CrossFit vs HYROX | Noah Ohlsen | Ep 50

0:00Noah Ohlsen. That's me, baby. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. For the people who may not know who you are, would you just be able to sum yourself up? Absolutely. I am a 35-year-old husband and father. Those are the most important things to me now. I'm also an athlete. I've been competing in the fitness world for the last 15 years, mostly in CrossFit. In the last couple years, I've, I wouldn't say transitioned over to the high rock space, but I've dabbled. I think this weekend was my third ever High Rocks race. So two world championships under my belt.

0:35No intentions of ever becoming a pro or an elite 15 guy just because I think the gap is so wide now. And what I would have to do to close that gap would be pretty significant. So I'm just kind of having as much fun as I can getting to hang out with cool guys like you that are very impressive in this space. But for the most part, my focus still is in that CrossFit world. I've got the CrossFit Games coming up in a month from now exactly I'll be competing in the master's division for the first time I just turned 35 so that's uh is that the is that the age where you switch yeah so at 35 they start the master's categories and every five years there's a new age division um I can technically still compete in the open division if I want to which is what I've always done but I've done that 10 years and so to me this year it was more interesting exciting engaging to mix it up and compete in the master's category I think I've got a good chance hopefully of being able to win that and um yeah it's just it's cool I'm I'm excited I like the the place that I'm in right now no it's a super interesting space and we'll move on to kind of like what you think of where you think CrossFit will go where you think Hyros will go and like the the kind of I don't not argument but like the talk between them yeah because i think there is like not rival rivalry i think they're both great for each other totally that's um it's a good mutual respect now i think that it's kind of developed between the two but you do see online that there's a lot of kind of you know there's a crossfit corner there's a house corner totally and people like oh the other one's shit the other one's not and they're both incredible yeah i think they almost like progress onto each other as well people are starting to meet in the middle a little bit more now i think the last couple years there's been a shift in that which has been nice like you'll see more you're probably not seeing as many high rocksters going and doing crossfit at a competitive level but you're definitely seeing more crossfitters step in and do high rocks and i think that's a testament to high rocks just being a really healthy brand and competition and community right now so yeah i think as long as you guys and high rocks continues to do what it's doing you'll see more and more people start to come over and test it out yeah so for reference we are at uh we're in stockholm at the moment world championships yeah world championships you competed this morning yes sir uh you competed last night as well yeah yeah last night we competed um great race yeah uh how did your race go our race was okay i got to race pro doubles with my buddy bailey o 'brien from australia great kid uh we ran a 58 26 i think my best ever was a 54 four in Miami with Chandler and I think Bailey had done a 56 before so neither of us PB'd which is always a little bit bittersweet but I think I'm starting to understand a little bit now the nature of how high rocks is a bit different everywhere the setup can kind of vary what your time is like I was just talking to Alethea Boone who I think is the director of of sport in some capacity and she was saying that they had a panel on exercise science that the temperature is maybe the most impactful factor in a venue and that it was quite warm today.

3:45So I think there were a handful of people. The number three to five minutes slower, I've heard multiple times throughout the weekend that people are feeling like this course is a little bit off of whatever their best might have been. So did you guys feel like even if you put down your best effort, your time didn't necessarily reflect that? Yeah, we had a great race. It was warm out there though. yeah and i think all times were even uh you know alex and tim who won yeah i think that they were roughly around one minute to 90 seconds off okay no world records were set this weekend yeah this far at least um and obviously it's the time of year it's actually the longest day of the year i think it was yesterday here interesting so someone saw this so yeah the the sun didn't actually set i don't know if you noticed uh but it didn't actually set yesterday which is crazy it is pretty wild i closed the curtains in our hotel room at like 9 p.m and it was definitely still very bright which is unique no it was crazy but um yeah i want to i want to take it back to where it started for you like where did your fitness journey start where did you realize that you had talent i have always played sports i grew up playing sports um a little bit of everything football, American football, lacrosse, baseball, soccer, kind of as a youth.

5:05And then when I was in high school, I wrestled for a year, got beat up, hated it, transitioned into swimming and water polo, which was fun and unique. And then when I was my second year in university, I found CrossFit and was studying exercise science at the time at the University of Miami. So that just kind of went hand in hand, was learning a lot about that, was very interested in health and fitness, got into CrossFit. That was in 2010 and realized that I was decent at that. And 2014 was the first year that I qualified for the CrossFit Games. That also was kind of the time that CrossFit was starting to grow as a brand and it was possible to be a professional athlete in the sport.

5:52I had just graduated with my master's degree the same year that I qualified for the CrossFit Games. So it was this beautiful timing of not having a gap where I needed to go and search for a career in between. I just transitioned right into being a professional athlete, had a couple of sponsor contracts that kicked in that first year and was able to just go all in on being a pro CrossFitter, which at the time felt kind of silly to say. Now it's been 15 years that I've been doing that and making a living off of it. So super grateful for the career that I've had. I've had a very healthy one as well uh knock on wood I've not missed the games aside from last year because I was doing something else and um have competed 10 years in a row individually did one year on a team and then I'm going back this year for the first time in the master's category so been very active in that I've dabbled like I said in high rocks a couple of times did a marathon did an iron man um open to any other types of fitness i think as long as i'm doing it with people and for a purpose it's exciting for me it's very engaging i have like purpose in in training um yeah yeah no that's a that's some career yeah it's been fun and you know what the thing i love about crossfit is that it does genuinely train you for anything like you do not know what the workouts are going to be totally you've got to train everything to be ready for anything yeah and it's when i've done some high rocks races i think five years ago maybe even further back than that a lot of people thought crossfitters would be great at high rocks it's just crossfit but with more running and maybe at that time that's true that a crossfitter could have stepped into high rocks and done very well we're seeing now that high rocks is growing as a sport people that have a running background are going to be a lot more successful at racing high rocks than somebody that has a CrossFit background because the running component is so important.

7:48So now I think even though I'm well prepared, like I can go do relatively well in a high rocks race, if I wanted to, again, close that gap, I think I would have to give up a lot of the variety in my training that CrossFit normally brings in gymnastics and weightlifting, and I would have to focus solely on running. And obviously touching on the stations, but because I've got a pretty solid base there the focus would shift more towards that um yeah i think um if if say anyone was to give you a hyrax program at the moment like for you specifically like because you built all the strength for a number of years i think probably one strength session a week and then you just have a running program yeah i think i think for you that would be kind of like optimal maybe like touching up on just a bit of technique but um for like the burpee broad jumps you don't obviously you do a lot of burpees but like burpee broad jumps it's a skill in itself technical for sure um but uh again i think crossfit is a great because crossfit to me like you're always learning something and i think that's why it's so like addictive for people like you go into a crossfit gym you might start with how to learn how to power clean and then it'll be squat uh yeah and then it'll be a snatch yeah there's always uh there's a lot of goals that are very attainable and even if you you've learned the movement now you've got these numbers in mind that you want to always chase and do you find that high rocks is similar that you're trying to pb your average run time or pb your overall race time yeah yeah i think it's more uh tailored to someone who uh potentially likes grunt work yeah and likes hard work yeah a little more grindy and grindy stuff rather than like say the the crossfit side which is more skill acquisition right am i like but like you guys you can kind of like because you learn that skill of skill acquisition yeah the the amount of times that you've had to learn something new like i saw one time in the games but you you there was like you got given a workout and it was a skipping yeah they're skipping and you got like 10 minutes to learn it yeah for sure they they throw things like that in the mix every now and then and i think it gets mixed reviews some people think it's very cool to have us challenged with something that we've not ever done before and how quickly can you overcome and adapt to that but then sometimes when it doesn't show well like we're supposed to be some of the best athletes in the world you can't do it and you put us on tv looking silly tripping over a rope or we've done peg boards in the past we've never done that before people are like ah i feel like you should give them a little bit of a heads up so they can learn the skill just so it looks make it look good yeah aesthetic but i don't know yeah that's something that obviously you're never going to run into in the high rocks world at least the way that it's structured now because you know what you're doing you can prepare very specifically for it which i kind of like i i think that if there's um gives you a lot of purpose and structure to your training maybe sometimes you get a little bored that there's not as much variety as in the crossfit world but with crossfit sometimes you could spend an entire season focusing on building your strength and then that year at the games they happen not to test strength at all and and the the cards maybe just didn't play out in your favor so there's a little bit of risk there which is fun and exciting but it also can be frustrating at times into that then obviously you don't know what's going to be at the games and you've got to prepare everything yeah what does a typical week look like for you yeah i think now we know the categories that we're going to be tested in and you could probably even list most of them right there's going to be some sort of strength event but it could be anything with a barbell right you could be tested on a one rep max snatch but it could just as well be a one rep max deadlift or clean or there there's a lot of variety within what you can do with a barbell um and then there's going to be some sort of endurance event most of the time could be a 5k run it could be a triathlon like they've never gone as far as to do like a really big scale endurance event because it is a test where it's not just a high rocks race where you're doing one or maybe two in the weekend it's four days of three or four events per day so i think if they were to open up with a full marathon people would be so beat up for the rest of the weekend that again the performance viewership wouldn't be as exciting because everybody would just be moving so slow and sluggish um but yeah so sorry there's strength there's endurance there's going to be some sort of skill there's going to be a workout that has like mixed modality of both of those where you're going to run 800 meters almost like a high rocks come back in do some snatches do some muscle ups um and so you do have to train and kind of prepare for all of that and hope that you didn't miss anything and can just show up and do the best you can with what you got so like how would you even start with programming at all like how would you do it so like say from a monday to Sunday correct typically what would we be doing yeah that was your original question I glazed right over that but um normally my training week looks like Monday Tuesday Wednesday in the gym training Thursday is usually a swim day which is kind of more recovery like we said before lower impact on the body but you're still working your aerobic system Friday Saturday pretty hard training and then Sunday for me completely off um within those days usually I'll get to the gym at 10 a.m I'm doing maybe a my coach will kind of vary it where maybe Monday Wednesday Friday there's a strength session at the beginning where you're doing a couple different things with a barbell maybe some Olympic lifting at the beginning then some more pure strength some heavy squatting heavy pulling then you're going into uh we'll call it like a metcon maybe where you're doing a traditional CrossFit workout finishing up with an endurance thing at the end and then the next day maybe you're not touching a barbell but you're doing a lot of gymnastics skills a little bit more aerobic work um and then wednesday back on the barbell doing another something different for strength so if on monday you did pulling on wednesday you're going to do squatting and clean and jerks or something like that um but just trying to make sure that throughout the week you touch on all of those categories that you know you're going to be tested in and within a month block, you're getting variety within that so that if they test one of the lifts that we mentioned before, it's not like, oh man, I haven't done that particular lift in six months.

14:15We like really neglected that and I don't feel as confident in that. You hopefully have done enough that you look back and you're like, all right, I just did that three weeks ago. I know more or less where I'm at in that and I feel confident in it, but it definitely is hard with as much variety as there is to always feel confident and prepared because you don't know what's going to show up for sure and like even like a programming it like how many how many movements would you say that you practice within that monthly cycle that you've got to kind of like keep on top of and you've got to hit like once a month because if you think about just the tools we've got a barbell we've got a dumbbell we've got kettlebells yeah we've got sandbags we've got uh right like if you're doing team events you might have like a worm right and even within all of those items that you listed there's five or ten different movements that you can do with the kettlebell right so um man within a week we're probably touching on i'm just doing quick math in my head like 20 to 30 different movements in a week over the course of a month maybe it's 50 different movements that you're touching on in variations of the same movement which i think is fun it makes it really exciting and engaging and you don't get bored because you get to mix it up a lot um but there also is some element of wanting to have structure and knowing that you're showing up doing all the right things which you guys I think are able to do a little bit more there's been talk for a long time I'm sure it's starting to be said in high rocks too about how would they ever be able to put this in the olympics or something like that and if they did I think there would need to be a bit more structure to it my vision for that would be it would let's say it's a three-day competition and they decide that there's three events per day so you always know you're going to show up three-day competition three events per day event one is going to be an endurance event event two is going to be a mixed event event three is going to be a strength event something like that where you have these predetermined categories you know what you're going to get within that there can be variety because you can switch movements in and out distances weights and all that but there still is some sort of structure so that fans that are watching know what to expect and athletes that are preparing for it also know how to prepare for it yeah and I think that's it that's super important such another point that you mentioned before like if it is in the Olympics like you've got to be the cream of the crop you've got to perfect them exercise as much possible yeah like a clown on TV yeah yeah with it so who knows it may never ever happen it would be that kind of like talk that that potentially like CrossFit or something like that obviously there's all these different fitness events popping up yeah there's athex um what's the what's the new is one that just came up there's the world fitness project the crossfit games hyrox is the potential obviously i think hyrox is kind of like a separate they're trying to push for the olympics but is there like a another like fitness competition that wants to go into the olympics is that there's been talk in the crossfit space for a decade on how great it would be and i know there's been organizations that I've tried to make it happen.

17:12I have no idea where that stands. I don't have enough of the insider knowledge, but it would be incredible, right? As I mean, I'm 35 now. I don't know how many more years I'll continue to compete, but if they were to make it an Olympic sport, I would try my absolute hardest to still be able to call myself an Olympic athlete. I think it would be incredible. That's a dream for any other. Yeah, right. That's like the pinnacle of sport, period, no matter what sport you do. um so hopefully for either of us that comes to reality but even if it doesn't i think we've still had some pretty incredible careers gotten to do some really fun stuff traveling the world tell me i'm sure people that have watched the podcast have heard it from you before but i am curious what your athletic background has looked like can you give me a quick summary on how you got here uh i i always loved running as a kid okay i just was fascinated with it but i also uh was like the skinniest guy out of my friendship group no longer are so you've done a good job yeah we used to kind of like go to the gym uh i remember like this gym i think we had to be 14 to get into the gym okay and we were 12 at the time and we'd like lie about our age yeah yeah when we're younger i think they just let us in because they were they were keen they were happy that we're going yeah that's nice it was it was back when a time where like the gym apparently was bad for a 12 year old like it stunts your growth it does all this and uh i think all that's come out that it's nonsense now yeah and it's actually good to uh start training early but uh yeah it just uh it was kind of like a sawdust kind of gym and it was great and that's where kind of i was brought up i had my gym friends and then i went to uh an athletics club called lee harriers cool and i used to run kind of middle distance again because that was like competitively in in high school yeah yeah competitively but only at like a county level so i think uh i came first in like wigan schools sixth in like manchester which is like a greater manchester which is i don't know how many how many people are in greater manchester yeah but then you go to the national level and then like 300th yeah something like that so okay it was uh i would never any good just like that's still pretty impressive yeah but uh it kind of humbles you yeah you think you're good at this and then you go there and you're like 300th i feel like that's what happens to me when I come to a high rocks race.

19:28I'm like, I'm pretty fit. And most competitions that I step into, I'm going to be vying for the top spot. And then I come to a high rocks and I just get dusted by people. And I'm like, oh man, that doesn't feel awesome. But it's cool that there are so many incredible, incredible athletes period out there. So yeah, I know the feeling well. And then I think for me, I did double in a bit of CrossFit, but only did like six to 12 months. Nice. And I just realized - What age was that for you? probably like 17 18 okay and did you have aspirations to compete in that or just because i really struggled with the skill acquisition okay i would say to to be able to uh do a squat snatch to be able to do these things it wasn't mobility issues it was just getting like the timing right extension triple extension all that i'm still trying to figure that out and i've been doing it for 15 years um but um yeah it was it was really hard and obviously a lot of people um I just, I'm not very strong for kind of like my size.

20:25Yeah. But I just found, I actually went to a gym and it was called High Performance Center. And I used to coach there. And basically it was for people who couldn't get the grasp of CrossFit. And there's a lot of people out there. Was this before High Rocks was a thing? It was like when it was just starting. So I think we started there probably like 2020, 2021. And High Rocks was just coming about in the UK. uh i think uh it got big in like 2022 so you were training for something that you didn't really have any competitive goals for yet but you're like this just this type of training feels better for me and we was in a gym where the culture was just you get in at 5 a.m you you train you then do a full block of clients maybe like eight to ten clients then you train again okay double days every day yeah like you sacrifice everything for working hard and that's what you weren't training for anything in particular just because you loved it at the time we did kind of like local events and stuff like that but uh yeah it was this hybrid fitness instead of doing snatches it was basically deadlifts okay and it was like bench press yes and it was yes it's simple stuff but still can work really hard going straight into the ergs yeah straight into running and uh we we did this and i just kind of picked it up yeah and i got fit did my first tire ox won it and then thought oh i could actually be potentially good at that's awesome and that's how i kind of like i rolled into it but what was your first year of doing irox 2022 okay cool yeah um and how old are you now i am 27 now nice so uh yeah yeah it's um quite a few years ago but um yeah still young yeah i know if it makes you feel any better i would say when i was 27 i thought there's no way at the age that I am now 35 that I would still be competing at a high level feeling good enough to do so have the desire to do so and here I am all three of those things are are not true I still feel great I still really enjoy competing and I'm still able to do it at a high level so I don't know if that encourages you that you still have maybe at least another good eight years ahead of you maybe more than that and that's how I see I see if you look at the average age I think of the elite 15 I think it's 32 okay cool so even even so there's some longevity there yeah and and the some guys obviously uh there's hunter in the sport i think he's 36 now i think yeah so it's it's it's a sport that you kind of like grow into yeah and that's i think is nice as well endurance like there's marathoners uh you know i think you peep for a marathon like 38 or something like that i think it's a little bit later i could have just been making that yeah please don't check that i could see how later on yeah because you're building that base and it also is less taxing on your body so i feel like in a sport like crossfit if you're doing it for 10 years most of the time people are pretty beat up their joints are aching they've got some sort of injury or surgery that they've had to come back from fortunately i haven't dealt with any of that but i think in a sport like high rocks where it's a little less impactful just in terms of the amount of loading that you're putting on your body the amount of variety of positions that you have to get in you could probably do something like high rocks and stay healthier for longer yeah and i think that's what's great about it like the fact that almost anyone can do it and anyone can train for it yeah we've just seen this weekend like the amount of people that have flown all over the from all over the world yeah and compete in stockholm it's just it's just insane i think i heard somebody that works for high rock say that this year there were over 1.5 million different people that have raced in a high rocks which is pretty incredible That's I mean, I as someone who loves health and fitness and loves people being able to be the happiest, healthiest versions of themselves through exercise.

24:09I'm very grateful for the brand and the sport for providing everybody with that opportunity. It's cool. No, it's it's insane. Going back to kind of like your CrossFit career. Yeah. What was your favorite year? Oh, man. Yeah, it's it's tough. there have been so many unique experiences because there's so much variety in the competition some years are a little heavier on certain elements um there's also different eras of crossfit right like within the crossfit space there was like the the og era i feel like where if you know it from way back i don't even know if you'll recognize some of these names but there was rich froning chris Spieler, Jason Kalipa, those guys were the wave that was like just before when I started, although I am super grateful in 2014, my first year was a lot of those guys last year.

25:03So I got to experience competing alongside some of what are like, legends in the sport and some of the greatest guys that have ever done it and really inspired me. And then there's this, there was I think this middle block of guys that were in there from like 2014 to, I don't know, 2020, maybe that was myself, Matt Fraser, Travis Mayer, Will Morad. I'm missing some guys, but a lot of really great athletes, Patrick Vellner, Brent Fikowski, and all the women, obviously, Tia, Katrin, Annie. And then we're kind of now in this third slash new wave of guys where there's James Sprague, Jason Hopper, Dallin Pepper.

25:42And so it's cool to kind of bend along the ride for three different like generations of CrossFit. I think that also the location varies how the competition experience goes. It's been in California for a big chunk. It was in Madison, Wisconsin for a big chunk. They did Texas, New York, back in California. To pin down a specific year, I think one of the ones that comes to mind first, because it was so unique in 2020, rather than canceling the CrossFit games due to COVID and a lot of the world being shut down. What they did was the first portion of the games to narrow the field down to make it safer.

26:22They had the top 30 men and women from the previous stage of competition compete at home. They sent one judge to every athlete at their home gym. Everybody did the same set of workouts over the course of I think three or four days. The top five men and women after that weekend kind of like an at-home competition, qualified for the finals. And then they took the top five men and the top five women to California, had this very secluded private CrossFit Games with just the top five there. And that was interesting. It was a very unique experience because there were no fans there. There was just the organizers of the event, the CrossFit Games people.

27:02Every athlete was allowed to bring one coach. And so it was one coach, one athlete. So 10 people there in the warmup area, a couple people kind of moving you out onto the competition floor the directors and all that but it was very like eerie and quiet and different but super cool that I think I was able to be a part of a hopefully once in a lifetime thing I hope it never happens like that again because we're healthy and never go through another pandemic but that was also one of the most grueling years as well there were I think 15 plus events over the course of three or four days and some of them were really brutal um we had a a trail run through the mountains in california and there was always there's like this mental um test that we got put through where you thought you were coming up to the finish line and when you cross the finish line the director of the competition said this is actually the halfway point now you need to turn around and run the course back in reverse and nobody knew that until you got to that halfway point um and then there was another event at the end of that competition that was called atalanta that was with a weighted vest on you had to do 100 i'm sorry a mile run 100 handstand push-ups 200 pistol squats with a way 300 pull-ups all with a weighted vest and then another mile run at the end and that was at the end of already a brutal weekend so similar to like a murph yeah exactly it was like a scaled up murph harder movements um and that was pretty gnarly so that one stands out the best year that i ever performed I finished in second in 2019.

28:35Almost won it. I was in the lead for a good while there. I've had two different years where I've had the leader's jersey on. That's something that they'll do where if you're winning at any time throughout the weekend, you get to put on the leader jersey. It's kind of like the yellow jersey in cycling. Exactly. Yeah, everybody knows who the top dog is and they're all chasing you down. So that's been a fun experience. Could never quite hold on to it until the very end, unfortunately, but still super grateful. matt freezer one i think that was so he won that year did the the covid year i think that was the year that he retired afterwards um i'm i've been more of a longevity guy so for me although i've always wanted to podium i think the the goal of competing for 10 years in a row is something that i accomplished and was very proud of i made the podium uh individually i finished second in 2019 made the podium on a team in 2024 we took third your team i was with a guy named tola maracino who's one of the strongest guys in our sport he's incredibly strong like snatches 330 pounds 150 kilos cleans an insane amount deadlifts a ton and is still very well-rounded and then two amazing women from norway matilda and lena they all moved to miami for that season and we had a really great experience we took third and so i've got a silver medal and a bronze medal and i'm hoping this year that i can round it out with a gold medal in the master's category yeah no that's uh like you say that i think that's more impressive than anything like you say that longevity in the sport showing that you can do that and you you're not just this athlete that you know is like a one-hit wonder yeah you've been around forever and you are an og yeah because of that which is nah it's super inspiring and it just shows like yeah you you look at the long game you don't just look at like what's to come like is that your mentality i think a lot of that and and there's a lot of things that this can apply to in life an intentional perspective shifting is really important there if you are somebody that values winning and you don't care about the longevity then maybe you're not as impressed by that but if you decide you make the decision i want to be around for a long time i want to continue to be healthy and that that's something that's important to me.

30:47I can choose to be proud of that. For example, in 2019, when I finished in second, I feel like I was so close to winning. A lot of people were like, oh man, that must have been so tough to have been so close to winning and not have won. And in the moment I was a little bit torn, but then I decided very early on after the competition, like instead of feeling like this bitter sweetness that I was so close to winning, I'm going to choose to celebrate the fact that I finished in second and it's the first time I've ever been on the podium and it was an incredible experience so I think if you make your journey something that's exciting to you and appealing to other people Bailey O 'Brien the guy that I ran with this weekend he also was just talking to me about how he's shifted from wanting to be like this elite competitor to now prioritizing enjoying the experience so he'd rather go out and have a good time and be healthy and look good and feel good and create awesome content than go win the competition, but be miserable and tired and not be able to focus on anything else.

31:49And that's, that's just his, that's what's important to him. And he's been very successful in that. And other people view his content and what he's doing as, man, that's awesome. I, I really am inspired by you, but there might be somebody else that's never heard of him because he's not made the podium and are way more inspired by the elite 15 guys who maybe don't make a ton of content, but are super successful. So again, I think it all comes down to what you choose your perspective to be on something and what's important to you but in order to live a happy life that you're grateful for I think you got to be happy with what you got and what you've done do you think a lot of people say this but do you think winning and happiness can be in the same sentence yeah I think so honestly I've when I say winning like uh like the preparation the sacrifice everything that comes with like you know having to be at that level yeah yeah it's obviously tough and matt fraser is a good example of that he's talked about before how he sacrificed everything when he was competing just to be able to win time with his friends time with his family time with his wife experiences like he wouldn't go to friends weddings because he had to train and he doesn't regret that at all because he was so dominant and now he's able to be in a chapter of his life where he's a father he has two kids he's a great husband and And maybe he's found balance in that.

33:09Like, I'm going to go super hard for this amount of time and then know that when I come out of it, I'll be able to be successful. I was a bit different in that I didn't want to make as many of those sacrifices in the moment. I wanted to make sure that I showed up for my friends and for my wife then at the expense of maybe not being the greatest athlete. Maybe I could have won the CrossFit Games if I made more sacrifices at the time, but but it wouldn't have felt right to me in my heart and my spirit. So I'm sure it can be done. I think if you're incredibly gifted that you could put in enough hard work to be able to close the gap and win and not sacrifice all the other stuff, but it definitely would be tough.

33:51There's a fine line there. I've been fortunate enough to win some competitions, like some of the bigger ones in the CrossFit space. I won a competition in Dubai. That was a big thing back in the day, paid a lot of money. I've won Wadapalooza a bunch of times and, and I was like happy and healthy at the time. I had great relationships and had a ton of fun. So I know it's possible. That wasn't the big thing. Like I didn't win the ultimate goal of the CrossFit games, but I still won some stuff and was winning at life too. So I, I know that it's possible to find that balance, but I think it obviously makes sense that it would be difficult to be the absolute best and put everything into working hard enough to be great at that and still being able to have kind of a normal life.

34:35Yeah, no, it's interesting. I remember listening to something with Matt Fraser, and I think he was on a podcast and he was like, he was talking about rest days. And he was like, my competitors go to the beach on their rest day. And he said, that's not resting. Yeah. Well, what is when he when he talks about that what is like a rest day like for me I think there are two elements of recovery and maybe even more than that but the ones that are really important to me are being able to physically recover to get back and train on a non-rest day and then to spiritually like relationally recover there I it's really important for me to make sure that my wife feels prioritized now my son and the rest of my family.

35:20I want to be fully present with them on a rest day. I owe them that and even more than that. So on a Sunday, I don't do absolutely any training or stretching or recovering because I want to just have fun with them. I want to be present as a father and a husband. And for me, that refuels me. I think if I were to have a Sunday where instead of completely enjoying time with them, they went to the beach and I was at home stretching or swimming or like with the Norma Tech boots on, I wouldn't feel good doing that. And my priorities are shifting a little bit now too. So when I'm at the gym doing zone two work a couple years ago, I would be able to do that and just shut off my brain and do the work that I needed to.

36:10Sometimes now it's a Friday maybe, which is not typically a rest day, but my wife has finished work and she's at home playing with my son and I'm sitting on the rower at the gym and I'm thinking, man, I would much rather instead of doing 90 minutes of this, which is programmed, I'm so tempted to just do 60 minutes and get home to them. And obviously that's not going to lead to me being the best athlete, but I think I'm okay with that now with the balance of being a pretty good athlete and being able to accomplish goals and still compete in a sport that I love, but to be a great father and a great husband and enjoy the balance in my life.

36:49I love how you said recovering isn't just about the body. Yeah. It's more about like, like you said, the mind and like filling up that cup. Yeah, totally. Training is draining. Sometimes it's not enjoyable. Um, how do you, obviously you're so motivated you're training like six days a week. Yeah. How do you make training as enjoyable as possible? That's a great question. And that's been really important for me to have, a long career, I think, is to have made it very fun. And I think a great training environment, good friends to be able to train with, training partners, a training crew is super fun.

37:25Being intentional about making sure I'm having fun in the in-between moments, right? Like when the clock starts, I'm going to dial in and I'm going to be serious and I'm going to try to kick everybody's butt that I'm working out with. But when the clock is off and we're either warming up or cooling down, like just fun banter and being lighthearted and having a good time, I think allows me to enjoy that. Happy but hungry has been kind of a mantra that I've had for a long time. And to me, that means pursuing something that's very difficult, but also enjoying the process of doing that. And if you can find the proper balance there, the happy, like enjoying it, having fun, that's gonna allow you to do it longer.

38:03And the hungry, being able to work really, really hard and pursue great things is gonna allow you to be successful. If you do too much of one or the other, if you're just focused on the hungry and not the happy, I feel like maybe you have one of those really high peaks but are probably going to burn out and either get injured or get a little mentally fatigued with it all and if you're just having fun and not taking it very seriously sure you can have a great time for a very long time but you're maybe not going to be as successful as you could if you are able to really dial in i love it it feels i feel like everything that we're talking about like there's a balance yeah it's kind of like this perfect balance and yeah you probably have it you've unlocked that i i've tried for sure like i said i think there are times that i could look back and be like man if i would have trained harder here or if i would have been a better partner here to to my wife but i i do have a look back or do you do you try and like always stay positive look forward onto the next thing um mostly look ahead and try to even more than look ahead just be present in the moment i know that's really hard to do i'll find that sometimes i'm like on a walk with my wife and my son and i'm like all right well what are we gonna do after this walk and and I check myself and I'm like just be on the walk just enjoy this moment like when I'm here in Stockholm in a hotel room by myself I'm dreaming about getting back home and just walking down our neighborhood street holding hands and pushing the stroller like I want that moment but then when I'm in it I'm thinking about what's next so I think that's something that I would like to do better at but I think it's probably good to quickly look back and reflect and be like okay what can i learn from these experiences in the past how can i do better for the future plan a little bit for the future and prep for it but for the most part try to enjoy the present moment yeah no that's uh that's that's insane um what um what's next for you like you said you've obviously got the crossfit games coming up yeah but where do you see your career going now that's a good question my brother uh i i haven't really figured it all out yet i think um um like i said a while ago when i was your age 27 i thought there's no way i'm still going to be doing this at this age i thought maybe 30 would kind of be the the cap to it and i've continued to enjoy it i think there's a possibility that after this year i still am healthy enough and enjoying it enough to continue to compete in crossfit there's i uh watched a teammate of mine have a lot of fun competing this season and they her and her teammates won a semi-final event and We're like so fired up and celebrating together.

40:35And I was like, man, the team thing was so enjoyable. Like if you're really doing that with somebody that you love, it can be like doing doubles. If it goes well, the highs are higher because you get to celebrate together. The lows are obviously lower because you can feel some guilt and like it's harder to have that team dynamic. But beyond this year as a master, if I could put together a dream team, I'd love to maybe do that and CrossFit one more time and try to win the games on a team. But I'm obviously not going to be able to compete forever, even though the opportunity exists. Like I could continue to compete in CrossFit until I'm 70 plus is the highest master's category.

41:10That sounds unreasonable. I don't know that I'd be able to continue to support my family and pay our bills in doing that. So I think there will come a time in the near future when I transition into another role as more of a professional in a different capacity. I've talked for a while about doing a podcast like this, which I think is awesome and very positively impactful, hopefully, to everybody that's watching out there. So kudos to you for doing that. My manager who owns an agency called Ripple Sports, who's had a great weekend out here, actually, Bijan is my manager, and he represents Dylan Scott and Alyssa McKinley, and they both won individually, which was huge for Ripple on, what was that, Thursday or Friday night.

41:52Very exciting. he has talked about me stepping in and taking a role um in ripple sports in some way bijan and i have been working together for since basically the beginning of my career he we went to college together he started representing me right when he graduated law school and has now kind of we've grown together in this so i think that's exciting to me to be able to like take all of the experience that i've had as an athlete and maybe be able to give back to another generation of athletes in a different way. Being an athlete, as you know, is a very selfish pursuit because you need to focus on being the best version of yourself when you take the competition floor.

42:29So I think the next chapter for me is being the best version of myself for others, for my wife, for my son, and maybe for other athletes that I can either represent and help or coach or I don't know. I don't know what it looks like. Maybe inspire and doing more content and media stuff. But I would imagine it'll still be something in the health and fitness world because I'm very passionate about that. yeah you've got great energy as well whether it's podcasts whether it's i could see you like commentating yeah it could be fun doing something like that like yeah you've got so much good energy and like you say you've got so much wisdom as well so i hope so um but um yeah with with all these like fitness events like growing obviously it's insane because like at the end of the day i think one of your big goals and as well with me exactly the same is we want to get as many people into fitness as possible because you know how it's changed your life how it's give you confidence how it's like there's endless no one got fit and regretted it yeah i agree hopefully yeah so like that that's kind of like the aim but like with all these fitness events kind of like arising which are you like most excited about it's interesting we're in such a positive place in fitness that it's growing so much right now and people are prioritizing it which i think is great there's nothing wrong with that i what i've heard people say and i guess i understand now the danger of there being so many events is that it can kind of fragment the the community and where there's so many options that people try their hand in this and that and this and that and like every event kind of grows to here whereas if it was just like one or two specific events that everybody was putting their time and money and energy into those events could grow up to here and i don't know like would it be a better world for people competing if it was like just the crossfit games and just hyrox and those were the two and then there's obviously running events and there's different types of events but in the like competitive fitness world if there were two monster brands that were doing things really well or is it great that now there's there's high rocks world fitness project xenom games ethics crossfit games where the the big dogs are like we can't go and compete in all six of those events it wouldn't make sense we'd be spread so thin the types of training that we have to do is so different and so they're probably not going to grow to the level that they'd be able to if there were only one or two of them so do you understand what i mean like that there's um of course it's pluses and some minuses yeah and like even like obviously you we've got kind of like not headaches but like you're looking at these events saying which ones should i go yeah yeah and which ones should i try and try and prioritize and train for and stuff like that i think overall like for for the people competing like it's great to have options i think it's incredible but for for brands it must be hard to kind of because they like probably placing the bets yeah which one do i want to invest yeah which one do you want to invest in which one do you want to put time and effort in and like you say there's only so many pots of money to professionalize these sports yeah uh if if there's so many then there's no not going to be many it's a little bit diluted and yeah and things like that but uh like i say i feel like in general like there's there's so many people willing to invest in the sport hopefully it's they all grow yeah yeah everything but um yeah it's uh it's really interesting i'm i'm uh i'm really intrigued about this xenon yeah i think they're decathlon of fitness i think they've called it i believe so yeah and it seems like i feel like we now look at it through the lens of like does it favor does an event favor more of a crossfitter or like an endurance hyroxer and i would guess that xenon is going to favor a crossfitter maybe a little bit more because there still are some really high skill movements like i think they have muscle ups and they have a one rep max snatch and like somebody that doesn't train those is gonna have a really hard time trying to figure that out without having ever done it whereas something like a high rocks if you've never done a farmer's carry you can you can just grab the kettlebells and and go with them so i know it's funny i was wondering if we would get into this topic i saw a video recently that somebody had done where it was like some of the best high rocks people and the best cry crossfit people if they switched over and there was this argument i didn't watch the video but i saw that the thumbnail was about that like who would be more competitively successful there is no like there's no question about it like what what is your well well crossfitters like like you said at the beginning like crossfitters can compete in high rocks yeah a relatively good level yeah yes they might not be elite 15 but there are there have been people in the elite 15 that have been ex-crossfitters and they still are lauren weeks yeah it's done dabbled in a little bit and things like that um i even like bo wills i know he is a crossfit coach he owns the whole crossfit gym yeah and he's been in the elite 15 for a number of years now um so that can definitely happen anyone in the in the high rock space unless you've had training you're you're definitely or experienced with crossfit you're definitely you're nowhere near and i think uh as well like you can almost i think this is one of the reasons high rocks is doing so well is because anyone you can make that dream possible so if you say i want to get to the top of this sport it's possible for almost anybody right anybody almost anyone obviously genetics play a part and yes it's going to get more elitist it's going to get more um harder to get into that elite 15 but the dream is there and it's it is possible whereas i think you need to be from and obviously you're the expert on this but if you're not from a weightlifting background or gymnastics background you're probably not going to make the olympic sorry the i think now that is more the case maybe 10 or 15 years ago crossfit was in a similar place as hyrox is now where anybody that like happens to see it on tv or watch see it on instagram can be like oh that looks really cool i want to try that and maybe make it to the highest level excuse me that was me in 2010 i stepped into a crossfit gym guido trinidad was the guy that owned the gym and he was a beast he was jacked and he was awesome and he competed at the crossfit games and i was like i want to do that and four years later i did it now i think there are probably people that are you've got to train for it for your life you've got to be brought up that way in my opinion i don't know about you but like you've got to from from like a kid or very young like you probably like i want to be a crossfit athlete and to be the best yeah to be at the pinnacle i would imagine like you said as a sport matures and gets older and more uh of a household name like hyrox is becoming and crossfit has been for a while it'll just be harder and harder to get to the top um it's interesting yeah there's also another thing about uh uh which i i thought was interesting about crossfitters i think there was like something i saw something and it was like uh most crossfitters would make their national weightlifting team who go to the crossfit like most crossfit games athletes yeah the national olympic weightlifting team the level has gotten so much better in crossfit for sure whereas with the running of uh crossfit athletes like it's i think the the average like 5k time is like 17 18 minutes yeah what's world class what 12 13 minutes yeah no that's so far so it's so far off like in terms of the running space yeah yeah that's an interesting stat to know yeah so it's it's crossfit is very much the the point the post was crossfit is very much towards strength compared to kind of like endurance but you could say you've just got to be with with the endurance like you said you before this she was like i i run one or two times a week right because you've got to fit so many different exercises you also swim once or twice a week yeah you also cycle once or twice a week you also row ski all these things you gotta do you've got to kind of fit you can't prioritize everything so you've got to be kind of like like say prepared for anything but you you can't be optimal at anything yeah yeah exactly and um i it's interesting i think once you finally understand And the difference between CrossFit and High Rocks, but I had a conversation before I came out to Sweden this weekend.

50:52Our nanny, Haley, was saying, you're going to crush it. You're going to win, right? Like, High Rocks is so easy compared to CrossFit. And I laughed and I said, I'm going to come nowhere close to winning because those guys are so good at what they do. It's so very different, the level of endurance capacity that a High Rocks athlete has. They're just running so much faster than we are. And so I have a huge respect for you guys and your ability to do what you do. And I think for a little while, people didn't. And still, obviously, based on that comment from Haley, as great as she is, like she just doesn't understand and get it yet.

51:30People are starting to more now. I think maybe when I started to, I thought, OK, yeah, I could probably hang with the best guys in High Rocks. And now I know that's not true. And I remember after the world championships, I said something about there's no way that like a CrossFit Games athlete would be able to come in and immediately be in the Elite 15. And people were like, how could you say that? That's not true. You don't respect CrossFit. And again, that's just somebody that doesn't understand that it's such a it's yes, they're similar. We do a lot of the same movements, but it's so very different what you would need to focus on and prioritize in your training.

52:05And so I think both athletes are phenomenal at the highest level. and you can't really make the comparison anymore just because they're such different sports even though they're using very similar movements on that it within kind of like and we'll talk about the full like crossfit era choose one athlete that you think if they like give a solid kind of like two three years to high rocks who do you think would be the the best high rocks athlete within the crossfit field like throughout all the time it might be someone who's retired now i mean like tia to me came in and did really really well she got the world record with um joanna i think yeah um she's incredible tia's a freak of nature she won the games like i don't know seven or eight times at this point and it's just so good that she'd be one of the only people that i think could cross over and do that well her partner james newberry has done a really good job like he's qualified for the elite 15 doubles yeah super impressive he was a really high level crossfitter for a long time so they've kind of proven that it's possible if you shift your priorities in your training um but looking at it it would obviously be somebody that's got more of an endurance background that's very good at crossfit but maybe has always finished in the middle of the pack on average but excelled really well in some of the endurance events um as um is it is it ricky that's got probably the best time yeah he was actually crossed over into i think what is his best individual okay yeah i don't know how many people have done a sub 60 years ago now okay so so obviously times have moved on like in the last year like um not saying sub 60 is incredible yeah but um like the level the amount of sub 60 athletes around now like totally yeah you get it but back in uh you know two years ago there was there was a handful for sure yeah it's cool how that sport is growing you'll you see that in high rocks you've seen it in crossfit like 10 years ago the one rep max snatch was now what everybody hits like it's your baseline the person that won the snatch event now is what weight everybody has to be hitting in order to be competing at the crossfit game so sport evolves it happens it's great it's as an athlete it's difficult because you need to continue to keep up with it but it's cool because it inspires you to continue to push your limits and what you thought was possible for yourself yeah no no it's uh it's an insane space and i love how it just keeps on fucking growing do you think i feel like people have said this too like eventually though there's gonna be a threshold let's use high rocks as an example right there world record continues to get set but at a certain point like there's no way anybody's ever gonna run a sub what 40 high rocks it's just impossible even if you get so much faster like what do you think the threshold is i think for singles i think i think uh 51 i think it'll be it'll be interesting to see that unless the you don't think somebody could ever do uh 51 i think Alex ran a 51-59.

54:58I think that's a world record at the moment, but that was on a super fast course. Unless the course changes and the sleds get lighter or whatever, I think it's going to be a struggle to go faster than that. And faster than 51 minutes. Maybe someone in the future, but yeah, it's going to be interesting to see. With the doubles, I think we're just touching the surface. I think there potentially could be people that uh run uh maybe like uh i think for obviously sub 47 i think yeah i think but i don't think it's going to yeah i think at the moment like uh the records that have been set this year i think they're going to stay for a little bit okay interesting yeah a couple years ago yeah there were records that have been broken within the last few but you think it's going to slow down and kind of stick where it's at right now i think so i think i think for the time being yeah but uh We're seeing new people come into the spot all the time, which is incredible.

55:54I want to finish with a couple of quick questions. First of all, have you got any bad habits? I'm sure, yeah. This sounds like a question for my wife. She'd be able to list all of them for sure. She loves me, and I love her, but she's definitely more aware of them. My driving is something that we argue about probably the most. I just drive a little bit too fast and pay a little bit less attention than I think she would like. I think I'm a good driver, but she doesn't. You're kind of like Max Verstappen. Yeah, exactly. Being a Red Bull athlete, I think that's got to be what it is. I'm just like motivated to be fast and win everything.

56:34Just think you're on the Monaco Grand Prix track. On the circuit all the time, yeah. What else? I think I do find myself being distracted sometimes, like the world that we live in, to be like connected on social media. But it's a part of our job now too. So it's really easy to be like, oh, I'm working. But you're not. You're like, I want to do a better job sometimes of having very designated times of being on my phone to get the things done that I need to and then putting my phone away and focusing on being with my family and my friends um sometimes I'll catch myself like my wife and son are playing in his little play pen and and I'm over there in the kitchen on my phone like either making a post or I have scrolled a little bit and I'm like ah what am I doing like I this is not important that is important um so that's a bad habit that I want to get better at but no that's uh yeah I think we of that especially like in today's day and age yeah but yeah it's good to be mindful of that and you know those aren't so bad right they're not bad no i think i've got worse habits okay give us one of them um i think i'm just messy okay yeah especially i don't know if you get this but like i think that's a key sign when you know that you're overtraining one when you're grumpy all the time like yeah just just waking up grumpy and then two like when you you clear one's like you the washing you you got clean washing on a bed or whatever you don't put it away like you just don't have the time and energy for it because you're like no way not right now yeah i know that you just feel like a zombie yeah but i think that is a key it sounds weird but uh i find like i'm really bad at rest but when i take like a full rest day i'm like doing shit around the house yeah i'm trying to like because i'm like well Emily loves rest days yeah she's like oh like you never do this you never tidy up after yourself like what's this yeah um and i think it's just because you've got that bit more of an energy totally what you do to to do um have you got any hobbies like outside of training what what hobbies what you get up to obviously you've got family yeah um i i don't have any like one particular thing like i go golf when i have free time or anything like that um i think for me right now it is just spending time with my family we um we have an almost one year old son which is super fun and has kind of become more of a hobby like My free time has become just spending time with him.

58:57And I used to be, and I still am, very productivity-driven. If I'm just sitting back doing nothing, I feel guilty. I'm like, I should be doing this. I want to be accomplishing something, getting something done, even if it's folding laundry or cleaning the kitchen. I need to be taking action. And so having a son now, I need to, and I'm getting better at being okay with, hey, I'm not accomplishing anything right now but just hanging out with him and playing with him like that is valuable and that's that's good for him it's good for me we're bonding um so that's been just a shift a little tip for you that might make me a little bit better like when you when you're like you say when you're when you're bonding here you're playing about with uh with your little one maybe just have like the dishwasher working in the background yeah that's good yeah the dryer on like that like that because that's doing the work for you exactly you that's good good advice You're going to be a great dad someday.

59:50And then final question. What you got? What would you tell your 16 year old self?

59:58Just keep doing what you're doing. I think that question is one that I've gotten before, more or less. What would you tell your younger self? And I'm so happy with where I've ended up now that I wouldn't want to go back and change their trajectory too much of my life, which is cool. That's a good thing to be able to say, I think. one thing that I think in that time period that I struggled with and maybe still do but I'm better at now was self-confidence I was very self-conscious as a high school or college student like I don't know I always felt like even I would have in the past in this situation have been thinking a lot more about saying the right things and what is Jake gonna think about in my responses with him and what are the people watching gonna think about what I say and that's not a fun place to be now I'm a lot more comfortable with who I am and so I'm able to just speak freely and not be so worried about how it comes off which is great and it's not always like that right like you meet a new person and you want to make a good impression obviously but I think just having confidence and like hey it's okay to be who you are it's okay to be a little bit silly like I don't know whatever it is you don't have to always be cool and tough and people care a lot less about what you're doing than you think that they are.

1:01:12You know, you go into a party if you're in college and you feel like all eyes are on you and nobody cares what you're doing, you know? So I think just inspiring myself and other young people to just be yourself and relax and don't be so stressed out about what everybody else thinks. People will love you for you. Yeah, exactly. You're bringing something unique to the table in the world and just keep doing that. Thank you, Noah. Thank you, brother. It's been a pleasure.