Lindsay Scaringella

Almost nobody finds us this way. People come in because a friend dragged them, or a spouse signed them up, or a coworker wouldn't stop talking about it. Lindsay Scaringella found Prototype on Instagram, sent a message asking if she could come check the place out, walked through the door, and signed up. No referral. No connection. She had just bought her first house in Upton, didn't know a single person in town, and went looking.

She's a registered dietitian and licensed nutritionist — which is to say she does professionally what most people are trying to figure out on their own. She started at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy on a pre-med track, then transferred to Framingham State for her master's in nutrition, because sharing what she knew about health turned out to matter more to her than practicing medicine. She grew up in Littleton with a younger brother. She loves the beach, biking, and hiking, and recently finished a sprint triathlon. She loves to cook. And she is, in her own word, obsessed with Kaia, her three-year-old hound mix.

She'd been doing CrossFit off and on since 2020, and she knew exactly what she was after. Not a treadmill. Not a wall of machines. She wanted a gym that didn't feel like a gym. Something she wouldn't dread. She'd fallen in love with the feeling of being strong and powerful, and she wanted that back.

That doesn't mean she wasn't nervous.

Lindsay has trained at several CrossFit gyms over the years, so she had a basis for comparison. She says Prototype was the most welcoming of any of them — that the second she stepped through the door she was welcomed with open arms. The strangers didn't stay strangers for long.

What She Was Carrying Through the Door

Here's what nobody in that room knew about the new member who'd just signed up.

In 2023 — years before Upton, before Prototype, before any of us met her — Lindsay was diagnosed with cancer. It came out of nowhere. We'll let her tell it:

Read that again and notice where the exclamation point lands. That's Lindsay.

Through all of it — every round, every hospital stay — she kept training."Throughout my entire chemo journey, I continued with CrossFit," she says. And she doesn't treat that as incidental. "My doctors and oncologists believe I recovered so well and so quickly due to my background of health and fitness, and I thank CrossFit for saving my life."

We want to be straight about something: none of that happened here. Prototype had nothing to do with Lindsay getting through 2023. She did that somewhere else, with other coaches and other people around her, long before she'd ever heard of us. We don't get to claim it.

But we've watched it happen inside these walls, more than once. Jean Hanks trained through breast cancer treatment on this floor with one rule: don't treat me any different. Maria Maynard found out what this community does when one of its own is going through it. What Lindsay's story adds is the chapter that comes after — when the hard part is behind you, and you move to a new town, and you have to go find your people all over again.

The Strength She Came For

Lindsay's record with us is short — she logged her first result in March 2026, so this is a starting line, not a career. But she came in wanting workouts that were quick and actually effective, and she says the strength program Coach Tony runs delivered exactly that.

The numbers back her up. Her deadlift went from 230 to 250 pounds in nine days. Her bench press went from 125 to 140 in fourteen. She's put 195 pounds on her back and stood up with it. For someone a few months into a new gym in a new town, that is not a person easing in.

What she got from Tony, though, wasn't only programming.

Stay in the Present

Lindsay has a tattoo on her arm. It says stay in the present.

"You can't control the past or the future," she says. "Take it one day at a time — sometimes hour by hour — and focus on what you can control in that present moment." It's the kind of line that sounds like a poster until you know where she earned it.

Ask her how life is now and she doesn't hedge. "Life is pretty damn good," she says. "I try to focus on the important stuff and the positive people in my life. I've realized life is way too damn short to be worrying about stuff you can't control and people who don't uplift you."

She came here for a workout she wouldn't dread. What she found was a room that reminded her how much she'd missed this — that a gym like this one was never really about the gym. It's about who's in it. She sent a DM to a place she'd never been, in a town where she knew no one, and walked out with people who cheer for her.

If you're waiting for a sign to do the same thing, this is a pretty good one.

"Just don't stop moving. Continue being active — whether that means walking your dog, yoga, swimming, CrossFit, biking. I attribute my life to being active, and that's what healed me."

If any of this sounded like you:

You've joined a gym before and quietly stopped going, because you dreaded every minute of it.

You're new to town and you don't know anybody yet, and walking into a room full of strangers sounds like the hardest part.

You're coming back from something — an illness, an injury, a year you'd rather not repeat — and you want to feel strong again.

Lindsay didn't know anyone here either. She sent one message.

No pressure and no workout — just a conversation about where you are and where you'd like to be. That's the whole thing.

Lindsay is one of the newer members I've highlighted in this series, and I thought about that before running it. Most of these stories come from people who have been with us five, ten, thirteen years. But reading her answers, I felt like it was important for people to get to know her.

She found us on her own. She sent me a message on Instagram asking if she could come check the gym out, came in, and signed up. Nobody referred her, nobody walked her in. New town, nobody she knew, and she just went and did it. That takes a certain kind of person.

Whenever I see her in here, she always has a smile on her face. She works hard, and she picks other people up. Her confidence and her humility together are amazing traits, and to me, that's exactly what makes her such a great fit here at Prototype.

And here's the thing I keep coming back to. Everything in this story — the diagnosis, the treatment, all of it — happened before she ever heard of us. She was already that person when she walked in. We didn't build any of that. We just get to be the place she landed.

She's a few months in. As far as I'm concerned, we're just getting started with her.

— Mike

This story was developed from written responses submitted by the member and shaped with the help of AI writing tools. The facts, quotes, and experiences are Lindsay's own — AI helped organize and present them in a format worthy of the story she's lived.