Conquer the Tri-Fitness Challenge with Al Rosen

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the Team Lally real estate show, home of the guaranteed sold program, we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio, and if you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596, or check us out online at Team lally.com Our

ATTILIO: 
guest today is the founder of Tri-Fitness, a groundbreaking fitness competition that has been empowering athletes since 1997 with a rich background as a gym owner, physical education teacher, coach, professional wrestler and fitness trainer, he created a unique platform to inspire participants through health fitness and the spirit of competition.

ADRIENNE: 
Known for his innovative scoring system and diverse challenges, he has redefined fitness events by blending grace and physique competitions with obstacle courses and True Grit challenges. Please welcome back. Al Rosen, hey. Al, Aloha,

ATTILIO:
Aloha, aloha. So how, how is, how goes there in Florida?

AL:
Oh, everything, everything’s good right now, as well as we don’t have any hurricanes. Yeah, the weather’s been nice.

ATTILIO: 
No more hurricanes. No more hurricanes. You know, we’re there a couple months ago, and weather is kind of similar to Hawaii. Yeah,

ADRIENNE: 
it is beautiful there in Tampa, yeah. So, so. Al, so we wanted to have you back on because, you know, as you know, we get to the new year people, you know, they start thinking about getting in shape, fitness, New Year’s resolutions. And one of the things that you know, tell you, and I really like love about this, the Tri-Fitness Challenge. Change is that, you know, like, this is an event that you can train for, and you know, you just it is very diverse as far as the type of training, yeah, that you know needs to be done.

ATTILIO: 
Well, let’s break down the event. Let’s talk about, let’s talk about different parts of it, and you’ll give us an explanation on it. Let’s talk about what part you want to talk about. First, Adrienne,

ADRIENNE: 
let’s talk about the ops. Obstacle Course. How did you how did you come up with that? Al,

ATTILIO: 
yeah. Well, talk about the obstacle course. Yes.

AL:
Well, based on, it’s based on some of the military after courses. And I wanted to, when I came up with it, I wanted to tell you that people could accomplish and and I don’t want it to be a real more. I wanted to be more of a sprint, yes, obstacle course, rather than, you know, taking taking time, you know, half mile type obstacle course,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, yeah. And it’s

ADRIENNE: 
what I mean to take you about, like, a minute, right? Is it about a

ATTILIO: 
minute? Is the goal. You won’t be under a minute.

AL:
Well, we’ve been doing it for 27 and a half years now, and anybody that breaks 64 seconds in the four seconds makes the all time list. Nice. We can’t, we kept track. And there’s probably about 400 people so that yeah, so over the years that have broken that 64

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, and so and and you’ve created trading processes for each part of the ops and

ADRIENNE: 
the whole, like, the technique is very important, because, like, if you do the wrong technique, it could cost you a second or two. Yeah, every second counts. Yep,

AL: 
exactly,

AL:
every, every starter step two to three tenths of a second. So you want to voice starter steps and be optimal and again. Obstacle course, some of the obstacles we have, like the 10 foot wall and the 15 foot carbon at we have high jump. It 30 inch thick mats underneath that you jump down onto and rebound off of it and sing it. Get, get off of them quickly.

ATTILIO: 
Now there’s a second obstacle course that one’s like, super fun. What’s that one? Adrienne,

ADRIENNE: 
the True Grit. True Grit. Really, you said it’s super fun. I like, I like the the one minute sprint, the obstacle course. That’s, I like that one way better than the true grit. That’s, yeah. It’s kind of Whoa. It’s

ATTILIO: 
challenging, and it makes you come in touch with your past ancestors. But tell us about come

ADRIENNE:
up with that one. Yeah. So that’s the second one,

AL:
the true the true grit is a 230 yards one, and there’s no and there’s something that anyone could train and throughout the country. So all you need a kettlebell, a couple weight plates, etc. And we have all the kind of instructions online, yes. So it’s a longer, longer course, and it’s a lot of stopping and starting. I’ll go over it. So you have a 20 yard show, run, 10 yards down, 10 yards back, like a 20 yards in. Then you go down five extra yards and go over a five foot wall, yep. After after the wall, you can jump down. You go through a 15 foot running grid. Then you stay. Then you have to stop to do three push ups with your chest touching the medicine ball, and bear cross through a 15 foot shoot and do a four then do a forward roll on the other side of the shoot, and then come out of that. Then go around the coal five cone weave, then on the six colon, you make the turn to come back. Now you just the course is, lay that over a 50 yard field. So, so, but the first half, because of the shutter, run this 70 yards. Yep, okay, but you come over, you’re working your way back. You flip 161 pound tire over it, and you flip it back. That’s a start and stop. And then you go down another 10 yards, getting 25 or for man the 35 pound kettlebell. Swing it five times to the top of your head. Then you sprint down another 10 yards to a six inch box. You do jumping jacks and com straddle jacks on top of the box. 10 of those. Then you go down another to five yards to a

ATTILIO: 
waiting jump rope,

AL:
although I lost the farm to the farm to carry squats. Okay, three school with a 30 women with 35 pound plates, guys with 45 pound plates, you do three squats, carry them down 10 yards and 10 yards back, drop. And then you run down to the 15 yard line, even with the wall. And do get a four pound heavy rope, jump that 10 times. And you go around the cone at the goal line, the original starting line, and you run 10 yards to a 30 inch. Hurdle, 10 yards to a 24 inch hurdle, 10 yards to a 24 inch hurdle, 10 yards to go under a 3030, inch bar. Then you go around the cone and spread back 40 yards. Nice,

ATTILIO:
tired just hearing it so like

ADRIENNE: 
with, like, just these two events, it kind of sounds like a cross between a Spartan Race and a Ninja Warrior obstacle course.

AL:
It’s more of a sprint versus Ninja Warriors. A lot of climbing and grip strength and stuff like this. There’s a lot of stopping and going, yeah, do something sprint. 10 years, do something else, etc,

ADRIENNE: 
yeah, yeah, that was a pretty difficult event. And then what? So the other one is the fitness skills. How did you come up with those skills? Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
tell us. What about what are the fitness skills and and what do we what do they have to do? Well,

AL:
the fitness skills I came up with years ago, I used to train a lot of professional athletes. I own my gym, and we had this big platform, and it was 20 inches high, and I used to do a lot of group training, and especially with college baseball players. And we said we used to jump up and down, down for 30 seconds on the 20 inch platform to see who could do the most. So then, when I came up with the event, I said, Look boxes. Do box jumps. And I put a chair floor underneath it, raising it, make it an 18 inch jump. And, and then we again with the number 50 and and we just time it. And then the shutter run, I came up with that from from the old suicide days, you know, child training, yeah. And then the bench. The bench, it was hard to come up with something that’d be equal about people’s body weight, pull ups and stuff, I guess. So we came up with bench press, but we’re lenient as far as the rule. So it’s more of an endurance bench that you have mentioned. Girls, 60% the guys, 80% of their body weights, yeah, and for repetitions, with a maximum of 50 reps, and as a 5.0 start value, and you get 1/10 of a point per repetition, yeah. So if you, if you do 23 reps, it’s a 7.3 score. And all our events are put into a 10 point score systems like a gymnastic meet.

ADRIENNE: 
And then so you’ve got the all around and you have individual events. The other

ATTILIO: 
thing I want to point out to our listeners, this is not all done, like one after another. These are kind of broken up into two days, two days, and then what else?

ADRIENNE: 
Adrienne, oh, I just want to point out too, one of the competitors this year did 63 reps, 6063 reps at 60 60% of her body weight because a female competitor, and that was just amazing. I mean, that’s got to be a record, yeah, that’s a lot of bench press wraps. Sure

AL:
is. I think, I think she was benching 75 or 80 pounds,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, wow. And so, and then for the ladies, because this started off as an all female competition. Right now is that the history?

AL:
Yeah, back in 97 we started as a first one in 98 with all girls, and then I switched it. But it’s for some reason to stay a lot of a lot of women, yeah, and it’s kind of strange because males, for some reason, are intimidated to get out there on the island by themselves. Yeah, one guy, one guy who won the I trained. He won the Broken Skull challenge on TV, Steve Washington, Ninja Warrior, and he told me that most guys think it’s too hard. They want me to eliminate on the obstacle, of course, some of some of the obstacles, if a 79 year old woman could do it, anybody could do it’s a matter of training,

ATTILIO: 
training and mindset, that’s for sure. Yeah, exactly. Now talk about the part that the other two parts, that the women do, that the men do not, that the men don’t do.

AL:
Yeah, it’s optional, grace and physique events, yes, and where the girls were a bikini and judge in symmetry, grace and poise, overall appearance. And then there’s a the fitness routine event, which is almost like a gymnastic

ATTILIO: 
routine. Yeah, it’s

AL:
like a flow routine, depicting the strengths, moves, flexibility. And choreography and which, let me say, Adrienne won it this year. Nice, coming back, coming back from two. ACL cares, yes,

ATTILIO: 
yes. That’s called Mind over matter, or mind over knees. And

ADRIENNE: 
Al encouraged me to come back. I was kind of hesitant about coming back and actually doing the the fitness routine. I didn’t know that I would be ready, but I was pretty good. How’s Al really encouraged me to

ATTILIO: 
Adrienne was going up against some ladies half maybe, maybe half my age, half your age, and you kicked her. Kick their legs. That’s fine,

and it was nice to be able to participate in that. Al, what was the main reason why you added the men to those parts of the competition, as opposed to being just all women all these years,

AL:
I wanted men to be able to challenge themselves, as well as children and which they can and all the we had a kid, I think we had kids five. We had a five year old and a seven year old. So it’s just a matter of challenging yourself. And it’s great to see a grandmother with a daughter and a daughter there all doing the same event. Yeah.

ADRIENNE: 
So this we’re talking about ages. What is the age range from this last competition was the youngest to the oldest,

AL: 
five to 7979

ADRIENNE: 
Wow. So someone at 79 do they do all of the same kind of things, or is there modifications?

AL:
Okay, yeah. And the box jumps. We load. We lowered the box to 16 inches, which actually 14 inches, two inch chair to your floor. And then on the True Grit, we lowered the plates from 35 down to 25 you still had to carry 50 pounds for 20 yards. Yeah,

ADRIENNE:
size of a small grandchild. So that you make some some modifications, and then the jumps don’t actually have to be jumps. Or, like, you could do a step up instead of a job. Exactly

AL:
as long as it’s 50 repetitions, we’ll both see touching the top of the box. You can step them. You can run up, run ups, or, obviously the fastest way is jumping them.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, I would say that people out there listening like, if you’re like, A F 45 group, or orange theory core

ADRIENNE: 
power, you’re like, like to run the Spartan runs

ATTILIO: 
company with a fit, with a fitness goal for your employees, and you just want to get everybody together for some kind of group event. We did see, like, some, some one big private gym from where, Alabama, yeah, they had so much fun. Yeah, like 20 something people over 20 some people come in and came down as a group, and, yeah, it was fun. You

AL:
know what it is? It’s, it’s for the athlete. It was, it was 4550 years old that grew up doing gymnastics or softball or cheerleading and traveling or a soccer traveling as a team, and this is misses the camaraderie of traveling with your team or for the person who never had that opportunity. You know that parents put them in the fourth and all sudden they’re they’re at a gym, and the gym says we’re going to do this event, yeah? And they get the chance to travel together, stay together, and have had the camaraderie of a team, yeah? And I think that’s what most of those people from Alabama really enjoyed,

ATTILIO: 
yeah. And I think, like, yeah, you’re, I’m in that category you describe. I didn’t really do a lot of that stuff competing in high school, but in my in my adult years now, I work out a lot, and it’s like, it’s good to have something to work towards,

ADRIENNE: 
yes, and then just having the culture, the group of people that are part of the tri fitness, it’s very just positive, inclusive, uplifting. And, you know, it’s great to see everybody you know each year.

ATTILIO: 
I think, I think it was nice just to, you know, it didn’t matter what your body shape was and stuff. It was just nice to see people moving, people moving, and then even the female competitors getting into the swimsuit competition. And it wasn’t, you know, any surface level, you know, this exterior esthetic that was totally out of reach of everybody. You being comfortable on the stage and being proud of your body. I

AL:
think it was a part of there’s some women that maybe at one time, weighed 230 pounds and and dropped 80 pounds down to 150 pounds. Yeah, we never thought about wearing a bikini. And they said, Well, let me go ahead and just challenge myself and do this and this. I’m out of my comfort zone. But a lot of things you have the comfort zone, yes, and and it’s a the feeling of accomplishment. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
I think the most rewarding things we achieve in life are things that are outside our comfort. Zone, not within it, that’s for sure. All

ADRIENNE: 
right, so now, like I just, I want to talk back to like I had started this competition back when I lived in Florida, and I think I had met Al back in I think it was maybe 2000 or 2001 Yeah, so in the early days of the competition, and you do have some ties to some to Hawaii, and some like local Hawaii celebrities. So let’s, let’s talk about that. Because I remember connection, yeah, and I remember that he Yeah, he was part of that event, yeah,

AL:
yeah. Back in 19 to the 1979 I went over and I wrestled for high Chief Peter my via and we all actually lived together in the office by doing it was a seven year old Dwayne Johnson and I was, like a year before they actually when they when they started The Young Rock Show. They started him at eight years old, so, but I was there in 79 and 80 and and I’m actually Dwayne’s godfather. They’re actually over there right now. They had a premier. His mom. His mom is still there. Yeah, it’ll be they’ve been there for like, the last three weeks or so, and

ADRIENNE:
Al didn’t. Didn’t his mom compete in this tri fitness a couple years back?

AL:
Yeah, she, she trained for it, and she’s been to a bunch of them. She was actually training. We actually have a video out there online of her training on the astral course and doing sense of skill. He needed her to go to a movie premiere, so, and it was the same date that was back, I guess, about nine years ago. Yeah, but he supported the event. And then part of my family is Tonga Fauci, the first Tongan wrestler. He’s better known as Haku or Ming in the WWE do, WWF back then, and we’re brothers, and now his whole family has three sons that are wrestling in the WWE, and all the coming of people out there. Okay, my little a and to all the Samoan people

ATTILIO: 
you’re welcoming to sign up for the tri finish next year. So let’s talk about,

ADRIENNE: 
yes, what’s happening this next year? 2025 what month

ATTILIO:
in the 2025 Do you think you’ll be holding it?

AL:
It’ll be the Veterans Day weekend, second week of November, okay, in Tampa, Florida. And if anybody’s a coach out there as a gym, and they want to interest in bringing a team to go ahead and call me Lally given my number, 813-263-2779, I’m on Facebook and on Instagram, and I will help you try to put together a team like a lot of people in Southern Illinois or Alabama or Texas Center,

ATTILIO: 
wow, we gotta have more people on the Hawaii team, because it’s a team of two right now, Adrienne and

ADRIENNE: 
myself. But there’s, I’ve had a lot of comments based on my postings where, you know, people are curious. So we’re inviting any of our listeners you want to come and train with us, come with

ATTILIO: 
Adrienne and Attilio, go to Tampa next year and compete in the tri fitness competition. We need more Hawaii representatives. Yeah, hey, we’re the fittest state in the United States. Let’s show em. Show em in Florida, that’s right. And okay, so Al these the Veterans Day weekend, November, and nobody has any excuses right now, because you’re getting a like, lots of notice this basically 1112, month head start on it. The thing that you’re going to call up these coaches is you’re going to give them the training The training regiment, training regiment for this competition that they can incorporate, right? Yeah, exactly.

AL:
And that’s why a lot of people use it, and for a lot of the gyms, it creates an extra class, creates extra income for the gym, gym owner, but of karate, of somebody haven’t put it together a team, and that other gyms don’t have, and traveling together, just like we spoke that camaraderie thing And and they’re competing up to seven events. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
you know, I tell people was like, wow, we just do the sparring thing. But I’ll tell you, Adrienne and I, we’ve, we’ve brought our team to the sparring thing. We’ve done the Spartan. You just like a number in the masses going through there, the experience that we have with the tri fitness is much more intimate and personal. You get to pretty much know everybody. And you know, I made some good friends, people that we never, have never known before, but we met them that day on the warm ups and the trainings and the competition and these like minded individuals, that’s what I like about it. And you get to know these people over a couple days, as opposed to just being some number in these huge and

ADRIENNE: 
they continue to encourage each. Other, you know, when you’re, you know, having challenges, and you know, if you don’t feel like training, it’s, you know, it’s just an added, added support,

ATTILIO:
yeah, and then I think it’s inspiring to see all the different ages and abilities.

AL:
It’s probably the largest, we say, the tri fitness family. It’s the largest family in the world, okay? And because anybody has ever competed in our event, we get to know, and I would say, the people come away with at least, at least 20 new friends, because it’s all, it’s all about challenging yourselves. You know, you’re not in it to, you know, I asked people, what would you rather have win a trophy or have 20 new friends? Yeah, and the people that say 20 new friends and to be able to challenge myself, they kind of get it, yeah, unless

ATTILIO: 
you’re grouchy, then you’re like, I want the trophy. But you know, for me, it was 20 new friends and one enemy, the person who beat me. No, I’m just kidding. He’s still my friend, too. Shane, well, I went to Alabama. He’s my good friend. So

ADRIENNE: 
when I had left Florida and come to Hawaii, I just had missed the tri fitness so much, and just being so far and, you know, raising my kids and everything, really had missed the culture and the community and just, I was just so happy to be able to come back, and it’s like, I never left.

ATTILIO: 
Oh, what was the So, guys, we’re wrapping it up. Tell the audience, what was the honor that you bestowed upon Adrienne on this last competition?

AL:
Oh, Adrienne was inducted into Tri-Fitness Hall of Fame. Yeah. And started starting, I think it was back in 2011 nice. We inducted. We induct people who’ve been with us for a minimum of 10 years, and along with with their accomplishments, etc. And you have, you have notable people that competed with us and that went on to WWE, like Tori Wilson and Lisa Victoria Victoria that are in the WWE Hall of Fame. Actually, Dwayne’s whole family in the tripendence Hall of Fame, excuse me, yeah, and and now, now it was honor, honor, because Adrienne’s been around, like you said. She started with us in in 2000 Yeah, yeah. She competed in 2001 in Las Vegas, then she competed in the California with us, and then she then she was back here in Florida, like after raising her kids, but she never forgot us report.

ATTILIO: 
And I, I think most of the people just went on to compete, running around with their grandkids because they’re in better shape. And what more could you want? Well, thank you so much.

ADRIENNE: 
Yeah, we’ve got to wrap it up. But thank you, Al, for being our guest, and we’re looking forward to seeing you for the 2025 and tri-fitness challenge,

ATTILIO: 
we’re going to have you in, in, in, back on the show for an update as we progress through the year towards that date. Yeah. How’s that sound out? Have you on again?

AL:
Sounds great. Your pictures are in the mail on Monday. Yes, all

ATTILIO: 
right. Thank you.

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