Dedicated to working out

Kimbley keeps busy staying in shape

English+teacher+Daniel+Kimbley+also+helps+coach+volleyball.+He+plays+volleyball+and+participates+in+cross-fit+training.

NJatalie Chidemo

English teacher Daniel Kimbley also helps coach volleyball. He plays volleyball and participates in cross-fit training.

When you think of a sport, what is the first thing to come to mind? Chances are football, basketball, soccer, and baseball are the main thoughts to pop up.

Still, that doesn’t mean that people don’t know of or like other sports like volleyball, cross-fit, swimming and parkour. In fact, English teacher Daniel Kimbley has quite a bit of devotion toward volleyball and cross-fit.

Every day after school, Kimbley has a set schedule that could be summarized in a couple words — get healthier. After school, Kimbley coaches girls volleyball where he fills in as more than just a coach. He frequently participates in matches with them and even plays volleyball outside of the school with others.

Kimbley has been playing volleyball for years.

“I started playing regularly my junior year in college,” Kimbley said. “Basically, I was working as an intern at Rolls Royce and a guy saw me and said ‘hey you’re tall and look like you’d be interested in volleyball’ and I had a girlfriend at the time who was also in volleyball so I went to a tryout.

“It was one of those if you’re good, we can use you and if not then oh well kind of things.”

Kimbley’s schedule doesn’t stop there either as he also participates in a sport called cross-fit. Basically, cross-fit is a mix of aerobic exercise, gymnastics (body weight exercises) and Olympic weight lifting. The exercise has been described as “constantly varied, high intensity, functional movement,” with the stated goal of improving fitness, which it defines as “work capacity across broad time and modal domains.”

The workouts are typically short—30 minutes or less—and intense, demanding all-out physical exertion. They combine movements such as sprinting, rowing, jumping rope, climbing rope, flipping tires, weightlifting, carrying heavy objects, and many bodyweight exercises.

“I always worked out and I guess cross-fit was like a whole new level for competing and I loved competing,” said Kimbley, who is in his fourth year of dedication to the sport.

Kimbley also likes watching cross-fit.

“Cross-fit is my favorite in both because they’re the ones I’m most involved and committed to,” Kimbley said.

Kimbley goes on to tell about other people who participate in his grueling exercises with him.

“I originally started off on my own in my garage,” he said. “After a while, my friends started to see the improvement in my abilities like strength, speed and agility and they became interested. I also train a few people who come by to exercise.”

Another detail Kimbley shed light on is actual competitions he’s competed in.

“I’ve never won any of the volleyball competitions but I’ve competed in tons of them like local, national competitions in Chicago and all over in Indy.

“So I’ve played in volleyball tournaments all over but cross-fit is more of a time commitment and so it’s basically taken me three years to get strong enough to actually compete. And so my goal is before this school year is over to compete in cross-fit. I did compete in the cross-fit open though last year.”

Kimbley also has other hobbies.

“I like anything science related,” he said. “I’m basically into anything to do with athletic enhancement, or anatomy, physiology, and nutrition.”

Kimbley clearly has proven to be a very healthy individual with a very dedicated personality. Only a few people know, from some point or another, the difficulties of committing themselves to working out as hard as cross-fit would require. Most people would give in or “miss” a couple days until they stop working out overall unlike Kimbley, who clearly has a lot of workout dedication.