For CrossFit Vet Kari Pearce, Fitness is Still Full of Wonder

For CrossFit veteran Kari Pearce, training for the unknown and unknowable isn’t new. It’s what she does. 

“I am a veteran, so training for the Games is similar to all the other years. You have to train for everything. You never know what you’re going to be given. And you know that's what you're training for - you're training for the unknown. You don’t know what's coming, ever,” Kari said.

Kari is a six time CrossFit Games athlete, three-time Fittest American Female, published author, and creator of PowerAbs. She is currently the 5th fittest woman on earth and has been in the top 10 for the last five years. 

One of the things Pearce didn’t see coming was her business: PowerAbs. 

When M.Gordon Publishing reached out to develop content with Kari, it was for gymnastics. Kari, who has been a gymnast since the age of three, agreed instantly. “I love gymnastics, and I don’t think a lot of people understand them really.” But when one of the women present shared that her husband couldn’t get over Kari’s abs, they had an idea.

“I can remember exactly where I was sitting when they asked me if I wanted to do an ab program. It was one of those moments,” Kari said. “That is amazing. I had always thought about it but I never knew how to bring it to life.” 

In December of 2018 PowerAbs came to life. “I was a personal trainer and I saw people at the gym working their abs, but in gymnastics, you do so many things to work your abs. People don’t do these because they’re different, but gymnasts do,” Kari said. “And I knew I could come up with a program to first help people get a six pack, but is also fun. It’s ten minutes, five days a week. Ten minutes seems like a short period of time, but when you’re doing the workout, like man! They’re hard. It’s intense. But you know it's only ten minutes, so you realize - okay, it's ten minutes. You can do anything for ten minutes.”

But for Kari, who is in it for much more than just the credit, PowerAbs has changed her life. 

“I’ve been blown away by the growth. PowerAbs is so different because it's online and you can reach such a different crowd. Once I saw that we had people from all over - Canada, New Zealand, the US, people all over the world are doing it and I was floored. It is so cool,” Kari said.

For Kari, who has loved fitness since she was little, it’s not the business success that pumps her up: It’s the personal success. “People will send their before and after and for me, sometimes I feel like I just got my six pack for the first time! It's so fulfilling, and that's part of how I think I am able to run my business and still have my training and do everything, is because it is so fulfilling in itself, and it's a different kind of reward than training.” It’s one of the things that still drives her to be better, which she shared with BUBS Naturals co-founder Sean Lake on an Instagram Live with us recently. 

Sometimes, it still surprises her. Kari, who has loved fitness since she was a young girl, understands that fitness - be it competitive CrossFit, gymnastics, or ten minutes of PowerAbs - is transformative. “It's so easy to say, oh it's just an ab program. But you see some of these testimonials and you read people finally having the confidence to take their shirt off at the beach, after so many years, and it's not. It's not just an ab program. It's gaining confidence in your own life. That’s what it really is.”