Interview: Is it Finally Anikha Greer’s Time?

Anikha Greer is drained.

She is “bored with this circle” she has been living in since 2018, when she first missed qualifying for the CrossFit Games.

She is bored with enthusiastic about how she missed the Games by one spot again in 2021 when she was sixth on the CrossFit Atlas Games Semifinals, and nonetheless last yr when she was twelfth on the North America East Semifinals.

And she’s definitely bored with us asking her about it.

“I almost said no to you,” she told me politely during our chat about how she debated turning down the interview.

It was nothing personal. She’s just done with all of it.

She’s done with it, but most of all, she’s ready. Ready to interrupt herself free from the cycle of coming near reaching her CrossFit Games dream.

“I just wish to go do it,” she said.

Moving on From Last Season

Shortly after last yr’s Semifinals, Greer, now 21, took to Instagram. She admitted the workouts weren’t great for her and vowed that next season, she “will likely be so good” that the workouts won’t matter.

“It’s definitely not the primary time I even have been on this position. But it’s definitely the last,” said Greer, who’s from Prince Edward Island, Canada, but has been living and training at Peak 360 CrossFit in Miami, FL, under Training Think Tank coach Max El-Hag for the last two seasons.

Ultimately, the experience of coming so close, once more, last season crushed her, leaving her in “not an amazing headspace,” she said.

Greer was particularly crushed because she had spent the yr training with 10-time CrossFit Games athlete Noah Ohlsen. The two of them became good friends, and he or she was so excited to qualify for her first time as Ohlsen qualified for his tenth and final time as a person.

“Not getting to do this was really sad,” Greer said.

Angry at herself and at CrossFit, Greer “heavily debated” joining Ohlsen on a team this season for a “mental health break.”

But after some soul-searching, she realized that joining a team would feel like doing herself a disservice, almost as if she were accepting defeat.

“I’m not able to be a team athlete. It would feel like I’m giving up, so it wasn’t the best alternative,” she said.

Instead, Greer and Ohsen found a technique to proceed to coach together by allowing Greer to essentially train with Ohlsen and his three teammatesTola Morakinyo, Lena Richter, and Matilde Garnes, all of whom currently live in Miami.

Every Sunday, Greer and El-Hag sit down and pick metabolic conditioning workouts from Ohlsen and his team’s program that complement the remaining of her program, allowing her to “mix” her programming to create a plan that works for her.

“I still have stuff I do alone. But lots of our metcons I even have been in a position to do with them..and it has actually been figuring out higher than I could have hoped…It’s super helpful and having girls push you could be very different than having Noah push you. I feel like [Lena and Matilde] have taken my running game to a different level, in a short time,” she said.

The Results Speak

Greer had an enormous finish on the Down Under Championships in Wollongong, Australia, in December, placing second behind only four-time Games veteran Madeline Sturt and ahead of Grace Walton, who recently finished second on the earth within the Open.

She turned around the next month and finished third within the team competition — with teammates Garnes and 2023 Games rookie Rebecka Vitesson — on the 2024 TYR Wodapalooza in Miami.

Most recently, Greer finished third worldwide within the Open, placing forty second, twenty seventh, and third on 24.1, 24.2, and 24.3, respectively.

What’s most impressive about these worldwide finishes, nevertheless, is that neither 24.1 or 24.2 seem like “Anikha Greer-type” workouts.

Greer has been incredibly open about her aerobic capability or her “engine” being a weakness. She typically struggles with more conditioning-biased workouts, especially those with running.

On the opposite hand, she excels when the barbell is heavy and the gymnastics is technical.

That said, each 24.1 and 24.2 were not-so-technical, not-that-heavy, conditioning-style workouts, and even Greer was surprised with how well she fared (not to say the proven fact that Greer is simply 5-foot-2, and 24.2 had lots of rowing).

“I didn’t expect that in any respect. I used to be definitely surprised to be that prime, especially with the primary two [workouts],” she said. “If you take a look at my past Open placings, my worst placings ever, teenage and individual, have been pulling off the ground, double-unders, and burpees.”

This is to say that Greer might just be one step closer to her promise to herself that she can be so good this yr that it wouldn’t matter what workout comes up at Semifinals.

The Big Picture

At this point, Greer is just able to get on with it, and he or she’s confident she has done all the pieces she will to finally break her cycle of coming close.

“I feel like a very different athlete…I do know what I’m able to,” she said. “I even have no real interest in fighting for the last spot [to qualify to] the Games.”

In light of this, Greer is approaching the primary a part of this season with “a robotic way of thinking” and is just ready “to make things occur.”

She hopes her dad is true when he tells her that “it’s inevitable” that her time will come.

But after six years, she is greater than ready for that point to be now.