Joe Fonseca throws a 20-pound wall ball up toward a target 10 feet high on the wall Sunday during a CrossFit workout at Triumph Fitness in Redmond.(Andy Tullis/Bulletin photo)

REDMOND — If you have ever been intimidated at the thought of taking up CrossFit, keep this in mind: Ten years ago, when Triumph Fitness owner Joe Fonseca first tried out the high-intensity fitness regimen, he was not much good at it either. That was what he liked about it.

“I played sports when I was little and then (ran) triathlons and marathons, anything leg-heavy always felt good, it was kind of easy,” recalled Fonseca, who was born without hands. “But I like not being good at something. If there’s a flaw, I want to find it and fix it. And there was so much about CrossFit in general that was exceptionally challenging, weightlifting and the combination of movements to transition (from one exercise to the next) was exceptionally difficult, and I loved it. There’s been nothing easy about this process. I did a lot of experimenting to figure out how to make things work.”

Fonseca performs CrossFit exercise with only the smallest of modifications: He uses foam blocks for pushups and similar moves, kettle bells instead of barbells, and ties that help him control a barbell as he lifts it off the floor.

Earlier this month Fonseca, now 35, competed as a member of two teams at the Arnold Classic in Columbus, Ohio — although it was only in the past three or four years that he started to see CrossFit as something he wanted to do competitively. He began traveling to various competitions based on the types of exercises typically used in CrossFit workouts, including some, like the Working Wounded Games, that were just for adaptive athletes. After competing at the Wodapalooza Fitness Festival in Miami in 2015, he was approached by representatives from Team Some Assembly Required, an organization that aims to provide adaptive athletes with opportunities to not just participate in sports, but to compete and succeed against all competition, able-bodied and non-able-bodied alike. Team SAR had Strongman competitors and marathoners, but the organizers wanted to see if Fonseca wanted to be a part of their expansion into new disciplines.

“They didn’t have high-quality CrossFitters, so we’re trying to see what that would look like,” Fonseca said at the Triumph Fitness gymin Redmond last week, soon after he returned from the Arnold Classic. “The team is constantly shifting and rearranging itself. The point for us is to get elite adaptive athletes to compete against elite — you guys would call them able-bodied athletes. Ninety-nine percent of the teams all live in the same place, train at the same gym, and that’s not the case for us at all. We’re all over the country.”

“There’s a gentleman with one leg, one gentleman that was born with one hand and a wrist. There’s one gentleman that has one arm at the shoulder, and their abilities are absolutely incredible. Did we win? No. But were we competitive, absolutely.”— Joe Fonseca