After winning five consecutive CrossFit Games and hanging up his competitive hat, Mat Fraser’s life looks like anything but retirement.
“I think when I announced my retirement I should have prefaced it that I was retiring from competing,” said the 32-year-old. “I’m working more now than I ever had.”
Still more fit than most of us (all of us, really), he’s using his wealth of fitness knowledge to run his training program, Hard Work Pays Off. Those who are following HWPO can expect some serious upgrades as the company is moving to its own stand-alone platform through Fitr Training.
“We’re looking and launching more tracks. The user interface for the athletes, the customers, is incredible. You can go into your one app and there’s a track for everyone. I’m really excited about bringing in more athletes.”
Fraser says HWPO is working to expand so that anyone looking to advance their skills in CrossFit or just overall fitness can do so. Through finding the best specialists in each modality, he believes they are “the best training platform” and is looking forward to becoming even better.
Under HWPO – Fraser and Jake Marconi are training 18-year-old and seventh fittest woman on earth, Mal O’Brien, who’s already off to a powerful start locking in a first and second place finish on Open workouts 22.1 and 22.2.
“I’ve been working with Mal for a couple of months now…I’m obviously taking my experience, my knowledge, my resources, and applying it to her, but we’re different athletes. We have different strengths and weaknesses, we like different training styles, so it’s been a while getting the feelers out there and figuring out what works well and what she responds to.”
Based on the leaderboard thus far, it seems like the coach and athlete chemistry is working. Although the nerves and excitement of competing can’t necessarily be replicated off of the competition floor, Fraser does admit he was a bit nervous to be responsible for making sure her Open videos were good enough for CrossFit, and the world to see.
As HWPO continues its growth in the training program space, Fraser is confident there will be more news to come, especially with his co-pilot Matt O’Keefe back by his side.
“He never really left… It’s come full circle… It’s incredibly rewarding that I finished my competitive career and he went from manager, agent, friend, and he always called himself my caddy at the Games but now we get to work together officially for the long haul.”
While it’s still a bit strange to look at the Open leaderboard and not see Mat Fraser’s name, it’s encouraging for the sport that he’s still in this space gracing the next group of athletes with his fitness knowledge.
“I’m solely focused on helping the younger generation of athletes coming up achieve their dreams.”
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