Doug Harrison - 5th overall

Finalist 2014

What do you do ? Student / PT

Final year MSc physiotherapy student at King's College London. On my final placement on an acute orthopaedic ward in Queen's hospital, Romford. My home club is Reebok sports club in Canary Wharf but I am training at Fitness First, Romford whilst I am on placement.

What experience have you had in Gym X Training ?

I have been training for FitBrit for over a month now. Having been involved in the UK cross-training race circuit (www.x-training.co.uk) and world gym challenge online competitions (www.worldgymchallenge.com) for over four years now, FitBrit involves lots for training modalities and rep ranges I am used to.

What makes FitBrit appealing to you ?

There are some new, interesting exercises that have freshened the whole course up and made the training a bit more varied. I have been doing Crossfit for over a year now and have a student powerlifting competition in November so training for these have helped with the squats and the swings but the course still remains cardio-heavy, with the run, bike and row making up at least 5minutes of an 8-9 minute course

Where do you think the importance is in training for FitBrit?

To be in with a chance of winning, these areas have formed my main training focus, breaking the course into 3 event pieces and repeating them as interval training e.g 5x600 1%, 30x24kg swings, 20box overs. You need to be able to do the resistance moves quickly but also when you are tired so you have to train both ways for that too.

What about some advice for first timers ?

For first time competitors I would advise training with clean reps with full ROM as, on the day, the races will be so close that it could be won and lost on a few reps so you can't afford to get docked.

What do you remember of the 2014 finals?

Last year I came second in the final and fifth overall. It was all super close between the top five. I definitely lost some ground on the bikes and gave away at least 20s to a few of the guys. The life fitness bikes are all about cadence 120+ rpm) and I normally train on watt bikes at 90rpm. Nuno Barreto, who has been synonymous with FitBrit over the last 4 or 5 years absolutely killed me on the 1k run too, starting at 20kph and building up. I thought I was doing well starting on 18.2 and building to 21 but he was just a different class. AJ Orchard had an immense bike and was strong across all the disciplines and was the overall winner

Who do you think will win it this year for the men?

Probably between AJ and Nuno, these two will definitely be ones to watch and there are always a few new faces; Charles Green at Romford is a man mountain but is also really mobile for a big guy.