Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Staying Competition Ready - E.339
In this episode, we dive into athlete experiences at competitions, updates on Misfit Athletics, and the importance of preparation for the CrossFit Open and Hell Week. From programming strategies for athletes juggling multiple events to the evolving CrossFit competition landscape, we break down what it takes to stay ready year-round.
But that’s not all—what if your best performance starts with your morning coffee? We rate our latest brews, debate training goals (can a 225lb strict press happen by 2025?), and explore how discipline in fitness mirrors the craft of coffee tasting.
What’s Inside:
- How to balance training and competition schedules
- The "no free lunch" mindset and its impact on success
- A throwback Misfit gear collection YOU get to help create
- Shoutout to remote athlete Tony for his RX division debut at WODAPALOOZA
Drop a comment with your favorite takeaway and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more Misfit content.
#MisfitAthletics
#CrossFitTraining
#CompetitionReady
#SharpenTheAxe
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We're all misfits. Alright, you big, big bunch of misfits. You're a scrappy little misfit, just like me Biggest bunch of misfits I've ever seen either. Good morning misfits. You are tuning in to another episode of the Misfit Podcast. On today's show we're going to be talking about coffee, open prep, check-in on Hell Week and then a very new programming challenge that we have that I'm going to put Hunter on the spot and we're going to talk through a little bit.
Speaker 1:Just sort of related to the old narrative was athletes train in a dungeon for 90 years and then they get one chance to come out and play, and now it seems like the sport is, at least in the short term, trending in the other direction. So what does that mean for athletes? What does that look like? Little bit of housekeeping, a little bit of life chat, um. So when this drops, when this podcast comes out, um, you basically will have to be living under a rock to be a misfit person and not know that this is already happening.
Speaker 1:Um, but we are in the process of rebranding um at Misfit Athletics and before we do that, one of the things we wanted to do was take the eight best selling shirts that we've ever had, um and have you guys vote on which four we are going to sell. Um, so it's kind of a throwback collection is going to have the old logo in it. You know, if you're watching on YouTube, up over my, up over my shoulder, here is is the the old misfit athletics logo. There's, um, a few reasons why we're going to be changing that. One of them, um, could be related to a legal issue, um, but we are moving forward with some new branding that we're excited about. But again, before we do that, we want to have you guys choose which four shirts um that we are going to sell, and we are going to whichever shirt sells the most units. Every person who bought that has entered into a contest to win free gear for an entire year. So, at a very minimum, that will be four collection drops. Hopefully it's going to be more than that. So, every single thing that we release, you guys are going to be able to get and if there is a quarter without one, you guys will get a pretty hefty gift card there so, cool little thing that you're going to be able to get. And if there is a quarter without one, you guys will get a pretty hefty gift card there. So, um, cool little thing that you're going to be able to see on social media, um, the pre-sale will be going.
Speaker 1:Your favorite athlete codes, um, are still working, still on there, so you'd be able to use those, be able to support your athletes and, if you forgot, since it's been a while, sharpen the ax cocom. Um, misfit affiliate program. You can get a two week free trial. If you head to team misfitcom and click on sign up now, it will prompt you with push press or sugar wad or strength that you can link there. Or, if you prefer to get your program directly from us, you just scroll down a little bit and get signed up there. Woo, that's everything I got. Life chat Hunter. What's up?
Speaker 2:What's up? I don't have a whole lot of life chat personally, but I will shout out. Hold on, let me get my info straight here before I do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm going to shout out my remote athlete, tony, and lots of you followers know Tony, but yeah, he's been a remote athlete of mine since 2019. And just this week, this last weekend, he's done Guadalupalooza with a couple of couple of bros the last few years, but this was his first year bumping up into the RX division, rx division and, uh, to say that's a significant jump from intermediate to rx at at a, at a big competition like, that's pretty substantial. So, um, more like hey, just a great, good, great weekend of competition. I'm sure they would have liked to finish a little bit higher on the leaderboard, but I don't think that was so much the goal, as it was to get some experience competing at a, at a higher level.
Speaker 2:And anybody's ever played a sport and they, you know they're, they're a fucking war hero at their in their high school or their middle school or whatever. And then they go to a summer camp where now all of a sudden, everybody who's there actually wants to compete and play really well and now all of a sudden, you're playing on a different level. Uh, it's kind of the, the equivalent, how I would equate that where a lot of people can understand if you ever get good enough at something, you get to find out just how bad you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah just what the levels are. But I like it because he's setting a bar right like that's one thing that people don't realize about being vulnerable enough to level up, even if you're going to be in that bottom tier. You now have a whole new measurement system. He knows that if we came in 39th, like can we come in 35th next year, can we come in 30th, like? I love that kind of iteration with athletes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think some of the some of the workouts. One of the workouts was a, an over an overhead squat sort of ladder, just reps, where the team split it up. But he, uh, like that's a perfect example where it was just like, hey, man, you need to overhead squat 185 for a bunch of reps. Like there's no. Like there is no in between. You can't lean on your. You know it's not a, it's not a 135 bar. You can't lean on your teammates completely you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And it's like you, you have no choice but to overhead squat. This thing and you know, sent me a video. It looked like they were having a great time. They were under the lights for that event and just hammering out overhead squats at 185, which historically is not one of his favorite movements, but just blasting through him in competition.
Speaker 1:So really cool. That's the best little fun, little team kind of situation and you're like I can't do this for one, and then you do it for 19 yeah like fuck yeah, that's basically, that was basically it. So um yeah, so that's my, uh, that's my life chat um, we have a someone who still, I think, wishes they were in miami over here on the other side life chat seb, what's up? Miami said with the glasses yeah, no more misit Seb.
Speaker 3:I think we're going to go with Miami Seb. Miami changed me boys. It was a nice time. I think I realized this weekend that I'm getting really old In the media. Welcome to the club, because at the end of the 12 hour days my lower back Felt like it was just Going to explode. So I think I got to get more mobility going because my hammies are pretty tight. But yeah, it was a good time. Waterpalooza is a cool event. It's my first time being down there, so that was that was super cool.
Speaker 1:What was it like having a competition on the beach?
Speaker 3:So I did the tier SoCal at a way smaller level. That was really cool, but for some reason the programming and I'm speaking a little bit out of turn here. It seems like they had 13 miles of beach to use and instead were using like assault runners for the workout. So I just thought that was like the beach would have been a little bit cooler for.
Speaker 2:There's a decent chance. There's some like legal, like municipality issues with like big events running across beaches and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:They sent them down to the beach in the past, yeah, but when? When it was still, you know, in, not in Miami beach.
Speaker 3:And the first event was on the beach, but I think it was the second to last event that it was just. You know, shooting teams is tough because it's like it's a lot of moving parts, but it's like even in the lanes that they were using, they use like 20% of the lane space. They didn't use like the entirety of it. On the it was the called the sandbox, which was like sponsored by rain. Yeah, it was. It was cool. I think that the beach stuff was cool. They move Waterpalooza to March next year, so I'm assuming it's going to be a higher-profile event. When it comes to qualifying for the game, do you think they're still going to use all the? The sand is going to be main of the competition floor or do you think they're going to have to switch?
Speaker 1:that up, we'll see you've got some. The sport just keeps changing so much. But like norcal, classic is a prime example of we had an identity as a competition. Yes, we are qualifying now, but we're still doing jumping double unders or traveling double unders, whatever the fuck they're called, and then you can use whatever bike you want, like do however many reps you want make, I don't know how many I don't know how many competitions will continue to be like hey, like hold on to your identity.
Speaker 1:But I'm sure hunter didn't see it. But there was a lot of drama related to sleds on the on the sand, because if you had packed down sand versus like I saw photos of like a plate over here, a plate over there, the sled doesn't even have any plates on it. Like there were definitely some issues. They tried to rake the sand, so like if that was games qualifying, that would be an issue. But then also, like I mean what's first place?
Speaker 1:70 grand, 80 grand, something like that, so it's still like, even though it's not a qualifying situation, it's still a big deal, um, but I didn't. I didn't have an opportunity to watch very much of it when I don't have athletes going. It could be blasphemous to say this, but like, eh, like, I'd rather check the leaderboard, check the highlightsboard, check the highlights, check the time domains. If there was a workout that people are talking about, I want to see what it is, but I'm probably not going to sit down with like a live stream and watch that sort of thing well, the live stream was horrendous this time was it they were.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there was a pretty big their. Their camera died like their main camera, and then they went to phone so they film the entirety of the competition with the iphones fuck good stuff.
Speaker 1:Um, all right, I have, uh, I got a few things here. Um, project lollipops is we're're still cruising here we got up to, so I put the vote out on Instagram. I asked people whether I would strict press 225 or more within the year 2025. And everyone but one person said yes. And the person who said yeah, it was Hunter that. So I said that to someone out in the gym and, oh, kyle kyle asked if it was hunter, what? A twat one person um, and it was holly from iceland, and there's three scenarios here.
Speaker 1:Number one he's trolling, which is fine. Um holly's a friend of mine. Number two he's icelandic and he's just like I don't think you can do it. So I'm just gonna tell you you can't do it. Like that's very much lines up with their culture. I'll say, or he can't do it and he doesn't like the idea of a schmuck like me going out into the gym and doing a little bit more weight than I'd be pretty fucking impressed if Holly could strict press 225.
Speaker 2:Have you so, I'm guessing he's trolling that's his thing.
Speaker 1:That he's like. He's like like beefcake upper body Like that's his thing. Like he considers himself like a world renowned arm wrestler and he's always fucking. His back's always hurt.
Speaker 2:So I guess that's a thing that we have.
Speaker 1:I was going to say is that because, since his back became a limiter, it's something we share in common there, but I got up to 165 for five last week, which, like might not sound crazy, but I don't like. There's like six slow twitch fibers in my body. So getting up past two, you used five of them or three. So getting up past two, used five of them or three. Um, and I always do a double heavier than my working sets before, and one 70 rep number one was bad, real, bad, real slow. And then rep two was amazing. So I was like I was scared while pressing one 70. I'm like I'm doing five pounds less than this or five, um, but I did make my way, did make my way through there, um, so I'm, I'm very happy with that.
Speaker 1:I also, um, I have, um, if you're watching on YouTube, I'm wearing a shirt right now, um, that says free lunch, with a line through it, um, I'm going to start, um, doing my, my, my old thing that I used to do back in the day, where I print uh t-shirts with my sayings on them. I get an email from sticker mule, like maybe like every six weeks, that says our, our single print shirts are on sale for like eleven dollars. I'm, I'm like, fuck, yeah, let's go. Um, so I think that the two gifts that I can give to the universe before my time is up are meathead mentality and no free lunch. Um, like, and I truly believe in both of them, as like, end all, be all life philosophies, and the no free lunch thing is is should be somewhat self-explanatory, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's the idea that if you really want something, that you're going to have to work for it, and anytime you actually do get something disguised as free lunch, it's going to end up working, like negatively for you. So if you have something that comes to you very easily, that ends up being your expectation. So you have that one instance of the free lunch out in the gym. It could have to do with programming the stars, aligning whatever. I got way better at this machine quickly. My back squat went through the roof, my toes to bar are now fantastic, whatever it is, and that becomes what you think it takes to achieve the next thing.
Speaker 1:So oftentimes, these things in our lives that are disguised as free lunch end up working negatively in our favor. Like when things are handed to you in life, it feels great, feels like you won something, um, and you're just not trained to be the kind of person that realizes that if I want something, I just need to do it, I just need to go get it, need to get after it, and I've tried for so long to come up with the visual for it. Like I'm very much a visual thinker, um, and the designs that I've tried to do for the no free, free lunch shirt are too complicated and too convoluted, so it would be like the picture that I always had in my head was like a real downtrodden looking group of people, like, like tons of them, lined up in front of a kiosk that said free lunch, and I I don't want it to be like tongue-in-cheek, I don't need them to be like overweight, like they could be robots, they could be whatever. But then a shorter line of people in misfit athletics, misfit gym gear, whatever, um, at the place where they just go to kind of do the works. It's like these two lines, these two separate views of people, and since I took so long to figure out what to do, I just wrote free lunch in illustrator and put a line through it, and now that's where I'm at with that.
Speaker 1:Um, and last but not least, uh, as promised, my coffee ratings. Um I. Another shout out to the, to the listeners of the podcast. Um, I don't want you guys to. I I'm a little embarrassed. Some of you guys thought that I didn't know what good coffee was. So it was like here's Onyx, here's Onyx, here's whatever. Like I know of probably 30 of the best brands in the world that I could go spend hundreds of dollars of my money on, on coffee. So I do know that those places exist. I was trying to come up with can I get a five pound bag in the range of $75? That is actually really good. So that was the. That's the experiment that we have there. Um, so, hunter, if I'm doing a poor job of explaining this, because I think people are watching, just let me know. But Seb's going to pull up the links here and we'll go through. I'll give you guys my notes.
Speaker 2:Where's Collectivo? Is that in Miami? Is that a Miami spot?
Speaker 1:No, that was so. That's one of the things that was fun about it is that's the place that we always went to in Madison, so it's got like it's got some roots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's got some roots, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's got some roots there, so we'll get um coffee number one here.
Speaker 2:Um 26 for a subscribe and save. Wow, that's actually super reasonable.
Speaker 1:Yep. So subscribe and save, for the five pound bag is $75 and 56 cents and then the one-time purchase is 83 95. Um, so collectivo indigo um, I'm a light roast guy. This is like as kind of like clean as you can get with a coffee and that's even with the with the like regular pour over. You're like pour over that. You see that just looks like something that sits on top of a cup. Has thinner paper um, and it lets more flavor through. Chemex has a thicker paper um. Typically gives you a cleaner cup. Even just with the regular v60, this one is very clean um. On the screen here it says that one of the notes is blueberry.
Speaker 1:I don't love a lot of the fruitier kind of coffees, but if you like something, there's absolutely positively nothing offensive about this coffee. It is as clean tasting as you can get. So if you're into black coffee but you get scared, this would be a good coffee for you. I would say it's like a six-ish out of 10, somewhere in that range is where I'd put it. I would keep a bag around. 12-ounce bag maybe, but no, go for me on the five-pound bag. Maybe, but no, go for me on the five-pound bag. This is the content you guys came to us for obviously. All right, seb. What's next?
Speaker 3:What do we got Right? It's going to be the Black Rifle gunship.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I can tease this one a little bit before he pulls it up. Um, really really aggressive, uh, imagery and marketing for the, and I shouldn't be surprised. Like it's veteran owned. I think they donate a lot of money to a lot of great causes. Causes, um, and like I don't know, like a apocalypse now and my morning coffee, like the vibe, just feels off a little bit from, like an imagery standpoint. My, my son is like asking me questions about, like what are those guys holding? And I'm like no, nothing, don't worry about it, just a helicopter. It's fine.
Speaker 1:Um, gunship roast. I would say closer to like a five out of ten. This would be a bag of coffee that you could buy for your stubborn relative that drinks shitty coffee and you want to get him on the path to drinking good coffee. It's not quite a light roast. I would say it's probably closer to like a medium. Um, it's good like it's not bad coffee by any means, but I would say that's what you would be like. You would buy this as a gift for someone who does Folgers K-Cups and you're like you got to get your fucking life together. This is a good gateway coffee. Or you buy it for someone that thinks about machine guns and helicopters. At five or six in the morning, solid, but a little bit, I would say probably roast a little bit too close to medium on my end.
Speaker 2:The second one Are these your top rankings? We're going from six out of 10 to five out of 10. When did I say that? Oh, I thought you said what that these are your top rankings, or that you five out of 10 or six out of 10? No, I bought four bags of coffee. Oh, and you're just evaluating them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I see, I see, yep.
Speaker 1:Yep, All right. Next one we have the silencer smooth Again. Explain to your kid what that is. Well, he actually. He just thinks that one just looks like a toy.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask, ask, while you're talking, I'm gonna ask chad gpt to explain to a two-year-old what a silencer is without it sounding terrifying, um, and he like acts out our interactions fully. So in the morning he wants to smell it. He wants to smell the beans in the coffee bag so he can look at me and go coffee, um, and he does that basically every day. And then he wants to hold the beans in the coffee bag so he can look at me and go mmm coffee, um, and he does that basically every day. And then he wants to hold the bag and shake it, um, and the other one, he seems to be like whoa, this is crazy. Like what is this gunship? The silencer just looks like a toy, um, but again there's a, there's a vibe here. I feel like they have a kind of a specific clientele.
Speaker 1:If we're talking about, again, machine guns and silencers and all that stuff, this one is another one that's going to be in the like six to seven range range. Um, this would be another coffee that like not a lot of weird, like fruity notes or anything like that, um, so this would be one again that you could gift someone that wants something smooth and kind of down the middle. So I'd say six to seven, somewhere in that range. Um, definitely the better of the two. Um from black rifle. And then, last but not least, we have collectivo del sol, by far the winner. Um, like not an eight, but not a seven, you know, seven, four, seven, seven, four, seven, six. This would be if I had a diner. This would be the coffee that I would serve in it Very smooth, good amount of flavor, like. And when people sat down and got the cup poured and they assume, because it's a diner, that's going to taste like dog shit, they would be like oh, this is nice.
Speaker 2:I was going to say really not not selling that to me by saying I'd put it at diner.
Speaker 1:But no, I mean like, if I had like a, like a breakfast restaurant, like, like doesn't have to be diner, this would be the kind that this would be the kind of coffee I think that now, when I hear diner, I'm thinking like everyone would like well here's. That's one thing that pisses me off. We have good food here locally. We have really good food in Portland. It is rare that they pour you a good cup of coffee in a restaurant. It's almost always trash.
Speaker 2:That's almost always fucking charcoal. There's a shitload of very good coffee around here, but that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:I don't have both.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and there's a couple of spots that do decent, like breakfast sandwiches with their caught Like I like speckled axis breakfast sandwiches and coffee shop though. It is yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not I've been told that the coffee in America tastes like shit because they over roast it, because people put too many ingredients in it. So starbucks doing the charcoal roast is a response to um, people put a ton of cream and sugar in it and if you do that to a light roast you don't taste much. But if you do that to a dark roast, that like smoky coffee flavor still comes through.
Speaker 1:Taste the coffee through exactly yes, so that's where the like you know, the espresso roast and the Italian roast and all that like, that's where a lot of that supposedly comes from, because people can actually taste it. So yeah, del Sol, definitely like, would 100% recommend that if you were going the five pound bag route One of our I can't remember who it was I should have pulled it up before, but somebody on discord sent me an at-home roaster. Um, oh yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna wait a little bit, but that feels like my that's right up my fucking alley the more, the more steps I can add to the process of making coffee. It just gets me excited. Um, so that that will definitely be next. But I would say, a hundred percent recommend if you're a coffee person, del Sol, if you're not a coffee person, I think any of the other three would totally be fine to order the five pound bag. If you're just like, give me the fucking coffee.
Speaker 1:So basically, if you're not a snob, all four of them are good, and if you're a snob, I recommend the Del Sol. How many listeners do we still?
Speaker 2:have A silencer is like a little helper for a tool that makes loud sounds. It makes those sounds much quieter, kind of like when you whisper instead of shouting. It's just a way to keep things peaceful and calm. Exclamation point.
Speaker 1:Wow, send that to me.
Speaker 2:I'll read that to carter tomorrow silencer to a to a one-year-old, without it sounding scary love that, love that.
Speaker 1:All right um hunter. We are in open prep.
Speaker 1:Hell week starts now blessings um while we're recording this, it is week three, we are heading into week four and I want to reiterate some things that we've put out there relating to the open prep peaking schedule and that is. We started with that low volume. We started with the fantastic warmups and the mobility and thinking about our nutrition, our hydration, our sleep. This is the time of year that we ask open athletes to go pro. Hell Week is intentionally supposed to challenge you to keep those habits and kind of kick your ass, a little bit Like overreaching at its finest, going above and beyond what you're capable of, going above and beyond what is necessary on a week-to-week basis when it comes to programming volume. That is what we're doing this week and we'll have more insight into how to execute workouts after Hell Week. But I just really want to challenge people to get this stuff out on paper. Make yourself a schedule, especially if you're you know more of the weekend warrior type. Um, like, really think about can I do? I have the time to go in, warm up properly, cool down properly, get all of these pieces done. Should I or could I move a certain piece from this day to this day to make sure that my schedule actually works well? Um, but I think it's fun for people to.
Speaker 1:You know, sort of like hunter talked about um or alluded to with tony at wadapalooza. These, these moments where you ask yourself to level up, can be very insightful into like goal setting and expectation setting for yourself. Like, is this really the life that I want to live? Is this to get me excited? Am I happy that I'm training more, or is it like really fucking with my personal life and I just want to continue to? You know, go crush it with my friends at a partner competition. You know two or three times a year that sort of thing, or do you lean into it and it is exciting and that regimented lifestyle you know really works for you and you see the improvements there. So, um, yeah, good luck in hell week, um, and if it sucks, it was supposed to I don't know if you have any words of wisdom.
Speaker 2:Volume that you were going to ever be able to allocate time to is, you know, three training pieces like a lift, conditioning and skill, or maybe a lift and two conditioning pieces, with that, the time of year being kind of what it is. Ultimately, the goal is to just overreach a little bit on volume with commensurate intensity. So the caveat there is increasing the volume a little bit, assuming that it can still be executed at high intensity. It's not like we're not trying to cram 10 pounds of shit into a five pound bag, like we want you overreaching a little bit. But if adding volume comes at the sacrifice like okay, I can do one more piece, but that means no cool down, I can do one more piece that just means I need to shorten up my warm-up. That's where I would say it's like that's, that's not, that's not how you do it, like there needs to be some kind of fixed goalposts. It's like I'm always going to get a good warmup, I'm always going to get a good cool down, and then what happens in between is where maybe you're able to overreach a little bit.
Speaker 2:Um, as far as just making sure that you're, you're getting kind of the intent of hell week and the intent of the open phase, where the volume ramps up a bit and then tapers back down into the open. Um. So it's just kind of like a, just a tone setter for the week from the perspective of like, hey, it is meant to be, but it's also not meant to be like, fucking, I'm going to do Murph every day for a week, you know, like a, like a, like a chat, like a volume challenge. It's not supposed to be that thing. Ultimately, we're trying to prepare you to compete. You have to be ready for one workout a week for three weeks, not 12 pieces a day for a week. So just keep that in mind. There is obviously a purpose to doing a little bit more than maybe you're used to and maybe more than you're currently capable of handling, but you step. You know there's a fine line between leaning forward and bending over. So peek over that line, don't do the latter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and you guys can go back in in our YouTube video history a little bit and find some of our athlete training camps. When people come to town, and one of the themes that we have, especially if they show up during, you know, a hell week or a mock games or whatever it is one of the themes that we have is no check boxes. So as part of the warmup.
Speaker 1:It's like what are we doing? Why are we doing this? And we're in front of the whiteboard and they're just, you know, they're rolling at a hundred beats per minute warming themselves up and we're talking through. What are you trying to get out of this piece? What are you trying to get out of this piece? What is the expectation that is set here?
Speaker 1:And we do that almost like, like, in an annoying way, every single time we go to do one of those potentially three, four, five pieces in a day, just to be like, hey, if we reach a point here where you don't have an answer to this question or you feel like you can't push anymore, we're not doing this. Um, so the the no check boxes thing is, like, I think, even harder to grasp when you're following an online program, because we might say, hey, this is hell week, we're intentionally doing extra volume, and you might think that that means there was an intention behind what we're doing here and we're never gonna put pieces into the program that don't have a very specific reason to be there as you go through yeah, that's that's one of the ways that I would audit, if you're ready to do it like why am I and?
Speaker 2:there's also, there's a difference too between a checkbox and a like an quote, easy training piece. So, for example, like accumulate five minutes in a wall facing hand, stand, hold, like we can, like that is in in a sense kind of a checkbox, like you did it or you didn't, but there's still like we can still dedicate mental energy towards like being in a good position. Not overreaching to the point, not, you know, the checkbox would be like, yeah, I'm gonna do this for five minutes, my position's gonna suck, I'm just gonna try to knock this out all in one set and be done with it. Right, it's like we can still do the practice session with kind of a low intensity of, you know, physical exertion but a high level of mental kind of focus and just making sure that we're doing the stuff correctly. Once you get to the point where you you know you're writing out on your little mini whiteboard or whatever, it's like oh fuck, I gotta do this, this, this and this. And we're like and now, now I'm looking at the clock and now I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this in this 20 minute window, this in that 20 minute window, and we're not like allowing ourselves to think like, okay, what if I'm what if I'm just too fucking beat up after this piece, like I'm not going to be ready to go five minutes after this short burner Metcon right into some skill work or something like that?
Speaker 2:So if it's okay to have that kind of laundry list of stuff, especially this time of year where we're asking you to do that but if it gets to the point where it's like, yep, I got to do that, I got to do that, I got to do that and I just got to move from one thing right to the next, I'm willing to bet you're not getting the most out of those pieces. We're not kind of learning as much as you can. You're probably not getting the physical adaptation as much either.
Speaker 2:You're just kind of adding mileage onto your body as opposed to something that's a little bit more beneficial to kind of know, know the line between you, know just the checkbox mentality and actually saying like, okay, yep, this is higher volume than I'm used to, but I am going to have kind of, I'm going to perform every piece with with intention, with some sort of focus, uh, and you know, even if it's not your, your best effort, like as long as it is the, the best effort that you have in that moment, like that's acceptable to me in this kind of at this point in the phase.
Speaker 1:I consider that my time to shine. The first time an athlete comes to visit, it's like I think I want them to feel like when are we going to fucking start this? Like what?
Speaker 3:is happening right now.
Speaker 1:That just the minor details. The handstand hold, the accessory work. Like, hey, you know you struggle, your hip bothers you, your low back bothers you and we do the positional front squats. Like are we doing our squat hold, then couch stretch, then hitting the ankles? You know, checking in on range of motion doing some activation.
Speaker 2:What does the?
Speaker 1:warm-up look like, and it's like I really want people to to feel that like, oh wow, like even even this side of things, there's a way that we can do it. That progresses us. You know, like so many people think that like, okay, brick wall got it ram head yeah like, and that's just one tool I had a.
Speaker 2:I was I was doing a pt session yesterday with one of our members and she, uh, she struggles with some knee pain, a little bit of hip pain. She's had some a couple of surgeries and stuff like that, so there's a reason. But she also really struggles to use her, engage, her glutes and hamstrings, which is like classic, oh, your low back and your knee hurts. Like I'm willing to bet we don't use the supporting musculature that supports our low back and our knees. And we spent like a good chunk of the PT session like, hey, we're going to do lunges, we're going to experiment with different kinds of types of lunges to try to see if you can get your glutes and your hamstrings to work, and we're going to do some like activation drills in between and the the. The point I'm trying to make here is like it was a lot of just like little shit that I just guided her to through and it was like no, you're going to do this and it's helpful, cause I'm like one-on-one you have one person holding you accountable to doing that in a. If you're working out by yourself, like there's a, there's that side of the coin where you have to kind of be your own accountability buddy, so to speak. Obviously, if you have a coach, you've got that in your, in your sheet and hopefully we're checking it off. But even like you know that just having that one person there or that very directed sort of thing guidance to give them, and then actually putting like she put the effort in, we were like okay, you're going to do some glute activation steps before you even do this set of lunges, as a way to kind of like like pre-fire the muscles that are supposed to be firing.
Speaker 2:And she came in today and she was like the only thing that's sore on me right today is my glutes. And I was like fantastic, we did fantastic, we did it. And all the only difference was like I'm just going to be like on you about here. Nope, like let's tinker a little bit, let's find the things that are going to make you move correctly, use the correct musculature, whatever. And now we at least hopefully she at least kind of stores that in the back of her brain. It was like yep, I did this, I did that. That's how I can get these muscles working. And you know, that's just kind of one step, one step in the right direction. But just an example, hey, take the time to do those things right, do them well and like learn something kind of along the way.
Speaker 1:I think people want the needle moving activities to be big and sexy or scary or whatever, and so often it's like you came to me as someone trying to compete in a sport where you just redline, yeah, all of the time, like I know that you're willing to do that and go there. There's so many instances of, like the amount of mobility that you need to do to get to the CrossFit Games is astronomical, and it's like, yeah, is it truly? Again, like it's the conversation of whatever it takes athletes like to say that what if it's stretching? Yeah, like, are you willing to go there and do that?
Speaker 1:what if it is glute activation, that kind of thing, all right. Um huntrum I'm. I did this intentionally. You, you can tell me, fuck you before you give me the answer, but I'm very intrigued by putting you on the spot and asking you how you think about programming, for how you would think about programming, or start to develop your hypothesis surrounding someone who would be doing the following schedule they do the open in february yeah yeah they do the open in february, they go to the mayhem classic.
Speaker 1:In april they go to the virtual semi-final, um uh, beginning of may they have world fitness project. In may they potentially have another in-person semi-final at some, depending on how the other stuff went up until early June. Games in August, world Fitness Project number two at the end of August, rogue at the end of October and World Fitness Project number three in the middle of December. Just the idea of what we are trying to accomplish with these athletes is very different than what it was before. Where's your mind?
Speaker 2:My mind first goes to like how many people on the planet are qualified to even attempt to undertake that sort of schedule?
Speaker 1:40.
Speaker 2:Maybe right yeah, and you're saying-.
Speaker 1:There are people that are going to try.
Speaker 2:You're saying all of these what if I-.
Speaker 1:I would say one of the things that's interesting about this is if you are truly a top 10 athlete in the world, there's a pretty good chance that mayhem virtual semifinal, in-person semifinal is like a two out of three situation. I think. Knowing CrossFit, you probably have to do the virtual to participate. If I had to guess, I feel like they're're gonna make everyone do that kind of a thing. Um, but that, like it, is interesting because your planning has to take into account if someone's goal is to get to the games and they yeah, I was gonna ask that's.
Speaker 2:My second question is what's, what's the goal of this person? Is it to to make, hopefully finish in the money in most of these and make this like a? Is this like a profitable? Is this like a? This?
Speaker 1:is?
Speaker 2:I don't think this is my, my living, or is it like now? The games are my um, the goal is the games. I'm assuming this is modeled after a specific athlete. Well, what I tried to do is I.
Speaker 1:I did two variations of this and we'll go over the second variation next. It's like the athletes that are doing world fitness project in theory have a really good chance to get to the CrossFit Games. They have to decide whether that's still something that they want to do. Realistic schedule for someone who's, you know, in 20th to a hundredth in the world, something like that. But like I'm just asking you in a more broad sense of like you're now programming for these athletes who can't do elongated cycles of you know very targeted work in the off season. Now it's like a stay ready kind of a situation. Yeah, yeah, cycles of you know very targeted work in the off season. Now it's like a stay ready kind of a situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a it's as far as prepping for the actual events. Like you, I would start. I would start by saying like, or start by blocking off, like okay, these are, these are the competition days, and then so obviously, there's no programming there, and then the week before and the week after the programming is pretty minimal, right, so we're almost we kind of lose two weeks for every competition that we do essentially, um, and then, like you butt two events back to back, like all of a sudden, you know the week after a competition and the week before the next, kind of really short taper into a competition and then, like after the recover, after you recover from a competition, on the other end.
Speaker 2:So if, if I only have two to three weeks to actually provide this person with the volume that they not even volume, but just like training in general that they need, yeah, um, I, um, I'm going to like, I'm going to make a couple assumptions as well. Like this is a, this is a high level athlete who has the time and the you know, the physical capacity to dedicate a decent amount of training at least a couple hours a day.
Speaker 2:So, um, like, I'm probably going to lean pretty heavily on some zone to work for the purpose of like conditioning and just overall fitness where it doesn't contribute too much impact to this athlete. Um, the lifting I think the way that we do our lifting, kind of rotation, works really well. So making sure there's at least one day a week where it's like there's a true opportunity to get really heavy from a nervous system perspective. So it's like, and I think of opportunity to get really heavy from a nervous system perspective. So it's like, and I think of those as like a back squat, a deadlift. For a lot of athletes at this level, a clean and jerk works. You're less experienced athletes like that might not be heavy enough to elicit kind of that strength stimulus. So leveraging kind of the slow lifts and the big lifts as our needle movers from a raw strength perspective.
Speaker 2:Obviously we need to mix in. Make sure that snatch and clean are in there at least weekly, whether it's both in the same week or maybe alternating, which can be tricky again if you only have three weeks to sneak that in. But those are and then I'm, I'm going to like, I'm going to rotate which lifts those are. So if I have one day where it's like truly a heavy stimulus, like maybe it's a back squat one week, a deadlift at the next week or something like that, we have our for for this level athlete. Um, I'll probably have maybe one day of a skill-based lift, but maybe not, not again, just from a like available time perspective, like I want to maximize that as much as possible. So if there's a lift the athlete struggles with, we can dedicate you know, maybe their snatch isn't excellent or maybe their split jerk sucks or like a higher skill sort of lift, we can dedicate some some skill time, uh, like a skill-based session, to that as far as like a lifting day goes.
Speaker 1:But, um, there are tricks of the trade there too. With the, with forcing good movement, like what's the rep scheme, we can exactly we can ask for like lower rep touch and go. We can ask for a complex that's like so wacky that they're not gonna put 20 minute.
Speaker 2:25 minute emom where you just gotta keep hitting the lift.
Speaker 2:So lots of different options there, but it's gonna rotate between kind of like a a true heavy sort of like three to five reps, three to five sets sort of vibe. Olympic lifting's a little bit different, but that then um, either. You know if I have a very specific goal with an athlete, like sometimes an athlete benefits from, like a speed work type session for lifting, others benefit more from a volume based sort of approach to that. So I might pick one or the other based on the athlete which works. Which of those two works better for them? Um, and then as far as the conditioning goes, like again very athlete dependent. We've got our zone to work.
Speaker 2:We're probably going to do that at least once, maybe twice a week, probably shooting for like I'd say, I'd say at least 90 minutes total across the entire week, probably closer to like probably more, two or three depending on the machine a high level athlete and, depending on the machine, um, and then as far as the conditioning, your, your metcons and bitch work go, met, metcons, intervals, uh and bitch work, like just a the the most balance that I can make, those three things that are going to address mostly the things that they need to work on. If there's like a gaping movement hole, then maybe we do a little bit more specific progression, either in skill work or, you know, a kind of deliberate progression in a Metcon. That requires a little bit of, say, like programming experience to do that well, but for the most part, you know, I'm thinking like I'd probably lean pretty heavily on the bitch work and the zone to work and there's probably one day a week or one one piece per day that's either a traditional CrossFit Metcon or a CrossFit style interval con or a crossfit style interval. Um, again, just kind of the reason for that being like, if this is a high level athlete, they presumably have the capacity to do all of the movements in a metcon. And just because they haven't done a fucking workout with 75 thrusters in it doesn't mean I need to like maintain their ability to do a workout with 75 thrusters in it every single fucking week. Like these people are fit, we can really make sure that their energy systems are, are keyed up for competition through machine work. That's a little bit lower impact, um, still eliciting kind of the response that we want.
Speaker 2:So yeah, basically like bait, but baseline is at least obviously one lift per day. That's going to rotate a heavy day, a volume maybe, and or a speed day. There's going to be Olympic lifting mixed in there and whatnot. On the opposite end you've got at least one, probably two, maybe three zone, two sessions per week and then the other kind of filling in the other. The rest of the volume, based on how much time the athlete has.
Speaker 2:There's definitely a Metcon or an interval piece each day, metcon interval or bitch work every day, and then, if there's time after that, maybe there's some skill stuff in there. But again, kind of assuming that these athlete is pretty proficient in every most areas of fitness, that that's kind of the, that's kind of the template I'm I'm thinking about and like how I taper that volume up and down in between competitions is like it might be the difference between a couple pieces per week, between a couple pieces per week, but there's just not a lot of time to go from like taper at the end of a competition ramp up, taper back down like that it might not even exist.
Speaker 2:It might just be like two weeks of normal training before kind of tapering back down, getting ready for the next competition.
Speaker 1:So I think this is a really good example to give people about why almost no one should train like one of these people, and this happens too often. So what I'm referencing is and you're not going to find a group of coaches that buys more into things like zone two training and things like monostructural conditioning but what happens to an athlete that is already very well-rounded when they blast their energy systems and go lift weights is not the same as someone with a glaring weakness. So my mind goes to two places. One, home run hitters that have a bigger name in the sport are going to struggle a lot with this style, because if you're a home run hitter, then I'm the one that's got to be like when can we take time off to get you stronger or bigger or more skilled? Or can we, you know know, nail your mobility? Or it's the opposite. A lot of home run hitters super fast twitch like can we log the time and go work on these very specific things so you should be more well-rounded, like no shit.
Speaker 1:But that's where my mind goes. With this stuff, you're not going to get the same you're if you segment crossfit and you haven't earned the right to do that. When you go out to do crossfit, it's not going to go very well. Like the, the people that have gotten themselves to a point where they don't need to do game speed crossfit as often in the off season, like that's a, that's a rite of passage that they've already gone through, that they've spent a ton of time doing that. While they're getting stronger, while they're getting their machines where they want to get them to, you have to make sure that each piece of my short, my medium, my long, my machines, my running, my lifting and that's in relation to the power lifts and the Olympic lifts. I'm a pretty skilled athlete. You've got to be pretty well-rounded or you're going to lose your spot in the sport over a certain period of time, over like a certain period of time.
Speaker 1:That's where my, that's where my mind goes, just in terms of like. I completely agree with what you're saying. If the athlete has, like, earned the right to be there Cause there are some athletes where it's like. Like you, you want to test their conditioning, they're going to come in the top five in like every event, and then they got to go do this lift or that lift, or they got to push the sled, they got to do something powerful and they clearly struggle with that, like those athletes not having the time to build that like. That's the one to me that's probably the scariest is the like conditioning monster, where it's like we got to spend so much time with you backing off of that shit and getting stronger that I don't know when we're supposed to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. It's kind of funny, I think of like it's almost like training somebody who has never done CrossFit before and is like has been sitting on the couch for the last 15 years and training the highest level games athlete is almost more similar than training the person right in the middle, the two people on opposite ends of the spectrum. So, like your person who is not done any physical activity in 15 years is like I can teach you how to do a thruster, I can teach you how to do a pull up, and obviously we can scale these things you how to do a pull-up and obviously we can scale these things, but at a certain point there's almost too much that needs to be worked on that this person actually just needs to move their body. They need to improve their conditioning. We're going to do that with a lot of machines. We're going to keep the weight lifting stuff to like it's going to be under control. We're not going to I'm not going to ask this person to learn how to deadlift with their heart rate at 170.
Speaker 2:Like we're going to segment a lot of these things more so, just for the safety and longevity of the athlete, so that they can eventually you know they increase their conditioning, they become more mobile. Now I have AXA and I'm becoming fitter, so I can now use more movements and more tools that I have in my CrossFit kind of toolkit to improve this person's conditioning right. So, like for a beginner, bar muscle-ups are not a conditioning tool Like they don't. They're not going to do the same thing for a CrossFit Games athlete. A set of 10 bar muscle-ups is very much a conditioning tool that we can have access to.
Speaker 2:But the point being and then on the opposite end is the crossfit games athlete who is actually very, very proficient in all things crossfit your thrusters, your double unders, your bar muscle ups, your handstand walking, all the skills you know, all the, the, the various weight ranges that we are typically used to seeing in competition. They're actually capable enough to handle all of that stuff that they don't need to do it so frequently that they're just going to beat the shit out of themselves. Right, it's like at some point, like Atalanta was, was it is a unique example, it's like Murph is now borderline to.
Speaker 2:it's not too easy. I'm not going to say it's too easy, but it's like if, like, the highest, fittest people on earth are just blasting through murph like what's the next iteration of it? Are we just gonna fucking annihilate people with more volume? And it's like that's okay in testing, but in training it's like that's just a, that's just a ticket to zero cartilage and, and you know, beat up joints and stuff like that. So for the highest level gain, and that athlete has the capacity to really put themselves in a hurt locker, whether it's with too much volume, because they're fit enough to handle it, or too much, almost like too much intensity, in the sense that like, hey, if I really hammer assault bike sprints for someone who's really powerful, it might take them like fucking 72 hours to feel like normal again. And it's like I don't, I don't have that kind of time, especially in this example, to train. So those two athletes on the opposite end of the spectrum get trained kind of similarly, despite the fact that they're like couldn't be farther apart.
Speaker 2:It's the people in the middle which also happened to be about, you know, fucking 95% of the people listening to this podcast and CrossFitters in general, who are just enough to be. We're not in that beginner stage. We can do all the movements. Most of my movements can create a conditioning stimulus for me, but there's a lot of things that I need to work on. So I need to be doing CrossFit consistently to learn a little bit more about how to do this like most efficiently, correctly, kind of boost my athlete iq um, while still making sure that we're developing skills, we're improving capacity and those things that you know it's we're. We've got more capacity than a beginner, but nowhere near as much capacity as a games athlete. That person lives kind of in the middle, where it's like you need constantly varied functional movement executed at high intensity. The further on the outskirts of that kind of athlete we go, the more nuanced the the programming gets agreed um.
Speaker 1:So that is a discussion related to like what we could call tier one, like the, the, like the defcon rating system one high, um. When we go to tier two, um, I thought about this a lot because this was already on my mind. Pre-world fitness projects. This athlete that is probably locked in the most on an in-person event that's going to be happening mid-May to early June, something like that. So this athlete would do the Open in February, they would do the virtual semifinal in early May and then they would do their in-person event. You know, if they're going to synd syndicate, they'd be going in late may.
Speaker 1:Um, this is one where we basically what we do when we have these two things that are that are sort of competing with one another, is we make space for them. Luckily, one of the best tactics that we've had over the years is, if we have time during a peaking schedule, to simulate a competition in the middle. Um actually works really well because it gets athletes off of like okay, we're squatting on this day and there's another zone, two sessions, whatever, like so much volume going up into that peak that it's like okay, so we get what would feel like a change of scenery mentally to go in and simulate the competition, but also, like a simulated competition, significantly less volume than what we would give somebody on a weekly basis, right change um, which means we get a little bit of a taper in there. We get the athletes well rested. So where my mind goes, if the person doesn't have to compete super close to the virtual semifinal, is let's start semifinals prep at a date where we can have the virtual semifinal be mock semifinals, just like we would have in the games, just like a lot of our athletes have experienced in the past, where it's like athletes do really kind of put the, the pedal to the metal, like really get after it in the competition simulation. So it fits kind of naturally into the way that we would potentially do things and then that sets us up to to do really well um with the in-person sem-final.
Speaker 1:And again, that's the. That's the level of athlete that I believe needs something more structured, more game speed. Crossfit, like still going to have the lifting that you mentioned, still going to have, you know, quite a bit of zone two work, monostructural, but there's probably, you know, a reason why they're not in that higher tier, which could be like glaring weakness that we've got to deal with which we can in a competition peaking schedule or like the rite of passage thing. I'm still on my journey, I'm still making my way to the point where that could be possible, that kind of thing. Um, so there's going to be a decent chunk of athletes that we work with that listen to this podcast. That, like I'm almost just saying this to put them at ease in a way of like this could actually be an ideal situation because with the way that they structured in the past um fuck, what was it called? It's too many things. Quarterfinals.
Speaker 2:Sanctionals.
Speaker 1:Quarterfinals into semifinals. It was tough to go through prep, like the schedule, just the way that it lined up. It's like we're going to pause and do this thing and we don't know what any of it is and is the whole deal Like. I think this fits, fits um much better into that situation. So if you have an athlete in the situation that we just talked about, is there any nuance that you would think about? Um related to what I said? Or it's hey, like this is how we do our competition peaking schedule.
Speaker 2:We refer into the your yellow highlighted yeah this is now the new new person. It is a virtual semi-final, the just training virtual semi-final, or is this the like CrossFit online semifinal?
Speaker 1:CrossFit online semifinal, which is mock semifinals, but also real.
Speaker 2:But I can qualify for the games through that right. So if I could qualify through the virtual semifinal and then I don't need to go to the in-person semifinal, right, I don't need to go to the in-person semifinal, right, it's?
Speaker 1:unlikely that you are in that tier and or it's possible to do that and not in the tier that we've already addressed, because we're down to shit. 10 or 11 people.
Speaker 2:I think total are going to qualify through that, through the virtual or the in-person.
Speaker 1:Through the virtual, there's not many left, so you have to come in the top 10 in the virtual there's not many left so you have to come in the top 10 in the entire world in that to qualify. But it is also a qualifying system.
Speaker 2:Part of the qualifying system for, I think, syndicate and fittest experience yeah, like they're gonna backfill from that so I'll also just gonna to like the in-person semifinal dates, like in combat or virtual like yeah, so uh, I, let's, let's play, let's just kind of like make a couple assumptions and say that the in-person semifinal is like in June, like early June, so it's on the tail end of that.
Speaker 2:So it's on the tail end of that, so it's not, because if it's like late april to early may, like in person to virtual, it's like there's no difference, essentially like that that person's not doing one of those things. They can't um, they might have to like.
Speaker 1:That's the one thing that I don't know exactly about the qualifying system like crossfit strikes me why would they have?
Speaker 3:to where you have to do heck.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean, so they have. So there's like, basically who we would be talking about would be mayhem classic, which is invite only and only like top 20 athletes in the world. So that's sort of, and a lot of the ones that we would be referencing would be, um, european, asian, um, you know, south America, like that kind of thing, um, in those places. So you'd be looking at having to work into your schedule the virtual semifinal and the in-person being very close to one another.
Speaker 2:Um, I think in that in that scenario, you kind of have to, like you got to pick one of those two to be the the thing yes, your target needs to be circled, yeah, so and it's like if, if it's again, let's assume that the in-person semi-final is after the virtual, if they're, if they're right, if they're butted up right up against each other, like you got to you mail in one of them, I, I feel like that. I don't know that there's a way to be like, at the level you need to, if the goal is to qualify for the games. In that scenario, then like you got to pick one of them and hammer it and sent, and just send it and kind of mail in the other one, the other, the other option is like, let's say, the virtual semifinals at the beginning of may and the in person is in early june and you are going to do both. The virtual semifinal is like I don't know, that's, that's what that is. Hell week, right, that's about the hell week kind of like distance away from the in-person semifinals.
Speaker 2:so I'm I treating the, I'm maybe just saying to the athlete the virtual semifinal is your competition prep. It is like we're going to do all the things that you would want to do in person. It's the long warmup, it's the you know, do all the right things that you need to before the execution, have a plan. In execution you cool down. Afterward we debrief on the workout or you, you know, make some notes and whatnot. But the virtual is is essentially a dry run in. In my eyes is how is how that kind of works? So it's just kind of getting a feel for the, the cadence of the weekend where it's like, okay, warm up, work out, cool down, go fuel. Warm up, work out, cool down, refuel, that sort of thing. And then the in-person version is just like the application of what we did in the virtual semifinal. So I think, like in that scenario you got to pick and choose, kind of one of those things. I'm looking at the link.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, the Europeans. That's serious shit. So the Europeans would either be in-person then virtual back-to-back weeks, or virtual then in-person back-to-back weeks.
Speaker 2:Hustle up last chance qualifier.
Speaker 1:Last chance.
Speaker 3:Kitchen is back yeah, what a fucking. That's a tough schedule 8th is NorCal.
Speaker 1:The following weekend is last chance dude, that was always so brutal sidebar. Like our athletes, we always went last and we always had like 90 people in the last chance qualifier and they're like I'm not okay, yeah, like I don't know. It's 100 burpees to 12 inch target for time. Are you fucking kidding me right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep that was always a kick in the pants. I mean the whole. The goal is like you're doing one or two of these right. It's like at some point. It's like what do you think? What do you think is the Like? What's the maximum number of events that you could reasonably Like? I'm doing every single thing I possibly can to qualify for the CrossFit Games, but there is a point at which too much. There's. There is a a too far line like how many events realistically, would you?
Speaker 1:I think athletes are committing to almost everything and then they'll drop out as the process plays out. I think that's the plan for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:So they sort of have multiple dates circled on the calendar and, best case scenario, they get to erase a bunch of them. But you know, 30 men, 30 women's just not very many people, yeah to to sort of contend with there. And a lot of our athletes um, just sort of happens with companies geographically like a lot of our athletes have the luxury of being further into the season when they go to compete at their in-person semifinal and that's a benefit for quite a few reasons. So, like you go to like one of the best ones that you could go to would be syndicate crown, because you go there and your list of qualifiers also happened to be like 15 of the best athletes in the entire world. They might've already qualified. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean Like, so you so you, just you know more when you go into that competition. One question that I have is, like, if athletes continue to compete just for the notoriety of prize money like, what are they going to do? Are they allowed to, and what are they going to do about the like podium, like? Can an athlete that comes in like 10th at syndicate. Go to the games because everyone else is pre-qualified ahead of them, like, and I don't know, I gotta go, I gotta like how many?
Speaker 2:how many pre-qual? If you're just saying, if I already qualified, I'm just going to keep going to competitions to to rake in prize money, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:or if they're not there. That's an intriguing thing for crossfit to deal with. From a media perspective, it's going to be like all unknown names names exactly and and like I work with some of them, they're fit as fuck, but I don't know who they are, yet that kind of thing, so it's definitely interesting um, yeah yeah they, I mean they without the prize money being.
Speaker 2:The prize money would have to just be sufficient enough to sure draw those people. But yeah, I don't know yeah, at some point it's just like there's just too. That's just too much. If, if the goal is just make money, make a living doing fitness, then maybe it is perfectly fine to be in the what. What's the who? Is it 10? Top 10 usually make money.
Speaker 3:Top five make money also talking about a semi-final you're just any of these events no.
Speaker 2:Dude, no one yeah so.
Speaker 3:I mean, there is no incentive.
Speaker 2:It's just like Top zero. Yeah, that's tough, there's no incentive for that.
Speaker 1:Some of them are again more community events and they're still going to have all these other divisions and different floors and everything, and those ones typically have better prize money. But when crossfit was involved which I don't think they are anymore the prize money went way down like way, way down yeah um, all right, so tier three here this is the final one that we'll do.
Speaker 1:This will be a fairly quick conversation, so this is going to apply to the most people listening to this podcast, and that's going to be the people that have the virtual semifinal circled.
Speaker 1:You are one of the top, you know, 1,000 to 2,000 for the virtual semifinal in the male or female division and it's pretty cut and dry. Like I'm turning over my shoulder to look at my whiteboard here, you've got a seven week peaking schedule, um, you know, if you're following misfit athletics and that starts on monday, march 10th, and you ride that baby all the way to semifinals, virtual semifinals um, the thing that you'll have to be able to wrap your mind around is that is during the open, to be starting semifinals prep during the open, um, which is again can be a little bit of a mind fuck, but we'll typically have, you know, sort of built in things there for you to be able to deal with. So, um, I don't know that there's anything to really say about that. We'll probably have an entire podcast episode dedicated to it, but it's a. It's a peaking schedule, um, not unlike what's going on with the open prep. Um, it's just a pretty serious level up when you're talking about open prep versus semifinals prep semifinals prep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think that's the scenario in which that athlete knows who they are. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah, for sure, I was just doing some. We know we have an accurate count without just kind of doing the math like on uh, open registration, someone I got someone posted it to social.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to remember who it was.
Speaker 2:Looking at the men's leaderboard, there's 366 pages of 60 people. I think it's 60 on a page, maybe it's 75, which is like 22,000 men.
Speaker 1:Seb, do you remember who's been posting, been posting? I know people have been fewer, fewer women.
Speaker 3:So looking at I can if you guys give me 30 seconds, I can call the right person also haven't did, I didn't do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm gonna say it's like because, someone basically posted like hey, here's what the prize money is um currently, and I think it's. I think they're halfway to their goal, I think they needed like 300, some odd thousand, to get the 370k, I believe was first place and right now I think the prize money is like 170 K to first place is what I saw, but like I don't know, 34,000.
Speaker 3:34,000 is how many people?
Speaker 1:are signed up currently.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is a. It's a rough estimate, so I'm not going to throw him under the bus. Uh but known and noble 34,000. Yeah, that's not that many.
Speaker 2:I'm doing math on about 22,000 individual men. Two thirds of that are about 75% as many women. So another like under 40,000 individual. And then if I toggle over to age group, like it's quite a bit less than that. So even if it's like 5,000 per division, you're still looking at well under yeah, it'll be interesting to see, that's for sure. A hundred thousand registrants. Be curious, everybody always signs up, fucking.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I saw something too that was like yeah, it's like someone was like open registration sucks and someone else was like well, they've like that's it's been 24 hours and like yeah, so we won't know until actual registration. I don't fucking end up registering until pretty close to the open itself.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I usually register, like during the open.
Speaker 1:Yeah I'll be like obviously I'll be like week two of the open. I'll sign up so that there's a chance that like page gets my nine dollars yeah, whatever it is for that ratio. So again, I mean I know that this like there's some, some insight in this episode for sure, but I just I like challenges like this. I like to to go in and input where an athlete's going to be and how the programming will change. Um, I think that there will be probably a lot more deleting of cells in google sheet than adding as we make our way through um. If you're not listening to the athlete, if they're not updating you, this would be you know where an athlete might be telling you about their like wearable. You know, here's my, here's my sleep data, here's my hrv data. I'm actually responding really well to x, x, y and z um, but it'll be like in a vacuum. I know how to handle every single one of these situations individually. Okay, so you're competing on this day and then you have to compete again on here, but if you're not iterating as a coach and not listening to your athlete, you're probably going to get it wrong. So there's like I don't know. 30% of the program is like in pencil, the rest of it like in pencil. The rest of it's in pen, like what's going to be appropriate. On these days, and luckily again at the highest levels, it's almost always appropriate to get your ass on a machine and get after it, whether that is we take a really long period of time and go low intensity, that's going to get us results. Or that whole spectrum down to we're going to go really intense for a short period of time and go low intensity, that's going to get us results. Or that whole spectrum down to. We're going to go really intense for a short period of time. Yeah, um, final thoughts.
Speaker 1:I think, again, it's just an interesting challenge, like I, as a like, as a coach and not a programmer.
Speaker 1:As a coach, specifically, and as a fan, the changes just become a bit much year to year for what's changing here. But as a programmer, I like when things get mixed up a little bit so I can try to look at something from a different perspective. Um, because there's definitely been instances in the past where athletes are like I want to make money, so I'm going to this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, and it's just like what the fuck, what are you doing? Um, and then now that's a reality for, um, to a certain extent, probably a couple hundred athletes on earth, and then, to a very serious extent, probably a couple hundred athletes on earth, and then to a very serious extent, maybe like a hundred athletes. Um, so it's, it's a unique problem to have and I definitely welcome the challenge and continue to be like open and transparent with people on here or listeners about, like, how we tackle it, what we do, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a interesting thought experiment for sure. Here's one competition a month for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3:How do?
Speaker 2:you do it. Every month for 12 months on the month do one competition.
Speaker 1:I think the play for so many of them is say yes to every single one of them and then back out when they can't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's just kind of like standard practice and that sort of thing. It's easier to back out, especially if you don't have to pay to lock in a spot or something like that.
Speaker 1:But yeah, all right, did we do it? We did it. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the misfit podcast. Make sure to head to sharpen the axe. Cocom for the throwback collection shirt pre-sale. If you're looking for affiliate programming, you can head to team misfitcom. Click sign up now to get all of your options. Bunch of 14-day free trials there. Um all the programs that we've been talking about bouncing around on this podcast today misfit athleticscom. Or head to the link in bio on our social media to head straight to Fitter to get signed up for the programming. Yeah, see you next week.
Speaker 2:Later.