With the CrossFit Open around the corner, and having recently made a video encouraging people to sign up, I had a wave of nostalgia. That felt great, but it also made me realise that I am giving advice to people who are not in my position, and who have not yet been on the same long and complex journey with CrossFit that I have. I thought it might help to give some context, and briefly explain how I found CrossFit, and what my journey has looked like to date, with the Open as a reference point throughout the years.
In late 2011 I was working as a Section Commander in Pirbright, training the British Army’s next generation of recruits. It was a time when almost everyone I trained would be deployed to the Middle East within a couple of years of leaving training, and there was a real sense that the training we provided had to be of the highest standard and genuinely effective. We all took pride in our personal standards as instructors, especially in our appearance and our delivery of lessons. This was particularly true for me, earning commendations and exceptional reports for my teaching. However, I was a long way behind my peers in terms of personal fitness. I was surrounded by the best Junior Commanders the Army had to offer and held my own in almost every area except my physical capacity. I had this pointed out to me nicely, not so nicely, and sometimes through blunt, aggressive rants from superiors. Nothing really hit home until two things happened close together.
First, I caught myself having to hold my breath to sit on my bed and tie my shoes. My stomach was simply too big and got in the way. Second, I had recently weighed in alongside a new intake of recruits at 115kg, just over 18 stone. At 5 foot 11 this was not great. I was in a 40 inch waist trouser, sometimes a 42, and struggled with many daily tasks.
Then, on returning to camp after a weekend at home, I went into the recruits’ accommodation on Sunday night to check on them before the start of the week. I noticed a group gathered in the central corridor. They were looking at the pass out parade photo from our previous course, taken about six weeks earlier. I heard them sniggering, and I heard my name mentioned, although they disappeared quickly when they heard me approaching. I stopped to look at the picture to see what they found funny.
In military course photos, people are arranged in rank order, with the course staff and instructors sat at the front and centre, while recruits are placed in height order behind them. Because I was an instructor, I was on the front row. We were wearing our No. 2 dress, the Army’s version of a suit. Unlike everyone else, my stomach was hanging out the bottom of my jacket. The suit was dark green, my shirt was beige, and the contrast made it even more obvious. In that moment I realised several things. The recruits who I believed looked up to me actually saw me as a figure of fun. My peers and commanders were right. I had a serious disconnect between the values I preached and the values I lived. And I had a personal problem. I had grown up fit, active, and into sports. Now, having just turned 28, I was obese, smoking over 30 cigarettes a day, eating almost exclusively junk and convenience food, and drinking heavily. In a single instant I allowed myself to accept something I had never admitted before. I was deeply unhappy.
Why this time was different, I honestly cannot say. I had tried things before; quitting smoking, drinking only once a week, eating well, going to the gym after work, and so on. Nothing had stuck. But six weeks after that realisation, my stars aligned.
I was placed on a course, booked months before I decided I needed to change, but the timing could not have been better. This course was to retrain me for a new job role, and I was on it with recruits who had just left basic training, including some I had trained. Because I did not need many of the broader military lessons, just those specific to my new trade, I had a lot of free time. I was also exempt from their physical training sessions. I made a decision to learn about health and fitness, and to use my free time to sort myself out. Make no mistake, this was entirely motivated by my desire to be taken seriously in my role, be competent across the board, and progress my career. There was no bigger-picture health motivation yet.
I started with YouTube. WiFi was less reliable back then and the camp did not have good mobile internet coverage. I spent a lot of time lying on my bed watching videos and reading whatever articles and blogs I could load. I vividly remember two things I stumbled across. One was a video of Rich Froning and Graham Holmberg from around 2010 or 2011, between Graham having won the CrossFit Games and Rich winning his first title. At the time, I had no idea who they were, what they were doing, and I do not even remember hearing the word CrossFit. The other was a video of Robb Wolf talking about the Paleo diet. That intrigued me almost as much as watching these guys flip tyres, do pull-ups, and perform a thruster, whatever that was.
For the next three months I ran five days a week because that was what the Army taught me fitness was. I also did what I thought was CrossFit based on the videos I watched. This meant doing normal gym exercises with dumbbells and barbells, broken up with shuttle runs. As you can imagine, in 2012 that got some funny looks in an Army gym. Over time the workouts became a bit more like CrossFit and a bit less like random circuits, and I became more structured and more curious about what I was doing.
After three months I started the second part of my course. This was at Leconfield, only a short drive from home in Scarborough. Again, I had a lot of free time. The internet was better, and I clearly remember watching technique videos while training in the gym. I experimented with nutrition and kept reading. Unknowingly, I had worked my way through the entire CrossFit Level 1 content online, along with countless hours of supporting material. I was now eating mostly meat, plenty of vegetables, some fruit, and snacking on nuts and seeds. I was drinking once every week or two, and smoking had dropped to around 10 per day.
After another three months I returned to Pirbright to finish a final stint of work before being posted to a new unit. All told, I was nine months into caring about my fitness. I had lost around 35kg, cut drinking down to once per month, removed convenience food from my diet, and reduced smoking to just a few per day.
Then fate helped me again. In December 2012 I was posted to Stafford. I was starting a job with plenty of responsibility, but also plenty of freedom, especially around physical training. As part of my arrival, I had to take the Army’s annual fitness test, which included a 1.5 mile run. The last time I had attempted this I had failed badly, which was a major embarrassment and something I still carried with me.
The pass time was 10 minutes 30 seconds for those under 30. My previous result had been 11 minutes 20 seconds. A full minute outside the mark. With my new fitness base, I was still nervous, but I had no choice but to take the test. I crossed the line in 8 minutes 45 seconds. Faster than I had run it during my own basic training in 2003. Over the coming months I would reduce this further to 8 minutes 9 seconds.
While I was pleased with my running, I was increasingly enjoying CrossFit. I was always in the gym after work, following CrossFit workouts, and trying desperately to increase my strength, especially wanting to improve my 100kg squat. I spent my first year in Stafford building capacity, improving pull ups and push ups, staying on top of my running, probably a little too much, and learning the barbell. I even achieved an 85kg clean and jerk by watching technique videos from California Strength and Catalyst Athletics and drilling them in the mirror.
Unfortunately, I had not realised what the CrossFit Open was in early 2013, so I missed registration. I did the workouts a couple of months later and was shocked at how far behind the top scores I was. I thought I had come so far. Surely I was world class? It was humbling and a clear reminder not to miss the following year.
Towards the end of 2013 I started seeing signs on Beaconside for X Fit, which I now know is blasphemy, but that was the wording. A quick search led me to Central Staffs CrossFit, a local gym about to open. I had never stepped foot in a CrossFit gym, despite doing CrossFit in some form for over a year. I was away the first couple of weeks it opened, but as soon as I got back, I went. That was late November 2013. I had just turned 30, was still vaping to quit smoking, and I was terrified.
I still remember my first session. Straight away I realised that despite how far I thought I had come, there were people doing incredible things with heavy weights, and I wanted to be better. Fast forward a couple of months to early 2014, and I took part in my first official CrossFit Open. Only three of us from the gym signed up that year, but loads of members came in on Saturday mornings to cheer us on and help judge. We went head to head every week for five weeks, tracked the leaderboard closely, and I quickly learned that finishing in the bottom ten percent of a workout with double unders, given that I could only do one at a time, was not ideal. Either way, I finished my first CrossFit Open, and, surprise, did not qualify for the Games. I had, at least, quit smoking and vaping by this point!
In 2015 there were far more of us taking part. Some did it on Friday nights, others over the weekend, maybe 15 to 20 in total. We had a vibe. We pushed each other, had friendly rivalries, drew spectators again, and it was clear people felt they were missing out if they did not join in. I made a little progress that year. I also realised I loved the Open and hated it in equal measure. The workouts always gave me a dry mouth, I was terrible with strategy, and I would often try to redo any workout I was not happy with. It was not good for training, but it was an honest test.
2016 was my last year doing the CrossFit Open workouts at Central Staffs CrossFit. I helped organise the Friday nights, and the majority of our now 30 plus participants tried to make it in to do them together. We had heats, someone took photos, and it felt like both friendly competition and strong community support.
After opening my own gym in early 2016, the years 2017 to 2021 saw me both take part in and oversee the CrossFit Open. Training fluctuated as it tends to do when you are busy and ageing. Sometimes I focused on ultra endurance events, sometimes on weightlifting, sometimes on pure CrossFit. Regardless, every year I signed up, got excited, and sold my soul each week to get a realistic measurement of my fitness. I stopped repeating workouts, stopped setting goals based on finishing positions, and learned to view the Open as an objective measurement, just like bodyweight, age, or the colour of the shirt I happen to be wearing, only much more fun.
I used to love the buzz, the shared hardship, and the support each week throughout the CrossFit Open when I ran CrossFit GTF. It was one of the things I knew I would miss most when we closed the gym, especially as we closed just as the CrossFit Open ended.
Even after that I still took part in the Open from 2022 to 2024, this time with CrossFit Napalm, where I was coaching. Again, Friday nights were electric, with big turnouts, loads of support, friendly rivalries, first muscle ups and handstand push ups, PB lifts, and sprint finishes that climb you a thousand places on the leaderboard. It is a feeling that is hard to beat, and it takes the right set up and atmosphere to achieve, something I am determined to recreate moving forward.
So why have I done the Open 12 times? In short, it keeps me honest. It has been great to dive down rabbit holes over the years, testing myself over hundreds of miles, often with weight on my back, running up and down mountains, swimming marathon distances, taking on national level weightlifting competitions, and spending hours on Concept 2 machines. But no matter what else I do, CrossFit remains fitness in its truest form. And the Open remains the only real test of that fitness that most of us ever take.
Sure, my leaderboard places have fluctuated, but I have always been able to check whether my base fitness was being maintained. And when I got a result that I was unhappy with, I got back to work with the next year’s leaderboard in mind. I have had years I was very happy with, years that were average, and years that annoyed me. But I have twelve honest years of results to reflect on, and we are about to make that thirteen. No matter where my fitness sits in February 2026, I will test it honestly, alongside everyone who is willing to join me.
My opinion? Every person should do the Open. And when you look back years later, the most important results you will ever have are your first year, and the years when you were not at your best.
