MH.CO.ZA/ August 2019 103the trampoline, or jump from the roof onto the
trampoline, then into the pool.
His mother – who clocked long hours, then
spent all Saturday doing paperwork – made
him do his homework when he got in from
school. He was mystified when other kids
couldn’t come out to play on Sunday, because
they still had to do theirs. “Why hadn’t they
done it on Friday? We had to do what we needed
to before we could do what we wanted to.”
Fraser played “a little bit of everything” at
school, including American football, just so
he could hang out with friends – he’d never
seen a game and didn’t know the rules. He
started weightlifting with similar ignorance
at 12, competing with a friend to see who could
hoist the most kilos overhead – “super unsafe”- when one of the coaches intervened. He
soon learnt that technique had to come before
adding weight, even if it meant losing to other
kids his age in the short
term. Sure enough, years
down the line, when his
body developed, that hard
work paid off, just as his
coach had promised.
Diligent in training,
Fraser was less disciplined
outside the gym, staying
up late to talk to girls on
AOL’s instant messenger.
He and his friends started
experimenting with drink
and drugs at the age of 10.
He was hungover three out
of four training days and
thought it was normal to
booze until he blacked out.
He was encouraged by
his father to hang out with a
man who was 10 years older
than him. Fraser noticed
that his new acquaintance
was sober, as were all his
friends. At a meeting where
his mentor spoke about
overcoming addiction,
Fraser cried at the
realisation that he, too, was
an alcoholic. Still, it took a
couple of years and the offer
of a scholarship to the US
Olympic Training Centre in
Colorado before he went cold
turkey. A month later, when
a friend asked him how he
was doing in the gym, he broke
down. His friend’s friend, who
was also sober, volunteered to
be Fraser’s sponsor and gave
him Alcoholics Anonymous
homework. The sponsor got in
touch a few months ago. He’d
taken up CrossFit and twigged
that the Mat Fraser everyone
was talking about was the
17-year-old he had supported.
Alcohol wasn’t the only bull
that bucked Fraser. At 19, he
broke his L5 vertebra in two places during a lift.
He was told that his sporting career was over.
Four months of wearing a turtle-shell torso
brace that pinched when he sat, driving him to
try to rip off his steering wheel in frustration,
did nothing. He rejected the recommended
spinal fusion surgery for a more experimentaltreatment with a 50-50 chance of recovery,
which involved re-breaking his back, power
tools and two metal plates. Determined to
lift again, he underwent a year of rehab at the
Olympic Education Centre in Michigan, where
he studied maths and physics with a view to a
mechanical engineering degree, during which
time his roommate had to lift him out of bed.
Burnt out from weightlifting after a year
back, Fraser brief ly worked in an oil camp
in Canada, then went to the University of
Vermont to get his degree, loosely planning
to land a job on an offshore rig. Instead, he
wound up at an aerospace company that
made actuators for missiles – not a bad gig,
but he was miserable. “I went from training
twice a day for 10 years to nothing and
working 90 hours a week,” he recalls. “I was
losing fitness, and it felt like I had a hole
in my life.” He looked up a CrossFit box in
Vermont, figuring it’d have better gear than
a “Globo Gym”. He didn’t even know what a
muscle-up was. But as he improved and was
encouraged to enter competitions, he started
to win 100 bucks here, 500 there, in his
inappropriate Nike Air Max 90s. His “part-
time job” became a full-time occupation.
Truth be told, Fraser’s move to Cookeville
was partly prompted by the nine reasons his
new accountant gave him: Vermont levies 9%
income tax, Cookeville none. But the city of
33 000 has become the CrossFit universe’s
centre, with Froning the gravitational pull.
Fraser often trains at Mayhem with Tia-Clair
Toomey, the similarly dominant female
champion who relocated from Australia, and
her coach/husband, Shane
Orr. Surrounding yourself
with the right people who exert
a positive inf luence is crucial
for Fra ser.
Even though he has fainted
when giving presentations,
Fraser has been dabbling
in public speaking, and was
invited to tour with the United
Service Organisation to boost
the morale of American troops
stationed overseas.
CrossFit's popular with the armed forces, if
not all of the top brass, and Fraser’s most-asked
question was how to turn a negative situation
into a positive one. “I’m trying to inspire people
to have a better work ethic, or chase whatever
they want to chase,” he says.
For that, there can’t be too many fitter.“I’m trying to
inspire people
to chase the
goals they truly
want to chase.”
WORDS: JAMIE MILLAR; INTERVIEW: EBENEZER SAMUEL
FRASER IS
ALWAYS
REACHING FOR
NEW HEIGHTS
OF STRENGTH.