It Took Seven Years to Become Rookie of the Year (with Nick Mathew)

That’s all it was. It was a dogfight for all these years. Even the mental battles throughout the years of like, “Oh, well, am I good enough? Am I ever going to be good enough?” I think just open each year and improving, even if it was just by a little bit each year, and just having these goals along the way were what kept me going the whole time.

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 CrossFit Games athlete Nick Mathew, who finished 14th at the 2022 CrossFit Games. Along the way, he also earned the prestigious Rookie of the Year award and won two events in the fittest field of athletes on earth.

Nick was no overnight success in the sport of fitness. He talks about his seven-year journey to the top rungs of CrossFit, including his roots in bodybuilding, overcoming injury, and several near-misses that provided both frustration and motivation. Nick is humble, candid, and honest about his goals in the sport, as well as, to put it lightly, the drudgery that can go along with being a top athlete.

It’s a side of elite athletics, especially in the strength game, we don’t often hear about, so I’m really glad Nick was able to share. I hope you enjoy.

Nick, thanks for joining me today. I want to start off because we’re recording this basically the day after the 2023 CrossFit Open finished, officially. I’d love to hear about how you’re feeling, how that experience was for you. We’ll talk about your background in a second, but let’s get to the here and now.

Oh, for sure. Open finished up yesterday. I had my best finish that I have since my career started seven years ago. Unofficially, I don’t know when it makes it 100 percent official, but I’m 12th right now. No, it was good. In the years past, I would put up my training on a pause or a hold, going through the Open, just gearing up, making sure I give my best effort to each Open workout.

This year, I just made sure that I was training through the Open, not cutting things out of my normal training, not just stopping things altogether, but doing my squats each day, doing my Olympic lifting, doing the multiple Metcons and stuff, and then just treating the Open as another workout.

 It sounds like you might have gotten a little bit fitter compared to previous years. Is that safe to say?

I definitely would have to say that, yeah, for sure.

12th in the world unofficially, when this podcast is released, I think results will be official, but when we’re recording this, it’s unofficial. Call it 12th in the world, unofficially.

Yeah.

Pretty dang good. This is going to sound like a really dumb question, but bear with me. I’ve talked to a lot of Games athletes, a lot of Games-level athletes, and certain people who do well at the Games are open, they excel at the Open, and certain folks don’t excel at the Open. Do you see yourself as an Open style…does it play to your strengths, basically?

I don’t know. I would say that in terms of my strengths and weaknesses, I don’t have, I wouldn’t say too many huge holes or anything like that.

I think my realm, I can do everything, all of that just in general needs to be lifted up just for my performance versus open or in-person competition, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with in-person, and I feel the Open has reflected my performance almost directly every year.

I’ve continued to get better since I started, and then it shows when I go to my in-person competitions, too, so just finishing the highest that I have in the Open just gives me confidence going forward to quarterfinals, and then just confidence that I’m going to do much better at semifinals when they come as well.

Makes a lot of sense. What is your least favorite Open workout you’ve done?

Least favorite Open workout, I would have to say, it would probably be…In general ever?

Yeah.

I would say the 10 rounds of 8 ground to overhead, 10 bar-facing burpees is the first one that comes to mind there. Just that little couplet from, I think it was 2020 or 2019, somewhere in there.

Just brutal classic couplet where there’s nowhere to hide.

Yeah, just pain cave it, exactly.

Burpees, are you a fan or are you not a fan?

I think I’m a fan of burpees, I’m not a fan of the barbell cycling aspect. I like lifting a heavy barbell, heavy barbells for one to five reps is great, but when you got to take a moderate to light load, and you got to do it 10, 20, 30 times, that gets me a little bit.

That’s something, I mean, you’re a top-level CrossFit athlete, but that sounds a lot something I would hear from an Olympic lifter or a powerlifter.

After your CrossFit career, would you consider moving over to a sport where you only have to lift the bar once at a time?

Not necessarily, I’ve done that route. I’ve done Olympic lifting, I’ve done powerlifting, that was my bread and butter. That was what I started with strength training, bodybuilding. I did a couple shows back in the day, as well. I had that whole world, and I think it’s just familiar, and I like training that style, so it’s fun to me. I like being strong.

Coming to CrossFit, I like being able to feel healthier and be able to have multiple different avenues of strengths. When I was like powerlifting and strongman, I couldn’t run a 5k. Now I’m just as strong, if not stronger, and I can perform. I can run 5Ks, I can walk on my hands, I can do pull-ups and muscle-ups, and all those other aspects of training, too. I think I’m going to ride CrossFit till the wheels fall off.

Well, that is a perfect segue into talking about your athletic background, and it seems…a lot of folks. When I first started in this space and first started talking to CrossFit athletes and interviewing them, we’re talking over 10 years ago at this point. No one had really started CrossFit as their first sport.

It just didn’t happen because competitive CrossFit was still a very young scene. These days, some people find it when they’re very young, and that’s their primary athletic outlet, and they build up and improve their capacity and skills.

You are someone who had a lot of other athletic interests and a pretty varied athletic background. We’d love to hear about that. We’d love to hear about your sports background, your training background, and then how you ended up finding CrossFit.

For sure. I’d say it was pretty diverse in terms of different avenues, and I’ve always liked fitness. I’ve always liked sports, so I’ve tried about everything.

It started with baseball when I was really young, which moved to football in the school days, middle school, high school times. Jumped into wrestling, middle school, high school time as well, and that was probably my favorite sport of all of them.

On the side of all those sports all growing up, I always did some strength training, too. Like summer, I was doing extra…the football strength program, or just in school, I would take strength and conditioning classes and gym. It would just be part of the school day, and I’d go down and lift weights for a class and learn more on the health and fitness aspect there.

After high school, I got into personal training right away, so basically lived in the gym forever and that’s where bodybuilding started to take a turn and one of the coaches there was a powerlifter, so I just naturally picked up with him and wanted to get as strong as him, and then from there it just continued as a little mini competition. He was much older than me, much more experienced than me, so I learned a lot from that guy as well.

I guess sports led to a couple bodybuilding competitions, but I didn’t do very good in those because I couldn’t follow a nutrition plan very well.

I didn’t have the discipline on the nutrition back then. 21, 22, 23-year-old kid trying to stick to chicken and white rice wasn’t the best option there.

Some people have that ingrained in them and some people just don’t. I’m one, I don’t. It is always a challenge to stick to it week after week.

For sure. I’m a lot more disciplined now in my nutrition, but now it’s eat for performance. I don’t have to have plain chicken and white rice, or just fish like it was back in the day, and eggs and egg whites. I can have all this other stuff that helps fuel me. Some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and bagels, and things like that.

What is your — this is a complete aside, I want to get back to this in a second — favorite like, “Man, I need some calories. I’ve done three Metcons today. I just need to put calories in my mouth.” What’s your go-to?

My day is pretty…I got my lunchbox, maybe I’d say it’s usually fruit, fig bars and the Uncrustables.

When you said peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I was like, “I’m sure there might be Uncrustables involved here.”

Yep, Uncrustables. I think bagels and regular peanut butter and jelly are a little higher calorie, but Uncrustables are just very convenient. I can just grab and go versus have to make stuff so.

They just hit. OK, sorry, back to…you’re working in the gym, start bodybuilding, got to powerlifting. Take us from there.

Bodybuilding was…I ended up getting to a point where I was like, “What am I doing this for?” I’m just working to try to make my shoulders a little bigger, my arms a little bigger, my legs a little bigger, and I just started getting bored.

I was like, “OK, I need to kind of fill this competitive outlet that I had. One of my friends suggested a powerlifting meet, so I went and did that. I took third place in the one powerlifting meet that I did, but then like I said I went for a run, or I like tried to get some cardio in after my meet, and I couldn’t run 5k without stopping.

That was when I was like, “OK, I need to change things up a little bit.” One of the people that I was talking to at the time they recommend going to a CrossFit gym nearby, and I was like, “OK, I’ve never tried that before.” I got in, and it was…I think my first couple workouts were…I think I did…

This is a funny story, I did Cindy for the first time in a Globo gym.

 For those who don’t know what Cindy is, I’ve done Cindy in a Globo gym, a miserable experience, but for those who don’t know what that is.

I did this differently. It was a 20-minute AMRAP, and this is how I saw it on the CrossFit site. It was five pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15, it said body weight squats.

I was like, “OK,” me being a meathead, bodybuilder, powerlifter,” or whatever, I was like, “OK. They can’t possibly be doing just squats with just their body, their own body weight. That must mean they put their body weight on a barbell, and then that’s how they performed the squats.”

I did my first Cindy, it was five pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and then 15 squats at 185. I got four or five rounds in the workout in the 20 minutes, and then I looked up the leaderboard on workouts like that, and I saw people were getting like 20 plus.

I was like, “Well, CrossFit’s not for me. This is absolutely absurd.” It was kind of a shock to the system. Then I got to a CrossFit gym, and I figured out exactly what everything was about.

Yeah, try to do Cindy with…I’m not even going to ask how you felt the next day or the two days later.

Terrible. Again, strongman, powerlifter. I did sets of five. Then 15 at body weight was, just even for one or two sets at the time, was terrible.

When you got into a CrossFit gym for the first time, you realized that maybe you were reading the workouts a little incorrectly. “OK, I’m going to try this, and dip my toe in.” Talk to us about that evolution. I mean, how many years ago was that?

That was in 2016. I signed up for my first CrossFit gym in January of 2016. Did about three weeks of CrossFit. There was a competitor’s class that they had at the gym that I was at, so I hopped in, and they did a misfit athletics programming back in the day.

I jumped in with them, and I did the workouts with them every Saturday, and then, three weeks into it, my first CrossFit Open started. Then we did Friday Night Lights. I did my first CrossFit Open. Before this, I kind of knew about the CrossFit Games.

I knew about Rich Froning. I knew about that stuff at the time. That was like, “OK, I can do this. I can try to compete with these guys.” Little did I know that it was going to take a lot longer than I thought initially. I did the Friday Night Lights, and I finished top in the gym and then took 2,200 in the world, or something like that.

Not bad for three weeks of conditioning.

Not bad, yeah. Not bad for just the start of it. It was chest to bars in one of the first workouts, and I did them all strict because I didn’t know how to butterfly or kip at the time. Overhead lunges barely had the mobility for it. I expected in my head to be a lot higher. I was like, “Oh, I can do this, no problem.” I got humbled right away with it.

I was like, “Well, let’s see what a year of doing this looks like, and then I’ll come back next year and do it and use the Open to get to the Games,” and very optimistic at first of how I thought I was going to be able to do. Then that just began the journey. Then every year since then, for the last seven years, it’s been a fight to get to the Games.

alk us through that first few years. You said it took a little bit longer than you had hoped for. Look, we all see a new sport that we’re interested in, especially something like CrossFit, like, “I’m strong. I could be like those guys. Maybe I can qualify next year.”

I remember talking to Matt Fraser back in 2013 at his first regionals, and you compare his meteoric rise from not quite qualifying for the Games that year, being an Olympic lifter who’s just trying this out, to the next year getting second at the Games and being the second coming.

We see that, and we’re like, “Oh, wow, he did that in a year.” That is the exception to the rule. Also back then, the CrossFit field was a little bit smaller and a little bit less competitive, not saying that Matt wouldn’t stack up in any era.

For sure.

Take us through those years of scratching and clawing and fighting and working on your fitness to get to the Games, because you were not an overnight success. You were not a one-year success. This took multiple years and multiple repeat efforts, and some very close calls.

Yep, exactly. That’s all it was. It was a dogfight for all these years. I guess even the mental battles throughout the years of like, “Well, am I good enough? Am I ever going to be good enough?” I think just open each year and improving, even if it was by a little bit each year, and having these goals along the way were what kept me going the whole time.

I think the first year was like, “I’ve had three weeks of CrossFit. Let’s give it a full year. Let’s see what happens next year. Then I think I cut my placing in half the next year in 2017, went from like 2,200 to 1,100 or something like that. I was like, “OK, significant jump, one more year and I’ll be able to make it.”

Then that was the year 2018, made it to regionals, which again was a huge feat there. I remember even people talking on the “Road to the Games” videos, and other podcasts and documentaries and things like that back in the day, it was like, “If you make it to regionals, you are a cyborg of fitness,” I think is what Sean Woodland or something said back in the day.

I made it to regionals, ended up taking 24th at regionals, was pretty stoked with that performance. I mean, top half when in just the first three years, and then we went into…Basically at this time I had bought in fully, and I was like, “OK, I’m not going to stop until we make it to the Games. This is what I choose to do. I’m not switching to a different sport again. This is what I’m going to accomplish.”

Once I just engraved that in stone, it’s been just a battle ever since. 2019, can’t really remember my placing, but again, just outside the top 100 in the Open, top 200, and then cut that in half the following year, 2020, I think that was the sanctional season, got to start traveling with my fitness a little bit, went out to Ireland and competed at the Filthy 150, which that just fueled it even more.

I was like, “Oh, even if I wasn’t to make it to the Games ever, the process trying to get there, I was doing things that most people won’t be able to do in their lifetime, travel to Ireland, go to Amsterdam, or wake up in the morning at 6:30 AM and go and do a swim workout on the beach in Miami. “

You felt like a pro athlete.

Yeah, exactly. It was just the experience of all of it. It was wonderful. Then that led to the ’21 season, where we got to Granite Games, took sixth, near-miss there, and then 2022 where we took sixth again for a near-miss.

Oh, go ahead, please. I interrupted.

I just said to end of present day.

 Let’s talk a little bit about your goals for this season. You’re feeling good?

Yeah, feeling wonderful, feeling fitter than ever. I feel really good.

Well, let’s talk about Games experience after finally making it there.

I still think there’s part of me, too, that wants to fully earn my spot in the semifinals, regionals, whatever we’re going to call it over these next years.

For those who don’t know the full context because the CrossFit Games qualifying structure has changed about 10 times over the last 10 years since I’ve been covering it. Sometimes it changes twice in a year. It’s so confusing.

When you say that about really early, you are a Games athlete. You did quite well. You came away from Madison with some hardware, so to speak. When you say, “Really qualifying or actually qualifying,” by all definitions, you did qualify. Take us through your thought process there.

For sure. Two years in a row, taking sixth place at Granite Games. They take the top five that go to the Games. The first year was just a near-miss three points, I think it was, or two points or something like that that separated it. Took that one a little harder in terms of a loss.

The next year in 2022, I was sixth place again. This time I kind of had a different mindset anyway, going about it, after the event. Then we learned that somebody had a banned substance in their system, and I got to backfill the spot. I guess what I mean in terms of just qualifying and earning it is standing up on the podium without getting the actual spot.

Then we get to the Games in August, and we put in work there for a little while. We won two events and had an awesome performance over the weekend.

Where did you finish officially at the 2022 Games?

Finished 14th.

Rookie season, 14th, pretty darn good. Was the Games’ experience what you expected it to be? Obviously, there are always some surprises. What was most surprising about it relative to your expectations?

I would say it was less stressful than I thought it was going to be.

Oh, OK.

I think this is partly in terms of getting the backfill spot as well is there was no really expectations or anything like that on me. Also, to the point of like, “I achieved my goal, I made it to the CrossFit Games. This is the pinnacle.” Our entire goal for the last seven years was just to get here.

There was no stress in terms of “Oh, I have to perform. I have to get to the top 10.” I was like, “No. I made it to my goal. I achieved it. Let’s just see what I can do over the weekend.”

I think that came in handy when I was going from event to event. If I had a bad finish or a mess up here or a mistake there, I was able to really let it go really fast instead of sit on it and worry about it, and let that carry into the next event. Whereas at Granite Games, there’s a lot more pressure because you can’t have a bad performance or you don’t get to make it.

I remember specifically this last year, I did bad on one of the workouts at Granite Games, and I let that affect me going into the next workout. When if I didn’t, I would have performed much better and maybe even gotten those extra 10 points or whatever I needed to get to make it.

At the Games, it was a little bit less stressful than I thought it was. It was more about just have fun, see what I can do, soak it in a little bit that I achieved the goal that I wanted to. There’s much bigger goals outside of just making it to the CrossFit Games. My goal is not to just make it. My goal is to improve every single year. That’s going to be what I’m going to be doing this year.

Let’s talk about your two event wins because for a rookie season at the Games that’s pretty rare and would love to give…at that level, too, you know that you are the best, basically the best person in the world at that. Yeah, there could be someone whose maybe a specialist who didn’t qualify for the Games, who could have done better in one or two of those workouts.

At that level, in the fittest field on earth, you know you’re the best at it. That’s got to be a cool feeling. Walk us through those workouts.

For sure. The first one was the speed skill medley. They use peg boards, jump rope, all kinds of variations, and then different variations of handstand walking and press to handstands and stuff. As soon as the workout got released when we were in the back in the warm-up area, I kind of joked, and I looked over at my coach and I was like, “I’ve done all these movements before. I think I can win this one.”

After looking around and seeing other people who never have done a crossover double under before or anything like that, I knew I was pretty confident with single unders even. I saw a podcast with Chris Hinshaw back in the day, and he was like, “Always add tools to the toolbox. Don’t lose them.”

Just because you can do double under doesn’t mean you should lose the ability to do single unders or play with crossovers, or whatever else there was. I half-joked to my coach, I was like, “I think I can win this one.”

My only worry going into that event was getting out of the first round because it was things that everybody could do. Everybody could do three pegboards unbroken. Everybody can do single unders. Everybody can do a handstand walk to the finish over the course. That was my biggest stressor.

Then after that, I was like, “Awesome,” already exceeding expectations that I made it into the second cut. Then, on the second cut with regular double unders and pegboards, I was like, “Even if I got kicked out here, I’d be still pretty happy.” I just went out, no stress, had fun with it. I squeaked out the top heat by like five or six seconds or something like that.

At that point, my legs were jello, I was excited, so pumped. I was like, “Man, I could just sit this out, and I’d still even be really pumped about this workout, top five, or whatever we had at the last.” Then we get into the last part, and I hit my pegboards, came down right to the jump rope, and then I did my first 10 crossover double unders unbroken.

That’s the movement that really threw everyone else off.

Yeah, exactly. I heard the crowd roar and get excited, and I was like, “OK, let’s keep going through the workout, let’s see what we can do, let’s see if I can string 10 more together,” and so on. I got the crossover double unders done way ahead of anybody else. I finished my pistols, too, because those were just a minor inconvenience.

Then I got to the press handstand, and I took a breath, and I was like, “OK, if you can get up the first try, you’re going to win the event.” I did my press handstand, got up into the handstand, I started moving forward on the parallettes. I was like, “Oh, my God, I just won.”

I knew I wasn’t going to…I’ve trained with parallettes and ramps enough, I was like, “I’m not going to fall.” As soon as I kicked up into the press handstand, I was like, “Oh, my God, I’m doing it, I’m winning.”

That’s not bad for a former bodybuilder and powerlifter to win the high-skill gymnastics jump rope event.

For sure. Then I saw that yellow line as I was handstand walking, and as soon as I saw both hands cross, I just let it all out. It was so exciting.

Let’s talk about the other event you won.

The second event was the sandbag ladder. The most I’d ever done with a sandbag clean was 250 pounds leading up to that. I have one in the gym, we call it Pinky.

A big sandbag that I won at Wodapalooza a few years back. Basically, we started out with the ladder, and I was like, “OK, the most I’ve done is 250, we’re starting at 260. 10-pound jumps isn’t very big, so it was as long as I feel it out, and 10-pound jumps shouldn’t separate…” — eventually it’ll separate a lot of people — “I think I can make 10-pound jumps all the way up and be completely fine.”

Then we got to probably about 320 pounds, and a lot of people were hanging on for a lot longer than I thought they were going to, especially after seeing people trying to lift the 300 in the warm-up area. We got up to, what, the 330 bag. We all hit it, and then there was five of us left to give the 340 a go.

All of us hit it on there, and then they brought out the 350-pound bag, which was awesome, that’d have been really cool if any one of us could have lifted that, but it’s kind of the same deal. I made it to the top 10 in that workout, and we were all sitting there on the benches, and I was looking around like, “Oh my God, we’re here at the CrossFit Games.”

I was soaking it in again, like, “Wow, I’m exceeding my performance again.” I’ve always prided myself on being strong. Lifting a sandbag is just raw strength. Then we got to the final five, and then it turned into just a little bit of a bro session down there. We were all stoked to be there, just slapping each other around on the ass, having a good time.

Then we went to the tiebreak afterwards, and me and Guy crossed the finish line at exactly the same time.

For someone who is known for his strength, being able to hang with Guy is pretty impressive. He’s the one who we always watch for when it comes to the strength events. You gave him the run for his money, so congrats on the performance.

Two very different events, by the way, to come away with wins on. What do you think are holes in your fitness that you maybe saw at the Games that kept you out of that top 10? Not that 14th is anything to sneeze at, right?

No, for sure. The big one that jumped out right away was swimming. I have always lacked, we’re going to say, lacked confidence in swimming. I think that beat me up more than my actual swim abilities. This is where I have my coach to thank, Matt Burke, as well. He’s very good at helping me get through the mindset aspect of training and the mindset aspect of competing.

Things like, we were at the Games, and it was only a 50-meter swim. You know what I mean? It’s not you’re out in the lake trying to swim a mile or anything like that, but I would get so much in my head in terms of just my performance there.

Wearing a swim cap or my goggles filling up with water or bumping into people during the swim, or I had negative thoughts about, “Oh, I’m not even going to make it out of the swim and let alone get the skier calories done just for the event. “

I got a lot more in my head than I thought I was, and it took probably my worst placing. I took like 34th or something like that out of 40. That’s one thing, again, that’s changed this year is we just got back from Wodapalooza

I trained swimming every single week, and Wodapalooza gave me a pretty big confidence boost as I took sixth in the swim event. That was quite the flip in just four or five months from the Games. I’d say that’s probably my biggest one that I’m going to flip in terms of points when I’m at the Game’s next.

Every aspect of fitness can be mental. Everything has a fitness component. It can be the most mindless lift or it can be the most cerebral thing, so I appreciate that. Nick, where’s the best place for people to follow along with you, especially as we head into the meat of the 2023 CrossFit game season?

For sure. I would say the best spot is Instagram, coachnmatthew is my Instagram handle. I would say that’s probably the best spot.

Amazing.

I’m terrible at posting sometimes and terrible at messaging back people sometimes and things like that, but that’d be the spot.

 It’s almost like you have other priorities like…

Right.

 …like making [indecipherable 28:45] the CrossFit Games.

Not only a full-time job of training and stuff like that, but also full-time work of coaching and managing a gym and all that stuff, too, and family life.

An influencer comes, that’s fifth or sixth on the priority list. Let’s put it that way.

For sure.

Well, Nick, thank you so much for taking the time.

It was exciting to hear about your progress through the years, and looking forward to seeing you hopefully back at the Games this year as the season progresses.

Awesome, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.