Understanding Fitness As A Competitor - Steven Fawcett - #155

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh, yes. Hello, friends. Welcome back to Modern Wisdom. My guest today is Steven Fawcett, multiple Times CrossFit Games athlete, owner of JST Compete and man with a Wigan accent. I drove down to see him in his Man Cave garage gym, and we had a fantastic discussion speaking about how competitors, both local and at the absolute top level of fitness, can program their years. How often should you be competing each year? How often should you be doing qualifiers? How can you prepare in between events at competitions? How can you ensure that your progress is not being beset by constantly hammering yourself with Metcons? There is a lot to take away from this episode. But for now, it's time to talk fitness. Steve Fawcett, take it away. Oh yeah, PS. Some of you might be thinking, well, it's all well and good you telling us about fitness, Chris, but my gym's shut down at the moment. What am I supposed to do? Well, if there is one takeaway from this podcast, I would say that it is focusing on the individual elements of your sport to then bring it back in so that you can use it in a competition setting. And that is what is happening right now. You have the choice to go away and work on some of your deficiencies, some of the things that you need to get better at. So go and do it. Steve said so.
Steven Fawcett in the building. How are you, man?

**Steven Fawcett** (1:40)
Good, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Well, thanks for traveling to Wigan. Beautiful.

**Chris Williamson** (1:45)
Look at this in the dungeon.

**Steven Fawcett** (1:47)
I know, this is my little man cave.

**Chris Williamson** (1:49)
It's cool, man. It's very cool. You just come back from Miami?

**Steven Fawcett** (1:52)
Yes. How was it? Yeah, such a good time. Such a good time. I've been back for a week or so now, but in terms of competitions, probably the most fun that I've ever had. Why? Probably a couple of things, mixture of who I was with, who I was around. There was, obviously, I was there competing in a team with Taylor, Anita and Mikey, but we also had a little bit of a JST crew going on with reggie, Philip, the Danish lad, Philip Biscard and the girls as well. So there's Evie and Isla there. So it was a good group of maybe eight or nine of us who've all known each other quite a while. So it was good just to go out to Miami, which is somewhere just completely different to Wigan.

**Chris Williamson** (2:37)
Slightly different to Wigan, yeah.

**Steven Fawcett** (2:39)
And just go and have a good time. And you know, it's like being around Mikey and reggie, they just bounce off each other and there's laser sharp focus when it's time for the event and warming up. And then 10, 15 minutes after, it's just back to just having a good time. So it's something that I've not always had that balance of around competition. Sometimes I get myself in the zone and the fun aspect is maybe just kind of like limited because I'm so focused on wanting to compete. So having those guys there was, it just made it really a really full experience.

**Chris Williamson** (3:11)
Do you think that you can have the level of focus that you want from yourself and from your athletes whilst still having that turn off?

**Steven Fawcett** (3:22)
Yeah, it is a very hard balance. If I was there, if we were there competing and we were going there, knowing full well that we were going to be a top three team and be getting a games ticket, then whether or not the environment would have changed just kind of naturally, like people would have been a bit more serious, I'm not sure, but I mean, I'm sure there is a balance out there, but I think it's a very hard balance for people to find. Because, I mean, if there's three hours between events and this next event is potentially going to be life changing with the result that comes, then it's quite hard to be, you know, it's quite hard to be acting the way that we were acting last week. So, I'm sure some people have the balance, but I think everyone's balance is just a little bit different.

**Chris Williamson** (4:04)
When you watch it, right, you can see different personalities come across within the games, you know, watching the documentaries and stuff like that. You see some people who are kind of, especially some of the girls, some of them seem to have real polarised laser focus, and others seem to be kind of like giggly, spending time with their partner or their coach and like laughing and just doing girls' stuff. You know what I mean?