On Coach Leroy Saunders, and Why I've Stopped Chasing the Edge

I woke up to the news like a lot of people in the fitness community here did. Leroy Saunders, a well known fitness coach, collapsed during Hyrox Bangkok 2026 and passed away. He was only 41. I don't know what happened to his heart or his body that day, and I'm not going to guess.

Extreme performance comes with real risk. This isn't controversial or new. We've known for a long time that elite cyclists, some of the fittest humans on the planet, have heart issues that show up more than you'd expect. Hearts that have been trained hard for years can develop rhythm problems, scarring, enlargement that isn't always benign. The same engine that lets you hold a brutal pace for hours is sometimes the thing that turns on you. Sport science has been circling this for a while. Chasing the very outer edge of human performance is not automatically a health optimizing activity. Sometimes it's the opposite.

I think we confuse two things that aren't the same. One is fitness, meaning your ability to perform at a high level, hit a fast split, set a personal record, finish on the podium in your age group. The other is health, meaning the actual state of your body over the long run, your heart, your joints, your hormones, your sleep, your nervous system, your ability to recover and keep showing up for your life and the people in it. These overlap for a while, especially when you're young or just starting out. But past a certain point time injury catches up with us. Chasing the last five percent of performance often means trading away recovery, sleep, and margin for error, all in pursuit of a number that mostly matters to your own ego and maybe to a small circle of people who care about your finish time.

Health is made up of so many things. Not just your VO2 max, not just your race pace, not just the number on the scale or the watts on the bike. It's how well you sleep. It's whether your joints let you play with your grandkids in twenty years. It's your mental state, your stress levels, whether you actually enjoy moving your body or whether it's become another hurdle. Recovery isn't the boring part between the workouts that matter. Recovery is where a huge part of your actual health gets built. I used to skip it, or treat it as wasted time. Now I think it might be the single most underrated part of the whole equation.

I understand that for some people, chasing the edge is their livelihood. Coaches build reputations on results. There are sponsorships, credibility, egos, identities wrapped up in being the fastest, the strongest, the one who can push through anything. I get why that pressure exists. I used to teach swimming for a few years before, and I used to think competing in Masters swimming would mean more students. Being a good teacher means more students. Word of mouth helps.

If there's one thing I'd want anyone reading this to take away, especially anyone training hard right now for a race or a record, it's this. Train because it makes your life better, not because you're chasing a number that only exists on a leaderboard. Build in real recovery, not as an afterthought but as a core part of the plan. Get your heart checked if you're pushing hard year after year. Listen to the signals your body gives you instead of overriding them because you're afraid of losing fitness.

Rest in peace, Coach Saunders. My thoughts are with your family and everyone who trained under you. Take care of yourselves out there, and take care by recovering.