Road to Conviction Episode 1: It’s Almost Symbolic

While incarcerated, Fletcher Tholin discovered CrossFit. Watch his rehabilitation in this eight-part series.

In Episode 1, we meet Tholin, learn how he found CrossFit and see his first workout at a CrossFit affiliate.

While in prison serving three years of a five-year sentence, he saw the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games on ESPN. Intrigued, he started doing CrossFit and tried to research as much as possible. Though his resources were limited, he had some outside help from a friend’s sister.

“(She) would … occasionally write me letters and everything like that, and I told her about all my CrossFit things,” he says. “She was there whenever the bug first bit me. I’d write her and tell her my progress and how stoked I was about all this stuff.”

She helped him find resources and books, which led to Tholin’s accidentally purchasing a workout log book. Though disappointed it wasn’t a book about movement, he started logging all his workouts.

“When I got something like 120 days from the door, I started using it,” Tholin says.

He tracked workouts, mood and attitude. In the process, his attitude improved and he started having more good days than bad.

Watch as Tholin goes to his first affiliate—CrossFit Edwardsville in Glen Carbon, Illinois—gets his first coach, learns how to move properly and participates in the 2014 Open.

Video by Gary Roberts and Jordan Shalhoub.

11min 44sec

Additional reading: “Journey Behind Bars: Part 1” by Emily Beers, published Oct. 22, 2013.