Being the world champion of any sport can be a life-changing experience. Imagine receiving that accolade at 22 years old. That’s what happened to Justin Medeiros when he won the 2021 CrossFit Games. While he’s now the number one man in his sport, he still remains a humble college student at Boise State University.
“It’s honestly crazy for me to still believe, but honestly not much has changed,” the kinesiology major said. “It’s now back to my everyday life. Right now I’m just trying to finish up school.”
With a full schedule of classes, and a competition coming up in less than a month, you would imagine that Justin Medeiros would be going all-out with each training session. He said that going hard all the time isn’t necessarily the best course of action.
“There’s definitely a lot of deload because CrossFit is so high intensity. You’ve got to allow your body time to recover. It depends on how the training season is,” he told M&F. “Even though I’m doing a competition in the next three weeks, this is still an offseason for me because the end goal is still the CrossFit Games. I actually do a lot of machine work in the gym to keep my body and joints healthy.”
The Fittest Man on Earth also knows that what happens away from the gym is just as important, if not more so, than what he does in the weight room. That’s why he focuses so much on nutrition. In spite of what you may see on various films and documentaries, it isn’t always about eating sweets and junk food to get that burst of energy.
“I think for a lot of people, the things like Fruity Pebbles and pizza are just for the competition. During the season, you’re just trying to keep your body healthy. You need to have a well-rounded diet to get yourself ready for the competition,” he stated. “Volume is higher than ever, so you really need to get a as many carbs in as you can, and that’s what a lot of the focus is on. I track my foods very diligently.”
Another component of his recovery is sleep. Justin Medeiros makes sure to eat the correct foods so he can wind himself down before going to bed. Getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night is paramount for someone at his level of fitness.
“They say you spend a third of your life in your bed. I think that’s super important to me because if I wake up, and I had a rough night of sleep, then I know that my training the next day is not going to be good.”
As for what he is sleeping on, a coach introduced him to Eight Sleep, a smart mattress that includes a pod that allows him to control the temperature of the bed while he’s sleeping. It also includes sensors to detect the weather so it can automatically adjust settings.
“The pod can help you set the temperature to what you want. For me, I was waking up way too hot or way too cold, and I couldn’t find that sweet spot. When you wake up in the middle of the night, and you can’t go back to sleep, it just messes everything up,” Medeiros said. “Having that pod and being able to set temperatures, I was like ‘this is awesome.’”
Another valuable aspect of Eight Sleep is the app that shares valuable data for him to determine how well he slept during the night. That information can help him gauge how hard he should train the next day.
“Having something that can help me track how I sleep is very important to me. It gives me data for how long I slept, how long it took me to fall asleep, my resting heart rate. The sleep score helps me determine my recovery, and it can help me determine what routine is best for me so I am at my best when I go to train.”
Medeiros is currently sleeping and training in preparation for the 2021 Rogue Invitational , taking place in Austin, TX, from Oct. 29-31.
