“Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.”- Frank Lloyd Wright
PROFILE
From Pregnancy to Competing at the Games Together, Athlete-Coach Duo Share Amazing Relationship
The CrossFit Games are stressful, no doubt about it. Now, imagine competing at the CrossFit Games at 15-years-old, in your third-ever in-person competition, only able to contact your coach over the phone. This was Michigan-based teen athlete Hailey Rolfe’s first CrossFit Games experience in 2021, when she competed in the 14-15 Girls division with coach Emily Tanner back home in Texas, just days away from giving birth to her daughter.
“I didn’t really know any different, honestly,” Rolfe said. The then 15-year-old placed third that year with no event finishes outside the top ten, an impressive feat for a rookie. “I did learn that FaceTime is a very useful tool, though.”
Despite Rolfe’s amazing success during her rookie season, Tanner had a much more emotional experience. She attributes much of it to being nine months pregnant, but says she cried four times because of the overwhelming emotional rollercoaster of the weekend. The 33-year-old has competed at the CrossFit Games in the team division twice, in 2017 and 2022, and recognizes the mental and physical toll it can take on an athlete. The coach’s side of things, though, was a new experience.
“Any coach, especially one that’s been an athlete in the past, knows that coaching is more of an emotional rollercoaster and harder than competing in that you’re seeing your athlete go through these highs and lows of competing and you just want to be able to do it for them,” Tanner said.
Nerves and fear-of-missing-out aside, Tanner says the joy and excitement she held for Rolfe held strong all weekend. She spoke high praise of her athlete’s adaptability and maturity.
“If there’s one thing I know about Hailey, it’s that she can handle adversity and take anything thrown at her in stride,” Tanner said. “For being so young and still pretty new to the sport, she’s one of the most level headed people I’ve ever coached.”
In case you missed it: Lauren Kalil, the host of The Bottom Line, spoke to analyst Brian Friend about what the deal is with the Wodapalooza and Dubai qualifiers.
Get in on the action: CrossFit Games team Move Fast Lift Heavy are looking to house multiple teams moving forward and are now accepting applications.
Interesting read: Scott Perkins, the founder of Pliability, talks about his journey and his love of CrossFit in Men’s Health UK.
Zzzzzzs: In case you didn’t already need incentive, another study has shown that a lack of sleep can lead to a host of problems including negatively impacting immune stem cells, increasing risk of inflammatory disorders and heart disease. 😴
LIFESTYLE
MEMBER EXCLUSIVE
Don’t Make This Mistake While Trying to Improve Your Engine
As the CrossFit godfather of endurance training, the founder of Aerobic Capacity, and a coach to over 50 podium-finishing individuals and teams since 2013, Chris Hinshaw knows his stuff when it comes to improving your engine.
On Friday’s Coffee Break Conversation, a weekly half-hour live deep-dive exclusive to Rx members, we chat with Hinshaw about how to incorporate more endurance training into a class setting, the value of structuring your season, how strength and aerobic training actually marry well together and much more. For the full interview, tune in here.
One of our biggest takeaways from the conversation? Turns out you’re (likely) going about addressing your aerobic endurance weakness all wrong; particularly at this point in the year.
“My recommendation is to really slow down your intensity to find intensities that are sustainable. The purpose of the training that I’m recommending has nothing to do with intensity. It has to do with time. What we’re trying to do is spend more and more time building capacity, building stamina,” Hinshaw said.
The goal of the Crossfit Games is to find the fittest man and woman on Earth, and in doing so, the competition involves a balanced test among several events. But what is the goal of off-season CrossFit competitions? Morning Chalk Up’s Lauren Kalil sits down with Brian Friend and Chase Ingraham to discuss whether these competitions need a balanced test, what the goal of off-season competitions should be, and whether it needs to be a universal mission across the board.
Why Olympic Weightlifter Mattie Rogers Started an Inclusive, Gender-Less Clothing Brand
Mattie Rogers always wanted to start an apparel company.
But not just any kind of company.
“I didn’t want to jump in and actually do it unless I felt like I could add something that wasn’t already being done. There are a million and a half active apparel brands, so I wasn’t going to do this if that’s all that I have to offer,” said 27-year-old Rogers, who competed for the United States in weightlifting at the 2020 Olympics last summer in Tokyo, Japan.
So Rogers sat on the idea for a while, and eventually came up with a vision for her company.
“It basically came down to I wanted to be as inclusive as I could in every sense of the word. I knew right off the bat I wanted to be fully size inclusive, because that was the biggest gap I could identify,” she said, adding that she also wanted “to go about placing genders on clothing a little differently.”
The result was Vicaya, a size-inclusive apparel company without gender labels, that Rogers launched a year ago, just one month before she placed sixth in the world at the Olympics.
Remind me: Though an elite weightlifter now, Rogers found her sport through CrossFit, which she started in Florida when she was a young teenager. She competed in CrossFit for a year before switching her attention 100 percent to weightlifting.
Since then, Rogers has gone on to win silver twice at the World Weightlifting Championships, and most recently she won a gold medal in the women’s 76 kg event at the 2022 Pan American Weightlifting Championships. She also holds American records in the snatch, clean and jerk and total.
The details: On top of being size-inclusive, what sets Vicaya apart, Rogers explained, is that none of their clothes follow usual gender or sizing norms.
“I decided to be gender-less, which just means that I don’t assign a gender to the clothing, so those who may not identify as male or female in the associated styles won’t have to feel like they’re put into a box,” Rogers explained.
Further, Rogers and her team created their own size chart, where they “made up our own sizes completely,” she said, the goal being to “encourage people to measure themselves and have to find their size instead of being attached to, ‘Ok, I’m a size small,’ or ‘I’m a size large.’”
The big picture: Rogers might be one of the best lifters in the world, but she’s anything from being a tunnel-visioned athlete. In fact, her proudest moments in her sport have nothing to do with the medals she has won or the records she has set.
“I’m most proud of, not any specific record or winnings or anything like that, but more really learning about myself. I have severe anxiety, and learning how to, not overcome or conquer it, because that just doesn’t happen, but learning how to work with that and instead of trying to fight it, go with it and become friends with it (is what I’m most proud of),” she explained.
Rogers is equally humble when it comes to Vicaya. Although she would love her brand to grow beyond its current niche market in the weightlifting community, if it stays small, that’s OK, too, Rogers said. Because it’s about so much more than that to her.
“I didn’t start it to become some huge thing…If I were in this for money, I would have stopped probably six months ago. I’m doing it because I really am passionate about it. I really feel like what I’m doing is good, and I’m making products that wouldn’t otherwise be on the market,” she said.
THINGS TO...
...KNOW
What Carbs and When
Carbs are life. But depending on your workout routine, when to eat your carbs can be a little confusing. RP Strength gives you the lowdown on when and what kind of carbs you should eat for workouts.
Get Access To Training From The Best Coaches in CrossFit
TrainHeroic offers a free 7-day trial to the best coaches in CrossFit. Work with PRVN's Shane Orr, Training Think Tank's Max El-Hag, DEKA Comp's Michele Letendre, Brent Fikowski, Christian Harris, and dozens of top coaches that offer training that ranges from Games Competitors to your everyday athlete.
Rowing follows a precise order of operations and when that order gets messed up, things can get ugly! Learn the basics of rowing mechanics and use these tips and tricks to help you be the most efficient rower possible.
These Nano X2 Adventures were built as a survival kit to help you co-exist with dinosaurs, so they'll probably do okay in your gym. Including a ballistic nylon upper for ultimate protection, reflective details for visibility, and a carabiner compass to help you navigate the terrain.
Weightlifter Maddie Staniszewski from Vero Beach, FL snatches 215 pounds/98kg from the blocks.
Semifinal athlete James Sprague gets gymnasty with this movement that has yet to be seen on the CrossFit competition floor— one rep includes 1 toes-to-bar + 1 pull-up + 1 bar muscle-up.
Congratulations to Rob Mcgregor from Pen Y Bont Fitness in Wales on his 2:43 birthday Fran.
Babylon CrossFit in Babylon, NY is hosting a Barbell for Boobs event Saturday, October 15 at 7am with a goal of fundraising $20,000. Contact their team for details and how to help.
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