HYROX has arguably become the largest global fitness race. ATHX is newer but interesting for different reasons. Both competitions succeed because they solve several problems that traditional functional fitness competitions sometimes struggle with.

In sports science literature, there is a clear distinction between training to perform and training to develop. Understanding which game you are playing changes how you program, recover, compete, and stay in the sport.

That clarity, more than intensity or motivation, is what keeps people progressing year after year.

Charlie Munger had a rare ability to strip problems down to first principles. When you look at training, performance, and long-term athletic development through that lens, a lot of what we see in modern functional fitness suddenly makes much more sense.

Here are a few ideas from the book that stayed with me, and how I see them applying directly to coaching.

The Open is the moment where all that work turns into data.

If you’ve been consistent and training with intent, the numbers don’t lie.
You’ll see yourself climbing, not just inside your box, but on a global leaderboard, year after year.

Classes are still the best environment to progress.
And that often surprises athletes.

When I started coaching Ailsa in 2022, I wasn’t really coaching Ailsa the athlete yet.

Here’s how I onboard a new athlete — and why skipping steps leads to coaching the wrong athlete.

Jamie reached out and asked me to prepare him for a full ATHX season. With limited prep time, we started the way we always do at eddiesmethod: We tested. We assessed. We built backwards.

The more straightforward way to know if your conditioning is improving is to remove as many confounding variables as possible — take out heavy loads, demanding skills, and focus purely on capacity.

A coach plays a huge role in an athlete’s development. They don’t just provide programming; they guide mindset, help you see your potential, and hold you accountable when it matters most. A good coach understands when to push you and when to pull back, and that balance can make all the difference in long-term progress. I might be on the competition floor alone, but this is truly a team effort. 

As this long block came to an end, both of us felt the structure worked perfectly. The results back it up — Sarah achieved new personal bests in multiple areas, including: 1-mile run, 2k row, 3RM bench press, max strict HSPU, butterfly chest-to-bar pull-up, several benchmark workouts.

When applied correctly, plyometric training can significantly enhance both force and power output. The “magic” lies in how the muscle temporarily stores elastic energy during an eccentric contraction and then releases it explosively in the concentric phase.

If you train hard but don't allow your body to regenerate, you're undermining the stimulus before it can take effect.

I’ve always believed that athletes who want to perform better should also think better — and part of that comes from learning beyond the gym.

Last month, I read three books that every athlete could benefit from, each offering a distinct perspective on performance, longevity, and focus.

Unlike specialised sports where training can focus on one domain, functional fitness demands concurrency — often within the same week, sometimes even in the same session. This complexity makes programming both a challenge and a necessity.

With nutrition, sleep, training structure, age, and training level all working together, athletes can optimize recovery, reduce injury risk, and sustain high performance over time.

It is easy to think that to be a great coach, the most significant priorities are getting a certification, writing structured training plans, and delivering well-structured sessions.

It is easy to think that to be a great coach, the most significant priorities are getting a certification, writing structured training plans, and delivering well-structured sessions.

If the Open is a meaningful event in your competition calendar and each year you like to see where you stand on the leaderboard, witnessing how much you improved from year to year, in 2024, your chances of progressing through another stage (s) of the open are higher than ever.

The goal of any Coach or training program is to improve performance. This is only possible by having the athlete flirt within their current level limits. It can be achieved by exposing the athlete to high percentages in strength, ballistic movements, or high but calculated intensities in aerobic conditioning.