100 in 100: Keivan Russo-Day 25

In the summer of 2014, Keivan Russo had just finished his first real athletic goal as an adult — the Jamestown, Rhode Island half marathon — and promptly lost every ounce of motivation to go back to his regular gym. He was a year out of school, living at home, just getting his career started. He’d always been a little curious about CrossFit, but also a little wary of it.

So he went looking. He checked out a box in Framingham. Then he found Prototype, right on his drive home from work in Westborough. He walked in. The vibe felt right. He started.

He was not looking for a community. If anything, he was bracing against one.

“I always had this idea in my head that CrossFit was very group-identity driven,” he says. “That you’d get pulled into something whether you wanted to or not. I wasn’t sure that was for me. I kind of just wanted a new spot where I could show up and work hard.”

And then, in his words: “Little did I know.”

The One Thing That Stayed

August 2026 will mark twelve years. In that time, Keivan went through a breakup, met his now-wife, bought a house, gut-renovated it largely on his own, switched jobs, came back to a company he’d started with, got married, got a dog, and had a daughter. A full decade-plus of life happening all at once.

Through every chapter of it, one thing held steady.

“Prototype was probably the single most consistent thing in my life outside of certain people and family,” he says. “Looking back, that’s kind of amazing to me. I never expected that when I walked in. I also never expected to become part of a community. I wasn’t really looking for that. But here we are.”

The Crew Knew First

When the world shut down in 2020 and everything felt isolated, Keivan kept showing up — on Zoom. Brian, Carolina, Big Will, Nicole. That crew kept the mornings going when nothing else was.

He’d been planning to propose to his now-wife during that stretch. That was always the plan. But the timing meant he had almost no one to tell. So he told the people he saw every morning on a screen.

That is the whole story in one moment. A guy who walked in specifically to avoid getting pulled into a community told that community about the biggest decision of his life before he told his own family. Not because he had to. Because they were the people who were there.

Fifty-Five Days in Thirty-Degree Water

Winter of 2022 going into 2023, Keivan heard Mike and Mark DiRienzo talking about cold plunging. A good friend was doing it at his house around the same time. His wife was pregnant. He was, by his own account, processing a lot.

So he committed. Fifty-five days in a row, in a tub outside his house, in thirty-degree water. He worked up to sitting in it for ten minutes at a stretch.

“It was a mental challenge as much as anything else,” he says, “and that’s exactly what drew me to it.” Prototype eventually got a cold plunge of its own — which, he’ll tell you, is pretty cool.

What He Can Do Now

Start with the one that surprises him most: he trains at 5am. He used to be a 5pm guy and couldn’t imagine it any other way. Now he can’t imagine making an evening class. He’s in four to six days a week.

And he is lifting the most weight of his life — not as a one-time peak, but consistently, for years now. A back squat of 355 pounds. A deadlift of 430. A bench press of 275. Here’s the part that’s genuinely rare: all three of those career bests were set deep into his second decade of training, in his thirties, while his life got busier, not less. At one of Prototype’s Lift Off competitions he went chasing a 400-pound deadlift and blew through it. Pulling in the 400s is just normal now. Next target: 500.

Double-unders are the same story — he chased them for years, then one day they clicked, and now the only question is how many he can string together unbroken.

“That’s kind of how it goes here,” he says. “You hit something and then you just move the bar. You’re always chasing something, and when you get there, you’re already looking at what’s next.”

But the lift he values most isn’t on the board. Keivan has a high-stress senior role in commercial construction — a lot of responsibility, always on. The hour he spends here is the hour he gets to put all of it down.

It pays out beyond the gym, too. Keivan snowboards, surfs, and spearfishes when he can. With a young family and a demanding career, he isn’t out there as often as he’d like — but when he is, his body shows up. He can pick up a snowboard after a long summer and feel good. He can swim around for a couple of hours chasing fish and not be wrecked the next day. “If I wasn’t getting a consistent full-body workout here,” he says, “I think those hobbies would be suffering a lot more than they already are.”

The People Who Became His Life

His dad started coming a couple of years after Keivan did. He’s retired now, close to a decade in, and he just hit his 1,000-class mark. The two of them, in the same gym, all these years later.

Then there’s Brian. One of Keivan’s first weeks, the two of them sized each other up — who’s this guy? — neither one knowing what the other did there. They’ve been close ever since. Brian’s line has stuck with Keivan for years.

And Garrett. Around 2021 the two of them started a standing Saturday ritual — Keivan comes in at 6am, an hour before the first class, so they can train together before Garrett coaches. They’ve done it ever since. It’s one of his favorite parts of the week. Garrett’s wife has become a friend through the gym too. “That’s the kind of relationship this place builds.”

Jon and Mike are close to him in age, moving through the same stages of life. “It’s been really cool to gain those two brothers as friends over the years,” he says. And good old Steve — he just loves seeing him every time.

“There are a lot of people at this gym who have just become part of my life now,” Keivan says, “whether any of us planned it that way or not. I’m really appreciative of that.”

Just Show Up

Ask Keivan how his life would be different if he’d never walked in, and he struggles to even answer it — the place is too woven into everything. He’d be less strong, sure. More fluctuation in routine and mindset, probably. But the bigger thing is a lesson, not a number.

“This place has taught me to just show up. To not make excuses. To approach things that feel daunting and go for it anyway.” He renovated his entire house — 23 windows, new floors, new kitchen, new bathrooms, new siding, reframed walls, retiled — much of it work he’d never done before. He wasn’t afraid of it. Same mentality as a workout that looks impossible on the board: you approach it, and you go.

He lives 21 minutes away at 5am, closer to 30 in the middle of the day. People think he’s crazy. He doesn’t even think about it. “That’s just part of what I do.”

He came in unsure about the whole CrossFit culture thing — worried he’d feel obligated to be all-in on some group identity. What he found instead was the opposite of obligation.