There’s a moment in almost everyone’s day where a voice says: just skip it today.
Long day. You’re tired. The couch is right there. Nobody’s keeping score.
Coach Curtis Seidel knows that voice well. Between serving as a Catholic priest, running a Catholic school in downtown Walla Walla, leading multi-day backpacking trips through Wyoming’s Wind River Range, and coaching at Destination CrossFit, Curtis’s days are genuinely full. Some nights, the quiet evening wins.
But most nights, it doesn’t.
And the reason why — and the line he gives to every member who walks in unsure if they wanted to be there — is the heart of Episode 18 of the Actually Doing Things podcast.
“You already won. You won the workout. Everything else from there is gravy.” —
Coach Curtis
From Seminary to the Squat Rack: How Curtis Found CrossFit
Curtis’s path to CrossFit isn’t a typical one. He started doing CrossFit workouts in a dorm while in graduate school in Washington D.C., studying alongside other men preparing for the priesthood. The workouts were pulled straight from the CrossFit.com website and done in a shared gym.
After being ordained in 2014 and moving through a series of parish assignments in the Spokane area, Curtis eventually landed in Walla Walla to lead the Catholic schools here. He found Destination CrossFit, started training, and after a few years decided he wanted to do something more with it.
“I love the learning of things,” he told us. “I wanted to understand the philosophy and mechanics of CrossFit coaching — and whether there were pieces I could bring back into the schools.”
He went through our coaching internship program, earned his Level 1 certification, and spent nearly two years coaching classes at DCF. In that time he also served as a police chaplain in Spokane, where being physically capable wasn’t optional — it was part of the job.
And then there’s the Wyoming piece. Curtis has twice led or assisted on 21-day freshman backpacking trips into the Wind River Range through Wyoming Catholic College — a school of fewer than 200 students that pairs classical literature with intensive wilderness experience. Last year, during an instructor training course in the Grand Canyon area, he spent part of an exercise carrying a 165-pound “patient” down a canyon with two other instructors, lowering him over boulders, navigating technical terrain.
“It was cool to know — say yeah, I can carry a 165-pound person out of a canyon if that’s what needs to happen.”
That’s functional fitness in the truest sense. Not aesthetics. Not performance for performance’s sake. Fitness as capacity for life.
The Integrated Human: Why Body, Mind, and Spirit Can’t Be Separated
One of the things that drew Curtis to CrossFit — and to coaching it — is an idea that shows up in his work as a priest, his leadership of schools, and his time in the wilderness: that human beings are integrated, not compartmentalized.
“I’m of the mind that happiness is the fruit of living our humanity at its fullest,” he said. “And we exist on a multitude of levels that build on and interrelate with each other.”
That means that if you’re not physically active, your capacity to relate well to others is hampered. And if your relationships are thriving, they pull you toward the gym even on hard days. One feeds the other.
As someone who works in mental health, this framing resonates with me deeply. We’ve always believed at DCF that we’re not just training bodies — we’re training whole humans. Curtis just happens to articulate it with twelve years of theology behind it.
He also brought up something worth naming: on days he makes the class, his performance is different than on days he stays and does the workout alone. The community is part of the training. The people showing up next to you are part of what makes you better.
That’s not soft. That’s science. And it’s one of the reasons we build DCF the way we do.
Play, Type 2 Fun, and Why We Need More of Both
When we asked Curtis about his favorite kinds of workouts, his answer was immediate: the ones that feel like a playground.
Rope climbs. Box get-overs. Wall walks. Things that are a little awkward, a little ridiculous, and require you to figure something out with your body that you haven’t quite figured out before.
“I’m not good at most of those things,” he admitted. “But I love them.”
That’s the spirit of what we’re going for. Fitness that takes itself too seriously stops being sustainable. The goal isn’t a perfect score — it’s a good hour in your day.
As Coach Pat Sherwood says: just make it a good hour. Everything else gets better.
Curtis also talked about “type 2 fun” — the kind that’s uncomfortable while it’s happening and deeply satisfying afterward. He sees it in the gym after brutal workouts, people flat on the floor with big smiles. He sees it in the backcountry, teenagers getting rained on all day and recapping it like a highlight.
That shared experience of doing something hard together — and coming out the other side — is the connective tissue of community. In the gym and everywhere else.
Pandemic, Protocols, and the Power of a Shared Mindset
Curtis was part of DCF during the pandemic years — both as a member and as someone navigating school reopening on the other side of his professional life. We spent a lot of time in those years taping off spaces, counting people, adjusting and re-adjusting.
What he remembers isn’t the inconvenience. It’s how the gym handled it.
“I didn’t feel like I was fighting against the protocol stuff,” he said. “We’re not here to adjudicate what is or isn’t. We’re just here to work out.”
That’s a culture thing. It doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when you build a community where people are invested in the collective, not just their own workout. Where showing up for each other is part of the deal.
It also reinforced something we believe here: consistency is built during the hard seasons. The people who stayed connected during the pandemic — in whatever way they could — came out the other side stronger and more committed than before.
What DCF Loses (and What Stays) When Curtis Heads to Spokane
At the end of June 2026, Curtis is moving back to the Spokane area for a new assignment — a parish with a K–8 school, closer to family and old friends from his Gonzaga days.
Before he goes, he’ll be leading one more trip to Wyoming: taking his DeSales students through Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, a day of rock climbing, and five days of backpacking. Then serving as chaplain on a Wyoming Catholic College freshman trip — one with special meaning, because the lead instructor was a student on his very first trip.
What will he miss about DCF?
“DCF does a real brilliant job of having a high-intensity workout environment coupled with a very relaxed community environment,” he said. “People really work hard, but there’s no judgment toward scaling or toward people who aren’t at RX. That’s a really cool balance.”
He’ll also miss the recovery resources — the cold plunge, the sauna, the compression boots, the InBody, MyZone — and the coaching formation process. Things that just aren’t available at most gyms.
We’ll miss him too. Not because coaches like Curtis are easy to replace (they’re not), but because the diversity of perspectives he brought to our team — priest, wilderness guide, school administrator, lifelong learner — made all of us better.
“Some days the voice that says ‘just stay home’ wins. But the days where I take a breath and say: no — I’ll be happier if I go — invariably, just making that decision, I’m already happier with myself. Because I’m choosing for my future self.”
Showed Up Today? You Already Won.
That’s what we want you to take from this one.
The hardest part isn’t the workout. It’s making the decision to come in. Once you’ve made it through the door of a CrossFit gym in Walla Walla — or wherever you are — you’ve already done the thing that matters most.
Everything else from there is gravy.
If you’re new to Destination CrossFit or curious about what we’re building here, we’d love to meet you. Start with a free consultation at wwdcf.com/free-consultation/ and let’s find the best fit for where you are right now.
And if you’re around on June 29th at 6:30pm — come to Curtis’s send-off after his last class. We’d love to have you there.
