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- 🏃 Inside Cole Sager’s First HYROX Race (And What He Learned)
🏃 Inside Cole Sager’s First HYROX Race (And What He Learned)
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Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.
In today’s edition:
🏃♂️ Cole Sager enters the HYROX arena — questioning his CrossFit well-roundedness and chasing a sub-60 race with the CompTrain crew.
⏱️ Many athletes sabotage their gains after the workout — these six recovery-nutrition mistakes might be holding you back more than you think.
🔥 After a skydiving crash left him paralyzed, Sam Constantin spent two years rebuilding his body, and then he earned a silver medal at the Adaptive CrossFit Games.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
I have a lot more respect for HYROX after racing. It was far more community-focused than I realized.”
COMPETITIONS
A New Arena: Cole Sager Takes on HYROX
Credit: @djfalconnn / Instagram
Cole Sager recently asked himself, “Am I as well-rounded as a CrossFit athlete (claims) to be?”
This idea prompted him to reflect and compare himself to his peers training in the hybrid space, running sub-three-hour marathons, which Sager can’t do.
With HYROX as a new way to measure fitness, Sager felt inspired to try it. He approached it, wondering if he could perform at a high level in other areas of fitness, just as he can in CrossFit.
Over the last few years, a growing number of professional and everyday CrossFit athletes have been testing themselves with HYROX, some of them returning again and again to beat their previous times.
In November, with multiple races across the country, social media was packed with finisher photos of athletes. Olivia Kerstetter and Chris Ibarra competed in Dallas, as well as Dillon and Arielle Loewen.
Sager was one of them as he headed to Chicago, Illinois, for his first race.
In a recent two-part YouTube episode, Sager shares his behind-the-scenes moments and his mindset heading into the competition alongside his CompTrain crew, Bryce Chambers, and Jamison Price.
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SPEED READS
🎄🚣♂️ Concept2 x HWPO Holiday Challenge: The annual 100k–200k meter grind is back, and this time Concept2 has partnered with HWPO Training, pushing athletes to log big meters between Thanksgiving and Christmas — with BikeErg, SkiErg, and row meters all counting toward charity and challenge rewards. Learn more here.
🔧🔥 3 CrossFit Hacks to Level Up (Fast): Bayley Martin drops three game-changing efficiency tips — from hip-snap thrusters to energy-saving ring muscle-up mechanics to faster, less-fatiguing rope climbs — that instantly make high-volume workouts feel smoother, lighter, and way more sustainable.
🎶🏋️♀️ The New Night Out: Gyms like the Bay Club are redefining nightlife with “soft clubbing.” As Gen Z and Millennials ditch hangovers for wellness-first socializing, gyms are filling up at night with people looking for music, movement, and community without the bar tab.
🧠⚖️ Triumph and Disaster: In their newest Chasing Excellence episode, Ben Bergeron and Patrick Cummings unpack why both success and failure are traps — and why the athletes who stay centered, detached from outcomes, and grounded in routine handle pressure, chaos, and big moments better than anyone.
ICYMI: 📊 Full WFP season comes into focus — 21 workouts, 67 movements, and a nearly even split between mono, weightlifting, and gymnastics.
MEMBER EXCLUSIVE
Common Recovery Nutrition Mistakes Athletes Make and How to Fix Them
Credit: @ctpcam / Instagram
If you’ve ever finished a hard workout feeling like a champ, only to wake up the next day sore, sluggish, and questioning why you bother training, you're not alone.
Recovery is one of the most overlooked aspects of performance nutrition. Many athletes believe the work is done during the workout, but the real gains are built after you leave the gym.
The problem is that even well-intentioned athletes often make a few common nutrition mistakes that slow recovery, boost fatigue, and sometimes even cause injury or burnout. The good news is that each mistake has a simple fix.
Let’s break down the most common recovery mistakes and the strategies that will help you bounce back faster, stronger, and with fewer “why did I do this to myself” moments.
PROFILE
From Paralysis to the Podium: Sam Constantin’s Two-Year Battle to Walk and Compete at the Adaptive CrossFit Games
Credit: Enrique Villasenor, @evillmediasports / Instagram
It was a routine day parachuting for Sam Constantin.
His 171st career jump.
But that day in September 2023, the long-time CrossFit athlete, who was in his fourth season of parachuting, had his sights set on a challenging maneuver that was new to him: A swoop.
A swoop is a landing technique where the skydiver uses intentional speed and turns to glide close to the ground at higher speeds than usual.
“Maybe I was still too much of a beginner to try this,” admits Constantin, now 24 years old, about the day that changed everything for him more than two years ago.
All of a sudden, something was wrong. Something was really wrong.
“I was too low to the ground, and I didn’t have enough time,” Constantin said.
Unable to control the landing, he hit the ground at 100 kilometers an hour. He couldn’t feel his legs, his back was injured, and he could see by the way his foot was pointing that it was broken.
“I remember everything, but I didn’t know what was going on,” he said.
What was going on was that Constantin had become paralyzed below the waist. Doctors told him they didn’t think he would walk again.
HIGHLIGHTS
Celebrating a PR, hosting a fundraiser, this, that, or otherwise? Send us a tip.
🎂Happy birthday to Joshua Al-chamaa.
Check out Eren Kim handstand-walking, I mean running, at the Bangkok Throwdown.
Well done to Mangomed on this axle bar 136-kilo/299-pound clean and jerk at the Kanda Showdown.
Bronislaw Olenkowicz challenges his followers to this brutal partner workout - maybe something to attempt over the holidays? 😅
🙌Congratulations to Blair of CrossFit Eclipse in Tulsa, OK, on this 115-kilo/255-pound clean PR.