Guillory named La.’s Fittest Woman

Cross Gates trainer takes sixth in regionals

By Chris Kinkaid
St. Tammany News
Published on Sunday, August 8, 2010 12:22 AM CDT



Slidell resident and Cross Gates Family Fitness Trainer Kelly Guillory, 44, is Louisiana’s Fittest Woman after coming in sixth place, but first among Louisiana participants, in the South Central Regional held in Texas.

Guillory, who has lived in St. Tammany Parish most of her life, competes in the Crossfit games, which is a form of training used by police, military, fire fighters, champion martial arts and others.

“It takes people out of the regular gym and puts them in this new environment,” Guillory said.

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The idea isn’t just to get the workout in, but to get as much work done in as little time as possible.

An example of a workout might be seven rounds starting with lifting 95 pounds followed by six 35-pound kettle bell swings, nine box jumps followed by a 200-meter sprint. The goal is to get it done in less than 20 minutes.

When Guillory goes to competitions, she usually won’t find out what will be involved with the workout until just few days before and all of the competitions are different. If the event is scheduled for a Saturday, she’ll find out usually on a Wednesday, so there really is no time to prepare for exactly what you might face because a participant won’t want to overdo things and not be at full strength for the event.

Guillory said the way she prepares is continuing to workout and doing a crossfit workout nearly everyday and sometimes two. Most are 20 minutes.

In order to make regionals, she had to finish in the top 30 among the 60-70 people in the sectional meet. Anybody can compete in sectionals.

The top four in the regionals made the finals.

“We’re trying to find the fittest man and woman on Earth,” Guillory said.

In the competition, you earn points as you go along. The regionals took place on a Saturday and a Sunday and there were two workouts each day in a field of 55. There are no age groups or weight groups as different people are going to have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s only divided up by male and female.

“Some of the bigger girls have the advantage on the weightlifting part of it, but then I had the advantage on body-weight stuff like pull-ups, push-ups, muscle-ups and the handstand pushups,” Guillory said.

The first workout was the Olympic snatch. They set up bars that started at 75 pounds down to 135 pounds. She said she struggled with that and only got to 95 pounds.

The next workout was pull-up/push-up/squat with a 20-pound weight vest on, which was an advantage for the small girls. That was as many rounds as possible in 10-minutes. Guillory said she did 9.26 rounds. She said that put her toward the middle. They came back that Sunday morning and did 100 double unders. Afterward was ten 185-pound deadlifts. Then put the bar down, pickup a 50-pound sandbag, run 250-meters. She had to do that three times and then row 1,000 meters on a machine. The timecap on this was 15 minutes.

She said she was still ranked 30th at this point.

The final workout was 10 muscle-ups, followed by 15 handstand pushups, 20 105-pound squat cleans and a 300-meter run on paved surface and then up a hill with pot holes and then down a hill on grass. There was a 15-minute limit on that and Guillory said she completed in 12:23.

She said she was the only woman to finish in her heat. She said that bumped her to first place, but there were six more to follow and she ended up in sixth.

Guillory was happy with the result.

“That was outstanding,” Guillory said. “It was a great feeling. I felt like I had won a superbowl just because it was probably one of the biggest things I have ever accomplished sportswise.”

Guillory said she didn’t realize she had won Fittest Woman in Louisiana until she got home.

“I was on facebook and I have friends from all over the place,” Guillory said. “Somebody typed in, ‘hey, if this is to determine the Fittest Person in the World and you were the first Louisiana finisher, aren’t you the fittest woman in Louisiana?’ I went, I guess I am.”

Guillory has participated in all kinds of athlete events including a marathon, half-ironman, hundreds of 10K and 5K road races and Multiple Sclerosis Tour the Cure (150-mile bike ride) just to name a few.

The marathon went from Oceans Springs, Miss. to Pass Christian and she finished in four hours 28 minutes.

Brant Peddy, 35, who heads up the Crossfit Program at Cross Gates and has been there for three years, got it started two-years ago. He played defensive end at Notre Dame for one year before tearing his ACL and then went to Lambuth College in Jackson, Tenn. He said he’s never seen anybody so determined to get work done as Guillory.

“Kelly’s one that might sit there and psych herself out, but once it’s time to work, the bulldog comes out in her,” Peddy said. “She hates to lose. The thing about crossfit is you’re competing with yourself and other people. Kelly has that competitiveness.”

Guillory, who has been at Cross Gates for seven years, said they’ve had the program called Crossfit Crusade for two.

“It’s a phenomenal way to get fit, feel healthy, eat healthy, live healthy and we’re trying share it with everyone,” Guillory said.

“It’s a healthy lifestyle and you can do it at any age,” she said.

The cost is $89 per month to join the program and they hold it six days at scheduled class times.

Peddy said his goal is to help people get fit and help them to set long-term and short-term goals.

“I want them to feel good about themselves and that they can do something tough they never thought they could do,” Peddy said. “My thing to help them reach their goals, eat right and get their mind right. Crossfit is mental.”

Peddy said he enjoys seeing the smiles on people’s faces when they reach their goals.

Guillory said right now, she’s doing a lot more participation than teaching since she’s preparing for a competition the upcoming weekend.

She said they like to keep the groups to 6-8 per instructor and they do all kinds of workouts like flipping tractor tires. She said the rewarding part of her teaching is seeing people doing things they thought they could not do.

Guillory has been married to her second husband Scott for the past three years. Guillory has two daughters Ashley, 23 and Nicole, 21.


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