Courtesy of Ryan Lopez
Dan Bailey has always been competitive, but he’s also realistic. He knows there’s one thing no one, including him, can beat: time.
Once achieving the title of fourth fittest person in the world, the CrossFit Games veteran has moved into a new phase in his career as he preps to compete in the masters division of the Games, which divides competitors into age groups as they move past peak performance age.
“Let me be real honest, training looks way different than it did five, 10 years ago,” Bailey says.
Life in general has come to look different for Bailey, too. He owns a home, runs a personal training business and, since February, has been happily married to fellow CrossFit athlete Alexandra LaChance. All of that coincides with his changing views on his sport and goals.
For the past few years, Bailey’s been competing in CrossFit’s 35-39 age group division, something he swore to never do. For Bailey, competing in the masters division meant competing below the highest level of competition – something he had no interest in doing.
However, in his efforts to reach peak performance, Bailey increasingly found himself at the brink of overexertion and bodily strain.
In 2018, Bailey ruptured his left quad tendon, underwent a double hernia surgery and a labrum repair on his left shoulder, which left him unable to exercise, let alone compete for an extended period of time. He was devastated. That, along with two other significant injuries in the past several years, made coming back to full physical form a true challenge. And he’s not taking his recovery for granted.
“After the injuries, I put so much work into getting my body back into shape that I was kind of like, ‘Well, you owe it to yourself to try to get back out there and on the floor in any way that you can, just to prove to yourself and to prove to others that even if setbacks happen, you can overcome them,’” Bailey says. “You can achieve things no matter what setbacks happen.”
Bailey made it to the CrossFit Games’ competition floor once more last year, only to test positive for COVID-19 while at the competition after spending time helping an Australian athlete and friend train.
Courtesy of Ryan Lopez
“My whole life I’ve been aware that the sum of who I am and my value and my worth is not in what I do on the competition floor,” he says. “That’s an awesome tool that I’ve gotten to use and gotten be a part of. It’s not the summation of who I am. So, while that was a big disappointment and I was frustrated by it, it was OK. I had my pity party for a couple days then I said, ‘OK, let’s move on, what’s next?’”
What’s next is finding the healthiest version of himself. That includes physical fitness, but also making his business a priority. He now limits his training to 90 minutes a day, with some twice-daily sessions close to competition season. That’s a stark contrast to the four to six hours he trained each day at his competitive peak.
Bailey, who has lived in Westerville since 2018, reached the CrossFit Games championship five times as an individual and earned five top 10 finishes. In 2015, he earned his best finish, fourth, and was crowned with the Spirit of the Games Award that same year.
Prior to his CrossFit career, Bailey competed as a Div. I track and field athlete at Ohio University (he’s run 400 meters in 47.83 seconds). He first discovered CrossFit while at the University of Akron, where he received a master’s in exercise physiology.
Bailey has dedicated his adult life to fitness and training at the highest level. As he pursued a number of fitness related careers – physical education teacher, conditioning coach for the U.S. Department of Defense – he moved between Cookville, Tennesee, Fresno, California, and San Diego.
In truth, Bailey says training for the CrossFit Games is close to a full-time job for most people aiming for the podium, as it was for him. None of the other jobs stuck for him.
“You have to be willing to humble yourself, to learn and to fail, really,” he says. “That’s how I look at a lot of different things that I did.”
While in San Diego, Bailey spent two years living on a boat and made a $20,000 donation that funded a school in Kenya through CrossFit Inc. San Diego was also where he was living when, in 2015, he achieved his career high finish in the CrossFit Games.
Eventually, Bailey made the move back to central Ohio. When it came time to settle down and purchase a home, Westerville provided all that he wanted.
“I’m a big outdoors person and the reservoir is right next to my house, so it just has a little bit of everything and also super close to downtown,” he says. “All of those things kind of factored in to why I ended up in Westerville.”
He bought his house in 2018, which came with a barn on the property, around the same time his injuries left him unable to train.
Instead, he put his effort toward transforming the barn into a training and hangout space while he recovered. It frequently features in the background of his Instagram and YouTube videos, where he shares his workouts, training tips and films for his online training program, Always Train (alwaystrain.com). His YouTube channel has received over 5 million views.
As he continues to transition his mindset into the next phase of his life, he has one foot in and one foot out of competition. Bailey is hoping to qualify for the masters competition again, but he doesn’t have the same stakes in competition as he once did. Now, he says it won’t be the end of the world if he doesn’t qualify at all.
“I’m not going to be super disappointed as long as my body is still healthy and I’m still able to do the things I love and continue to make a career out of the passion that I have,” Bailey says. “I’m winning on every level.”
Claire Miller is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback is welcome at cmiller@cityscenemediagroup.com.
