Tom Rowland | CrossFit Open Week 2 - Where Real Progress Happens | Tom Rowland Podcast Ep. 431

Tom Rowland is the host of the Tom Rowland Podcast and a competitive CrossFit athlete in the 50-54 age division who finished 56th in the world during week 2 of the 2021 CrossFit Games Open with 387 reps. In this Physical Friday episode, Tom breaks down his performance on workout 21.2, revealing how seven reps—just seven—separated him from a top 20 position on the worldwide leaderboard. He takes you inside the mental and physical battle of wall walks and double unders, the brutal math of tie-breaks and leaderboard positioning, and the critical lesson that applies whether you're competing in the CrossFit Games or just trying to get better at anything: the real progress happens in those final moments when you think you have nothing left.

The Seven-Rep Reality Check

Tom pulls up the leaderboard and starts doing the math that every competitive athlete dreads: what if I had done just a little more? At 387 reps, he's sitting at 56th place worldwide in the 50-54 division. Not bad at all—one of his best Open finishes ever. But here's where it gets interesting. He scrolls through the rankings and realizes that seven more reps would have put him at 18th place. Seven. Not seventy. Not seventeen. Seven single reps. The gap between a great finish and a top-20 position that could change his entire competition trajectory came down to moments, not miles. Tom breaks down the exact math, the tie-break times, and what those rankings really mean when you're trying to advance to the next level of competition. The full leaderboard breakdown starts at 04:04.

Wall Walks, Double Unders, and the Fifteen-Minute Grind

If you've never done a wall walk, Tom explains exactly what it entails: you start lying face down with your feet against the wall, hands on a piece of tape at your shoulders, then walk your feet up the wall while walking your hands back until your chest touches the wall at a mark 10 inches away. Then you reverse it and drop into a push-up position. That's one rep. Now do that 21 times while also completing 210 double unders—jump rope passes where the rope goes under your feet twice per jump. The workout builds: 1 and 10, 3 and 30, 6 and 60, 9 and 90, 15 and 150, 21 and 210. Tom finished the 150 double unders at 11 minutes and 55 seconds, which became his tie-break time. The elite athletes finished the entire workout in under eleven minutes. The complete workout breakdown starts at 02:04.

Where All the Progress Lives

This is the point of the entire episode, and it's a lesson that extends far beyond the CrossFit Games. Tom walks through his performance and admits he probably had something left in the tank. Maybe not much, but something. And that's exactly where all the gains happen—in that space between what you think you can do and what you actually can do. He illustrates it with the leaderboard math: moving from 387 to 393 reps wouldn't just be six more movements, it would be moving up 35 positions on the worldwide rankings. The rewards are massive at the end of the effort. Most people stop when they think they're done. The real progress happens when you do one more, two more, three more. Tom's reflection on his own performance becomes a broader principle about fitness, competition, and improvement. The core lesson starts at 08:02.

The Tom Rowland Podcast Leaderboard

Tom created a custom hashtag leaderboard for podcast listeners competing in the Open, and he walks through exactly how to join it. You go to your competition dashboard, find "your hashtag leaderboards," and add "Tom Rowland podcast" as a custom tag. When he pulls up the leaderboard, there are already four people on it—and Patrick Benson is beating him by three reps at 390. Tom also checks out the fisherman leaderboard and finds Adam Sundquist from Iceland at the top, followed by a few other anglers including Key West guide Mike Bartlett. The leaderboard feature creates a micro-community within the massive global competition, and Tom's already thinking about how those three reps separate him from Patrick. The leaderboard tutorial starts at 10:47.

Final Thoughts from Tom

This one hit different for me because I could see exactly where I left performance on the table. Seven reps. I keep coming back to that number. It's not some abstract concept about "leaving it all out there"—it's concrete math showing me that I had more to give. And here's what makes that valuable: it's not about beating myself up over what I didn't do. It's about understanding where the real work happens.

Whether you're doing the CrossFit Open or just trying to get better at anything, this principle applies. The comfortable middle section of any workout or challenge? That's maintenance. The end, when everything hurts and your brain is screaming at you to stop? That's where you actually improve. Those last few reps, those final moments of effort—that's the premium real estate of progress.

I'm taking this lesson into week 3. Whatever workout drops on Thursday night, I'm going to make sure I know I emptied the tank. And if you're working on anything right now—fitness, business, a skill—ask yourself if you're really pushing into that uncomfortable space where growth happens. This episode is a reminder that the difference between good and great is usually smaller than you think, but it requires going further than you want to. Listen to the whole thing.