How to be interviewed

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am one of those people who go to a Crossfit gym. For those of you who don't know what Crossfit is, it is basically an exercise programme that incorporates weightlifting, gymnastics and cardio related activities.

Crossfit has it's world championships or Crossfit Games every July in America. It was held last weekend and Matt Fraser came out on top in a run away victory.

Today at my gym I worked out with a guy who was visiting Tokyo and he told me that he goes to the same gym as Fraser and that he gets to see him train on a daily basis. It would be interesting to see what an elite does differently from someone like me. Everything I suspect.

The Crossfit Games are streamed live on Youtube and the Crossfit website and it is quite interesting following the events and seeing the athletes go through different workouts that we do at the gym every week. Of course they are at a higher level than us but we can kind of relate to it.

What I was most interested in though were Matt Fraser's interviews. Sometimes when we look at some athletes we expect them to talk like this:

However we know for most them that is not the truth and the professional athletes get training on how to deal with the media and what to say and what not to say. Most of them come across as being quite articulate and they can be interesting to listen to when they are not spouting out those cliches.

Matt Fraser's interviews were interesting in that he came across as being very intelligent. I think that he just graduated from university in the last six months with a masters degree or something like that so he must have a few brains. However when he was interviewed his answers were good but very short. It was like he answered the question and then that was it he didn't want to elaborate on it too much.

I guess Crossfit is a new sport and I can imagine the elite athletes may not have the same media training that the other professional codes do. Also I wondered if Matt Fraser was naturally shy or introverted so he didn't like to let too much go. Anyway, I'll let you decide for yourself:

What do you think? I suppose that he has just done a workout and he is quite tired so doing an interview might be the last thing he wanted to do. At the end of the day (another sports interview cliche) however, television are paying a lot of money to broadcast these events so they want their pound of flesh so to speak.

It will be interesting to see next year at the Crossfit Games if Matt Fraser has more to say. If they have trained him a bit more on how to talk to the media.

Anyway, not knowing the guy personally I can only speculate that he might be a little introverted  and that can sometimes come across as being rude when in fact they don't have a lot to say. It is in this situation like the interview above that you can turn into a situational extrovert to appease the bosses and the people watching at home.