{"id":720148,"date":"2026-07-31T02:20:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T02:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/720148\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T02:20:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T02:20:25","slug":"breaking-a-sweat-for-the-story-and-glory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/720148\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking a Sweat for the Story, and Glory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Times Insider<\/a> explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.<\/p>\n

As I explained to the customs officer at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport last month, I\u2019m a regular contributor to The New York Times who was flown from my home in Berlin to write about a new event called Xenom.<\/p>\n

The event is a two-day fitness competition that was taking place that weekend at Ford Center at the Star stadium in Frisco. Still, the officer seemed skeptical. \u201cIt\u2019s related to CrossFit,\u201d I hastily clarified.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it\u2019s like a cult thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am something of an expert in the \u201ccult thing\u201d of CrossFit. I have written extensively about the company<\/a> and its exercise methodology<\/a> for The Times, and my book about its rise and fall comes out in October.<\/p>\n

I’ve also covered many fitness fads and exercise competitions that share CrossFit\u2019s DNA, including Hyrox, the German race that has exploded in popularity<\/a>; the Tactical Games, a \u201cfitness fad with guns\u201d<\/a>; and MetFix, the health-focused regime<\/a> created by CrossFit\u2019s founder, Greg Glassman. So covering Xenom, which aims to turn CrossFit into a mass participation event like an Ironman race, was par for the course.<\/p>\n

As usual, I set out to learn how the event came together, how it worked and what kinds of people were participating. But this time I wouldn\u2019t just be reporting on the competition. I would be a competitor.<\/p>\n

Xenom consists of 10 tests held over 48 hours. It\u2019s a long, physically demanding challenge that includes weight lifting, gymnastics and high-skill movements like handstand push-ups and muscle-ups. I have been doing CrossFit training more or less daily for the past eight years, so it\u2019s not like I was going into this weekend-long fitness extravaganza unprepared.<\/p>\n

But as a reporter, keeping my eyes open, my ears to the ground and my mind attentive was a full-time job. It proved a lot harder to be keenly observant while also warming up, sweating profusely and throwing barbells around. I had to force myself off the floor after a particularly grueling event involving a stationary bike to do some interviews and take notes.<\/p>\n

On a Sunday morning, I nervously prepared to take on an event I had been dreading: the clean ladder. A clean is a kind of Olympic lift in which you heave a barbell up from the ground onto your shoulders. When done well, it looks easy, but it\u2019s an extremely technical movement that requires precise timing and control.<\/p>\n

Five minutes before the event, I rushed over to Josh Godinez, a coach with HWPO, a CrossFit training program I\u2019ve subscribed to for many years. Mr. Godinez was on hand to give pointers to athletes \u2014 and I badly needed some. \u201cCan you give me some tips on my clean?\u201d I asked. I showed him what my clean looked like, and he took it in silently.<\/p>\n

He offered some pointers. \u201cI\u2019ve taught a lot of people to clean,\u201d Mr. Godinez said. \u201cBut never this quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the competition floor, and with his advice in mind, I made it to the 198-pound bar, concentrating on what he had told me: Engage my lats, shrug hard. The barbell came up \u2014 and I caught it. People around me were lifting far heavier. But under the bright stadium lighting, in that moment, I felt like a superhero.<\/p>\n

My last event wrapped on early Sunday afternoon. I spent the rest of the day wandering the arena, chatting with other competitors and asking people what they thought of the weekend \u2014 the usual shoe-leather reporting I do while on assignment, though in this case much more exhausted.<\/p>\n

One unexpected advantage was that the people I was reporting on saw me not as a nosy outsider but as a peer. I talked to one of the men in my group about his experience. \u201cI saw you run past me on the running event,\u201d he said. \u201cGreat job!\u201d<\/p>\n

Drafting the story that Monday morning was a little more difficult than usual, if only because my body was so banged up. Working as a reporter doesn\u2019t usually involve being so sore. But I believed that I understood something about Xenom only through doing it myself. It would have been difficult to know just how well Xenom conveys the feeling of being a professional athlete without experiencing it myself, in every lift, every burpee and every ounce of sweat.<\/p>\n

Now I am on the lookout for the next assignment in the fitness realm. An Ironman race or an ultramarathon might be interesting.<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019s time to start training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1167,6647,102,1996,56,54,55,103023,238206],"class_list":["post-720148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-exercise","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-new-york-times","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weight-lifting","tag-xenom-inc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}