All on Chyna

July 10, 2014

Leah Lutz

"I don't want to be on a program. I want to do what I want to do ... there is no coach to please so it's all on me."

Chyna Cho first competed at the 2010 CrossFit Games and each year she’s fought to return, missing the mark by painfully small margins.  

Cho was fourth at the 2011 NorCal Regional—tied for third but lost in the tiebreaker to Annie Sakamoto—fourth in 2012—5 points out of third—and sixth in 2013—just 3 points out from third.

This year, Cho is finally going back to the Games. She placed second in the NorCal Region between Alessandra Pichelli and Margaux Alvarez.

What’s different this year? Plenty. She got a new coach and a new training environment, as well as unexpected personal motivation. She said she came into this year’s competition with a sense of confidence she’s never had before.

“I should have made it in 2011 and 2012,” Cho said. “Those regionals were made for me. This year I just love my training, love to suffer and I have confidence in my abilities. This year I went into the regionals feeling like I belonged.”

Having previously worked with coaches John Welbourn and Aimee Everett, Cho took on the responsibility of her own programming this year.

“It was time for a change,” she admitted. “I don’t want to be on a program. I want to do what I want to do—a class, a swim. It’s what I want and I’m happy doing that.”

It was a drastic change from her prior highly programmed life. With years of training and coaching under her belt, taking more responsibility for her own training has been just what she needed.

“I learned that I really do want to work hard,” she said. “I took initiative on my own to program, and there is no coach to please so it’s all on me. I have the confidence now that I’m doing the work.”

She doesn’t do the work all on her own, though. She’s picked up a training partner in perennial Games athlete Neal Maddox. Maddox also finished second at the NorCal Regional.

“Last year, most of my training was by myself. I had a coach, but no one to race,” Cho explained. “Now I’m in an environment to go faster and push harder. There is a big difference in working out with someone yelling at you and working out with people right there, working and pushing you. I needed more competition, the physical competition instead of the fictional competition that a program alone gives.”

Training with Maddox has helped Cho build new intensity with the ability to consistently go to that dark place of discomfort.

“Neal is so good at coaching us during the WOD,” Cho said. “He yells at us, corrects us while he’s going hard himself ... He truly wants us to be better.”

The regional proved to be an unexpected test of this intensity for Cho. On Day 3, right before Event 6—the 50s down-and-back chipper—it was clear something was wrong. A trip to the medical tent revealed a displaced rib, which they popped back into place. The surrounding muscles were all inflamed, so Cho spent the 40 minutes before the event on the table getting worked on. There was no time to warm up, no time to know how she would hold up during the 50s.  

Her fiancé, Freddy Camacho, nervously watched her take the floor. During the event, while the crowd was cheering wildly for the competitors, Camacho couldn’t say a thing.  He was silent until she made it to the wall-ball shots.  

“I knew she was going to the Games,” Camacho remembered of watching her during the event. “She would have quit this workout before. Long workouts just weren’t her thing. During the 100s last year, she checked out—done before she started. But I knew she was going now.”

She said an overwhelming desire to win for her father was what got her through the brutal event. Anyone familiar with NorCal competitions knows Papa Tom Cho is a super fan and attends each of his daughter’s competitions, with a camera in hand and a smile on his face.

In the final week of the 2014 Open, Cho’s family discovered her father, Tom, has Stage 4 brain cancer. While his prognosis is still unknown, Tom will be able to watch his daughter compete at the StubHub Center at the end of July.    

Cho was driven to win for her dad, as a dream of his was to see his daughter at the Games again. “I have to go,” Cho remembered thinking. “I just have to do it. This might be my one shot for my dad to see me go.”

Now, Cho is ready for the Games. She said she feels great, and while her dad is still in chemo, he’s ready to get to Carson, California, to cheer her on.

To prepare, Cho is in intense prep, doing multiple workouts a day, training hardest on Friday through Sunday, doing all she can to prepare herself for the unknown events of the Games.

The unknown can be scary, but Cho is looking to her dad. While currently undergoing chemotherapy, he is still working out at CrossFit Monterey, running, lifting and doing all the things he loves in life.

“I have no excuses,” Cho said. “(My dad) fully supports me and puts no outside stress on me. I remember his perspective: ‘Only worry about what’s in front of you.’ I took that perspective to regionals, just one event at a time. That’s how my dad approaches his cancer, and I’m carrying this over.”