatever life throws at you. The Real Scorecard Stop grading your workouts by how destroyed you feel when they're over. That's measuring the wrong thing entirely, like judging a meal by how sick it made you. The real scorecard is what happens next. How's your energy at 4pm? Your patience at dinner? Your motivation to show up again in two days instead of dreading it for a week? One tip to steal today: after your next workout, don't ask "how hard was that?" Ask "how do I feel three hours from now?" That answer tells you more about whether your training is working for your life or quietly working against it. Train like your energy is worth protecting. Because it is, and you've got a whole life waiting on the other side of that workout that needs it too. Not sure where to start? Click the Book a Free Intro button and let us help!
What does it take to stick with something for 15 years? Not motivation. Motivation runs out. It takes something else, something closer to a habit that turns into a life. Aaron sent his first email about CrossFit Roselle on July 1, 2011. He still has it. Before that, he'd tried the Bartlett Park District gym and a couple months at a different CrossFit gym. Nothing stuck until a friend told him to come check out CFR. His first Saturday WOD, he ran into a guy he went to high school with. "I've always challenged myself in different ways, from triathlons to Tough Mudders and Spartan races," Aaron said. "The park district gym just wasn't doing it for me. I needed something different. I needed a community." That word, community, comes up again and again when Aaron talks about why he's still here. The Numbers Don't Even Tell the Whole Story Our tracking software puts Aaron's class count at 1,469 over the past 11-ish years. But his membership goes back further than the software does. Fifteen years of showing up, habitually. He's not chasing a leaderboard spot. He's not hunting a PR every week. Ask him what keeps him coming back thousands of times and he doesn't talk about specific lifts at all. "I'm always pushing to make it a minimum of three to four days a week," he said, "and I enjoy hitting up a local CrossFit affiliate whenever I'm traveling." Consistency, not numbers on the whiteboard. Showing up on the ordinary weeks, not just the ones where something big is on the line. Still Chasing Something Fifteen years in, Aaron still has a list of goals he’s after. When asked what’s changed since year one, he said - laughing - "getting older!" Then he explained double-unders are still torturing him, and Kelsey won't let him forget that he needs to keep chasing that goal. That's the part people miss about long-term members. It's not that they've mastered everything and now just show up out of habit. Aaron still has skills to chase, weights to move, movements to clean up, and workouts he looks forward to every year: Murph, the 12 Days of Christmas workout, and the CrossFit Open specifically. He's watched CFR's approach to the Open grow into something bigger each year and calls the energy around it “electric.” (We agree. 🤗) A New Kind of Freedom For years, Aaron's training happened around full-time dad duty. His daughters are off at school now (and graduating in December, “following dear old Dad with degrees in Accounting!”), and that's changed things. "It's nice having the freedom to make fitness more consistently about me again," he said. He's still trying to recruit his daughter Jessica away from a globo gym but so far, “she's not convinced CrossFit isn't trying to kill her.” But the bigger shift for Aaron hasn't been about training harder now that he has more time. It's been about showing up for other people. He's known for driving long distances to cheer at teammates' competitions. Earlier this year, that meant helping record a teammate's lifts at a meet out in St. Charles. "I just love the effort put out, and I do my best to absorb some of that same energy," Aaron said. "I always love being able to help, even with the small things." That same instinct shows up on Sunday mornings, too. Aaron's part of the regular Sunday open gym crew, the ones who show up to work on weaknesses, do some lifting, or catch up on something they missed earlier in the week. If you've never joined them, he'd tell you to pop in. The more, the merrier. What He'd Tell Someone New If a brand-new member asked Aaron why they should stick around past the first three months, his answer is simple. "This place grows on you. You develop the relationships, and you want to show up to work out, sweat, and grind right along with your new friends." He's watched it happen in real time with newer members finding their footing and building friendships that keep them coming back. Proud, Not Finished Fifteen years is a long time to keep choosing the same gym. Ask Aaron what his younger self would think if he could see him now, and he doesn't talk about gold stars or records. "I think 15-years-ago me would be proud that I'm still here. Not because I've mastered everything, I definitely haven't, but because I kept coming back, kept challenging myself, and kept taking care of my body. At 57, being able to walk into CFR, train hard, and still have things I want to improve is something I'm genuinely proud of." A quick note to explain the photo choice, because this is not the type of picture I typically include for a CFR member story. But if you flip through 15 years of CFR photos looking for Aaron, you'll notice something... He's rarely the one front and center. He's in the background of someone's PR, grinning in a group shot, holding a phone up to record someone else's lift. Some people show up for the spotlight. Aaron shows up for everyone else's. That's Aaron's story. Fifteen years, thousands of classes, and he's still not done.
