🤯 Max Clean Madness in Mesa Shows How Strong the Sport Has Become

COMPETITIONS

Max Clean Madness – 9 Men Broke 400-Pound Barrier at WFP Tour Stop II

At the 2019 CrossFit Games, the eighth workout of the weekend was a max clean. 

The format was a ladder of set weights, where athletes were eliminated if they couldn’t lift a barbell. The final weight for the men was 380 pounds, a weight only Mat Fraser cleared. For the women, Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr won the workout with a lift of 265 pounds.

The question that year was whether Fraser and Toomey-Orr could have lifted more weight. 

• Probably. Once they hit their final weight, they stopped – they had no reason to chase higher numbers. 

The big question: When the World Fitness Project announced there would be a max clean event at Tour Stop II, the chatter began almost immediately. But the question wasn’t whether any of the men could surpass the 400-pound mark, but how many would actually do it.

• Continue reading for the full breakdown of how many athletes cleared 400 pounds — and who topped Tia and Mat’s historic lifts.

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INDUSTRY

Mind Over Matter: Rashad Barksdale’s Athlete-First Approach

Three years ago, former NFL player Rashad Barksdale realized a vision he had.

He founded Mind Over Matter, an athlete management company with big goals: to build genuine, trusting relationships with his athletes and help them “build a table big enough so that everyone can eat,” he told the Morning Chalk Up. 

• “We want to take off as much stress as possible so they can compete to the best of their capacities,” Barksdale added of his intentions when he became an athlete manager in 2022.

The reason Barksdale is so relationship-focused stems from his brief time in the NFL. There was a real lack of genuine care between athletes and their managers, which motivated him to do things differently, he explained.

The challenge for Barksdale, though, was that no one in the CrossFit community knew who he was, so he had to start from scratch.

Regarding his personal goal for the company, Barksdale hoped that within three years, Mind Over Matter would become his full-time job.

• “But we’re about quality, not quantity. I want to make sure we’re genuinely able to care about our athletes, so they know they’re not just a number,” he said in 2022.

Continue reading to see how Barksdale’s vision turned into a roster of Games athletes.