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Danielle Brandon can throw 100kg over her head, walk on her hands faster than many people can run and sprint 400m in little over a minute – skills that have seen her named among the ”fittest on earth” in her chosen sport of CrossFit. But her journey to the top has been far from conventional.
The 29-year-old has only recently opened up about the challenges she faced during her childhood, including her mum’s battle with addiction and related stints in prison. “I wanted to be defined as this really great athlete and person, without the asterisk,” Brandon explains.
“[My childhood] was a whole lot of not normal,” the R.A.D athlete says – I’m speaking with her ahead of the release of her second signature shoe with the brand. “I had to be very independent due to my parents both being addicts. When I was at home with my mum, she wasn’t really raising my brother and I; that’s not really what her focus was.”
Brandon never really knew her father. When she was in primary school her mother was sent to prison for drug possession, so she and her brother were placed in the care of their aunt and uncle.
“My mum and my grandparents, even the government when they put us there, thought it would be this really supportive, loving space because it was family, but it ended up being quite the opposite,” Brandon says. “Deciding how to navigate it all was left up to our own interpretation. We were alone in it, and really just had each other.”
“Sport was my saving grace”
Sport provided structure and consistency in Brandon’s life. What’s more, she soon found she was invariably good at it, whether she was turning her hand to gymnastics, athletics or later CrossFit.
“From as early as I can remember, I was always active and competing,” she says. “It gave me something to focus on. I really enjoyed being around the people, and I found I could lean on those people much more than I could lean on the people at home.
“It was something I looked forward to every day, not only because it was something I picked up so naturally, but also because the people in sport wanted me there. My coaches, my teammates; these are people and friends I loved to see every day. It’s still true to this day. Anyone involved in my life through sport, I want to be around them, and I think they like having me around as well.”
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Finding CrossFit
Brandon was introduced to CrossFit in secondary school, unaware that it would later become her entire career. Her PE teacher was a CrossFit coach and had woven the training methodology into his lessons. One of her gymnastics coaches was also a fan, and together the pair “tricked” her into coming along to her first class.
“They were like, ‘Oh, you would be so good at this,’ and kind of played with my head, so I thought I needed to go and check this out,” Brandon laughs. “I did Filthy 50, which is a classic CrossFit workout, and Fran. It was so bad; I fell in love with it.”
However, in college Brandon had to prioritise her other athletic endeavours; namely, track and field, in which she later became a pole vault specialist.
“My schedule was very chilled, probably too chilled for what I was used to. I needed more, and I thought, ‘Well, CrossFit could be that something more’. So I joined a gym, made really great friends, then started doing CrossFit on the side of track and field and all of my classes. I asked for chaos and I got it. That was quite the chaotic schedule.”
Clashing commitments meant she was unable to compete in CrossFit’s upper echelons. It wasn’t that she wasn’t good enough, she simply didn’t have the time. Then, in 2019, the stars finally aligned and she made her debut appearance at the CrossFit Games – the sport’s annual competition to find “the fittest man and woman on earth”.
Brandon finished 10th in a field of 117 women, and she has competed every year since with a highest finish of fourth in 2022.
CrossFit misconceptions
Many CrossFit fans’ abiding memory of Brandon came after she won an event at the 2021 CrossFit Games – an obstacle course race which had to be completed while walking on your hands.
After coming into contact with a positive case of Covid-19, she had been forced to segregate from other athletes and complete several events in isolation, despite repeatedly testing negative.
After crossing the finish line, in a culmination of days of frustration, she flipped the bird on both hands and held them aloft. This, and her fiery nature on the competition floor, has led many people to develop misconceptions about her, Brandon says.
“I get the impression people think I’m going to bite their head off,” she says. “I meet people all the time and they’re like, ‘Oh wait, Danielle is actually really pleasant and smiley’. I think that is what is written off most about me; people think I’m going to meet them with anger, unpleasantness and chaos.”
“Maybe they’re reading into something a little true. I think my friends say it best: ‘We love you, you’re so easy, you’re so chill, but we also would never want to upset you.’ That’s so fair. I wouldn’t want to argue with myself either, but I’m actually more chilled than people think.”
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What does a week of Danielle Brandon’s training look like?
To become one of the “fittest on earth”, you’d assume the gym is Brandon’s second home. And you’d be right.
She hits the gym five times per week for three to five hours per day. As the CrossFit Games in August grow nearer, this is usually bumped up to a couple of two to four hour sessions, and on the cusp of the competition she often trains three times per day.
“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday contain one big gym session,” she says. “Thursday is going to be a swim or a longer run day, and Sunday will typically be a full rest day.
“You might see other athletes breaking their gym sessions into two, but this is how I personally like to do it.”
This personalised approach is a common theme. Brandon’s been training in some capacity for most of her life, and she’s learned what works for her. This information is balanced with input from her coach to create an effective plan.
“This is my second season with my coach,” she says. “My coach knows a lot, but I also know a lot about what works for me and I’m really big on that. I think I know myself really well as an athlete and I know what I like to see in training.”
There are certain exercises she does every week. “I want to make sure I’m hitting handstand push-ups, muscle-ups, some sort of heavy power snatch, running twice a week, a rowing piece and a biking piece,” to name a few. These are structured into a series of progressive drills and workouts to help Brandon make headway.
“Typically, every gym day there’s going to be an aerobic or zone piece,” she explains. “That might be a longer run or more [exercise] machine-specific, so I could be sitting on a rower or exercise bike for anywhere from half-an-hour to an hour.”
“Then I’m going to have strength work every day, and that’s pretty predictable. I can walk in a gym on a Monday and know I’m probably going to have back squats and cleans. Or every Tuesday I know I’m going to have snatches, snatch pulls and front squats.”
“There may also be a gymnastics piece or weakness work. This could be more skills-based or it could just be muscular endurance building. And then I’ll do my big piece for the day.”
This “big piece” is a particularly challenging workout designed to boost various facets of fitness while preparing Brandon for the rigours of competition. Below, she shares an example – and it’s not for the faint of heart.
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Danielle Brandon workout: The monster mash
Start by setting a 30-minute timer. There are three parts to this workout, and the aim is to complete part one in the first 10 minutes, part two in the second 10 minutes and part three in the final 10 minutes. Once you complete each section, rest until that 10-minute segment is up, then start the next one.
Part one
From 0-10 minutes, complete three rounds of:
- Burpee box jump-over x9
- Thruster (50kg) x5
- Bar muscle-up x7
Part two
From 10-20 minutes, complete four rounds of:
- Thruster (40kg) x7
- Chest-to-bar pull-up x14
- Lateral burpee-over-bar x12
Part three
From 20-30 minutes, complete five rounds of:
- Pull-ups x21
- Thruster (30kg) x9
- Burpee x15
“I think it’s a fun one,” Brandon laughs. “For my big piece, you’ll either see a metcon [a high-intensity blend of strength, skill and cardio-focussed movements] or an interval-style workout. For me, it’s typically going to look more like a metcon because that’s what I’ve found works best for me, training my body in a very specific way to keep moving.”
“Because I come from an athletics background, I adapt really well to interval training. With the rest, I can almost recover too much, to the point where the intervals aren’t really preparing me for much. Whereas if I’m like, ‘What does it look like without the rest?’ it’s often not very pretty.”
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What Danielle Brandon does outside the gym to support her training schedule
It’s hard to wrap your head around the sheer volume of Brandon’s weekly training plans. But she says exercising isn’t the hardest part of being a top-level CrossFit athlete.
“Sometimes people think, ‘CrossFit athletes just go to the gym and get all the hard work done, then it’s over and they get to do nothing’,” she says. “It’s quite the opposite. Outside the gym you’re constantly having to eat. Food is the number one most important thing to consider, and the hardest thing to stay on top of.”
There is no specific number of calories or protein goal Brandon aims to hit. Instead, she’s fine-tuned her routine to eat similar things every day and simply focus on “getting enough food in”.
“It’s not fun. The amount of times I’ve been at competitions or at home, and I’m just sitting there miserably trying to eat my food. It’s funny when you see other athletes doing it and you think, ‘I know the struggle’. It’s not that the food isn’t good, it’s just a job.”
Her sleep is the next most important thing, in Brandon’s eyes, followed by looking after her mental health.
“I think mental health is huge,” she says. “There has to be this balance of training and life. When you’re constantly thinking about training or work, that’s exhausting, and it’s not fun. Personally, I don’t think that’s what life is all about.”
And finally, she tries to listen to her body: “The tough thing and the cool thing to do is to train through really hard things, nicks and pains, but it’s not cool when you get injured.”
