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Dena and Tom Hogan are two of the most experienced athletes and coaches in HYROX, with over 40 races and five World Championships between them. As founders of Team Hogan, they coach athletes across all levels while continuing to compete at the sharp end of the sport.
In this episode, Dena and Tom break down how HYROX training has evolved since 2020, why endurance and efficiency matter more than max strength, and how athletes should think about race weight, cross-training, and longevity.
We also explore individualized coaching, smarter ways to train sleds and wall balls, the role of community in long-term motivation, and why enjoyment—not constant PB chasing—is key to staying in the sport.
You can listen to The Next Move podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Episode breakdown:
00:00 — How has HYROX training changed from 2020 to 2026, and what were people getting wrong early on?
01:50 — Why did elite athletes start dialing in an “ideal race weight,” and how do you find the sweet spot between muscle and run pace?
03:44 — Should most athletes try to gain/maintain weight for HYROX, and how do you test where your tipping point is?
04:40 — Why might HYROX be more sustainable long-term than Ironman/ultras, and what does that change about training priorities?
05:39 — Is HYROX “mostly endurance,” and why do long hill efforts often beat gym max-strength for real station performance?
07:26 — Do newcomers need an aerobic “base sport” first, or is the right plan entirely dependent on their current background?
10:36 — What questions do you ask a new client to personalize training, and why do “circumstances” matter as much as fitness?
13:58 — What is a “test week,” and how do you use it to set paces, strength targets, and training intent?
15:57 — How do you keep performance high while running very little due to injuries, and where do you “get the stimulus” instead?
18:16 — Will elite training keep shifting toward high-volume, low-impact work (ergs/bikes), and why does it beat more running?
21:06 — How should strength training look for HYROX if max strength isn’t the main limiter?
22:42 — What’s a practical playbook to improve sleds, and why do hills + varied sled loading matter more than “race weight only”?
25:17 — Why do wall balls break people (mobility + technique), and how should you train them under fatigue instead of fresh?
28:15 — How do you define “efficiency” on stations, and why might being slightly slower but fresher be the winning tactic?
30:27 — What are the best ways to teach efficiency (video, timing, stroke rate, settings), and why is it all trial-and-error?
35:44 — What keeps you motivated to keep competing for years, and how does community (and family) shape that?
41:35 — How do you enjoy the sport more—especially if you’re always chasing PBs or comparing yourself to others?
48:34 — What advice would you give to someone who wants to build a coaching career in HYROX without becoming “generic”?
53:11 — What training trends are you watching in early 2026 (volume pullbacks, coach changes), and will more elite runners enter HYROX?
Transcript:
John (00:00)
Okay, so I’m here today with Dina and Tom Hogan. They both competed in over 40 different Hirox races, five world championships as some of the most experienced athletes in Hirox, as some of the most trusted coaches in Hirox. Dina and Tom, welcome to the show.
Tom & Dena (00:15)
Hi John, how are you? John, thanks for having us.
John (00:16)
I’m doing well,
I’m doing well. It’s so great to have you. So I’m curious, so you’ve been in the sport since 2020, you’ve seen how the training for the sport has evolved since then. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in terms of how people approach the sport of high rocks? What are people getting right in 2026 that they really didn’t understand very well in 2020?
Tom & Dena (00:36)
everything. At the start nobody really knew anything. were just doing whatever and seeing what the pieces fit into the puzzle. a lot of the time we were doing things wrong and like we don’t say any different. We actually used to go out and do like a sim every Saturday for about six months and then wonder why we actually weren’t getting better. But all we were doing was just high rocks, high rocks, high rocks, high rocks. think initially we kind of just really
took our own sports, what we were doing at the time. So we were both kind of heavily involved in Ironman. And so we were just doing vast amounts of volume, know, cardio. I mean, our first ever high rocks, we had never even seen a sled or a wobble until we walked into the venue. So and I think what we did was just try to like stick in a few of the movements every now and again, you know, so we try to stay on our
usual path of what we were doing and what we knew. And this huge amount of volume, this endless kind of zone two stuff, and then just threw in some bits and then quickly realized that this is just not producing any results. So I think probably a lot of people, the OGs would agree with that. I know Alex still kind of did a good bit with women and Hunter was on his endless mountain bikes and stuff. So yeah, I think
quickly people realised that they needed to change their training in order to see some results. Yeah, and we pretty quickly figured out as well that the weight thing was a big part of it. Like at the time that we started, I was about 69 kilos. You were skinny! I was doing a lot of wheelchair running and stuff like that. I was built for that. And pretty quickly realised if I wanted to do high rocks, that I needed to get up closer to 80 kilos or not of 80 kilos.
John (02:01)
Yeah.
Mm.
Yeah.
Right, right, see.
Tom & Dena (02:22)
And
that’s something that you’re seeing a lot in the elite this season, that people are really starting to hone in on what their ideal raceway is. And you can see massive differences. I know Sean went into the first major in Hamburg way too late. And then he came out in Melbourne there heavier and he had a fantastic race. And even with the travel to the other side of the world, he still had a great race.
So he’s after kind of figuring out exactly where that weight needs to be. And a lot of the elites are kind of honing in now on a very specific race weight for race day. Yeah, because we didn’t know what was the ideal, right? Like, you know, did you need to be kind of big and heavy for the ergs and sleds? Did you need to be skinny? So I think it’s finding that sweet spot between having enough muscle mass to do the stations efficiently and with force without
John (02:56)
Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah.
Tom & Dena (03:15)
jeopardizing run pace. And so but that’s all hierarchies in general. It’s just a one big balancing act. And one big job. Yeah.
John (03:19)
Yeah. It’s one big bouncing act, one big optimization. And
what you’re talking about is a pretty major shift. So Tom, you’re talking about, you know, as a runner, you were 69 kg. I imagine this is when you were running 30 minute 10 Ks. Is that right? That was your PB somewhere around there. So yeah, so that’s an incredible running time. But in order to compete at your best at high rocks, you’re saying, you know, 12 kg heavier, somewhere around 80 kg was optimal. So
Tom & Dena (03:34)
Yeah. Yeah.
John (03:44)
Where do you think most of your athletes are in terms of that balance? Are you encouraging your athletes to try and maintain weight? Or like, how do you think people should think about balancing that for the sport?
Tom & Dena (03:53)
It’s hard for, especially for like an online coach like ourselves, to really hone in on something like weight with clients because we’re not there, we don’t see them every day. So what we kind of say to people is you have to balance it up yourself. Like you have to take time to kind of move around different weights and see. So like you want to go as heavy as you can without losing speed on your run. So if once you get to the tipping point of you’re starting to slow down, you’ve probably gone a bit too heavy.
So you want to go to the point where the runs and the thresholds can kind of stay at a really good solid pace and push the weight all the way up as high as you can until you start slowing down.
John (04:28)
Yeah,
that seems to be a very different mindset from some of the endurance sports that maybe you’re coming from. So, like when I think of running or even when I think of triathlon, like a lot of the emphasis is maintaining as little weight as possible almost because it has such an impact. So, yeah.
Tom & Dena (04:40)
Yeah. Oh, God. mean, we spent years
just being as lean as possible. Definitely under our natural weight. And I mean, looking back now, I don’t know. very unhealthy. It’s very unhealthy lifestyle. But you just don’t see it. When we were in the thick of our Ironman, have four children and they were ranging from one, three, five and seven. And we were doing
possibly around 25 to 30 hours a week training and, you know, juggling constantly being sick, constantly, you know, juggling these little niggles. So it’s another reason why I think high rocks is just this super sport really in terms of longevity. Like you don’t have, even at the top level and as much as you push yourself, I really feel it’s a bit.
better on the body long term than say some various other sports, the definitely ones that we’ve took part in, ultra marathons, Ironmans, that kind of game.
John (05:39)
Yeah, that’s something I appreciate too. It’s, it’s, you really need to have the strength and you definitely need to have the endurance. Um, I kind of like that it’s, seems to be endurance, um, and emphasize that, right? So, so it’s not quite equal between strength and endurance. It still seems like endurance is, it’s a dominant part of the dominant part of the sport. Um, would you agree on that take?
Tom & Dena (05:57)
Definitely, because if I went into the gym and I would say 99 % of people in there would out squat me or leg press or we go like a classic like strength test, but put me on a sled, I’d be happy to like a beast 100 % of people in that gym over 50 meters. Like once we actually have to move something for a set distance, that’s I think I can beat everybody over because and I think we’ve I think something that a lot of people forget is
So the sport is very new, but all the people who were kind of in the elite for the last four or five years, we were kind of training for this without knowing we were training for this for a decade or 15 years or probably even longer. So we spent a lot of time running in the mountains, running in the hills. And I really believe that built leg strength far beyond what squatting or leg pressing or doing anything in the gym could ever do. And I think that’s where we’ve built a huge amount of endurance. And if you go to someone like Hunter,
John (06:47)
Mm.
Tom & Dena (06:52)
Like Dina said, he’s cycling for six, seven hours in the hills of Malibu. Like the amount of quad strength and leg strength he’s building doing that far surpasses anything he’s probably ever done in the gym. And if you actually got everybody in the elite for the last five years and started questioning like their background and what they were doing, you’ll probably find very similar patterns amongst people that know the classic like lifting or one rep Mac things were not very good at.
John (07:02)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (07:18)
when you have to do something for two, three, four minutes, like we’re all very, very good at it because we were training for it even though we didn’t know we were training for it.
John (07:26)
Okay. So given that understanding of your background, so you’re talking about, you guys had a background both in mountain racing as well as in triathlon. You’re talking about Hunter McIntyre, how he does a lot of cycling. We are seeing that with most athletes having this extended background. So when you’re thinking about advising people coming into the sport, does that shift the way that you advise them on how they should think about their training? Do you feel like people really should just be focusing on some other aerobic sport?
prior to really even competing in high rocks. How do you think about that overall?
Tom & Dena (07:59)
No, I don’t think they need to kind of like do anything specific for a long period of time before they get involved in high rocks. It really does come down to the training that you’re doing now in the moment, right? It’s why we always say that Team Hogan, we’re coaching, we’re not a program.
So we don’t spit these plans out. don’t do that. Sometimes people get in contact and they say, oh, I have a race in 12 weeks. Can you send me a 12 weeks to my first high rocks? We don’t do anything like that because it’s so personal to have the best race you can have and to progress the best you can. Right. So if a fella comes to us and all he’s been doing for the last 10 years is strength training, know, chest and arms, bit of
bit of back squatting, like obviously he’s gonna need a very different programme to a guy that’s been a 10K road racer for the last 10 years and has hit in 32, 33 minutes, you know? So it’s not necessarily that you have to have this huge volume of anything. It’s just you have to do what’s right and what’s going to progress you. So seeing something on Instagram and copying it.
is probably not the best approach, right? Like, just because they need to do it doesn’t mean that you need to do it. So that’s kind of our take on it. It’s knowing where you need to emphasize your time and really work at that. And it depends on the goals. Like, the people that I was talking about are people in the elite. Like, 99 % of people don’t want to get to the elite or have no aspirations to get to the elite. They just want to do better for them.
John (09:19)
Hmm.
Tom & Dena (09:37)
So then the background thing isn’t as important. And where it is important is like I’ve had so many people over the last three years tell me, I’m going to be a leet in six months. And then when you ask them what their background is, like they’re throwing darts or they’re pool. You know, it’s never going to happen. if someone said, I’m going to be a leet and I say, what’s your background to say, was mountain biking for 12 years. Well, then you kind of, your ears park up and you think, well, like this guy could have a chance. Like, let’s dig a little more into.
into it because he has a background and we’re seeing it now with Luke Rear, the guy in the UK, like his background, phenomenal running background. So someone like him, like he had a poster saying about winning the Elite World Championships and like it’s not beyond the realms of possibility because his background is so good and his running is so good even in comparison to everybody else, like he’s far, far beyond them. Like he could actually do it.
John (10:07)
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (10:32)
If he figures out the stations in the next six months, I wouldn’t bet against him.
John (10:36)
Yeah, and it again comes down to having that tremendous base that he’s built up. But Dina, I’m very intrigued with what you said, and I completely agree. I feel like you really have to personalize these training programs. So when you have a new client who comes to you, what are some of the questions you really ask them to understand more about that background? What do you find to be some of the most informative information to help with personalizing those programs?
Tom & Dena (10:40)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
So the biggest thing that I really like to know is obviously what they’ve kind of been up to over the last few weeks or months, what they would hope to achieve. But more importantly is like current circumstances, right? Like, you know, is this person that’s with me at having this conversation, are they a mom of three who’s a nurse that’s doing night shifts, that’s, you know, maxed out in terms of time?
John (11:10)
Hmm.
Tom & Dena (11:24)
like circumstances have to come in because if you load up session after session and someone said, I’ll get it done, I’ll get it done, eventually becomes counterproductive anyway, right? So training within your circumstances is just as important as what you’re actually training. You know, you might have someone else that say a student and they say to me, Dean, I’m actually, I’m in full-time education.
but I have four full days of zero commitments. They can train 11 to 12. Well, their circumstances are very different to Mary, who’s the nurse. So it’s all about getting the most bang for your buck, right? So really training with intent, training smart sessions instead of just this endless, endless junk, right? So if you have an hour to spare, you say, oh, I’ve got one hour. Okay, I’ll run.
30 minutes up the road and 30 minutes and then I’ve got 60 minute run done. Okay, well what about doing a 10 minute warmup, honing in on some intervals, doing a cool down and now all of a sudden you’ve only spent 60 minutes running as you would have, but it’s a session, it’s with purpose, it’s with intent, you’ve calculated your paces. And I think that’s where Team Hogan is maybe a little bit different to the vast majority of coaching or program, not all, but.
the vast majority out there, we are big believers in training within what’s going on. my, Tom and I’s training looks nothing like it did even two years ago. Okay. And just, and I don’t want to sound like a big head or anything. Our performance hasn’t dropped. We, we’re still winning every race we go to, you know, I mean, I think in London we were second overall.
We won our age group and then we were second overall by like 20 seconds or something. Our performance hasn’t dropped because we’ve changed our training to suit our way we are now. So Tom’s constantly injured. So he really has to like watch what he does. And as I said, the children are at that age now. People think...
you know, when the kids are small, it’s hard to fit in training. No, no, no, no, Wait till you’re Uber driver, you know, and they have their own sports and they’re doing their things like our time available is not what it was anymore. So we’ve we’ve got even smarter. And so it’s it’s sometimes doing less, but doing purposeful training works so much better. So when new clients come to me, we have a chat. I like to know absolutely everything. We really talk about like
John (13:34)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm.
Tom & Dena (13:58)
what’s realistic, you know, like what can we do that’s going to give you consistency and longevity over two or three blocks leading into a race rather than what can you smash out in the next three weeks and then do nothing for two weeks. So that’s the kind of difference. And then when they come on board, we always do like what we call test week. So it gives us a really good understanding of their strength numbers.
John (14:07)
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (14:25)
their fitness, their run paces, and then from there then we do some calculations and the horrificness begins. Longevity is key for us, I think, is a big thing. Every year one of our goals is to basically run the same times we did last year. We kind of say every year if we can run a 56 or break a 56, I think we’re on six years in a row doing that or something now. So that’s kind of a big thing for us every year. And we don’t...
John (14:32)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (14:52)
I won’t say we don’t care if we win. Of course we care if we win, but it’s not as big a focus anymore. Like it is more or less we are focused on us and can we get that 56 again? It’s not, we can’t control other people. So we don’t really put any emphasis on that. is another beauty of high rocks as well that you can always stay competitive if you want, right? So like three, four years ago, if we didn’t overall win, like we weren’t happy. Like, and you know, now the realistic thing is
these young fit people are coming into the sport, which by the way, we encourage, we love seeing it. So now for us, it’s like, okay, well, we can still be the fastest of all the old people, right? So like, it’s really good that way in that like, there’s something for everybody, whether you just want to compete just to finish, whether you want to do it with your friends, whether you want to do it with your partner, whether you want to get on the podium, there’s always something within high rocks that you can tick off. So that’s really good.
John (15:45)
Yeah.
Yeah, there’s an objective for everyone. yeah, just to give more context, so that London race 2025, you guys raced the 5422, came in second place. That’s still a remarkable time. So that just gives a lot of credit to your training. But I’m curious, yeah, so you said, the pressures of life, given the kids being the age that they are, your training has had to adjust quite a bit. What are some of the major ways that things have changed? So how has it been changing?
Tom & Dena (15:57)
Yeah. Thank you. ⁓
Well,
I run a total of about 10 to 12 kilometers a week. That’s all I run for probably the last, I’d say this time last year, probably going back that far. And that’s mainly because of injuries and I’ve a dodgy hip and it causes a lot of issues on my left side. So causes hamstring issues and calf issues and all sorts of things. So I just, used to try and kind of get back from an injury and I tried to go again and get injured and tried to, so I just stopped. So I don’t do any...
really fast running anymore. If I’m thresholds or intervals, I’ll do them on the salt bike. I’ll do most of me easy zone two stuff on the bike erg or the ski erg or the roar. So I do a lot of ergs. And that is the thing to remember as well. Like when we talk about maybe Tom running less or doing less sessions or whatever, it’s not sitting up here on the couch with his legs off either, you know, like it’s having the commitment and the discipline to get the stimulus somewhere else. Right. So
Like I don’t think anybody can bury themselves on like a ski erg and a salt bike like you can. Like I know I certainly couldn’t, but it’s adapting. So it’s talking to your coach or if you don’t have a coach, it’s understanding yourself. Okay, I may not be able to do this, but what can I do? So like in our Ironman days, for instance, like I would have always done a double threshold run day, always. I’d have gone to the track in the morning and then lunch, dress day and back again.
that would just be so counterproductive for me now. I probably wouldn’t be able to walk for two weeks, nevermind run. So what do we do? We still do a double threshold, but we do it in another way. So we might do a run in the morning and then the bike intervals in the afternoon, or if like we swim actually. So that’s another way to get good interval session in. So there’s lots you can do, but it’s just understanding where to get the stimulus and to make sure you’re still training. Cause even though we’re juggling stuff,
time injuries, we’re still pushing to where that line is. And that’s, that’s the thing like, you know, it’s finding the line that’s going to give us the most progress without pushing us to the point of not being able to train.
John (18:16)
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So mentioned, you mentioned, so Tom, yeah, you mentioned assault bike and the bike hug. Both of you have been talking about cross-training and these different modalities. You know, as I observed the sport of high rocks, you know, one thing that’s become clear to me is that cross-training on these, you know, other modalities has gotten more and more popular. Do you think that trend is going to continue? Are we going to see more and more people doing even less running than they currently are right now?
Tom & Dena (18:42)
Yeah, 100 % because for as long as people see that volume is kind of winning out, so if you look at like Charlie or someone like that who’s 25, 26 hours a week of volume, people see that so they want to replicate that. So they’ll do what he’s doing. Charlie is probably doing 12 hours on the bike or 13 hours on the bike, another two or three hours on the ergs. I saw Sean did like a four hour erg session on Sunday.
⁓ So lots of people are going that way because they know I can get the volume in but I’m not going to wake up totally destroyed the next day. Like if you go out and you do a four hour run we all know how you’re going to feel for probably a week after that you’re going to be in very bad shape. So you’re going to see a lot more and as the sport becomes more professional and people have more time you’re definitely going to start seeing more. Like if we look at pro triathletes they’re training for 30 hours a week but why can they do 30 hours because they’re swimming and biking.
So very little impact on their bodies. And you’re going to see as high rocks gets more professional that people will push up to kind of 25, 30 hours. And the only way to do that is to do it on the irks. Yeah. I mean, that’s people at the very pointy end of the race, right? You’re talking about, you know, Sean and Charlie and obviously it’s very different for age group athletes. One, they just don’t need to be doing that amount of stuff like, you know, and this is a thing you have to remember as well.
John (19:45)
Okay. Okay. Okay.
Tom & Dena (20:03)
you can’t just copy what others are doing. It’s just pointless. Just because it works for some people. These are people that this is their job. They’re not in finance, they’re not a nurse, they’re not... And that’s the thing to remember as well as an age group athlete, what is the most productive you can be because training 30 hours a week won’t be it.
John (20:13)
Mm-hmm.
Tom & Dena (20:27)
But it’s not, it isn’t all about, we’ve had a lot of clients who maybe get injured from running, don’t run for four or five weeks and we do a lot of org work, a salt bike in the meantime and they’ll come back and if they’re not running what they were running, they’ll actually be a bit faster. it’s, the orgs definitely have a place and I think as we’re finding as we get older to have more of a place and we’re giving a lot of our clients kind of a salt bike and stuff now for thresholds and intervals and they’re all saying the same thing.
John (20:43)
Mmm.
Tom & Dena (20:55)
They’re saying like I get in a great workout, great stimulus and I wake up the next day and I actually feel good. I don’t feel beaten up like I would if I went to the track and did 8x8k or whatever the hell it is. know, so it’s definitely has a part and I think you’re going to see a lot more of it.
John (21:06)
Wow, okay.
Yeah, so it’s almost learning these ways of how to not get beaten up or how to not have that really deep fatigue on a day to day basis. Okay, so we’ve mentioned, we’ve talked about running and how, you know, doing more cross training could be beneficial. The other area where people seem to get beat up is on the strength training. And so I’m curious if you’ve learned lessons there in terms of, you know, how to get the most bang for your buck, how to reduce fatigue. What have you found to be the most beneficial in terms of the strength side of the sport?
Tom & Dena (21:37)
Well, I don’t think you need to lift to like full fatigue or you don’t need to like kill yourself in the gym is a big part because like we said at the start, it’s not max strength is not going to win out in high rocks. So most of our programs wouldn’t be like your five by fives or like very short sets. Most of our stuff would be a lot more volume. Especially it depends what time of year you are as well in terms of like off season or race season, preseason. There is a
there is definitely a place for that kind of stuff. Maybe if off season, if let’s say you are that ultra runner that is in your second season and you’ve got your, you know, you got your basis going on and now you’re like, right, okay, we need to get you a little bit stronger. We need to get you a little bit bigger. Well then in their off season, obviously they are going to hone in on trying to build strength and get a little bit bigger. But on a whole,
Really training for high rocks is again about muscular endurance. So that longer reps, longer rep range, that kind of thing. It’s definitely not your typical bro split. No, there’s probably a bigger like.
John (22:42)
Yeah, okay. So give us a playbook.
So for someone who wants to become a master at the sleds, they want to be able to push the sled like Tom and then run after it. What would a training session look like if that was a specific emphasis? Somebody who really wants to improve their sleds.
Tom & Dena (22:57)
See, we wouldn’t say like it’s all in the gym, so we would always again go back to the hills. So anyone who’s doing a long run on the weekend, like I encourage you get as much elevation gain in that run as you can get. So if someone can get 400, 600 meters of elevation gain in the run every Sunday, like I very much believe that that’s going to transfer more into being good on the sled than me giving you a lot of back squats or anything.
hill rep sessions but we will put lot of sleds in and I think at the start some of the mistakes we made were we just put race weight on the sled all the time and just push that over and over and over again whereas now we kind of mix it up so we go heavier than race weight for shorter mountain meters we go much lighter for further and I think all of those things add up to making you better on the the sleds and it does just go on race weight over and over and over and over again and trying to
And when I say race weight, we actually don’t write that in any programs. We write race feel because my carpet and your carpet, and as we all know, no carpets are ever the same in any high rocks. So they’re definitely not going to be the same in any gym. So we always kind of say race feel or as Dina likes to say, if you can push the sled for more than 10 meters without wanting to break, it’s probably too light. Yeah,
John (24:05)
Yeah, okay.
Probably too light. There we go. There we go. Okay.
Tom & Dena (24:19)
Again though with high rocks like, you know, it really is overall fitness that will win out. So, you know, if you, yes, you have to be strong enough and have the muscular endurance for the sled, but if you’re not fit enough to run off that sled, you know, it’s kind of, it’s like having the fastest swim of a triathlon, right? It’s pointless. No one cares. Like you have to be, yeah, you have to be just overall.
John (24:38)
Mm. Mm.
So.
Tom & Dena (24:43)
ready for the whole race. And I think that’s the thing to remember. I don’t think we’ve ever posted that we’ve had the fastest burpees or the fastest sleds. It’s really, it’s of no interest to me. A couple of times I’ve seen people post, ⁓ we bet Dina and Tom in the sleds. And they’re like, okay, but then you came 50th. So you’ve just, ⁓ you gotta be overall fit and ready to take on your high rocks.
John (24:45)
Yeah.
Yep, yep. It’s having that overall complete profile being ready to tackle the whole event. So another area where people tend to really struggle is the warbles. So I’m curious, what have you learned about training for the warbles?
Tom & Dena (25:17)
Yeah.
Most people it’s mobility issue. It’s never really a strength issue. It’s usually the fact that their hips or their ankles won’t allow them to actually get into the position to throw a wall ball. And I think if you don’t address that, you could go out and throw a billion wall balls and you’re never really going to get much better at them. The people who have the mobility issues tend to do two or three times the work of the lads who don’t or the lads who are very good at wall balls. You’ll see people really roll over the ball.
And when they do that the ball ends up being almost at their feet. So now they have to move the ball. If it’s a foot off the ground you have to move it up to 10 foot up to the target. You’ve got to move it 9 foot by 100 reps is 900 feet. If you see someone like Alex who keeps the ball nice and high he’s probably only moving the ball 4 feet by 100 reps, only 400 feet. So it’s less than half the work of the guy who has the bad mobility and is having to move the ball.
the nine feet in every single rep. So I think it’s more about actually getting your mobility good and getting the technique right and then it becomes much easier. it really is about just getting them in and getting them done. I tend to film my war balls a lot and look back on them because the amount of times you think you’re going low enough.
And then you look back at the video and you think, damn, they would have been on the edge. you know, so I think this is what happens. People are like throwing them in their gym. Maybe their target is a little bit lower. Maybe it’s, it’s not an actual target. Maybe it’s a marker on the wall. And then what happens is they get to the race and the, it’s so different because you’ve got to hit that middle point to the target, right? You’ve got to break parallel. So it’s really important.
that your technique won and then you’re doing them properly. And then the other thing is you need to put in wall balls a lot within workouts. Do you know a lot of people say, oh, what if I throw 50 wall balls every day? Well, I don’t know. I argue with it because if you took most gym people and said to them, throw a max set of wall balls, you know, fresh there, there won’t be an issue. It’s very different when you are
65 or 75 minutes into the race. This is the last station. You’re fatigued. So I would suggest rather than like just throwing aimless warbles, like put them into workouts and also push out the sets. So a lot of people will do these things where they do lots of like sets of 10 or 15 within rounds. And what I would say is try and do at least a workout a week where
you’ve got a bigger set for less rounds. So you’ve got to do these bigger clusters and that should help try and improve them. And the other thing you could do is get a partner and just make them do a lot of them. Works for me. Yeah, I think across the whole race and it’s going to get more more important in the elite side of things. Well, efficiency of movement is very important.
John (28:04)
That’s definitely you. Go ahead, Tom.
Tom & Dena (28:15)
Like I said, you have to have the mobility. You have to be efficient through all these movements. There’s no point in just going in and muscling your way through sleds and muscling your way through the row and the ski. You have to start getting really efficient at everything. You have to spend time. We’ll go down to two of us down to the gym and time different ways of doing different things to find the most efficient way of doing burpees or the most efficient way that we can move a sled. So it isn’t always about just
John (28:34)
Mm.
Tom & Dena (28:40)
pulling your way through things. It’s about, and it’s not about even how fast I can get the sled 50 meters. It’s how fast I can get the sled 50 meters, but feel good coming off of it. And that’s two very different things. Like if I can move the sled 50 meters and be five seconds slower, but feel 10 % better, well that’s the one I’m gonna do. I’m not gonna do the fastest option because I come off of feeling absolutely terrible and then I can’t run.
John (28:52)
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (29:07)
So it’s about being very efficient on stations and finding the most efficient way for you, which is very, very important. why it’s critical to have a really good race plan and have your tactics and your pace is nailed down for your races. So like with team Hogan here, like if our clients are racing that week, they’re always offered a call.
like to talk through the race, to decide the pace in. For instance, our own son was racing in Frankfurt a few weeks ago and he had a whole new tactics because he’s been having some stomach issues. And so we changed it completely. We changed the pace in which he was skiing. So sometimes going as fast as you can and as hard as you can and as quick as you can is not the answer. In fact,
It probably very rarely is the answer. So a good race plan and good tactics is, and having the head to see them through. The amount of times we’ve gone through something with a client and said, so for this then you’re going to go at this pace and then I’ll be tracking them and I’ll be like, and straight away he’ll be like, he’s like, I was next to this guy and he was doing this pace and I knew I could keep it. And he could, but unfortunately then that cost him 15 seconds in the second run. So having a race plan.
having good tactics and having the head to actually in the discipline to see that race plan through. That’s kind of what you’re looking for.
John (30:27)
Yeah, I think that race plan is critical and kind of knowing where your limits are. I also love this overall discussion on efficiency. I also feel like efficiency is so important and there’s so much you can learn. So you mentioned one technique, which is video feedback. Another technique is using that stopwatch to time different techniques. One thing that I’ve been trying, like on the ski out, for example, I’ve been trying different techniques, but trying to keep my heart rate relatively low. So it’s like, you know, like
Tom & Dena (30:45)
Yep.
John (30:53)
at a heart rate cap of 150, know, that’s zone three-ish for me. What different techniques can I try and how can I get the most speed out of that heart rate? And I found that pretty useful for efficiency as well. But I’m curious, what else have you found that works in terms of teaching people efficiency? Are you guys doing video feedback with your clients or what’s the best way that you found?
Tom & Dena (31:05)
Yeah.
Yeah,
we do video feedback and we also put our own like techniques into the groups and also people can see them. play a big one with the ski in the row is we play around with stroke rate a lot and get our clients to do the same. Like, I mean, I weigh 52 kilos, five foot. I’m not going to have a dampener and a stroke setting the same as himself like, right. So learning things like that and talking through
John (31:26)
Okay.
Tom & Dena (31:39)
your coach, things like that is really, really important. Yeah, and it’s all trial and error as you’re finding out yourself. So you can’t, what you’re doing might not work for the next person. So everyone has to kind of try things themselves and take time to try them. Like I said, we try various different things. The kids who we down there watching sometimes, and then we’ll test them and they’re very different than we are. Like the age and stuff makes a big difference as well.
So if we say to them, this worked really well for us, why don’t you try it? And then they try it and they don’t like it or it doesn’t work for them. What did Tess say to you this morning, actually? We were in the car going to school this morning and Tess has got her first, she’s taken part in the first Young Stars in Amsterdam in a couple of weeks. And I said to her, I said to Tom, oh, will you do the rowing all with her tonight now? Her technique needs work. And straight away she was like, well, what did she say?
John (32:21)
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (32:31)
It for me. It works for me and I feel super comfortable. I’m like, OK, fair. know, like so it is it’s it’s just because something is what’s being told is out there. There are always going to be anomalies, right? There’s always going to be someone that actually this is better. And I remember when I was cycling triathlon, like I remember I used to have like a SRAM Red group set like and
John (32:46)
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (32:58)
men actually, most of you say to me, why are you pushing such a heavy and I’m like, that’s always been my jam, like a really slow, really low cadence. And like down in the like 50, 52 rep range, but a really heavy gear, which is by far from what would you be would be told is, you know, optimum. So listen to advice, play around, but ultimately, you know,
Learn to listen to your body and what’s right for you.
John (33:27)
Yep. Yep. Yeah. And there’s probably, there’s, there’s more constraints on each of these movements than people often think about. So, you know, I often think about the row and, know, there’s all these debates about high rocks athletes having really bad technique for rowing and maybe they somewhat do to some extent, but then, you know, we’ve also heard, you know, it’s, it’s, we’re trying to use more of our back so that we’re protecting our legs for the next station. So maybe there is a different way of rowing in high rocks that is actually more efficient for the event overall.
Tom & Dena (33:51)
No.
John (33:56)
⁓ so, you know, it’s like little things like that, that are gonna vary for the hierarchy specific event and vary by the athlete. So I think it’s a really good point.
Tom & Dena (34:03)
Yeah, exactly.
you know, as the saying says, like paper never refuses ink, right? So it’s probably a bit outdated now. Younger crowd won’t know what I’m talking about. But basically, everything you see on social media, someone’s always going to have a point of view. Someone’s always going to tell you it’s right or it’s wrong. And unfortunately, that probably as good as social media is, and I am supporter of social media.
the stuff you see out there now, you’ve just got to learn to kind of really do your homework. And it’s like when people say to me, did you see this or that? if you’re going to take advice from someone, you’ve got, well, what did this person ever achieve? What did this person ever do? How is this person qualified to tell me that this is the best way? And I think it’s just it’s on us now as as humans to really remember that. Like it’s it’s on you to
make this person known to you? Like why and not just not just listen? Yeah, that’s it. The Rowan always comes up, but like and I know it’s the Rowan purists who usually bring it up. But like if you’ve got some running purists to look at, even the elite races, like they would actually laugh and say, what’s going on with some of these guys? the technique Alex like looks like he’s fighting every step.
John (34:58)
Hmm. Yeah.
Tom & Dena (35:16)
But Jess is able to run at such a quick pace. He would never be your typical, this guy is good at running. If you brought him down a running track and let him run 400 meters for a few coaches, they’d probably say, change everything that this guy is doing. But it works for him. It works, so why change it? If it’s working for you and it’s efficient for you, we’re all built differently.
John (35:23)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (35:37)
We’re not all the same shape, not all the same waist, our arms are not the same length, our legs are not the same length. So if it works for you, keep doing it.
John (35:44)
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s, ⁓ let’s shift gears slightly. So you both have been competing in high rocks for over five years now. Do you think you’re still going to be competing in another five years time? Are you, are you still enjoying the sport? What do you think? What do you think explains why you’re still enjoying the process? If indeed you are.
Tom & Dena (35:55)
You
Yeah, I think we will be for sure. I am actually going back to triathlon next year. I’ve got an itch there. So that’s the first triathlon since 2017. I can’t see us never having a place in high rocks. community is great. The is a big draw. And even on a smaller family. are into it. The kids are so into it along with all their other suffering.
John (36:07)
Okay.
Tom & Dena (36:25)
Harlan and everything else that they do. But it’s very easy for us to stay connected through High Rocks, which is great. For instance, my oldest son is 24. What am I going to have in common with him as a 44-year-old woman? Nothing. But hey, do you want to come and do this 30-minute WOD with me?
most of the time guilt him into spending 30 minutes a week with me. You know, if I didn’t have this. it’s a great way and it’s so versatile in what you can do that we can all go down from Tess being 13 to us being ours. can program a session that everybody gets their max effort out of it. You know that, which is great. Whereas if you could say, right, let’s go on a 10K run. Well, if.
If Tom’s gonna run at Tess’s, well, no. I was gonna say if Tom is gonna run at Tess is gonna run at Tom’s, right? But you know what I mean? Like there’s such a varied pace difference within the family. Someone wouldn’t be getting anything out of it. Someone would be killed though. So for High Rocks, that way it works. It’s hard to leave the, we’ve been on the journey kind of with High Rocks, I guess. And it’s hard to kind of, it would be hard to walk away from that. We’ve been there from the time that it was.
Like there was no emails, there was a briefing in German on site. Like nobody really knew what the hell they were doing. All the way from, we had the first world championship after-party in the car park, drinking warm cans of beer. And now you’re having these big extravagant parties in Las Vegas and in Nice and all these things. And it’s kind of just, we’d like to stay apart because we want to see where does it go? Like does it get to the Olympics? Does it keep growing?
Maybe there will be a time when we step away but for now I think we want to stay on the train just to see what the final destination is actually going to be, how big is it actually going to get. It’s pretty cool to be there from the start to see the size of it now. I mean we have a massive client base, huge. We’ve worked very hard and it’s exploded for us over the last few years.
John (38:17)
It is pretty cool.
Tom & Dena (38:26)
⁓ I mean originally it was people in Ireland and then UK and maybe it branched to a few in Europe. Now I mean we must have over a dozen from your neck of the woods. Australia is a small place right? Surely you know We’ve got people in Asia, the States like
It’s this massive global thing. Kuwait recently. Like it’s absolutely unbelievable. And we have a few different things go on. But one of the biggest things we have is we have a girls only WhatsApp group and a boys only WhatsApp that never cross paths, you know. And the girls group is just it’s absolutely. What’s the word I’m looking for? It’s very emotional for me, Yeah, man. But just to see.
So how these girls interact and how they motivate each other and support each other. you know, like one of the girls could come on and say, girls, I’m just after quitting my run halfway through. feel so level up. And straight away, 10 or 15 girls are in there. you had this. Remembering you did this and you’ll be back. And the support and the network that has come from team Holgan.
is beyond anything that we ever thought we could achieve really. And we’re motivated lot by it. it’s, won’t say the training is easy for us, we’ve all trained hard, but when you see someone coming on that loses 20, 30, 40 kilos, like and you think well what they’re doing is a hell of a lot harder than what I’m doing. Like it’s it’s motivational to see those people are when we hear some of the stories of why people want to come on and it’s not.
to run a fast time or to, it’s, it’s, we’ve had a couple of cases where they want to do it because maybe they’re hitting 40, they’re a little bit overweight and they want to do something to make, so their kids get into sport. They want to like be the role model for their kids. And when you hear things like that, it’s like, like that’s hugely motivational for us. And I love that it’s, the sport isn’t just about like times and stuff like that. And it’s in London actually recently.
There’s myself and Christian and Ralph were standing at the finish line and I think it was the women’s doubles and it was around like two hours or two hours 15 or something. It was all of those kind of finishers coming in and the joy on those people’s faces compared to the people who were trying to get a sub 60 or sub 70 is crazy. it was so inspiring to see people throw the last wall ball and they’re jumping up and down. They’re not even finished.
crossing the finishing line. They’re spending two minutes hugging each other and jumping up and down that they finished this thing before they even bothered and then it’s like, yeah, we gotta cross the line now. You know, we’re forgetting about that part. They don’t actually care about the finish line.
John (41:05)
Yeah.
It’s
such a good observation and I feel like the community side, it’s so essential. if I think about my own journey, yeah, if I think about my own journey, I started with various like strength and endurance goals and certain things that I wanted to meet. maybe after my first year of training, I was pretty much there and I was like, okay, so what’s next? the way I thought about it, it’s like at this point, it’s all about maximizing fun.
Tom & Dena (41:15)
Yeah, it’s so essential.
John (41:35)
maximizing time with the community and really just enjoying the process. And I think that can be something that’s quite hard for people to appreciate. You don’t need to keep on chasing the numbers. You can just try and work on enjoying the process and making the most of the community that you have. ⁓ what other advice would you have for people who really want to increase their enjoyment that they’re getting from the sport?
Tom & Dena (41:49)
Yeah, for sure.
Stop looking around you at other people. Like social media is the best thing and also the worst thing. Like it’s great, you look at it and you get a little bit of motivation and we get to see what friends around the world are doing but at the same time like we got caught up in everyone’s highlight reel essentially. Like everyone looks like they’re doing fantastic and we see the guy down the road and we’re like I can beat him and then it becomes not about you anymore, it becomes about that guy and you trying to...
be that guy or beat that guy. I think remember why you’re doing something or remember why you started doing something. Like most people will have started the sport for the love of the sport. They won’t have started to get to the top or to, you know, with a time in mind. So I think if you can always kind of go back to remember why you started. And to like really appreciate the races and your, you know, your results. And like I’ve been in contact with a couple of people where
They’re just, they finish a race and every single race, they’re never, they’re never happy. Like they’ve PB’d or they’ve podiumed or they’ve qualified for Worlds, whatever it may be. And the first thing they go, ⁓ I was slower on this or I missed this or this person bet me and they’ve never bet me before. And I’m like, man, if every single time you finish a race, you’re going to feel disappointed. What’s the point, right? Like if you’re going to, I always say to my girls, like in the group and all.
Time is so valuable. It’s probably the most valuable thing we have. And if you’re going to spend time away from your family or get up at five o’clock in the morning or miss that party because you’ve got the training session the next day, right? If you’re gonna sacrifice all this and do all this hard stuff, then it needs to be rewarding, right? So like you should really, really be positive and look, I mean.
I can hand on my heart say, I don’t think we’ve ever finished a race and been disappointed, right? And people could argue, ⁓ that’s because you always win or whatever it may be. I don’t know. we always just appreciate the moment, appreciate what we’ve just done and enjoy the celebrations. we’ll usually be told, so now that we have the two, three, four day events and can have mixed doubles might be on two days or three days.
I can honestly, 100 % tell you now, we never check the results. Like we’re usually told by somebody, oh user, win whatever position, but these other waves have gone off. And that’s not because we’re cocky or like we think we’re just gonna win. It’s like Dina said, we’re happy with our race and we don’t really care about everybody else’s race. Like I don’t need to check what everybody else done. If at the end of the weekend we come out on top, fantastic. If we don’t...
other teams are better than this to beat us. But I’m not going to spend two days refreshing the results and like just to check on other people. Like that that sort of stuff is just madness to me. Like I don’t understand why people do it. When you’ve done your race, you can no longer control anything else. You’ve done what you can do. Everything else is out there out of your control now. So why do that? Yeah, I always tell tell the girls and the clients like, you know, the race result.
John (44:48)
Yeah.
So good.
Tom & Dena (45:05)
doesn’t define you. What defines you as a person and as an athlete is the commitment, the discipline that you have in all the weeks leading up to that 60, 70, 80 minute workout. If you’re putting everything into your time, it’s gonna be miserable. It really is gonna be miserable because...
sports crew, you know, it has this cruel way of like putting you in your place and there’s always going to be something that maybe happens that’s beyond your control and like you should really, really be focused in. Well, look at that. Like for 12 weeks in a row, I never missed a session or I, you know, worked so hard and I kept my nutrition on track and I did everything possible to put me in the best possible place on that start line.
And that defines you over any time or podium place, you know? And not like, we have to remember that the courses are never like, I know it’s an ongoing debate all the time, but nothing is ever the same. Like for anybody. we, so Dina said that we’ve people from at all spectrums and in the Elise Ronan is kind of in the top 20 something at the minute. in Frankfurt before Christmas, we had like crazy heavy sleds.
John (45:59)
such a great mindset.
Tom & Dena (46:19)
Ronan was going there looking for a 55 and he had a couple of 56s leading into it and he got a 57 and I actually said to him after Further a race. I felt that was the best race he’s ever had like he was so good in it but he the sleds were out of his control like he couldn’t he couldn’t change it and At afterwards he wasn’t disappointed like he knew like he had beat he’d beaten good athletes and he beaten them Convincingly and that’s what he took away from it
He didn’t get caught up in, I didn’t get to 55 and now I’m going to be depressed for the next two weeks or I’m going to go smash myself and train him. He took away the fact that I had a really good solid race, I beat really good athletes and I’ll get it in the next one. And that’s kind of the attitude that most people should be having with these things. It’s a funny sport and again it’s probably a lot to do with social media but I’ve never been involved in a sport where people expected a PB.
John (47:03)
Amazing.
Tom & Dena (47:16)
every race. This is the first sport I’ve ever come across where this is a thing. It’s never been a thing in track and running and anything else. Cycling. Oh, the best one is I only got a PB by three minutes. like... Like if you were running, you might get one. Yeah, you could do 20, 25 running races a year. You might not get any PB. You might get one or a 5k or 10k or something, but you would never PB every race.
John (47:17)
Yeah.
Alright.
⁓ You need patience, you need patience. Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (47:42)
For people to think that it’s just that linear that every day I go out and want to get a PB is pretty crazy. It’s pretty crazy.
John (47:49)
Yeah,
we all need to start thinking in terms of years, not in terms of months and days.
Tom & Dena (47:56)
Yeah, yeah,
it’s matter or start really looking at if you really want to get into that stuff, start looking at results. Like start looking at if I was 100 in the age group today, well, if I get 99 to my age group next race, that’s that’s progression. Like I don’t have to be faster because every course is different. So maybe start looking at the results rather than the times all the time. Like if I can move up to results ranking, well, then I’m improving. Like the time doesn’t time is.
Time is very irrelevant. Every course is different. And high rocks can say, they’re standardizing things. It’ll never be standardized. I don’t see how they can ever do it. It’s just never going to happen.
John (48:34)
Love it. Okay, last couple of questions. So you guys are some of the most experienced coaches in high rocks. You’ve built a fantastic business. You’ve built a great community. It’s continuing to grow. A lot of people are really enjoying their high rocks journey and have a similar goal of maybe one day coaching in the sport. What advice would you give to a young person who is considering trying to make a career in high rocks as a coach?
Tom & Dena (48:59)
Start small, definitely kind of grow gradually and like we have a cap on what we take on and I think that’s very important. I think you can get caught up in just like taking on more and more and more more people and just churning out the same crap for everybody like but like we’ve kind of highlighted a lot. We would like to be very specific with people and around what they can actually do and their workload and their family life and stuff like that so you need to take all that on board I think.
you’d be better taking on lesser clients and getting a good name than taking on a lot of people and kind letting a lot of people down. And that’s something we’re always kind of conscious of that we don’t want to take on a massive It depends what kind of coach you want to be as well and where you want to take your programs and how you want to. Like we, I mean, if you talked to a hundred of our clients, they would probably tell you,
that they’re friends with us. know, like we always, you know, every race we open a WhatsApp group for everybody that’s going just for that race. And if we’re there, we’d always put in where we’re going to be for a coffee. And last year we had a barbecue at our house and loads of people came. We did a local competition and...
I think we had 15 of them in our hot tub at two o’clock in the morning. It depends what you want to do. Like we cap it because we want to keep it personal. We want to really build relationships with our clients. Others might not want to do that. And that flips the other way too, in terms of what you want from a coach. Do you want a plan just delivered with no interaction, tick, tick, tick, or do you want someone to...
you know, check in with bounce ideas off, talk about a race plan. So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of bad coaches out there. That’s like, that’s just the simple facts there is, but there’s also a lot of good coaches, right? And it’s not necessarily that us and other good coaches are better than each other. It’s just we’re very, we made very different mentality, you know, we’re all about.
being very inclusive, interactive, a community, very responsive. Others may not be, it’d be more of just a plan. So find what you want to do and what you want to achieve. As Tom said, start small and then build from there. Also, you know, experience it yourself. Like if you’re a high rocks coach, you should have done a high rocks, you know?
you should have some results. And I’m not saying as a high rocks coach, you have to be an elite 15 athlete. That’s not what I’m saying. But you, I do believe, and it’s only my point of view, that you should have definite experience and be able to somewhat get yourself in a good place. You know, if you look at who’s there as well, like Tiago, like he was elite 15 with Tom. He has a huge client base as well. He’s a very good coach.
John (51:48)
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (51:57)
And what him and Tom have in common is they were both Elite 15, right? Like he knows what it takes to get there as do we. So I think that type of thing just make a difference.
John (52:08)
Yeah, I completely agree. feel like that practical experience is really beneficial. And even if you don’t reach the level of Elite 15, just knowing that you’ve been able to hit at least close to your potential, or you know how to train yourself so that you’re getting to a good level for you, I feel like that’s very important.
Tom & Dena (52:21)
Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly.
You progressed yourself. Yeah, exactly. It doesn’t matter what level you get to, but if you progress yourself to the top end of what you’re capable of, like that is a big thing as well with not everybody has the capabilities to be a LE15. And that’s like, it’s just, that’s the way it is. That’s like, it’s at least same as any kind of sport. And I kind of, most people should be realistic with yourself on what their goals like can actually be.
John (52:28)
Yeah.
Tom & Dena (52:49)
in regards to that. Manifesting can only get you so far, right? You got to some talent. I’d to manifest as like field 25 again, but it’s not going to happen.
John (52:53)
Thank you.
Okay, final question, Dina and Tom. What are you most curious about at the moment? Or what is capturing your attention in terms of training, in terms of coaching? What is really sparking your curiosity at this time we’re recording at the start of 2026?
Tom & Dena (53:11)
that’s interesting. I do love to see, especially among kind of, say, like athletes that are kind of at the very pointy end of the competition, you know, they’re different training techniques. And there’s definitely a few that have jumped from one to another to another. Maybe they’re in they were in a
coaching and now they’re in a different coaching. And it’s really interesting to see what’s kind of working and what’s not. Like last year, yeah, last year and the year before, you seen this real trend of a particular coaching style by a lot of people of these masses of amounts of volume. Like I’ve seen some of the elites like doing up to 100 and 120 K of running.
And we have noticed that they’re all jumping ship on that. Well, a lot of pull right back, maybe change coaches. So I’m really interested to see this direction that it’s taken because we seen it 10 years ago in running, right? We’ve seen it where, know, I don’t know if you’ve heard this saying like throw enough shit at the wall and something will stick. Like we’ve seen it in Irish marathon running where these particular coaches just threw masses amount of volume.
at these runners, maybe one out of 10 went on to kind of do something. The other nine are now, you know, never ran again because they’re so injured and they’re so, you know, burnt out and they’re so, so we’ve seen this trend. And so it’s interesting to see that it’s come in full circle in high rocks as well. So yeah, that’s kind of something that I love keeping an eye on because obviously everyone has an appointed view. to see if more top
top runners come into. With Luke Greer coming in, will a lot of other guys look at that and think, here’s a sport where I can actually make a decent living. Maybe they’re not good enough to be runners. Running is so dominated by the East Africans that you’re never going to win a marathon or anything like that. It’s just beyond the realms of most people. But will a lot more look at high rocks now and think, here’s somewhere I could pick up good sponsorship, I can win good prize money.
If I’m a 1500 or 800 meter runner on the bigger end like a Craig Matram type guy, Dazzy do remember that guy? There’s he before your time.
John (55:26)
I don’t, sorry, yeah, I should, but I don’t.
Tom & Dena (55:27)
He was
a 1500 meter runner from Australia, but he was a big guy. He was probably about six foot, which is very big for a middle distance runner. But if you can get somebody like him who has that capacity in running, but has a bigger frame, so he could probably hold 80 kilos quite easily. You have to imagine that if those guys come in, they move the sport on a hell of a lot. It’s just a question of are the...
sponsorship incentives or are the prize money incentives big enough yet to kind of entice those guys over? Well, I think when they start to come in, it’ll change a lot. It’ll change a hell of a lot.
John (56:02)
It’s going to be interesting to watch. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you both today. Thank you so much for joining the show.
Tom & Dena (56:07)
Thank you.
Thanks everyone.
