This is part 2 of the Tia-Clair Toomey interview. Check out the first part here where we talked about her mental game and her thoughts on the 2022 CrossFit Games programming.

Is Coaching a Possibility for Tia-Clair Toomey?

Although the talks about Tia-Clair Toomey retiring have died down recently, especially because she said her plan is to go for her 7^th Games crown, it is still fair to assume that Tia has a plan for her future. While that is probably the case, she is keeping that decision close to her chest.

In a recent video on her YouTube channel, while training with Emma Lawson and Saxon Panchik, you can tell Tia is very much comfortable giving tips to other athletes inside the Box. So is coaching in her future?

“Shane is the mastermind behind all the programming and everything,” Toomey tells BOXROX, referring to her husband and coach Shane Orr. “He really enjoys coaching and helping other athletes. For me, I love helping, but more like guiding or mentoring people. I’ve never really thought of coaching. It’s more about sharing what I’ve learned in my journey and allow them to kind of fast track their journey.”

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Tia-Clair Toomey and Missing Her Training Partner Mat Fraser

Mat Fraser’s last year competing as an individual athlete in 2020 had him working under Shane Orr’s wing together with Tia-Clair Toomey for the year. During that CrossFit season, Fraser and Tia would see each other multiple times every day.

Now, Mat has become a coach in his HWPO while Tia is continuing her quest to break her own record of Fittest Woman on Earth. BOXROX asked Toomey if there was any impact in her training, not having Mat Fraser there any longer.

“We had the perfect training environment. We’re both so competitive.”

Tia-Clair Toomey explains how it is sad not to see Mat Fraser regularly any longer. “We pushed each other the way we needed to, but in a healthy way, and it worked.”

Toomey’s one word to describe the moment Mat Fraser announced his retirement was “bittersweet.”

Source: CrossFit Inc.

Just like Tia-Clair Toomey wants to help other athletes as a mentor, she believes Mat Fraser has found his happiness as a coach. “He is finding that fulfilment in helping other people too, coaching Mal O’Brien and more athletes. It’s really, really cool to see,” she says while calling her relationship with 5x Fittest Man on Earth like a “brother and sister relationship.”

How To Learn New Skills or Techniques

Robbie Wild Hudson, BOXROX’s editor-in-chief, is going to attempt to lift famous Scottish stones as his fitness challenge for the year. There are a variety of stones to choose from, with one of the most famous being the Dinnie Stones, but there is also the McGlashan Stones, Atlas Stones, Inver Stone and the Menzies Stone, to name a few.

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As you can tell, the shape of the stone is not like a sandbag, barbell or dumbbell which is relatively easy to grip. So how do you manage to improve this kind of skill or any skill for that matter? Tia-Clair Toomey says all you need is time – 8 weeks more or less.

The first thing, Tia tells us, is to talk to people who have accomplished a specific movement you want to master. These people can help you foresee troubles you didn’t know existed. “This will set you up for a really solid preparation because you’ll be able to apply those techniques and it will become natural while you are progressing with the new skill,” she said.

For Tia, you should take about 8 weeks to master a really difficult new skill or movement, if that is your goal. “Obviously you won’t like the first day of training, but essentially you want to build strength and skill over the course of 8 weeks.”

“I always really liked an 8-week cycle because it’s not too long where it becomes overwhelming, but it’s long enough to really build strength and work on many aspects if you want to improve.”

Tia-Clair Toomey might pop up at the Rogue Invitational, but she won’t be attending as an athlete. Instead, she is now preparing for the Down Under Championship where she will compete in a team with Brooke Wells and Ellie Turner.

Read More: How Much Money Did Athletes Win at the 2022 CrossFit Games

Tia-Clair Toomey was everyone’s favourite to win the 2022 CrossFit Games this year. However powerful, strong and ready the Australian athlete is for any workout someone throws at her, there can always be a curve ball. For Tia it was her “very serious” back injury.

In hindsight, someone could argue that Tia’s back injury is what made her 9^th on the overall leaderboard at one point, her worse positioning at the Games in the past 8 years. “That is the thought in the back of your mind. I haven’t had my traditional lead-up to the CrossFit Games the way Shane [Orr] had wanted,” she tells us.

So how was Tia’s mental game before the Games and while she saw her name almost falling out of the top 10 at one point?

“The mental aspect is a key component to competing CrossFit. I remember specifically the weekend before the Games struggling to get out of bed and I was in tears. I know what I’m capable of, but for the first time ever I’m experiencing potentially falling short due to some physical capabilities.”

Toomey’s mentality, in the end, was to get to the Games any way she could, because in her vision the Games weekend is not as hard as training back at her Box. “You’re only doing 4 to 5 workouts during a day versus, you know, 10 to 12 [when training].”

Tia-Clair Toomey’s Comeback

It was on day 2 that Tia managed to climb back to her usual top 3 spots (behind Mal O’Brien and Emma Lawson). When people began wondering if this was finally the year someone else was going to get her crown, she cursed on the official livestream, something you rarely see her do.

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“The more I think about it, the more I believe that I was a little timid at the start. I definitely felt a little different. There was no way I was going to let a back injury hold me back.”

Her back injury was a kept secret between her and Shane Orr, the husband/coach of the Fittest Woman on Earth.

“I didn’t want to use the back injury as a cop-out, you know. I really didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

Toomey’s Last Event in the Coliseum

The individuals at the CrossFit Games finished the weekend inside the Coliseum with a triplet: row, thrusters and bar muscle-ups. It was during the muscle-ups that Tia-Clair Toomey decided to go against Shane’s proposition, take her time and not rush.

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Why did she take her time? Because it could have been her last time at the CrossFit Games as an individual athlete. “You never know the next time you’re going to be out on that competition floor. I just want to go out there and I want to break up almost every rep and every set and I want to just soak up the crowd, you know?”

Tia said she will savour this moment, even if she came in 10^th, more than anything else. “I will remember that more than going unbroken and trying to race to win the event.”

Related: Tia-Clair Toomey Competing at Down Under Championship Instead of Rogue Invitational

CrossFit Games Programming from An Athlete’s Perspective

BOXROX asked Tia-Clair Toomey how she felt about the workouts programmed this year. It was Adrian Bozman’s first time programming the Games entirely and there were new movements that we haven’t seen before and some events that took on the natural obstacles of the city around where CrossFit usually takes place.

In short, Tia-Clair Toomey loved it. “I have a lot of respect for Adrian Bozman and Dave Castro. Bozman gets to do it his own unique way and I think he did a fantastic job. It just goes to show that our Sport is evolving and growing.”

The only sad thing about the programming, according to Tia, was that the weather was uncooperative. Due to rain and storms, CrossFit had to postpone events 2A and 2B and also change up event Alpaca and eliminated the legless rope climbs for the safety of the athletes.

“The fact that we had to postpone that shoulder to overhead event. We would have had a few different positions or placements that would have changed and been shuffled a little bit throughout the men and women’s division.”

Tia’s Recovery

Being the Fittest Woman on Earth 6 years in a row is not an easy task. In fact, it was impossible until Tia-Clair Toomey made it happen.

Tia utilises an array of recovery protocols when competing, but her Oura Ring is something she hardly takes it off.

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“I get to track my sleep with my Oura ring. I see the trends of how I’m sleeping. If I find something out of the ordinary, I think back on what I did differently.”

Her Oura ring is not only to measure her sleep, but she also uses it to check her heart rate throughout the day. “I wear it when I’m walking around too, or on a rest day and it shows my activity levels. Having that data to show, to know if you need to emphasise on a recovery protocol, or sleep more and take training a step back.”

CrossFit Games Highlights: 5 Things We Liked and 5 We Didn’t

Toomey is the most dominant individual CrossFit athlete in the history of the Sport. Rogue Invitational is arguably the biggest off-season CrossFit sanctioned event, but she confirmed she will not be attending this year to retain her title.

Tia-Clair Toomey Won’t Compete at Rogue Invitational; Going Down Under Championship Instead

Tia has shared a video online debating the possibility of still going to the Rogue Invitational, saying that competing as legends could be a possibility. However, when BOXROX talked with Tia-Clair Toomey last week, she explained further what the rest of her 2022 season will look like and Rogue Invitational is not in it.

“I tried to see if I could do Rogue Invitational for sure. I actually had a conversation with Caity Henniger, the lady that runs the Rogue Invitational and her husband Bill Henniger. She actually was the one that kind of gave me the hard talk and said ‘I’m going to make this decision for you because I know it’s hard. I’m not going to let you [compete at Rogue Invitational] because, you know, you need to rest and do the necessary things,” Toomey clarified.

Caity Henniger is talking about the back injury Tia-Clair Toomey suffered two weeks prior to the CrossFit Games that almost prevented her from competing.

If Tia-Clair Toomey is not competing at the 2022 Rogue Invitational, is she done for the year then? Not exactly.

Because Tia is still healing from her back injury and cannot compete at the Rogue Invitational, she chose to compete in a team at the Down Under Championship.

“I did want to have something to look forward to, that gave me enough time to try and recover and get back to 100%, but also come back with not a whole lot of intense pressure on what I’ve got to do,” Tia argued.

And this is why she chose to team up with Brooke Wells and Ellie Turner. “I think it’s a perfect combo. The three of us will be able to have a lot of fun on that competition floor. And you know, it will be a nice, easy way of getting back into the groove of things.”

The Rogue Invitational will take place on October 28-30. The Down Under Championship happens less than a month later, on November 18-20. It would be very taxing on Tia’s body to compete in both tournaments, especially after suffering such a serious back injury.

Read More: CrossFit Event Down Under Championship Shaping Up with Toomey, Garard, Panchik and Wells

The athlete from Windsor (just west of London) turned 26 on Tuesday, the 5^th of July, and, although she began CrossFit only four years ago, she competed professionally in gymnastics and swimming.

Campbell made waves earlier this year after finishing 4^th at the Wodapalooza, the first time she competed at such a high-level CrossFit event according to her. Months later, she would qualify for the first time in her career for the CrossFit Games after finishing 5^th at the Lowlands Throwdown.

Being Compared with Sam Briggs

Not only Lucy Campbell is going to the CrossFit Games for the first time, but she is also the second British female individual athlete to compete in the elite division, behind Sam Briggs.

Campbell said she was looking forward to competing side-by-side with Briggs, but the legendary athlete did not make the cutline and announced her retirement recently. Whether she wanted or not, Campbell is now the U.K. representative for female athletes at the highest level of CrossFit.

“Those are huge, huge shoes to fill,” she says telling me Sam Briggs is a legend. “I wouldn’t be surprised if people do compare us because we’re both better at endurance-type stuff.”

”If they compare more, I think it’s a good sign.”

Competing Against the Best of the Best

Going to the Games, Lucy Campbell expects to employ the same tactic that got her there in the first place, which is to ignore the competition and focus on her own work.

At the Lowlands Throwdown, Campbell was placed in an event between Laura Horvath and Gabriela Migala, 2^nd and 6^th Fittest on Earth last year, respectively. “As soon as I was in the zone, they were just competitors.”

“There are so many different things to think about when I’m doing the workouts and keeping my plan, it doesn’t really give you a chance to really think about who is that you’re next to.”

The English athlete also doesn’t like to put a target in her first CrossFit Games experience. “I don’t want to say ‘I want to come top 10’. I really want to make the most of each workout in terms of my performance and how I carry out my strategy, if I make good competitive decisions when the time comes and those kinds of things.”

However, if there is one goal for Lucy Campbell is to be at the CrossFit Games next year again. “It’s not guaranteed that I go next year and that’s the level that we are at in Europe. It’s so competitive,” she says, citing Katrin Davidsdottir and Sara Sigmundsdottir, two elite athletes who will not be at the Games this year.

10 Highlights, Surprises and Shocks of All 2022 CrossFit Semifinals

Lucy Campbell’s Long-Term Strategy Similar to Justin Medeiros

When I asked her about her least favourite exercises in CrossFit, her reply was similar to what Justin Medeiros told us a while ago in another interview.

”It’s just sort of, you know, being good at everything. I need to make my weaknesses not so weak and it’s very much about bringing the average up.”

Although Campbell excels at longer workouts, she believes she is starting to improve to a point where there isn’t a workout she sucks at it. “I don’t look at a workout and think ‘oh, finally, I’ve got a good one for me’.”

Lucy Campbell competed professionally in swimming at Loughborough University, in England, and although there aren’t many swimming events for CrossFit athletes, her background helped her achieve her elite fitness level.

“I’m good at the long stuff and, because of gymnastics, I pick things up quickly. So I learn things easier than a lot of people do, I think, and that’s why my progression has been so fast.”

By the way, her favourite exercises are overhead squats and thrusters.

Coach Carter Movie, Peanut Butter and Nutella

Lucy Campbell reveals one tradition she has kept throughout the years. “I watch Coach Carter before every big event.”

Coach Carter is an American biographical movie starring Samuel Jackson as the titular basketball coach Ken Carter who benches his entire team for breaking their academic contract with him. The movie is a heartfelt story about coming together and becoming strong individuals while strengthening the community around you.

“I love the quote that the guy says at the end,” Campbell explains. “It’s like ‘our deepest fear is not that we’re inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.’ That whole speech that he says just really gets me.”

Campbell probably enjoys the movie with her two favourite foods combined: peanut butter and Nutella.

Lucy Campbell Advice for Future CrossFit Athletes

Before signing off from our video call, I ask Lucy Campbell if she has a piece of advice for future CrossFitters and it is simple, yet eye-opening: to enjoy the process of getting better in the Sport.

”Learn to enjoy not being good at stuff because you can only get better at it. As much as it sucks not being good at it, it means that you’re going to get better and that’s a cool thing.”

Lucy Campbell will be travelling to Mexico for a two-week training camp at the end of the month before heading to Madison where she will be competing against the best of the best for the title of Fittest on Earth.

 *The questions and answers were slightly condensed and edited for clarity and flow.

Froning’s workout regimen is incredibly thorough. He works out 6 days per week for approximately 5-6 hours per day. Here’s a quick snapshot of what some of Rich Froning’s toughest workouts look like.

With such a demanding & calculated workout routine many people often ask him “how do you recover?” and that is what we sought to find out in our exclusive interview with Rich about his recovery routine. 

What is Rich Froning’s Recovery Routine?

In the past 5 years, after recovering from a couple minor injuries and just aging in a physically demanding sport, I’ve put much more emphasis on pre and post-workout routines. Post workout recovery can be more beneficial when there’s a pre-workout routine in place.

I try to get seven hours of sleep, but that can vary depending on the kids and if something needs to be done on the farm, so I start with a contrasting shower every morning before training. Once I get to the barn or Mayhem, I’ll spend 3-5 minutes in the deep squat stretch, frog stretch, and couch stretch (all against a wall) before moving into a warm up that’s more specific to the movements we’ll be doing in that session.

Source: Cold Plunge

Post workout usually involves a PHSO-RITE and massage gun before getting into the Cold Plunge. I’ve found that 10 minutes at 50 degrees works best for me. It doesn’t matter if I’ve just finished strength training, a nasty Mayhem Athlete piece, or an aerobic session, 10 minutes at 50 degrees are my magic numbers.

My diet and nutrition has looked different throughout my career. I used to eat just for the calories and energy, which is important, but 3 years ago I started eating more quality foods, staying away from the things that caused inflammation in my joints, and consistent timing, and I’ve learned how much that aids in my recovery, too. 

What Does Rich Froning Think About Cold Water Therapy?

I’ve read the science and peer reviews so based on that, I was pretty confident it would improve muscle recovery but I didn’t realize how much it would help or how that would translate to how I felt during the day.

It has also affected more than muscle recovery, which has been an unexpected bonus. For example, I knew it would help with muscle fatigue and soreness, but the extent of improvement was surprising.

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The unexpected part was seeing the direct correlation through WHOOP data. I have more consistent days in the green, lower RHR, and my deep sleep percentage improves when I’m consistently doing Cold Plunge sessions, and those are things that stretching more isn’t going to improve, only certain recovery disciplines can do that. 

What is Rich Froning’s Favorite Recovery Product?

I don’t think there’s a silver bullet to recovery, there’s no stand alone practice that is adequate for well rounded recovery, especially in CrossFit,  but incorporating the Cold Plunge has had a compound effect on my other recovery routines like getting enough sleep, daily mobility, and a nutritious diet.

Source: Cold Plunge

I believe the reason for that is, most everything else has varying elements that are out of our control. Some nights we don’t sleep as well for unknown reasons, some days time constraints can interfere on a mobility session, and other times having the right food at the right time is hard to do, however, no matter if it’s 30 degrees in Tennessee or 90 degrees, my Cold Plunge is going to be 50 degrees and I can (usually) always manage 10 minutes for all the benefits it provides.

The 25-year-old currently trains in Georgia with Training Think Tank alongside top athletes such as Sara Sigmundsdottir and Alexis Raptis, while completing a master’s degree in Sports Management at Georgia State University.

“I’m not sure if I should consider myself an elite athlete, but I’m on the path to becoming one,” Ana told BOXROX. She found CrossFit aged 19 after participating in a myriad of sports – and being competitive in quite a few – ranging from swimming and boxing, to tennis and track and field, to running 5k and 10k races and half marathons.

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With many family members completing triathlons, Ana was always in awe of their ability to master swimming, running, and cycling at once. That was until she came across the CrossFit Games and saw athletes able to run fast, lift heavy weights, perform complex gymnastics movements, walk on their hands, and generally be able to do everything.

“This is what I want to do,” she thought to herself. The year was 2016 and a Box opened near her home. It wasn’t any Box, but just so happened to be the place where the competitive people of the country trained at, including Gabriela Perez, the first Honduran athlete to compete at the CrossFit Games.

“Everyone had full-time jobs, but the rest of their free time was dedicated to CrossFit,” Ana remembers.

She loved the methodology so much she earnt her Level 1 and started coaching at the age of 21. Ana has been inside the top three women in Honduras in the Open every year since 2017 and has won the competition in her country three years running.

Rubbing shoulders with the best

The CrossFit scene in Honduras isn’t huge – in fact, CrossFit’s Affiliate map shows no Affiliates in the country at the time of writing. However, when Ana Maria started, there was a solid competitive drive within Honduran athletes, who made sure to join many competitions in and outside the country.

Through them, she met people who saw potential in her and encouraged her to try and take the sport more seriously, to leave Honduras and train with others abroad.

Source: Courtesy of Ana Valladares

She spent eight months training with Team Soul with two other Latin American athletes. “The three of us found a flat in Miami and lived there just to train, which massively improved my skills,” said Ana. She already had her sight set on doing a master’s degree in the US and moved to Georgia in August 2021.

“I feel like I’ve been able to grow and improve in the sport in these last eight months in a way that would have taken me at least two years to achieve on my own in my home country,” Ana said. “I’m practically training with some of the best athletes worldwide every single day. Every single training session is all-out, it’s incredible.”

She can only recommend the experience to other Latin American athletes wishing to see substantial improvement. “If you can, try to go abroad and rub shoulders with people whose livelihood is CrossFit,” she said.

Semifinals bound

Ana is currently trying to find a healthy balance between completing her master’s degree successfully and training to the level required to be among the best CrossFit athletes in the world. Her training schedule varies depending on how much she’s got to do for her degree.

She’s excited for the future even if she doesn’t quite yet know how everything will play out.

“It’s important to me that the sport grows [in Honduras] and I believe there is a lot of potential,” Ana said.

“I came from there, and I believe I’ve managed to come a long way so far. I’d love to complement and add to my community so it keeps growing, I’d like to contribute to the sport – a sport that I love so much – and get it to grow in my city.”

Source: Courtesy of Ana Valladares

Being the only Central American athlete out of 120 women to qualify for Semifinals from the North America region, she is leading by example. When she first submitted her Quarterfinal scores, Ana was seeded 125th in North America, five spots away from a Semifinal qualifying position. However, as the review process went underway, her placement improved to reach 118th in the region.

She was in the car when a friend texted her, asking which Semifinal she’d been invited to. “I immediately logged in to my email and the first thing I saw was the official invitation to the Granite Games Semifinal,” she recounts.

“I wanted to jump with excitement!”

“I’m going to compete with everything I’ve got and I’m aiming for one of those five spots, because why not?” Ana said. “I will not underestimate myself but also won’t put myself down.”

“I hope to surprise all spectators.”

Follow Ana Maria Valladares on Instagram.

This interview was originally conducted in Spanish and has been translated by Caro Kyllmann.

With an immaculate work ethic and a highly competitive drive, Craig has done incredibly well very quickly in the sport. He is a perfectionist when it comes to the technical side of lifting and possesses an amount of attention to detail and patience that many don’t have, says Jas Cabourn, his other half.

Craig won the British Weightlifting Senior Championships, his first ever weightlifting meet, in January 2022 with a total of 291kg (135kg Snatch and a 156kg Clean and Jerk).

Source: Courtesy of Fittest PR

The 29-year-old is relatively new to the sport of Olympic Weightlifting, having began focusing on it in 2021, but has set his eyes on breaking the British 89kg record. Find out how he got into the sport, what he likes about it, and what you can learn from him below.

From CrossFit to Weightlifting

“I’m a very competitive person and I want to be one of the best in what I’m doing,” Craig said about shifting his focus from CrossFit to weightlifting. Craig and Jas spend a lot of time travelling with their business and being around top athletes, which made Craig realise he doesn’t have enough time to be a top level CrossFitter.

But he’s always been powerful, so weightlifting entered the picture.

In true Craig fashion, he gravitated towards a lofty goal at the start of winter to give his mind something to focus on as the days got darker and shorter. Looking at the numbers in his weight category, he decided commit to weightlifting and, with Jas’ full support, set himself to breaking the British 89kg record.

“The more you enjoy something, the better you become at it,” said Jas.

A new training style

Unlike CrossFit, where you can spend hours upon hours training, you can only dedicate so much time to weightlifting before your central nervous system goes on overload.

“It’s nice to see the progression as you tick off the days,” Craig explained when I asked about his training regime, which includes similar training days with higher percentages and lower rep schemes within a block. “It’s nice knowing that you’ve done everything at the percentages given and that you got better that day.”

All your energy goes towards improving the Clean and Jerk and the Snatch.

The specific training varies depending on the time within a season. “Right now, we’re doing a lot of paused positional work because it just builds a lot of strength in specific positions,” said Craig. Closer to competition he’ll reduce the quantity of work but train at heavier weights.

“Weightlifting is such a confidence sport,” Craig explained. “You can have such a great training cycle and you could hit some massive numbers, and then sometimes in training I look back at some of the numbers I’ve hit and I’ve gone ‘oh, I couldn’t do that right now.’”

Under the spotlight

Craig might be used to being in front of a camera, but he says looking back at the day of competition on January 29, he was more nervous than he thought he was going to be.

“I knew my numbers were better than what I did on the stage and I rode my luck a little bit with the result, but it was really fun walking out; the stage was all lit up, you couldn’t really see the crowd, and the barbell was just there,” Craig said. “And then it was like, ‘okay, seven months of work and I’ve got six lifts.’ It was actually a lot of fun, way more fun than I thought it would be.”

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Considering the British Championships – the pinnacle of English weightlifting – were his first time on an Olympic weightlifting platform, his achievement is even more impressive. And despite not performing the way he wanted, Craig realised he wanted to compete again and improve.

“Imagine being disappointed with your first ever weightlifting competition and still winning gold?” Jas said, to which Craig responded: “That’s called being a competitor and knowing you can do better.”

He’s now aiming for gold at the English Championships.

“I think I’ve found my thing, for now anyway,” he said.  

Top weightlifting tips from Team Richey

Do a weightlifting cycle

If you are a CrossFit athlete, Craig recommends trying out an 8-week weightlifting cycle to improve.

“The main thing that I found coming from CrossFit to weightlifting was that, if I did a solid eight-week cycle, it would give me so much more knowledge and understanding of positional strength and work and movements,” Craig said.

Most CrossFit athletes are missing this awareness.

Move well

One thing Craig tells a lot of people who do CrossFit is to focus on moving well. “Having a baseline of strength is a great thing, but technique is the is the main thing,” he said. “The better you move, the less chance you’ve got of being injured and the more chance you’ve got of hitting the lift nicely.”

Many people have excellent baseline strength, but unless they improve their technique, they will hit a ceiling at some point and stop improving, explained Jas.

“Be meticulous with moving well, don’t put loads of weight on a bar and just be like, ‘yeah, I’m going to go out for a PB every day,’” Craig recommends. Instead, “work at that 70% range and just make it look pretty.”

Pay attention to details

Positional holds and positional strength work will allow you to figure out where your weaknesses are.

“It’s not until you pause below the knee and then above the knee and then in the catch, that you realize that in these positions you’re actually a bit shaky,” said Jas. “Once you’ve done a couple of weeks of these holds and you feel yourself becoming more stable you piece it all together and realise ‘no wonder I can’t do this if I can’t even feel strong in the process to get there.’”

This ties up well with the first point; the best weightlifters would rather see someone move well with 30% of their 1RM than look ugly with 100%.

Be aware of what you’re capable of

Setting lofty goals can help keep you focused and motivated during training, but you also have to be self-aware enough to know what your capabilities are.

Craig thoroughly believes in visualisation and believing in your goals, but also knows to be realistic about them.

“Don’t let your ego control the barbell, use your mind,” he said.

Follow the journey

You can keep up with Craig’s and Jas’ stories and follow the couple’s training exploits and experiences with some of the largest names in the CrossFit space on their YouTube channel, TeamRichey.

Besides focusing on the English Championships, Craig has got his eyes set on Clean and Jerking 180kg and Snatching 150kg, which would earn him a British record. He regularly posts updates on his journey on Instagram, make sure you give it a follow.

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Read more: Starting CrossFit and Weightlifting Late

Jonne Koski fought through the 2021 CrossFit season with an injury on his left shoulder. A couple of weeks before the CrossFit Games, he fell from a pegboard and hurt his shoulder even more. Even this extra obstacle was not enough to stop him from winning the first event, finishing 6^th at the CrossFit Games and, in the process, claiming the title of Finland’s National Champion.

Shortly after the CrossFit Games, Jonne Koski announced he had a shoulder surgery to fix a “full supraspinatus tendon tear.” Because of the procedure, he had to forfeit his chance to compete in following competitions, such as the Rogue Invitational.

Jonne Koski Says His Shoulder Is ”Back to Normal”

With shoulder mobility issues, Jonne Koski had to adapt to keep his fitness in check.

“Last year I would do more strength training before the Open, but this year has been different,” he tells BOXROX. “I have been doing a lot of running and improving on my squats.”

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Earlier this year, Koski says his shoulder mobility score went back to normal. “My mobility score for my shoulders has never been 100, but I got to 80, which is what I normally get just before the CrossFit Open.”

Being able to rely on his shoulder, Jonne Koski continues his physical therapist’s plan of recovery of slowly increasing his Olympic lifting power.

“I can snatch now just above 100 kilos (220 pounds) which is similar to what I had before the Open last year,” Koski reveals.

To put it into perspective, at the 1-rep-max snatch during 2021’s CrossFit Games, Jonne Koski snatched 118 kilos (260 pounds).

Although he is feeling much better and ready to go back to his normal training routine, there is still one exercise he hasn’t done since his surgery back in September.

“I haven’t done any muscle-ups.”

Koski explains that he could do muscle-ups but just hasn’t gone around trying it yet.

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The equipment list for the 2022 CrossFit Open states that athletes must have a pull-up bar at their disposal “for all common hanging movements and kipping.” There is a chance Jonne Koski will be tested on his muscle-up technique sooner rather than later.

Read More: BOXROX Interviewed Jonne Koski When He Was 19 Years-Old

Having started CrossFit at the age of 24, Emma recently placed first at Wodapalooza – her first individual gold at an elite competition.

The 32-year-old was a high-level quad bike racer for most of her life before transitioning to CrossFit. She started the former sport at the age of six and made it all the way to the Premier Championship, the highest level you can get to in Europe.

At the time, she was the only female racing at that level.

As such, Emma was constantly looking for ways to get stronger, better, and fitter, and that’s how she came across CrossFit. “I was like ‘right, let’s go do this. I’ll get fitter and stronger than every fella on the track,’” Emma told BOXROX.

She jumped 6,444 positions between her first CrossFit Open in 2014 and the next one, to be placed 36th in the worldwide competition, good enough to qualify for her first Regionals.

You see, Emma doesn’t like not being able to do things and, additionally, she loves learning new skills.

“The first year I did the Open I remember – it’ll haunt me forever – it was a power snatch double unders workout,” said Emma. “I flew through the first set of power snatches and got to the double unders, and I think it took me the remaining off the 10-minute AMRAP to try and get 30 double unders, so that that destroyed me. I just I couldn’t believe all I could do was 30 double unders in 10 minutes.”

With every workout, there was a limiter, but outside of that she was good. So, she set to learn the skills.

“There was no plan and there was no structure,” she said. “It was just me like: ‘right, can’t do double unders? Let’s double unders every single day. Can’t do pull ups? Let’s do pull ups every single day.’ It was probably really stupid, but it got me to the level I was at.”

The approach and lack of guidance ultimately led her to overtraining and, in a nutshell, hating CrossFit.

“Coaches wouldn’t allow that to happen now,” Emma explained, they’d break down why you don’t have the skill before getting you to do hundreds of reps trying to figure things out. But instead of quitting the sport, Emma went to train with James Jowsey (also coach to legendary Sam Briggs) at the end of the 2017 season.

“I was really broken. I was really mentally drained. I hated CrossFit and I was just on the point of quitting when I started with him,” she said.

It’s taken a few years to get Emma to where she is now, but with her amassing more and more experience with every competition that goes by, she is primed to continue to improve.

“We’re at that place now where we’re ready to do some damage,” she said.

Source: BC Creative / GOWOD

Emma represented Northern Ireland at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, finishing fourth in the 63kg Weightlifting event.

Next to pursuing athletic greatness, she is currently heavily invested in her coaching, trying to make sure upcoming athletes don’t make the same mistakes she made when she started the sport.

If Emma is known for something right now, it’s for her ability to hurt; she tries to remember the context of her performance mid-workouts:

“If I don’t hurt now, it’s going to hurt more after, so just keep going,” she tells herself.

Five fun facts about Emma McQuaid

• Favourite food: Italian food
• Favourite non-alcoholic drink: water and blackcurrant
• Favourite exercise: Power Cleans
• Favourite activity on a day off: Netflix
• Favourite music: a Spotify playlist with a good beat

Very few people knew who he was back then, even less were expecting to see his name in the top 5.

This doesn’t mean that Justin was inexperienced – he was one place away from qualifying the year prior  – but he was the only athlete in the field without any previous CrossFit Games experience. Aged 21, he went on to earn a third-place finish and was awarded the title of Rookie of the Year.

Even if you feel tempted to write 2020 off as a freak year, Medeiros showed he’s here to stay during the 2021 season. Making a statement at the CrossFit Games he was crowned the Fittest Man on Earth, becoming so the youngest ever winner of the competition.

There’s no ignoring his name now.

But just how did he do it? We asked him during a phone interview last week, and this is what we found.

A great coach and team

Justin trains under multiple CrossFit Games Team athlete and CrossFit Fort Vancouver owner Adam Neiffer. Justin is Adam’s only high-level athlete and even lived with his family for a good part of the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

“We have a really good connection,” Justin said. “I think one of the reasons why we both work so well together is that like we both know that we both don’t know everything, and we’re completely willing to go out there and learn from as many different people as we can.”

Their partnership works because both have the humility to say “I’m not an expert at this, so let’s go find someone that is an expert at it, and let’s learn as much as we can from them,” Justin explained. “He is just completely willing to do whatever he can to make me the best athlete I can be. It’s super awesome to have someone like that in my corner.”

Source: Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

Justin says he’s only achieved what he has through the combined efforts of many individuals and organisations who support him; from his coach and family to all the other coaches they have brought on and sponsors.

“Having everybody just trying to make me become the best athlete I can is amazing,” he said.

Smart training and great strategy

Justin knows programming is only one aspect of training, and while he admits Adam’s programming is amazing, his coach has also helped him develop a strong mindset and taught him how to approach and develop a good strategy for workouts.

“There’s a lot more to training than just selling your soul in every workout,” he said.

His advice to anyone training CrossFit is to be very aware of the workouts you’re doing and what their purpose is in your overall plan.

“A part of being the Fittest Man on Earth is just the execution of events,” Justin said. “You can be as fit as you want, but if you can’t go out there and execute a plan, then you’re not going to be able to optimize your fitness.”

“If you can have a good plan going into a workout, you’re really going to be able to optimize the fitness you have,” he continued, “because you want to go out there and perform at a higher level than your fitness is.”

He said a relatable experience is doing CrossFit Open workouts twice; the vast majority of the time people improve on their score the second time, not because they got fitter in two days, but because their original plan wasn’t good.

“You don’t want to go out there and perform lower level that your fitness is,” he said. That’s why everyone should focus on executing great plans.

Top recovery

Following his success at the 2020 CrossFit Games, Justin realised he was maximising everything he could inside the gym, but to reach the next step he would need to optimise his recovery too.

He said having connections like Mat Fraser and hearing him preach about the importance of recovery was incredibly important.

Source: Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

“The CrossFit Games to my eyes is, it is who can wash lactate the fastest and who can recover the fastest,” Justin said. “I’m just trying to be able to optimize recovery in whatever I do, and sleep has been the biggest thing for me.”

“When I get a bad night of sleep, it’s like that whole next day is just sluggish,” he explained. So, he reached out to Eight Sleep, a smart mattress company that self-regulates its temperature to help people fall asleep and stay asleep.

“I had my Eight Sleep mattress way before I even started working with them just because I knew that that was going to be a difference maker for me,” he recounted. “To be able to regulate the temperature, get sleep data, and see how recovered I am, that was a big game changer.”

He also partnered with GOWOD, an app which gives him personalised mobility and stretching routines based on an assessment to improve on his weaknesses.

It’s all part of doing everything he can to be the best he can be.

The community

One of the reasons Justin joined CrossFit was because of the community, and that love for the people in the sport only grows stronger each day.

He thinks back at this year’s CrossFit Games, how athletes crossed the finish line yelling, excited, all pumped up. “That’s because of the crowd,” he said, “the crowd just gets you so into it and makes it a whole different experience.”

He recounted how the 2020 CrossFit Games didn’t feel like the CrossFit Games at all: “it just felt like I was working out with a decent group of people.”

But having his community in the crowd and seeing it all come together certainly made a difference. The fact that some people gave up their front-row seats to let his parents watch him dominate the last CrossFit Games workout at eye-level only makes his desire to give back grow.

A strong intrinsic desire to get better

Justin knows that winning the CrossFit Games doesn’t mean there are no areas where he could still improve. He hardly ever wins workouts overall, but his strength lies in his incredible consistency throughout competitions.

He says he always puts his best effort forth, and being the best is only a secondary outcome. Improving is “about just looking at a performance, rather than the outcome of my performance,” he said.

His aim is to continuously get better: “if I did all those Games workouts by myself, and I didn’t get to compare myself to anybody, there’s just so many things that I that I can improve on,” he said. “If I was going to compete against myself, head-to-head, against me from last year, I just want to be able to beat myself.”

Source: Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

And if he did want to compare himself against everybody else, he says he simply has to look at the past CrossFit Games; out of 15 events he only won one.

“That’s the thing that fires me up the most: yes, I won the CrossFit Games this past year, but I also know that I have so much that I can improve on going into the next season,” he said. “That’s all I’m focused on, I’m just trying to become fitter than I was last year.”

Confidence, positivity, and gratitude

When Justin first got in touch with Adam, he had about a year and a half before finishing his Kinesiology degree at Boise University and having to find “a real job”. He wanted to give his dream of competing at the CrossFit Games a real shot, but never quite imagined he’d be in a position to make a living out of it.

“Now I have the opportunity to be financially stable and compete, which is just crazy. I still can’t believe it,” he said.

He’s grateful for the opportunity, saying he’d never go chase a dream that’s not there, and it still feels crazy to him to plan to do CrossFit full-time, but he’s excited to have a full year of 100% diving in to become the best he can be.

Podiuming at his first CrossFit Games and then going on to win the competition a year later gave Justin the confidence to know that his best effort is enough to be on top. He knows he can trust his preparation, his training, his recovery, and his nutrition.

Quick questions with Justin Medeiros

BRX: What is your favourite food?

Justin: Cereal. I’ll probably have cereal like pretty close to every night. It’s just something that makes me really happy.

BRX: What is your favourite type of workout music?

Justin: I try to listen to pretty much everything – but 80s rock and country are kind of my go-to.

BRX: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Justin: Do what you love and do it the best you can, the rest will kind of work itself out. If you’re going to do something, do it to the best of your ability.

BRX: What are your favourite and least favourite exercises?

Justin: My least favourite are probably any of the machines, I am on those things all the time. I have a love hate relationship with the machines because you love seeing the progress, but to get progress you’ve got to work really freaking hard.

My favourite is handstand obstacle stuff, I think that’s just something that’s super fun.

Source: Photo by Meg Ellery/CrossFit Games

*The questions and answers were slightly condensed and edited for clarity and flow.

The Leicestershire native was crowned the Fittest Man in the UK in 2020, but not many would have guessed that Zack would make a living out of being fit when he was young. In fact, the 31-year-old was “severely overweight and deeply unhappy with his body” growing up.

We’ll fast forward past the long hours spent in the gym and the sheer amount of dedication Zack put in to get to where he is – that story has been told before – and will instead tell you about Zack in recent years. Because Zack’s dream went beyond losing weight, he wanted to qualify for the CrossFit Games.

If you’re familiar with the scene, you might know that his name is not yet in the CrossFit Games leaderboards. After qualifying in 2020 by beating every other man in the UK during the CrossFit Open, his invitation to compete was withdrawn a few months later as a result of the pandemic and its restrictions.

Source: RXd Photography

He set his eyes on the 2021 season, but bad luck would strike again. A new season format meant that athletes had to go through three stages of competition to qualify for the CrossFit Games, without opportunities to catch up if for some reason you missed one.

Zack pulled out during the second stage following a hip injury, forgoing so his chances to see his dream come true for a second year in a row. You’ll learn more about his injury shortly, but what sets this story apart is how Zack dealt with it.

Because Zack is positive and humble and relatable in a way few professional athletes are.

And the way he navigated the injury offers invaluable lessons for everyday athletes.

Find acceptance

Zack felt a sharp pain from his hip down to his knee while competing, and while he was getting treatment for the pain daily, the CrossFit Quaterfinals Test 4, a 4-rep max front squat, was too much to take. He made the decision to pull out of competition to avoid causing further damage, the CrossFit Games would have to wait.

“IT Band Syndrome,” he told BOXROX during a video interview this week. It is an overuse injury and the only way to treat it is rest.

Any squatting or running would aggravate the pain, so he was told to stay away from these exercises for 12 weeks. There was still plenty to do in the realm of gymnastics, but Zack does admit he lost a lot of leg strength during the recovery process.

Understandably, he was eager to train normally again and decided he was good to perform bodyweight squats again after 8 weeks, so he started incorporating them in his training. He wonders now if he tried to come back too quickly, with the injury lingering by for longer than it could have. Well, that’s a lesson half learnt.

Focus on what you can do

Zack had a lengthy list of movements he couldn’t do after the injury. He coaches and programs for himself, so week on week he’d feel out the injury and attempt something from the list, ticking off the exercises that didn’t cause pain or discomfort anymore.

Bodyweight squats were the first to get ticked off, heavy cleaning was last. But the list was only one part of his training, and Zack went full in on what he could do while in the background slowly ticking away the movements from the list.

Source: RXd Photography

Five months would pass before he attempted to compete again, and when he did, he dominated. It gave him a huge confidence boost knowing he could again go all out and fully trust his body to perform without needing to hold back.

See possibility

Zack uses setbacks to achieve other projects. When he faces adversity or an obstacle that is out of his control, he accepts this and moves on.

After finding out the CrossFit Games were out of reach once again, he used the time to write a book and work with brands; opportunities that arose because he had new time available to him, time he would have otherwise dedicated to put forward his best performance.

“It doesn’t make the setback worthwhile, but I can look back at the last two years and see something positive,” he said. For that he is grateful.

Zack George and the new season

Zack recently finished second at the Madrid CrossFit Championship, a high-level competition featuring prominent CrossFit Games athletes and rising stars.

He’s preparing to compete at the Dubai CrossFit Championship in December and then again in Miami at Wodapalooza in January.

Source: RXd Photography

“I just love competing,” he said. He likes to test himself against the best in the world and gets great enjoyment from competing in front of fans, loving the feeling of hearing them roar and feeling their absolute belief in him. He can sense their desire for him to succeed.

One of his favourite moments – a close second to qualifying for the 2020 Games, which he considers his greatest achievement – was competing at Strength in Depth in 2020. Being in home soil there was so much support, the atmosphere was electrifying.

Additionally, he loves travelling to fun places, testing himself, and gaining an insight into his weak spots and improvement areas. As an athlete, the exposure and opportunity to make money throughout the year are pretty good as well.

He’d like to have finished Madrid, Dubai, and Miami with a lot of valuable information to then tackle the 2022 CrossFit season.

Watch out for him!

Eric Roza, CEO of CrossFit, knows this well. Since taking ownership of the company in August last year, Roza has looked for ways to get back what was lost and address crucial concerns within and about CrossFit, all the while hoping to keep CrossFit – more specifically CrossFit’s core – the same. 

We had a chance to catch up with him on the last day of his trip to Europe earlier in September. Roza is not blind to CrossFit’s issues, its misunderstood public image, and its capricious past, but he’s also a firm believer of the sport’s capacity to change lives around the world for the better.

“I don’t think we can solve all the world’s health problems,” Roza told BOXROX during his trip. “But we know individuals are having their lives changed by CrossFit, there are millions of people that has happened to.

“I don’t know if [CrossFit] will quite save the world, though, but I absolutely think it’s more than a workout.”

What needs fixing 

It’s hard to speak of CrossFit without its reputation preceding it. The sport – whether we like it or not – comes with baggage. Whether it’s intimidation, presumptions about injury risk, or the company’s baffling moves. 

For almost anyone who has heard about CrossFit in passing, the association is that it is a dangerous form of exercise, full of big dudes covered in tattoos dropping heavy weights on the floor – perhaps even passing out in the end. 

Up until pretty recently, CrossFit embraced the second part of this image; warning participants of the sport’s lethality if unprepared and adopting Uncle Rhabdo (for rhabdomyolysis) and Pukie the Clown (because exercise-induced vomiting was not rare) as unofficial mascots.

When I was introduced to CrossFit at the start of 2019, I liked to think of it not as an organisation with a reputation that preceded it but as a pubertal teenager in the middle of an identity crisis. An entity that wholeheartedly believed it could save the world, while at the same time trying to figure itself out and dealing with the pains and swings of puberty.

It fought big fights and closed its Facebook and Instagram accounts without warning. Its public image came uncensored, full of big dudes being tough (or the complete oposite with older people lifting water jugs to soothing piano music in an old living room), and cartoons of semi-naked women bowing to the “ills of modern medicine”.

CrossFit had two separate messages to spread; one, that it was the toughest exercise regime in the world and broke fit people to bring them back up, and two, that the world was facing a health crisis that could be solved through CrossFit (known as “an elegant solution to the world’s most vexing problem”). 

Even within CrossFit as a sport methodology there are two concepts: there’s the mind blowing feats of athletes in CrossFit the televised sport, and there’s the CrossFit box your grandma joined to be able to carry her groceries upstairs. 

If you’re coming to CrossFit from the outside, it’s hard to reconcile these are the same thing.

On the ground, diverging standards between CrossFit Boxes don’t do much to help.

I always enjoyed working out, but it was hard to escape the company’s politics. And while all this was irrelevant as soon as you picked up some weights, outside the Box it was impossible to tell people you practiced CrossFit without at least getting funny looks. 

A great deal about CrossFit is right, but you have to already be involved in the sport to know that.

What is right

CrossFit has changed millions of lives around the world. It changed Roza’s to the point where he sold his data analytics company and decided to spend his life in areas making people healthier and happier. 

Since the change in ownership, CrossFit is working to become “the world’s leading platform for health, happiness and performance”. Some people will do it only to get a good workout in, but there’s more value to joining CrossFit than just the experience in the gym if you’re after health and happiness as well.

There are also indispensable parts of the methodology; the community, the workouts, how hard we push ourselves – the constantly varied functional movements done at high intensity.

Once you start working out, everything that needs fixing becomes irrelevant. And no matter where you are in the world, once you get into a CrossFit gym everything is more the same than different, you look inside and do the workout and you could be anywhere.

CrossFit’s next move

CrossFit’s next move is “about bringing CrossFit more into the mainstream without it all compromising the methodology,” Roza said.

“We want to make CrossFit more and more accessible to people,” he continued. “Part of that is what happens in the gym every day, and part of it is the way we talk about CrossFit and the imagery of CrossFit.”

Practically, the way this change happens is from the bottom up and the top down. 

Bottom up means the experience people have every time they work out. By ensuring that you feel safe wherever you train, people are more likely to continue to turn up and bring their friends along. Be inspired by the experience and find ways to share the love.

There’s only so much CrossFit LCC can do to ensure quality across the board, but they’re trying with initiatives such as the Affiliate Playbook, Roundtables and quarterly Town Halls. The idea is to provide all Affiliate owners tools (not rules) to become more successful and up their standard.

From the top down, Roza and his team are working on presenting a new CrossFit from a marketing standpoint and telling that story globally. The team is aware of the incredible transformations happening in Boxes, but stories from the CrossFit Games still get ten times the exposure. 

“We’re going to do a lot more to tell these transformational stories in a way that they rise up above all the noise down here and can really be heard,” said Roza. “More and more of the stories we will be telling in our media will be about normal, everyday people who are seeing their lives change with CrossFit.”

As it happens, the organisation’s first Chief Marketing Officer started her role this month, her aim to make CrossFit just as exciting while making it more accessible and less intimidating. 

“There’s no one thing or two things you need to have to be a CrossFitter; you can be any age, you can be in any country, you can be in any physical condition,” Roza reiterated. “But people who don’t do CrossFit don’t necessarily know that yet, so there’s more we can do to tell that story.” 

Source: Courtesy of Klaus Gruber

More than a workout 

As the world’s perception of CrossFit changes, the organisation will also focus bigger efforts on CrossFit Health, the CrossFit Foundation and its training business. 

While it’s okay for some people to be part of CrossFit simply because they enjoy the workouts, for others it has been and will continue to be a lifeline. 

The company has a leader who didn’t buy it as a financial gamble but deeply cares about growing CrossFit, and has the tools, contacts and experience to make his mission a success. 

“I ran a data and analytics business for digital advertising and I just couldn’t get excited about the mission of the company at some point,” Roza told me during our interview. “And I thought about ‘what would I do if I could do anything,’ without worrying about whether it was practical or not for me to try to think about that.” 

He kept coming back to wanting to make people healthier and happier. Practically, that meant leading CrossFit one day.

“Having the duty to bring it to more people is a really powerful thing,” he said.

The account, which started in June 2021, features normal sporting scenes with miniature athletes navigating them. The pictures are not only a joy to look at but are also an incredible show of talent (and patience).

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The man behind gigantic.world is 29-year-old Tom Parsons. Based in Marlow, UK, Tom is a graphic designer and illustrator by profession with a 9 to 5 job.

Somehow, he still finds the time to train CrossFit and create fun images.

“I’m just doing it for fun,” Tom said about the account. “I initially did with a few of my own photos and I just thought they were hilarious.”

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People in the CrossFit scene – especially the pro athletes he uses as subjects – have received the work with much love, which motivates Tom to continue to edit photos.

“I don’t have as much free time as everyone thinks,” he half-joked. “I sort of squeeze things in here and there.”

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Tom first got into CrossFit around four years ago after watching the Fittest on Earth documentaries. Deciding bro-sessions in the gym weren’t really his thing, he tried CrossFit and loved how a 10-minute workout could leave him feeling dead.

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He got the idea to of putting “tiny humans in a gigantic world” after seeing the meme Instagram account Chalk Llamas post pictures of tiny CrossFit Games athletes with big heads.

The creation process for his photos is unreal and the attention to detail astonishing. It’s not only the athletes that are edited but sometimes also the props around them, which makes the images feel realistic and not-quite right at the same time.

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“It’s a bit of a trial and error,” Tom said “Some photos work really well and I’m slowly getting together some sort of algorithm that I think works, things like a certain perspective.”

His favourite ones are the pictures where athletes are around objects that almost fit them, but are still huge.

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Tom is running gigantic.world for the fun of it and is loving the reception his posts have received. He said he doesn’t yet have big plans for the account, but his DMs are open if anyone is interested in his work.

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You can follow gigantic.world here.

It has not always been that way; the two-time CrossFit Games podium athlete avoided sports as a kid and only started training at the age of 17 to lose weight because she thought that’d increase her chances of finding a boyfriend.

“After I started in CrossFit I finally accepted my body,” Sigmundsdottir told BOXROX. “I saw my body as something more than just what it looked like. What my body looks like is the result of what it is capable of.”

Sigmundsdottir is an incredibly impressive athlete. She has won the worldwide CrossFit Open three times and finished within the top five an additional two, as well as having won multiple Regionals and Sanctional competitions.

Source: SIGMUNDSDOTTIR x WIT

She’s a joy to watch compete, and it’s not only her achievements that are an inspiration for many aspiring athletes, but also the message Sigmundsdottir is sure to spread: our bodies are a result of all our hard work and allow us to participate in what we love to the best of our abilities.

She has not only spread that idea through social media and interviews but has now launched a clothing line with the message at its core.

You can be feminine and have muscles.

Leaving the commercial interests aside, this shows incredible progress in the journey for women in strength sports. To champion strong female bodies, instead of trying to hide them, will hopefully one day be the norm.

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This change takes time; Sigmundsdottir herself accepts it took her a while to accept and appreciate her body as strong and beautiful “because she does CrossFit, not in spite of it”, she told the South China Morning Post.

Yet the tides have started to turn, not only for Sigmundsdottir but also for younger athletes hitting the spotlight now. “I just came to accept that it was OK to be muscular and not be ashamed of my strength because this very body allows me to do what I love: CrossFit,” 17-year-old Mallory O’Brien told CrossFit.

The American athlete finished 7th at the 2021 CrossFit Games and was named Rookie of the Year.

While Sigmundsdottir still gets unwelcome remarks about her physique to this day – “Being a muscular female seems to invite weird comments,” she said – she knows they usually come from a good place doesn’t let them spoil her mood.

“A classic scenario that almost happens every time is when I take my jacket off at the security gate at an airport someone in the line or who is working at the gate makes a comment like: ‘WOW you’re huge’, ‘Do you have a permit for those guns’ or ‘You could beat me up’,” she recalls.

“Not really the compliments a girl would normally be looking for, but I can’t say it bothers me either.”

Since the perception of her own body changed, the 29-year-old Icelandic athlete has embraced and encouraged other women to let their bodies thrive and appreciate them for all they do for us.

Part of the way she hopes to achieve this is through the new clothing collection, which she designed herself. “Being able to bring ideas to life and directly work with designers to create unique sports apparel pieces that have a specific purpose is something I am very proud of,” she said.

“The biggest highlight of them all is now seeing all the athletes training in the pieces from the collection liking it and looking so good in it.”

Source: SIGMUNDSDOTTIR x WIT

With close to 2 million Instagram followers, her attitude has helped challenge and evolve traditional ideas of feminine beauty.

“Challenge your body to get as strong as it can be and I guarantee that you will surprise yourself,” Sigmundsdottir recommends to anyone entering strength sports. “It’s incredible what your body can do if you allow it to work.”

All images courtesy of WIT. The full SIGMUNDSDOTTIR x WIT collection will launch in January 2022, but you can shop an exclusive pre-release capsule of the collection now at www.wit-fitness.com 

Note: this is the second part of an interview with Lazar Đukić. In the first part, Lazar told BOXROX about his path from Waterpolo to CrossFit, how he chose not to compete at the CrossFit Games in 2019, and his previous experience until finally competing in Madison in July 2021. You can check out the 1st part of the interview by clicking here.

Lazar Đukić Will Go to Rogue Invitational

The ultimate goal of every CrossFit athlete is to become the Fittest on Earth. Lazar’s plan is no different, but now with the end of the CrossFit season, his focus shifts to the rest of the year which for him means one thing: Rogue Invitational.

“100% Rogue I will go to,” he says. “It’s a big opportunity to get some media attention and sponsors. And the prizes are just insane,” he confesses.

Source: Courtesy of Lazar Dukic

The other two competitions Lazar Đukić is considering appearing in are the Dubai CrossFit Championship and Madrid CrossFit Championship.

Lazar Will Not Make the Same Mistake from the Past

The Rogue Invitational will happen at the end of October and as the number 1 priority in Lazar’s plan for the rest of the year, he established he would not make the same mistake as he did in previous years.

“Back in 2018 and 2019 my main competition was Dubai and after Dubai I always let myself get fat,” Lazar tells us. “I decided not to do that [this year]. I’m resting mentally and enjoying the moment and not really thinking about training dates.”

Source: Courtesy of Lazar Dukic

Lazar revealed that he will go back to training normally at the beginning of September. For the moment, he is doing accessory work and “a bunch of squats.”

Serbia as the Next Iceland

Dottir. For anyone who loves CrossFit, this last name carries a lot of weight. Also, it means you are from Iceland, the land of Sara Sigmundsdottir, Annie Thorisdottir, Katrin Tanja Davidsdottir and many other. And Lazar Đukić wants Serbia to become the next Iceland.

Although Lazar and Luka helped Serbia shine in CrossFit, they were not the first athletes to compete at the Games. That would be Tamara Trumbetas who, in 2019, was cut after the 1^st event. So far, only 3 Serbian athletes have competed at the Games, but according to Lazar Đukić that will change soon.

“We have a big potential in some younger guys and even some guys that are older than me. If it’s possible, I would help anyone who wants to come to the Games,” Lazar said. So keep an eye on for Luka Vunjak, Boris Judin, Martin Krajtmar, and Luka Jegarski.

In order to help people, Lazar wants to become a CrossFit Box owner and a coach, but only after he retires. “If you want to be a great athlete, you need to focus only on that.” At the moment, there is only one CrossFit affiliate

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Quick Questions With Lazar Đukić

• Favourite competition you’ve been to?

Athens Throwdown 2019 – “I came in 2^nd by one point.”

• Favourite athlete to hand out with at the Games?

Pat Vellner and Brent Fikowski.

• Favourite CrossFit workout?

Open 20.5 – “I won worldwide that event.”

• What are your strengths?

Muscle-ups, overhead squats, toes-to-bar, rowing, wall balls, GHD sit-ups.

• What are your weaknesses?

Lifting – at the 2021 snatch event, Lazar was “praying not to finish last.”

• What music do you like to hear when training?

Serbian rap and sometimes Drake. “Anything with a good beat.”

• Any book to recommend?

Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable, by Tim S. Grover.

“It could have been better,” Lazar explains. “But we need to save something for next year.”

How did he get there? Was it really lucky that someone in his rookie year finished in the top 10?

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BOXROX interviewed Lazar Đukić a couple of weeks after the end of the CrossFit Games while he was in Strasbourg, France, resting mind, muscle and bones.

Find out how the Waterpolo athlete became the most known Serbian household name in the CrossFit community in less than a week.

Note: This is the 1^st part of the interview with Lazar Đukić. The 2^nd is available by clicking here.

Lazar Đukić Was a Waterpolo Athlete

In Serbia, there are two sports that get the crowd going: basketball and Waterpolo. Interestingly enough, Lazar took the water sport, while his younger brother Luka Đukić diverted to the team sport – Luka also participated at the CrossFit Games this year for the first time and came in 29^th overall.

Source: Courtesy of Lazar Dukic

Lazar however had given up Waterpolo when he travelled to the United States to study and work for a short period of time as a lifeguard. “There I got familiar with CrossFit through a friend who was doing it already.”

Lazar thought he was athletic until his friend challenged him to his first CrossFit WOD: the Murph. Lazar did not do Murph with the weighted vest, and still, he lost to his friend and could not finish the workout. “He beat me bad and I wanted to win, so I started practising, learning new skills, and that is how it went,” Đukić tells us.

Lazar was just interested in CrossFit at the beginning and then he saw some competitions happening in Serbia. He trained for a few months and he came in 2^nd a few points behind the Serbian Fittest on Earth on Lazar’s first competition.

”So I was like, maybe I can be good in this if I try. And I kind of started training for real and started lifting.”

Rookie Only If You Don’t Know Where to Look

Malory O’Brien won the 2021 Rookie of the Year, but we are pretty sure that Lazar Đukić was a big contender for the honour. However, you are mistaken if you think he is a total rookie.

I had the mistake to ask Lazar which competitions he participated in before and which ones did he get on the podium. What followed next was a 2-minute list of competitions around the Middle East and Europe.

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From Serbia to Belgrade, to Belgium, Croatia, Egypt, Romania, France, Cyprus, and also the Dubai CrossFit Championship.

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Lazar Choose Not to Participate at the Games in 2019

In 2019 CrossFit Inc. had changed its approach to how athletes would get invited to the Games. And that is one of the reasons Lazar Đukić was eligible to compete in Madison, but chose not to.

National Champions would get a straight invitation to the Games and the Open would dictate who was the fittest in each country around the world. Lazar was named the Fittest in Serbia for the 3^rd time in a row in 2019 and could have travelled to the United States to try his luck against Mat Fraser, BK Gudmundson and Noah Ohlsen, but he chose not to.

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“There were hundreds of athletes,” Lazar recalls. “I knew most of them would be cut off their first, seconds, or third event, and for Serbia, that trip is pretty expensive. It was a really easy decision for me.”

Lazar says he decided to focus his energy on improving as an overall CrossFit Games athlete. In 2021 CrossFit changed again how athletes would be invited to the Games, with Quarterfinals and Semifinals around the world, which gave Lazar a better understanding of his athleticism and gave him the assurance that he was ready to take on the big names of CrossFit.

• Open = 34^th overall
• Quarterfinals = 14^th in Europe
• Semifinals = 2^nd at the CrossFit German Throdown

“It was a great confirmation for me that I did all of those stages [Quarterfinals and Semifinals] pretty good,” he says. “It gives you some kind of motivation. That you are ready and it’s time now.”

And so, after a week in Madison on his first attempt at the CrossFit Games, he is now the 9^th Fittest Man on Earth.

Lazar Shared the Bedroom with Brother Luka Đukić

Not only it was Lazar’s first time at the CrossFit Game, but his brother, Luka Đukić, finished 3^rd at the CrossFit German Throwdown and was also eligible to go to Madison. The brothers shared the same bedroom and hyped each other up before the events.

Source: Courtesy of Lazar Dukic

“It was really, really special for both of us,” Lazar remembers. The fittest brothers in Serbia usually compete with each other to know who is better at a particular WOD than the other. But during the Games, the atmosphere was different.

“We didn’t even consider each other as competition. We considered ourselves as a team. Even though you have your coach, they are not going to know what you are going through,” Lazar Đukić explained.

This is part 1 of the interview with Lazar Đukić. Part 2 focuses on Lazar’s future and his plans for 2021 and life after retirement. Click here to read part 2 of the interview.

This group of athletes are pushing the boundaries of what most people think is possible once you hit a certain age — and one of those athletes is 61-year-old former High School math’s teacher Lynne Knapman; a CrossFit Games Master who has qualified for her 10th in-person Games this year.

“I’m very ordinary” Lynne tells BOXROX one minute into our conversation from her home in Sydney, Australia “But see, I think anyone could do it.”

Lynne started her CrossFit journey in her 50s after deciding to support a friend in running a 14km road run. Prior to this, she used to run on the treadmill for three kilometers, nine kilometers an hour. After telling her husband she wanted to run the 14 kilometers, he put her in touch with his trainer at a globo gym — this turned out to be her trainer for next 10 years Chad McKay.

When Regionals and the Masters were introduced, Chad encouraged her to take part.

“The first year I qualified accidentally,” she laughs as she tells us. “I was like, I don’t know, maybe fifth in the world? But there were a couple more regions to go. I was thinking, oh my gosh, what have I done? We would look every weekend to make sure I was dropping far enough to get out of it, because we didn’t even know what it was!”

What it was was the early days of the CrossFit Games, and Lynne didn’t drop out. She came 8th in the Regionals, and they took the top 15 in the 50+ Masters Division of the 2010 Games. She is the only Masters athlete to have qualified for every single CrossFit Games since it was first introduced, and has been the Australian National Champion in her age group several times.

The Key to Success Is Good Coaching

Despite all this, Lynne doesn’t consider herself an athlete. She attributes much of her success to Chad and the team at Sydney’s CrossFit Active;

“I think anyone can coach an athlete. Like if someone came along to coach, say, Rich Froning or whatever, they’d be able to do it, but to coach basically a Muppet takes extra special skills, and I don’t learn very quickly, but he doesn’t give up and neither do I.”

Chad knew back in 2011 that mobility would be Lynne’s limitation as she got older. As a result they spend a lot of time working on this aspect of CrossFit, and it’s this kind of care and insight that has allowed Lynne get to where she is now.

To give you an idea of her numbers — according to her CrossFit Games athlete profile — she can back squat 240lbs, deadlift 295lbs, and has a 5.18 Fran. Not bad for a former High School teacher with no athletic background whatsoever.

“The first time I got a medal I gave it to him [Chad],” she says. “He always says that he doesn’t do the work, he just shines a light on the path. And it’s a pretty bright light.”

Lynne Knapman: 10x Games Athlete

Chad has been working with Lynne from the very beginning, but she is still incredibly humble about her achievements. “When somebody asks, I tell them I’m good for my age. Which I think I am.”

“One of the things, now that I’m 61, I look at old people walking hunched over across the road and all that sort of stuff. And when I play with my grandchildren, that’s when I notice that this is really worthwhile.”

Lynne trains 7 days a week, and she says this is because she’s an older athlete and therefore has to maintain a level of competitive fitness. On Sundays she swims, but on otherwise spends about three to four hours of training a day. She recently left her job as a math teacher to free up some time, because the schedule was pretty grueling.

Source: Wykie Etsebeth

Lynne qualified for the 2021 CrossFit Games in Madison this year, but due to ongoing lockdowns and COVID restrictions, is still unsure if she will be able to make it. As the only Masters athlete to have participated in all live Games events, she’s seen the competition change dramatically.

“They’re so slick now in comparison. In 2010 the Masters were on a field, and there wasn’t even the Internet and all that sort of stuff wasn’t as good either.”

“So they basically had this microphone and we were sitting behind the grandstand and it was just a bit lucky if you knew even knew what was happening!”

She goes into every competition with three goals: do the best she can, don’t get injured, and have fun — the podium has never been a goal, even if she has made it once or twice.

One of her favourite memories from the 2019 Games was competing in a workout which included handstand walks. “It’s a bit of a fluke if I can do them,” she says. “But I did four handstand walks and I felt so proud and so pleased.” She came last, but despite that considers it one of her best Games achievements.

CrossFit Is For Everybody

Lynne has a special needs son Chris, who also took up CrossFit when his mum and siblings did. As to not leave him out, she put him in a PT class not thinking he wouldn’t make much progress — but found she was very wrong.

“At first he couldn’t jump up on a normal set of stairs, 6 – 8 inches, and he certainly couldn’t hold himself up on a pull-up bar. But now he’s got a competitive nature in him. His brother even said ‘If Chris can do it, anyone can.’ Here’s someone with poor muscle tone, poor coordination, everything stacked against him, and his coach has helped him make progress.”

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CrossFit is immensely scalable, and Lynne wants anyone thinking of getting into the sport to know that. She also praises the community at her box at length because it’s provided her sons with structure and role models that are hard to come by.

“What I think Chris has done, is my finest achievement,” she says. “Even over and above the Games. Because it has made such a difference to his life.”

After a decade of competing, Lynne thinks she will only stop when Chad does; “If he quits, he’s got two little babies, so if he decided he didn’t want to do it anymore, then I would still probably train as hard as I do, but probably not compete.”

Read More: Emma Cary on the CrossFit Open, Scary Goals & Being a Teenage Elite Athlete

This will be Sydney’s first ever Games and one of her only in-person live competition events since picking up CrossFit back in 2018. Prior to this year she had never competed in a Sanctional or Semifinal before.

Furthermore, Sydney broke both of her ribs in the run-up to the 2021 CrossFit Open, which makes her qualification even more impressive.

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“I knew it was going to be close,” she told the Morning Chalk-Up. “That last event was basically going to determine who got that last spot. It was anyone’s game.”

The 21-year-old athlete finished just 11 points ahead of sixth-place finisher Anikha Greer, and will now be heading to the Games to compete against the very best of the sport.

“I was super emotional. I started crying, but I don’t think it really sunk in until two or three days later. My first training session back is when I think it really hit me. I was like, ‘OK, you’re training for the Games now.'”

Sydney Michalyshen: Volleyball Player to CrossFitter

Sydney was formally a gymnast, and went on to play volleyball at University, but as she tells Mike Arsenault, she can now be considered a CrossFit athlete.

“It’s honestly such a surreal feeling to qualify this year. My last in-person competition was at Wodapolooza, and that was in the RX Division back in 2020.”

“I don’t have too much in-person competition experience and going into that Semifinal weekend my sole goal and purpose was to qualify for the Games this year, so I’m honestly just super excited that I get to extend my season and get to focus on my training for that experience.”

Sydney Michalyshen

Despite her lack of in-person experience, Sydney says that doing these competitions virtually was a big adjustment, and that she’s looking forward to getting back out on the competition floor.

“I’m really, really looking forward to seeing what I am capable of when I step onto the floor, in person.” She tells CrossFit.

Read More: Is Brent Fikowski About to Have His Best CrossFit Games Yet?

The Benchmark Hero Workout has become tradition in the CrossFit community, usually performed on Memorial Day in the US to pay tribute and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for freedom; including the WOD’s namesake Lt. Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL who lost his life in 2005 in Afghanistan.

The enormous effort saw Gladding pull off 19 Murph workouts in 24 hours. For those perhaps unfamiliar, one Murph consists of the following:

For Time:

• 1 mile Run
• 100 Pull-Ups
• 200 Push-Ups
• 300 Air Squats
• 1 mile Run

All with a Weight Vest (20/14lb)

“Health and fitness has always been a huge part of my life,” Gladding told BOXROX, “During the national lockdown in May/June 2020 I completed a 30 Murphs in 30 Days challenge. This sparked my interest in CrossFit and I began including it into my training regime.”

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Around the same time, Sam’s little sister Sienna was diagnosed with Leukemia. She was admitted to the Starship Children’s Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand and this inspired Sam to take on a brand new Murph challenge to help support the organisation what was currently supporting his sister and family.

“The Starship Children’s Hospital have been tremendous from the start,” he said on his JustGiving fundraiser, “They are giving the best care, love and support, not only for Sienna but for the whole family, as well as providing medical treatment that is second to none.”

Beating the Murph World Record

Before Sam gave the Murph World Record a shot, the current record was held by French athlete Tanguy Cruz, who managed to complete 18 Murphs in 24 hours in November 2020. That was the number to beat.

Kicking off at 0600 on Friday, his friends and family helped document the day on Instagram.

“The hardest part was definitely around 12 hours in,” Sam told BOXROX, “I had done 11 Murphs with no rest as I was feeling strong, but then I took my first break. I hit a massive wall, threw up twice and just couldn’t get moving again. Every sip of water or bite of food just came straight back up so I couldn’t stay hydrated or refuel. I was running completely on empty from about Murph 12-15.”

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“Doubt started creeping into my mind but I had to push it out and go to a place in my mind that I hadn’t been before. The rest was just a blur but I somehow managed to complete the rest of the Murphs and get the World Record.”

After a grueling 22 hours and 27 minutes, Gladding managed to complete 19 Murphs, breaking the previous world record of 18 Murphs and finishing at 0427 on Saturday morning.

“I think that just proves to anyone wanting to push themselves that your body is capable of so much if you can get your mind in the right place. I put a lot of work into preparing for this challenge mentally, with meditation, cold exposures and visualisation, and I’m so glad that I did because that’s what it came down to in the end.”

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Sam’s effort is truly inspiring, and he has so far raised well over his £1000 goal. However if you think what Sam did is impressive, or the charity resonates with you, you can still show your support for the Starship Children’s Hospital and donate here.

Read More: How to Scale 5 Classic CrossFit Workouts (Tips for Non RX Athletes)

The Afghan native moved to the UK at the age of 7 and found CrossFit aged 15. After competing in the 2017 CrossFit Games, Taz qualified to the Elite division in 2020 as Afghanistan’s National Champion, but the global pandemic meant his invite was revoked.

For 2021, following the CrossFit Open and Quarterfinals, Taz has qualified to compete in the European Semifinals for a chance to make the Games.

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An Athlete Through and Through

“I was the kid that used to get bullied because I didn’t know how to speak,” Taz told BOXROX. This lead him into boxing, where he went on to compete.

However, a recurring nose problem took the enjoyment out of the sport and he decided to try CrossFit. The Box, CFR Barbell, was within the same premises as his boxing gym.

“I got strong really quick and it wasn’t something that I would think about,” he said. “Training wise, I’d do the class and then I’d do another two-hour session.”

It only took Taz one year of CrossFit training to get to the Games. He attributes that to being young and developing quickly, as well as a fitness background which allowed his body to train three to four hours a day.

“Going to the Games in 2017 was amazing. I learnt so much from the Games and being around better athletes. You don’t really know until you’re there and you do it; you can’t get the same experience anywhere else.”

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The Growth Mindset

Taz likes to train and compete against people who are better than him, knowing that being the fittest around is fun, but having better people around brings him up a lot faster.

“It’s good to be one of the worse athletes again,” he said about the jump from the Teen division to the Elite. “Once you get really good, you don’t have as many people to chase. When you go back to the [elite competition], you’re suddenly the worse guy again.”

“I don’t think many people realise how difficult it is because you go from being surrounded by 16-year-olds to 25-year-olds and you don’t really realise how much better these people are and how much more developed.

“They’re bigger, they’re better, they’re stronger.”

Suddenly, goals become way bigger because you’re surrounded by people who can do it all.

“I used to be the weakest in everything I did in CrossFit. To start off with, every competition I did I really was the weakest one,” Taz remembers.

So, out of passion and enjoyment, he decided to set himself goals and work on them every single day.

“I went from 60kg to 120kg in my snatch in one year. It wasn’t something I was properly programming into my training, it was just something that I did myself – I was really passionate about it,” he said.

If you train out our enjoyment, you’re always pleasantly surprised with the results, Taz found.

He has also worked a lot on his mental game, noting that training isn’t only about the physical, but also about what’s going on through your head.

“The way I approach a max clean and jerk or snatch, I’m in a completely different mindset,” Taz said. “I’m just like ‘I will get this.’ 100% there’s no doubt, and I want to feel that way when I do a 5k row for example.”

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Training and Competing During Ramadan

Taz competed in the Individual and Team Quarterfinals this past month. Ramadan, which started on April 12, 2021 and coincided with CrossFit’s Team Quarterfinals, is definitely not the best time to compete at a high level, but sometimes there’s no way around it.

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“It’s just one of them, you just have to deal with it even though it’s a lot tougher than usual,” says Taz. “Ramadan is a mental challenge, it’s what it’s meant to be; it’s made to put you in the position of the less fortunate.”

“I love Ramadan, but it really does take a toll on your training,” Taz explained. Timings are different because, even though most daily tasks go on as usual, you’re training in the evening, eating in the evening, adapting your training load every day.

“It’s a good thing,” says Taz. “It doesn’t help me a lot with my training, but it does help me psychologically and mentally.”

Read more: How CrossFit Members Adapt Their Lifestyle and Training During Ramadan

Onto CrossFit Semifinals

Taz ranked 21st in the UK following the 2021 Open and made the top 60 in Europe after Quarterfinals.

He will either compete at the CrossFit German Throwdown or CrossFit Lowlands Throwdown between June 11 and 13.

Both events announced they’ll become a virtual competition for 2021.  

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His Affiliate, CFR Black, also made the top 40 in Europe and has, unofficially, qualified to the Semifinals.

While Taz is a full-time student, he would love to make a living as an athlete after he finishes university.

He chases goals pragmatically and is realistic about his prospects. Medals and participating in international competitions don’t mean a lot if the opportunities to make a living out of the sport aren’t there as well.

“I’m really trying to make the right decision for the future,” he told me. “I’ve got other stuff going on, but to be able to compete and train as your job – how amazing is that!”

Emma has been involved in CrossFit since she was ten years old, which puts her years in the sport on a par with adult athletes like Justin Mederios (22) and Dani Speegle (27). It was a passion she picked up from her father, who used to come home and tell her all about the workouts. 

“I grabbed my broomstick, I grabbed milk jugs and I would want to do the workout in the front yard,” she told BOXROX, speaking to us from her home in Missouri following the grueling Quarterfinals weekend, “so at my first opportunity, I joined the kids class on Wednesday nights. I would be so excited all week. I fell in love.”

Once learning that she could compete in this thing that she loved, Emma stopped attending classes (at that point, she was working out alongside adults) because she felt like they weren’t preparing her competitively. 

At 11 years old, she started programming her own workouts, which she admits was crazy, “I didn’t really know what I was doing,” she said “I just knew that I wanted to work hard, I knew that I was strong and I wasn’t afraid to get way out of my comfort zone.”

In 2019 Emma was finally eligible to compete in her first CrossFit Games season, where she went on to win the 14-15 Age Group Division. At the Games she came first in three out of six events, and top three in all but one.

Then came the 2020 Open. An impressive display in the first two workouts landed Emma 12th and 9th in the overall leaderboard, putting her on track for Elite qualification at age 14. However, the strength-based workouts for 20.3 & 4 caused some setbacks for the teenage athlete.

She finished almost 600th in those workouts, falling out of a qualifying spot. “I was like, wow, you know, I’ve been working on strength and I’m still not strong enough. I have no idea where to go from here.” 

Emma still qualified for the Games in her age group, and started working with Matt Torres of Brute Strength Training. But then of course, the arrival of the pandemic abruptly ended the season, putting a swift end to any plans she had of winning the 16-17 Age Group Division at the 2020 Games. 

Yet despite this, Emma’s mindset quickly shifted from complete heartbreak to setting lofty goals.

“That was a loss of a dream that I would never really get back but I was like, OK, I can make this happen for me instead of to me.”

Together with her coach, Emma set a scary goal: to qualify for the Women’s Elite Division in 2021. “That goal at the time was really scary,” she told me, “there have been times where I have really doubted it. But now as we get deeper into the season, the goal just keeps getting bigger.”

Emma’s stand-out moment in the 2021 CrossFit Open was her performance in 21.2; a combo of dumbbell snatches and burpee box jump-overs; where she beat out all other elite level competitors in her division — including 4x CrossFit Games champion Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr.

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But it was her performance in 21.4 (the barbell complex) which stands out in Emma’s mind, because it was testament to all the hard work she had put in in the last year. “I opened up really heavy. The only option is to succeed at this point, like that is the only option I’m giving myself,” she told me, “I had a couple of misses in there that I shouldn’t have had, but then at the very end I came back and hit 218lbs for the complex.” 

“Not only have I gotten stronger,” she continues, “but I have gotten stronger under fatigue. It was just the best feeling to hit that lift and know that I probably did not win the Open, but I was confident that I had done enough to make myself really proud. I was just fired up going into the rest of the season knowing what I was capable of, and just seeing that there was only one person to beat me and that was Tia.”

What’s It Like to be an Elite Athlete at 16?

To say CrossFit is a passion is an understatement, because it almost has to be more than that if you want to be as dedicated as Emma is. However, she is also a very normal teenager, just one who balances training with school.

When it comes to training, she’s working out twice a day, five days a week. Thursdays are for active recovery, and Sunday is for catching up on homework. Her day goes as follows:

“I’m kind of a night owl. I wake up at about 8 or 8.30, eat breakfast right away and while I let that digest, settle down and work on homework for about an hour. Then I will train depending on how much training I have. I like to split my sessions pretty evenly, so 2-3 hours then I’ll eat lunch, head to school. I’m there for a little over two hours.”

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“Then I head home or head to the gym. I have an awesome home gym so sometimes I do my training there, which is usually two to three more hours. I eat dinner and if I have any time left, I’ll work on homework. If not, I go to bed about eleven and then that gets me 9+ hours of sleep, so I am ready to do it all again.”

The kind of discipline it takes to be able to juggle both school and training at such an elite level shouldn’t be glossed over, but for Emma, it’s a means to an end. If she’s not training, she would rather be sleeping or recovering, and is happy to sacrifice her social life for the routine that will take her to success. Her friends understand that this goal will always come first.

“My friends just understand that this is a sacrifice I have to make, and one I also choose to make. They do understand how important this dream is to me, and that it does come first. If anything is going to stand in my way of achieving this dream, I just have to remove it from my life.”

The Ultimate Goal

Back in 2019, Emma’s coach asked her to sit down and write out exactly what it was she wanted for the next few years. 

He asked her to set out a one year goal, a five year goal and a ten year goal. “I was like, OK, in five years that’s 2024, I’ll be 20 years old,” she said, “I can win the CrossFit Games. So ever since then 2024 has kind of been the year I’ve had in my mind.”

However, she’s on course to possibly achieve that goal before 2024, but has many competitors to beat out in order to make that dream a reality; not just in Toomey-Orr but fellow teenage athlete Mallory O’Brien, who is currently one spot above her in third place following the Quarterfinals. 

Both athletes are paving the way for teenagers in CrossFit, proving that the popularity of the sport has allowed an even younger generation of athletes to start to become serious competition for the veterans.

“I think it’s really awesome how there can be so many teens this year doing so well and inspiring other teens” Emma says. “Now we get to be those role models and that’s so cool and never something I would take lightly.”

Since Emma’s stunning performance in the 2021 CrossFit Open, she has forgone the Age Group Qualifiers and is focusing entirely on preparing the upcoming Granite Games Semifinals in Minnesota.

Emma has been working towards the Semifinals all year, but following her placements in the Open and Quarterfinals, she will no longer be satisfied with simply qualifying for the Games.

“Finally I had a little taste of what was coming for the rest of the season and the rest of my career,” she said, “because the Open was never the goal.” 

“Just to prove to myself that I do belong, because it is easy to get intimidated with people older and bigger and more experienced, but that silenced the doubts I’ve had. I have gone into training every day since then confident and hungry. Success just makes me hungrier.”

However, what if during that month you had to fast each day from sunrise to sunset (going without food, water and caffeine) and give back to the community as well? 

Some of us might approach the offer with a bit more caution. 

For Muslims, this yearly event is known as Ramadan, and starts during the full moon during the 9th month of the Islamic calendar which begun this week, on April 13th 2021.

It certainly can’t be easy to have children, a career and a fitness routine in place during a month where you are not allowed to eat or drink from sunset to sunrise. So, as this will be my first time in Dubai during Ramadan, a country where over 60% of the population is Muslim, I was eager to learn how Muslims within the CrossFit community adjust to, and even embrace, this holy month.

Working Out During Ramadan

For starters, day to day life slows down considerably. Traffic thins, the city becomes less hectic and evenings are spent with family and friends. To forego food, water, coffee and other earthly comforts means taking time to become more in-tune with your spirituality, family and community.

It is a month of giving back and deep contemplation, but life is not meant to stop. It’s still, in many respects, business as usual. According to Areej Mansour Dajani, a member of InnerFight Dubai “it’s about making adjustments.”

She continues to train, work and take care of her two children with a few tweaks that going without food and water for 12 hours a day requires, and these changes are especially important in the gym.

During Ramadan, many Muslim gym goers such as Areej approach their training sessions in two distinct ways. They will train before they begin their day of fasting or immediately after.

When Ahmed Abdelkhalek began CrossFit six years ago, he opted to train in the morning. He would wake up before beginning his fast to drink and eat, usually opting for water alongside oats with banana and honey and then workout.

However, Ahmed realized this would jump-start his metabolism and cause him to feel even more hungry and thirsty during the day. He has since changed his routine to an evening training session.

Now, once the sun has set Ahmed partakes in what is known as Iftar, which literally translates to “break fast.” This consists of a light snack such as a banana with some dates and yogurt to allow the body time to restart the digestive process after a long day of fasting. Ahmed then partakes in evening prayers, does a light strength session at 7:30PM followed by a substantial meal with family.

Training before or after a day of fasting both have their set-backs, but most athletes I have spoken to find it best to train in the evening. They will either schedule a workout so that they finish as soon as the sun sets, knowing their first meal of the day is straight after, or opt to break fast with a light meal and then train. 

Making Small Adjustments to Fitness and Lifestyle During Ramadan

Tarek Bazrbachi, who started CrossFit less than a year ago, asked his friends for advice in regards to training during Ramadan. Apart from their point-blank advice to “just do it,” Tarek will follow suit and train with them before Iftar, allowing him to spend the rest of the evening with family and friends.  

For Niera Osama- a 22- year-old with less family commitments, she will return home after work for a nap, then do a light cardio session before the sun sets. She then breaks her fast with dates, soup and salad followed by evening prayers. On some days Niera will train again around 9PM with friends, focusing on light strength work followed by her largest meal of the evening.

The Complexity of Training During Ramadan

No matter when someone decides to train during the month of Ramadan, it will be much more difficult to say the least. Fatigue, hunger and thirst will be at the forefront of everyone’s minds. That’s why training with friends in a class setting becomes even more important; it reminds you that you’re in this together, doing it for a greater good. 

Most CrossFitters partaking in Ramadan continue to train, but they will dial things down.

For Areej and Ahmed, this means going from 5-6 days of training to 3-4, and working at a decreased intensity to avoid putting too much stress on the body. 

According to Areej, “it’s about leaving your ego at the door. You’re not worrying about the amount of weight you’re using or how quickly you can finish a workout. It’s just about moving and keeping healthy.”

Further, you might think that fasting and training would be a recipe for getting into better shape, but that’s not the focus or what the month is about. Scaling back your workouts and having a large meal late in the evening makes staying fit much more effortful. 

Focusing on Nutrition as well as Sport

Liam Holmes, the owner of pHNutrition says: “It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking (and feeling) that as soon as evening rolls around you can dig into dinner and eat as much as possible. But research suggests that calorie load isn’t decreased during Ramadan, for some it actually increases.”

With family time being a primary focus, spending time with loved ones over the dinner table becomes the norm, and nobody leaves hungry. Traditional meals may include dates, lentil soup, salads, samosas, chicken with rice, stuffed grape leaves and finally, desserts; all of which are all served late in the evening. 

However, in having partaken in Ramadan every year since childhood, many people know how to balance their indulgent evening meals with healthier ones.

Consuming easy to digest carbs, lean protein and low fibre foods for Iftar and keeping hydrated with both liquid and water dense foods such as cucumbers and tomatoes are all ways to reduce inflammation, digestive issues and dehydration.

Preparing for Ramadan Ahead of Time

So, how do those partaking in Ramadan prepare ahead of time? One unanimous way is by cutting down on caffeine, a huge staple within Muslim culture. Knowing full well their beloved cups of coffee will go from a few a day to none, many begin to cut back.

This way, they can decrease their chances of caffeine withdrawals and avoid becoming more dehydrated. 

However, coffee is fair game once the sun sets, and many coffee aficionados will wake up before the sun rises to down an espresso or two. Further, some may begin to practice intermittent fasting in the weeks leading up to Ramadan to prepare themselves both physically and mentally.

To many, the month of Ramadan is akin to Christmas. You’ll find decorations within many homes and presents are always given out at the end of Ramadan and on the first day of Eid. These “Eidiyah” are typically presents given to children by family members.

And while children aren’t expected to take part in Ramadan until their parents believe they are ready, many start to look at the month in earnest, even practicing with their own “birdy fast,” from 4-7PM. And alongside presents exchanged within the family, Ramadan also places emphasis on giving back to the community.

Giving a Zakat, or donation to a charity, serving food to those in need and inviting others for dinner who do not have family nearby are all ways of contributing.

So, if you see someone in the gym during the month of Ramadan, make sure to give them a fist pump for all their efforts and feel free to say “Ramadan Kareem,” meaning “have a generous Ramadan” or “Ramadan Mubarak,” which translates to “Happy Ramadan.” 

Is this your first year doing Ramadan while also CrossFitting or want to learn how to adapt your training and nutrition during the month?

pHNutrition has some great advice on how to train, eat and supplement your training here.

The Isle of Man native is a rising star in the CrossFit scene and juggles her career as a professional athlete while training as a nurse. Alongside CrossFit, the 21-yer-old competes in endurance and athletic competitions, winning the 2019 Island Games 400m hurdles and taking gold in the 2020 Isle of Man Triathlon Championship.

What’s more impressive, Aimee wishes she could still do more.

“I just love sport really,” she told BOXROX a few days prior the Open. “Anything I can get my hands on I’ll try.”

As Much Sport As Possible From The Start

Aimee has a background in gymnastics – which she started around the age of four – athletics, and strength and conditioning, which lead her into CrossFit.

After a few months in the kids sessions Aimee gradually stated to get into it more and more, to the point where she was training five days a week and began following a competition program.

Her climb up the UK leaderboards started in 2018 when, at the age of 19, Aimee placed second in the Isle of Man after the Open. She followed that with a 25th and a 20th place finish in the UK 2019 and 2020 respectively.

She loves CrossFit because it demands so much from her: “I think this is the sport for me because I had to do gymnastics, athletics and triathlons – it’s like all that combined anyway, but better.”

However, she’s still half trying to figure out why we pay to go through savage workouts: “It’s weird, but you feel good afterwards,” she said. “And it’s a great feeling when you get PBs, even throughout lockdowns.”

Her training schedule varies with the seasons and her studies. Not long ago she had a 12-week placement with shifts lasting up to 13 hours, which wasn’t ideal. Now with online lectures she’s able to fit in a couple of sessions per day.

Source: @peter.photo_cumbria

Becoming a Professional CrossFit Athlete

Aimee is down-to-earth and honest. She’s in the process of figuring out what it takes to be a full-time professional athlete and is open about her struggles with self-confidence and the feeling she should train more.

“At the minute, because I’m a student nurse I think I can’t put enough into [training] and get enough out of it,” she explained. “I also see people train five hours a day, and I don’t do any of that, so I don’t think I could be there right now.”

Social media, lockdown, and the lack of competitions have definitely had an impact.

“From not doing any competitions for a while I guess [your achievements] go out of your head,” said Aimee. “But as soon as I get to compete again maybe I’ll show myself that I am kind off ‘up there.’”

Which she is. With the 2021 CrossFit Open now behind her and her best finish yet – Aimee unofficially sits in 245th place worldwide – she hopefully knows she’s on the right track.

Source: @peter.photo_cumbria

Next up, Aimee will tackle the CrossFit Quarterfinals with hopes of making the top 60 women in Europe and advance to the Semifinals.

“I’d love to see how far I can go with CrossFit; I’d love to go to the Games,” she said. “I know it’s a long way off, and I have to listen and be patient, but it would mean the world to me to show how much hard work has been put in.”

The 2021 CrossFit Quarterfinals for individual athletes will take place online between April 8 and 12, 2021.

Elite CrossFit Training and Nutrition

Aimee loves food. Browsing through her social media, you’re sure to find very enviable pictures of her morning porridge.

“I just like to sweat and work hard, which I guess I do,” Aimee said. “But yes, I feel like I need to earn my food because I just can’t stop eating all the time.”

Aimee doesn’t follow a strict diet or nutrition plan as food makes her happy and she doesn’t want to stress about it. She eats healthily and has a good idea about how, what and when to eat to support her performance.

Make your own special Aimee-style porridge

 

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A post shared by Aimee Cringle (@aimee_cringle)

Protein Porridge recipe:

For the oats

• 85g rolled oats
• Protein powder
• Water or milk – enough to cover the oats

Toppings

• Raspberries
• Banana
• Mini smarties
• Chocolate or any kind
• Homemade granola
• Protein crispies
• Cocoa nibs
• Pumpkin seeds

Add oats milk/ liquid to your bowl mix, place into microwave for 2-3 minutes, remove, stir in protein powder, microwave again then another minute or so if needed, remove from microwave and start getting creative with toppings!

Unfortunately, the field of athletes was ultimately reduced to only 5 men and 5 women due to COVID, and Zack was unable to attend, but after 6 years of graft to reach this level, he is now looking ahead with intelligence, maturity and focus to defend his crown in 2021. 

Learn more from Zack himself about how a champion eats, lives and trains in order to operate and perform at the highest levels.

Use Zack’s tips to improve your own nutrition and performances. 

Training and Lifestyle

1. Hey Zack, do you have any daily habits or rituals?

I actually don’t, apart from my regular structure around nutrition, training, mobility and recovery, I don’t really have any little interesting habits or rituals!

2. What does a typical day look like for you?

Wake up around 9am – it’s really important for me to get at least 8+ hours sleep. The amount of training and volume I do makes this bit really vital to recovery and performance. I go to sleep at around 12am and wake up at 9am so I get approx. 9 hours sleep a night. 

Have breakfast right away and then it’s get ready to leave for the gym around 10am. 

I’ll spend about 30 minutes warming up and working through mobility drills, ready to then start session one for the day at 11am.

Session one is always fitness/cardio based and takes around 1.5 hours.

After that I’ll head home for lunch and get any work I need doing done, I also do individual programming for 14 people so this is the time I’ll also spend working on their plans and programming for the week. 

I’ll then head back to the gym at around 5pm for Session 2, which is always weightlifting and gymnastics based.

After that it’s home for my evening routine which is dinner and then recovery time – I’ll do more mobility work and get the Hyperice Hypervolt out, this is my go to, it’s amazing at releasing tension built up throughout the day.

3. Do you do your own programming, or do you have a coach that handles that side of things?

I do all of my own programming. I know that’s something really unique in the CrossFit® world now, but it works for me. I do have someone who programmes swimming and running for me, which I do every Wednesday afternoon (well, I was when the pools were open…), this is with Loughborough University.

4. Do you program specific strength cycles within the larger framework of your CrossFit® training? If so, what do these look like?

Strength has never been one of my weaknesses, I’m a larger athlete weighing 100kg, so strength is something I’ve never struggled with, so personally I don’t programme specific strength cycles, instead I have to attack my weaknesses, like gymnastics movements.

5. Can you give us an example of a CrossFit® workout you enjoy that will test and improve strength?

A typical strength session that I like to do is mixed up with a cardio element:

5 rounds for time of:

• 20 cal bike
• 5 squat snatches

Weights on the bar = 70/80/90/100/110kg

6. Bench, Deadlift or Squat, which is your favourite of these three lifts?

Squat has to be my favourite exercise out of the three. 

7. How do you make sure to keep all the different parts of CrossFit® and your fitness (strength, endurance, specific skills, cycling, swimming, running etc) in balance within your training?

Making sure you cover all the elements of training for CrossFit® comes down to good programming and knowing what sort of athlete you are and your weaknesses.

For me strength has always been something I don’t need to work on as much but fitness and gymnastics are elements I’ve had to focus a lot of time to, along with swimming and running.

So, ultimately it’s really personal and dependent upon the individual, but my advice is don’t ignore weaknesses and don’t just programme the things you enjoy, if you want to keep getting better, you have to address the things you don’t like.

Nutrition

1. Are you methodical in the way that you track your daily Macros or do you go more by feel?

Yep, I always track my food and I like to use My Fitness pal to do this.

Tracking food is a key variable which I can control that makes an enormous impact to my performance so I always make sure to do this, especially when preparing for competitions, that’s when I’ll really dial it in – no cheat meals allowed then!

2. What are your daily amounts (grams) of proteins, carbs and fats?

I always have the same breakfast which is — 150g porridge, 50 g raisins and about 20-30 g honey.

For lunch and dinner, I have pre prepped meals from Balance Foods, they’ve been amazing. So convenient to just have all my food for the week delivered in one go all aligned perfectly with my macros.

Typically, I eat around 3,500 cals a day split:

• 446g carbs
• 178g protein
• 119g fat

3. Does this change depending on how you are training?

My diet stays pretty much the same during the week but when I’m in off season I’ll allow myself cheat days on Saturday and Sunday where I can eat whatever I fancy on that weekend. This differs to when I’m gearing towards a competition as I’ll have no cheat meals 3 months leading up to a competition, so I naturally cut weight ready for the comp – I try to be around 96kg to be comp ready.

4. Why is eating high levels of carbs so important for CrossFit® Athletes?

Given the nature of typical CrossFit® workouts where we use powerful, explosive quick movements, these short, high-intensity workouts need lots of energy to fuel them and to be able to perform well and avoid fatigue.

Carbs are the bodies’s primary fuel source and the most readily available source, providing energy quickly, vs for example fats, which provide energy at a slower rate.

5. How does Myprotein help you in regards to your recovery, nutrition and ambitions?

Myprotein helps me massively to aim with my training and goals. They provide the best supplements and training gear to allow me to push myself to my limits and help me recover inbetween sessions. 

6. Which Myprotein products would you recommend to other athletes (favourites, top3)?

My top 3 best supplements would be:

1. The whey pro protein salted caramel flavour
2. creatine monohydrate elite
3. daily multi vitamin tablets 

GET UP TO 50% OFF EVERYTHING with Code: BOXROXBLACK

7. Now especially during lock down and in between home workouts, how much do you snack and what is your favourite high protein snack?

The MyProtein baked cookies are my absolute favourite, I have to really limit myself to one a day, they just taste so good!

8. What’s the one supplement every ambitious CrossFit® Athlete (Beginner/Advanced) should use to boost their fitness and to take the next step?

Creatine would be my best recommendation for anyone wanting to take CrossFit® to the next level. If you aren’t already using it and you want to compete, you should be!

Advice and Tips for Athletes

1. If you could start CrossFit® again from the beginning, what would you do differently? What advice would you give yourself?

The advice I would give to anyone wanting to start CrossFit®, or advice to myself when I was just starting CrossFit®, would be to find a good box and start joining in with the classes and getting coached by their coaches.

I would then say to be patient and learn the basics first and learn them well. It can be very easy to want to learn the complex movements because they look cool and not focusing on the basics, but they really are so fundamental and as the basis for all other movements, having these nailed will make the complex ones come easier

2. What advice would you offer for athletes that want/need to improve their strength for CrossFit®? What advice would you give to athletes that are experienced when it comes to strength work and the gym, but want to crossover into a more functional based, CrossFit® context?

My advice for anyone wanting to increase strength is to follow a good strength cycle and to be consistent with the training — this bit is KEY. Focusing on the major compound exercises of squat back/front, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press, and pull ups.

Other Questions 

1. We know you have your new book coming out: What inspired you to write your story/ this story?

Yes, I am so excited for my book “Start Where Others Stop” to come out in April next year.

I really just wanted to be able to share everything I’ve learnt from my journey and show others that it’s never too late to start what it is you want to do, it doesn’t even need to apply to fitness, it can apply to anything in life — in work, family life or something else completely. I hope people enjoy it!

2. 2021 is almost here, what’s your game plan for next year?

Well, hopefully things run a little bit smoother than 2020 did. I’ve got some really exciting things lined up, I’m going to be launching a brand new platform for Silverback Training, I’m also working on a new clothing release with Myprotein.

Competitively, the CrossFit® Open has been set in February 2021 and so now I’ll be gearing up to work towards that and defend my UK champion title and nail a spot to The Games® 2021!

3. What’s your tip to make the lock down more enjoyable, while staying on top of your fitness?

My tip to everyone during lockdown trying to keep their fitness up is maintaining your regular routine. I train at 10-30 and 5pm everyday so when we went into lockdown, I said to myself that I would still train at those times and keep my routine with my training and nutrition.

This made the transition into lockdown training much easier and makes it less tempting to miss sessions or make excuses. It also provides a sense of normality and having a schedule not only helps keep you accountable but while couped up at home, gives your mind something to focus on as well. 

If you want to raise your game and optimise your nutrition like Zack, check out these great deals on the link below. Don’t forget to use the code: BOXROXBLACK for even more discount…

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BOXROX had the chance to speak to him exclusively shortly after and, during our conversation, we covered the realities of elite online competition, Vellner’s thoughts on his own performance, and his thoughts as a prominent athlete and competitor on the future of the CrossFit competitive season.

Read the first part of our interview here.

During the second part of our conversation, we discussed the start of the season, the disruption of it through the global pandemic and why he chose to shape his season the way he did, as well as his reflections on his CrossFit Games performance and his thoughts on the future of competitive CrossFit.

Vellner went into the 2020 CrossFit Games after an impressive season, where the Canadian won the worldwide Open, finished second at the Dubai CrossFit Championship and won both Wodapalooza and the Rogue Invitational.

After such an impressive start to the season, many thought Vellner’s early exit from the CrossFit Games last year was a fluke, and he was primed for a podium spot this year. However, competing alone from Nanaimo, Canada, Vellner finished 9th after Stage 1 of the 2020 Games, 15 points away from fifth place. He shared the realities of it with us – read all about it below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s been a long year! Obviously not the way I wanted my weekend to go, but I’m proud of my effort and amazed by all the athletes who competed this weekend. Huge congrats to everyone advancing to the #FinalFive . It’s exciting to see some new blood pushing at the top on the men’s side! I’m so grateful for all of the support both locally and all over the world. Thanks to the @crossfitgames for giving us a chance to compete in yet another unique competition format. For now i need a lot of rest, a lot of food, and a lot of friends and family time. ? ? @trainingdaymedia @tamanephotography #crossfitgames #crossfit #alldone #reebok #reebokcanada #foodspring #romwod #tydaxfit #championsandlegends

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Sep 20, 2020 at 8:33am PDT

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Pat, you had a huge season, winning the Open, two Sanctionals, second in Dubai, and then the CrossFit Games comes. You’ve said before you didn’t reach your expectations, and it’s easy to see that from on outside perspective because you were doing so well, but what is it actually like, being you?

It’s tough to reconcile expectations to reality. It’s kind of funny, I almost shot myself in the foot on it.

But after last year’s Games, the way the Sanctional season is built now and with the cuts – while it’s a cool style of competition – if you make a mistake at the wrong time or if you get a bad judgement call, anything can end your season very abruptly.

Even if you’re having a great competition, having one bad event at the wrong time means you’re out and you don’t get the chance to make up for those mistakes.

Knowing that was what the structure was, not being sure whether it’d be changed and looking at the whole season, I decided I didn’t want to hinge my whole season on that one competition with such high levels of unpredictability – you can get screwed.

By no fault of anybody’s you can get a really tough draw where your ultimate weakness comes up right on the cusp of one of the major cuts. Despite having great performances everywhere else, it sucks that you weren’t ready for that one test and you’re out.

It was hard to then put all my eggs in one basket, which is what athletes have done in past years because that’s what the system was like. But with the new Sanctional season I reasoned there’s lots of major events going on through the year.

You can earn good income competing at those events and compete against some of the best athletes around. By the time the Games come, if there’s another system or unpredictable thing going on, it’s not going to harm your year.

You’d already have had a good year by the time that system comes so, frankly, when COVID took off and things were shutting down, I was like ‘thank God I did that’ because there was no guarantee that the Games could happen or what they would look like.

We ended up in a situation where everything was unpredictable, so I was really thankful that I’d already had a good year; it was the perfect call for this year.

Source: Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

This is the thing, I didn’t give myself an off-season. Last year I trained for Rogue in May and trained hard for the Games through June, July and August. Then we had a month and a half before the Open, so I never really stopped training.

Then I did Dubai in December, Wodapalooza in February, then the West Coast Classic in March so I got training for that but they cancelled a few weeks before. So near the end of March I had a bit of a break, but Rogue was still scheduled for May.

I started training for Rogue and then they pushed back to June, so I kept at it until then and you’re right at Games training. But then the Games kept getting pushed back, so I was just circling, trying to maintain this high level of fitness.

[Editor’s note: in the end, the Games got postponed twice and happened eight weeks after they were originally scheduled for]

I wasn’t able to do it. I burnt out a little bit at the end of the season and got hurt.

Twenty days before the competition I tore my groin – that’s the way it goes when you try to compete that much and strain that much.

It’s frustrating and it’s unfortunate. Obviously I more than anyone wanted to try to erase my Games finish from last year, compete well and be able to put that on the shelf.

I wasn’t really able to prepare the way I wanted to the month leading into the Games – I basically didn’t do any squatting until two days before the competition and the first two events were all squatting. I was very nervous going into the competition, seeing the programming there was a lot where I thought I’d get hurt or wouldn’t be able to complete the events.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Courage is knowing it might hurt and doing it anyways. . Stupidity is exactly the same thing and that’s why life is hard ? . Just remember that next time you get on the rower to do 1000m for time ? ? @trainingdaymedia #quotes #thatscrossfit #courage #orstupidity #whatarethesenumbers #reckless #2020 #rowing #1km #crossfitgames #trainingdaymedia #reebok

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Sep 21, 2020 at 3:43pm PDT

At the end of the competition I was happy that I was able to compete and finish everything and put a decent effort in. I didn’t execute everything super well and I was definitely a little hampered by it, but I finished top 10 – that’s still a good recovery and something to be proud of.

I was happy with my season overall, I think it was great.

It sucks when you come to the end, when everybody’s watching, and you have a falter. But you know what, I’ll get over it.

Frankly, the way my season had been going to the Games, I’m don’t know if I’d been able to do another five weeks of training to then compete again.

My body definitely needs a break, so I’m happy that it’s the off season. I’m really looking forward to taking some time to rehab some things that have been bugging me over the course of the year and treat my body nicely for a change.

As much as I would have loved to have finished higher and qualified for the second stage, the people who did were undeniably deserving, they all performed super well for the weekend and it was a really tight race at the end.

If I would have done it, frankly, I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t know if I would have been able to get myself back together for five weeks to compete again.

For me, this was the best case scenario: to finish reasonably well and now have the chance to take care of myself because I need it. Had I made it with the injury that I have would have been a mistake, and I would have had a lot of trouble dealing with that.

It’s very easy to lose perspective and forget that you had an incredible season, and that speaks more about your ability than a single event, even if the event happens to be the CrossFit Games. And then you have to remember that everything got postponed over and over again and it’s really hard to stay on top and keep that peak going over time.

I know there’s a few other guys who were hurting and fighting injuries because that’s what happens when you’re trying to maintain that peak for so long, you start to break down.

But those are the conversations I’ve had with my coach: we made a decision early on for how we were going to this season and we did it exactly how we wanted to, and we knew what the risk was.

The reality of it is that Stage 1 of the CrossFit Games this year was a day and a half of competition.

It sucks when your whole season gets measured against one and a half days of competition.

But I’m proud of what I did this season and I’m not too worried about it. I know that I’m capable of competing with the guys, so next year I’m going to plan things differently based on what information we get about how the new season will look like and go from there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On Season Pat Off Season Pat ? @trainingdaymedia @iainharringtondc #offseason #vacation #aintnopartylikeanoffseasonparty #shushwap #boatin #reebok

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Oct 5, 2020 at 8:25am PDT

I know CrossFit is opening new lines of conversation, how much information are you actually getting at the moment about how the future season will look like?

We’ve been talking to CrossFit a little bit, particularly now that most people’s seasons are done.

When the season finishes, everyone wants to plan how they’re going to approach the next year, figure out what their offseason and in-season will look like.

We’ve approached them with questions to help us make more intelligent plans, and they’ve shared some of their ideas. A lot of athletes and Sanctional organisers had some chance to provide feedback on a few things.

We discussed what we really liked about the old system with Open, Regionals and the Games, and what we like about the Sanctionals system. We’re trying to come up with a new way to marry both of those ideas and create some sort of hybrid system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Oooo you nasty! ? @trainingdaymedia @tamanephotography #nastynancy #younasty #crossfitgames #tydaxfitness #reebok

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Oct 8, 2020 at 2:24pm PDT

There’s no real details yet, we’re still in early conversations, but we have an idea of the timeline which is good for now. Either way, right now, there’s no way to plan any further than the Open because we don’t know when live events can happen again.

For now, everybody’s off until the Open, which gives us more time to recover than we’ve had in the past. So yes, we’ll maybe have some sort of hybrid system but we’ll see what kind of shape it takes, I’m confident it’ll be sweet.

Best case scenario, what would you hope for?

I don’t know. I think from an athlete’s perspective, so it’s hard to look at things from a spectator’s perspective or simply a general perspective, say someone who has the goal to make it to the next stage competing.

The old Regionals system was really cool for that because it was very linear and obvious and easy to follow. You got a bigger degree of community involvement.

In the Sanctional system you also get a large degree of community involvement, but only where the Sanctioned events are, and they’re not everywhere. So it’s a little different.

From an athlete’s perspective, the Sanctioned events provide an opportunity to choose where and when we want to compete. And you’re not geographically locked. In the old Regional system I was living in eastern Canada and always had to compete at the East Regionals.

Some Regionals happened in really cool places and ours just happened in Albany, we competed in a hockey arena. And then you see the people in California competing on a cliffside – there were some really cool venues and I was jealous. But we couldn’t compete in those places, it wasn’t allowed.

There was no way to be allowed unless you moved there. So the Sanctional system provides a great opportunity to say, go out and compete in Europe against a whole group that I never see and never get to compete against.

Plus the involvement of some larger companied allowed some prize purses to balloon up and, frankly, be very financially lucrative for athletes. So there are some great things from the athlete’s side from Sanctionals.

In terms of simplicity, the old system was very nice, but I don’t actually know what the ideal would look like because the ideal for me is not the ideal for everyone.

If I made the ideal competition system for me it would probably be a tier system where you’ve got to compete a set number of events per year, so nobody would get the advantage of not competing more than others. You could do these events all over the world.

But the reason why that system is great for me is because it’s got a high barrier of entry; you’d have to travel a lot and it’s expensive. If you don’t have the sponsorship, you can’t really do it. So for me, it’d be sweet and awesome and I’d get to travel around, have a lot of earning opportunities.

But if you’re an intermediate athlete trying to make it to the Games for the first time there’d be a very high wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Perfectly balanced. As all things should be… ? @trainingdaymedia #thanos #balance #inevitable #handstand #crossfitgames #reebok #reebokcanada

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Oct 14, 2020 at 1:38pm PDT

That’s the sort of thing we’re trying to be mindful of, everybody wants to make sure this is accessible and can involve everybody. So there’s been a lot of hitting the ball back and forth so that everyone’s happy.

There’s no perfect system and there’s always going to be places where you can point at and say ‘this could be better’. But it’s been fun, now more than ever it’s been really cool to be able to speak to CrossFit, have feedback and feel like we can have some control over our own destiny to some degree.

We’re trying to make sure all parties are taken care of and create something that’ll be cool and sustainable. The biggest thing that I want is that we don’t keep changing it every year, and find a balance that we could stick to for at least three to five years, then see how it goes.

That’s really interesting, to be able to share ideas and see how they stand against other parties.

I think what’s cool about it is that it’s eye opening, because regardless of our best intentions we’re all very self-interested. So when I look at the competition season I want to do what’s best for the athletes, but when the event planners look at it, they want to keep in mind the interests of the people organising events.

And when CrossFit looks at it, they want to know it will help affiliates, how it’s going to help the training side and so on. We’re all hearing from each other and it’s cool to be in those conversations because they really point out your biases sometimes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One year later, that’s a wrap on the 2020 @crossfitgames season. What a year it has been! Shout out to all the athletes who continuously battled through all of thr adversity this season. Hands up if you are ready for more . Athlete // @pvellner . #crossfitphotography #bealpha #sigmaglobalvision #crossfitgames #crossfit

A post shared by Justin Tamane (@tamanephotography) on Oct 26, 2020 at 5:14pm PDT

When you want to do something a certain way and someone says ‘but have you thought of that?’ and you’re like ‘oh shit, no I haven’t’. It’s cool to see the whole ecosystem and have people who are involved from all over, and get to build something together.

I think that we’ve been really lucky to be a part of that. I know as athletes it’s something we wanted for a long time, to be involved and give some feedback. I’m excited about it.

I think that’s cool because then you also get to know the reason behind things. Regardless of what it looks like next year, what do you think your plans will be? Do you have any expectations?

It’s hard to know because we don’t know when the season can start. We’ll do the Open in February and see what happens from there. I know what the big plans are but a lot of it depends on the state of the world.

What we’re trying to encourage is some sort of contingency plan where, if the plan is to run live events by May and close to the date it becomes apparent we can’t do that, there’s a secondary plan in place to run those events online or find similar formats to the Games or Rogue. Even if it makes me sad to think that the next five or six events we compete in are all online – I want to see my friends and play with them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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That’s a wrap! Congratulations to @pvellner on an amazing season. This year will definitely go down as one to remember. After all of the up’s and down’s it’s incredible to see what all of the athletes accomplished this season! . @crossfitgames @dekacomp @tydaxfit @reebok . #bealpha #crossfitphotography #crossfit #crossfitgames #crossfitgames2020

A post shared by Justin Tamane (@tamanephotography) on Sep 20, 2020 at 4:01pm PDT

If we try to maintain interest and keep people engaged, it’d be good to have a plan in place on how we do it. Even if it doesn’t look like a typical season, if there’s way to run smaller events do that, it’ll maintain community engagement and create some fun buzz and give opportunities to athletes.

Maybe there’s some way to do something like that – it’s hard to plan outside the Open right now.

I’m going to do a lot of rehab for the next two months and then start training a little bit and get myself in half-ass shape for February, after that we have to play it by ear.

I think the biggest thing is everybody needs to go in with an open mind. We have no idea in this scenario and we’re all doing our best with what we have.

There’s been a lot of that in the past few months, with the delays for the Games and such. Everybody’s just got to adapt and be understanding that no one is doing this because they want to, but because we have to and it’s for good reason.

Totally, we’re all just winging it nowadays. Thanks a lot for talking to us Pat, it’s been a pleasure.

CrossFit, forced to scale down the 2020 Games due to the pandemic, resolved to only let 30 men and 30 women compete virtually for a chance to qualify to the finals. Only 10 athletes, to top 5 men and 5 women, would progress to the in-person finals in Aromas, California.

Competing alone in Nanaimo, Canada, Vellner finished 9th after the online stage, 15 points away from fifth place.

Vellner went into the 2020 Games following an impressive season, where he won the CrossFit Open, finished second in the Dubai CrossFit Championship and then won both Wodapalooza and the Rogue Invitational.

We had a chance to speak to him following his performance in Stage 1 of the CrossFit Games. During the first part of our conversation we discussed the realities of competing online as an Elite athlete, form the differences between virtual and live competition to the details that proceed and followed every event.

You can read all about it below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s been a long year! Obviously not the way I wanted my weekend to go, but I’m proud of my effort and amazed by all the athletes who competed this weekend. Huge congrats to everyone advancing to the #FinalFive . It’s exciting to see some new blood pushing at the top on the men’s side! I’m so grateful for all of the support both locally and all over the world. Thanks to the @crossfitgames for giving us a chance to compete in yet another unique competition format. For now i need a lot of rest, a lot of food, and a lot of friends and family time. ? ? @trainingdaymedia @tamanephotography #crossfitgames #crossfit #alldone #reebok #reebokcanada #foodspring #romwod #tydaxfit #championsandlegends

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Sep 20, 2020 at 8:33am PDT

We have split our interview into two parts. Part two covers Vellner’s competitive season, reflections on his performance and his thoughts about the future of CrossFit. The interview below has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Hey Pat, how are you feeling? Fully recovered from the Games now?

Yes, I was having an issue with one of my legs going in and I definitely didn’t make it any better competing. I’ve got a groin that’s now not in great shape, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t have anything else to do, so I can just rest up.

What was Stage 1 like, did it feel like the CrossFit Games to you?

It was different. Personally, not really.

I know a lot of athletes made a pretty big effort of trying to make it feel like a competition as much as they could. A lot of people got together and tried to compete with other athletes or created some sort of a stadium or things like that, and tried to simulate more of the Games feel, and we just weren’t able to do that here.

So I don’t know. It felt different. Same as Rogue; it’s tough, not to motivate yourself or to push, but it’s tough to simulate that same competition feel. That is something that misses anytime you do an online format. So I was I missed that a little bit for sure.

What exactly did you miss; the crowds, the people, the music?

It’s funny, I don’t care as much about the crowds of people and things. I like having the athletes around and I like being able to, in between events, be with the athletes and have that immersive experience, talk to people.

That’s one of the funnest parts of competing; it’s the banter you have with the athletes and that environment in warm up areas and cool down areas and on the competition floor, physically being able to race somebody.

There’s a lot of skill that goes into that, how you navigate those factors – so it was a totally different style of competition that eliminated that stuff. It tested different elements, it was a different added aspect to the test, so you lost some things but you gained some things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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GHD hair, don’t care ?? ? @trainingdaymedia #whipmyhair #breezyandbeautiful #ghdsitups #crossfitgames #crossfit #reebok #tydaxfit #foodspring #romwod #championsandlegends

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Sep 22, 2020 at 9:50am PDT

I know personally that’s why I like to compete: I like to go somewhere. I like to see the athletes. I like to be on the floor with people and push against them.

Having lost that for Rogue and now the Games – and then the Open will be the next competition we do – it’ll be three in a row having no physical competitors. That kind of hurts me a little bit. I really like that part.

What about the “hidden” leaderboard? You go into every workout and you give it your all and then you don’t really know how you performed. And to start with you’re only looking at your own performance and maybe thinking ‘I’m really pleased with that,’ or not. And then you actually see how it compares to others – does your perception of how you performed change?

I would say probably for most people the answer is yes, and it depends. I found the beginning with the blocks challenging.

[Stage 1 of the CrossFit Games was built into blocks, where athletes had four three-hour windows to perform a pair of workouts per block]

I like to follow the points and see where things are and understand where I stand. I view a competition as a big whole game.

That’s part of how I approach it, but not being able to know things on such a time delay – and I didn’t have that much of a delay, once my block ended, everything was out, but I had the delay from the workout before – it’s hard, and some people do better than others.

Normally, I really like live competition because I get charged up and I like to know where people are, who I need to stay ahead of and see the physical race taking shape in the overall standings.

Whereas some people, I think that can really stress them out. But it’s hard to really ignore it, and sometimes it can play in their head a little bit. Whereas in a system like this, you have no choice but to ignore it.

It maybe allows people to stay more focused on what their performance is.

I know personally, I could do something where I thought ‘hey I put a really good effort in and I’m happy with that,’ and then you see that was still only a 20th place effort. It sort of takes away that feeling a little bit, where you’re like ‘oh, well, now that’s not so good’ or ‘maybe I need to be better at that.’

You have to take that with you when you finish the competition and then start working on that stuff.

Different people respond to that environment differently. That’s why in live competition you see some people who can really regularly rise up to the occasion and do great things, when there’s that energy. And some people really seem to underperform when they compete on a live stage because some of those pressure situations get to them a little bit.

So there’s a different pressure, applied differently. And depending on where you live, maybe you felt it differently than others.

It was kind of interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Damn Diane ? ? @trainingdaymedia #damndiane #crossfitgames #crossfit #reebok #trainingdaymedia

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Sep 25, 2020 at 3:04pm PDT

You mentioned the competition blocks; what did you actually do in between them?

Mostly I went home, even between events, because the blocks were three hours long and you had two events per block, and nothing was really long. The first day every workout was four minutes long or less.

You want to maximize your rest in between events. So I did this – and I’m sure most athletes did the same – where you try to compete pretty early in the window on your first event and then save the second one until the very end of the window. So you end up with a two hour block in between events within the same block.

And then you end up with your three-hour rest in between blocks, and then another two-hour rest between workouts in the second block.

It was quite long days, actually. You’d warm up, do your event and then try to go and settle your system down and rest up, recover for whatever you have next, come back, warm up, do it again. You were in a constant up and down.

I don’t live very far from the gym where I competed, so I was able to go home and sit down and watch a show or have some food or do whatever I wanted to do to relax for a little bit and then be able to come back with plenty of time to get everything done.

It sounds like another part of the competition that you have to strategize for.

It’s interesting when you have some freedom over it. In live competition you show up and you compete whenever they say to and then you leave.

I haven’t talked to a lot of athletes about how they manage that, but if I had to guess, I’d say most people are trying to maximize the rest. And it depends a little bit between what the events are, some things are a little bit less taxing than others and you might be ready or willing to do the next one earlier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Annie are you ok? Are you ok Annie? . Who has tried some of the workouts from this years @crossfitgames in the last week ??‍ ? @trainingdaymedia #annieisok #awfulannie #trainingdaymedia #reebok #tydaxfit #crossfitgames

A post shared by Patrick Vellner (@pvellner) on Sep 28, 2020 at 2:00pm PDT

But it was cool to have a little bit of control over that kind of thing. You just got to say go whenever you wanted. So you’d be warming up and ready, and everybody would be looking at each other like, ‘Are you okay? Are you ready?’ And you’d be like, ‘I guess. OK, three, two, one, go.’ And then you just go, there was no strict timeline. It was kind of fun.

That must have been weird. I know from my experience, right before a competition starts you get this realisation about what you’re about to do, like an ‘it’s actually happening’ and then you start and you’re hyped. It must have been strange to get to go whenever you chose to.

Yeah, there were a couple of times where it felt almost anticlimactic.

We were like, ‘All right, so… we’re going to go,’ ‘OK,’ ‘Go.’

It’s funny – like you’re saying, it’s rare that you have that amount of control over your environment going into a competition. It was an unparalleled level of control that I’m not used to, and that was interesting.

And talking about the workouts themselves, which one did you enjoy the most?

I think Nancy was really good. It had running, overhead squats and burpees – it was a good workout.

I don’t do a lot of benchmark-type CrossFit anymore, so it was a good reality check and a good kick in the teeth on a couple of workouts. The Fran workout was a good, hard way to start the competition.

Most competitions I’ve done in the last couple of years, we don’t really start with something high speed, high power like that. Fast, dramatic, high-energy workouts are usually done at the end.

But taking away the spectator experience, which was irrelevant for this stage of competition, they could shuffle things up however they wanted.

It was hard, everybody at 9am had to shoot out of the cannon and go max effort and blackout speed. We don’t do that very often to start a competition, so that was something that was new and cool.

Part two of this interview, where we delve into Vellner’s reflections on his season and his thoughts on the future of CrossFit, is coming soon.

Following the global pandemic, travel bans, mass event cancellations and other unexpected circumstances, CrossFit HQ announced the cancelation of the Masters, Teen and Team divisions for the CrossFit Games. National Champions also had their invites revoked and only 30 male and 30 female athletes were granted the opportunity to compete this year.

Once the decision to hold the event online had been reached, qualified athletes arranged their competition venue, gathered the necessary equipment and measured their running course. BOXROX spoke to Andrea Solberg, Camilla Salomonsson-Hellman and Emma McQuaid to learn about their experiences competing at the online CrossFit Games.

“It was good, it felt very professional having the floor laid out, start, finish line, and your own judge,” said Fittest Woman in Ireland Emma McQuaid, who qualified by ranking 7th in the worldwide Open and finished the Games ranked 19th. Athletes were briefed on the competition setup, ensuring distances and conditions were the same for all competitors.

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Because she qualified early on, Emma had a big off season and worked a lot on weaknesses. “I would say the only thing I lacked going into the weekend was the top-end intensity from not having trained with people regularly,” she said, referring to restrictions set by the global pandemic. She equalled her Front Squat PB and beat her max Handstand Hold.

“My favourite part was having all my friends and family share the Games weekend with me, and to do all the WODs in my own gym,” she said. She will most remember Event 7, the last one, and the insane atmosphere in her gym.

“The highlight was the final event,” echoed Swedish four-time CrossFit Games athlete, Camilla Salomonsson-Hellman, who secured her highest individual Games finish with a 23rd place this year. “I will remember the full setup as a whole. It was a cool way of competing and so many more people were cheering me on than when I’m competing at the real Games in the U.S.,” she said.

“It didn’t feel like I was doing the workouts by myself because I was never alone,” Camilla said. “I had great people around me all the time that really pushed me.”

“At this level it’s just super hard to predict where you’ll end up with what you did, so it’s better not to focus on that at all and just focus on the things you can control,” Camilla said, referring to competing remotely and the results on the leaderboard, which weren’t published until hours later in Europe. “That’s exactly what I did this weekend. I had a great time and knew it would be over in a second – and I was right. So I’m really glad with how my mindset worked this weekend.”

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Andrea Solberg, who qualified for her first CrossFit Games this year through the Filthy 150 Sanctional, competed from CrossFit Oslo alongside Kristin Holte. She finished 27th on her rookie year and said she didn’t mind not having previous CrossFit Games experience to compare this year’s competition to, so she enjoyed it just the same.

“I am happy with my effort!” she said. “Some events went better than expected, some less. Highlights were events 3, 4 and 7, and I’m a little less happy with events 1, 5 and 6.

Andrea finished event 6 in 7th place, holding a handstand for 1:53 minutes and beating all the male times. She was, however, expecting to hold the handstand for over two minutes, as that is what she always does. “Unfortunately I had a little shut down during Nasty Nancy, so my body was not ready to hold that handstand hold for as long as I am used to, but I still tried my best,” she said.

“It has been a long season, so my body was tired, but I am happy with what we got out of it and really happy to complete my first CrossFit Games,” she continued. “The most memorable part was the atmosphere on Friday afternoon during events 3 and 4. The crowd were electric, and me and Kristin fired each other up to perform even better than we expected! We also put on some really fun music, which made it even more special.”

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“We could not have asked for a better competition and a better community than what we got at CrossFit Oslo,” Andrea said. “Kristin and I are really grateful that we were able to do this together with our team, not being alone in the situation, and motivate each other.”

The Norwegian athlete will still work towards another qualification, hoping to experience the original format in upcoming years.

CrossFit Games Interview with Kristin Holte: “I’m Still Getting Better”

“If I’m happy with my performance once I’m done, I’ll get the placement that I deserve,” the Norwegian native said. “I know there’s things that I could have done better, but I believe that I performed to the best of my abilities.”

A difference of one place in any workout prevented Kristin from qualifying to the CrossFit Games finals in Aromas, California, where the top five women from the first stage will compete to determine the Fittest on Earth.

Holte, a 34-year-old athlete who’s competed in the CrossFit Games every year since 2014, finished the 2020 CrossFit Open in 3rd place, qualifying so for the Games. She underwent wrist surgery at the end of January, so a season of cancelled and postponed Sanctional competitions allowed her more time to heal and recover.

As an athlete, Kristin is renowned for her incredible endurance and powerful gymnastic skills, but has worked relentlessly on her weightlifting and strength – every year she keeps getting stronger and fitter.

BOXROX had the chance to catch up with her and discuss her experience, training in the lead up to the Games, and her outlook on her performance and future in the sport.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Hey Kristin, how are you? What is it like, having finished the Games?

It’s good. I mean, it’s boring to be done with the season and not really know what’s going to happen next, but it’s good to have a little downtime and just give my body and mind some time to recover.

Do you feel like you’ve been to the Games, with all the past years having travelled all the way to the US? What was it like, competing in CrossFit Oslo?

It was different in a lot of ways; only two days of competition and not having to travel anywhere. But it was that was kind of nice too, not having the stress with travelling and adjusting to the time zone, eating food that I don’t eat normally. I could do what I usually do every single day in training, so everything was familiar.

But competing by myself in the gym, it was different and more challenging in a lot of ways because you don’t have the competitors next to you, which drive the excitement. So that was harder in a way. Still, it was a really good experience; I had all my friends and family there cheering for me. And I just knew that everyone, everybody that was in the room, they were cheering for me and that was a good feeling.

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Do you prefer performing against all the other athletes, where you can see what the other people are doing in the other lanes? Or do you prefer the Open’s style, where it’s just you in your box?

I prefer live competition. I think it’s because I’ve done so much mental training and many more mentally challenging things come up in live competitions.

There are many things that are out of your control, so you just have to figure out how to work around them and how to deal with them in the moment. And I like those things, I like things being a little unknown. I like the challenges.

How do you prepare for those kinds of eventualities that don’t know will happen or those parts of the competition that you can’t control? What kind of things do you work on?

First of all we focus on the things that we can control, and that’s my own effort, my own performance and what I’m going to do. I leave everything else out of my mind; the other competitors, what they can do, what judge I’m going to get, what the workouts are, stuff like that.

When it’s time to focus on that, I will. But if there’s something that I can’t do anything about, I will not put any energy thinking about it.

My mental coach has given me a lot of tools so that I can handle every challenging experience in my own way. There’s a lot of ways to do that, but we mainly work on breathing, visualisation, goal setting, etc.

Mentally, what was it like, performing workouts by yourself, not being able to see the leaderboard straight away and sometimes even having started a new competition block before the results from the previous block were out? Did the outlook on your performance change at all once you compared it to other athletes?

I really enjoyed that because that’s how me and my coaches have been working for several years; the main focus is my own effort and if I’m happy with my performance once I’m done, I’ll get the placement that I deserve.

It was good to just focus on performing my absolute best in every single workout. And after each workout I was like, OK, was this my hundred percent? If I said, ‘yes, it was’ then I’ll be happy no matter where I place. And I said that after almost every single workout, and so I believe that I got the placement that I deserve.

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It was such a close competition.

That’s sport and that’s how it is. I was a little bummed, when I was in fifth place I really hoped I would make it.

But when I realized that I was close yet still not in I was OK with it, I had told myself I had done everything I could and performed as good as I could. I know there’s things I could have done better, but I believe I performed to the best of my abilities with the time we had to prepare for each of the events.

What was training like for you in the run up to the Games?

After Rogue, when we didn’t really know if the Games were going to happen or not, I remember it was hard to motivate myself to push really hard because I didn’t really know if I needed it at that time. I trained, but I struggled to really push myself in the toughest workouts.

Then we learnt the Games would happen online and at that moment I was like ‘OK, now it’s time to push hard.’ I think I came in better prepared than I’ve ever been before. I am fitter and stronger than I was last year, so it’s been a good year despite everything that’s happened.

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What do you do in order to achieve your consistency? How do you keep getting better in all these different areas?

I sometimes I ask myself that, too. I’m not getting any younger that’s for sure. But I think I’m getting smarter every single year.

I understand what I need to work on and also understand what I don’t have to do all the time, but still focus on getting even better at the things that I’m good at. Because that’s where you gain the most, there’s a huge point difference between being top three in a workout compared to being top 10.

Staying healthy has been the most important thing to me these last four years. I’ve been able to train for a full year and I hadn’t been able to do that before, where I had a lot of smaller injuries that put me out for a few weeks or a few months. I had to start over so many times that I never had a great year of training until 2017.

And also focusing on all the details that I know won’t make a huge difference by themselves like sleep, nutrition, mental training, but combined will make a huge difference.

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You said ‘The Kriger will be back’ – what are your plans training and competing in the future?

I’m going to do one more year and then we’ll see after that. But I’m still getting better. And that’s been my reason to quit, when I feel like I’m training my ass off and I’m not getting any better, that I’ve reached my potential.

But this year I PR’d all my lifts and I’m like, ‘I can’t stop now.’

I just love what I do. I love to have this opportunity and to be able to train every single day and have this as a job. I feel really honoured to be able to do that and I just don’t want to let go yet.

Finishing second in the CrossFit Games last year, I thought it was going to be even more spectacular than it was. I thought it was going to be like, ‘wow, now I’m happy I can quit,’ but even a few days after I was like, ‘OK, what’s next?’

I’m never going to be satisfied. I feel like I always can do a little bit better and a little bit more. So that’s going to be a tough one to figure out when I reach my potential and feel that I can actually be done.

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What do you think you would be doing if you just never found CrossFit?

That’s a tough one. I am so happy that I don’t have to figure that out because I would have missed out on so much and I’m so happy that I found CrossFit, but I think I’d probably have a family by now and have an eight-to-four-type job somewhere that I probably didn’t enjoy a hundred percent. But I don’t know.

And I’m just really happy that I found CrossFit and that it has been my path for so long.

QUICK QUESTIONS WITH KRISTIN HOLTE

One book that you love to read or that you would recommend to other people to read?

That must be the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson

One song that you love to train to when you’re in the box?

Warrior by Mark With A K.

One place in the in the world that you would love to visit, but you’ve never been to?

The Maldives.

One aspect of CrossFit or training that you feel like every-day CrossFitters should work on more?

Everyone could do more burpees

If you could pick any one type of food and it would always be healthy, like a bit like a guilty pleasure, what would it be?

Bread and pastries – all carbs.

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Heber Cannon and Marston Sawyers are the men behind the latest CrossFit Games documentary, The Fittest. Together, they have co-produced and directed popular documentaries about the CrossFit Games and filmed snippets of the season beforehand, bringing the stories of top athletes to live and giving competitors character outside the spotlight.

The pair used to be part of CrossFit’s media team up to last year, when CrossFit unceremoniously fired most of its media department to pursue a health-oriented growth and focus less on the Elite, competitive side of the sport. Yet Heber and Marston decided their love for the sport was bigger than resentment and set off to independently film the 2019 CrossFit competitive season.

In a phone interview with them, BOXROX delved into what it takes to film, direct and produce these popular documentaries.

Getting permission

Filming the CrossFit Games does not just involve turning up with a camera, especially if you want to be on the floor where the athletes are competing.

Heber and Marston negotiated a deal with CrossFit long before the CrossFit Games, their intention being to produce a similar documentary series to their Road to the Games with the competitive format introduced for 2019.

While that didn’t quite happen as planned – instead they created The Buttery Bros – a deal was in place to shoot the CrossFit Games on the floor and share footage to obtain rights to videos off the competition floor.

Finding distribution

One of the major deciders on whether a movie sees the light of day or not is finding someone to distribute it.

A few weeks before the CrossFit Games, Heber and Marston didn’t know if they were going to have distribution for the movie and weren’t even entirely sure they were going to make a movie.

“It all came together the week before the Games,” said Heber. Ten days before the Games they sent out a message on social media asking for help; camera guys, drone operators, etc. who were going to the CrossFit Games and already had a media pass.

Within two hours they had 20 people who wanted to work with them.

The idea behind The Fittest

“We wanted to stick to the same style documentary-storytelling that we had in the past,” said Heber.

The pair started making the CrossFit Games documentaries in 2014 through to 2018, although that last year no documentary was released.

“We needed to fill in the gaps there, so we started the movie off by telling how exciting and how grand and how much of a spectacle the 2018 Games were, and then that leads into the fallout of all the employees and all the changes, with Regionals going away and lack of public information,” explained Heber.

Together with the developing events at the CrossFit Games, that was the story The Fittest was aimed to show.

Heber and Marston chose their characters for the documentary, Mat Fraser and Tia-Clair Toomey, pretty early on and focused on them. When Noah Ohlsen climbed up, they fleshed out his character and were able to bring him on as a main b-character.

Source: Buttery Bros

Filming every individual event and juggling the Buttery Bros show

The weekend included a lot of moving pieces and involved a lot of running around. Heber and Marston had to find a way to film the CrossFit Games events, film behind the scenes to get athlete reactions, manage the people they were working with, and then turn the camera on themselves to film for their YouTube show.

The pair was stationed in the RV Park for the whole week trying to pull everything together.

When they filmed a special piece behind the scenes, they knew the clip would go into the documentary instead of their YouTube show. That way, they ensured exclusive content for the movie.

Shooting without CrossFit’s help

Financing for the documentary was the biggest hurdle Heber and Marston had to get across. To start off, they tried to monetise the Buttery Bros but it didn’t catch instantly, so they were also doing every commercial job that came their way.

They slowly shifted their focus 100% towards the Buttery Bros, but that didn’t happen until a couple of months before the CrossFit Games.

Another big aspect was gaining permission and rights. An obstacle they’re also dealing with this year.

In the past, the pair has worked with co-workers at CrossFit, so support on the ground was well figured out. And while they didn’t have that in 2019, Heber and Marston have filmed the Games so many times they know how to operate really well.

They didn’t know about the events or schedule beforehand, which suited them fine. “We wanted it to be that way because we wanted to be finding out and have authentic reactions to what the workouts were and what the news was, as it was happening, because we were inserting ourselves into that story for the first time,” said Marston.

“Learning how the sport works and how it moves, and knowing how Dave programs, knowing that he’s going to set the workout up so that it’s visually easy for the audience to understand who is in the lead,” Heber added.

“You don’t really need to know the workouts so much as you just need to know how the floor is going to be operating. Having shot the Games so many times it’s easy to see where the winner’s going to be.”

The experience definitely helps, but it doesn’t make producing a documentary easy, especially when it’s mainly only two people behind it.

“You just kind of figure out where things might be happening and then cross your fingers and hope things go the way you expect,” said Heber.

The Fittest Documentary

The Fittest Documentary is one of Marston’s and Heber’s favourite documentaries they’ve produced so far. A lot of blood, sweat, tears and time went into making it happen, yet Heber described the path to it as incredibly fun and part of what makes it so great.

“There was a lot of challenges that weren’t presented in the same way just because when you work for a company, they can take all the financial burden and they can hire people. For us, we knew we could pull it off, but pulling it off ourselves and doing it our own way, that was actually the most rewarding part of it,” said Marston.

And the experience filming at the CrossFit Games wasn’t bad either.

By the time the CrossFit Games came around people knew who Marston and Heber were, and they had taking a liking to their show.

“This last year I actually thought it was the most fun CrossFit Games experience that I’ve had. Even though we were doing so much,” said Marston. “Going out and being in the community and getting recognised a lot, that was very different for us.

“This last year was my favourtie experience to date of covering the Games and it was our first time being independent from CrossFit.”

2020 CrossFit Games

“It’s really special to me to be able to have left a company that we worked for and still wanted to work in that space and within a year be able to start a new company and bring on sponsors and prove what we were doing was valuable,” said Marston.

“The following we have now on out YouTube show, they’re dedicated and loyal fans and we’re really thankful that they believed in us and supported us throughout all this. It motivates me to keep wanting to do it – it’s been a lot of fun,” he continued.

Heber and Marston want to support the athletes, and they hope that will take shape in the form of telling their stories at the 2020 CrossFit Games.

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Yet CrossFit’s efforts to ensure the 2020 CrossFit Games happen have meant that the competition will take place behind closed doors and no Age Groups Athletes will be invited. Their latest statement announced no team competition would be held either, all National Champion invites were revoked and only the top 20 Open finishers and Sanctional winners were to compete in Aromas, California.

Which leaves Zack right under the qualifying line. As the 26th man in the Open, only a couple of athletes stand between him and his dream.

How did he find out and what did he make of the news? What does this mean for him and what is he planning to do moving forward? Zack talked to BOXROX to share his views.

The UK’s Fittest Man is the first to admit the current world situation is a lot bigger than the Games. And he knows he has no control over the state of the world, so there’s no point getting angry or frustrated.

When CrossFit first announced there wouldn’t be spectators at this year’s Games, Zack knew the experience wouldn’t match his expectations and what he knew the Games to be, and prepared himself for a different end result than what he wanted.

“I want to go the Games for me, but I’d also love to be there with my friends and family, so I knew it’d be different,” Zack told BOXROX.

The experience, while still his dream, would not have been anything like what he’s seen on TV and, even if it’s taken him for six years to qualify for the Games, sharing the moments with his friends and family is important to him too.

The support is the essence of why he loves competing, and why he planned to take part in three Sanctionals at the start of the season, even if at the time he’d thought he had his Games place secured already.

“The atmosphere at Strength in Depth was amazing and it highlighted why I do these Sanctionals, to get that buzz from the crowd,” Zack explained. He enjoys competing, he has fun with it, and the experience is made all the better by the people there.

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As the world went into lockdown, Zack mentally prepared for a scenario different to his expectations and shifted focus to the 2021 season. When he found out his invitation had been revoked – his phone had been going crazy after CrossFit posted the news on Instagram – it didn’t affect him as much as it could have.

Right from the start he’d prepared himself for a change, so it didn’t come as a surprise. Besides, he was in a better place mentally because he was already focusing on the upcoming season.

“The main thing right now is people’s health and safety, anything that might jeopardise that has to be really looked into,” Zack replied when asked about his thoughts on the Games going ahead.

He is still training as much as he can and hopes to peak again for the Open in October (just in case), so when the 2021 season comes around, he’ll be ready for it. But he also knows everything will be pretty different for quite a lot of the year still.

The doors to his affiliate have been closed since March and might remain so until July or August. When they finally reopen, classes will be run differently and safety measures will have to be put in place. Yet at least the community will be able to lift together again, one of the things athletes miss the most at the moment.

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For now, Zack will continue to train to ensure he comes back stronger next year. He’s happy to have achieved his aim to become the Fittest in the UK and, now that he’s qualified to the Games once, he knows he belongs within that field of athletes and has got the confidence he can qualify again.

“I’d love to still compete at the Games. It’d be a really cool event being in Aromas where the Games stated,” said Zack about the very slight possibility of re-qualifying this year (if five athletes above him decline their invites). “But again, only if it’s safe and some measures are put in place; if they test people, if it’s definitely safe to fly…

“Taking that out, yes, I’d still love to compete in the Games, but it’s not going to affect me if I don’t or if I do.

“I’ll still work as hard as I can to get back there and to perform even better next year than I would have done this year,” Zack continued.

“If I don’t make it nothing changes. I’ll keep my head down and continue to work towards next year.”

Source: Image courtesy of Zack George

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More recently, Amalia also won the Adaptive Rx Seated division at Wodapalooza, where she competed against seven other women and won four of the seven workouts, and was a runner up in the other three.

Box Latino Magazine had the pleasure to talk with this impressive athlete, below the full interview:

Who is Amalia Ortuño?

I’m 34-years-old and am an interior designer. Nowadays I also practise adaptive CrossFit.

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Tell us a little about your disability.

I’ve got a disease called evolutionary hip dysplasia, which is a progressive degenerative condition.

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What has your sporting life been like?

I was a ballerina and a gymnast at a young age, I also practised swimming and athletics. After that I moved on to triathlons and I’m now fully committed to adaptive CrossFit.

What’s your training as a CrossFit athlete like?

My preparations involve single CrossFit sessions some days. Other days I do two or three session, and combine them with swimming and wheelchair sessions. I increase loads according to competition dates and have clear goals.

Related: Víctor Assaf: The Face of Adaptive CrossFit in Latin America

What was your experience like at Wodapalooza?

That was an incredible and challenging experience. It allowed me to meet and share with great people and outstanding athletes.

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What are your plans for 2020?

Next up I’m competing at FitLand in Colombia. It’s a competition that excites me a lot, as it leaves a positive message about inclusion and perspective, as we compete side by side against able-bodies athletes.

In June I’ve got to defend my title at the WheelWOD Games in Minnesota.

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And in November I’ve got the Copa Independencia in Costa Rica, another competition which opened an adaptive division in 2019.

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To finish off, Amalia asked the Latin American community to always be persevering, follow their dreams no matter how high they might be and, most importantly, to live life to the fullest.

–

A version of this article was originally published in Spanish by Box Latino Magazine, a publication covering athletes, coaches and events in the Latin American region. The original article was written by Nicolás Garzón, the BOXROX version translated by Caro Kyllmann. You can find the original version here.

BOXROX has partnered with Box Latino Magazine to grow the coverage of the Latino CrossFit community. If you’re a Spanish speaking reader or interested in knowing more about the scene in Latin America consider giving them a follow @boxlatinomagazine.

• 1st Place: Hunter McIntyre – 58:39
• 2nd Place: Ryan Kent – 1:00:47
• 3rd Place: Chris Woolley – 1:03:01

We spoke to Hunter about his life, sports history, HYROX, training and competing with top Games® Athletes alongside his experience at the 2019 CrossFit Games®.

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HEY HUNTER, TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU GOT INTO SPARTAN RACING?

My Grandfather was a masters Olympian and I had more energy than anyone in my family so my parents were like, “You’ve got to put him into sports”. I started with Javelin, then I got into running and my grandfather was a very big part of that growth.

I was never the kind of person that focused on one thing really strongly. I wrestled, I ran, I played lacrosse. I ended up being really good at wrestling and really good at running but I feel lucky that I really started to find my focus later on in life, around the age of 22. Basically, I’d dropped out of college, taken a bunch of years off and I was into bodybuilding. But that didn’t feel like it was going anywhere so I ran my first half marathon and did pretty well. Then I did my first Spartan Race and I did really well in that. 

I thought to myself, if I put a bit of focus in and really go after the number 1 guy – his name was Hobie Call – I could paint my path to becoming a world champion one day. I wanted to be number 1, I didn’t want to be anything else. That was 2011, it’s 2020 now.

I started to see CrossFit® stuff back in 2010, but at the time it was so small that it was much easier to find your way into a half marathon than a local CrossFit® Contest.

WHAT DOES A TYPICAL TRAINING WEEK LOOK LIKE FOR YOU?

I just had my VO2 Max tested this morning and I have to go to a chiropractor appointment after breakfast, training then acupuncture in the afternoon, metabolic testing the next day. It’s a full-time job. I’m a racehorse and a full-blown machine that has to be greased and tuned up.

Source: HYROX

Getting towards being the number 1 Spartan Racer in the world – I never won the World Title for the long distance but I won a lot of the shorter distance ones – I had to get to the point where I was training 25 hours of cardio alone every single week.

This involved 5-hour days. 3 hours on a bike, two hours of running with a couple of hours in the gym a couple times a week.

I could run a 5:30 mile for an hour and a half and talk the whole time. That’s what it takes to be The Spartan World Race Champion. Now my body has completely transformed. I’m not nearly as aerobically fit. If you look at the graphs it’s all over the place.

Right now I’m training about 18 – 20 hours a week, about 10 – 12 hours are slow and smart cardio, being able to move this more muscular body through time and space and not get tired whilst doing it.

The other 8 hours are 4 2-hour sessions in the gym. Back in the day when I was training for Spartan Race I would do deadlifts, pull ups, kettlebell work etc, but keep everything pretty light. Now I’m doing 500lb deadlifts for reps and split squats for reps with 100lb dumbbells on my shoulders.

It’s about how much horsepower can you build within a body and then drag it through an hour long race like HYROX. When I was doing CrossFit® and prepping for the Games® it was 15 – 20 hours of strength training a week.

You can only do a finite amount of work every single week otherwise you start to go downhill and overtrain. I think the CrossFit® industry is probably the worst people in the world at that, after spending some time with them.

I know how many hours I can work a week, I know how intensely I can work those hours and now I know how I have to split it up to achieve my goal.

WHO ARE YOUR COACHES?

Typically, I have 2 to 3 coaches at all times. I used to work with Charles Polliquin until he passed away. He was the guy that would develop my overall blocks of training including strength, competition and recovery. I learnt a lot from him.

Rich Diaz is my running coach. He told me today that he wants me to take those 10 hours of running each week and perform them with less intensity, do that I can build up my aerobic system for HYROX.

TELL US ABOUT HYROX?

HYROX is a really interesting combination because it’s 30 minutes of strength and 30 minutes of running for the top athletes. It’s almost split down the middle for the best people in the world. You have to be strong and you have to be fit.

Source: HYROX

I focused on The CrossFit Games® and as soon as that was finished, I got into HYROX. I loved training for the CrossFit Games® but I missed running so much. I live in the mountains of Malibu and there’s no point training and sitting inside when you live up in a castle on the hill.

I had two months after the Games®, after I had recovered, to get ready for the HYROX events. I went and I won the race, I saw how it was run and organised. I have over 9 years of experience in the market and we worked out how to make HYROX as competitive, fun and challenging as possible, for both the professional and non-professional athletes. I work on the consultancy side and as one of their athletes, as a professional runner.

Learn more about HYROX

HOW DID YOU TRAIN FOR HYROX EVENTS?

HYROX is half cardio and half strength so I was basically splitting my training time right down the middle.

With CrossFit® you have to do everything. HYROX is 8 stations. If you know what movement patterns will be associated with those stations then you can target them in your training.

So, the first time I did HYROX the sled crushed me. I’m strong but something was missing. So, I took split squats out of my routine and replaced them with reverse Zercher lunges. This gave me the same angle that I would be pushing the sled, helping me to improve the movement when I found it again on the HYROX course.

I also realised that during the row my biceps were getting exceptionally tired and usually that’s not the case. To fix this in training I started doing barbell rows then I would grab a resistance band and work a similar movement for 60 seconds to 2 minutes immediately afterwards. This allowed me to build up my muscular endurance in a way that is specific to this exact movement pattern.

Source: HYROX

I analysed every single movement in HYROX, looked at the muscle groups that were taxed, and then work them hard in a variety of ways. Work the big muscles first then the tiny ones.

These tips helped me take 3 minutes off my time since the last race so it worked.

Find your nearest HYROX event

WHAT TIPS WOULD YOU OFFER EVERYDAY ATHLETES THAT WANT TO TRAIN FOR A HYROX EVENT?

Have good runs with your friends a couple of times a week, try a 5K, 10K or a half marathon, go challenge yourself and see what you’re made of when it comes to running.

Go to a local CrossFit® Box and practice. It’s important to be able to work 2 or 3 movements back to back for 15-20 minutes. Prep your body to get used to working whilst fatigued, picking something back up and pushing right away.

Another important thing about HYROX is that there are 16 transitions in total between the runs and the fitness stations. If you’re sloppy between those transitions then you will lose a lot of time.

At the end of the day go out and have fun. HYROX is awesome and it will really test, challenge and improve your fitness, whatever your current ability level. When it comes to 100 wall balls, it doesn’t matter how fit you are that sucks.

Look at my Instagram videos and all the training that HYROX provides and you’ll learn a lot.

WHICH TOP LEVEL CROSSFIT GAMES® ATHLETES HAVE YOU TRAINED WITH AND WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

The hardest athlete I’ve ever worked with was Jacob Heppner. He’s not like this mad scientist that has all these clever tactics, it’s just that he works harder than everybody else.

Sara Sigmundsdottir is the cleverest athlete that I’ve ever worked with. Her program made a lot of sense and it was always incrementally adding volume and technique, rather than just beating yourself down.

Brooke Wells was really good too, her programming from CompTrain seemed to make a lot of sense to me.

Tia Clair Toomey and Mat Fraser was both interesting. They work very hard but they were really intelligent about their training. Most of the other athletes I trained with were always having to push themselves until they were blowing snot rockets and falling down covered in sweat but Tia and Mat never seemed like that. They always knew where they were at and what they were doing.

With any of these sports, HYROX, Spartan Race or CrossFit®, at the professional level it comes down to three things. How genetically prepared is your body, how hard can you work it, how hard can you recover from it.

EXPERIENCE AT THE 2019 CROSSFIT GAMES®

The CrossFit Games is the kind of thing that you see on TV and think I could do that. And I did, I trained for it, got my Wild Card and went for it. But I think what I didn’t recognise is the way that they do things at the Games®.

You warm up for a while, then they talk to you for a while, then you get put in a holding chamber then you go out. I’d never competed like that before, it’s a completely different way of getting ready. Once you’re out there, another thing that I didn’t recognise were the different conditions. Both events that I did were on turf, I had never trained on turf before. Snatching on turf was hard for me, doing a handstand walk on turf was really, really hard for me and it was stuff that I hadn’t prepared for.

If you sit in a gym all day and think, they can snatch this and I can snatch this therefore I’m definitely going to do well. That’s not the case. The environment of the Games® doesn’t necessarily match the training that you’re putting on. There’s a huge difference.

I did Broken Skull for a long time. People were training to beat me all the time but they didn’t recognise that when they got there to the event it was 110 degrees in the desert. I would wear leggings and long sleeves and people were taking their shirts off trying to look all buff and I was thinking, you’re making a huge mistake dude, as soon as your body hits the hot sand your skin is going to melt.

My first year at the CrossFit Games was similar. Now, if I could go back in time, I feel I would be so much more prepared without even having to work more.

At the beginning of the wild card process, so many people were rude to me and they didn’t want me to come, but by the time I got there the majority of the athletes were really inviting. Some of the people in the CrossFit® staff were rude to me, which doesn’t really make any sense but at the same time, it’s not my house so I’m not going to make the rules.

I was glad that I had my good friends there like Heppner and Sigmundsdottir and they were really supportive. I made good friends with Chandler Smith and the CrossFit Cowboy Sean Sweeney. Guys came over and were kind to me and supportive “Good luck dude you’re going to crush it” and we all had a good time.

The lead up was very different to anything I had experienced before because of the animosity against me competing as a wild card.

WHICH EVENTS DID YOU THINK YOU WOULD HAVE DONE WELL IN OVER THE ENTIRE WEEKEND?

With the ruck run I would like to say that I would have won, but I can’t because I didn’t compete.

I always watched the CrossFit Games as a whole weekend. Now with the cut system it’s no longer a whole weekend, it’s a last man standing kind of thing. It has changed things a lot. It’s not my sport so I can’t sit there and moan about it. I was coming in with the excitement that if there were 12 workouts and 3 of them has a strong endurance bias then I was going to have a really good chance of winning or taking top 3 in those events.

I’m not going to be the guy who walks well on my hands and snatches 255lbs for reps between sets, that’s just not who I am, but my level of capacity is the best in the world in what I specify at. The same capacity that it takes for a ruck run is very similar to what it takes capacity wise for HYROX.

Source: HYROX

I will always go out and challenge anybody at what they do and hopefully be able to contend against them and that was the whole point of going to the CrossFit Games®. I wanted to show that I was made of something and at least I can walk away with my head held high. At least I tried and I’m pumped that I got the experience to.

WHAT WORKOUT WOULD YOU LOVE TO SEE AT THE CROSSFIT GAMES®?

Run 2 miles, flip the pig a bunch of times then do the sled drag. That to me is like a rugby match. It would be an all-out, long and hardcore full body workout.

5 FOR 5 QUESTIONS

• Favourite exercise? – Weighted pull ups, they’ll make you jacked
• Favourite workout song? – Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson
• Favourite food? – Rip eye steak
• Favourite book? – Endurance by Ernest Shackleton, it gives you some perspective when you’re complaining about how hard a workout is
• One place you would love to visit? – South Africa

If you want to learn more about HYROX, how to train for it and how to find an event, check out the link below:

Find your nearest HYROX event

We were lucky enough to interview Kara and find out how having Scottie has changed her outlook on life and training, how she has managed to juggle being a mum, a business owner and professional athlete, as well as learning what her goals for this season are.

Kara has always been an incredibly inspiring athlete in every way. Her performance has always been dominating, with seven CrossFit Games appearances under her belt and a personal best of 2nd place in 2017.

Now as a mother of nine-month-old Scottie, Kara is leading the way showing new mums that it is possible with hard work to be a great mum, a successful business owner and a professional athlete all at the same time.

“I will try and define a new normal for me, for other athletes, or just hard-working mums out there. My girl is my number one now but I’m still a hard-working woman and I love to succeed as ‘Kara’, so I want to try and find the balance of the two,” she told BOXROX.

The Australian native is loving life as a new mother. She cannot say enough good things about how lucky she is, how incredible Scottie is, and how much of a positive impact being a mother has had on her life and outlook.

“Being a mum is so epic. I love every second of it and my girl is just so damn cool,” she highlighted.

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TRAINING WITH A TODDLER – HOW HAVE THINGS CHANGED?

Kara competed in the CrossFit Games Open in October 2019, only five months after giving birth to Scottie. She placed an astounding 12th and, much to her surprise, secured herself an spot at the 2020 CrossFit Games.

Kara is now about to start her season of CrossFit Sanctional events, kicking off with the Australian CrossFit Championships on March 5.

Kara trained right up to the birth of Scottie, had a few weeks off after, and then started slowly building back up again. Her volume is now back up to where it used to be pre-baby and she is back to training five days per week.

Most of these days are made up of a morning (1.5 – 3 hours) and an afternoon session (1 hour). Morning sessions are often strength, accessories and CrossFit-style workouts, and the afternoon ones more of a longer aerobic piece.

“It’s not always easy juggling a baby and a full training schedule,” Kara said. “I try to make it work however I can, and not miss out on anything too important. Instructions from my coach are that family always comes first now, so don’t ever feel bad about needing to do that sometimes.”

Scottie often hangs out with Kara at the gym and it’s not unusual for her to have to stop what she’s doing mid-workout and tend to her.

“I do whatever I can as best I can and if I have to stop and relocate her or give her a snack, then I usually hustle more when I get back to work anyway so it doesn’t bother me in the slightest”.

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RECOVERING AND COMING BACK TO TRAINING FROM PREGNANCY

Pregnancy takes its toll physically on a mother’s body. The abdominal muscles get stretched, the core muscles are often weak, and there is usually some laxity around the ligaments in the pelvis and other joints thanks to relaxin, a hormone which is released as part of pregnancy to assist with childbirth.

Also, a mother’s body will always prioritise feeding the baby above everything else, so in those early months it can be frustrating for athletes wishing to dive back into a sport such as CrossFit.

Patience over many months is required to build back strength and skills, and let the body heal and find its normal balance again.

When asked how Kara’s body was feeling nine months postpartum, she commented:

“It’s a long road and I don’t know how long it actually is or if I will be as strong. I’m just taking it as it comes and trying to do all of the right things to have the best possible chance.

“I’m not too far off where I used to be but I find that my body still prioritises feeding Scotti, so some things are a little different. Strength has been really hard to get back and is still taking time. The skills and aerobic capacity came back pretty well.”

Source: @miss_kiss_me_kate

HOW HAS KARA’S OUTLOOK ON LIFE AND TRAINING CHANGED SINCE BECOMING A MUM?

When Kara was asked what was the biggest thing that has changed since Scottie came along, and how her outlook on life and training had changed, Kara replied:

“I never really had a why before and I just did what I did because I was good at it and I liked how it makes me feel.

“Now, every single move I make every single day is for the sole purpose of giving Scottie the best opportunity to have an amazing life. Obviously I want to pay the bills, but it’s more about being her greatest example and showing her what I want her to know as normal.

“I want her normal to be about health, fitness, hard work, and having a blast in life and not working a job or doing anything because everyone else says you should. I’m a lot more relaxed about my own pride and ego around competing and have much more drive towards my influence on her.”

Kara also remarked that she is not willing to make training her number one priority anymore… Scottie now comes first.

HOW DOES KARA MANAGE TO FIT IT ALL IN?

Any new mother can appreciate and sympathise with the challenges that are brought with raising a little human being. Sleep deprivation, things not going to plan, and being time-poor often makes life a struggle.

It is impressive that Kara is successfully juggling being a mum, business owner and professional athlete, and is still smiling and full of nothing but positive praise for her new life. When asked how she does it all, Kara replied:

“I say to Matty regularly that one day I’ll look back and wonder how on earth I did them all!

“It sounds corny but I’m so lucky I have a husband that doesn’t work a 9-5 office job and can be home with us so much and co-parent totally 50/50 with me.

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“In both of my businesses I have such amazing supportive and understanding business partners that just have my back and cut me some slack when I’m a bit hopeless or hold Scotti so I can finish a workout. It truly takes a team and I happen to have an epic one.”

Kara also admitted like any other new mum: “I also max myself out a little too much sometimes and have bi-weekly breakdowns and then come good again!”

SETTING UP KARA’S NEW BUSINESS

Alongside bringing up Scottie over the last nine months, Kara is part-owner in CrossFit Kova and has also been working hard to get her new brand of Sunglasses, Activ Performance Eye Wear, off the ground.

This business is developing great-looking sunglasses that can be worn when being active or working out. The idea came from one of Kara’s previous business partners and it fitted with Kara’s philosophy for living a fit and healthy lifestyle and it totally aligned with the kind of lifestyle she lives and breathes.

The business is at the stage of having stock and is getting ready for its exclusive launch. People can register their interest on their website and Kara stated: “They’ll be the first ones to know when we’re live and the first ones to be able to purchase them.”

She also added: “We have huge plans for this business. I’m so excited and it’s so hard keeping the details a secret!”

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PLANS AND GOALS FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON

Kara is competing at the Australian CrossFit Championships (ACC) as her first Sanctional event on the 5th of March 2020.  She is also planning to compete at the Rogue invitational but warned: “I’ll be flying solo with Scotti to the US in May for Rogue, so if I fall asleep on the comp floor you know why ;-)”

With regard to who would be looking after Scottie on the side-lines, Kara has help from all corners of the globe lined up, including Sam Brigg’s mum!

“Hubby is on dad duty for ACC with the exception of the early morning event on the Thursday, as he’s coming off night shift.

“My mum will sleep over and keep her alive while I do that early event and then dad should arrive after her morning nap.

“For Rogue I’ve got a little bit of a crew. Briggsy’s mum is going to help out and I’ve got a good team of sponsor families that I can hand her over to while I do an event. She will be with me between every event so I can feed her and just be her mum.”

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With regard to her goals for this season, Kara added: “My dream is to just turn up and go out on the comp floor and have a blast with the girls throwing down and come straight back to my little one for some playtime and debriefs.

“I don’t have any pressure to achieve a certain number just yet, but I love to give 100% and I won’t accept anything less than that from myself. My 100% is just a little different now.”

We think everyone around the world will agree with us in wishing Kara all the best for this season. What she has achieved in the last nine months is both incredible and inspiring.

Keep leading the way for mums all around the world who are also ambitious, hard working, and who want to be a great mum at the same time as succeeding in other areas of life. Thank you for letting us share a part of your story.

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Box Latino Magazine had the chance to talk to this great athlete, and their conversation covers Víctor’s preparations as an adaptive athlete, his car crash, the road to recovery and his hopes and dreams.

You can read the full interview below:

Who is Víctor Assaf?

“Well, I’m a motivational speaker, an athlete, a coach, an entrepreneur and one could say someone pretty disciplined and serious.

“I’m 30-years-old and have been a full-time CrossFit athlete for over 10 years, six as a competitor and four as a professional.

“I deliver motivational talks nationally and internationally and I’ve got my own clothing branding, which I’m currently in the process of growing, hopefully to a worldwide level.”

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You had a car crash a while ago, was your recovery process like?

“Yes, I had a motorcycle accident seven years ago, which caused a total brachial plexus tearing and that’s how I lost sensibility and mobility on my right arm.

“I was put into a coma for five days in an attempt to treat all jaw injuries and mitigate the risks of a haemorrhage or brain damage.

“The recovery process was extremely long because I wasn’t only trying to recover physically but there was a big psychological toll too. I had not only suffered an accident, but I had to go through the realisation that my life had changed completely.

“I had to re-learn how to write, walk, stabilise myself. Shower, get dressed, eat, sleep, talk. I had to adapt to it and accept it all; and it wasn’t only a problem regarding what had happened but also how I looked.”

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Why did you decide to take on CrossFit?

“I did CrossFit way before the accident, around three years perhaps. The main reason back then was a family member, who insisted I take on CrossFit after some health issues I experienced caused by a third party.

“I was spiked and drugged with scopolamine at a party. I lost consciousness and it resulted in an overdose. My flat was broken into, etc…

“I started doing sport, specifically CrossFit, because I read sweating loads was best way to remove those toxins from the body. That was the start.”

What’s your programming like as an adaptive athlete?

“It’s not too different to a normal Games athlete program. It comprises a warmup, strength, Olympic weightlifting, three WODs, gymnastics, skills, mobility, between other things.

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“There are no shortcuts. And if you find them, they’re probably banned by the rules.

“Not everything happens inside a box. The important thing is to make the unknown look simple, regardless of the effort that you put in, the reward is always greater when the work is CLEAN.

“I’m very lucky but at the same time I’ve put in a lot of effort to get to where I am and be part of a team of top athletes known worldwide as wheelwod.”

Tell us more about Team Cyborgs?

“Team Cyborgs, woah! Comprised of Amalia Ortuño from Costa Rica, Pipe Maturana from Chile, Andrés Arana from Costa Rica, Titi Salas – who’s not an adaptive athlete – from Costa Rica and myself.

“It was born through an idea, which was to compete in a normal event with able-bodied athletes without derogating or belittling athletes with special limitations or setting them aside. That could add value to the competition, as well as motivate and prove that anything is possible.

“Once it gained momentum it became unstoppable. We’re the face of Latin America in the adaptive world, and everyone wants to know about it. Nowadays, everyone wants to add adaptive divisions, yet its true that not everyone can or knows how to.

“Team Cyborgs will continue to surprise Latin America, CrossFit and the world so, if I were you, I’d keep my eyes out for us. In 2020 we’re hoping to revolutionise inclusiveness in the sport globally.”

What was that process like with FitLand in Colombia?

“It started with an idea our manager, Andrés Arana, had. He contacted the organisers and they started thinking about ways to add this category within the RX category.

“The only difference was that we wouldn’t compete as a team that time, but as individuals within our own capacities.”

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What are your thoughts on the Open workouts for FitLand?

“They were very good. I repeated 19.1, which was 20.1 now, and it was great but exhausting.

“20.2 was very dynamic in its movements and 20.3 was my favourite. It wasn’t only the movements but also the challenge it presented to try and do the push presses unbroken, which I almost managed. I had great fun.

“The parameters for the workouts came from wheelwod and adaptivetraining, so it was Andrés, Christopher and Alec who created them.”

What has your inclusion process been like with regard to CrossFit?

“It has been a long process – it’s a trajectory that’s taken years. It’s not been easy, as adaptive CrossFit is something relatively new to me.

“I say relatively because I only discovered WheelWod a few years ago, but I’ve spent seven years training, teaching and adapting with only the help of my close friends or seminars I attended.

“CrossFit gave me a new light and brought me out of many negative steps, it opened up a career path and allowed me to become a better person every day.

“The normal competitions have always been a challenge for me, as my condition is different to everyone else’s, but I never took a step back. I competed against everyone else here in Ecuador and abroad, being the only one on the competition floor with a “disability”.

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“But I never felt I was beneath anyone; instead, it felt to me like I was setting the parameters and – sorry I put it this way – people always said “the man uses his balls even with a disability.”

“I’ve always been someone with a strong character and it goes to show that, if there’s a will, there’s a way. Attitude is everything in life, everything!

“Sadly, sponsorship isn’t around for me geographically, as only football players and pretty women get support… the rest isn’t of interest and for many brands it’s hard to sponsor someone when they’re based abroad.

“I’ve fought and continue to fight to try and get brands to work with me long-term, so we can mutually help each other. I feel I have a lot to offer as an athlete, motivational speaker, coach and competitor.

“But many just want to gift you a free tee-shirt and for you to essentially sell your soul – that’s not how things work. I take advantage of this interview to call out to brands within the sport of CrossFit, so we can work together to inspire and teach, everyone needs it.

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Víctor Assaf closed off with a message to the Latin American community:

“Nothing lasts forever; act today, do today what you didn’t do yesterday. Be it training, being thankful, resting, working, loving… Whatever it is, don’t give up.

“We Latinos are known for something, and that something is our grit and determination to fight and move forward. Forget the fact that this is sport; take instead the attitude you have in CrossFit and apply it to your daily life.

“Just like you wouldn’t want to skip a rep or how you want to get a PR, you should confront your life and your reality equally. Nobody wants to live in the “what would have been”.

“Everybody wants to tell you about the experience, don’t let them, live it yourself! Put your head up and move forward, this is only the beginning.”

–

This article was originally published in Spanish by Box Latino Magazine, a publication covering athletes, coaches and events in the Latin American region. The original article was written by Nicolás Garzón, the BOXROX version translated by Caro Kyllmann. You can find the original version here.

BOXROX has partnered with Box Latino Magazine to grow the coverage of the Latino CrossFit community. If you’re a Spanish speaking reader or interested in knowing more about the scene in Latin America consider giving them a follow @boxlatinomagazine.

This was Ant’s first year at the CrossFit Games. After five years of Regionals and a Sanctional podium in 2019, the Honk Kong native finally made it to the Games as China’s National Champion in 2019.

“Tammi was there supporting last year and she got more stressed on the side-lines,” Ant said in a phone interview with BOXROX.

Because Tammi, she knew what he was going through. The South African native has not only competed at the Games before, but she has stood on the podium as part of the third Fittest Team on Earth in 2016, CrossFit Yas.

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While Ant was competing at the Games, Tammi was still training to make it back for the year after. Ultimately, watching Ant compete reignited the desire to go back to competing on the big stage.

“I didn’t know how I’d get there, whether it’d be a Sanctional, the Open or a National Championship,” Tammi said. And while her plan was to make it for 2021, Tammi became South Africa’s National Champion this year, placing 70th in the worldwide Open and beating 1,288 South African women completing the Open RX.

She’ll be accompanied by Ant, who secured his spot as China’s National Champion again in 2020, winning four out of the five workouts in the country. The 30-year-old has been crowned Hong Kong’s / China’s Fittest Man four times. Under CrossFit’s rules, Hong Kong, as well as Macau and Taiwan, all fall under the Chinese flag.

Source: Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

“It’s a bit different when I’m carrying a flag that I’ve never really related to,” Ant said about what it means to him to be a National Champion. “But obviously I still get to represent the people of Hong Kong and the people of China, who are actually unbelievably supportive of me. I really appreciate that.

“And I also of course represent the people of Macau – which is its own separate place – and also Taiwan.

“So actually, it’s four different countries that I am essentially representing, which is awesome. I couldn’t be happier to go back and represent them again this year,” he continued.

The couple trains and coaches together at Coastal Fitness. Having both going to the Games means they can train at the same intensities, with the same goal in mind.

“It’s really exciting to have something to work towards, as big of a goal as the Games,” said Tammi, who had taken a couple of years off competitive training to backpack round South East Asia after her podium at the Games, and only got back into it last year.

Source: Photo courtesy of Tammi Robinson

Their backgrounds are relatively similar. Ant found CrossFit towards the end of a successful career in Rugby, where he represented Hong Kong on an international stage in Rugby Sevens and Aside Rugby. Yet dealing with a broken body every weekend meant he decided to shift his focus towards personal training and his business. When one of his colleagues introduced him to CrossFit during that period, showing him workouts like Murph and Cindy, he thought it was stupid.

“As you come from a strength and conditioning background, all the classical principles that you are taught, you’re like ‘CrossFit is just idiotic’ basically,” he recalled.

But after trying Fran “to see how good he was” and being unable to hit the standards he realised that he enjoyed breathing heavy and that CrossFit filled his competitive side, which he’d already stated missing from rugby.

He was convinced into signing up for the Open and ended up qualifying to Regionals in Asia. Since then he’s been able to do many competitions. “I love it now, it’s my life, it’s what I do on an everyday basis,” Ant said. “My goal every year is to get to the CrossFit Games and perform as best as possible there.

“Pretty much every decision I make on a daily basis […] is based around ‘is it going to enable me to be successful with my overreaching goal at the end of the year?’”

Tammi came from a touch football background and her first workout was also Fran. As a young kid, the South African native had dabbed into many sports. She was always competitive and quite talented, and many a time found herself getting to the highest level she could within the sport and thinking “well what now?”

The reason why CrossFit appealed to her was the fact that it included all these skills and new movements and things she hadn’t done before.

“As anyone who’s done a competitive sport before, it kind of ignited that fire again and made me feel super hungry for it,” Tammi said. “What I loved initially was the fact that I couldn’t do things.”

The methodology and ideas behind the sport made sense to her as she started looking into it more – they were the first things she was learning.

In 2014, she signed up for the Open without really knowing what it was and “scraped” (her own words) through to Regionals. It was the first time Tammi had been on an individual stage like that and it was a very humbling experience.

From that year on she moved to Abu Dhabi and worked at CrossFit Yas. They formed a team and went to Regionals two years in a row, qualified to the Games in 2016 and finished third.

Source: Photo courtesy of CFERBOX Championship

As National Champions, neither Ant nor Tammi lack time or expertise on big competitive stages. They stack eight years of Regionals between them, a Sanctional podium and a CrossFit Games podium.

While Ant accepts seeing Regionals go was sad – they were the events he used to train for every year – he’s excited about the new prospects Sanctionals have opened.

“I think the whole idea is great,” he said. “The more it expands, the better the level of athletes will be.”

He thinks down the line opening up qualification to new people and other countries, and having a National Champion, is going to help CrossFit grow and expand as a sport, a business and a methodology.

“Maybe the first year of Sanctionals was a bit scrappy here and there; there were massively different standards within different competitions and what not,” Ant acknowledged.

“At the end of the day CrossFit is still such a young sport – soccer, rugby, all these other sports have been around for hundreds of years; they’ve had a chance to establish exactly what it takes to be a leading sport in the world,” he continued.

“CrossFit is still evolving. It’s cool that it’s finding its roots and making these opportunities for A, National Champions and B, companies and bodies who can run these Sanctional events to a massively high level like we’ve seen in Strength in Depth and I’m sure we’ll see in Wodapalooza.” (The interview was conducted before the event.)

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When it comes to the Games, Ant knows people that come from minute nations or somewhere where CrossFit isn’t hugely popular don’t expect to do very well. Yet even without taking away any prize money, they have the best time – he knows he did.

“It was an unbelievable experience and that’s why I did it again, to try and go back,” he said. “And that’s why Tammi, who has just had the opportunity to experience it all again, kind of reignited her fire and her desire to go back to the CrossFit Games.”

She agrees with him; Tammi doesn’t think less-experienced National Champions devalue the competition and knows that, at the end of the day with the new format, it provides enough opportunity for the best people to be on the main stage.

“I think that’s awesome to grant people that opportunity [represent their country], to be able to get that badge and honour,” Ant said.

Source: Tammi Robinson

The couple trains for the Games under Ant’s brother’s commands, Ed Haynes, a former high-level athlete himself.

“I love the structure,” Tammi said. “We’ve both coached high-level athletes and we’ve both competed at relatively high levels, so it’s really good, it’s a discussion.

“We build blocks together, we discuss what we see as priorities, what we see as weaknesses, whatever it might be.

“There’s so much more that goes into Ed’s coaching than just the actual coaching that he puts on a page. I really value his opinion,” she said.

Tammi plans to compete at the Down Under CrossFit Championship and Ant the Asia CrossFit Championship in China. They’ll both go to the ELFIT CrossFit Championship in Egypt at the beginning of April.

You can follow the South African National Champion and China’s Fittest Man under @tamarind111 and @anthayneshk.

Since then, the 2020 Austrian National Champions has called herself Anna Makes Butter. She’s spread that never-give-up mentality to every aspect of her life, and she’ll be heading to the CrossFit Games for the first time this year.

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With three degrees in Professional Sports, Marketing and PR, Anna is currently the CrossFit coach behind Team Butter online and also coaches in-person. It sounds like the 30-year-old athlete has it all figured out, but it hasn’t always been that way.

Originally from a small town near Vienna, Austria, Anna found CrossFit after a burnout, which resulted in her quitting her job. She’d worked too hard and, when she was asked the relatively straight-forward question “what makes you truly happy?” she couldn’t think of an answer.

“For me, CrossFit was kind of a lifesaver,” she told BOXROX over a phone interview. “I started to travel and explore other countries and other CrossFit Boxes. I met other CrossFit athletes which was inspirational and got stuck in the CrossFit world.”

This took a while however, as Anna wasn’t hooked from the beginning. Her first class involved Turkish Get Ups and she hated it. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to take a kettlebell and lay down and stand up and lay down again.

“I was like, ‘I’ll never do CrossFit in my life again; this is nonsense,’” she said.

Yet somehow her friend convinced her to stick to it and, after a while, she realised that the weird-looking pull ups were actually a smart way to lock out at the bottom and put your chin over the bar. It’s efficient.

She’s gotten so good at it that she became Austria’s National Champion without really intending to.

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“It was crazy, seriously it was crazy,” Anna said about getting the invitation to the CrossFit Games. “To be honest I didn’t want to do the Open in the beginning because it’s a lot of pressure and I didn’t prepare for it, it wasn’t on my agenda.”

Yet three days before the start she realised the Open was the qualifier to many Sanctionals, which she was intending on doing because they’re fun, she enjoys live competitions and she loves being on the competition floor with other great athletes. So she signed up – and won four out of the five workouts nationally.

“I still haven’t really realised it because it happed out of nothing,” Anna said. “I never had it in my head, I never thought about going to the CrossFit Games, ever. Then, all of a sudden, within five weeks, everything changes – my whole plan for the year changed.”

Now, she’s doing everything she can to prepare for the Games properly and be ready to give it her all during competition.

She’s aware of the criticism National Champions face; she wasn’t a big fan of the new structure either, especially the cuts, and she loved Regionals.

“I’m not in the top 100,” Anna said about her Open ranking (she finished 120th worldwide). “To be honest I do think that I don’t belong there [at the Games].

“Which does not mean that I don’t want to go there – it means everything to me, it makes me so happy – but I’m still aware of the fact that there’s many people in the world who are not going to the Games who are better than I am.”

“Athletes like me, we are not on the top level, it’s hard for us to talk about ourselves like ‘we’re going to smash it’ because we know that we won’t place in the top,” she continued.

Which doesn’t mean she’s not putting the hours in already and has in past years. Anna is a Regionals athlete, became Indonesia’s National Champion in 2018 and is now the Fittest Woman in Austria.

“I’m still going to do my best; I’m going to enjoy every single second and I take it seriously,” she said.

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As for her hopes for the Games, Anna wishes to make many like-minded friends at the ultimate proving ground of CrossFit competition, fill herself with new experiences and learn as much as she can.

“I know the ultimate result is not going to change my life, so to me, I’ve already won because I can go to the CrossFit Games and that’s everything,” she said.

The CrossFit Games will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, between Wednesday July 29 and Sunday August 2. Anna beat 333 women who took part in the 2020 Open in Austria in the Rx category.

Box Latino Magazine had the pleasure to talk with the Argentinian behind the preparation of the various Latin American athletes that became National Champions at the latest edition of the Open – a direct qualifying route to the 2020 Games.

In the interview, he shares unpublished details about his personal life, motivations and professional expectations for the year, in addition to particulars on his online and physical presence with each of his athletes locally, nationally and internationally.

‘Maka’ is accompanying a fair few athletes this season. The following athletes all train under his wing and will represent the Latin American community after being crowned National Champions:

• Simona Quintana – Chile
• Piero Gorichon – Chile
• Guillermo Torres – Ecuador
• Andrea Rodríguez – Ecuador
• Maximiliano ‘negro’ Arigossi – Argentina
• Juan Manuel Seitun – Uruguay
• Lukas Osaki – Peru
• Laura Sánchez – Venezuela

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Who is Juan ‘Maka’ Coronel?

“I was born in Miramar, a coastal city en the Buenos Aires province in Argentina. I am a strength and conditioning coach for high performance athletes. Either as a coach or as a trainer, I’ve been in the sport and fitness scope for over 15 years in Argentina and other Latin American countries.”

What is the key to good programming for each individual athlete?

“There’s a quote by Pablo Picasso that goes: ‘Learn the rules like a professional, so you can break them like an artist.’ I think this defines perfectly what I see as the key in programming for competitive CrossFit – it’s almost like an art.

“I’m always asked how I plan or what I ask my athletes to do, but in reality there is no good or bad programming. You can have good and bad coaches, concepts, or ignored or badly applied principles, etc. There are hundreds of books on training, physiology, biomechanics, endurance, force, etc. – that’s what I consider ‘learn the rules like a professional.’

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“When you have that theoretical and practical background you can ‘break the rules like an artist.’ You can give me the best paint brushes, the best colours, I could have the best technique with a brush and use the best canvas, you can tell me how many strokes I ought to do with each colour and in which direction and that won’t mean I can paint a Guernica.

“It’s essential to posses that internal process of utilising all the tools at your disposal and to be consistent in your training so as to know when to break away from the rules and when to lean on them.

“I consider it key to evaluate the process and rethink your own practice, as well as the results you constantly get; you change whatever doesn’t work and reaffirm what does.

“Competitive athletes have the same needs, they differ in degree but not type.

“An athlete with an ‘X’ weakness is a less competitive athlete. No matter their strengths, it’s the weaknesses that will get them out of the game; be it the CrossFit Games or a local tournament.

“They can all work on similar things or train in similar periods, but each of them to their own degree based on their weaknesses.

“Strengths are also worked on, but these are the things that help you climb up the leaderboard. Depending on the competition, your strengths might be incredibly good or simply acceptable – the important, and urgent thing, is to revert weaknesses.

“Each athlete has its own learning periods, as well as periods of physical and mental adaptations to the loads, it’s at this stage that training and work can be individualised to an even higher degree.”

What’s the process behind your online and physical presence with your athletes like?

“My presence is more evident with some athletes as I currently reside in Buenos Aires and many either live here or travel over regularly.

“I aim to arrange days where I meet up with them, to watch them train, make amendments, talk to them. I also really like it when they meet up amongst themselves.

“Yet each of them has two to three training sessions a day, so I can’t physically be at all of them.

“The same thing happens with the athletes that live abroad; we talk regularly and go through their training, doubts, go over videos… That’s why I like to create an open and trustworthy environment, so they know they can reach out to me constantly if they have any doubts or necessities.

“They know I’m there no matter the time if they need my counsel or want to send me memes!

“Equally, even if I’m at their disposition and totally committed to them, I look to always instil independence from me when it comes to their daily performance. From the responsibility to be strict with their diets, to keeping to their levels of intensity and rest. That way they’re not dependant of my constant presence to give their 100% or do what they have to do on a daily basis.

RELATED: How to Make Faster Progress in CrossFit by Becoming More “Coachable”

“I hope to induce awareness that it isn’t me they ought to answer to, but themselves. An athlete learns so much about him or herself that way. It’s a way to ensure that, when they’re alone at an event, they know they have themselves and that’s an incredible resource if it has been trained. It’s good to be prepared for that, I consider it a necessity.”

What does it mean to you to have so many athletes qualify to the 2020 CrossFit Games?

“For me it’s an honour and a huge pleasure. It’s a validation and a reward for many years of work and big efforts with these athletes.

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“I believe that, year by year, I have convinced more people on how to train, what is necessary and what isn’t. It’s been hard but this is the result: eight qualified athletes to the Elite competition at my third CrossFit Games as a coach.”

What expectations do you have for the 2020 CrossFit Games?

“Expectations are high, but I don’t want to put a roof over my or anyone else’s head by setting a specific aim – we’ll aim for as high as we can.

“The minimum we hope to accomplish is that, within the athletes I work with, they become the fittest within Latin America again, which we achieved last year. I also hope we go through the first cut.

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“I believe that I have positively capitalised on my past experiences and that trodden path is an added value, important coming into the upcoming Games.”

What has been the development like in Latin America like these past few years?

“The progress in terms of coaches in certain regions of Latin America is really good and completely void in others.

“It’s not something I like at all; on the contrary, I want to see Latin America better represented each year in CrossFit in general.

“I see a lot of training and little sense. I don’t see many coaches here really revealing their methods or coaches that can back up what they’re asking from their athletes or students through grounded criterion.

“There’s a lot of ‘I do it because I’ve seen it being done’ without a strong theoretical basis to sustain the training or what one hopes to get out of what’s being done. I believe that dies within itself; to copy someone else’s successful methods does not provide success.

“I’ve got no doubts that in every Latin American country there are many great coaches with incredible practical and theoretical capacities, but one does not hear of them or they’re not being consulted.

“There’s a certain mentality within the competitive athletes of Latin America that if your coach doesn’t speak English or lives in the US or in Europe, he/she’s not good. Or that if they’re not specifically CrossFit coaches o haven’t competed themselves they can’t contribute to anything – this is such a big lie.

“I believe that once we get over those types of beliefs, more research is done, and each country resorts to its professional and educational capital – and all of this is shared – then the competitive and professional level of the region will inevitably rise, both in quality and in quantity.

“Maybe this is a bit Utopian, but I like to see that horizon as my direction in my work.

“On the athlete’s level, things are evolving strongly and I love it. They’re travelling abroad a lot more and the possibility to access Sanctionals and rub shoulders with other Elite athletes is insurmountable.

“It’s a huge motivational boost for the athletes, which then carries over and reflects on their compromise and discipline in their daily work.

“On a competitive level, I see that national competitions follow an orderly criterion for what it is they want to test and what kind of fitness should be awarded. Whereas on a local level, I can tell there’s a lack of criterion of what’s being sought after.

“Now, I’m talking about CrossFit as a sport; if it were CrossFit as training this would be a completely different conversation.”

How do you balance you professional and your personal life?

“It’s a constant battle trying not to mix them up! But seriously, I understood a long while ago that, in order to be able to be efficient in my profession and be able to lead an optimal personal life, I would need to keep them apart and dedicate time to each one.

“They both feed and grow of each other incredible amounts, but separately, I try to take care of both equally.

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“I constantly work on keeping focused on the task at hand, mainly as a form of respect to myself and the people around me. If I realise I’m zoning out, or I’m not delivering mentally or need some time alone, I spend some time with my guitar and a pair of Coronas; clear the mind and be 100% there again.”

To finish off, Juan talked about his personal and professional sources of motivation.

“Surrounding myself with people who push me to surpass my current level really drives me. The people that I admire on a personal and/or professional level, they give me a hunger to learn and work more. This is key for me and that’s why I look to engage and build relationships with people like that – and hope to be that person to others.

“To continually study and learn, it keeps me active for most of the day. It’s very common for me to be reading four or five books at a time or training myself to acquire the information I need, or look for ways to be the best version of myself for the people that look for me, so I can help them achieve their goals. Having them achieve their goals is priceless and the biggest source of motivation for me.”

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This article was originally published in Spanish by Box Latino Magazine, a publication covering athletes, coaches and events in the Latin American region. The original article was written by Nicolás Garzón, the BOXROX version translated by Caro Kyllmann. You can find the original version here.

BOXROX has partnered with Box Latino Magazine to grow the coverage of the Latino CrossFit community. If you’re a Spanish speaking reader or interested in knowing more about the scene in Latin America consider giving them a follow @boxlatinomagazine.

One of her sporting highlights happened when she was 16-years-old; the Argentinian participated at the Youth Olympic Games in weightlifting and won a bronze medal.

Box Latino Magazine had a chance to speak with the 21-year-old athlete, finding out more about her experience at the Olympics, her athletic journey, her personal life and her preparations in the run up to the most important CrossFit competition in the world.

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You can find the full interview below:

What did the beginning of your sporting career look like?

My sporting career began thanks to my dad. I started competitive gymnastics aged five and continued until I was 12, then I went into many sports but none of them really hooked me.

I played tennis for two years and moved on to karate, athletics, swimming… I ended up rock climbing, and my dad took me to a conventional gym to gain strength to help with climbing. They practised weightlifting at that gym and the coach told me I’d be a good weightlifter.

He offered to coach me and that’s how I started weightlifting at the age of 13.

What was your experience like at the Youth Olympic Games?

The first day I went to the gym and met my weightlifting coach, he said even without having watched me lift: “You are going to the Youth Olympic Games.”

At the time I had little clue as to what that was, but he had tons of faith in me and we got to work. With the years came the invitation – I had qualified. It was incredible.

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But even better than that was winning a medal when I was only 16.

What was your preparation like for the 2020 Open?

I’ve changed my programming a lot this past year, focusing specifically on my weaknesses and taking training a lot more seriously; I now know I want to devote myself to this.

It was a big turn but it gave big results, as I’ve greatly improved for the 2020 Open and I know I can improve even more. So yes, we’re on our way to achieve just that.

Meet the Coach with the Most Latin American Athletes Qualified to The CrossFit Games

What was your reaction like when you received the message that you’d qualified to the 2020 CrossFit Games?

When I first found out it wasn’t official. I got a message from Venezuela, some friends said that they’d heard at the Mayhem Classic that three women had declined their individual invites, therefore three more would come in and I was between them.

But it didn’t come officially from CrossFit, so I was happy but kept calm, without saying anything. And then the official email arrived from the organisation that said that I was invited to the upcoming CrossFit Games.

It’s a dream, especially because of the way it’s played out.

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What does your schedule look like for 2020?

I’ve signed up to the Brazil CrossFit Championship, also FitLand (in Colombia) and other events, but my plans have changed a lot since I got the invite to the CrossFit Games.

I haven’t yet decided how the year’s going to pan out, but I believe taking part in competitions outside of my main goal (the Games) would mean interrupting my training.

Yet I could also go to gain experience. I haven’t yet sat down with my coach to decide.

As an athlete, what’s your programming like?

Unidos is in charge of my programming, which is created by Batuque Iribarren – who’s also my boyfriend. What a better person to know me and know my strengths and weaknesses. I’m more than happy with my programming.

There’s always something to improve, but we’re on that path.

I train two sessions a day.

How do you balance your personal life and your life as an athlete, especially considering you’re so young?

At the moment and I’m very thankful for it, I can train full time, so my life revolves around my training, my nutrition and daily routine. I’m home, I do mobility, I read. I dedicate every hour of the day to being an athlete.

It’s the way it should be, not just inside the gym.

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Sasha greeted the Latino community to finish off and thanked them all for their continued support.

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This article was originally published in Spanish by Box Latino Magazine, a publication covering athletes, coaches and events in the Latin American region. The original article was written by Nicolás Garzón, the BOXROX version translated by Caro Kyllmann. You can find the original version here.

BOXROX has partnered with Box Latino Magazine to grow the coverage of the Latino CrossFit community. If you’re a Spanish speaking reader or interested in knowing more about the scene in Latin America consider giving them a follow @boxlatinomagazine.

If you had told him back then that within five years he would embark on a journey of CrossFit, including training five to six times a week and winning the CrossFit Games, he would have never believed it possible. 

Jason genuinely believed that the DNA in his family meant he would follow along the pathway laid out by his parents of obesity, poor health and disease. He used to run three to five times a week and thought that was all he needed to do to lead a healthier life. That was until he started CrossFit, changed his diet and really turned himself around.

“I just figured with my DNA, it doesn’t matter what I do, I am going to end up obese,” he said on the Up Before You podcast a few months ago.

At age 38, Jason was persuaded to try out a CrossFit class by one of his friends. In his first class HSPU’s were programmed and, despite him being overweight and unfit, Jason had been a gymnast in his younger years and found he was still able to do handstands. 

He finished the class totally destroyed, absolutely loved it and was hooked. Jason trained five times that first week and then picked up an ongoing routine of six classes a week. 

Without making any changes to his lifestyle Jason noticed his body shape changing, he was also becoming quite a good and competitive athlete. This was the beginning of him making some serious life and health changes.

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A year after starting CrossFit, Jason entered his first competition. He also completed his CrossFit Level 1 and opened his own affiliate. He learnt for the first time in his life about what a proper healthy diet was on the L1 course and followed CrossFit’s recommendations from this point onward. 

Initially, his goal in 2017 was just to make the top 200 in the world in the 40-44 age group, allowing him to compete in the Age Group Online Qualifier (AGOQ), which he did aged 40. The following year he gave it everything he had and qualified for the CrossFit Games. 

His goal was simply to go and not to suck at it. He placed 4th. However, following disqualification from one of the other athletes on the podium due to a positive drug test, he was bumped up to 3rd place. 

A year later, in 2019 when Jason was aged 43, he found himself at the Games again and, after a dominating performance, he stood on top of the podium in 1st place. He showed the world and himself it is truly possible to break out of a lifestyle of poor nutrition and health and turn your life around to achieve great physical feats.

Breaking out the pathway of obesity and poor health

Around 35% of Americans are thought to suffer from obesity, which is now considered to be a chronic disease. A child with one obese parent has a 50 percent chance of being obese. When both parents are obese, their children have an 80 percent chance of obesity. Jason was one of the lucky ones who broke out of this pathway.

“It is possible to break out of the destiny you are locked into. Coming from an obese overweight family and really unhealthy nutrition wise, for a lot of years I thought ‘man I am just buying my time before I am a big thick guy’. When I discovered a methodology like CrossFit, it is more than just a workout of the day. It’s a lifestyle,” said Jason.

“You can literally rewrite the story that was laid out in front of you. I feel like my DNA was that I was going to be a big guy and I was probably going to end up sick as a 50 or 60-year-old. It isn’t easy but it’s not out of grasp. It is just an hour a day 5 days a week. I eat a lot of food but just different healthier food.”

Source: Photos courtesy of Jason Grubb

Who is Jason Grubb?

Along with being an elite CrossFit athlete, Jason is a father of four kids aged between three and 21. He has an interesting career history working in human resources, as a high school teacher, recruiter, psychologist, wedding photographer, professional poker player, CrossFit Affiliate owner, and business entrepreneur. 

He is currently setting up a business to help prospective brides get fit for their weddings (vow to get fit) and also works one on one with athletes to help improve their performance. 

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Jason trains 5 days a week, taking 2 days as recovery days, one active day and one total rest day. He focuses strongly on maintaining good nutrition, sleeping well and recovering well.

What’s next in the Masters Athlete calendar?

Wodapalooza takes place in February with its hugely competitive Masters Division throughout all age categories. The Age Group Online Qualifier takes place on March 12 2020 and is a direct qualification route to the 2020 CrossFit Games, where the top 10 athletes will be given invites. This usually consists of five workouts over four days. Jason is competing in both these events in the 40-44 year old age group.

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Interested in CrossFit Masters Stories?

Helen Harding is the founder of The Masters Movement, a group set up to connect masters athletes around the world and sharing stories and masters related information. She’s also a two-times CrossFit Games Champion (2016/2017) in the 40-44age group and a 4 times Pacific Regionals Athlete.

Professionally, Helen is a Physiotherapist with over 20 years clinical experience and has a special interest in exercise rehabilitation and health.

The last was crowned Third Fittest Man on Earth this past year. But BKG wasn’t the only Icelandic athlete to stand on the podium at the 2019 CrossFit Games. Brynjar Ari Magnusson, a 15-year-old Icelandic athlete, also stood tall at the end of the competition, having been declared Third Fittest Teen on Earth (14-15).

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The Icelandic teen started CrossFit at the age of 11. Coming off from gymnastics and looking for something challenging, it was his dad who got him into it.

“I was just going once a week and then started to put more and more into it and now I’m competing at the Games so that’s crazy!” he told BOXROX.

There weren’t any competitions in Iceland for young athletes at the time – he wasn’t even a teenager – so his first experience in the competitive scene was the Open. At the age of 13, when he was one year away from being able to complete compete at the Games, he finished the Open within the top 20.

“That was really big for me because I also won in Europe,” he said. “Then I just took it really seriously and my goal was to go to the Games.”

GREAT ROLEMODELS

Brynjar takes challenges as they come. Of course he has thought about his predecessors and what that could mean for him, but that’s not his sole focus.

“There’s a lot of good athletes in Iceland and I really look up to them and of course I want to be like them. They’re just incredible.

“But that takes a lot of time and repetition and that’s not what I’m actually thinking about right now, I’m just focusing on what’s going on right now. The Open just finished and I’d been thinking about how I was going to win it – and then the Online Qualifier.”

“I’m not focusing on wanting to be the next star. I don’t see myself like that,” he said.

TRUE DEDICATION

“The end result,” said Brynjar with conviction when I asked him about his favourite thing about CrossFit and competing. “Seeing the hard work pay off.

“When I PR in weightlifting and results at the Games; when I get a good time in a workout training – just accomplishing goals.”

The 15-year-old won two events at the 2019 CrossFit Games. A highlight of his was the Ruck Run: “I was never really great at running. This past summer, we really ran a lot and that just payed off. I won the ruck run.

“It was incredible; we had to do three laps and I was last in the first, 7th the second lap and then first on the last. I was really proud.”

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After the 2020 CrossFit Open, where he finished first in Iceland and 15th in the world in the Boys (16-17) category – and 30th in Iceland overall – Brynjar will have to make the top 10 at the Age Group Online Qualifiers in March 2020 to make it back to the Games.

He knows it’ll be a tough year since he’s on the younger end of his age category: “Right now I’m really focusing on becoming stronger because all the older boys are really strong. Now my goal is just getting stronger and making it to the Games this year,” he said.

The distant future doesn’t pressure Brynjar. “I just take things as they come. There’s a long time until I get to the Elite so I’m just enjoying the time in the teenage division.”

And so he is, currently training at CrossFit Reykjavik with around 20 other teens competing at his level.

Related: Talent in The Land of Fire & Ice – What Makes The Icelandic Athletes so Good?

She’s made friends with locals wherever she goes, gotten to know places on a personal level thanks to their suggestions and kindness, has been captivated by many a culture and, above all, has experienced first-hand how real the CrossFit global community is.

“Sometimes I’m in a country for 12 hours or one day and I don’t really get to learn much about it,” Davina said on an interview with BOXROX, “but every time I go to a Box it feels just like it could be my Box at home. I’ve never been somewhere where I didn’t feel super welcome and really excited to see the lives of people just like us.

“We all have this common thread and it’s been amazing.”

Fittingly, Davina is packing up for another trip as we start our interview, I can hear bags zipping and unzipping in the background as she tells me, sometimes with disbelief and others with hilarity, about the experiences she’s had all around the world.

From achieving her first set of double unders in Ireland to getting over 17 calories in a minute on the rower for the first time in the Netherlands, Davina says her personal milestones are overshadowed by the wonderfully hospitable Boxes she’s been to, and the people and coaches she’s met there.

Davina has visited and worked out in CrossFit Boxes in 50 countries around the world. She has visited many more Boxes in the US than represented on the map.

“I love our community and have grown to appreciate it even more in the many countries and boxes I have been to,” Davina said. “One night I was in Serbia and it was their Christmas Eve, the Orthodox Christmas Eve.

“I was like ‘if it doesn’t work out, I totally get it.’ But one of the coaches was so interested to meet someone from the US and he was amazing. He was just so intrigued and honoured to be able to talk about his country and how his gym has evolved.

“We worked out together, it was just the two of us. It was really inspiring because there was a snowstorm and it was beautiful and so much fun.

“I just kept thinking ‘this is an incredible community that would do something like this.’ I’m really hard-pressed to think of any other environment where someone would do it for anything beyond the love for the culture and the sport.”

A similar thing happened to her when she visited Cyprus, where the coach at the Box she planned to visit picked her up from the airport and took her to the gym. He was incredibly proud of his group, their techniques and the work he had done.

“That comes through to me more than anything,” Davina said. “A lot of coaches, they want to show what they bring to [CrossFit].”

WODS ADAPT TO THEIR LOCATION

And so do people.

A lot of the coaches Davina has met have done their own things with CrossFit and adapted to their location. “Especially small islands, they tend to incorporate beaches in their workouts regularly,” she said with a slight hint of disbelief.

“I always think ‘wow, what a blessing to be able to do that’ and then I actually do the workout and I’m like ‘I can’t breathe, it’s too hot!’”

That’s exactly what happened in Puerto Rico.

But Davina also remembers working out in Bogota, Colombia, which sits quite high above sea level. “I remember sucking wind behind all these people because I just wasn’t ready for the altitude. I wasn’t training in the same conditions and it’s funny to see how different it can be in other places,” she said.

Davina drops names of countries and recounts experiences from around the world as if you were listing the days of the week. She tells me about the workouts she’s done in the UAE, where they sometimes have women classes separate from the men classes.

“A huge part of this for me is have a mixed group to socialise, but it was really cool to have females in full body coverings do these workouts in like 100 plus degrees. My partner, she was super committed and I was like ‘I can’t do this, I can’t keep up with her.’

“People are so resilient.”

BEING GOOD IS RELATIVE

There was this one workout in Romania that involved relatively light snatches, so Davina was trying to get through them quickly when, at some point, she realised no one else was moving their weight; they were just watching her, amazed.

“Everywhere I go, people have an interesting reaction, especially in countries where CrossFit hasn’t been as popular or around this long,” she said.

A similar thing happened in Thailand, where Davina dropped in for a workout that involved rope climbs. No one at the Box had learnt how to apply rope climbing techniques at the point and Davina had just learnt to master that skill at her Box in New York. So there she was, showing the Box in Bangkok the tricks and techniques of rope climbing.

“I don’t know if they look up to me,” Davina said later in our conversation, “I wonder if it’s more like curiosity; to see how they would stack up against an average American CrossFit girl.”

Having started training four years ago, Davina has been steadily improving by attending classes daily. However, she’s not used to fellow athletes stopping their training and watching her go, that definitely doesn’t happen at her home Box in the US. And it doesn’t always happen abroad either; Davina remembers the incredibly fit people in Denmark and Norway with awe.

“It’s weird to come out of a context where I’m so pathetically average and go places where my skills…” she trails off. “I think this is probably the case just because of how long it takes you to learn, things people just don’t get right away. It’s not necessarily that someone is fitter or not, it’s just a skill thing.”

Sometimes however, working out abroad is not only about skill sets. Wherever Davina has travelled, she has found CrossFit can be influenced by cultural priorities. “There was a girl in Singapore who wanted to lift with me and was shocked that I lift what I was lifting, but she wasn’t training the same way, her priorities were speed and agility.”

Some people do CrossFit to be lean, some to stay healthy, some to see progress; there’s a clear difference between how people see the purpose of the sport sometimes, Davina has discovered.

REACHING 50 COUNTRIES

The idea came because Davina was already travelling a lot for work and getting a fair number of Boxes in, so she thought she’d make something of it. She made 50 her target.

As a female (many times solo) traveler who likes to attend the early morning classes (they’re the ones that fit with her work schedule), finding CrossFit Boxes can sometimes turn into an adventure. Davina remembers how her Uber driver in the Czech Republic refused to leave until she had found the right warehouse somewhere behind an abandoned railroad track.

Davina has done Open workouts in Switzerland, Poland, Italy, Indonesia, Australia, Scotland and the US. She was worked out in French (Tahiti, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Morocco), Spanish (Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Panama, Puerto Rico, Spain), Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal), Italian, Polish, Thai, Khmer, Arabic, Malay, Indonesian, Icelandic, Dutch, Chinese, Korean, German (Austria, Germany), Romanian, Bulgarian, and more.

THE LOVE FOR CROSSFIT AND THE COMMUNITY

“If it came down to it,” Davina said with certainty, “and I had to choose between going to a CrossFit gym or something like a tour, I would always choose going to a CrossFit gym. Just because it’s something that speaks to us as part of the community and it’s something that actually makes me feel like I can understand what a day in the life of someone who actually lives here is like.”

Wherever she goes, with all the interesting and rich cultures, she knows at a Box she has this one thing that brings us together.

On a personal level, CrossFit has helped Davina develop a strong mindset; she discovered that when running a marathon. “What really impressed me was the killer instinct that I just honestly never believed I had, that whole tolerance to pain and working through it and still accomplishing your goals.

“CrossFit taught me that it was going to hurt but I could get through it. It just gave me the sense that something like this couldn’t defeat me.”

The benefits of CrossFit transcend beyond that for Davina, who is an ward-winning international human rights statistician and works on modern slavery and human trafficking.

“It’s a tough job, so having the mental health of the community like this whenever I go can’t be understated. It’s just the best form of stress management.

“It makes me kind of feel grounded and like no matter how tumultuous things are where I am, I remember that there’s a community at home and here that’s full of people just trying to do their best. That’s a really encouraging thing that helps me, even in my broader work on slavery.”

In a smaller or broader sense, that’s a shared experienced wherever you CrossFit.

Following a job opportunity for his wife, Loris, who had lived abroad for longer periods of time but never outside Europe, took a sabbatical year from his work and he and his family moved to the capital, Hanoi.

“To be totally honest, our parents were not so happy about it, but we did it anyway,” he said.

SOURCING FOR THE BOX

Finding a place and sourcing the equipment for the Box wasn’t easy. “It was the hardest part,” Loris said. “Especially in Vietnam where you cannot go online and shop with your credit card on any website and expect things to be delivered at your door.”

CrossFit Tay Ho started on the top floor of a gym building. At the time, it was the only CrossFit Affiliate in the whole county. The beginning wasn’t easy; it took two months for the equipment for the gym to arrive from Australia.

“The plan was to first find a reliable and relatively cheap producer (the box was small, so I need only 7 bars as I could not do bigger classes) and I ended up choosing one Australian one. The material was so good that some of it is still used now at the box!” Loris explained.

“Step 2 was to find a local enterprise that would import the goods on my behalf and took care of all the custom and transport procedures,” he continued. “As I had never done anything like that in the past, I was definitely out of my comfort zone!”

THROWN IN AT THE DEEP END

The floor shook when athletes dropped weights – the first space being on the top floor – and after a few complaints from the neighbours the landlord moved CrossFit Tay Ho to the ground floor. “The ceiling was too low to do wall balls, so I built a structure outside, in the parking. Ring muscle-ups were another challenge. So, I made a steel structure on the rooftop.

“Sometimes you just need to be creative! The rig was done locally following my instructions and measurements and is the one that is still used at the Box,” Loris said. “It was smoking humid in some periods of the year and super hot in some others, so I had to adapt the timetable of the classes moving them to early morning or afternoons. It was not easy as I am not an early bird!”

Source: Loris Ditta

In terms of programming, decisions were also based on the different climate: “the movements I had to choose were influenced by the weather because, during the rainy seasons, we just could not go out running.

“But I must say that these challenges helped me grow as an athlete and as a coach, as everybody is a great sailor with easy wind and calm sea.”

“I must also admit that being an official affiliate – and at that time the only one in the whole country – helped me because I was the point of reference to all the CrossFitters that were passing by and to the expat community in the city.”

SHARING THE PASSION

We asked Loris what lessons he’d learnt owning CrossFit Tay Ho; it was Loris’ first time as an Affiliate owner.

“It does not matter how fancy your equipment is, but what really matters is the ability, as coach and owner, to transmit to your members the passion for CrossFit and your vision about it. CrossFit Tay Ho was a small community, so it was easier to have a kind of personal relation with my athletes, but this is how it should also be in bigger boxes.

“Coaches and owners should not only be able to teach the movements – that is the baseline – they should be mentors who guide the members into their CrossFit journey so that people show up at the classes half an hour before and stay after the class another half hour just because they like the atmosphere and they feel at home.

“CrossFit is about building a community. Not about building a Games athlete. If you build a Games athlete good for you. But you should remember that your rent is covered by the other 99% of your members (mothers, fathers, doctors, housewife, students…). Focus on them, the athlete is an extra that most boxes will never have even if they are still great places with great coaches and owners.”

CrossFit Tay Ho had (has) a magic atmosphere about it, Loris recalls. During his time as owner, about 95% of the members were expats, which meant the Box was a great place to meet friends. “Kind of like a second home that makes you feel less alone, as most of the members come from thousands of kilometres away. You can smell a unique sense of community and friendship,” Loris explained.

A COMMUNITY-RUN BOX

He owned the Box for almost two years and, when it was time to say goodbye for sure, he gave the keys to the members. “I let them run it as a community-run box. I found the idea a little naïve and unique, but it is the best example I can imagine of the strength of a community,” the former coach said.

It’s all done on a voluntary base; the admin team manages the cash flow and run the day-to-day activities. All big decisions are made by them and by athletes that had been members for more than six months. “I used to say that I just planted a seed, and they water it every single day with their sweat,” Loris said.

He went back to the Box once in 2017 and had an amazing time training with the old members and being introduced to the new ones who’d all heard stories of him. On the whiteboard, still closed, waited a letter for him from his days at Tay Ho.

Source: Loris Ditta

While he was running the Box, Loris finished 3rd in Asia during the Open and was eligible to take part in a competition which he then couldn’t attend as he left the country. The envelope contained the official invitation to the competition.

“Nobody had touched it. Nobody had opened it. But they keep it because they wanted me to get it. It was like the closing of a chapter of my life. I get goosebumps every time I tell this story,” Loris said.

The Italian man started CrossFit in 2010 in Belgium with a Danish coach called Emil. “It [CrossFit] gave me so much in terms of fitness and general well-being that I regret not having started it before. It has also allowed me to meet people all around the word and realize that it does not matter where you train, but that you can really feel at home in any box,” he said.

Loris now trains at CrossFit BINK 36 in the Netherlands and CrossFit is part of his day to day life, he enjoys his job and training days but also remembers his time as a coach fondly. “Who knows what the future will bring!” he said.

This is what CrossFit Tay Ho in Hanoi, Vietnam, looks like now!

Shane and Tia moved to Cookeville in September last year to aid with her training following the changes in the CrossFit world. Since then, 4-time defending CrossFit Games champion Mat Fraser has started training with them.

“Shane will program for Mat and myself on a daily basis,” Tia told BOXROX in an interview. “Shane gets to see us both on a daily basis, is constantly around and he’s programming and coaching us and making sure if there’s something we might need to dial in on, like our movement patterns for example, he’ll let us know,” she continued.

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The Australian couple will meet Fraser at the gym and do their morning or afternoon session together, depending on how they’re feeling and what the training is like. After a rest, they’ll go back to the gym for another four or five hours; there’s always quite a bit to tick off the training list.

“We’ll do every single peak together which is really great because, even if he’s lifting a little heavier, there’s always a really healthy competitive streak between the two of us where, if I put more weight, Mat puts on more weight and if Mat puts on more weight, I put on more weight,” Tia described.

“I think it’s quite entertaining for him sometimes because they’ll be times when Mat and I can get quite competitive,” she said about Shane coaching both CrossFit Games defending champions.

“He’s not always just stuck with me,” Tia joked about Shane now coaching Fraser as well. “There might be some times where I might be complaining a little bit but Mat and him just stand up for each other. Shane really enjoys it and I think the fact that Mat’s in it 100% and he’s always putting his best foot forward – Shane appreciates that.”

But the coach is not the only one happy with the new arrangement. The three-times Fittest Woman on Earth truly enjoys having Fraser around. “It’s really quite cool just to be able to have his level of experience right there with me,” she said, acknowledging that she has definitely learnt from him. “The boys tend to gang up on me a little bit so I’ve always got to defend myself, but I absolutely love it,” she laughed. “He’s really become quite a brother to me and it’s very special, being able to do what we do.”

Source: BOXROX

Prior to Tia training together with Fraser, Shane used to work out next to her (or nearer a corner if he didn’t want to slow her down). “Shane would literally do everything with me. He’d be doing it right by my side,” Tia said. “As Mat’s come onboard and is training right beside me now, he [Shane] doesn’t feel like he has to be there to push me or physically be going through the pain with me. Which, when you think about it, that’s quite nice.”

Shane is now able to watch both athletes during their session and coach them more. Yet, he still gets his fitness in: “Surprisingly – and he’ll always deny this, he’s a very humble person – he’s actually a really good athlete. He’s very strong and he’s very determined,” Tia said.

“If I told him ‘Shane this is not possible,’ he’d literally just start the clock and do it to prove me wrong. He is very fit as well. A lot of people don’t realise that he’s actually a very good athlete himself, but he’ll never admit it.”

Shane doesn’t switch off; he’s constantly thinking of new things that he can incorporate into the training program, trying to figure out what he can challenge both athletes with next and is completely dedicated to helping them improve.

“I think he really appreciates having Mat and myself there; that we’ll do the work and he knows that we appreciate it, even if we don’t say it on a regular basis,” Tia said.

Find out what Mat Fraser thinks about his new coach:

Luke has been crowned fittest man in New Zealand four years running and has competed in Regionals every year since 2015 (participating in the Australian CrossFit Championship and the DUCF Sanctionals in 2019).

“I’d never done a CrossFit competition that ends in two events,” Luke said. Watching the Games over the past years, his idea for the event was of a “brutal 12-16 workout competition” with some different disciplines like swimming and road cycling thrown in.

A Box owner for the past six years, Luke shared his thoughts about the Games this year, the CrossFit scene in his home country, competition in that end of the world any why he would have rather qualified to the Games though Regionals.

The 2019 CrossFit Games were Luke’s first experience competing against people outside of Australia (with the exception of Jacob Heppner), so he got to see a different level as well as set his goals and expectations for the future.

Luke has been a big name in the Australian and New Zealand region for a few years now. With CrossFit Games experience now in the bag and the realisation that more exposure to elite athletes would benefit him greatly, the Kiwi hopes to participate in more Sanctionals Europe or the US.

“It’s become a pretty massive priority now, after seeing the guys this weekend and realising you really do need to go up against them a couple of times before you can really understand what it’s like,” he reasoned.

Luke follows John Singleton’s training plan The Progrm.

The first time we talked, her honest desire to learn more made a huge impact on me. It was the enthusiasm, passion and earnestness in her voice when she talked about learning to ride a bike and improving her swimming. Pasent’s positivity is contagious.

“It’s been an amazing experience to be at the Games and down the field,” she told BOXROX when we caught up with her in Madison. “Once they announced the cuts […] the main goal was to just pass the cut.”

The Omani National Champion finished the Games ranked 83rd, unfortunately missing the first cut. “I was not nervous about the run, I was not nervous about the rope climbs because I do that a lot, in the same weather that the workout has been in. It’s too hot, it’s too sunny and I intentionally do that back home, in the sun, the same kind of workout.

“But something was different, the whole setup was different, the rope was different, so everything didn’t go as expected unfortunately,” she said.

Still, Pasent was the highest ranked woman in the Arab region and she’s happy about that. Which doesn’t mean she’s going easy next season. “If you’re good, you have to be better. If you’re bad, you have to also be good. So it doesn’t matter if you’re good or bad, you still have to be better no matter what,” she said.

Oman’s First Female Games Athlete Hopes to Inspire People to Try Harder

The Fittest woman in Oman breaks down stereotypes; like any other Games athlete, she’s dedicated, capable and strong. “None of the girls were okay lifting weight and getting muscle and wanting to lift heavy, but CrossFit made us want to lift heavy and look muscular and be happy about it,” she told BOXROX on a pre-Games interview when we asked her about training back home.

Pasent learnt to ride a bike and improved her swimming specifically for the Games. She’s still happy she worked to better her skills even if they weren’t tested this time around: “that will not stop there, other competitions will come throughout the season. Next year who knows what the first workout is going to be, so it’ll definitely come in handy,” she said.

Being at the Games inspired Pasent to be better; one day after her appearance at the Games she was already thinking about training for the upcoming season.

“I don’t even know how sometimes. Lots of hard work,” she told BOXROX when we asked her the obvious question: just how?

Katelin Van Zyl, formerly Marks, used to play hockey professionally for Australia. When a jaw injury ended that career, Katelin took onto CrossFit at the beginning of 2013. Over two decades of competing at a high level developed the mentality and traits of a professional athlete in Katelin and the constant opportunities to improve and learn in the wide variety of modalities CrossFit encompasses appealed to her a lot.

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“I had played for Australia, I did as well as I could within hockey and then nothing was really challenging for me anymore. When I found CrossFit I was like ‘this is awesome, there’s so much to learn, there’s so much to practice and so much to do.’ I think that’s what drew me to it mostly,” Katelin said.

She’s the kind of person that likes to be challenged, which would explain how she’s managed what she has in part.

A COMBACK FROM PREGANCY

From the beginning, Katelin and her husband agreed that, if they were going to have a child, they wanted to make sure it fitted with their lives and ensure they could continue to pursue their goals.

The Aussie trained throughout pregnancy and continued to do pretty much everything. “The biggest thing I learnt is to listen to your body and know when to stop,” she said. Having gone though it, she’s happy to help and inspire other athletes going through pregnancy as well.

“It’s different for everyone,” Katelin explained. If a body is used to doing CrossFit at a certain intensity, it’ll be okay to continue to train whilst obviously stepping it back a little. “There’s always going to be a lot of scepticism around and you just can’t let it get to you. You know your body better than anyone else.”

Katelin worked on her recovery and hit the 2018 Open not even five months after giving birth. She finished 8th in Australia. Let’s stop here a second; Katelin qualified to Regionals five months after having a child.

In 2019, Katelin would finish the Open as the Second Fittest Woman in Australia, 31st in the world, and qualify to the Games.

“Once you take off all expectations, all pressure, all stress, I just feel you perform so much better,” she said.

“Making the Games not even two years after having a son – it is possible,” she stated. “It’s hard work though, very hard work.”

TRAINING WITH A TODDLER

“Everything. Absolutely everything,” Katelin answered when we asked her what has changed since having her son. “My sleep is probably the one thing that is non-existent anymore.”

“Every day is different,” Katelin laughed. There are days when Hunter is grumpy and wants to be held the whole time – that includes Katelin coaching or training. Constantly paying attention to her child whilst prioritising training is difficult. “It’s just a job pretty much,” Katelin half-joked.

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Of course there are a few things that come harder to Katelin after her pregnancy. She recalls how, during the 2018 Open she had to do double-unders and how that wasn’t ideal. “I went through a whole heat of double-unders and I was like ‘oh man this is bad,’ I’m peeing myself pretty much and I’m yelling at my husband ‘get me a towel!’ – the joys of motherhood,” she laughed.

“There are a lot of things that are harder for me than for most people […] but I just don’t like to see anything as an excuse,” Katelin said. “I know I’m capable of lots, and I know I can be a really good athlete. So, I just assumed I needed to just perform the way I know I can.”

PREPARING FOR THE GAMES

In the run up to the Games, Katelin’s schedule was hectic to say the least. The family would leave home early and wouldn’t come back until about 7:30 every night. “We just have to juggle it, every day is just a juggle,” she said. “It’s stressful at times but, if you know you want to do something and you know you want to do well at something, you kind of just gotta do it, you have no choice. It’s just part of the process.”

“We try to embrace it as much as we can, we love being able to bring our son up around the gym and he absolutely loves it,” she continued. Hunter is only just old enough to know to stay away when people are lifting.

As hard as it might get, Katelin is incredibly grateful that she and her husband get to raise their son around the gym, pursue their own goals and teach him anything is possible.

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Katelin’s goal, of course, was to get back training as soon as she could and do the Open. Nevertheless, she wasn’t expecting a top 20 finish. The three-times Regionals athlete has been nursing an injury – which turned out to be an immune disease – for the past 18 months that has stopped her doing quite a lot of things.

“Even in the Open I had this injury and doing wall balls and all that stuff was just horrendous. Doing the box step ups, horrendous. You had to alternate between feet and stepping up with my bad leg was just really bad,” Katelin recalled.

“I think I’m that personality where I just give it everything. Even in pain – which probably isn’t the best thing – I’ll still push it hard if I know I can.

“I wasn’t expecting top 20 that’s for sure.”

Source: BOXROX

Katelin finished 59th overall at this year’s Games.

HELPING PEOPLE REACH THEIR GOALS

Besides her insatiable desire to overcome every challenge, an honest love for the sport is what characterises Katelin. Running CrossFit Urban Energy, Katelin gets to teach people what she loves the most.

“I love what CrossFit can do to you and do for you, for your health and your fitness. Not everyone wants to be a high-end athlete and that’s fine. I just love helping people reach their goal.”

Like all Boxes around the world, hers is filled with dads who want to stay fit to play with their kids or moms who just want to be stronger. Helping people achieve their goals is what motivates Katelin.

“I just love to be able to help each individual reach what they want to do,” she said, and you can tell she means it.

It’s the third year running Vedharth has been crowned India’s National Champion and, even though he knew he was one of the country’s best athletes going into the Open, his victory wasn’t a given. Just like the past two years, it came down to the last workout.

“I knew that if I put my head down, I had a good shot at it. It was close but I knew, if I fight it my best, I thought it was possible,” he said.

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Sport has always been part of Vedharth’s life. He was lucky enough to attend a school with exposure to fitness and, before CrossFit, he used to play cricket and volleyball for his state in India.

He found CrossFit during his studies as a Civil Engineer. He only had an hour to spare in his days to exercise, so he started CrossFit at the only Box in India at the time, which happened to be in Mumbai, his city.

THE MOMENT THAT CHANGED THINGS

The tree-times Fittest in India always took the sport seriously, but it wasn’t until his first Open in 2015 that things changed, and he decided to take CrossFit competitively. Surprisingly, it wasn’t because he won it and thought he had a great shot at it, but because he couldn’t do it.

“I remember it was a workout with seven muscle ups, 50 wall balls, 100 double-unders [15.3]. I think it was a 14-minute AMRAP and that’s when things actually changed,” Vedharth recalled. “I couldn’t do more than seven muscle ups and I did like six and stopped. For the entire 14 minutes I was just trying to smash seven muscle ups.

RELATED: Honduras’ First Ever Games Athlete Is Ready to Push Her Limits at the 2019 Crossfit Games

“I think that’s exactly why I started competing and being competitive; because it made me feel so awful. That time, in a 14-minute workout, I’m so close to being able to do the next movement and I’m there but not there. It’s a bad feeling.

“But these small things make the bigger things and that’s exactly why things have happened.”

PUTTING THE WORK IN

For two years after that, he put his head down and worked hard, chasing to be the Fittest in India, which he has achieved now three years running. Last year, he made it to the top 50 in Asia. He beat 895 Indian men that participated in the Open to become National Champion this year.

“From there to now, things have changed a lot. Practically, my life revolts around CrossFit at the moment. Things are great,” he said joyfully. Back in India, he owns CrossFit 7 Seas and opened to Alpha 7 Seas after membership outgrew the Box.

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CROSSFIT IN INDIA

Educating people about fitness in India is something important for the National Champion. “In general, the full process of awareness of fitness in changing,” he said when we asked him about CrossFit in his home country. “India is a place where there are a lot of people, and people with faith and believe. I think they’re starting to understand that it’s not only big muscles, that they also provide functionality.”

The Reebok athlete believes the country is on the right path, putting the right education content out. He runs “The Fittest League,” a series of on-site competitions to try to educate people and give them a taste of what competitive fitness looks like.

“I keep doing the smaller things to make the bigger changes in the country,” he said.

There currently are 49 Boxes in India according to the Official CrossFit Affiliate Map.

GAMES BOUND

About Games training, he said not much has changed except the volume of it. “I believe everybody is training hard, so I’m trying to focus on things that I haven’t been doing before, one of them is my food,” he said.

Yet he admits it’s a difficult task and jokes that, “after all the exercising you at least deserve all the food.”

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When we asked Vedharth what he’s most excited about going to the CrossFit Games he replied with: “Getting my butt kicked” and a laugh. He said it’s already been an incredible process and he’s received an immense amount of support, so he looks forward to the whole experience.

“India is full of warm-hearted people and they’re sending me messages full of love, saying they believe in me and that they’re looking forward to seeing me at the Games and that they’re proud of me. Little things like this make a lot of difference,” he said.

If he could program a workout this year, Vedharth would choose a 500ft handstand walk for time. Every time you break, you run 200 metres.

“I like being on my hands!”

Vedharth will move back to India after the Games for a while but says then there’s “another dice on the table,” as there’s another Open happening in October.

“I don’t think the madness will end next August,” he laughed.

It might seem contradictory at first, but Thelma uses the sport as a means to confront her phobias; what she loves the most about it is that she’s capable of doing things she never thought she could do.

“I need to go over my limits every time, and that’s challenging, but you never know what you’re capable of until you try. I’ve been training my fears a lot and now I am confident with them.”

Thelma has been crowned Fittest in Cyprus every year since 2016. She won every single workout of the 2019 Open in her country and ranked within the top 100 worldwide.

THE HARD WORK PAYS OFF

Before taking on CrossFit, the Cypriot athlete used to be a professional volleyball player. She started CrossFit at a time when no one knew anything about the sport in Cyprus or what this new gym was about.

A friend invited her over in 2012 as means to improve her fitness for volleyball. After a year of training and, for the next three years, Thelma competed in both. She participated in the Open for the first time in 2016 and, even though she was crowned Fittest in Cyprus, her worldwide rank was above the 2,000s.

Since then her performance has improved significantly, and this year she finished 87th in the world.

“All the hard work that I’ve been doing, now it’s come back to me. I really train hard, I take it seriously, it’s not a hobby to me.”

A total of 21 Cypriot women participated in the Open in 2019, although Thelma says the sport is rising and developing very fast in Cyprus. “Because life here has a slow tempo, the athletes turn into good athletes very fast, because they have more time to train than, for example, athletes in Athens.”

Qualifying for the Games this summer was her and her coach’s target from the beginning of the season.

“If it hadn’t happened I’d feel disappointed, I really put in a hard effort to achieve it.”

COMPETITION AND CHARACTER

She loves competing in high-level events against top athletes. She’s travelled and tried to compete a lot, especially in Cyprus and Greece.

“Competitions have built my character as an athlete, the more you compete, the more you learn about yourself; not to be scared, not to be so nervous during the competition. You get used to it when you compete a lot and it helps so much in the future.

“Competing is a very big deal for me.”

Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean with a population estimated at 1.2 million in 2019. The official languages are Greek and Turkish. According to the Official CrossFit Affiliates Map, there are seven Boxes in the country.

GETTING CLOSURE

Thelma’s parents are both Cypriot, but she grew up in Greece after her parents had to leave their home island. They started a new life in Greece, so she has both the Cypriot and Greek nationalities. Nevertheless, she’s always represented Cyprus in sports – it’s a place her family has always had close to their hearts.

A new volleyball contract in 2012 meant that Thelma had the opportunity to move back to Cyprus. “It’s a small island and I really love my life here,” she told me. “I am Cypriot and I’m very proud to represent the name of Cyprus in sport.”

She trains at CrossFit Limassol, Cyprus’ first Box, which she obviously says is the best one.

“It’s like an old-school Box inside, a ‘real’ CrossFit Box, not luxurious at all. The environment motivates me.”

She is also a Personal Trainer there and fits her classes in between her training sessions. She doesn’t follow a specific nutrition plan and admits she could eat more. “I feel like I don’t have the time to take a break and eat. I always want to train and it needs to be with the feeling of an empty stomach, I can’t train feeling like I have food in my belly.”

Her favourite WODs involve leg work; she loves lunges, step ups and overhead squats, although what she enjoys the most is a heavy snatch.

PARTICIPATING AT THE BIGGEST STAGE OF CROSSFIT

About going to the Games and her expectations, Thelma said:

“I’ve always wanted to go the US, I’ve never been. The combination of going and competing is a very big deal for me.

“I’m really excited to have such a long trip with my team and coach and friends and family, which I love because I’ll have support there. I’m really excited to see the workouts, if they’ll fit me, if I’ll like them, what it’ll be like to see all the top athletes and be next to them.

“I would like to make all Cypriots proud; I want to be worth of representing Cyprus.

“I’m not going there for fun; I’m not going there just because I qualified and now it’s fun – I want to give my best and leave saying that I’ve done everything I could. I don’t want to say that I could have done better or didn’t push myself enough.

“I’m sure that if I train hard my work will show – at least I hope so.”

Thelma has set up a fundraiser to help her get to the Games, you can find it here.

Lindsay, an American ex-gymnast based in Australia, recently qualified to the CrossFit Games after her performance at the Down Under Championship, a Sanctioned competition in Wollongong.

Her ginger hair is usually easy to spot on the competition floor and her charismatic demeanour led her to win the Spirit of the DUC Award at the same competition.

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After the opportunity presented itself at the end of 2013, Lindsay and her husband, Ehren Vaughan, moved to Australia from Idaho in the US to take over CrossFit Ballina.

“There are a lot of challenges when starting your own gym, like having to start with zero clients in a country where you don’t know a lot of people, where you don’t have any connections.

“But we didn’t start from scratch, which is a little bit different from what a lot of people do,” she explained.

After five and a half years, Lindsay says it’s been an interesting journey, but she loves where her Box, CrossFit Ballina, is headed. Box owners would know, the first year everything feels hard, stressful and hectic, but things work themselves out and they do get easier.

“Any business owners having a business with their partner would say it really tests the relationship. But it made us stronger and we learnt how to communicate better and how to work together in the business as well,” Lindsay said.

A WELCOMING FIGURE AT THE BOX

“We want to make this place the best it can be, and to create a really comfortable place for people of all ages. We want everyone here to feel like they’re in a place they want to be in.”

Lindsay thinks it’s important to have a female perspective and presence at the Box to achieve this goal. She says that a female coach can help guide people, especially females that for whatever reason might feel uncomfortable training with males, and help them step out of their comfort zone.

She adds: “Women add a special touch that is amazing to some members, to walk in the door and they just want that special touch.

“Obviously men have their own amazing things to add but it’s great to have both sides of the story involved in the business.”

She says that it’s good to see women take on as affiliate owners: “The fact that we have to specify ‘female box owner’ just shows that it doesn’t happen as often as the men. It’s really cool to get women in those positions.”

However, she has also experienced a “a bit of a fight back” in the past.

“One instance I remember very vividly was with one guy getting weights of the bar; they didn’t listen to me and kept going. It ended up with me having to put my foot on the bar to get them to stop and look at me and have a conversation about why I think they need less.

“I don’t know if they felt threatened by me, or didn’t think I knew what I was talking about, or if it had anything to do with my sex at all – possibly they just wanted to come in here and smash themselves and they didn’t want to be stopped. In the situation, it felt like it was specifically me they weren’t listening to, versus my husband or our other male coach.”

It doesn’t happen often, but Lindsay is also in the “lucky” position where she competes, so resistance is met by her out-lifting and beating those who haven’t learnt what a Box is about, what the culture is and what behaviours aren’t acceptable.

A COMPETITIVE MINDSET

“I went straight into competing; I can’t help it,” Lindsay said joyfully.

Three months into CrossFit and Lindsay was already competing – and loving it. Her first Open was in 2012 and she’s been a Regionals athlete seven years running, with two Sanctionals this season.

Source: Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc

What she loves most about CrossFit is that unique feeling of spending time perfecting a skill, working hard to achieve something not many people can do, and being proud of it.

“When you learn a new skill you have this feeling, that it is something you have worked really hard to learn and not like everyone can do. It feels really empowering.”

The ex-gymnast loves workouts that involve – obviously – gymnastics. Anything involving muscle ups, handstand push-ups, handstand walking, toes to bar or pull-ups she will like – a lot.

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Qualifying to the Games has been a dream eight years on the making, and her approach to training, goal setting and how you view achievements has changed dramatically since the start of the journey.

“It’s been a huge learning experience, when we opened the gym I really struggled.

“You start training by yourself in the middle of the day and we lose track of everything you loved about CrossFit: the community, training with your friends and having that hour of being with people – it’s fun and exciting. You lose all of that.

“I’ve gone through hating CrossFit, not wanting to compete anymore, not even wanting to do it anymore, and then pulling myself back in and finding that thing I love.”

She now does a group class every day and says that has been the biggest change for her, mentally and physically: “It’s way more enjoyable. The training and all the stuff I have to do on my own beforehand doesn’t feel like such a hard thing.”

It’s almost as if, if you want to be a competitive athlete, you have to be selfish, and not interrupt your training if someone walks through the door when you’re in the middle of your workout, Lindsay told me, slight frustration notable on her voice. “There’s something wrong about that. I love what I do and it’s because of the people.”

Source: Photos courtesy of CrossFit Ballina

It’s a balance hard to strike; being selfish with her time to pursue goals and giving her time to the people she cares about in her Box. Doing group classes has allowed her to build better relationships with her clients, as well as bringing back the community aspect to her training.

BLINDED

Eight years is a long time. A long time to have a goal and, year after year, not reaching the end. Because when you only focus on the ultimate goal, it’s easy to forget where you stand. Lindsay knows this very well; in the beginning of competition she struggled with mindset and resilience.

Her worth as a human would lower itself to mirror her athletic achievement – the feeling that she wasn’t good enough accompanied her often. Days of feeling like a failure.

All the negative talk. Another wasted year.

“The fact that CrossFit could take me into this huge depression; it’s amazing that it could happen,” Lindsay said. After all, this was the sport she had fallen in love with years back, it was meant to be her passion.

But she was blinded to the fact that she was competing on a regional level. That she was smashing PRs and having amazing experiences.

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“I feel really proud that I was able to work back from that really low point in my life. To come back to a place where I’ve qualified to the Games.

“It’s been my goal for eight years, and to come to a point where I’m really excited that it has happened, but it also doesn’t feel like it defines me as a human, that’s probably what I feel most proud of; that I could make that change and grow that much in a few years.”

COMMUNITY

Every Box owner will say so, and Lindsay agrees it’s the people who make her Box unique.

“You get to share really amazing experiences with people. Especially our older clients; they see such immediate differences in their quality of life and how confident they feel.

“One of our members, the younger 75-year-old, he can do pull ups, he learnt to pull up when he was 73.

“It just shows our younger athletes what’s possible when they get older, that the myths of ageing are not true at all.

“We’re so lucky in our gym – we get to see the best version of people. When they walk in the gym, they’re at their most accepting, most caring, most loving, most hard-working.”

CrossFit Ballina currently has around 240 members ranging in ages from under 20s to over 50s.

Opening your own Box is worth it, Lindsay says, if you love teaching and have a lot of patience, it can be the best and most rewarding job – do it.