“When it all started, I was just kind of a chubby kid who came to CrossFit.”
That’s how Nixa native Nathan Clifton described the beginning of his fitness journey, one that is now taking him to the worldwide CrossFit Games in Carson, Calif.
“I actually didn’t plan on doing the Open this year,” he said. “One of the coaches told me, ‘You should try it out.’”
“The Open” is the five week, weekly fitness test open to anyone and everyone who has eyes on making the Games. Workouts are posted, athletes perform them and record their times or repetitions, and submit them to CrossFit HQ. After the first—which consisted of as many rounds of possible in 20 minutes of 25 feet of walking lunges, eight burpees, 25 more feet of lunches and eight pull-ups—Nathan found himself at 18th in the world.
“We were like, ‘Oh, I’m pretty good at this,’” he said, laughing.
Even before he had eyes on being a competitor, he impressed the coaches at CrossFit Nixa, often doing extra work on his own after the daily workouts.
“We saw him put in the extra effort,” said gym owner and Nathan’s coach, Aaron Stokes. “It was still a surprise when he was number eighteen after the first workout. We were all like, ‘Holy cow.’”
After the first Open workout, Nate, as he’s known, proved it wasn’t a fluke and kept creeping up the leaderboard.
“It was like, ‘Ok, game plan, let’s keep him injury free, get through the next three weeks and see where we end up,’” Stokes said.
Nate ended up ninth in his age group and begins competition on Tuesday, July 19.
“I thought it would be cool to go to the Games in the future,” he said. “But I never saw it happening.”
No matter what happens, Nathan has an entire gym and an entire community behind him.
“He’s like a brother,” Stokes said. “We hang out, I pick him up, we drop him off, we go do lunch. I’m just overwhelmed with pride, like a proud big brother.”
