HERO Summer Zine 8 star Ezra Frech just won gold at Paris ...

EF: Absolutely. We’ve known each other for a long time now, haven’t we?TM: I’m trying to think about where we first met.

EF: My first memory of you is when we were at a track meet and you were wearing a really skin-tight white tank top where you could see your abs through the shirt. I was nine years old at the time and I remember thinking, “Damn, that guy is ripped.” I’m talking 2016 or 2017.TM: Oh man, maybe it was a meet in California.

EF: I think it was Desert Challenge Games.TM: Interesting, I would have been wearing the Altus uniform back then. You were just a kid – I knew of you for a long time because your dad had been doing the Angel City Games.

EF: We were close in Tokyo and afterwards, but we didn’t become really close until this year when we started training together, you came to LA and we started hanging out more.TM: Yeah, no doubt. You started showing signs of being very mature for your age. I think that’s what brought us closer together, the commonality in goals and mindset. Not a lot of athletes have that mindset because it’s a vulnerable thing to put out these dreams that are very hard to achieve, because the failure rate is really high and people are afraid of what other people think. When I started hearing you speak like that, it pushed me to greater heights as well.

EF: I love it. It’s important to be surrounded by people who push you to be better and I feel like we push each other in different ways. I learned so much about body mechanics and nutrition and all of these details that are overlooked by 99 percent of athletes. My mindset, manifestation, goals and how overly ambitious I am is a daunting mindset for most people but is something you relate to.TM: Yeah dude. Listening to Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, they go to the extremes, and a lot of other athletes don’t – mentally and physically. You expect them to because you think if you’re in Olympic calibre you must do, but they also think all these athletes eat healthy and they don’t. There are athletes eating McDonald’s in the Olympic Village and people think I’m crazy when I bring it up but it’s true. When you started speaking to me I was like, “Woah, this is good,” because it’s hard to find people [with that level of commitment].

EF: We go to the extreme in every realm: training, recovery, sleep, nutrition, manifestation, visualisation, meditation, this is what we do. We put our all in and to be honest, I think that’s the way it has to be. I don’t think you can achieve something great by pursuing it in moderation. No person who pursued greatness in moderation ever accomplished it, it’s those who are obsessed and a little bit insane with it, those are the ones who succeed.TM: One hundred percent.