You wouldn’t know it, but Jennifer Christopher used to hate Crossfit.

“The first time I did Crossfit, I wanted to die,” Christopher admitted. “I wasn’t strong! I was cardio-ing my body off.”

But Christopher is weak no more. She and her husband, Matt Christopher, recently opened their fifth Crossfit gym, after outgrowing their old space in the industrial park on Kendrick Road. The new gym is located at 6 Little Brook Road. It is run by the Christophers, and employs only one other full-time employee.

The new gym is 7,500 square feet, and is spacious enough to host trunk shows, as it did Friday night with lululemon, at the same time its members are working out. There are also separate rooms for spin classes, and a masseuse. The couple hopes to rent an extra space to a yoga instructor, too.

Christopher said the objective of the new place is to provide “a center of excellence.”

“That’s our main goal, and it’s getting there,” Christopher said. “All of our instructors are college-educated … they are excellent. … We really want to make it about getting in the best shape you can get in, and learning the most about your body.”

Christopher herself used to be a very cardio-based trainer. She said she stuck to what she was good at (lots of cardio), and did not push her boundaries. But her husband’s tour of duty in Iraq several years ago changed all that.

“He came home from Iraq, and said, ‘You need to stop what you are doing, and start doing Crossfit, or else you’re going to be a dinosaur,’” Christopher said. “He was able to see it in Iraq firsthand. … People who did Crossfit far outdid everybody in the PT tests, everything. They were getting in phenomenal shape.”

The couple began training people in Crossfit in their garage in Marion in 2011, but quickly realized they needed more space. Christopher said she hopes the current gym will be “home” for a while.

Christopher sees Crossfit not only as a way to encourage community, but to feel good about what the body can do, rather than how it looks. But the two, to her, are very intertwined, as “community helps break down that stereotype.”

“Community is what helps you with your self-esteem – to have this built-in support system is huge,” Christopher said. “We are huge on fostering our community. We make sure it’s a positive environment in which to be. … You will appreciate somebody’s body, because they can do something better than you.”

She also advocates, specifically, that women not be afraid of heavy weights, or focus on a specific goal of being a certain size or weight. One naturally follows the other – but, by that point, the “obsession” with how a woman looks will likely be long gone, which she sees as “a healthy change that needed to happen.”

“You don’t have to beat your body every single day. You shouldn’t be doing that,” Christopher said. “I think a lot of females, especially, think they need to beat themselves up in an hour-long class to make up for things they ate, or burn everything off.”

The gym also caters to kids. There are bodyweight sessions for children, in order to teach them how to move. The most important age group, Christopher said, is kids in middle school, as they have just gone through a growth spurt.

“They’re like deer on new legs,” Christopher said. “They start to get better, and you see them start figuring out their body. … It’s teaching them how to move properly.”

The Christophers were also presented Friday evening with a variety of "gym warming" gifts purchased by their community of athletes. Among them: two stationary bikes, a variety of tools for mobility exercises, and a book chronicling in photos and quotes Seaside Crossfit's evolution from a group of friends exercising in the Christophers' garage to robust gym it is today.