Todd and Peg Kinsman are retired. Which, as Peg puts it, means they do whatever they want to do every day. What they want to do, and have wanted to do nearly every day since the winter of 2013, is walk into Prototype. Todd started in January of that year. Peg followed in February. Between the two of them, that's 159 consecutive months with a class sign-in, 4,329 times through the door, and 7,368 results written down in Wodify. Not a phase. A life.
Neither of them came here looking for any of that. Todd grew up in Concord playing hockey through college, and his idea of "working out" was gym class and a little preseason lifting. Peg grew up in a big family without a lot of money, took every town sport and rec program she could, and played volleyball all the way through college in the mid-80s, when that wasn't a given for women. Then life did what life does. Work, kids, a long commute. Peg tried the Y, tried Curves, and took a break. Todd didn't do much of anything gym-related for years.
The door in was a golf course in Portugal. Todd was on a "business junket" (his word, not Peg's) with John Brosnahan, a friend from Bose who'd just started doing this thing called CrossFit and eating something called paleo. Todd had no idea what either one was. Within a month he was at Prototype doing both, 100 percent, all at once.
"I think you were getting irritated by me. 'Oh we can't eat this, we can't eat that, we're doing this workout.' It wasn't the paleo that got me in here. It was the working out part. I was like, I want to try to do that too."
— Peg (with Todd)Their kids were in high school. They could see life about to open back up, and they knew something had to change. So they changed it. They felt better almost immediately, and the "we should be doing this" became "we do this." Over the years the paleo loosened up (more carbs now, still clean), but the lesson underneath it stuck: you can't out-exercise a bad diet. Then it was sleep. Then, without them ever planning it, community. "All of the tenets of longevity," Todd says, "just started falling into place."
The 3:55 Alarm
For the first couple of years they came at night, after work. Then they switched to the 5 a.m. class, and that one decision reorganized everything. Breakfast, lunch, and clothes prepped the night before. Alarm at 3:55. Coffee, feed the dogs, out the door. Peg would train, then drive to Waltham, shower, and work a full day. "You had so much time for the rest of the day," Todd says. And the morning crew became the friends.
Peg calls them the badass group: eight women, very sarcastic, Lisa and Maria and Liz and Annie and Carolyn among them, who now count among the most important people in her life. "They're some of my very, very best and dearest friends," she says, and she sees them more than the friends she's known since high school and college. They do the big birthday parties together, they go on trips together, they know each other's kids and spouses. Todd's version is his golf crew from the gym: Marty, Dennis, and Neal, guys he says he probably works out with less than he spends time with outside the gym. "Other than family," Todd says, "they're probably the closest people in our lives."
"In the best way possible, it's like an anchor. It connects us, it ties us here. It starts our day. It's where our friends are. It's the hub of our life."
— ToddThat word, anchor, isn't a figure of speech for them. They're selling their house right now, and the two things they've decided they need to stay near are Prototype and Hopkinton Country Club, and Todd will tell you the country club is mostly about golf. When they bought a condo in Bonita Springs, Florida, they went out and looked at CrossFit gyms before they bought it; they're members at CrossFit Ionic down there, and picked it because it felt like here. Same community, same vibe. The gym is where their day starts, it's where their people are, and they're not willing to give that up for a shorter drive to anything else.
From PRs to "We Want to Do This at 80"
Early on, Todd went all in on the competitive side. Comp class. Competitions. Nights when he'd bolt from work, get here by 5:30, and stay past 8. "It sparked the athletic part of me," he says. "I wish I'd had CrossFit in college. I would have been a much better hockey player." The numbers from that stretch are still his: a 405 lb deadlift in December 2014, a 325 lb back squat, a 275 lb front squat, a 237 lb bench. Ring muscle-ups. Things he never thought he'd do.
Then it started to cost him. A shoulder surgery. A hip replacement a couple of years ago that took a long time to come back from. They were getting into their 50s, then their 60s, and the definition of a good day had to change. "PRs aren't the whole thing anymore," Todd says. "It's about getting a great workout, making sure my heart is healthy, that I'm strong. I scale. I modify." He did Fran a week and a half before this interview, scaled the weight, ended up on the floor, and felt awesome thirty minutes later. That's the whole philosophy in one workout.
Peg's version of that goal has always been the same: be able to walk when she's 80. She watched her mother struggle with osteoporosis, and everything she's read for thirteen years says the same thing, that women should lift heavy for bone health. So she does. Her back squat went from 105 lbs in her first month to 180. Her deadlift went from 110 to 240, and that 240 came more than eight years in. Her front squat nearly tripled, 55 to 150, with that PR set a full decade into her training. She and her partner Nicole St. Pierre are three-time Lift Off champions once the numbers are age-adjusted. "I really don't like to compare myself to other people," she says. "But that does sort of justify some of the work. You're like, oh yeah. I'm pretty strong for a 61-year-old."
"Trying something, trying, trying, trying, and getting it. As an adult you don't get put into that situation. You get that feeling here. It's empowering. Oh my god, who thought I could do this?"
— PegStill Getting Stronger in Their 60s
Here's the part that matters most for anyone who thinks strength has an expiration date. We measure every member's current form against the active members in their age group training at Prototype right now, the same age-graded standard across the whole gym. Measured against the men 60 and over, Todd's 205 lb back squat, 185 lb front squat, and 26 lb weighted pull-up all sit at the very top of the group. And he's still setting all-time bests: eleven movements have their lifetime best inside the last year, including a 225 lb barbell hip thrust and a front squat ladder this summer that went 165, 175, 185 in five weeks. His biggest month ever, 29 sign-ins, was December 2025. Thirteen years in.
Peg, measured against the women 60 and over, is at the top of the group on both pressing lifts we have current numbers for: a 75 lb shoulder press and a 100 lb push press, both well clear of the group median. Her biggest month ever was 27 sign-ins in May 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, when the gym was setting up a spotlight in the parking lot so the 5 a.m. class could see. Over the last twelve months she's still averaging 2.8 sessions a week; Todd, 2.7. That's a pace most members never reach in their first year.
Peg is in the middle of a harder test right now. She was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, had surgery, and was told not to lift for at least four weeks. It's driving her bonkers. Her goal is already set: get back up to her fighting weight and back to regular old CrossFit. Her surgeon said something Todd keeps coming back to, that you do everything within your control to improve your longevity, and you accept that some things aren't in your control. "I've been reminded that I get to do CrossFit," Peg says. "Versus, I have to."
Thirteen Years of Memories
Ask them what they remember and it comes out in a flood. Peg calling Coach Brian "Sean" for a month because she misheard his name, and Brian never correcting her. Pull-up bars on the wall, workouts written in chalk on the floor, counting reps that way. The green carpet it took years to get rid of (it's back, apparently). MURPH in the pouring rain during COVID with soaked masks. Watching Jessica do double-unders while pregnant. Coach Jon being a riot, Mark Hardin's dad joke of the day, Coach Gillian fixing a split-jerk stance Todd hadn't used in six years. A weekend at Rebecca's lake house. Being pushed to relive a certain "snake bites" story by Jay and Debbie. "It's like gym class," Peg says. "And I loved gym."
Their advice for anyone on the fence is the simplest thing in this whole series, and it's the thing they've actually lived for thirteen years. You don't have to kill every workout. In fact, if you do, you'll pay for it. Live to CrossFit another day. Find a partner, even if it's just "I'll meet you at the 9 a.m." Todd had Peg saying "nope, we're going" at 3:55 in the morning. And when you're sitting in your car in the parking lot, scared? Peg remembers being that scared. She and Justine went to their first class together right after on-ramp so neither of them had to walk in alone. "It's okay to be scared," she says. "We were all there. Don't let it stop you from coming in. Take it slow, and you're going to be amazed at what happens."
Todd and Peg came to Prototype for a diet. They found the hub of their life. And neither of them plans on stopping.
If you're someone who is in your 50s or 60s and has quietly decided the strong years are behind you, or who's watched a parent lose their independence and wants a different story for yourself, this one is for you. Strength doesn't expire. Todd and Peg are proof, and they'd be the first to tell you that all you have to do is show up. Book your free No Sweat Intro →
