25/08/2026
Hyrox Perth 2026. Personal best? Yes. Sub60? Not yet.
Humbling? Yes. Fun? Debatable.
It’s easy to underestimate a challenge until you’ve been in the cauldron. We only truly learn through our own lived experience, and the closer you get toward the pointy end, the more effort/volume/training is required to move the needle only incrementally.
With a race or event like this, no one else cares as much as you do. And to the outsider looking in, the amount of training does not directly correlate with the perceived outcome. So many hours of blood, sweat, and tears put in, all for a few minutes shaved off a time.
So what have I learned this time round? That treating life as an experiment removes pressure from an outcome.
Don’t take yourself too seriously.
Bring play and curiosity to the table, and suddenly life becomes a series of experiments and a game to be played, which IS fun. And this play state promotes a sense of freedom, which ironically leads to greater performance.
This has been the insight I’ve gained from Ben Crowe: “Replace expectation with experimentation.” I used this mindset over the weekend during the Hyrox event. When curveballs appeared, facing them with curiosity is a lens that subtly shifts your state, even just a little.
Life doesn’t have to be so serious. That’s not to say I didn’t put in some serious effort, but more to say no one actually cares about a result more than how you are/act/show up as a human being.
I want my kids to see that their dad puts in serious effort to be his best and to grow. But that effort is also a form of play.
Ben Crowe talks about how in psychology there’s a common thought that all human emotion can be linked back to two core, foundational states... LOVE or FEAR.
Play is derived from love and plays a crucial role in our own personal growth. From an energetic state, this is where we raise our vibrational frequency. I think this is where we can be our true selves. Uninhibited and free to be in our ‘inner child’ state.
For some people, a Hyrox event may not seem like the ideal form of play but anything can be play if we access a flow state. I encourage you to find yours!