Rich Froning is the most successful athlete in CrossFit history. He won four straight CrossFit Games (2011–2014), the first man to win four, then six more titles as the leader of the CrossFit Mayhem Freedom team. CrossFit’s own 2015 documentary called him The Fittest Man in History. Now 39, he runs CrossFit Mayhem in Cookeville, Tennessee, hosts one of the sport’s biggest events, and still does the Open every year.
Below: his age, height and full Games record, what he’s doing in 2026, and our interview from the year he first won, with the training and diet that got him there.
- Full name: Richard Froning Jr.
- Born: 21 July 1987, Mount Clemens, Michigan (age 39)
- Home: Cookeville, Tennessee
- Height and weight: 175 cm (5 ft 9 in), 88 kg (195 lb)
- CrossFit Games: 4 individual titles (2011–2014), 6 team titles with CrossFit Mayhem Freedom (2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022)
- Games prize money: more than US$1.05 million
- Now: owner of CrossFit Mayhem; host of the Mayhem Classic; still does the Open
How old is Rich Froning?
Rich Froning is 39. He was born Richard Froning Jr. on 21 July 1987 in Mount Clemens, Michigan, and grew up in Cookeville, Tennessee, where he played baseball, studied exercise science at Tennessee Tech and worked for the Cookeville Fire Department before CrossFit took over (Wikipedia).
How tall is Rich Froning?
175 cm (5 ft 9 in), at about 88 kg (195 lb). That’s compact for a man who could deadlift 231 kg and do 75 pull-ups in a row in 2011, and it suits CrossFit, where gymnastics and running punish extra size as much as heavy lifts reward it.
Rich Froning’s CrossFit Games record
Froning finished second as a rookie in 2010, losing ground on a rope climb, then won the next four individual titles. He moved to the team division in 2015 and won six more with his gym’s team, retiring from team competition after the 2022 title. He has earned more than US$1.05 million in Games prize money.
| Year | Division | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Individual | 2nd |
| 2011 | Individual | 1st |
| 2012 | Individual | 1st |
| 2013 | Individual | 1st |
| 2014 | Individual | 1st |
| 2015 | Team (Mayhem Freedom) | 1st |
| 2016 | Team | 1st |
| 2017 | Team | 2nd |
| 2018 | Team | 1st |
| 2019 | Team | 1st |
| 2020 | Team | No team Games held |
| 2021 | Team | 1st |
| 2022 | Team | 1st |
Why he’s called the Fittest Man on Earth
The CrossFit Games bills its champions as the Fittest on Earth, so every men’s winner holds the title for a year. Froning was the first to hold it four times. Mat Fraser later won five (2016–2020); for today’s contenders, see our profiles of James Sprague and Jay Crouch, who finished second at the 2026 Rogue Invitational.
What is Rich Froning doing now?
Business, mostly. He owns CrossFit Mayhem, the Cookeville gym his teams trained out of, and the Mayhem Athlete training app, and he hosts a podcast. In April 2026 he hosted the Mayhem Classic in Cookeville, part of the official CrossFit season, where he hosted the semifinal showdown.
He hasn’t stopped competing altogether. In the 2026 Open he finished 170th worldwide and 17th among men aged 35–39; in 2025 he was 80th, and 6th in his age group (CrossFit Games profile). When he retired from team competition in 2022, he left the door open to the Masters division.
Our 2011 interview: how Rich Froning trained to win
Rich Froning needed strength, speed, agility and endurance to win the 2011 Reebok CrossFit Games, his first title. This is how he trained and ate to get there, in his own words at the time.
When Rich Froning arrived at the 2011 Reebok CrossFit Games — an international competition to find “the fittest person on Earth”, which was held in Los Angeles in July — he was feeling pretty close to invincible. The then 24-year-old from Tennessee could squat 184kg, deadlift 231kg, run 5km in 20 minutes and hammer out 75 consecutive pull-ups. His body was ready for anything — and it needed to be.
“I had trained five times a day for a year for this event, but the first workout still surprised me,” said Froning, citing the 210m ocean swim, 1500m beach run, 50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 200 squats, and second 1500m beach run that constituted the first workout challenge. “I didn’t want to get attacked by sharks and drown, so I just hung at the back during the swim. Then I did the first run too hard, so by the second one I was pretty beat up.”
Preparing for the unknown is central to the philosophy of CrossFit, the full-body training regimen on which the annual CrossFit Games is based. Devised by ex-gymnast Greg Glassman, CrossFit is designed to develop broad, universal and functional fitness. Followers such as Froning train by executing a constantly varying, high-intensity 15- to 20-minute “Workout of the Day” (WOD) that combines weightlifting, powerlifting, gymnastics, kettlebells, sprints, and plyometrics to promote 10 core elements of fitness: cardiovascular endurance, strength, speed, agility, flexibility, stamina, power, coordination, balance and accuracy. As a result, CrossFit athletes are theoretically primed for any physical challenge, and the annual CrossFit Games winner has a strong claim to being the fittest man on Earth.
All-rounder
“CrossFit teaches you to do every aspect of fitness well,” says Froning, who finished first in three of the seven workouts on his way to the title. “When I train, I don’t specialise in one area. You don’t want to be too heavy in one area such as weightlifting, as it draws from another area such as speed, so I train with lots of diverse skills as well as lifting heavy stuff.”
The first CrossFit Games, dubbed “the Woodstock of Fitness”, was held in 2007 at a family ranch in California with 70 competitors and 150 spectators. Workouts were drawn at random from a peanut roaster and there was a cash prize of $500. In 2011, 26,000 competitors from around the world competed in the open stage by recording workouts at CrossFit gyms or posting videos online, before the top athletes battled through 17 regional stages to become one of the 50 men and women who would compete for $250,000 at LA’s Home Depot Center stadium in front of thousands of fans. “This is a huge leap from last year,” says Uli Becker, president of sponsor Reebok. “It has drama, camaraderie and inspiration. I believe this event can be the Olympics of the future, the American Idol for sport or a fitness version of the X Games.”
Triple threat
Over the three-day event, competitors tackled three punishing circuits a day, which included exercises as diverse as wall ball slams, squats, softball throws, handstand press-ups, rope climbs and a brutal handstand walk. Froning managed an incredible 45 metres in the latter.
“To get all-round fitness, you need volume and variation in your training,” says Froning. “For strength training, I follow Jim Wendler’s 5-3-1 program, which uses different percentages of your one-rep max with rep sequences of five, three and one.
“I do shoulder presses on Monday, deadlifts on Tuesday, close-grip bench presses on Wednesday, weighted pull-ups on Thursday and squats on Friday. I then do intensive CrossFit WODs before or after my strength session — sometimes five a day. That volume means when people start fading, I can keep going.”
Froning’s favourite CrossFit WODs include muscle-ups (a combination of pull-up and dip, performed on gymnastics rings) and barbell snatches. He uses supersets of heavy kettlebell holds and pull-ups to improve his grip strength and likes to “adapt on the fly” by introducing sled pulls, football throws or (not an option in Australia) firing handguns. “In Tennessee, that’s OK,” he laughs. Froning ruthlessly targeted his weaknesses in training. In 2010, he couldn’t climb ropes and finished second. “That climb incident was a heartbreaker, so I climbed a rope every day for five months to shut people up,” he says.
Diet plan
Froning does have one weakness: his nutrition. Most CrossFit athletes follow a Paleo diet or The Zone, which means eating a 4:3:3 ratio of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, but Froning is more relaxed.
“During the day, I just eat peanut butter and milk, which gives me protein and fat, and also Progenex protein shakes. I eat most food in the evening — steak and chicken, with frozen vegetables and maybe a sweet potato,” he says.
He is more scientific in his competitive tactics, though. He warmed up with scaled-down versions of the set workout, rolled out muscle tension using a PVC pipe and carefully preserved his energy. “I’d always walk or move the shortest distance possible to not waste energy,” he says.
It seems every competitor prepared for the Games differently. Matt Chan, who won the swim event, trained with six to eight CrossFit workouts a week and joined a gymnastics class to improve his flexibility. “I train between 1pm and 3pm when my body works best,” he says. Austin Malleolo, who finished with the best score in the regional competition, tackled two circuits a day — one strength and one metabolic conditioning. Tuomas Vainio, who ended up as the highest-placed European athlete, performed rowing or running in the morning and saved heavy lifts for the afternoon. “I often follow heavy lift work with a heavy circuit that includes the very movement I just practised to really work my muscles,” he says.
Mental toughness, however, was the quality shared by all at the Games. “You have to be in the right mindset to go back and face more agony,” explains Chan. The workouts were brutal. Vainio shredded his hands performing monkey bar swings. “I had to overcome the pain and because my hands were wet with blood, I couldn’t grip the bars, but I battled through,” he says.
Ultimately, Froning proved the toughest. “It was physically demanding and psychologically exhausting,” he says. “I had four hours of sleep a night because of nerves and endorphins, but by pushing myself in training, I knew I could beat whatever was thrown at me.”
Rich Froning FAQ
How many CrossFit Games has Rich Froning won?
Ten: four individual titles in a row (2011–2014) and six team titles with CrossFit Mayhem Freedom (2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022).
How old is Rich Froning?
39. He was born on 21 July 1987 in Mount Clemens, Michigan.
How tall is Rich Froning?
175 cm (5 ft 9 in), and he weighs about 88 kg (195 lb).
Does Rich Froning still compete?
Not at the Games. He retired from individual competition after 2014 and from team competition after 2022, but he still does the CrossFit Open: 170th worldwide and 17th among men 35–39 in 2026.
Who is the fittest man on earth?
The title goes to the men’s CrossFit Games champion each year. Froning was the first to win it four times; Mat Fraser later won five (2016–2020).
Sources: Wikipedia; CrossFit Games profile; Mayhem Classic. Checked 26 October 2026.
