How Three-Time Games Qualifier Alexis Raptis Is Preparing for the 2024 CrossFit Games
Alexis Raptis has been competing in CrossFit since 2015.
During her teen career, she took fourth in 2015 in the Girls 16-17 category before coming back and taking second in 2016.
As an Individual, she broke through in 2022, qualifying for the Games and taking 10th. Last season, she took sixth overall, just behind Alex Gazan.
- We sat down with Raptis to discuss everything that goes into her CrossFit Games preparation, from nutrition and training to her mental game.
Here’s what we learned.
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Nutrition
Raptis keeps her nutrition as simple as possible.
What that usually boils down to, she said, is eating relatively the same day in and day out during the training season.
- Raptis follows a macronutrient prescription — right now, she’s at approximately 150 grams of protein, 70-80 grams of fat, and 500-550 grams of carbohydrates per day — that she and her Training Think Tank nutrition coach, Becky Rogers, calculated.
Although she has a prescribed set of numbers, Raptis said she tends to listen to her body and trust her feelings.
- In other words, if she is hungry more on any given day, she doesn’t restrict herself from eating more because she’s limited to a strict set of macronutrient numbers — she simply eats more.
Raptis’ nutrition coach also happens to be married to her coach at Training Think Tank, Adam Rogers, an arrangement that she acknowledged makes decision-making easy on her end.
Becky can review Adam’s programming and adjust her food intake on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis to help Raptis optimize her results in each training session.
In addition to her nutritional health, Raptis works with a Wild Health coach to help keep her colitis at bay. Since they began working together, she’s had zero flare-ups.
Training
“This is my favorite time of the year,” Raptis said, referring to the grind of mid-summer Games training.
She currently trains on-site at Training Think Tank in Alpharetta, GA, completing two to four sessions daily with one full rest day a week.
- Her training partners include nine-time Games athlete Travis Mayer and 2024 Games rookie Linda Keesman from the Netherlands.
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Raptis’ feelings around training in a group have evolved across her young career when she liked to do more things on her own. As she’s grown more confident as an athlete, Raptis proved to herself that she could “hang with the big dawgs,” as she said, and now thoroughly enjoys the group environment.
- She talked about respect for both Mayer and Keesman and how she has an opportunity to experience the training from their perspectives as a seasoned vet (Mayer) and as a rookie (Keesman) while being somewhere in the middle herself.
Even when they aren’t “racing” in a session or doing something completely different, she appreciates being near them and having them around during her training sessions.
Raptis is known for her impressive handstand push-ups and incredible engine, and at the 2023 CrossFit Games, she won “Echo Press.”
- This season, though, she has been doubling down on her weaknesses.
At the 2023 Games, her lowest finishes were in events that included odd objects. Through her training, Raptis has learned that raw strength is not her issue. Instead, it’s managing the odd shapes efficiently.
On the competition floor at the Games, placements on the finish line come down to seconds or hundredths of a second, so she knows that she doesn’t just have to be able to move the sandbag well — she has to do it the best.
And the reason this part of the season is her favorite?
- Although she doesn’t necessarily love swimming, she loves the process of testing her body on the things she doesn’t get to do every day and seeing how well she can perform when uncomfortable.
Mental Game
Raptis has learned that she has a vast reserve of energy and intensity that she can tap into, but it’s been difficult to learn how to harness it to her advantage.
Through work with her mindset coach, Raptis is learning to channel this energy positively and to avoid spiraling thoughts while fine-tuning how to execute that with better intent and help her on the competition floor.
- She has incorporated more journaling this year. Regardless if it’s three sentences or three pages, she tries to do a little bit every day.
Bonus Category: Time Management
The time commitment during Games training is no joke, Raptis said.
- Beyond the two to four training sessions she does throughout the day, everything outside the gym that she needs to do to dial in her performance in the gym, takes the most time.
Whether preparing meals, mobilizing, or spending time out in nature, she’s always doing something to promote recovery or prepare for her next session. Then it’s time for bed and repeat for the next day.
The Bottom Line
Raptis is ready to take on the 2024 CrossFit Games with an eye toward consistency.
- “I want to show up and just be very consistent this year,” she said. “I think consistency is what takes you to the top. I don’t want to go out there and try to win every workout, I want to go out there and be consistent and do really well in every workout. I think if I do that, I’ll end the weekend in a good place, and I’ll be really, really happy.”
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Featured image: Frank Nguyen