WEB Warrior

COEUR d’ALENE — It’s a reality show like any other reality show, where the producers corral a group of contestants, take them to a far-off location, turn on the cameras and let the drama unfold.

Ten contestants, 10 episodes, and only one winner.

But no cat fights, here.

Tissy-fits?

More like trip wires.

It’s called Maximum Warrior, and while the premise of the unscripted show pits stranger against stranger, you’re far more likely to see an AK-47 than an argument.

Tempers don’t explode, but cars set up as targets do.

“It’s not like the normal reality show where they’re trying to get people to argue,” said Derek Hutchison, CrossFit Coeur d’Alene gym owner and former Recon Marine who participated in the

last-man-standing competition after a former colleague recommended he apply for the show. “None of that. Everyone there was so cool ... They were all hand-picked, so these guys are great guys — great at what they do. Everybody was laid back, nobody had egos.”

A reality show without egos, but it was still every man for himself. And without giving too much away, the Coeur d’Alene businessman held his own on the show set to air its fourth season beginning Oct. 7.

The 10 contestants, or warriors, represented all the branches in the military. Why warriors? Because their common thread is special forces training, which means each soldier is the elitist of the elite. The show taps into their backgrounds by putting them through realistic, heavy duty training exercises, scaling obstacles and blasting targets.

“I could have got cut on the first day and I wouldn’t have really worried about it,” said Hutchison, who served from 2000 to 2004 before doing contract work for the United States government. “I mean, it was cool just to be there. It’s like going to the Olympics and not getting a medal. Who cares, you went to the friggin’ Olympics!”

Spoiler alert: Hutchison didn’t get cut right away.

Spoiler alert II: Hutchison actually won the first two events.

“I was like, wow, I might have a shot at this thing,” Hutchison said, after noticing his fellow contestants packing for home.

In true reality fashion, the show’s host lines up the soldiers after they’ve all done a course and announces, slowly and with buildup, which soldier is heading for home and which one was the fastest.

“My strategy going into it was run hard when it called for it and when it was time to shoot, slow down a little bit,” Hutchison said.

The CrossFit coach credits his gym training for keeping him in shape for the show. In fact, five weeks before it was time to begin filming outside of Memphis, Tenn., in August, the producers told Hutchison, who had been awarded a slot, that he’d lost his spot to Dakota Meyer, the U.S. Marine who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2011.

Meyer received the highest military award for retrieving four fatally wounded soldiers and helping 12 others escape from a war zone inhabited by insurgents in Afghanistan in 2009, according to a biography on the Marine.

“I was like, that’s totally cool,” said Hutchison, who stopped practicing his shooting after he got word he wouldn’t be on the show. “That guy is a freaking’ hero, he deserves it way more than I do.”

But days before the cameras were set to roll, the show called back. They needed him. And while he hadn’t shot a weapon in a while, he’d been coaching and working out at the growing gym on Fourth Street — the “box,” as CrossFitters call it, that focuses on functional fitness. Exercises there combine running, jumping, climbing, squatting and basic movements with Olympic-style barbell lifting to build strength and cardio.

Many of the workouts take only minutes, but elevate an athlete’s heart rate quickly, which trains them to be able to think clearly even though they’re fatigued.

The reality show is sponsored by Maxim Magazine. Its web page detailing the fourth season, maximumwarrior.com, will go live on Sept. 23. It’s where episodes will air, too.

To win, the website states, takes a balance of strength and endurance, a mastery of relevant combat skills, and an ability to conduct critical thinking under stress.

“Just getting here is an accomplishment,” a description of the show reads. “These are not competitive shooters or arm-chair generals.”

One event is called Battlefield Pickup. The soldier has to navigate through an obstacle course starting without any weapons. Pistols, rifles, grenade launchers, even heavy machine guns and ammo are stationed at different obstacles along the way, and the warrior can take whatever weapons he wants with him, so long as he can carry it.

Miss a target? Time is added to your score. Same goes if you detonate a trip wire, except things blow up, too.

The warrior doesn’t know what’s coming, either.

They emerge from a waiting room, the course is explained to them (vaguely at that), the cameras roll, and they go.

“I was worried I was going to be a little rusty and make an ass out of myself,” Hutchison said.

His Battlefield Pickup included taking down pistol targets to start, followed by clay discs with a shotgun, blowing up a car with a grenade launcher, sprinting up a tower and taking precision distant shots with a sniper rifle, zip-lining to another building where an AK-47 and a full magazine were waiting, nailing targets there, sliding down a rope to another station and shooting a heavy, spinning metal target with the shotgun he’d carried since the second station.

Not exactly a show about seven strangers living together.

“Bringing that shotgun saved me,” he said, calling that event his favorite of them all. “At the end I would have had nothing to shoot those spinning targets with.”

Hutchison, who’s been to Iraq a dozen times between his service and contract work, said he’d donate his winnings to a veteran’s group if he did win it all.

The gym he opened in 2008 and co-owns with Jonathan Burns now has more than 300 members. It often hosts memorial workouts for fallen soldiers or emergency responders, and is the same gym that kept him in shape enough to survive at least the first few rounds of the Maximum Warrior military competition.

“I was there, really, representing the gym — showing what CrossFit can do for someone doing that, and how you’re preparing for something that you don’t even know what it’s going to be,” Hutchison said. “It helped in every single event. The more physical event, the more it helped.”