{"id":159150,"date":"2022-01-17T15:01:12","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T04:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=159150"},"modified":"2022-01-18T09:09:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T22:09:37","slug":"mentality-101-with-the-worlds-fittest-man-mat-fraser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2022\/01\/17\/mentality-101-with-the-worlds-fittest-man-mat-fraser\/","title":{"rendered":"Mentality 101 with the World’s Fittest Man: Mat Fraser!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Hard<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

CrossFit is one of the world’s largest participation fitness programs, with over 15,000 affiliated CrossFit gyms globally. 400,000 people compete in the CrossFit open, the biggest sporting participatory event in the world. One such athlete is Mathew Fraser, the Fittest Man on Earth \u2014 the most successful and dominant CrossFit athlete in history. Mat is a 5 time CrossFit Games Champion (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 & 2020) and the only 6 time individual podium finisher.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mat Fraser’s new book, Hard Work Pays Off<\/strong><\/a>, details for the first time his revolutionary methods for staying motivated and building peak strength, endurance, and speed. Read an extract from Mat’s new book below! <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n
\"Mat<\/a>

Mat Fraser<\/p><\/div>\n

Mentality 101<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I like to say that the best thing to ever happen to me in CrossFit was losing the 2015 Games.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d done practically nothing to get ready for Regionals, and if I\u2019d been rewarded with a ticket to the Games, I probably would\u2019ve trained even less and shown up totally unprepared. Then I would\u2019ve packed it in as soon as I hit an event where I couldn\u2019t just impress everyone with my brute strength. I barely rowed 1 kilometre at Regionals without stopping, and on the very first day at the Games, I would\u2019ve had to row 21,097 meters? Yeah, that would\u2019ve been a hard pass from me.<\/p>\n\n\n

It took me years \u2014 and a few very public humiliations \u2014 to decide that I wanted to be the Fittest on Earth. So what I want you to do right now is evaluate how seriously you want to take this sport. Be honest with yourself. Maybe you don\u2019t want to be the absolute best athlete you can be. That\u2019s okay. Believe me, I know how much work it takes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last few weeks leading up to the Games, my entire life \u2014 and Sammy\u2019s \u2014 would revolve around my health and safety. I\u2019d stop riding my motorcycle, even just around our neighbourhood. I\u2019d refuse to go to the beach in case there was broken glass I could step on. I\u2019d even stop using a steak knife because what if this was the one time in a million that I cut my hand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘What I want you to do right now is evaluate how seriously you want to take this sport. Be honest with yourself. Maybe you don\u2019t want to be the absolute best athlete you can be. That\u2019s okay. Believe me, I know how much work it takes.’<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019re your goals? Maybe you want to be number one at your gym but never compete. Maybe you want to get a specific skill, like a ring muscle- up or a bodyweight snatch. Maybe you just like going to the gym every day, breaking a sweat, and hang- ing out with your buddies, and you\u2019d be happy maintaining where you\u2019re at. Those are great goals, and you can always change them as you get more experience, just like I did. So decide what your personal podium is and work toward it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where you\u2019ll run into problems is if your expectations don\u2019t align with the amount of work you\u2019re willing to invest, and so many CrossFit athletes assume they\u2019ve got what it takes to focus on nothing but eating, sleeping, and training. Before you down- load your 12- week strength plan, meal prep for the next month, and buy every supplement that\u2019s advertised to you on Instagram, you have to ask yourself: That thing I hate doing, am I willing to do it every day for a year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what I did with rowing, and then sprinting, then dead- lifting, and then swimming, and the list goes on and on. To be a true competitor, you have to accept that you\u2019ll always be working most on the thing you like least. No matter how many times you win the Games, there\u2019s an endless list of weaknesses to improve \u2014 and that should scare you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014This is an edited extract from Hard Work Pays Off<\/a><\/em> by Mat Fraser (Penguin Books Australia), out on the 18th of January.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"New<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read an extract from Hard Work Pays Off by Mat Fraser, 5-time Crossfit World Champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":159175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6677],"tags":[7516,1910,7517,14189,14188,3922,4212],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/HardWorkPaysOff-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159150"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159231,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159150\/revisions\/159231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}