CAN YOU MASTER THE #5AND500?
An obscure CrossFit challenge that tests both strength and endurance is YouTube’s latest viral fitness hit. Use it to energise your own training
Jake Boly knows it isn’t going to be easy. This April, the trainer turned YouTuber plans to squat and deadlift 500lb (227kg), and run a mile in less than five minutes – all on the same day. He can already deadlift 260kg, so that part is no problem. The mile? He’s not so sure. ‘This,’ Boly says, ‘is going to suck.’
You’re not supposed to pick up massive weights one moment, then hammer a fast mile the next. Lifting heavy helps your body pack on muscle mass, but that same thickness can slow you down when you run. Boly is fighting to master this blend anyway, because he wants in on YouTube’s latest extremefitness curiosity. You’ve seen plank challenges and partner carries, but the combo that we’re dubbing the #5and500 is different. Undertaking this challenge (or something similar) can help you build muscle and shed fat and give you serious fitspiration in 2022.
The #5and500 is a long-term goal that gives your workouts purpose.
The five-day-a-week, one-hour-a-day gym grind can be boring, but a fitness challenge changes that, especially if you can show it off on social media. The basic targets are: deadlift or squat 500lb once and run a sub-five-minute mile in the same day. Boly’s spent about six months prepping; a gym newcomer may need to budget a year to tackle a less punishing version (see panel, right). ‘Combining heavy deadlift and run training, no matter what, challenges you in a unique way,’ says MH US fitness director Ebenezer Samuel.
‘You need aerobic capacity for the run and pure power for the lift.’
The #5and500 traces its origin to CrossFit Games director Dave Castro’s Constructing The CrossFit Games.
In that 2018 book, Castro recalls a conversation with five-time Games athlete Scott Panchik. The pair decided that completing a sub-five-minute mile, a 500lb back squat and 50 unbroken pull-ups in one day was an especially elusive fitness challenge. And for two years, the #5and500 was buried in that book, in part because most people thought it was impossible. Then, in the summer of 2020, when Covid shut down
‘THE COMBO OF HEAVY DEADLIFT AND RUN TRAINING, NO MATTER WHAT, CHALLENGES YOU IN A UNIQUE WAY’
CrossFit competitions everywhere, Adam Klink, a CrossFit coach from Virginia with a popular YouTube channel, decided to try Castro’s challenge. He made it his pandemic goal and, after 10 weeks of training, he posted an 18-minute video of himself finishing a mile in 4:56, then squatting 500lb, then doing 50 straight kipping pull-ups later that day. That video scored 126,993 views and spawned millions of media impressions.
Since then, a handful of YouTube fitness influencers have completed Castro’s version.
In November 2020, endurance athlete Michael Miraglia, aka Purple Sonic, made the most significant edit to the challenge, ditching the pull-ups and swapping the squat for a 500lb deadlift, a more accessible exercise.
Miraglia also added drama, aiming to complete both portions in five minutes or less. (He finished in 4:49.) That challenge attracted more copycats. Last summer, half-marathon American record holder Ryan Hall tried to duplicate Miraglia’s feat but fell short, finishing in 5:28. It’s since become a popular challenge, with fitfluencers such as former Olympian Nick Symmonds, physiology professor Jacob Goodin and trainer Fergus Crawley shooting videos that detailed their plans to train for it and notching up hundreds of thousands of views and lots of fitness-podcast airtime.
Boly is remixing the challenge again. He’s simplifying it and ‘burying my ego’, he says, ditching Miraglia’s back-toback structure and aiming to just complete all his events in the same day. He plans to hit the 500lb squat, gut out his mile and then return to the gym hours later for a 500lb deadlift. ‘I want to push the challenge further,’ he says. ‘But you have to blend it in a way that works for you.’
That last sentence is key. If lifting 500lb and running a sub-five-minute mile seems insane, you can still use the idea of the #5and500 to motivate your fitness in 2022. Get after it!