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🔥 Meet AOD Fitness, the Team Helping Harry Lightfoot Level Up His Game

November 17th, 2025

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Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.

In today’s edition:

  • 🧠 From a converted horse stable to the CrossFit Games, Harry Lightfoot’s journey with coach Mike Allen and AOD Fitness is a study in science-meets-grit.

  • 🍽️ Decision fatigue is real — Research shows constant decision-making wrecks late-day choices. Coaches live in that zone 24/7.

  • 🏋️‍♀️ Isabella Andueza didn’t just buy a struggling affiliate…she resurrected it while hitting elite-level lifts.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
❝

I hope it’s apparent that I never refer to what we’ve done as ‘mine.’ It’s shared. I’m a homegrown AOD athlete who’s had these guys invest a lot of their time into me.”

Harry Lightfoot on his relationship with coach Mike Allen and AOD Fitness.
PROFILE

Adapt or Die: The Team Behind CrossFit’s Rising Star, Harry Lightfoot

Credit: Mike Allen

The men’s podium at the 2025 Rogue Invitational featured familiar powerhouses—Jeff Adler, Justin Medeiros, and Roman Khrennikov—each showcasing the kind of strength, speed, and skill we’ve come to expect.

  • But ask anyone who watched, and many will tell you the real breakout of the weekend was Rogue rookie and UK local Harry Lightfoot.

Wearing his Adidas stripes and grinning through the chaos, Lightfoot seemed to revel in the moment. Yet after the dust settled, he shared on social media that the three-day grind wasn’t all joy. An 18th-place finish stung—rookie or not, it wasn’t the result he wanted.

Enter coach Mike Allen.

The two began working together when Harry discovered Allen and his coaching program, AOD Fitness (Adapt or Die), on YouTube, “in the early days when we were still coaching out of a barn,” Allen told Morning Chalk Up. 

  • “Coming from a rugby background, he connected with our performance-based approach and soon joined our generic program. After attending a few training days, it was clear he had serious potential,” Allen said.

A MESSAGE FROM VELITES

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SPEED READS

🧱💪 Improve Your Front Rack Mobility with Sonny Webster: Olympian and weightlifting coach Sonny Webster walks you through how to solidify your front rack — perfect hand placement, elbows up, and how to handle the barbell so it stays where it belongs. Nail this and your cleans, thrusters, and barbell-cycling transitions will start to feel smooth.

☠️😤 Why You Should Do “Death-By” Interval Workouts: Most CrossFitters live in AMRAPs and “for time,” but Max El-Hag from Training Think Tank revives a forgotten weapon: beep-test / death-by intervals that drag you deeper into the pain cave, round after round. He shows how they drive true Zone 5, train you to “move fast when tired,” and when to slot them in so you peak for the Open and quarterfinals

🎖️🏋️ Earn Your Stripes: The military-themed studio gym brand built on ranks and badges just earned franchise approval — and EYS is now rolling through the Southeast with national expansion in its crosshairs.

🎯🏋️‍♀️ Wall Ball Masterclass: From hand placement to hip drive, this CrossFit + HYROX tutorial breaks down how to fix your depth, stop wasting reps, and make wall balls feel (almost) effortless.

🤢💪 The Definitive Guide to Burpees: Invented in the 1930s, refined in the 1940s, and turned into a training staple today, this guide from CrossFit delves into why burpees are brutal and brilliant.

ICYMI: 📊 Two-Brain’s 2025 report reveals that smaller, higher-touch gyms are winning in terms of profit, pay, and retention.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Who Coaches the Coach? Why Even Nutrition Pros Need Guidance Too

Credit: @ctpcam / Instagram

You know that old saying, “Physician, heal thyself”? Well, in our world, it’s more like, “Coach, coach thyself.”

  • But…that’s not always how it works, is it?

If you’re a nutrition coach, you’ve probably been the go-to person for advice, structure, and accountability. 

  • You’re the one helping clients cut through the noise, make better food choices, and reconnect with their health goals. 

And, you’re the calm voice in the chaos of diet culture. But behind the scenes, you might also be the person staring at your own meal plan, thinking, “I know what to do… so why can’t I seem to do it right now?”

COMMUNITY

Meet Isabella Andueza: The Gym Owner With a 297-Pound Clean

Credit: @isabellaandueza / Instagram

When the opportunity to buy CrossFit Hawthorn East in Melbourne, Australia, presented itself, Isabella Andueza knew it was a risk.

The affiliate has been around for 12 years, but at that time it only had 42 members, and it was “pretty broken and needed a lot of love and energy,” Andueza admitted.

Still, something told her there was potential, so last February she and her now business partner, Dylan Simon, decided to take the plunge and buy the gym.

  • “I just believed that we could do it, believed we could turn it around,” she told the Morning Chalk Up in an interview. 

Today,  just nine months after taking over, the gym has 130 members and “the business is a lot healthier,” the 30-year-old Andueza said.

HIGHLIGHTS

Celebrating a PR, hosting a fundraiser, this, that, or otherwise? Send us a tip.

  • Happy birthday to Nick Mathew and Stephen Stover.

  • Well done to Brooklyn Sittner, who repped out three strict press at 68 kilos/150 pounds.

  • Watch Bryce from CrossFit Kiamaia in New Zealand PR his snatch at 135 kilos/297 pounds.

  • Congratulations to Rafael of CrossFit Montijo in Portugal for competing at the Badajoz Elvas Throwdown, for the first time in the RX division.

  • Watch Will Moorad rep out these bench presses at 102 kilos/225 pounds. Something we might see at a World Fitness Project event next season?