98 Games Put 600 Athletes Through 98 Minutes: What Lifters Can Learn
UPLIFT IRON CLUBInside the 98-Minute Team Test That Drew 600 Athletes
Most gym challenges ask one question: how fast can you finish? The 98 Games asked a more complicated one. On October 17, 2026, Sydney's Royal Hall of Industries hosted 600 competitors in 150 four-person teams. They moved through six scored events across three arenas, with a 98-minute competition clock. Rookie, Intermediate and Elite divisions gave newcomers and serious competitors different standards without turning the day into nine unrelated contests.
The format is the story. A single heavy lift tells you something about maximum force. A short sprint tells you something about immediate power. Neither tells you how an athlete performs after several different efforts, when another teammate needs a clean handoff and the clock refuses to care about your personal best. Putting strength, conditioning and mixed-modality tasks into one continuous schedule rewards people who can manage their energy as well as express it.
The event's organizers built a 12-lane competition floor with dedicated strength, capacity and hybrid areas. Teams included all-male, all-female and mixed lineups. Competitors arrived from more than 50 gyms, including groups traveling from outside Sydney. That matters because a large, varied field is a better test of the format's appeal than a showcase featuring only one training club's regulars.
Do not confuse the 98 Games with HYROX, a standardized run-and-station race, or the CrossFit Games, an elite season-long competitive system. This was its own team event with its own scoring, exercise standards and transition demands. The transferable lesson is simple: fitness is not a single number. It is the ability to repeat useful work, change tasks intelligently and remain dependable when the easy part of the day is over.
The Strength Arena: Presses, Cleans and Squats Under Pressure
The opening strength test made it clear that this was not simply a cardio race wearing weightlifting shoes. The published event schedule gave teams a 16-minute working window split into two parts. In the first six minutes, Intermediate and Elite squads assigned one athlete each to a one-rep strict press, a two-rep push press, a three-rep push jerk and a four-rep shoulder-to-overhead effort. Rookie teams had an adjusted press structure. Athletes were not asked to perform every lift themselves: choosing who should handle each task was part of the challenge.
From minute six to sixteen, all four teammates established their heaviest successful barbell complex: one power clean, two front squats and one hang power clean. Only one person could work at a time. The score combined the loads from the pressing portion and each athlete's completed complex. That creates an interesting trade-off. A specialist can lift more weight, but the team still needs clean execution from everyone, including the member whose engine is better than their front rack.
For lifters, the technical lesson is to practice the transitions within a complex. A power clean can be strong while the front squat feels unstable because elbows drop, the torso collapses or breathing becomes frantic. A hang clean adds another position change when the legs are already working. Heavy singles also become less predictable under a short time cap: warm-up choices, plate changes and knowing when to stop chasing a marginal personal best all influence the result.
In normal training, build the foundation before testing it. Work on strict pressing strength, then practice a modestly loaded clean-to-front-squat sequence for smooth repetitions. Keep high-skill barbell work crisp; fatigue is not a badge of honor when it turns a controlled catch into a gamble. The arena rewards strength, but it also exposes the cost of poor movement economy and an ambitious load selection.
Capacity and Hybrid Arenas: The Engine Behind the Lifts
Heavy barbells make great photographs, but the rest of a mixed-modality competition determines whether that strength remains useful. The 98 Games spread six scored events through three dedicated arenas: Strength, Capacity and Hybrid. The event used a continuous 98-minute format with transitions between tasks. That is different from completing one hard workout, sitting on the floor for twenty minutes and declaring yourself recovered. Each team had to return to work with a changing physical demand.
Capacity work asks athletes to sustain or repeat output without letting breathing and technique disintegrate. In a training setting, that might be rowing, air-bike intervals, running, carries or other cyclical tasks. Hybrid work combines endurance with loaded or skill-based movement. The precise official movements vary by event, so do not assume every 98 Games arena used the same stations as a HYROX race. The useful common principle is that local muscular fatigue and cardiovascular strain interact. A hard rowing effort can make your next squat set feel heavy even when the weight on the bar has not changed.
Three fitness qualities matter here. First, aerobic capacity helps you recover between hard bursts and maintain a sensible pace over a long session. Second, muscular endurance keeps repeated squats, pulls and carries from becoming a technique disaster. Third, skill economy reduces the energy spent on every repetition. Athletes who move efficiently at moderate effort can often preserve more useful output than those who sprint the opening station and spend the next one bargaining with their lungs.
For a simple baseline, try a controlled 12-minute mixed circuit: two minutes of rowing at a sustainable pace, eight goblet squats, six push-ups and a short loaded carry, repeated without racing. Record total quality rounds, average effort and whether technique deteriorates. Repeat after two weeks. It is not a replica of the competition; it is a measurable way to train the engine behind the showier lifts.
Keep hard intervals separate from your most technically demanding heavy sessions when possible. One workout can train many qualities, but trying to set a clean personal best after exhausting yourself on the bike is a poor way to assess strength. Use the right tool for the right adaptation.
Why Four-Person Team Strategy Can Beat Four Individual Stars
In a solo race, a pacing mistake mostly belongs to you. In a four-person competition, it can become everyone else's problem. The 98 Games required teams to manage workload, athlete order and transitions across very different tasks. The strength event made this explicit: particular teammates were assigned to different pressing efforts, while every athlete had to contribute a barbell complex. That design rewards a team that knows its members' strengths rather than a group that simply has the biggest combined Instagram following.
Start with honest role selection. A powerful lifter with an excellent push press may be the obvious choice for a heavy shoulder-to-overhead task, but the same person might struggle to maintain efficient output on a long machine interval. Another athlete could have less top-end strength but better pacing and recovery. Neither athlete is more valuable in every event. The challenge is distributing work so the squad's weakest bottleneck does not determine the entire result.
Transitions are an undertrained skill. Teams lose seconds while debating who goes next, fumbling equipment adjustments or giving instructions that nobody can hear. Agree on a simple handoff rule before the clock starts. Use names, a clear signal and a predetermined order unless an athlete visibly needs a change. For technical lifts, agree on opening attempts and what a missed repetition means. The right decision under fatigue should not require a committee meeting.
Communication needs to be specific. 'Push harder' is rarely useful when someone is already redlining. 'Hold this pace for thirty seconds, then tag me' provides an actionable task. Good teams also have a way to report discomfort or a technique problem without treating it as weakness. A compromised shoulder is not fixed by louder encouragement.
Practice a relay once per week. Give each of four athletes a two-minute machine or carry interval, then a controlled strength task, with a clear changeover and a shared score. Review the total time spent moving versus waiting. The lesson from team competition is not that everyone must train identically; it is that different abilities become an advantage when the handoffs are rehearsed.
Rookie to Elite: The Winning Teams and What the Field Reveals
The results show why the divisions matter. In the Rookie categories, Big Mamas won the women's division, Rookie Mistakes took the mixed category and FCA Wildcards led the men. At Intermediate level, LA Nation Black won the women, Amelia's Angels the mixed field and The Clean Jerks the men. In Elite, 98 Slay Queens topped the women's division, Rec Gym won mixed and Hybrid Dream Wreckers finished first among men. Those are nine separate division winners, not one overall champion of every athlete on the floor.
Six hundred participants and an almost even male-female split also make the event more interesting than a small elite-only exhibition. Teams traveled from cities including Canberra, Melbourne and Tamworth, and LA Nation brought 52 athletes. Rookie female teams outnumbered Rookie male teams by more than two to one. These details do not prove anything about global participation trends, but they do show that this particular format reached beyond one narrow group of competition veterans.
Choosing a division should be about the movement standards you can execute reliably, not the label you would rather print on a shirt. A beginner team that completes every prescribed repetition safely may learn far more than a team that enters an advanced division and spends the day failing heavy lifts. The Intermediate tier exists for a reason: experienced gym-goers can be fit and still need time to build competitive efficiency.
The same applies to training goals. You can be an excellent bodybuilder without a great 98-minute engine, and an accomplished endurance athlete without a confident front squat. That is not a contradiction. Specialization is real. A mixed-modality event simply asks how many of those qualities can coexist in one athlete and, more importantly, one team.
For spectators, the best comparison is within the same division and ruleset. Look at how teams distribute effort, how smoothly they move between tasks and whether their later performances hold up. An isolated highlight of a huge lift cannot tell you who won a six-event competition.
A Four-Week Training Plan for a Long Team Fitness Test
You do not need to recreate a full 98-minute event every Saturday to prepare for one. Most progress comes from developing the pieces separately, then learning to connect them. A useful four-week block combines two strength sessions, two aerobic or interval sessions and one short team rehearsal. Beginners can start with three days and add a fourth only when recovery is comfortable. The goal is to arrive able to produce repeatable work, not to arrive exhausted from proving your toughness in practice.
Day 1: Strength and skill. Front squat for three sets of five controlled repetitions, strict press for three sets of five to eight, and a light power-clean technique sequence for five sets of two. If you have never been coached through Olympic lifts, use a dumbbell clean or kettlebell clean instead. Finish with three short loaded carries. Keep two or three good repetitions in reserve on the main lifts rather than grinding every set.
Day 2: Aerobic base. Row, cycle or jog for 30 to 45 minutes at a pace where you can speak in sentences. Add five minutes of mobility afterward. This is deliberately not a maximal effort. An aerobic foundation makes it easier to recover between high-output intervals, and it is difficult to build one when every session turns into a race.
Day 3: Hybrid intervals. Complete four rounds of two minutes on a rower or air bike, eight goblet squats, six controlled push-ups and a 30-meter carry. Rest one to two minutes between rounds. Track movement quality and the ability to maintain pace. A team can split the work into planned handoffs. If the first round is twice as fast as the last, reduce your opening pace next time.
Day 4: Strength plus speed. Use a moderate deadlift or hinge for three sets of six, a horizontal row for three sets of eight, and step-ups or low box jumps for three sets of five per side. Finish with six short 15-second bike efforts separated by at least 75 seconds of easy movement. Jumps are optional; step-ups are the sensible choice if landings are noisy or uncomfortable.
Day 5: Team rehearsal. Once per week, run a 20- to 30-minute relay with fixed station order and clean handoffs. Keep it submaximal in week one. In week two, improve consistency; in week three, extend the rehearsal slightly while preserving technique; in week four, cut volume by roughly a third and rehearse the logistics. You want freshness before an event, not a record of how much suffering you survived in the gym.
Pacing, Fuel and Recovery: How Not to Lose the Final Event
The biggest mistake in a long mixed-modality day is treating the first event like the only event. A 98-minute competition is not a 98-minute all-out sprint, especially when heavy technical lifts and repeated conditioning efforts are involved. Start with a realistic plan for each station and enough restraint to execute it. A teammate who destroys their breathing in the first ten minutes may be unavailable when the group needs another strong effort later.
Use a simple effort scale. Easy work should feel like three or four out of ten, controlled hard work like six or seven, and true maximal effort like nine or ten. Save the highest intensity for tasks where it is necessary and where the rules reward it. On a heavy attempt, make a deliberate decision about the next load instead of letting adrenaline decide. On a machine, aim for steady output rather than a spectacular opening split that cannot be repeated.
Food and hydration matter, but the plan should be ordinary. Eat a familiar carbohydrate-containing meal a few hours before competition, with enough protein to support your usual diet. Drink regularly according to thirst, conditions and sweat loss; do not force excessive water. For a 98-minute event, many athletes will not need elaborate gels or a parade of supplements. A simple snack between warm-up and competition may be useful if the day includes long waits, but experiment in training rather than on the start line.
Prepare the equipment and the team as carefully as the body. Agree on who brings shoes, belts, wraps, water and spare clothing. Walk through the movement standards together. Decide who calls the pace, who watches the clock and how to respond to a missed repetition. A useful rehearsal includes one deliberate interruption so the group practices recovering its order without panic.
Afterward, cool down with easy movement, eat a normal meal and prioritize sleep. A very hard competition can leave muscle soreness and fatigue for several days; avoid trying to redeem a disappointing result with another maximal session the next morning. Review the scores honestly. Did strength fail, did the engine fade, or did transitions waste time? That answer should shape the next training block.
The 98 Games illustrates a bigger truth about functional fitness: the best performance is not always the athlete who looks strongest in one frame. It is the team that stays competent across changing demands, protects its weakest link and still has something useful left when the final event begins.
Functional-fitness shirts, tanks and workout gear for athletes who train strength, conditioning and everything in between.
EXPLORE COLLECTION
