Oct 13, 2026 · 1 hr 15 min · 13 segments
In this episode, Jake sits down with Keith Barlow, founder of XENOM, to discuss the future of functional fitness and his ambition to build a competition that combines strength, power, endurance and…
Keith BarlowGuest
Jake DeardenHost
I think that when you look at the world of fitness and when you look at the What helps these training partners? What helps affiliates? What helps gym owners? Generally, and people have seen this across the course of the rise of High Rocks, is when people have a goal, when people have something to train for, it gets so much more buy-in.
Christian always explained it in the early days of High Rocks, is For that High Rocks community, for that average gym goer, you basically had people who were either training for aesthetics or they were training to burn calories.
And there was no kind of gamified sporting version of fitness for that mass participation, for that endurance-based consumer who was going to a gym every week, three times a week and doing running and some burpees and a little bit of lifting.
In the same way in the CrossFit world, the best competitions have generally been reserved for elite athletes.
They've generally been reserved for, think about the CrossFit Games, you think about these kind of huge experiential events.
And what we learned from High Rocks is if you can give everyday athletes, everyday consumers that same experience.
And we talk a little bit about, people say like, what business is Xenom? Like, what do you guys do? And I genuinely believe that we are in the business of the suspension of disbelief.
You take an everyday person and you put them into this situation in this world-class venue and you give them the opportunity to perform in a competition that makes them feel like a superstar that makes them feel like the hero of their own story and whether they're competing.
So for us, by the time this comes out, foundations will be out, which is our most accessible form of the competition.
And it doesn't matter if you're coming and competing with us and you're doing a day one ticket in the foundations division in a pair, or if you're doing the full Xenon, the decathlon of fitness, two-day competition in elite competing against the best in the world, both of those consumers get the same feeling.
And that's something that we believe so completely in um that that exp that experience and that opportunity to give people this feeling um yeah no
it's really i feel like it's what fitness needs in my opinion uh we mentioned off air at the moment there's an amazing kind of category and selection of workouts and competitions that you can do on the endurance side of sports and fitness.
But there's not much in terms of actually, like you say, gamifying strength, speed, power, all these things that you need that people are equally as good at and maybe even find more enjoyable than endurance.
On the endurance side, you've got half marathons, marathons, they're super popular.
You've got your triathlons, which, you know, the Ironman hype at the moment is on full trend.
And if you probably look back at the first games, they were probably quite simple compared to now, but because the athletes are getting better and better and better year on year on year, They've got to make the workouts harder.
I think that when you look at the world of fitness and when you look at the What helps these training partners? What helps affiliates? What helps gym owners? Generally, and people have seen this across the course of the rise of High Rocks, is when people have a goal, when people have something to train for, it gets so much more buy-in.
Christian always explained it in the early days of High Rocks, is For that High Rocks community, for that average gym goer, you basically had people who were either training for aesthetics or they were training to burn calories.
And there was no kind of gamified sporting version of fitness for that mass participation, for that endurance-based consumer who was going to a gym every week, three times a week and doing running and some burpees and a little bit of lifting.
In the same way in the CrossFit world, the best competitions have generally been reserved for elite athletes.
They've generally been reserved for, think about the CrossFit Games, you think about these kind of huge experiential events.
And what we learned from High Rocks is if you can give everyday athletes, everyday consumers that same experience.
And we talk a little bit about, people say like, what business is Xenom? Like, what do you guys do? And I genuinely believe that we are in the business of the suspension of disbelief.
You take an everyday person and you put them into this situation in this world-class venue and you give them the opportunity to perform in a competition that makes them feel like a superstar that makes them feel like the hero of their own story and whether they're competing.
So for us, by the time this comes out, foundations will be out, which is our most accessible form of the competition.
And it doesn't matter if you're coming and competing with us and you're doing a day one ticket in the foundations division in a pair, or if you're doing the full Xenon, the decathlon of fitness, two-day competition in elite competing against the best in the world, both of those consumers get the same feeling.
And that's something that we believe so completely in um that that exp that experience and that opportunity to give people this feeling um yeah no
it's really i feel like it's what fitness needs in my opinion uh we mentioned off air at the moment there's an amazing kind of category and selection of workouts and competitions that you can do on the endurance side of sports and fitness.
But there's not much in terms of actually, like you say, gamifying strength, speed, power, all these things that you need that people are equally as good at and maybe even find more enjoyable than endurance.
On the endurance side, you've got half marathons, marathons, they're super popular.
You've got your triathlons, which, you know, the Ironman hype at the moment is on full trend.
And if you probably look back at the first games, they were probably quite simple compared to now, but because the athletes are getting better and better and better year on year on year, They've got to make the workouts harder.
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