The competition is a two-day event featuring three workouts on Saturday, three workouts on Sunday, with points awarded for each and overall winners declared.

Jersey Shore natives Logan and Luke Engel placed first and third respectively in the international competition, held in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Last month, drawing together about 350 athletes from around the world.

The brothers have been involved in athletics for as far back as they can remember.

“Our dad had a passion for fitness too. He was in the special forces and having that background and mindset, he always tried to stay in shape,” Logan, who recently ended his own 11 year career with the U.S. Army as a Staff Sergeant from the 82nd Airborne Division, said.

“Around 10 to 12 years old, he started taking us to the gym to learn the basics, discipline and to help with our sports. Two to three in the morning, we would get up, drive to his gym, do the workout, shower, and then we would go to school,” the 2011 graduate said.

Logan, a 2011 graduate would go on to focus on baseball while in high school, while Luke, who graduated in 2015 would take up swimming as his main sport. Each would later become enamored with crossfit, a blend of running, lifting and endurance.

Luke, who works as an occupational therapist, moved to Colorado in 2021 to be closer with his brother, an employee with the National Space Defense Center.

Though they have competed in smaller competitions, the Purple Mountain Throwdown was the first on such a scale for either of the brothers.

“There were 35 vendors there, the local news and a media team. There were special guests. It was very professional with a couple thousand people there cheering everybody on,” Logan said.

The brothers trained together two to three days per week at CrossFit SoCo, which Logan said was trickier than anything they’ve previously done.

“You know you’re gonna be doing fitness stuff, but you don’t know the specific workouts you’ll be doing until about a month out. They do that on purpose, so you can be adaptable and not training for one specific event,” Logan said.

One of the workouts included seven rounds on an assault bike for 16 calories, followed by a 15-foot rope climb up to 15 feet and 20 dumbbell snatches at 35 pounds, all within a time cap of 20 minutes.

“In another workout, you had to do 21 deadlifts at 225 pounds, 15 box jumps, 20 toes to bar, and then you repeated it. And the fastest athlete who got that one completed won that event,” Logan said.

Another event included four sets of nine reps of clusters and three 1K runs.

“The workouts are all over the place. That’s why you got to kind of be ready for anything,” Logan said.

While Logan is no stranger to fitness accomplishments, having been only the fifth person in the U.S. Army history to score 600 in the Army Combat Fitness Test during a branch competition for Noncommissioned Officer, or NCO, of the year at Fort Carson, Colo., in 2021, this victory was sweetened by sharing with his brother.

“If he’s not really feeling a workout or not I’m not feeling a workout, we really can push ourselves to do better, and then just being able to share the competition floor. If I got done with a workout, I could go cheer him on to do better, and then if he got done before me, he’d come in and cheer me on,” he said.

“Coming into the last workout of day two, I was tied for first with one other guy, and Luke was in fourth place. It came down to the last workout, so we were able to push each other, and pull it off,” Logan said.

“That’s something awesome, because there’s not too many people that compete with their brother and be able to podium at the same time,” he said.

“It’s crazy. Two brothers from Jersey Shore and now you’re competing on an international stage, you can’t make anything better than that up,” Logan added.

For anyone looking to reach a goal of their own, consistency is the key, Logan said.

“Just start small and then just be consistent with it,” he said.

“As you start stacking those little wins, the little wins become big wins, the big wins become even bigger wins. And then from there, from just keep growing that confidence, and then all of a sudden, just like my myself and my brother, you’re competing on the the global stages,”

And, Logan, 32 and Luke, 26, hope that their success can be an inspiration to others who may be looking to improve their own fitness no matter what their age.

“A couple buddies reached out, and they’re 32 to 34, frantic, like, ‘man, I’m out of shape. I gotta do this. I gotta get back in shape. I gotta eat better,’ and it’s kind of cool because they’ve seen what we did at this international competition, and they’re like, man, you’re living proof that as you get older, you can still be in shape,'” Logan said.

“You can still feel good, you can still have fun with your family. You just need to be disciplined with it,” he stressed.

As for what’s next for the brothers, the two have their eye on the Tampa Bay Games in August.

“It’s going to be Florida’s top athletes competing for the title of fittest, and then we’re going to show up to see how we place in that one,” Logan said.

“We’ve been training hard like we did for this one, so I’m not gonna say anything to jinx us, but I feel pretty good that we could podium at that one as well,” he said.