Let’s get it out of the way right now: MTV’s long-running competition show The Challenge is absolutely, without a doubt, a sport.

The reality show features grueling athletic competitions with elements of wrestling, mountain climbing, gymnastics, as well as games that resemble football or rugby with full body contact and balls. The cast has spoken in the past about the training that goes into preparing for the insanity that’s thrown at them each season, and the regiments sound like those of pro athletes.

Although there’s a mental element to the show– outsmarting your competition and working angles with your fellow castmates using alliances and double-crosses — how did we get to The Challenge as an incredibly tough athletic competition?

The series’ 30th season wrapping up on Tuesday night with the finale of The Challenge XXX: Dirty Thirty, so executive producer Justin Booth spoke to For The Win about how he and a small group of fellow producers come up with those crazy games that push competitors to the limit. In the process, he revealed just how the series went in that direction.

“I started as a field producer in Season 8,” remembered Booth. “The games were largely zany and kooky, if you will. There would be people dressed in chicken suits and doing silly things. In Season 10 (as an executive producer), we set out to make games that were both cool and could be campy. You could get a prize for doing well, but you’d have to be of sound mind to get through one.”

You’d also have to be of sound body.

“When we used to do it, it was just a camp that kids would come on, they didn’t take anything seriously and there was a lot of money at stake,” he said, “and so I thought that it might drive a different kind of story if we made this a competitive game. Instead of coming out and tying three rafts together and floating around, it would be an interesting experiment to see how the kids reacted to things they actually needed to be good at or generally athletic to be able to accomplish.

“Sitting here now, I see all these kids take it seriously,” Booth added. “They’re still having fun, our viewers get to live vicariously through them. Some of them are genuine athletes and I’m impressed by them.”

When Booth and his group plan a season, the process is surprisingly simple: He and about six producers — who have experience working on competition shows like The Amazing Race and The Biggest Loser — bounce ideas off each other in a meeting and bring the games and eliminations to MTV. The network, Booth explained, might ask for “three things that would make us laugh, three things that would terrify the kids and three things that bridge those gaps.” They also might jump in and tweak the overall format of each season to increase the number of “promotable moments.”

There are limits. Booth would love to get The Challenge cast into vehicles — ATVs, motorcycles, race cars — but there’s too much liability there. Many competitions involve full contact, but as long as there’s a goal other than “attempt to injure your opponent,” those are fine.

Booth is proudest of the “Pole Wrestle” elimination game that popped up on Season 13, The Duel, in which two players start on the ground both holding a short pole. Their goal is to simply pull that pole away.

“I hoped [The Challenge] would become something the kids participating took seriously,” Booth said. “I wanted it to be about an overall game, and obviously there’s all the politicking in the house, but to emphasize the competition part of that, just to take a little bit away from a bunch of kids getting into a house.

“I wanted it to be more than that,” he continued, “and I believe it’s become that.”