Founder and CEO of O2 Hydration Dave Colina has met some amazing people in his time. But none like Brian Chontosh.
- The two met at the 2017 CrossFit Games when Colina’s O2 Hydration booth was situated across the way from the CrossFit seminar booth, where Chontosh was a staff member.
Chontosh, or “Tosh,” left an indelible mark on Colina right away.
- Colina recalled: “The seminar staff would come over every morning while we were setting up, and Tosh would grab some O2 for the day. He would always bring the most positive vibes. He would come over and give everybody a high five with a big smile on his face…and man, that guy has the crispest high fives.”
But Tosh was way more than the guy who gave crisp high-fives.
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Some Background
Tosh enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993, becoming an infantry officer in 2000. A few of his deployments over his 20 years of service included Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Assured Response in Liberia, and Phantom Fury.
He has been awarded the Navy Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for valor in combat, in addition to many other medals.
Tosh was introduced to CrossFit from the wellspring.
- “I met [CrossFit founder Greg Glassman] in 2000 at a seminar on the Marine Corps base,” Tosh told the Morning Chalk Up in an interview. “I did fairly well at the seminar, and Greg wanted me to stay in touch with him. He was collecting a lot of military guys to be a part of CrossFit, and he wanted to put me in touch with Nicole Carroll to help dial in my nutrition.”
Shortly after, at a seminar in Pittsburgh, Tosh met Carroll, the longtime Co-Director of CrossFit Education and Training and currently Chief Brand Officer for CrossFit.
- They stayed in touch via email, with Carroll sharing her nutrition knowledge with Tosh and Tosh sharing his leadership experience with her. The relationship blossomed, and the two eventually married.
It’s easy to imagine transitioning from the military to coaching would be a natural progression, but this was not the case for Tosh.
Tosh told us that learning about the CrossFit methodology “just increased my own fitness credibility in the military and helped me be more lethal as an infantry officer and with the men.”
He paused.
- “I didn’t realize at the time that I was actually using fitness as a coping mechanism,” he said. “I was abusing and overdosing on fitness to run away from shit that I should have been dealing with constructively.”
Tosh was so busy as a seminar staff member, running his leadership business, and developing his relationship with Carroll that he was unaware of how much he was struggling to process some of the things he experienced while on active duty.
A Germ of an Idea
Tosh began to break down, confused about what was happening and why he couldn’t control the outcome. To make things even worse, he got the news that his radio operator from Fallujah had killed himself.
It broke him.
- “It started making sense to me; I had to do this trust fall and hope I would get caught,” he said. “And I got caught. I was surrounded by beautiful, wonderful people who love me and care about me, and they caught me.”
Understanding that not all veterans have the support system that he does, Tosh decided to do something about it.
- Using money from his leadership business, he began organizing small events for veterans. But there was only so much he could do alone.
Bill Henniger, founder and owner of Rogue, has always been a close friend and a mentor, so Tosh brought the idea to him.
- “Bill told me it wasn’t sustainable to do it out of my own pocket,” Tosh said. “He told me I could do so much more, so he mentored me for the better part of a year to help me start a nonprofit.”
It took a lot of reading, research, and trial and error, but it slowly came together. Early on, Tosh simply brought a handful of veterans together at his house in Colorado to spend quality time together just to talk. Tosh led the veterans as they shared their journeys, and he tried to connect them with resources and different ways of thinking.
It grew.
Building the Big Fish Foundation
Tosh started bringing in professionals to add different skill sets and perspectives to the conversations. He also brought in speakers who addressed the psychological issues of veterans to help them begin to reframe.
It was essential for Tosh to bring in services that veterans would not usually have access to.
“I had the luxury of having access to some incredibly talented people, and I started asking if they would mind coming to the house and sharing this with 15 veterans one weekend,” Tosh said.
- He continued: “I wanted to share the network and resources I had the luxury of having access to with people that would never, normally ever have access to it. I wanted to share my journey and the things I was using in real-time to learn, grow, and get out of this darkness that I was standing in when I didn’t even realize I was standing in it.”
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The organization, now called the Big Fish Foundation, has grown annually, with Tosh developing new programs or ideas.
He would get feedback from everyone who participated — veterans, spouses, children, and more — and tweak accordingly.
Tosh started to think about what these audiences had in common and realized that arranging assets and resources to address what these people had would lead to a better outcome than treating everything as unique and specialized.
The consistency of this philosophy became the core concept of Big Fish.
- Tosh described how it all connected: “My leadership philosophy, style, and my belief about being a human being is that you only have to have one playbook. With that one playbook, you can play on the battlefield, the ball field, the boardroom, and the breakfast table.”
Tosh believes that if people designed their lives around one consistent playbook, they would succeed more easily in all areas. This is similar to what he learned long ago in the CrossFit seminars.
- “A lot of where I’ve arrived at is taking Greg’s methodology with CrossFit and taking it out of the fitness and physiology world into psychological, leadership, and relationship,” he said.
Growing as Humans
Building on that singular playbook, Tosh focuses on connection, growth, and service with the Big Fish Foundation and the veteran community.
- “They are the things that allowed me to get through my shit,” he explained, “the connection to somebody else that I valued and trusted. When you come to one of our events, one of the main goals is that you will find yourself in an environment where you’re safe, unjudged, and loved.”
With that guarantee, then the work can be done.
At any Big Fish Foundation event, Tosh and his team challenge veterans to consider their situation from a different perspective. They bring in specialized speakers from various fields to share their knowledge.
Tosh wants the veterans to be excited to grow as humans:
- “I want them to put their gloves on, not their hands out. There’s an entitlement narrative in the world these days, and no one owes anyone anything. Just put your gloves on and work,” he said.
In late March, the Big Fish Foundation will host its second annual Veteran Plus One event and workshop at the JL Bar Ranch and Resort in Sonora, TX.
The event’s focus is for a veteran to bring someone from their immediate support network — spouse, child, partner, etc. — to experience all of what the Big Fish Foundation has to offer. Having it be a plus-one event was vital to Tosh.
- Tosh described the importance: “If you attend with a loved one, then when you leave, you’ve had an intimate moment with your support network that you’re going to go back home with and be in contact with. If you had come to that event by yourself, when you went home, something would be lost in translation when you would try to explain it to your loved one.”
This event will focus on aligning values, harnessing the growth power of traumatic experiences, and practicing mindfulness. Participants will also enjoy lodging, meals, guest speakers, and more.
Tosh and his team shoulder the cost, and the veterans are only responsible for travel to the ranch. Applications for the event are being accepted now through February 15. The event is capped at 65 participants.
The Big Fish Community Challenge
For the last five years, Tosh has done an annual challenge and fundraiser at his home. With a bigger group each year, he equates its feel to the original CrossFit Games in Aromas.
- “We bring in some veterans, pair them with celebrities in our space, and do a 30-hour challenge,” Tosh said. “This challenge is to put people into a physical and psychological space so that they start to show up.”
The people taking on the challenge are surrounded by spectators and volunteers who cheer them on, just as a support system would be present for veterans in daily life.
Notable figures in the fitness space, like James Hobart and Miranda Alcaraz, have previously participated, and Tosh is careful who he includes.
- “I want people that I know are beautiful and wholesome,” he said. “When you bring a veteran in and you connect them with a civilian counterpart, you create a bond, and they get to see that we are really not different.”
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In an effort to “recreate that sort of theme and environment in spaces across the world,” as Tosh described, this year Big Fish has introduced the community challenge.
- “The number-one goal is to grab a veteran and do this partner workout together. Two people gain something special when they do something hard with each other, and there’s an intimacy that just can’t be artificially created. You just have to set the environment and let it happen.”
The Big Fish Foundation is not asking for donations to participate. Tosh just wants to earn more name recognition for the foundation so more people can make use of his services.
He believes Big Fish is there for a specific group of Veterans who have been previously underserved.
- “In the landscape of veteran service organizations, many of them focus on acute care. I call that event horizon – we’re either close to having a catastrophic situation, or we’re in crisis, right? And that’s great, but there are very few organizations in the preventative maintenance space like us.”
The 45-minute workout in the Community Challenge will serve as a reminder that fitness is not just about physical health – it is about building community and striving towards something greater than yourself.
- Head here to register your gym to take part in the event, held February 21-23, 2025.
And the name of the organization, Big Fish? It was Tosh’s call sign when he was on active duty.
He gets emotional when he tells the story:
- “I used to tell the men all the time, there’s two kinds of fish in the sea: big fish and little fish,” he said. “Guess what happens to the little fish — they get eaten, so you need to be a big fish. That means you have to be fit, fast, strong, smart, disciplined, a good motherfucker, reliable, trustworthy, and honest.”
Be the big fish.
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Featured image: @bigfish_foundation / Instagram
