Following his parents’ divorce, Randy Hetrick grew up with his mother in the Southern California beach town of Corona del Mar. Money was tight, but her job as a flight attendant allowed them to travel for free to the United Kingdom, where they visited the castles that sparked Hetrick’s lifelong love of history.

Hetrick started wrestling in high school. Unwittingly, he was already laying down the ideal groundwork for acceptance into the U.S. Navy SEALs: “I discovered later that sports that do the best at SEAL selection are endurance sports with a high misery quotient and low crowd approval.”

Hetrick graduated from USC Dornsife in 1987 with a BA in history. “I pledged a fraternity, participated in everything and had an incredible mentor: USC President Emeritus John Hubbard, a WWII U.S. Navy bomber pilot and recipient of a Distinguished Flying Cross.” At USC, Hetrick learned teamwork by practicing another “hard and thankless” sport — rowing.

Following a family tradition of military service that stretches back to the Civil War, Hetrick achieved his dream of joining the U.S. Navy SEALs in 1987. Of the notorious training known as “Hell Week” (attrition rate: 85%) he says, “You’ve got to be thick-skinned, lucky not to get hurt, and determined not to let your mind fail you. That was my specialty and still is as an entrepreneur. It’s a propensity for biting down on your mouthpiece and grinding through.”

The idea for Hetrick’s TRX Suspension Trainers was born of necessity. Deployed without training equipment on a counter-piracy operation in Southeast Asia. Hetrick resorted to using his jujutsu belt. “I tied a knot in it, threw it over a door, leaned back against gravity and lifted my body. The possibilities opened up like a flower.”

After earning a master’s degree in national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994, Hetrick was selected to join an elite counterterror unit. From 1997 to 1999, he served as the principal lobbyist on Capitol Hill for U.S. Special Operations Command, representing a portfolio of more than $1.3 billion in active programs. Returning to active service, he finished his 14-year military career as squadron commander.

TRX Training was launched from Hetrick’s garage in 2004, one year after finishing his MBA at Stanford University. It has grown from a bootstrap start-up to a leading, global physical training brand. He launched his second start-up, Outfit Training, a technology-enabled outdoor mobile fitness franchise, in 2021.

See USC Dornsife News for more about Randy Hetrick