James FitzGerald: 1st Men’s CrossFit Games Champ Talks Optimal Performance

A lot of fitness is sold as a fix for poor lifestyles and poor behaviors. So I think there’s a lot of energy and education and technology and programs being put into a duct tape fast track model, and I think that’s futile, to be honest.

That’s why it’s seemingly focused on the cognitive aspects or behaviors or intentions, because if individuals, the client and the coach, can’t think for themselves and ask hard questions on, “Why am I doing any of this?” it’s actually just useless what you are doing.

Welcome to the BarBend podcast, where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host David Thomas Tao, and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today, I’m talking to James Fitzgerald, the founder of OPEX and the first ever men’s CrossFit games champion. James rose to early CrossFit fame under the moniker, OPT and he was an early poster on the first ever crossfit.com forums in the early 2000s.

Fast forward a few years to 2007, and James is crowned the first ever men’s CrossFit games champion. Fun fact, James still gets called OPT by some fans, something we’ll talk about a little later on in this episode.

While James competed for a number of years after his 2007 games win, he spent more and more of his time building what would become OPEX, a coaching certification and education program that has over 60 franchised gyms worldwide.

James and his education modules have reached thousands of coaches around the globe and he’s one of the fitness industries most in demand speakers and educators.

In this episode, we talk about the early days of CrossFit competition, James’ lessons learned from being a top-level athlete, and why the mental component of training is still so underrated.

Also, I just wanted to say, we’re incredibly thankful that you listen to this podcast, so if you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the BarBend podcast in your app of choice. Every month, we give away a box full of BarBend swag to one of our listeners who leaves a rating and review.

James Fitzgerald, thank you so much for joining our podcast today, it’s been a few years since we’ve chatted in person. I think it’s been about five years actually, since we last saw each other in person, but it’s awesome to connect now. I do appreciate you taking the time.

Yeah, of course. When was the last time we chatted?

I think it was in 2014. It was in Atlanta in 2014. I may be mistaken, but that doesn’t feel that long ago, then I looked at a calendar, and it looks like a long time ago. [laughs]

Was that for CCP course?

No. It was for the Grid League way back then.

OK, yes. It was just outside of Atlanta, right?

 It was in a hockey rink. They had the platform set up in the hockey rink, which I’ve never seen before.

That’s right. The Grid set up there as well.

Yeah. It feels like a lifetime ago. [laughs] Beyond our mutual involvement in that and many other things that you’ve done over the years, you’re a man of many talents. You’ve been in the fitness space, a known figure, a known quantity in the fitness space for a long time.

Can you give us a little bit of your athletic background for folks who might not know about that and about your involvement in fitness pre-2007?

I played a lot of sports as a kid from five or six years of age, living in Northern Canada up until 18. I had an injury that sidetracked me, but that got me more interested in strength, conditioning and sport. After that, I tried all kinds of column adult recreational expressions of sport.

Then came the CrossFit years which 2004 till probably 2014, where I participated as an adult mainly in the sport of fitness. Since then, I’ve been just exercising really, and remove myself from the specific athletic area.

It’s so fascinating. I found weightlifting after recovering from a team sports injury. It’s so fascinating to me how that’s a common thread among many athletes. They find a true love for strength and conditioning after or during rehab from an injury from a different sport, or called a mainstream sport.

Is that something you see pretty commonly?

 I probably have sought a lot because I went through it so I’m probably biased to it, but I may have an answer possibly as to why people do it. You recognize a void when that’s not there. The power around physical expression that void the calling can only be taken care of through a resistance and conditioning.

Back to some of those early 2000s, you got involved in the sport of fitness in CrossFit in 2004. You were the first ever men’s CrossFit games champion in 2007. Now, back then competition and CrossFit was new. It was unheard of beyond a few kind of backyard brawls and throwing down with your friends in the gym. It wasn’t a known entity or it wasn’t a known expression of fitness or movement before that.

What was it like competing that first year at the CrossFit games? Was CrossFit competing something you had kind of ever considered doing before that? What spurred you to actually compete that year?

Yes. It was enjoyable some people forget that. I say we as everyone who was on .com, I competed every morning from 4… I guess it would be just as an example. 240 to 250 workouts competitive per year, three and a half years straight prior to the games. The games was just an opportunity for a local event of .com.

That’s the way I saw it. We were all all over the world, they decided that they were going to have an in-person competition that was the expression of that or the medium of it. That’s why the 2007 games I think came to be.

Now, you said you were throwing down with folks on the.com message board. Generally had an idea of how your times, your weights were and your reps were stacking up against them. Did you enter the 2007 CrossFit games thinking you were the front runner and being confident in your abilities or was winning something that took you at all by surprise?

I think it was a combination of unconscious belief. I do remember having visualizations, training beforehand just really feeling like it was the right thing for me to do. It didn’t mean that I had full confidence I was going to win, it just felt right. Those who have had experiences before, know what I mean. It takes that experience to actually understand it.

I kind of could just use predictions based upon how I was comparing to other people online. I knew where my strengths and where my weaknesses were. I was just fortunate enough that the way the talent pool was there, alignment of the tests that I just came out on top on that day. I would be lying if I said I didn’t really want to win, that wasn’t the intention. The intention was that in person experience.

Really just trying to culminate this past number of years to see exactly, this new form of competition. In person competing, is it’s like playing in your backyard with your basketball net. You can come up with all these strategies, ideas, believe your Kobe Bryant hitting a three with a couple of seconds left. When you get in competition on a hot tarmac in California with other people, it’s a big difference.

Give us some context for folks who might have only come across the CrossFit games and fitness competition in recent years. We’re in big stadiums. The athletes are minor celebrities signing autographs. There were no celebrity athletes in 2007 at the ranch in Carson. Give us a little insight into what the conditions were like as an athlete, the kind of equipment you were using, you all didn’t know the events. I believe one of the events was actually pulled out of a hopper if that’s correct.

There was some unknown pieces to it. We did know that there was going to be a run and a lift the second day. We did know that indirectly, we didn’t know the style of mixed modal workout for the first workout of the day. To be short so people can get an explanation of it. I use a parallel sport, like a UFC to think how that came to be.

UFC almost went from this underground, online video fight club atmosphere, and then now it is professionalized.

So, that would be something that would make people understand the growth of the sport. It used to be just this backroom expression of competing in fitness, and now it is commercialized and produced at a different level.

What was the warm-up area like that first year? You go to the games now in Maddison, it’s a huge setup for tens of thousands of people and there are vendor areas, there are multiple stadiums, multiple venues for the actual competitions. As an athlete in 2007, was there a staging area? What kind of support systems did you personally have? Did you have a coach that year?

No, I just followed what the workouts were online and then I just designed my own training a couple of months out from the games.

The warm-up area, you have got to remember there were not 50 individual males, 50 individual females, 30 teams, and a number of teams and masters. There was not that. So, there was a lot of room to warm-up. It was in the ranch, in a gym that was there.

We just basically gathered in the back room, which was actually a really small facility and was able to warm-up. But, the space was not a problem because there was not a huge amount of individuals.

After 2007… This is something that, last time we saw each other in person we were chatting a bit about very casually, it has been five years since then.

Your relationship with fitness methodology, your relationship with competition you mentioned earlier in this recording, that you are no longer competing and you are more of the coaching, in theory, side of things. How did your relationship with fitness, the part it played in your life, start to evolve after the 2007 CrossFit games?

It just served me differently over time. I still competed for a number of years afterwards. I think because I experienced it and I went through it, I can speak of it. And because it has taken a long time with a lot of reps, and also training other people and training other coaches and training coaches of coaches now, I just start to see that fitness serves everyone differently.

For a period of time, it was my athletic pursuit, but now fitness is a means of standing up and being mentally acute at 85.

When I first met you, and when I first actually became aware of you and your background in the sport, you were still competing a bit. This was the early 2010s, but the term that kept coming up, it was actually a nickname for a while. It was a bit of a moniker that people would refer to you as, it was O-P-T.

I did not understand it at first, if OPT was your nickname, if it was your training methodology, if it was your gym, or if it was your certification. It is now OPEX, which we will talk a little bit about later in this recording and go more in-depth on.

What was OPT? When did it start? And how did that acronym become so closely associated with James Fitzgerald?

It was all of those aforementioned things, because when I started my business in Calgary in ’99, that’s what the name of the business was, Optimum Performance Training.

When .com came up, you had to have a moniker that you could go by so people could see what your scores were and what you were doing, so I labeled that as my business and my moniker on .com, so it combined the two.

I had a business that was called OPT, I was OPT online for .com, and also my business practices and how I created education was OPT. When we came to the states, OPT the name was used by NASM unbeknownst to me as a training module, but they did not have it trademarked.

We decided not to put pressure on owning the name due to economics and legalities, and instead change the name. Everything remained the same, it’s just that we had to change the name to OPEX.

Do you still have people refer to you as OPT? When I was first beginning to follow CrossFit in the early 2010s, I didn’t realize that you and OPT were the same person. I kept hearing about this guy James Fitzgerald and this athlete OPT.

It took me a couple months to realize, wait a minute, they’re the same person.

Yeah, all the time, as an example, I went to LA this weekend for a weight-lifting course with Sean Waxman and as I was waiting, this former military gentleman came up and looked at me and was like, “You OPT?” and then we got a chat.

Walking back to my hotel on the first night with headphones on, on a street with no sidewalk, this guy was going 20 miles an hour, but he slows down, put his window down and goes, “Yo, OPT!”

Coming back, ironically at the airport again, just came around the corner from the bathroom and someone does that second look, second take and says, “OPT.”

I get that all the time and I relish it, I love having conversation with people around the collective energy that we had based upon that name and what we were looking to do back then.

You don’t commonly go by OPEX these days, you don’t have anyone calling you OPEX I assume?

No, it’s James or OPT.

Mr. OPT, we’ll refer to you for the rest of this broadcast, I’m kidding, that would only be slightly awkward. OPT, now OPEX, what is it, what do you all do?

You mentioned earlier bringing the company from Canada to the United States, where are you based out of, and what kind of athletes do you serve today?

We moved down here in 2011 from Canada and the company, OPEX, is a fitness education company. We don’t service athletes anymore, that’s another company called The Big Dawgs, which is an online source of individual training.

We have coaches who work online with people individually, that’s how we service as an arm of OPEX, that’s how we service the athlete. OPEX stands for Health and Fitness Education.

We have gyms all over the world, we’re continuing to grow, slowly at that. We have over 3,000 coaches who have taken my education called OPEX CCP, and really what we’re trying to do as our “why” is to raise the value of a coach. What we do is we teach coaches principles of professional fitness coaching.

Now, you say you’re growing slowly when it comes to opening gyms. How many facilities do you have worldwide right now and which cities do they operate in?

We have over 50 and I wouldn’t be able to, unfortunately, give you the exact locations.

You can’t just rattle them off like the alphabet? [laughs]

Yeah. We’re in Australia, UK, Isle of Man, Switzerland…

Now, are these affiliated gyms, or do you own and operate them?

No, these are called license models. These are licensees, so everyone inside those gyms operate the OPEX way, from the education right down to the service delivery.

Gotcha. Now, one question I do want to ask, and I’m sure it’s something you get a lot.

You’re the first-ever men’s CrossFit Games champion, you’re an early celebrity — I’d say one of the first known or monickered athletes in that sport and with that fitness methodology. You talked about your relationship with fitness personally.

Your relationship with CrossFit HQ is something that I know has undergone a few different iterations in the past years. And now you’re running OPEX, you’re running very much your separate education and licensing company and it really stands on its own two feet in a pretty massive way. How has your relationship with CrossFit HQ or .com, as you might refer to it, evolved over the years?

Oh, yeah. There really isn’t one. It’s nothing different than what I had mentioned earlier. I was a participant on .com, I co-owned two CrossFit gyms for a while and just wanted to do my own thing. I always saw the method of CrossFit with regards to the exercises and the intention as being another tool inside of my strength and conditioning toolbox.

Over time, I think that I’ve transcended the concepts, personally. That’s really where it is. There is no relationship. The relationship is probably historical in context, with regards to my participation on .Com and my ownership of an affiliate.

Got you. Now, does Big Dawgs, when it comes to coaches working directly with athletes for performance training and results-based outcomes, are they working with a lot of aspiring CrossFit Games competitors or CrossFit athletes? Or is it more skewed to different populations these days?

 Yeah, it’s largely people who are really serious about their fitness. The majority of those individuals want to compete in some way, in fitness. That could be in grid, iF3, some weekend fitness event, etc.

What is next for OPEX? When I first came across OPEX, it was after you all were already in the US, you had re-branded from OPT to OPEX. You were working directly with a lot of athletes.

I actually knew a couple of athletes — not to name names on this podcast — who were working with you directly and getting feedback and had very, very positive things to say. Now, OPEX is more about the education model, the licensed gyms. Big Dawgs is more of the coaches working directly with athletes on performance-based outcomes.

Where does OPEX go from here? Does it expand? Does it grow and if so, how does it grow? What further types of education and courses do you think it could provide, for which populations?

Yeah, I think that’s a big question.

That wasn’t really fair. That was like four questions packed into one. [laughs] If you want to break that into separate ones.

No, that’s OK. It makes me stretch my mind a little bit, and it’s healthy. This has been on my mind for past little while, as I age as a human. I have two wonderful daughters, very grateful for their health and their brains — they’re 13 and 10 — and a wonderful relationship, continually growing with my wife.

It starts there, I believe, in terms of how you define growth. That’s why I preempt the conversation on what growth means, because it’s never disconnected to my own personal beliefs. I want to impact. I want to make a lot of coaches just wake up and think and I don’t know what the impact looks like.

I can’t put my finger on it, but I do know when I do it correctly and when I’m doing it right. I do know I’ll be vilified and persecuted in different ways for my thoughts on that to raise the awareness of fitness coaching.

It sounds ephemeral as well, but that’s what growth and the future looks like for me because honestly, I want to be able to do something every day that gets me out of bed and gets me excited. I think raising the market’s awareness around the power of the fitness coach is admirable. That’s just what I think. A lot of people may not think that, but that’s what I think.

How do we get there? It’s pretty simple. We have to sell more CCP courses and we have to get a higher net profit and more clients for Big Dawgs. I never discount the big ideas around economics that are connected to philosophy for business practices.

That’s pretty much what growth would look like and that would lead to moral pecs gyms and creating a big impact out there and health and fitness, and it would lead to people just thinking…I don’t know how to describe the word but harder.

Thinking harder around, what does exercise mean? What is the power of intention in fitness? Why should you do it? What are the pluses and minuses of a physical expression? Things like that. That’s what my hope is.

You are so closely tied in with this brand. You mentioned earlier growth, if it’s negative you’re going to be vilified, if it’s positive, you’re going to be celebrated. When it comes to this company you and the company are in a way a bit inextricable or at least you and the methodology the company is educating people on.

What does that pressure feel like and what are some mechanisms you use in order to better cope with or handle the pressure of being so closely associated with the information that you’re educating people on? You quite literally are looked at as someone who needs to walk the walk.

 Yeah. I take that seriously. I know I have a number of dependents and it’s not a dependent relationship, but I know I’m responsible for a lot of people. I don’t take that lightly, but my actions and my thoughts and my practices are far more important to me than what other people think about that.

I try to balance those two, meaning that I’m not going to be passive to challenging ideas even if that means making everyone around me happy and secure. That’s not my shit. I don’t feel pressure David because I’m confident and that confidence could be blind. I know that. I know my own biases.

I sure as hell know that confidence can get people into trouble because it can be really sidetracked with arrogance. I don’t feel pressure because I’m confident in my beliefs and I just know in my heart that what I go after and what I’m trying to do is moral.

This isn’t necessarily you personally, although I’m sure it’s still very much happens and certainly happened quite a bit in the companies earlier days.

When you or the company are basically selling the value proposition of OPEX and you were trying to convince a coach they might be curious, they might be looking to learn more, a coach or a facility operator, the value add, the value proposition of OPEX training.

What does that focus on? What do you believe people are going to get out of going through OPEX and becoming certified with your methodology, above and beyond or differently than other coaching methodologies and training modules that exist?

Yes, for sure. Those people will be more critical thinkers in fitness. I think they’ll be coaches that will be able to look at everything that’s being offered, and everything that’s being sold and everything that’s being delivered, and understand what is the utility of any of those things.

I think that’s what we indirectly propose a coach to do is to wake up, is to recognize that through observation and empirical evidence and science that there’s been some tried, tested and true, measurable things that humans have done for a long period of time, that coaches need to impart.

They need to be able to change behaviors and people to get them on board with that. I think that’s what we sell. We sell this idea that once you’re finished with CCP, you will have all the principles in place to be able to ask all the tough questions.

Throughout this recording, and this is something I’ve also heard you talk about previously, you are talking and speaking much more to mindset training for both coaches and their clients, than you are even the physical act of coaching in the gym.

Why is that? And what do you think many fitness coaches today still get wrong when it comes to the mindset they can impart on their clients or within their clients?

If I don’t get back to the second part, let me know. But I think, just because we spend time there doesn’t mean that the other is not important. Just want to clarify that. I think it’s just the unconsciousness inside of fitness intention today.

I think that a lot of fitness is sold as a fix for poor lifestyles and poor behaviors. I think there’s a lot of energy and education and technology and programs being put into a duct tape fast-track model. I think that’s futile, to be honest.

That’s why we seemingly focused on the cognitive aspects or behaviors or intentions because if individuals, the client and the coach can think for themselves and ask hard questions on, “Why am I doing any of this?”

It’s actually just useless what you are doing and there’s no argument. That is actually a fact, and actually puts people backwards as opposed to growing forwards. That’s why it probably seems like the focus is there.

In 1995, or even 2003, a lot of the more the focus was on exercise and the dose responses and how to do those things right. I think just now we’re at a point 16 years later, where people are seeing that there is so many options, and there’s so much information shared, and it’s so confusing, that we probably want to go higher-order in terms of what’s important. Intention, is where I think that’s important. And what was the second part of your question?

I think you nailed it. It was what are the mental aspects or the mindset aspects of training that you’re hoping your coaches are getting across to their clients?

I’m hoping that they continually ask those clients about their intention on exercise and their reason for doing it. That’s why we’ve created a system because I can’t just teach a course and then assume coaches are going to finish the course and be able to put this stuff together out there because it’s actually harder and harder.

Which is why I don’t sell fantasy, and why I criticize fantasy. You can make a lot of money on selling fantasy and low intention and unconscious exercise as an owner, but your coaches will die because they lose their enlightened opportunity to be a coach and to help every individual.

I want people to ask the hard questions, and I want coaches to get out. That’s why we set up an OPEX gym scenario because the way the system is set up, a coach builds relationships, true relationships, so that this conversation which takes more than three minutes, has to be had with a person.

I’m being very reductionist in the application of this, but we basically are asking people every couple of days, “Why are you really doing this?” Because if that’s not asked, even without possibly getting to reason, then I think you’re just dancing with people. I think you’re taking money and people humans are assets, and nothing is being learned or upgraded.

Playing off that, and maybe this is just an extension of your answer there. What do you think is the next great frontier in performance and recovery?

I think, to use the word I just mentioned, is probably an upgraded version of human measurement. I think for the past number of years, what people think is high-level human measurement is honestly just a 1.5 out of 10 as to what is really being done backroom. I think in the future, we’re going to have more access to really great human measurement that’s scaled and low-cost. I think that’ll really fundamentally change a whole lot of things.

Great. James, I really do appreciate you taking the time for folks who want to keep up to date with what you’re doing, where’s the best place to or where the best places to follow along with you, your work and what OPEX has coming out in the near future?

 I’ve got a number of places you could go so bear with me here.

We’ll put this on the show notes too, no worries folks, if you have trouble sorting through them.

Sometimes people are listening and they don’t go to the show notes. If you’re listening in, Opexfit.com. That would be the place as the starting point for everything. Secondly, Thebigdawgs.com, it’s “D-A-W-G-S.com.” Thebigdawgs.com, if you’re interested in just understanding what that process is or getting some online coaching with a coach. Third, if you just want some inside what we’re up to, Opexgyms.com, “G-Y-M-S.com,” just to see where we are in the world and what we mean and what we strive to do.

That may get people interested in either being a client in one of those places, where you’re certainly going to be taken care of or maybe a coach that’s interested in opening one up. I would also ask you to visit thebrandxmethod.com.

That’s a group that I’m involved with and we’re trying to raise the awareness of youth fitness certification. Also the International Fitness Federation, where we’re trying to grow the sport, just develop a sport and hopefully get it to the Olympics and create some governance around fitness as a sport long term.

What about you personally? Where can folks keep up to date with what you’re doing on social media?

My name is @jfitzopex, and that’s on Twitter and Instagram.

On Facebook, I don’t even know how people become friends anymore or hook up, because if you’re only connected to two or three friends, it’s just too much time to look through a person’s page to determine if you know them or if it’s even worthwhile having good conversations with, so Facebook’s probably not the place for me.

But I am on Facebook as well and I post things regularly there around my thoughts and I have coaches’ tips consistently.

Awesome. James Fitzgerald, thank you so much for joining us, and I look forward to seeing what comes next from you and your growing team. Appreciate you taking the time.

Thank you David.