Competitors from Mississippi and beyond welcomed to Madison for Coyote Classic Competition Saturday

MADISON, Miss. (WLBT) – On Saturday, the 8th-annual Coyote Classic Competition was held at Coyote Fitness in Madison.

” We really want to have an impact in our local community, we do that through health and fitness,” said Hunter Owen, the owner of Coyote Fitness. “This is just kind of a showcase for all the hard work these people have done.”

The competition featured CrossFit-style workouts that teams of two worked together to complete as fast as they could.

“It’s basically functional fitness,” Owen said. “We’re doing a lot of barbell work, gymnastics work, cardio, conditioning type movements, and we can kind of combine them in lots of different ways.”

The workouts in the competition are similar to those at athletes train with during the year, and having a competition creates a goal to work towards, and help keep them motivated to continue coming to the gym.

“This event kind of gives them something to work towards and train towards for the year,” Owen said. “It’s something to look forward to and hold them accountable, to keep showing up to the gym, keep their diet in check, and all that kind of stuff.”

Aside from the competition, there are benefits for the work the athletes put in during the year.

“It clears your mind, it gets you focused on the right things, makes you feel better. There’s no substitute for working out and making your life better,” said Mike Hurst, who has been working out at Coyote Fitness for three years, but competed in the Coyote Classic Competition for the first time Saturday. “My son and I go to the 5:00 a.m. class and I tell people there’s nothing harder I do all day long than that first thing. It really starts out the day on the right foot and makes the rest of the day better.”

Hurst was competing alongside his son Saturday.

“He asked me to be on the team,” he said. “I was very reluctant, because I’ve never competed in it before, but he just graduated high school, he’s going off to college in the fall, so this is one of the last things I think we’re going to get to do together [before he goes to school].”

The workouts don’t only help parents spend time with their kids inside the gym, it can also help them when spending time with them outside the gym. Lauren Johnson was competing for the first time since having her two-year-old son, she said the workouts have helped her keep up with her child when he’s on the move.

“Toddler phase is a different ball game, so absolutely, I feel like I’m going 90 to nothing all the time,” she said. “Definitely if I didn’t have the cardio that I get from CrossFit, I don’t think I could keep up.”

While the athletes competed against each other in the gym Saturday, it was still a friendly atmosphere, with athletes cheering each other on from the sidelines when they weren’t on the floor competing.

“The atmosphere is electric,” Hurst said. “People are on fire, people are cheering each other on, it’s competitive but it’s also very supportive of everyone.”

“I love it,” Johnson said. “Just the support, the adrenaline, it’s like everything that you do every day, working out, putting into just a big ball of energy. I love it. It’s just a really great community.”

The atmosphere was at, perhaps, its most electric when the kids were competing, as dozens of competitors and spectators packed the small gym to cheer on the young athletes.

“It just gave me more motivation so I could keep on going,” said seven-year-old competitor Riley Price. “It was very hard, but I fought through it. My brain was telling me to just to stop and I just said I’m just going to keep going.”

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