Mat Fraser (athlete)

Mat Fraser was born to Canadian Olympic figure skaters Don Fraser and Candace Jones in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and spent his early childhood in Sharbot Lake.[5][6][7] His mother worked as a doctor while his father was a stay-at-home dad.[8][9] The family moved to Colchester, Vermont in the United States where Fraser attended schools. He has been athletic from a young age, learning to swim when he was one, water-skiing at 18 months, downhill when two, and going up the stairs in a handstand when he was five.[10][11] He played football in middle school, but became interested in weightlifting when he was 12 years old after a coach saw him trying to compete with a friend lifting weights, and introduced him to a weightlifting coach who taught him how to lift weights with proper techniques.[12] After graduating from high school, he started to train full time in Olympic weightlifting at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado as a resident athlete on scholarship.[13][14]

In 2009, a few weeks before he was due to compete in the Junior World Weightlifting Championship in Bucharest, Romania, he injured his back doing a clean-pull, which was further damaged in a squat after he was encouraged to train a week later.[15] Although in pain, he went to compete in the Championships, but after returning home it was found that he had suffered two breaks in his L5 vertebra.[14] It required him to wear a plastic brace on his torso for four months, but it failed to heal properly on its own.[8][16] He refused a spinal fusion surgery as it would have ended his athletic career, and he elected instead to have an experimental surgery that involved having his back re-broken, inserting a protein sponge to help heal the bone with two plates and six screws attached to his lower spine.[14][12] The rehabilitation lasted a year, although he resumed training after four months.

After his injury, Fraser enrolled at the Olympic Education Center at Northern Michigan University to study math and physics while he also recovered from his operation.[17][8] He gave up weightlifting as a sport after two years in Michigan, and went to Rocky Mountain House in Alberta to work on the oil fields for four months,[18] before returning to Vermont to start a double major course in mechanical engineering and engineering management and a double minor in Math and Business at the University of Vermont in Burlington.[17] Fraser started training in a CrossFit gym when he was 22,[10] and competed in CrossFit events in 2013, but initially, he competed only to earn some pocket money while he was studying.[19] Although he had originally intended to pursue a career in engineering, a stint as an intern in an aerospace company in 2014 convinced him to focus on CrossFit.[17][20] By the time he graduated with degrees in engineering and business in May 2016, he had established himself as a CrossFit athlete enough to commit to the sport full time.[19][20]

Fraser came from an Olympic weightlifting background[21] where he earned his first national title in weightlifting when he was 13 years old and was the school age champion in 2003, 2005 and 2007. In 2009, he became the junior national champion.[13] He injured his back in 2009, but not knowing that he had a broken vertebra, he went on to compete in the Junior World Weightlifting Championship in Bucharest, Romania, and ended up 15th out of 16 in the 77 kg men category.[14][22] After spinal surgery and rehabilitation, he competed in two American Weightlifting Open competitions; he was placed third in the 77 kg men category in 2010,[23] and fifth in 85 kg men in 2011.[24] He retired from the sport after his final weightlifting competition as funding was cut after Chicago lost their bid for 2016 Summer Olympics and he had lost interest in weightlifting.[25][15]

Fraser first became involved in CrossFit while he was still competing in weightlifting – he was looking for a place to do Olympic lifts to keep himself fit when he was home in Vermont during a school break from Michigan. Although not interested in CrossFit, he chose a CrossFit box (gym) because CrossFit boxes allowed Olympic lifters to use their equipment in towns without Olympic facilities.[17] When he was studying in Vermont, he trained at Champlain Valley CrossFit, where he was introduced to CrossFit as a sport and was encouraged to compete in CrossFit events.[17][26] Fraser started competing in 2013 in various local competitions, and with only a few months of experience in CrossFit, he finished fifth in the CrossFit North East Regionals, which was not enough to qualify for the CrossFit Games.[17][27][28] For a time he also competed as part of a team; he was with the New York Rhinos team in the NPGL in 2014,[17] and in the Built By Bergeron team in 2015,[29] which finished third in the CrossFit Team Series that year.[30]

2016–2020: Champion

At the 2016 CrossFit Games, Fraser performed consistently well in events he had previously struggled in. He started his campaign with a win in the 7k Ranch Trail Run even though he was not known for running or endurance.[38][39] That was the only event he won, but he came second in seven events and top 10 in nearly all events, and the consistent all-round performance allowed him to dominate the field and emerge as the winner. He won with a 197-point lead over second-place Ben Smith, which was the biggest margin of victory in the history of the Games.[38][40][41]

The following year Fraser was again dominant at the 2017 CrossFit Games, winning four of the last eight events (Triple-G Chipper, Muscle-up Clean Ladder, Heavy 17.5, 2223 Intervals), the first time he won more than one event in a single Games. He finished in first place, extending his record margin of victory to 216 points over Brent Fikowski.[42][43]

Mat Fraser in 2018

In 2018, Fraser's consistent performance again allowed him to defend his title at the 2018 CrossFit Games. He led from the third event onward, winning in two events (Fibonacci and Aeneas) with top 4 finishes in 10 of the 14 events and only one outside the top 10 – 11th on the Marathon Row. He won with a record number of 1,162 points, and a record lead of 220 points over the runner-up Patrick Vellner.[44][8]

Fraser qualified for the 2019 CrossFit Games by winning the first ever sanctioned event held in Dubai under the new qualification system.[45] At the CrossFit Games itself, Fraser faced a strong challenge from Noah Ohlsen despite winning 6 events in this Games. He started well with two wins, but a couple of stumbles on day 2 of the competition saw him trailing Ohlsen in points by the end of the day – a sandbag falling out of his bag in the 6k Ruck event near the end of the race resulted in a 60-second penalty and a 17th-place finish,[46] followed by a worse 21st finish in Sprint Couplet. Fraser managed to claw back the deficit in the later events of the competition; a couple of first-place finishes (Split Triplet and Clean) and his second and first finishes on Ringer 1 and Ringer 2 in the last day gave him a small lead over Ohlsen. A win in the final event The Standard made him champion for the fourth time, but with the smallest winning margin since 2010. This win equaled Froning's record of four consecutive wins.[47]

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced major changes to the 2020 CrossFit Games. The competition was separated into two stages; in the first stage, 30 men competed online and Fraser won four of the seven events.[48] The field was then narrowed down to the top 5 men who competed in person in the final stage. Fraser dominated this much-reduced group of athletes, winning ten of the twelve events, only beaten to second place in Swim 'N' Stuff and CrossFit Total.[49][50] He won with a greatly-extended record margin; his points total of 1,150 was nearly doubled that of that the runner-up Samuel Kwant (605).[51] He also set a series of other records in the Games: most number of wins in a single Games (10 in stage two, 14 including stage one), most number of cumulative event wins (29), most number of consecutive event wins (6), the first continuous unbroken lead in the Games, and his fifth title surpassed Froning's record of four.[52][53]

On February 2, 2021, Fraser announced on Instagram that he has retired from competitive CrossFit.[54]

Since switching to CrossFit, he has not followed any sort of routine training program due to the constantly varied movements found in CrossFit and the CrossFit Games. In his early years in CrossFit, he did not dedicate his training to CrossFit with only 1–2 hours a day of training a few times a week,[55] did not maintain any kind of diet and would often eat an entire pint of ice cream or a half-dozen donuts. After coming in second to Ben Smith at the 2015 CrossFit Games, he changed to a better diet and dropped ten pounds, eating no "junk food", soda, and little of pre-packaged food.[56][57][58] He does not adhere to a specific diet such as paleo or counting macros, which is common in CrossFit. In general, he eats what he wants and when he wants it, aside from ensuring that he eats well.[58] Fraser tends to eat four to five big meals a day when training, which include mainly meat and vegetables, along with sticky white rice.[56] In the off-season when he does not train, he may eat only one or two meals a day, but his food intake may reach 6–7,000 calories at the peak of his training.[57] He also sees sleep as very important for recovery after training, and makes sure that he has regular sleep of 9–10 hours.[59][60]

Fraser does not have a fixed set of training routines, but he does maintain some structure in his training. During a CrossFit season, his training varies with time, but he trains a minimum of two sessions a day four days a week. He may have three track sessions, three or four weightlifting sessions, a couple of sessions on swimming and one on road bike.[61] He warms up and cools down before and after his training.[60] The training may depend on what was done the previous, a day concentrated on conditioning may be followed by strength work the next, and he tries to fit in conditioning, cardio, and technique work in a day.[58] He also focuses on his weaknesses, for example, after he struggled in flipping the pig (a concrete block encased in rubber) in the 2015 Games that contributed to his failure to finish the event, he bought a pig so he can practice with it.[8] He does not train in the off-season after a major competition. When preparing for a competition, the training ramps up over a set time period of 12 to 16 weeks, but he cuts down on the training slightly when close to the competition, and avoids workouts that can have an adverse effect the following day.[57][62]

In Vermont, he trained at Champlain Valley CrossFit and a home gym in the basement of his parents' house.[63] In 2017, he started moving to Froning's hometown of Cookeville, Tennessee, where he trained at CrossFit Mayhem and later at Calfkiller Crossfit,[64][65] as well as in his own home gym.[66]

He often trained with female athletes in preparation for the Games, for example with Katrín Davíðsdóttir.[67] For the 2019 and 2020 CrossFit Games, he trained with female champion Tia-Clair Toomey after she moved to Cookeville in 2018.[68][69] Toomey's coach/husband Shane Orr also served as Fraser's coach.[70]

Sammy Moniz and Mat Fraser in 2018

Fraser lives with Sammy Moniz, who created the website Feeding The Frasers dedicated to food she cooks for Fraser.[71][72] He does not drink alcohol, and has described his drinking problems as a teenager that led to his being sober from the age of 17.[9][73]

Fraser has sponsorship deals with a number of companies, including Nike, Rogue, Compex, Theragun, Xtend, and Beam.[58][74][57] Fraser's Nike sportswear, such as his personal editions of Metcon cross-training shoes,[75][76][77] features his motto "Hard Work Pays Off" or its acronym HWPO.[8][78]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mat Fraser (athlete).

• Mathew Fraser at CrossFit
• Mat Fraser at Team USA
• Mat Fraser's channel on YouTube