We are excited to announce and welcome Roz Glanfield, a certified yoga instructor, personal trainer, CrossFit level 1 trainer & nutritionist to the mod_e team. We met at the 2016 CrossFit Games in LA and realized that our philosophies and core values regarding nutrition, working out and life in general aligned greatly. Therefore ultimately joining forces was only a natural progression from what started with a simple conversation over a pre-workout juice sample. Check-out our interview with Roz and see what she’ll be bringing to the mod_e crew table.

Q&A with Roz:

Roz Glanfield is a Certified Personal Trainer, CrossFit Level 1 Trainer, Yoga Instructor & Nutritionist. Roz studied and worked in Law but left the corporate world behind to pursue her life’s passions.

As well as being a fitness enthusiast, Roz is a foodie and globetrotter.  We are excited to have her share her holistic approach to health and nutrition, providing nutritious recipes and fitness insights on how to maintain & improve your health and athletic performance, especially for busy individuals!

Q1: What would your perfect day look like?

My perfect day would include yoga, coffee, CrossFit, peanut butter, country music and a donut (yes, if you ask for a perfect day it includes a donut, but like everything perfect it’s a rare thing and when it comes along you got to enjoy it, life is about balance)! Although my preference is always coffee first, then everything else.

Q2: What are you passionate about?

I love food, traveling and being active. There’s nothing I love more than to combine all three and share that experience with others. Going on an adventure, especially with friends, sharing the struggle and rewards is magical and turns the adventure into a memorable experience.

Q3: What is your athletic background? Have you any notable accomplishments? And what's next?

I grew up playing racket sports, excelling socially in the realm of tennis and competitively at squash, which I played at a collegiate level back in the UK. As a child I fell in love with gymnastics and spent a lot of time upside down redecorating the walls of our house with tiny footprints.

More recently I took up long distance running. I earned a podium position in the Cayman Islands Marathon in 2014 and achieved a respectable finishing time of 3 hours 42 minutes in my first ever marathon in Chicago in 2015. Since then I have refocused my attention towards CrossFit and yoga. I'm still deciding what challenge is next, but I do quite like the idea of being able to call myself a Spartan!

Q4: Who or what convinced you to start CrossFit?

I started CrossFit at the beginning of 2015 not long after competing in the Cayman Islands Half Marathon. I had been mixing my endurance training with some resistance work by going to bootcamp classes & doing TRX but I was getting a little bored of my routine and also wasn't developing as much strength as I wanted. I was a little skeptical at first as CrossFit seemed to be causing a rift in the world of fitness. After listening to both sides of the spectrum, I decided the only way to really find out what it was all about was to give it a go. As I suspected I would, I loved it from the get-go! The premise of CrossFit - constantly varied, functional fitness executed at a high intensity - combines everything that I look for in a workout and the community provides everything I had been missing in my routine; support, competition, coaching & accountability.

Even when I travel, my CrossFit family are a continual source of inspiration and help keep me motivated. I love that I can drop in to a ‘box’ anywhere in the world and meet a bunch of like-minded people. Most recently I stopped in at Opus Athletics, CrossFit Whistler and happened to crash their 10-year anniversary party. I didn’t know a soul when I arrived but when I left I had several invitations to go hiking, biking & dog walking the next day. Having an instant group of friends anywhere in the world is a dream come true for  a nomad like me!

Q5: Do you specialize in any activities or areas of expertise?

Generally speaking I specialize in open-mindedness. I am an explorer at heart and and certainly a curious mind! That helps not getting stuck but to evolve and improve. It really fuels my holistic approach, staying on top of what’s best in nutrition and for athletic coaching.

As a CrossFit trainer & Yoga Instructor, I am especially attentive to people's physical alignment. I’m a stickler for form before intensity or load. The former gymnast in me loves to assist with any gymnastics based movements so there’s no avoiding handstands when I’m around! Outside the gym I love everything from kitesurfing to snowboarding.

Q6: What sparked your interest in nutrition?

My desire to learn more about food and nutrition stems from simply loving food, being an athlete and a woman. My love for food developed early as a toddler when I was exposed to a wide variety of foods and cuisines. My mother gratefully recalls how I would eat anything and everything – including my older sister’s leftover vegetables.

At university I kept my diet as well balanced as possible for a student, but it wasn’t until I became a serious athlete when took up running & got myself a coach that I really took an interest in food as fuel. As many others, especially at a young age I had been mislead by clever marketing to believe that the food I was eating was healthy, but my running coach redirected my education to scientific sources and I began to understand the significance of food on athletic performance. I cleaned up my diet, lost 10lbs and improved my half marathon time by 12 minutes.

As a woman, I am also acutely aware of the psychological impact food can have on people, both physically in terms of our body composition and hormonally as the fine balance of the endocrine system can be easily disturbed. On an emotional level, food holds a powerful bond over us all, bringing people and families together around a table it can be a great source of pleasure or a cause for pain and discomfort. I have seen both sides in a variety of different ways and want to share my knowledge and experiences so that people are equipped with the correct information about food. Information that I hope will help to shift the mindset of many and encourage people to cultivate a healthy and sustainable relationship with food.

Q7: What do you love most about working in health & fitness?

I love to see people discovering hidden talents or accomplishing things they never believed they could. And often that discovery happens at the intersection of smart, hard training and the right nutrition. Activating potential is growth, sharing it with others is life. I feel very lucky to be able to educate and guide others on their journeys. Seeing people reaping the rewards of their hard work, watching their self-esteem grow & witnessing them develop into the best versions of themselves brings a lot of joy.

Q8: What's your favorite quote?

“Love the life you live. Live the life you love.” – Bob Marley.