I believe they had the team lined up and it was supposed to be a European athlete, and he pulled the pin last minute. Then, obviously, a lot easier to get a European athlete in Iceland than fly someone in from Australia.
I got the last minute call-up. Christmas day, I believe I got a message, a DM from Annie on Instagram, “Hey, do you want to move to Iceland and go team with me? Also, Merry Christmas.” It was the right time for me to say yes to something like that. It was the perfect opportunity for me because I had no idea what I wanted to do this season.
I knew, to have any kind of competitive season, I could either find a team, throw together a team back home that could maybe get to the games and take it, have a bit of fun with it. Just be at the games, and that be the goal.
If I wanted to go back individually, the Australian, our region, is so competitive, and it’s only three spots. I knew to have a shot at taking one of those spots, I was going to need to be training really, really hard and putting a lot of other stuff on the back burner.
I didn’t know if Sydney was going to be the right environment for me to do that, which left the question open of where would I go to knuckle down and train distraction free, if you will. Then this opportunity came up. Yeah, it was perfect. I thought it would be an awesome opportunity.
Like I alluded to before, it’s been not only an awesome opportunity to start training like a professional athlete, but also to start doing the little things like the recovery stuff, eating, getting more routine, or taking supplements. I never used to be super religious about taking protein or taking creatine before in my life. Doing that every morning.
It’s like doing everything right. Resting on your rest days because you’re actually so fucked that you don’t want to go and do stuff. Even just making smarter choices. The training is so hard, and the environment is so competitive. Everyone is so good that what’s expected of you in the gym is so high that it forces you to make good decisions.
Whereas if I’m training back home, I’ve got my buddies and stuff around me, If there’s something on Friday night, I want to go and have four or five beers. I know that I’m not going to be too hungover to train, but I’m not going to feel my very best the next day. I’ll just take a chill. I have that option.
I have that say amongst the guys. If I don’t want to train, I don’t have to train. If I have a uni assessment that I need to do, I can spend an extra day in there at uni and stuff like that. Whereas here, every decision you make you’re making a decision, it is all in.
It’s all or nothing. It’s basically, is this making me better? Is this going to allow me to be at my best tomorrow in the gym when I’m training? Because, one, the benchmark in the team is Annie, and like you just said before, she’s the reigning third fittest woman on Earth.
Then you’ve got Kat has been on the podium. Kat’s won it a couple of times. She’s been on the podium many times. BK has got to be the most consistent male CrossFit athlete outside of your Frasers and your Fronings. And he’s just phenomenal as well. That’s the benchmark. That’s the standard that we go in every day.
Then, not to detract from Lauren and Tola, either. Tola has got to be the one, if not the strongest man in CrossFit. He’s also been amazing to live with and to be around because he’s so switched on with his routines and with making sure he’s doing his recovery.
He’s got those 1 percent. He’s so dialed in that, that then makes me think, man, if he’s doing these things to make sure he’s at his best, I need to do that, too.
When Annie asked, I knew it was going to be a great opportunity to learn and grow as both an athlete and a person. I didn’t realize just how much it was going to be, how good it was going to be.