Going all in on becoming a Hyrox Athlete (Guest Post by Holly Gabrielle) | #323

February 24th, 2026: Greetings from Taipei. I’ve been enjoying time away from the computer, though I’ve been dabbling a bit with Claude code & Codex (blown away, thoughts soon). The traveling village just wrapped up its first stop in Vietnam (thoughts on this soon, too). The trip has been better than expected so far, and we are back in Taiwan for the next leg of the trip, which is quite special for Angie and me to host here.

A couple quick shouts:

• Angie Wang 安吉 is publishing her book Made in Taiwan in Traditional Chinese next week! The final product is incredible; it’s one of the best memoirs I’ve read (I am biased, but I think I will be quickly validated by readers!). We’re excited to share it in English after we co-translate it later this year, so stay tuned. If you read Chinese or would like to grab a copy to support her, all the links are here: Made in Taiwan.

• You can now purchase notebooks, shirts, my paperbacks, and Angie’s books all directly from my Shopify store.

Below is a guest post/Q&A from Holly Gabrielle, who recently left the creator world to go all in on trying to become a top Hyrox athlete. I love highlighting new paths that exist in the world, and this one definitely qualifies.

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Ok, you just quit your job, which was working on Ali Abdaal’s team, after reading Good Work. What is going on over there? Is Ali getting ready to ban my books?

Haha, to be fair, Ali might think twice about giving out free copies of Good Work to members of his team in future. But my departure was the least dramatic thing ever - I simply sent a Slack message to Angus (Ali’s general manager) basically explaining that I wanted to go off and do my own thing … or in other words, quit a perfectly stable copywriting job to chase a dream of becoming one of the top 15 women in the world at a sport I’d never actually competed in yet 😅

Absurdity aside, being part of the Ali Abdaal team is honestly so dangerous because you start believing you can do things, and I wasn’t even a full-time team member - I was freelance, working 3 days a week - yet I still caught on.

Like many of us, I was guilty of procrastinating on ideas, shutting them down, telling myself I wasn’t good enough, or just learning more and more information, convinced that I just wasn’t ready yet. But Ali talks so much about taking action and not letting your emotions or fears hold you back - whether it’s starting a YouTube channel or a lifestyle business or even something as small and personal as going on your first date - and when you work for him, it’s pretty hard not to eventually listen.

So, like many other team members, after 2 years working with Ali, I’d heard enough. I took his advice a bit too literally and decided to go all-in on trying to become an elite Hyrox athlete (and simultaneously return to my content creator origins).

You’re going to pursue being an “elite athlete”? That sounds awesome. I suspect needing more time for training, rest, and recovery is part of it, and a job doesn’t help with focusing on that. Any other reasons?

Yep, you’re pretty much spot on. Time for training and recovery was a huge factor, and I’m hoping this allows me to make much faster progress. But it wasn’t just about the physical time - it was a mental energy thing too.

Realistically, I could’ve kept my writing job with Ali and also gone all-in on this lofty (and pretty scary!!) goal of becoming an elite athlete. Besides, working with the team was such a great experience - the flexibility was incredible, I was always learning new nuggets of information, and the people were amazing.

But I know myself well enough to know that my brain doesn’t really switch off - and that comes at a cost.

Even though the team never gave me any super strict deadlines, I’d always push myself to write one more email before 5pm, shorten my breaks to cram in a bit more work, or find a way to level-up in my role. It was exhausting.

And it wasn’t until I came across ideas like essentialism and the “Hell Yeah or No” framework by Derek Siver (again, all through Ali) that I started to question how much of a toll it was taking on me. I also realised that it was stealing a lot of mental energy away from my runs and workouts. I’d often blindly go into a session and wonder why it felt hard. I left no time to reflect on my sessions, properly plan my workouts, or even just celebrate my small wins.

So long story short: I finally decided to step back. Yes, it’s probably been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because saying no or quitting doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’m excited by the challenge of finally doing less to hopefully get more out of the things that mean the most to me and have the potential to completely change my life.

Are you already making money from your athletic pursuits (career, path, passion, what else do you call this?!), and how did this impact your decision?

I’d love to say yes, but the answer is no, sadly 🙈 Right now, I’m not making any money from this.

Just for some context: I’ve been “influencing” for about 10 years now. I started my first YouTube channel when I was at uni, and ever since graduating, I’ve pretty much been documenting my entire life on the internet. As a result, I have a couple of affiliate links that are earning me a bit of money right now, as well as some passive income from my old YouTube videos … but we’re talking a few hundred pounds a month.

Plus, they’re not exactly aligned with my version of good work going forwards.

Ideally, I’d love to be a full-time sponsored athlete one day - that would be absolutely unreal. And alongside that, I’m rebuilding my personal brand from the ground up.

I’ve recently started a joint YouTube channel with my partner, Angelo, where we’re documenting our journey to the Elite 15 in Hyrox, and I’m rebranding my Instagram content to be specifically within this niche. The goal is to make this financially sustainable long-term, but right now, the income from all of that is pretty much zero.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s scary not having a monthly income right now - like really scary. It was also a pretty big concern of my parents when I left my job, but I’m proud of myself for not letting financial worries stop me from going after some big goals that genuinely excite me.

What is the link between training, sharing your journey online, and how those have evolved together over time?

Love this question… although the answer isn’t super straightforward.

If we go way back, I grew up dancing competitively and have always been super interested in my own health and fitness. In all honesty, I always thought I’d live my life as a professional dancer, just like my mum, but I guess things didn’t work out that way oops - ended up going down a completely different path and studying biology at Cambridge instead.

This is when I started my first YouTube channel (2016), and even though my vlogs were heavily centred around my chaotic student life and studies at Cambridge, food and fitness were always underlying themes.

Sadly though, I experienced some pretty deep and chronic mental health issues that lasted pretty much the entirety of my teenage years and early twenties, which turned my love for fitness into something pretty toxic. I was in denial for years, and this made it really hard to be vocal about health and fitness online, because deep down I had my own things to fix first.

At the start of 2025, I stepped back from YouTube and social media a bit and decided to work on myself - focus on my writing job with Ali, spend more time with the people that matter most to me, and finally fix my relationship with food and exercise. When I could finally see how damaging this dynamic was, I thought it was best to never mention it online ever again. But I missed sharing my journey, and it’s always been something I loved.

So towards the end of the year, I thought about seriously rebranding my content. I started sharing my genuine love for food and fitness but framed it in a completely different, healthier way, and this was around the time when I’d just discovered Hyrox.

A lot of people knew I was into running and marathons, but what really drew me to this sport was that I could build my body in a way that felt most natural to me - develop strength in both my upper and lower body without having to drop weight, lose my period, or risk the injuries that often come with trying to reach elite marathon times. Training for Hyrox lets me be strong and fast, not one at the expense of the other, and I was super excited to share this with others.

Don’t get me wrong, rebranding online isn’t easy 😬 But so far, I’m having the best time sharing my fitness journey and everything I’m learning. Plus, when I announced my big goal to become an Elite 15 Hyrox athlete on Instagram recently, the response was genuinely overwhelming in the best way possible - something I really didn’t expect.

(Here’s the post if you want to check it out.)

You told me you are excited and scared to make this leap. That resonates so much. Tell me about that tension?

I’m incredibly excited because the upsides are pretty much limitless. I have no idea where this path will take me, how far I can take my fitness in Hyrox, or where I’ll be in say 3-5 years’ time.

But that uncertainty is what also makes me somewhat scared. What if things don’t work out? What if my savings dry up and I’m not yet making any money to support my life? What if I get a major injury? What if I don’t make as much progress as I think?

I can often think very catastrophically and worry too much about the “what ifs” so I’m working on trying to limit these thoughts and feelings. I’m also trying to turn these negatives into something more hopeful. In particular, I’m reminding myself that any failures are simply learnings. Even if I don’t make the Elite 15, I’ll have spent years doing something I genuinely love, becoming the strongest and healthiest version of myself, and living a life designed around my values rather than someone else’s - and to me, that’s totally worth the risk.

How much of a role was your partner deciding to quit with you in deciding to take this leap? How did you talk about the tradeoffs in the decision?

Funny story here actually: Angelo and I met on Hinge (2022) after he stumbled across one of my photos from my first ever London Marathon. We clicked pretty much straight away, and in particular, we both shared this huge love for running, fitness, and becoming the healthiest versions of ourselves.

Fast forward to 2025 and we bought a flat together in London. It was something we’d been wanting to do for a while, and we honestly thought we’d “made it” as real adults. We both had stable jobs, stable incomes, and started building the routines that we’d always talked about - run at optimal times in nice parks, go to the gym, meal prep on Sundays, stuff like that.

We genuinely thought this was it. So it makes me laugh now that only 8 months later we were looking for tenants, purchasing a 150L backpack, and getting ready to leave the country altogether 😂

I know a lot of people think we’re absolutely crazy. Like, why the hell would we give up decent jobs, a mortgage, and a life we’d spent years working towards? It just doesn’t seem to make sense.

But the thing is, sometimes you have to walk through one door in life to realise it’s not quite right for you. Sure, it would’ve been great to realise that we wanted to become elite athletes before we bought a property, but life doesn’t quite work like that.

And I guess the question is: what actually changed? And why did we change our minds?

Well, when Angelo and I started living together, we started watching more and more content online about this new and interesting sport called Hyrox. We watched races, got completely hooked, and of course, almost immediately signed up to our first one. As we were putting more and more hours into our training, we started to realise we were capped. We were working out too late, eating even later, missing sleep, recovery was suffering … and we started craving more and more time for this one thing we loved most.

At the same time, Ali was talking more and more about financial freedom and building a lifestyle business, and as his copywriter, I was literally absorbing everything he was saying and learning. Oh and I also read your book, Good Work, which made me see work in a completely new light.

So one day - I can’t remember when exactly - we dabbled with the idea of dedicating our lives to fitness. We thought about starting a business, coaching, or building an app, but then we were eventually like, why don’t we prioritise our own fitness first and then document the journey?

I’ll be totally honest here and say we hadn’t even done our first Hyrox race yet, which definitely makes us crazy, but we were so determined that with hard work and consistency, we could get to the top. And I guess only time (and a lot of hard work and sweat) will tell.

But we’re on this journey together, we have each other’s backs, and it’s the most incredible thing to be chasing your dreams with your best friend and the person you love.

What’s the plan? Where can we follow you?

Right now, the plan is to really dial in my own training and aim for the Elite 15 in Hyrox. Simple on paper, but most likely a lot harder in practice 😅

That’s my ultimate goal, but even if I don’t ever end up “making it”, I’m trying to build something sustainable alongside - long-term athlete or brand partnerships, potentially coaching if that feels like “good work” to me, and content creation that actually aligns with what I love. My athletic performance is definitely going to be the foundation, but there’s a whole ecosystem I can build around it and that’s what makes this whole thing feel less risky.

I’m currently sharing my journey, tips, and advice over on Instagram (@byhollygabrielle) where I’m active most days, and Angelo and I have started a new YouTube channel together (@angeloandholly). We’re posting one video a week to share our training, racing, and the reality of this whole journey.

Oh and we’re also travelling around and living in more affordable cities compared to London to make our savings go a little bit further. I always thought I’d be a “home” person who loves stability, but I actually don’t. I love the idea of exploring new places and building homes across the world, and I feel super lucky to do this.

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Hey there! I’m still on sabbatical, but I hope you enjoyed this issue

I’ve been doing some form of public writing since 2015. I’ve somehow figured out how to hack a living doing things like writing books and launching premium art editions of my book. If you like what you read here, you’ll probably enjoy my books The Pathless Path and Good Work:

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• Kindred, a home-sharing app

• Collective for handling your S-Corp accounting needs, and Nat Eliason’s Build Your Own AI Apps course

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