Emma Cary took the 2024 CrossFit Games season off last February. Now, as we head into the 2025 season, former Teenage phenom is officially stepping away from her competitive career.
In her first post on Instagram in nine months, Cary shared that she will not compete again and that she is excited for her future. “I’m done with competition and couldn’t be more excited for what’s next!” exclaimed Cary.
Cary expanded on her decision over the course of six slides along with recent photos.
Cary’s full statement:
This year wasn’t what I expected, but it brought everything I didn’t even know I wanted!! 2024 began with a major identity crisis. I was hating the thing I’ve defined myself by, while also hating that I had poured my entire identity and self worth into anything worldly that will inevitably fade. I was hating every moment in the gym, hating how selfish I had become, and hating how lonely and isolated I made myself in the name of “no distractions”. I used to believe the feeling of winning made all of the idolatry, pride, and selfishness worth it, and then I actually experienced winning. It was a fleeting moment of happiness, but it only made me feel more dissatisfied with how I was living my life.
I wasn’t serving anyone else in a meaningful or intentional way. I was only serving my pride; the voice that said I was worth something because I was good at CrossFit. It felt purposeless though, because that voice could not be quieted. The main thing I learned this year is that there is no lasting satisfaction or joy to be found in anything but knowing Christ. I also hated the thought that if I didn’t have CrossFit, I wouldn’t know what else I liked. I had no idea what the next day, let alone the next year, would look like if it wasn’t centered around my goal of winning. I made the decision to step away from the 2024 season with every intention to get my heart in the right place and return to competition.
While it is absolutely possible to serve God and others through CrossFit, I personally was not. I was doing it for purely selfish reasons, and when I stepped away for the season, I could clearly see how much better life is when I’m not living only to make my name great. As I took my eyes off of myself, I started seeing a lot more I could do with and for the people around me. Serving others felt better than being served! Building true relationships and being real felt better than trying to show no weakness. This joy in helping people and freedom in simply being with people led me to trying some new and different things that honestly scared me. I took an EMT class and also started nursing school!!
I’m so glad I did! I’ve been having the most fun learning about the body and what to do when things go wrong. I have such a long road of learning ahead of me and I truly could not be more excited about that, as well as grateful for the people I’ll get to do it with!! This stuff is so so cool to me. I don’t know exactly where I want to end up career wide, but I can’t imagine the feeling of working as a team for the good of someone else getting old anytime soon. As I experienced how passionate I am about other things, the desire to return to competitive CrossFit grew weaker and weaker. A few months ago, I made the surprisingly easy decision to step away from competition for good.
It was a scary decision but not as sad as I thought! I actually couldn’t be happier that the decision was as simple as not feeling joy or purpose in CrossFit anymore, and finding it in other things. I’m spending my time doing things I love with the people I love, and hopefully preparing myself to have the honro of helping someone on one of their hardest days. I can’t imagine a life I would love more!!! If you would have told me any of this in January, I would have had trouble believing that I could love or even be good at anything else, but I would be so deeply grateful to myself for refusing to stay somewhere I was unhappy just because it was all I had ever known, and for proving those fears wrong.
To the lifetime friends I’ve made, the coaches and mentors I’ll forever be grateful to, the brands who have supported me, the competitors I’ve had the honor of sharing the floor with, those who cheered for me or sent a kind message, thank you from the bottom of my heart! I’ll always treasure these years of chasing my CrossFit dreams with amazing people in my corner. I want other things for my life now and I’m excited to chase those dreams too!! Whether it is lived in front of 1,000,000 people or 10, a life spent knowing, loving, and serving Jesus is the greatest thing you could ever experience. I am so undeserving and so, so grateful for this beautiful life.
Emma Cary won the Teenage 14-15 year-old division at the 2019 CrossFit Games. She qualified for the 2021 CrossFit Games in the Open division where she placed 16th overall. Following rehab from a back injury, Cary returned to competition in 2023 where she once again made it to the CrossFit Games. She took 8th place.
