Zone Chronicles: Aja Barto

At 6 foot 5 and 225 lb., Aja Barto is one of the largest CrossFit competitors.

So what does such a big man eat?

HQ trainer Pat Sherwood does a mini Q&A with the athlete from the South Central Region to find out. Barto says he begins his day by drinking two glasses of water. That’s followed by a breakfast of champions: four to five eggs, three to four pieces of some sort of bacon, an avocado and three or four clementines.

“My breakfast is usually pretty giant because I know that’s going to set my day right,” Barto says while at a competitor seminar at CrossFit Park City.

He also throws in some protein powder, as well as glucose and maltodextrin powder.

“I’m pretty good with staying on track and kind of staying honest with myself,” he says. “But if I do deviate … I go toward the 70 percent-plus dark chocolate. I’m talkin’ ’bout probably two bars at a time.”

Barto’s diet seems to have worked: he recently qualified for the Reebok CrossFit Games for the second straight year and is the only man so far to snatch 295 lb. in Workout 5.

6min 27sec

HD file size: 118 MB
SD wmv file size: 77 MB
SD mov file size: 37 MB

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Additional audio: CrossFit Radio Episode 178 by Justin Judkins, published June 29, 2011.