A SPARTAN LEADER
HOUSTON TRAINER TAKES HIS TEAM ON ULTIMATE CHALLENGE
“You can’t be so serious when you’re in a thong.” Wooch Graff
Wooch Graff was pumped when he submitted his foursecond audition video for NBC’s “Spartan Ultimate Team Challenge.”
He was filmed standing in flooding rainwater near Shepherd and Dallas, wearing only a thong and his race shoes.
“My name is Wooch. I’m from Houston. I’m Spartan elite, and I’m thong strong,” he said in the video back in 2015. Then he sprinted off through the knee deep-flooding water in slow motion.
While the show’s producers would have preferred a longer video to gauge Wooch’s on-camera chops, they were impressed — even with his thong. They invited Graff to the first season of the show, which aired in June 2016.
Graff returns for the show’s second season, premiering at 9 p.m. Monday on NBC.
The competitive fitness-reality show is based on the international Spartan obstacle races, which include varying distances ranging from three miles to marathon length. Graff, 42, is one of the elite trainers who leads a team of unlikely athletes — this season it’s four University of Buffalo students called the “Mathletes” since all are math majors — through monster obstacles requiring focus and teamwork. The winning team gets $250,000.
“This is the ultimate team competition,” Graff said. “You get a chance to be vulnerable
because when you have nothing left, you have to completely depend on your teammate to carry you through. And then you get a chance take care of them. As long as you can communicate, it makes you strong and gets you through.”
The show, which airs for eight weeks, was filmed in March over two days on the set of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” in Atlanta.
For the first season, Graff trained a family of farmers — two of whom, at age 60-something, were the oldest competitors on the show.
“I told the show to give me the team no one wants, and I can make good things happen,” Graff said. “We had a grandmother who had never done a competitive event in her life and a grandfather hadn’t walked in years and was just starting to walk using prosthetic legs.”
While Graff’s team didn’t win, they made the top half of the 36 teams. Working with underdog teams is his niche, he said.
But it took him a while to find his passion.
Since he was young, Graff has competed in sports — sometimes playing football, basketball, baseball and running track all in the same day in his native Hamshire, near Beaumont.
“My whole life was sports. It was wonderful and tragic. As a kid, I never freely got to play because I always focused on winning.”
At Texas A&M University, Graff took to the Corps of Cadets and played on the football team. But by his senior year, the business major realized he had no interest in business. He changed to kinesiology, but dropped out 14 hours shy of graduation.
“It was a rough time. I suffered from depression and was struggling in so many ways,” he said. “I think the pressure to compete, to always win, was too much. I never had my own identity. I was adored by everyone, but I wasn’t happy.”
Things turned for the better when Graff moved to Houston, took a job at REI and started training with a friend for adventure races, which included kayaking, mountain biking, land navigation, rock climbing and trail running. They trained five days a week and participated in races (lasting anywhere from three hours to six days) across the country for nearly a decade. Graff earned two national championships, among other honors.
In 2001, Graff become fitness director at the Tellepsen Family Downtown YMCA, where he met his wife, Jill Smith, while teaching indoor-cycling classes. Now married 11 years, the couple has two sons, Pace, 8 and Brae, 5.
He also has developed large roster of fitness clients at his Timberline Fitness.
Today, Graff freely jumps off cliffs, climbs mountains, jumps in lakes and bikes until he’s fatigued — without the thought of winning, he said.
“I have an amazing wife who allows me to relive my childhood, but without restrictions. It’s not about winning. I get to have fun,” Graff said.
Adding to the fun is his assortment of thongs. He prefers to race in them instead of traditional athletic wear.
“You should see the faces of people when I show up in a thong at a race,” Graff said. “It’s about racing and fun. You can’t be so serious when you’re in a thong.”