Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Unlock Peak Performance with Remote Coaching - E.340
Ever wondered how a golf swing can teach you about the perfect snatch lift? Join us on The Misfit Podcast, where Hunter recounts his latest golf adventures, complete with new TaylorMade irons, and Seb pitches the idea of a golf line. Drew jumps in with a playful jab at CrossFit companies dabbling in golf apparel, all while we explore how younger players are reshaping the culture of golf to be more inviting. This lighthearted start sets the stage for a deeper conversation about the world of remote coaching, where we tackle the nuances of training elite athletes, drawing thought-provoking parallels between different sports and training methodologies.
Our discussion takes a strategic turn as we explore the art of remote coaching in CrossFit. We peel back the layers of training programs to reveal the importance of competition during the off-season and the delicate balance of strength and conditioning. By comparing coaching to nutrition and health strategies, we shine a light on the tailored approaches needed to ensure athlete success. From the significance of quality coaching relationships to creating individualized training plans, our chat is packed with insights designed to enhance the coach-athlete dynamic and bring out the best in both parties.
We also venture into the psychological realm, where the mental game becomes as crucial as the physical. Accountability, from both coach and athlete, emerges as a key pillar of successful training partnerships. Encouraging athletes to think independently and adapt in competitive settings can often be the difference between victory and defeat. We wrap up with a look at how understanding unique athlete personalities and motivations can lead to more effective coaching strategies, ensuring each athlete can achieve their fullest potential. Tune in for a blend of humor, strategy, and deep insights that promise to enrich your training journey.
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We're all misfits, all right, you big, big bunch of misfits. You're a scrappy little misfit, just like me Biggest bunch of misfits I've ever seen either.
Speaker 2:Good morning misfits. You are tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. On today's episode, we are going to be taking a deep dive. I think I say that every episode, so we're just always going deep. We're going to be taking some depth of dive into the remote coaching world. I will warn you, this is like 50% advertisement for remote coaching and then the other 50% is hey, I do my thing on my own and I know what I'm doing, and hopefully we can give you a couple of tricks that you can use to improve your training or to improve, if you're a coach, to improve how you program for and coach your athletes. But before we do that, as always, live chat. Hunter, seb, what's up? What's up? What's going on? What you got going on, boys?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're going to have to listen to this again, Drew, but I'll tell the people because they're definitely interested in my golf expenditures. Yeah, so there I was Sunday.
Speaker 2:That's good, I like that. You're Ed. So there I was.
Speaker 3:There I was deciding whether or not I was going to try to go to a golf simulator get some practice in, or maybe just stick around do some putting inside, and, lo and behold, the tailor-made vendor is at Golf Ski in Scarborough, maine. So that's just where you can either get legitimately fit or you can try out some of their stuff. They'll put you into the right gear or whatever, and they try to upsell you on it. And I know the game. Um, and I realistically just signed up so that I could get 45 minutes of free practice with a seven iron. Um, I'll swing a couple of their new clubs. See if, see if they can maybe convince me one way or the other. And well, see, the problem with that is is that I go there and then I hit a specific set of clubs. Extraordinarily well, just happens to be the day I definitely. I'll definitely continue that every single time I go to golf from now on. I will definitely be that good.
Speaker 3:But of course man, there is not a whole lot better feeling than a than a golf ball just flushed off the middle of a brand new iron um yeah, I feel like my parallel has to be sweet spot on the baseball bat yeah, it's sweet spot on a baseball bat. It's like when you catch that snatch in the perfect bottom position, you know everything just clicked and it was the easiest lift on the planet. It's the same kind of idea.
Speaker 3:So I start crunching numbers a little bit and realize that if I take advantage of the generous military veteran program that TaylorMade offers and combine that with trade-in value of the current set of TaylorMade clubs that I have and the trade-in special that they're running, I might find myself with a new set of irons for the old 2025 season at a uh, remarkably affordable price were you sold at all like was this a talented salesman?
Speaker 2:you know what he was doing. Did he understand that if he tried to go like full salesman on you that you'd leave?
Speaker 3:no, he. Well, I mean, like I'm gonna be honest, I like you sold them to yourself, yeah, yeah that's exactly what it was. I sold them to myself. I was like. I was like you definitely don't need these and you're definitely not gonna get these but, like what happens if?
Speaker 3:what happens if all of a sudden you'd have a? You have hopes of tour status perhaps or something better, but no, uh, yeah, I sold them to myself a little bit, but the? Uh. It's one of those situations where it would be borderline, fiscally irresponsible, not to take advantage of all of the cumulative savings. Now you're still selling yourself, exactly yeah yeah, it's a good deal, damn Damn good deal. I'll take that deal. Love it yeah, so I'll keep everybody updated.
Speaker 2:We have high expectations for that handicap changing again because last golf season you had the beginner's situation going on.
Speaker 1:Not beginner, but like novice to intermediate.
Speaker 2:Can you continue to ride that linear progress and just shaving strokes off left and right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll find out. The putting game is improving the winter. The indoor putting mat cleaning up the stroke and the consistency and kind of getting a feel for the difference between, like, three feet and six feet or 10 feet. But yeah, once the courses open up, though, I'll need to practice some longer putts because, as we learned on the last podcast, the statistical probability of me hitting ball within 10 feet is extraordinarily low. So facts, yeah, yep. Two, two putts are the name of the game next year.
Speaker 1:Trying to avoid those three putts seb what you got going on well, I think, uh, with the golf stuff maybe they're in the near future there could be a sharpen the x like golf line, just oh don't get him started.
Speaker 3:I don't know why there wouldn't be.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't I mean I sent through a malbon golf uh collab they did with willie nelson yesterday and it's pretty, pretty cool I would rather do a video making fun of all crossfit companies that have decided that they're fucking golf companies.
Speaker 2:How about that, seb? That's what I would rather do yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'm not, that's fair.
Speaker 2:I just think I think golf attire I had to sneak that in yeah, that's a callback from like there are more golfers out there than there are crossfitters. They'll say that, so market share wise yeah, you can definitely thank some of the younger guys that like paved the way because for obviously for the longest time, that was the exact opposite of the truth. Like you're fucking yeah, yeah so you, so you guys got to like the. If I dress like that, I'd kick my own ass Like that's baked into every nineties kids brain, like of all time.
Speaker 3:Last last weekend, jason day. He's an Australian PGA tour player. Really good he was. He played the fourth round Sunday at pebble beach in a full sweatsuit grout fit full gray sweatsuit. I love that. And his defense Saturday was miserable out there so maybe he was swinging it back in the other direction to go sure comfort, uh, but he was in a full fucking sweatsuit on Sunday afternoon, yeah hmm, what do I got?
Speaker 2:uh, I think we gotta talk super bowl, make super bowl.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got to make super bowl predictions, um, so I gamble lightly, um, and I basically only win. When I used to bet on tom brady and now when I bet on patrickomes, I will decide on an amount of money that hopefully I won from fantasy football to then donate to draft Kings. Um, I'll put that in and, over the course of the playoffs, lose most of it and then get back around, break even with the Superbowl. That seems to be be my rhythm. So I have good luck betting the super bowl. But again, I literally just bet on the better quarterback and they win almost every time. Um, I'm gonna go chiefs 27 to 24. That's where I'm gonna call that I can't see that sub.
Speaker 3:What's the yeah enhance?
Speaker 2:hunter is the one who always changes the fucking font to size 80 in the spreadsheet damn.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's actually a. Really that's tighter than I expected. The eagles have?
Speaker 2:what did you say? It was I, I'm, I'm going 27, 24, okay, chiefs that's one and a half point spread yeah, that's pretty standard in a super bowl.
Speaker 3:I would say that changes, we get closer yeah, it actually hasn't changed a ton.
Speaker 2:Right now, I believe the spread people are are on the eagles. Oh no, it's actually changed. So kansas city, yeah, 54, 51. So like, as long as it stays there, hunter, it won't move that's what they want.
Speaker 3:What's the point? Total, what's?
Speaker 2:the point if you scroll back up, it's 48 and a half over under. So wow, I've got. I've got it at over over. The eagles have a fantastic defense, um, but what's funny is they run the ball really well in the first half of football games often and then decide that they shouldn't run it anymore. In the second half they get a little cute. Um, and I I heard this stat the other day patrick mahomes has been trailing 53 times in his entire career in the fourth quarter, so that includes every time he's lost, like every game. He's over 500 winning percentage in those 53 games.
Speaker 3:When he's losing in the first quarter, when he's losing, no, in the fourth quarter, when he's losing in the fourth quarter.
Speaker 2:He wins over half of the time. He also has been trailing at the end of the fourth quarter seven times in his career in the postseason and he is seven and oh wait, trailing at the end of the fourth quarter. So he said yeah, basically like however many I don't know how many minutes they put on there five minutes, seven minutes, ten minutes left in the game, so he's been losing.
Speaker 3:Trailing at the end of the fourth quarter you lose, just to be clear.
Speaker 2:Yes, and he's 7-0 in those games. Like how terrifying is it to be on the other side of the field and be like we've got to be up to like like three scores I mean every single team has played against tom brady in the playoffs in the last decade.
Speaker 2:The chiefs are scarier though more consistent thus far like they had that one season where they had no offensive line and just got their asses handed to them and that was like really the only bad one, and that's when they got rid of all their star players and went and paid for defense and offensive line.
Speaker 3:What was your bet? What was your score, would you say?
Speaker 2:27-24, Chiefs.
Speaker 3:Oh damn, all right, I had 28-24 in my head. That's too close to that. I'll go down on the lower.
Speaker 1:I'll go 24-17,. Chiefs, I'll say 31-24, Chiefs.
Speaker 3:I'll say 31-24 Chiefs, okay, 31-24. Yep, all right. So right on, little over, little under.
Speaker 2:Yep, I mean, again, the Eagles play good D and they have an amazing offensive line in Saquon Barkley. So if they want to feed him and keep Mahomes off the field, it's possible for sure. But like I don't know, it's like you're gonna be watching the game the whole time and even if they're up a couple scores, you're just gonna be like not for long. Yeah, it's just like we see the same movie over and over and over. So I don't see that. I don't see that happening. Uh, only other thing I got for life chat.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm headed to fittest of the coast this weekend. Um mckenna is competing down there. I think you know we talk about this with remote athletes that have goals specifically related to the crossfit game season, like when should you compete, how often should you compete, and then what are you trying to accomplish while you're there? Um, sort of what is the point of the exercise of practicing competition? Um, in the off season. So I'm super excited to to get down there and and do that.
Speaker 2:Um, obviously, I'm talking in the past right now. So there's there's no way to tell people that I'm going to be there on this podcast, because I'll be home by the time you guys listen to this, but, um, I'll. I'll definitely throw something in discord and make sure people know through Instagram, but I get, I don't like super long stretches of not being able to coach in in person at competition, like I feel like almost similar to how I did as an athlete like I gotta, I gotta get out there and I gotta see this you know all the planning and spreadsheets and all this shit, like, come to life, out on the floor and see where we're really at, because that to me is like that's the proving ground where's the fit, where is it?
Speaker 2:charleston, south carolina which I assume, is probably not as warm as I think it's gonna be. It's probably like what? Like 50s this time of year yeah, it's something like that it's warmer, but it's not what you want it to be.
Speaker 3:no, although well, yeah, I spent this time of year in North Carolina and it was a different kind of shitty from here so it might be a little bit warmer. It was just cold and wet and slushy, just not like.
Speaker 1:Holy, oh, my God.
Speaker 2:Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck boys, Look at that. Yeah, have fun. It's been seven when you're there Fuck. I'm going to send you guys a picture of me with a little umbrella in my drink, that's so fucked, god damn.
Speaker 3:I'll send you a picture with a little umbrella. In my drink too, I'm going to sit in a cold car. Joke's on me.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be standing in a convention center watching exercise for three weeks, yeah, wow, damn yeah, wow, damn, is this friday and saturday and corrected?
Speaker 2:yes, yep, and I know that there there's some some misfits competing team on sunday as well, so I'll be able to go watch them a little bit, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, that's good news, right, fucking low in the 40s and the trade. I have, over the years, found out more and more about other companies and the way that they do remote coaching and I'm not gonna lie to you guys, it stresses me the fuck out. Some of them are like remote coaching factories. The amount of clients that they take on and I know to us Hunter, the idea of that doesn't even really fit into our brain because of all the other plates we're spinning, you know, related to the affiliate and the blog and all of that. So I don't have the direct perspective of like what is a professional remote coach? Like someone who literally just writes or adapts programming for 20 or 30 athletes at once, um, but what we have found within our company is less is more for sure, like I've had instances in my career where I've had double digit clients and the level of connection and the ability to like, make progress and whatnot did not line up as well as it did when I had half of those people that kind of thing, um.
Speaker 2:So we have a staff of like roughly seven or eight remote coaches and, depending on the athlete that applies for a remote coaching position to be the athlete we decide, you know who has which coach is best lined up for it. We have some coaches that are high level athletes that do a fantastic job, but would we want them coaching someone who they're competing against or someone who competes at the exact same time as them, that sort of thing. And then there are just coaches who coach at the affiliate level and gain the perspective on a more day-to-day basis of how to move the needle on a wider spectrum of athlete. So if someone applies and they're like, hey, I'm not there yet, or maybe I just have the disposable income and I want you know more accountability, or whatever it is, um, that's often when an a coach who is coaching at the affiliate level will be able to flourish a little bit more because they deal with those instances on a more regular basis. Um, and we like one of the reasons why there's.
Speaker 2:There's a couple reasons why I wanted to do this episode. One is I. The idea was sparked by something I'm actually doing for myself in programming right now. Um, and then the other side is we have, we have some openings, which doesn't happen all that often, um, and I thought having you know an athlete, being able to you know, click on the link to this podcast and listen through to the way that we do certain things and what they could expect, um, what would be different from following the blog would be a good thing to have. I don't know if you want to jump in at all, hunter, on the intro side of things, or if you want to get straight to it.
Speaker 3:No, let's get straight to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm going to categorize things to keep us on track, but one of the things that's really interesting is which category moves the needle most for a particular athlete is something that we do not know prior to going into the relationship with them. Um, and one of the correlations that we get um that can be helpful is the world of nutrition and like health coaching. Like whatever, you listen to a Huberman episode and he takes nine hours to say that you should walk outside every once in a while. Um, and there are these bullet points of very high level like you should eat this way, you should sleep this way, you should take these, whatever it is. But it's not the most complicated thing in the world and a lot of people really do understand what they should be doing. There's that level of accountability. There's the level of I'm going in and I'm paying this person, so I'm sort of putting myself out there a little bit and then I'm having them make sure that I like go in and execute.
Speaker 2:And while remote coaching is significantly more complicated, I've definitely had multiple clients that benefited the most from a level of accountability. Like how'd this go? How are you doing here? Like we're not making the most huge, sweeping changes to the blog. I want you to stay on me about X, y and Z. You to stay on me about X, y and Z. So we've got things like overall programming, structure, specificity within a particular piece, things like mobility, things like digging into the mental side of things. But I personally find it very fascinating to remain open-minded at the beginning of a remote coaching relationship in terms of waiting to see where we're going to be able to move the needle the most, because you can guess and you can make choices early on educated guesses. But, like when I look at this list, different athletes come to mind based on different categories yeah, the.
Speaker 3:I think the like. What's important is to identify what, what, the, what the athlete is actually looking for. Because while you and I are, you know, we've coached you more so than me coaching high level athletes, I I've also I also have a couple athletes on my roster currently who are not, um, not necessarily crossfit games athletes, but are looking more for exactly what you said the accountability, a little bit of a structure. It's like, hey, I have a busy work schedule. Crossfit is my like, or for, like so many people, the gym CrossFit, maybe even occasionally competing, is kind of my an outlet for me. It's a hobby, it's something fun. I like to perform as well as I can.
Speaker 3:I'm not necessarily looking to qualify for the CrossFit games in the near future or maybe even ever. I'm just using, I use CrossFit, like a lot of people do, as an outlet for, you know, physical health, wellness, mental sanity, all that sort of stuff. And like, my schedule doesn't allow me to get into a gym or maybe I don't have access to a quality affiliate nearby, I need programming and I need you to tell me exactly what to do. And it's like okay, got it, here's how much time I have, here's what we want to do Like you said. Maybe there's not massive sweeping changes as far as you know. Hey, you're going to clean instead of snatch this phase, or you gonna? We're gonna do deficit deadlifts with a pause and a tempo, instead of you know whatever and all the personalization.
Speaker 3:Maybe that's not even necessary for the individual as much as it is like hey, how do I? I have two hours to exercise, give me training that is going to allow me to move the needle on my fitness that I can do in that time frame, for example. There's other examples where folks are just like I have a lot of limitations, whether it's mobility wise, movement wise maybe you know it's a master's athlete, someone a little bit older similar idea where it's just like hey, I just need some guidance going. I don't have an affiliate nearby or one that I particularly rely on for quality coaching and programming. This is what I need from you. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, in a way, the CrossFit Games athletes or the high-level athletes can be easier in that sense, because it's like, hey, I'm willing to put the time in the energy in.
Speaker 3:In that sense, because it's like, hey, I'm willing to put the time in the energy in, and you know, that's kind of the the what, who we write the hatchet and the MFT and the age group program for, and then it becomes a little bit more about tinkering and figuring out what we need to do to move the needle for that person from a competitive perspective. But, yeah, finding out, finding out what the goal of the athlete is. And in a lot of instances too, unless an athlete has a very, very specific goal that they're coming to you for, a lot of athletes don't fucking know what their goal is. Can I benefit from it? If I do have the disposable income or I'm just going to budget money towards this remote coaching thing? How can I get the most out of this relationship?
Speaker 2:And it's not always qualifying for the CrossFit Games, yeah, and the funny thing is, even at higher levels, there can be maybe an idea of what an athlete thinks it takes, um, and there's a period of three months, six months, a year where setting the expectations of what this actually looks like. Um, we've been doing it for so long and so many of the principles that we use to to program and to educate and inspire athletes come from, like the Venn diagram of, like these 10 different athletes who are the most successful we've ever coached. So many of these attributes and behaviors are similar and you have an athlete who is either maybe just full of piss and vinegar and ready to get after it, but doesn't, just doesn't know those things. Or an athlete who it happens a lot, has a lot of potential, but just don't like that's how they got into it. They got the attention Like I can lift a trillion pounds or I can row a 632 K, and it's like, okay, let's take some time to explore if this is the right path for you, um, and it's not always that an athlete would leave remote coaching, um, in those instances.
Speaker 2:But they might change their goals. They might be like it is cool to be the strongest person in Northern New York. Every time I show up at the local comp, they're like fuck, bob's here, he's going to clean 800 pounds and we're going to lose this event, whatever. Like there are so many different places that this stuff goes and I've honestly seen some of the like hardest working, grittiest people at all different levels, so it doesn't have to be like like those people that really benefit from it and really do really well with it. It has more to do really well with it. It has more to do with you than it does like what level you're at essentially.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the thing that's that's an important point too is cause the. The athlete that you talked about is that person who may be like hey, it's that. That it's the equivalent of me picking up golf and after that year and a half saying like I think I can, I think I can make it to the tour. It's like no, actually, the better you get at this thing, the the more you realize how far you are from the pinnacle of the sport itself.
Speaker 3:It's like you, you start to get better. You get those, those individuals who do have maybe either natural athleticism maybe they were just former athletes who have a lot of the skills, or just the natural physical talent to acquire certain skills faster than the average Joe who comes into a CrossFit gym and kind of grinds their way to those skills and weights and stuff like that. And those people, those athletes, are in a lot of ways a little bit. I'm not going to say they're harder to work with. But because there are so many kind of like hey, we're actually at, you actually have CrossFit Games level strength and that's incredible. But if that person has that, the odds that they also have CrossFit Games level skill and conditioning is basically zero. And for a lot of those athletes, having the realization that like hey, you're actually in the 99th percentile in a specific thing but that's not good enough, is a really kind of like mentally taxing and kind of almost a what uh, it's the word. Just it just kind of just kind of steers that athlete away when they realize like just how much work is going to be required to like bring the things that they are not so good at up to the level of the things that they are naturally talented at. Um and you know I talked to athletes about it at the affiliate level.
Speaker 3:From time to time it's like hey, hey man, like someone, someone gets is done, a workout and they're frustrated with their performance.
Speaker 3:Or maybe even like after a week or two, they're frustrated with their progress after a period of time. And I'm like, hey man, I got 84 different movements on my movement tracker and I'm asking you, as an average everyday person, to come in for one hour a day and try to get better at these literal 84 different things. I promise it's not going to happen overnight. I promise you're going to get. There's going to be times where it feels like you're getting worse before you get better and it's just about kind of plugging away. And for a lot of those high-level athletes who maybe get to peek behind the curtain or kind of see the crack in the door of competing competitively, it's a bit of a rude awakening when they realize just how far off they might be from truly the highest level 15 years deep in this, because if you don't pass some of the litmus tests for these things after a certain period of time, I'm not going to beg you to.
Speaker 2:You know, see the light, because people, a lot of athletes, like to do what they're good at and that presents such a huge problem. You've got the um super strong athlete. They want to lift all the time. Hey, if we're going to do two or three conditioning pieces a day, you can't lift very much time. Hey, if we're going to do two or three conditioning pieces a day, you can't lift very much. This is not going to work. It's going to drive you into the ground, especially if you're the type of athlete that responds to probably a little bit higher intensity, lower volume. And then on the other side of the fence, this one's really fucking challenging. You've got the athlete who's the conditioning monster that we need to hit two lifts and two accessory pieces every single day and they can't do too much conditioning or that's not really going to take hold and they like really push back against it and it's like you held 250 watts on your zone to bike like fucking chill out that athlete.
Speaker 3:That athlete, too, is especially challenging, because if they are more conditioning oriented, odds are that means they're not maybe not particularly like a power athlete, right? So the lifting and the lifting sessions that they have to do are just fucking miserable.
Speaker 3:It's a lot of like volume. The accessory work is is pretty rugged and it takes a lot of time and it beats you up and like it. That's that's tough. That's a lot of like volume. The accessory work is pretty rugged and it takes a lot of time and it beats you up and like that's tough. That's a tough spot to be in, Not that being a power athlete and all of a sudden having to get comfortable sitting on a C2 bike for 45 minutes is pleasant either. Just kind of six in one hand, half a dozen in the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the first obvious places that we get to go as remote coaches is we get to play with structure in general.
Speaker 2:So what I mean by that is if you're looking at, you know wherever you get your programming. A lot of people use just straight up Google Sheets. A lot of people use an app like a fitter, but when you have a zoomed out, look bitter. But when you have a zoomed out, look so like if I could zoom all the way out. I have my full year of structure. You know where are we starting, where are we trying to go? Then we have a cycle or a phase where we get to start to make these decisions and then zoom that in again to just how a week would be laid out for an athlete. And one of the beautiful things that we get to do and hopefully the athlete doesn't go rogue on this is we get to moderate volume, like I would start there before I would start with anything else. Can you go, execute and get your heart rate into certain places or get your score to where it needs to be on a smaller number of things to start, before we go in and add anything. And in the sheet or in the document that I have for my notes, it says volume in parentheses earned Like if you have a certain level of expectations that is significantly higher than where you're currently at.
Speaker 2:You need to build in the behaviors that it takes to survive high volume at the gym, no matter what energy system it is. It's about an hour plus to warm up. Take that time before the workout, after the warmup, and then cool down and come back downstairs. And so many people want the six-minute abs situation and it's just not your body's. You're not going to perform well. You're not going to perform well, you're not going to recover well, you're not going to be able to continue to execute. And if we start layering on the types of things required for you to overreach and improve without those things happening early on, like that's a recipe for disaster. That's the. You know your labrum tears and your. You know ACL and all these different things. Like you're not taking care of yourself and acting like a professional athlete. It's not going to work once we actually go in.
Speaker 2:So I am very much in tune with like, if you're starting with me, what volume have you been on? There's a pretty good chance. I'm going to make it lower than that to start, just to see like hey, are you checking all these other boxes outside of intensity?
Speaker 3:yeah, and I think, like the I mean the intensity box is the box right? Especially when we're when we're starting to talk with a new athlete and like if that person, I'm always a little bit suspicious if that person says, yeah, I'm, I'm used to you know, four or five, six training pieces a day. That doesn't happen super often. But the obvious question then is like, well, how hard are you trying in these pieces? Like, if you're not currently a CrossFit Games athlete or a high level competitor and you're doing this volume of work and you're coming to me because it's not working for you, I'm going to make the assumption that, the way that we're doing this volume of work and you're coming to me because it's not working for you, I'm going to make the assumption that the way that we're approaching this training is not correct.
Speaker 3:And I think that there's a we, we like. It's always. I, always I'm always curious and always want to check in with an athlete on, like what their perceived level of exertion is on a certain training piece and whether or not they're, you know, saving something in the tank for future, for training later that day, for example. Or like, yeah, I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to go just a little little bit hard, little, not quite as hard on the Metcon, because I know that I have something else coming up after that. And if that's the approach, then we need to have a come to jesus moment about, like exactly how this is going to work in order for you to achieve your goals. Um, because you know, we I don't know how many fucking podcasts we've done on the volume versus intensity conversation, but uh, that's a I'd say that's a fairly common one.
Speaker 3:You also get athletes I mean, we see that at the affiliate level athletes who come in from another gym that say like, like you know, oh, yeah, I moved over here, or whatever, and I'm like trying to, can I do my, my programming in open gym? It's like sure, you can do whatever you want in open gym. But then they also come to you and say something like, yeah, the class workouts just aren't hard enough for me. And I'm like, oh good, just aren't hard enough for me. And I'm like, oh good. And we start to have that conversation of, just like, you want to know how many people have walked out of this gym and left because it was too easy. It's like I can count on no fingers the number of people that have left Misfit Gym Portland because the programming was quote too easy.
Speaker 2:The odds are that we either don't have an understand, more commonly, we don't walks into a crossfit gym expecting low, low intensity, high volume, like get yourself some fucking ankle weights, get like a sweatsuit from back in the day and take your ass out onto the street and just walk around yeah like you don't need. You don't need a membership here yeah, yeah, the, the.
Speaker 3:I think that's, that's a huge one, especially like the further away you, you and I had the benefit of being in man it's it's wild to think that, like 10 years from now, like they're, 10 years might be a little short, maybe like 10 or 15 years from now, like how few. How many coaches are there going to be in the crossfit space that were around coaching people in 2010, 2011?
Speaker 3:I mean, there's already it's a very small number of crossfit coaches out there that exist right now they were coaching in in 2005, 2009, when, when you know it was really crossfit was really in its infancy. But even like there are not that many coaches who have been around at the affiliate or CrossFit games level that have been coaching CrossFit since 2010. And I find that the further away we get from that kind of the infant, true infancy of CrossFit as a whole, like the more people's perspectives on how to get people fitter shift have shifted further and further away from kind of like the original crossfit methodology and what what we at least found to work initially and have made plenty of changes since then, but it's still centered around the idea that, like you have to learn to fucking light your hair on fire like a couple times a week as hard as you can.
Speaker 2:That is the, that's the avenue to your goals people also on this topic are arguing about the wrong things. So like, for instance, there's you have all of these people that used to be high level crossfitters that are now like trying to sell you their like hybrid, like booty program or whatever the fuck. And they're arguing about the wrong things because I consider the departure from what you're talking about to be layering on top of that. So if you went to an old school CrossFitcom style program, you're going to get heavy lifting on one day and then you're going to get a Metcon on another day, and then you're going to get heavy lifting on one day and then you're going to get a metcon on another day and then you're going to have a run of 5k and then you're going to have a gymnastics piece. None of that stuff is missing from a really good competitor program.
Speaker 2:There are things that are added to it, but that's a totally different conversation and it's like like one of the one of the biggest ones is the whole zone. Two thing we don't have enough of this going on. It's like like one of the one of the biggest ones is the whole zone. Two thing we don't have enough of this going on. It's like well, first of all.
Speaker 2:We all used to skip run 10k whenever it was on dot com that was that was the night you were going to call up dominoes and hang out like and like they're talking. Those people are talking about competing and then, once they're done competing, realizing that they need to go back to something that's different and like. I find that whole conversation to be fascinating because it's like yes, that needs to be layered on for athletes that need it, that are trying to achieve a specific goal that has nothing to do with the original intent of the program.
Speaker 3:It's different.
Speaker 2:It's definitely different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's a difference between when you go, when you seek someone out who is, when you seek a coach whose name you recognize because at one point they competed at a high level, versus seeking out a coach like, for the most part, like wayne gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time, was a dog shit hockey coach.
Speaker 3:Like the fucking phoenix coyotes did not improve with the greatest hockey player of all time behind the bench um, and that's probably more of just like a little bit of projection as somebody who you know, people who aren't high, former elite crossfitters turned crossfit coaches but, um, I think, if you're like, if you're an athlete listening to this and you're like weighing options between like well, like I could get, I could go get coached by someone who stood on the CrossFit Games podium it's like how do you beat that? I don't know. Are you shopping for a name or are you shopping for a coach? What is the difference between what you're looking for and what you're actually going to receive? Not that those coaches, not that those individuals aren't great coaches, I don't know, I've never been coached by them, but yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 2:I think we provide something different. One of the things that we get when a high level athlete comes to us and I won't name names and I won't name other programs, but they'll say I'm not interested in insert this name program, this name program and this name program, and it's more the idea of the bigger thing, where they could feel like a needle in a haystack, like they in. What we do is on, I think, it just on a much more personal level, what we're trying to accomplish, um, and and like we've been doing it for long enough and you know, every once in a while we'll make something where we either I'm sitting in front of all the jerseys out on the wall out there, I've referenced them like we have the resume, um, and it's just a different style, right, like some people want to go like go train in person at this place with the posters of the person there and that whole deal, and that is. It's just a different thing. Basically, I would say, um, okay, the second part of well, actually, one more note on the volume thing. So one of the tricks that I will have here is your traditional sheet for an athlete will be like strength one, strength, two, metcon, whatever All the categories left to right, the same ones that you would see when you log into Fitter to get your program. Mine might say mobility and warm up, then the lift, then warm up, then Metcon, then cool down, warm up, then Metcon, then cool down.
Speaker 2:I will have those things in there and expect a level of, like you know, hey, coach, check, I did this part, or a little note of what they did and again, just putting that extra stuff in there and making sure that the expectations are very clear. It becomes obvious early on whether you need to do that for an athlete or not, early on, whether you need to do that for an athlete or not, um, and you know it's. It's something where we have those resources connected to you know, when you, when you go in and you look at a workout, you can see our warmup protocols and we've got the articles and everything like that, um, and if you're a go-getter, you just kind of do those things and make sure that you're doing it and we talk about it ad nauseum on the podcast. But there's again that level of accountability that can be there where it's like I'm going to put this in your sheet as, like a, this is the thing that we're doing next? Um, all right. So within the structure we have all of the categories that we use. We have the ability to bias a certain movement and then we have the ability to specialize.
Speaker 2:When I talk about categories, we would be talking about weightlifting. What are we doing for peaking your one rep max? What are we doing for volume work? What are we doing for speed work? What are we doing for technique work?
Speaker 2:As a remote coach, we have, I don't know, five or six years of this style of programming banked and you can go as a remote coach like, hey, we're going to do this and I remember that this one worked really well and it's just, I'm taking from this program, I'm putting it into this program. When it comes to the um bitch work, we're looking at like does this athlete need to get better in the long and slow? So what machine are we going to buy us on the zone two? Um, from there, what are we going to buy us in the aerobic category? You know, elevated heart rate, but for a longer period of time, anaerobic. Do they need power output work? How often do they need it? So those categories can change and make a sweeping change all the way down the entire phase and then inform what we're going to be doing next for the athlete.
Speaker 2:When it comes to our definitions on biasing and specializing, the one thing that I'll say is, nine times out of 10, it's going to be a bias because of Hunter talking about the movement tracker right, the energy systems, the strength, the skills, all of these different things.
Speaker 2:That's what makes I don't think I would have lasted coaching in another profession that required, say, strength programming or conditioning programming, if it wasn't such a complicated puzzle with all these moving pieces. It just keeps me interested in figuring out how to accomplish that with each athlete because it is so different. But one of the things that I tell all of our remote coaches is specializing on one or two things early on in the relationship is one of the best ways to like audition for the athlete and build trust with them. Like you want me to get you better at one thing? Fucking, hold my hold myself, sir. You know, like, like, please. That's the easiest thing to possibly do for a like CrossFit programmer and coach. It's too easy, right? Because if you couldn't get people better at individual skills or energy systems or lifts, and you're supposed to get them better at all?
Speaker 1:of it at once.
Speaker 2:that would be a fucking problem there. Um, so that's one of the things that that we like to do, because you can flex your muscles a little bit as a programmer and it can be fun to do that, because you know, like, if an athlete is really struggling with something and it shows up intermittently in their program and now it shows up three times a week like they're going to get better at it, right, they're going to be able to go in and do that. So, from a structure standpoint, I start with making sure that just the amount of things and where the athlete is at in their journey lines up really well From there. That's when the overall structure begins to have some larger changes to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think if you're having trouble following, you can just think about biasing as kind of like a moderate version of specializing. Specializing is like hey, we're going, we're going high end to the right with like really dialing in on this one specific thing we need to work on and I don't know how often you you can say that you've truly specialized for an athlete. I I can't say that I've ever had to like legitimately specialized CrossFit specialized.
Speaker 2:Exactly, there's no five days a week. Shit going on Like that's just you've come to the wrong place, or? Or I shouldn't say that you're. You've asked me to help you with something not related to improving at CrossFit because that happens, someone gets injured or they want to go, you know, do this crazy bike race or something like that is truly specializing, just because of, like, because of how many training pieces that we write and the fact that some of them are mandatory, some of them are non-mandatory.
Speaker 3:This is as easy as just saying, like, hey, I'm picking your, like for me, for me, my athletes, except for one of them, um, like they don't get choices, I pick, I pick the pieces for them. The one athlete who has choices, that's you know. We work together and kind of like, I give that person hey, you need to do this, this, this and this throughout the course of the week. The other stuff, you've got a little bit more free rain, because that's how, that's what works for them, that's what they've done for a long time and that's you know through cost benefit analysis we're going to say that's, that's the right, that's the beneficial way for that athlete. But for the most part, like I'm choosing, telling the athlete what they're doing, picking for them, they don't get options and that just leaves me, like I have a whole host of training pieces that I can pick from and if I'm trying to bias in a certain category, like it is not, it is not very hard to just pick and choose pieces that are going to move the needle either directly or even a little bit indirectly. Hey, I suck at pulling gymnastics. Ok, great, well, like there's a bit of a pull in a deadlift, we're making sure that you get your strict pulling in your accessory work.
Speaker 3:Hey, rope climbs in a Metcon. That's pulling any. Obviously. Your chest in a Metcon that's pulling any. Obviously your chest to bar pull-ups, your, you know farmer's carries, is that pulling? No, not directly, but it's going to make your grip stronger and I'm fine, like that. That. That also allows for some flexibility so that I'm not just, like you know, you get. You keep continuing with this example. And athlete who struggles with pulling gymnastics I'm not just going to beat the shit out of them with pulling gymnastics five days a week. The difference there that would be kind of in that specializing category versus the biasing, it's like okay, well, what things comprise an athlete that is good at pulling gymnastics?
Speaker 3:Okay they've got grip strength, they've got good technique, they have mobility from a perspective of making sure that their shoulders rotate like they're supposed to, all that sort of stuff and when you slowly start to dissect it like that, you realize you don't need to haze this person with those exact movements every day and pick and choose stuff that is going to move the needle, on the pulling specifically, or the components of pulling that make a puller a puller.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and oftentimes those things that you referenced would actually be the wrong direction to go. There are athletes who do not have access to the positions that they need to get into to be able to achieve something.
Speaker 2:It's like actually have crazy grip strength, Um, and I can tell because you're holding yourself up with your bicep the whole fucking time you're doing chest of our pull-ups, Like, like, like. That's the, you know, it's like we got to learn to like hang from a pull-up bar, like from, like. You know, I got a good grip and I can feel this in and like. What seems obvious from a remote coaching standpoint is often not what it takes to get someone you know sort of over the hump and doing better with it.
Speaker 3:I think, and I think that's a deficiency as far as like kind of coaching in general goes and especially at the high level, like so many this is, it's a similar kind of plight that college strength and conditioning coaches I think have and like it's the idea of I don't actually know how to teach a power snatch or hang power clean, but I have fucking 50 elite division one fucking monsters who are at the highest point of their life in testosterone and competitive nature that can hang power clean 405. It's going to look atrocious but like I don't know how to teach them how to do this movement and my goal is to get them stronger. So whatever it looks like we're going to like, let the boys play.
Speaker 3:And when it comes to CrossFit, I think there's a little bit of that too, where it's like there are high level athletes who, like, who have managed to work around their mobility deficiencies, for example, for so long that they've just like they've managed to work around it. But they are the exception, not the rule, and it's like the fact that there are athletes who, who move so poorly at the highest level is more just in a.
Speaker 3:It's like that's a attribute to that I, like, I would attribute just hard work of working around, something that a coach probably should have said like, hey, you can't walk around with your ass like sticking out and your chest puffed up and your lower back just bent like a fucking banana, while you do every single movement and expect to have, you know, expect to have long-term performance here. You like that? Yeah?
Speaker 2:get hunter fired up here uh, one of those every pod.
Speaker 3:That just gets me nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here for you, bud the I so there's the joke all the time that they should have like like kevin from ohio running next to noah lyles at the at the olympics, so you can see how fast he is the average person, yeah, crossfit is weird because when you, first of all, when you watch it and your heart rate is low and you see someone standing around and waiting to do another movement, at a high level, you're like you know like I'll just get the cheeto dust off here, like.
Speaker 2:But it's not just that, it's the time warp is a real thing because you, even if it was like a body weight version of the workout they're doing, you wouldn't be able to do it in the same amount of time as them.
Speaker 2:Um, and I think the intensity portion is why it looks that way because you're not feeling the same thing the other person is feeling, but the other thing is like they're doing 70 pound dumbbell overhead walking lunges, they're using a heavy rope, they're, you know, climbing a 20 foot fat rope or something like that, and you think that it's the same as double unders, unweighted lunges and like chin over bar pull-ups, like the, the version of the work yeah, the version of the workout that they're doing you literally couldn't do.
Speaker 2:You would get time capped without getting a rep of something Right. So like, like, when you watch that stuff, it's so fascinating because you can see where you think someone should go faster, and it's like one of the things you run into as a coach. Like as a coach, you're like come on, come on, come on, come on, you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go, and like it looks like they're getting crushed in this workout and they lose by like 20 seconds and you're like I lose sometimes by 20 minutes in a fucking like class workout. So that's one of the things where it's like to me always so fascinating to see the difference in levels, because in these other sports they're they're playing the same sport and it's like the leveled up version that the pros are playing is something that you have no context for.
Speaker 3:You can't replicate the speed of an NFL of a play right.
Speaker 3:It's like you can play flag football with the boys but like unless you are the only one who's not a professional NFL player and you're in that fucking and you're in that huddle and you're in that play like you can't replicate it with CrossFit. That's, I think, one of the unique things about CrossFit. I don't think it is one of the unique things is that you can, in theory, for the most part, set up a barbell plates, a climbing rope, whatever it is, a 25 foot lane and attempt to replicate the exact workout that the professional version, the professional athlete, crossfitter, is doing and see how. You know how much you would lose by you. You can't.
Speaker 2:We used to do it, we used to do it at the gym and, like I'm talking like 2011, we would have the projector with the games going and we would do some of the workouts.
Speaker 2:Oh really yeah we would do some of the workouts there, all right. So, moving on from structure, again, much more macro, getting into micro would be specificity inside of an individual piece, and I don't say workout, I say piece, because it could be strength, it could be mobility, it could be skill, it could be a Metcon, interval, monostructural, et cetera. But that's what I mean the individual workout that you're doing, depending on what category it is. When it comes to strength, it can be really nice to remote coach within strength because you can manipulate percentages. Strength, because you can manipulate percentages.
Speaker 2:We all know who needs their percentages knocked down 5%, either because of the skill level that they're at or because they keep telling you that the bench press that they had when they weighed 40 pounds heavier and they were playing football or whatever, is their current one, you know, one rep max.
Speaker 2:But then the idea of, like, how much you can change with an athlete by giving them specific mobility to do prior to a lift, how much it can change when you actually have access and you're, you know, doing activation and firing there.
Speaker 2:And then what is the actual focus of the piece? Like I'm going in to do, you know, I'm going in to do snatches today and I keep jumping backwards and I can't figure out why, and it's like, well, your arms do bend in a snatch, but if you want to send that puppy out and around, you're probably going to have to jump backwards to make that happen. You're going to have to create a counterbalance and then end up in a certain position. So it's like we're watching videos, we're doing video review. Today, my focus is, once I actively pull under, there has to be some flexion in my elbow, like I really got to pull myself under instead of using my hips to send the barbell flying out. When you have a focus like that and you are biasing something, you're on a specific program, the results of said program go up in a in a pretty big way. You can make a real big change with an athlete based on like what are we trying to accomplish within this whole thing?
Speaker 3:yeah, and I think the like that's a great example. Another example is you know I've given this to athletes at the gym. Um, or you know, say we say we have a day where we're doing some speed bench presses, where it's like 10 sets of three at 50 or 60%, kind of a classic West side barbell type speed day, and I could I'll say at the whiteboard like hey, if you came into the gym and saw this on the whiteboard with no other context, and you did 10 sets of three at 50 of your one rep max, with one minute of rest in between, you're gonna walk out of there and I'm gonna get an email like 30 minutes later like what the fuck? Why am I paying you for that? Like that was the dumbest session ever, it was easy, it wasn't hard. You come in. Okay, rewind the tape. You come in.
Speaker 3:Hey guys, the intention of this piece is to lower the bar under control and press that thing off your chest like it's a fucking car, like as hard as you possibly can for all 30 of these repetitions.
Speaker 3:And lo and behold, by the time you finish it's like I get it now, like I could not press it that fast in set seven, eight, nine and ten and I actually had to go down and wait and it's like who knew 50 of your one rep max could get so heavy.
Speaker 3:Just a super easy example of like just the intention being provided by the coach. Hey, I actually want you to light your hair on fire in the first round of this metcon and see if you can repeat it for the other three. Hey, I want you to actually go out a little bit slower and on each of these five rounds, get faster and see what that fifth round, exactly how fast you can go, kind of with that negative split, small little things like that that can unexpectedly teach you as an athlete something that you didn't know about yourself. Or, again, like you said, just provide a focus that's like ah, I see, this is how this piece is intended to be executed. Or this is the way that I can take something that is otherwise very simple, written up on the whiteboard, and actually make it you know, or written up on in in an app or wherever, and make it the most effective it can be for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when you alluded to some of the stuff that you would do inside of Metcons and intervals, you alluded more to what the focus would be, which is so powerful, like just seeing the workout and being like okay, so this is supposed to be a cardio piece, but you've been struggling on the rower and that's typically where we would back off in a merry-go-round. We're going to crank that up a little bit and see what happens, see if we can move the needle there. The other piece here is common conversations when we are writing programming for mft, for hatchet, for age group, is if we're on the fence about a rep scheme or a weight oftentimes are going to be a little bit friendlier to the masses, um, and you get to make educated guesses on that as a remote coach, you get to go in and be like.
Speaker 2:I remember in the meeting that we decided to go with four muscle-ups instead of five or six, like if I'm going to move the needle for this athlete, I got to drop them into the desert a little bit. Now it's eight or something like that. Or it's mandating that something needs to be unbroken, or again negative splits, whatever it is, the ability to go in to these individual pieces and make those changes just to see like hey, there are pulling gymnastics in this workout, but I think you know you're awesome at bar muscle-ups but I got to get you better on the. You know rope climbs are a fucking problem. So it's like delete your favorite movement, insert like similar stimulus yeah, now you hate me kind of a situation right yeah, um, all right.
Speaker 2:So the example that sparked the idea for this podcast came from what I'm currently doing on the c2 bike um, for basically trying to get myself back into shape is what I'd call it. So in a remote coaching setting, if you take some of our classic gears workouts and just really quickly, we talk about this a lot and almost everybody that listen to this podcast follows the program. But if you don't, what we try to do is categorize specific monostructural conditioning workouts into almost like strength, where we are asking you to mark down your speed, your average speed, on a workout that says it's fifth gear. That way you know the next time that you go to do it what pace you should be able to hold. If you're feeling great, I'm going to be able to push. If it is a gear above, I can probably go a couple of seconds faster. If it's a gear below, I'm going to go a couple of seconds slower.
Speaker 2:It gives you context for the workout and one of the tools that I love to use um and it could be for physical adaptation or mental adaptation is chopping up our traditional gears workouts, um, into more rounds of less time and less rest.
Speaker 2:So if we look at some of our like again, more traditional pieces, a like almost all of our third gear work is going to be around five rounds of five minutes of work in two minutes of rest, and that can be very there, can be for someone who doesn't have robust energy systems and isn't, you know, training this stuff as often.
Speaker 2:Um, I will start the progression at half of that, so you would do 10 rounds of two and a half minutes of work in one minute of rest. So that'd be the most chopped up version of it. And then from there we can use linear progression to say I'm going to go like, if that went really well, then I can jump all the way to three quarters of the work and three quarters of the rest and rounds and all of that, and we work our way back up to. I want an athlete to be able to do the five minutes on, two minutes off, for five rounds at the pace or faster than we started with chopping all of that up. Um, and it gives you a lot of context. Um, when you have more rounds, you get to play with some of the pacing a little bit more you get to if you aren't more if you're aerobically challenged like me.
Speaker 2:You can start slower and ask for negative splits. And that's one of the reasons why I love the C2 machines is you have the projected finish. So I'll always go AMRAP and it's like okay, round one, I got 617 meters, I need to get 618 or 619 or 620. And I continue to work my way through that. I find that if I'm working my way back into a specific machine, trying to get myself back into fighting shape on the machine, If I have less rounds that take longer, I am much more likely to make a mistake on my pacing. And then again, if you're aerobically challenged, once you cross that line, you've basically launched yourself off a cliff.
Speaker 2:It's going to take you a while to climb the mountain.
Speaker 3:Well, I was going to say but I don't know if this counters what you were saying or supports it but with the version that you're saying, the more rounds it's the same total volume of work, time-wise, in the same window. I also like that version to get somebody back. I guess this is your exact example. It's like kind of getting back into training, either after an injury or maybe after a layoff or whatever, but the number of rounds it makes it more difficult for you to accidentally send yourself off a cliff. So your example was like you accidentally go too hard for that five minutes on Two minutes is not going to be enough time and you might have accidentally sabotaged your remaining five minute intervals. In your example, two and a half minutes.
Speaker 3:Like everybody, anybody who knows anything knows that you can bury yourself in two and a half minutes way easier than you can bury yourself in five minutes. But when you know that it's hey, I only get one minute of rest, you you do have. You basically have more opportunities to experiment and kind of find out, without so many of the negative ramifications of like unless you absolutely just you know, go out like a bat out of hell and make the rest of your workout miserable, like odds are. You're not going to do that and, like you said, you have some more flexibility with how you can like. Oh, I can, I know like now I can speed up or I also have more opportunities to see if I can shave a second off every time and lo and behold, by the 10th interval, like I'm, I'm rowing or machining way faster than I expected to. I can bank that, you know. Bank that in the back of my head for the next time this third gear type piece rolls around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the cool thing too is you can start the progression somewhere around fourth or fifth gear and then you have context to work in both directions. Yeah, Start in the middle. I did a fourth gear piece. Now I know that if I'm going to go slower, I know it's going to be on average maybe two or three seconds per 500 or 1K if it's the bike and you can work in those directions. And again, it just gives you the opportunity, like three by 10 minutes, 30 seconds rest. That's tough. That's the kind of workout where, like a seasoned athlete, I'm just going to put right in their sheet. Like this is a you know the unsexy.
Speaker 2:You know this is your one 58 or your two oh two pace Like I would rather, if you're not feeling great today, see you go two oh three, two oh two, two oh one or you know something like that across this Um, and it's just logging that time above your zone two but should stay out of zone five, like that kind of situation and that's gonna move the needle, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like those pieces are.
Speaker 3:I think one final thing to add to this is that kind of technique of chopping up volume into very, very bite-sized chunks is like you can almost apply that to any format of workout. It's 30 muscle ups for time, like let's swing in the complete opposite direction.
Speaker 3:It's, it's 30 by one right, it's 30 sets of one and it's every 30 seconds or it's every 20 seconds. You're going to do a muscle up until you do 30 reps. Similar like with lifting. We find it works super well at the affiliate level. It's like find a one rep max split jerk versus every 90 seconds, do one split jerk, start at 50% of your one rep max something that's like borderline, negligible as far as difficulty and add a small amount of weight each time and lo and behold, 20 minutes later, 20 reps later, the athletes, like it's mechanical, everything looks really good. It's called, we call it greasing the groove, basically um you.
Speaker 2:You give athletes context for what they're trying to do, as opposed to all right class just started. 350 pounds on the bar Go yeah you have some room for error.
Speaker 3:You say like, okay, that was a bad one, okay, but it's not a throwaway, because we're still. We're still on the lighter end, we still got time. Do that weight again, make it perfect, that was perfect, great. Add 10 pounds instead of five to kind of get you back on track. It's still not so much that it's going to make you move in a different way that you were already moving. Let's just kind of continue along that, that trend.
Speaker 3:So I think that that structure works really really well for lifting, especially like high skill lifts, your snatches, your cleans and stuff like that, your gymnastics movements and then like your bitch work type stuff, where it's like I don't know how hard on this machine I'm supposed to be going or I don't have good context for what I can hold. When you chop it up a little bit like that, that can be really powerful, just giving the athlete opportunities to learn and kind of get in, get in their, their, their decision making cycle as to how they're going to improve the basically from there, when we're looking again at bitch work, um, when, when it, when we talk about focus inside of bitch work, oftentimes that can be us having their gears chart done and telling them what pace to hold.
Speaker 2:Basically Basically, um, there's, there's something to just going in and being like, all right, one 46, like I'm going to go, I'm going to go do that, I'm going to hold it. It's going to progressively get a little bit harder. Um, when it comes to personalizing, we've talked about how to do that on more of the micro level. Basically, one of the things that I love to do is to sit down every phase on my own and then get the input of the athlete to be like okay, zone two, bias, aerobic, bias, anaerobic, bias, power bias, like what are we trying to move the needle on and how could that progress throughout the season? The most ideal situation if you're working with an athlete on how to do this is bias it in zone two, then bias it in aerobic and then bias it in anaerobic. So if you had three phases, if you were really locking in on something, that is the best way to progress through. I just want to put out the disclaimer that we always do A bias in aerobic is like four out of seven weeks or something like that. You're going to do that because, again, we know that getting the other machines in the same time domain in there and all of that is going to help round everything out. Um, but that's like one of the more powerful things that we can do. And then the only other note that I that I had here was almost the opposite of chopping things up. When you have an athlete that is good at machines, um, a lot of the off season for me is making sure their RP isn't too high, like you don't. If you're good at machines, one of the best things that you can do is just go log time on that machine and potentially give some of your other resources to a different place within your program. So, like it, let's say, an athlete, uh, competes at semifinals. I don't want, over the course of the entire summer, if they're good on machines, to be looking at RPE nine or 10 every single time they sit down on a machine. We need a bit of an off season. We know that if we go a little bit slower, we're definitely working on the aerobic system and even if their pace isn't getting markedly better, their ability to recover is getting better. We know there's a lot of benefits to that sort of thing, um, so in the opposite direction that's. One tool that I use quite a bit is, like this person's a monster here. I don't need their gears to be better than last year until maybe like phase two or phase three, and I sort of like ramp them up to that point to get there.
Speaker 2:Mobility Um, this can be a really big one. I like a level of of things being observable and measurable here. When we are giving mobility advice to the masses. It can be really challenging, um, because there are a lot of different ways to attack the problem and the instances for the specific person are going to be way different. So I try to give test, retest examples to the athlete. Like, while you're doing your barbell therapy, it's very clear to me and your squat clean that something is going on with, like your tricep and your lat. And it's like, like you look like you got the external rotation, but like, why does it look like your elbows look like you got the external rotation? But like, why does it look like your elbows are like pinned to your rib cage? Like, can we do tempo front squats and go through barbell therapy while every round you go over and just really mash the shit out of your. You have someone do art on your lat or something like that and see if we can move the needle.
Speaker 2:That's I think better for a lot of type A people Like I want you to show me that this is going to do something for me, because if you're just going to make me fucking stretch like I don't know if I can handle it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the mobility thing I've kind of the mobility and the nutrition thing in a lot of ways fall in a similar category for me as a remote coach, where it's like I can, can I like, can I help in both of those categories? Yes, definitely. Am I the most qualified person to do that? Possibly not. Like I can get you pointed in the right direction with the mobility stuff. It's like this is what you should look like, this is what you look like. This is what you look like. This is what I think is going on.
Speaker 3:Here's a couple of things that I know like hey, your internal shoulder rotation is dog shit. That's why your elbows bend every time you do a kipping pull-up and that's probably why your shoulders hurt after high volume butterfly pull-ups and stuff like that. And I can kind of steer the athlete in the right direction. In a lot of instances I tell the athlete like, hey, do you have like a try? Not to, because remote coaching is expensive and I'm not blind to that. But like, in a lot of ways it's like you need a qualified physical therapist or athletic trainer or somebody or a friend of yours who can really help, especially in real time. I think that's the. That's obviously the downside to remote coaching is that I'm not watching.
Speaker 3:I can't see you in person and in three dimensions, and a video can only do so much as far as improving those sorts of things, which sucks, because mobility is like like the is kind of the foundation for so much of this. Like in my I was ranting on it earlier it's like you get that that person who just has managed to work around and compensate for deficiencies for so long that it's just like that's just kind of how their body moves, and a coach may or may not choose to say like hey, you actually need to work on this and make this better, or just like, nope, this is like we, where we're like the fucking car's packed, get in. Like get in, we're going, sort of thing. So, um, be observable and measurable, stuff for sure, um and there. But there's also and there's a lot of instances where it's easier than it needs to be.
Speaker 3:The squat holds is like one of my favorite examples. Or you know longtime camp attendee and misfit Julia, like she really took that to heart and her overhead position improved just because she spent a whole lot of time. The old K-Star adage of spend time in the position of restriction is like. It's the thing. Like you suck at squat holds, you suck in the bottom of the squat.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Get in the fucking bottom of the squat and spend some time there, get comfortable and like eventually your body is going to going to respond to those changes. Is it going to be perfect? I don't know if, if you're moving perfectly, it might be perfect, but I think like the mobility is always a tough, a tough one from a remote coaching perspective for me, because it's like this is so important, but I'm and I know just enough about this stuff to be dangerous. But to help make you correct this correctly through a Google sheet is very difficult.
Speaker 2:And who knows what the level of education is. A lot of times they're coaches, which can be helpful. A lot of times they're students of the game and they watch the K-Star videos and all these. Basically, what we're looking for is, hey, we, and if you need suggestions, that's fine, but we need to figure out what's actually going to move the needle for you. You're going to feel a difference in doing this thing.
Speaker 2:Um, so a lot of times it is just about the athlete like being willing to to look up three or four you know lat things that they can do for their lats or things that they can do for their hip and then, okay, this is the one that works well for me, and that's one of the times when it's really helpful to have an athlete come visit that's doing remote coaching because, then it's like not only can you show them different ways to mobilize, but you can also set an expectation of. This is just what it looks like for a professional to warm up to start getting to start squatting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there's also a lot of instances too where, like the I don't know how many, maybe you you can answer it as a question but like, how many athletes have you ever coached remotely who have come to you having been taught crossfit like correctly from the beginning and it's like probably not as probably less?
Speaker 3:than half I'm willing to bet. But like, yeah, I think of the the down again, kind of a like the remote coaching stuff is important, but what? The? The unfortunate side of that is that an athlete is saying like there's nobody qualified to coach me in person, so I need to outsource this to somebody else remotely.
Speaker 3:And it's the case for sure that a lot of athletes, especially at not even a high level, like a moderate level somebody who's going into a CrossFit gym is not a liability in a CrossFit class.
Speaker 3:They move reasonably well, they scale themselves or they don't need scaling at all. It's like that person is the last person to get attention from a CrossFit coach and that CrossFit coach may be moderately qualified or may be completely unqualified to help that person and they just spend months or years doing things incorrectly. And you've just established so many poor movement patterns or so so many poor kind of um, yes, like sequences, muscle memory in your head that it just takes so much longer to relearn that. And it like a lot of it's mobility, a lot of it's just the nuance of like. You know, you may even have an athlete who claims they have a mobility issue and then you meet them in person, start working with them and it's just like no, you're, you're fine, you just move like a donkey like we. Just nobody ever fucking taught you how to snatch correctly. And it's like let's learn how to do the thing correctly.
Speaker 2:Here's a couple of of small things. Your broad jump squat snatch. I'm so confused as to why it's hard to support the bar after jumping two feet forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the best I can hope for that there's no real good answer to that question. The best I can hope for is a really healthy level of curiosity and like a level of optimism. Within the curiosity like, like I slash, we can figure this out. Um, because people expecting people out there in the world generally to be as obsessed with the finer details of these things as I am is not a realistic expectation. Um, that's why somebody's gonna come come to me to try and figure things out.
Speaker 2:I don't think we need to spend a ton of time on the category of accountability.
Speaker 2:We talked about it to begin the episode, but there is a very, very powerful connection between like they do the studies on when someone pays for something versus when they get it for free.
Speaker 2:Like they get this really valuable thing for free and they end up just throwing it away or not using it or not taking advantage of it. And it's like the adage of you know, a perfect program not executed pales in comparison to a mediocre program executed really well in comparison to a mediocre program executed really well. So the idea of the accountability associated with the price tag of a remote coaching and then having a person who's like personally invested in what you're trying to do. There's a very powerful impact related to that. So if you struggle with the idea of like I'm not disciplined or motivated and I I I need someone to help me find that version of myself. That's where I think the accountability piece comes in, and some athletes need it a lot, and some athletes are self starters who really just want to make sure that their program is tailored really well to them want to make sure that their program is tailored really well to them.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, not a whole lot to to add on that. Uh, I think the only one thing I guess only one thing I add to that is the that that coach athlete sort of 50, 50 agreement relationship.
Speaker 3:We've talked a lot about the things that we can, as far as the tools that we have at our disposal, to uh customize and modify the program, which is a part of what that remote coach relationship is. The other 75% is actually just kind of the relationship that you build with the athlete. I don't have athletes that I don't like working with athletes who want me to plug in, tell me exactly what pace to row at, tell me 100% of exactly what I'm supposed to do, because I understand why somebody would want that. The problem is that to me, that person is like there's an element of I want you to be able to think for yourself.
Speaker 3:As part of this relationship as well, I want part of moving the needle in your fitness is that you're getting smarter too, because if I'm telling you exactly how to approach a piece, exactly what pace to row at, exactly what weights to use, exactly what percentages, then I'm effectively the remote control operator for you, the drone. And then if you're somebody who wants to compete like I can't, like I'm not out on the floor with you you want me to tell you exactly how to, how to approach this test, how to approach this workout. Like I can't do that for you. And there's an element move the needle. There is a healthy dose of like hey, you, like I understand you're, you are paying for this and, like, I owe you a certain level of of service and there's an agreement here, but the expectation is that you you are giving enough of a shit to you know. Hold up your end of the deal, so to speak.
Speaker 3:Um and just make sure that you you are ultimately like, you are responsible for the outcome of this, this program, barring a coach who is completely separated from that relationship, which doesn't really happen. So, like, for the most part, it's like hey man, like, here's the program, I got a 10, 10 to 15 years of evidence that says that it works pretty good, and thousands of athletes and you know dozens of jerseys hanging up on a wall that says it's pretty good.
Speaker 2:So, like, either you're the one exception to the rule and the program just doesn't work for you, or maybe it's you and, yeah, the like people that think that you can get like, that I can give you programming via like osmosis or like make this program happen to me.
Speaker 3:Coach is such a red flag happen to me?
Speaker 2:yeah like I, like this is this is my expectation of what you're going to do for me, and it's like, if that's worded in the wrong way, it insinuates that I can do the work for you, which, like that, should be a red flag for yourself. Basically, I think, last but not least, definitely not least, especially at the higher levels, is the, the mental game of.
Speaker 2:CrossFit, dating all the way back to the beginning, greatest adaptation takes place between the ears. That's 100% the case and becomes very complicated at the highest level for CrossFitters and to me, one of the reasons I put this at the end is because the journey of the relationship you have with an athlete that wants to compete. It goes from what feels trivial in terms of like yeah, yeah, yeah, make you better rower. And like we're going to learn what to do with your legs and the muscle up, and like all of these things that we have tried and true methods of helping someone improve on. And I don't want to discount any of those things, but once we get through a lot of that, so much of it is about like, what makes you tick? What expectations do you set for yourself? What are your goals?
Speaker 2:How do you interact with, with the landscape of competing, especially in person? Like how, how do you feel when you go do that? What is the vibe that you need in the warmup area? How much direction do you need? There are so many elements to this that become this art form of putting your athlete in the best position to win and that becomes I've been able to watch some of your progressions, hunter with athletes and you just see how much it changes from what's the strategy in this workout and like what are you going to focus on this thing? To like what's the vibe like, what's the schedule, what's the warm up and you like, learn to adapt to the different athletes. Right.
Speaker 2:Cause you get like you. You might, like I could, go from the games where someone needs like every minute planned out to the master's games where, like I don't I don't know where Kenzie is I can't find her.
Speaker 2:Like you know what I mean. So, like you, you deal with so many different persons. Yeah, yeah, you deal with so many different personalities and like what motivates a certain person? Like some people want, like every once in a while, you to step in and be like, hey, get your shit together, let's fucking go. And if you say that to the wrong person and they start crying 30 seconds before the workout starts, like that's not going to go so well either.
Speaker 2:So um it's. It's a really fascinating journey to make your way into developing the relationship with the athlete for long enough that that becomes like the most important element of what you do for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you know before, before you go into like, I think like kind of the culmination of that remote coaching relationship is getting to work with the athlete in person in either a competitive atmosphere whether that's in a, you know, at a semifinal or a games or or something like that or they come to a training camp or something like that and you get to like kind of put all of the conversations that you've had via text message or via video call kind of into, you know, into into actual place. Hopefully you know you're not in the back in the warm up and you know an athlete warm up area and you don't know whether or not you should tell the athlete like hey, you need to get your shit together, or not. Like, hopefully, hopefully you've developed the relationship enough to that point where you know whether that's the appropriate thing to say, and when it is, if it ever is, to that athlete. Or is it more appropriate to you know? You know, talk, talk them off a ledge. It's like I know this person, I know this person's head, you know it's handstand push-ups.
Speaker 3:It's not a strong movement. I'm in a weird spot on the leaderboard. I need this workout to be damage control, but I also can't fucking fall another five spots on the leaderboard like. That approach goes very drastically from like hey, what's the strategy in this workout? To like hey, how do we mentally approach this thing, so that you know I'm more concerned about the next event than maybe I am this event. And then or there's the instance of like hey, I don't need you to worry about what's going to what, you know what the next two or three events are. I need you to worry about literally the next lift in this, in this lifting event, and making sure that you hit lifts one, two and three like we planned. So I think all of that, all of that, that mental aspect and the the coach athlete relationship, that, unless, unless the first interaction you have with that athlete is in a competitive setting, uh, right like that, that has kind of buffed out beforehand.
Speaker 2:For all the coaches out there listening. One rite of passage that if you want to go down this path that you have to go through is the fittest, strongest, most skilled person that you've ever worked with in a gym setting comes in 27th in the event, and you don't know where that person went. You don't know how it's possible. These people literally could come to the gym, write their favorite workout down on the whiteboard and get waxed by your athlete and then we get into a competition setting and that's not necessarily the case. That's when your eyes open to. We did the right things, we did the mobility, we got the structure right. They're crushing it. They're PRing left and right. What was this?
Speaker 3:What the?
Speaker 2:hell's going on there and like some people aren't cut out for competition. But it's not because they couldn't be, it's because, you know maybe we talked a little bit before about the idea of like optimistic curiosity they're willing to explore the different places you might have to go, which could be pretty heavy, honestly, if you have that level of a mental block, like that could be, you know the writing could be on the wall for them if it happens enough times. But that's just something that you go through earlier on in your coaching career oftentimes and it completely changes the way that you see what remote coaching is and what you can do for an athlete specifically.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the first time you have an athlete, you get them ready to get into a corral and it's like why are you crying? Stop crying that like what?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, it's like short circuit hold on a second hold on but then you have the athletes who cry and go crush it.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean like there's a lot of a lot of things. I love it, though. Every athlete cries every single fucking athlete cries, and the first time they apologize to me, I'm like, dude, I've been watching people cry for a long time, like you just trained. You did 612 sessions that are leading to this one moment. I can understand why. Adrenaline is high, emotions are high, it's fine, but it's always like they're like so embarrassed, so like I can't believe I cried and I'd be. It would be weird if you didn't cry. I was just waiting for you to cry for the first time so we could like move on.
Speaker 3:Yes, check that box and carry on. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um. So this podcast went on for significantly longer than I expected it to Um, but I should have known that, like what I consider to be the epitome of my life's work, I might be able to ramble a little bit about Um, so I will. I'll go first on final thoughts here. Um circle all the way back to the beginning of the episode. You can go to misfitathleticscom. Under the coaching dropdown is remote coaching. Tell you what pricing looks like. You can apply that application gets sent to me.
Speaker 2:We have a conversation about whether it would be a good fit or not. We do have some openings right now, which typically is not the case. So, again, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode and I also wanted to just put out there the way that we think about certain things. And if you are a go-getter and want to implement certain things into your own situation, go-getter and want to implement certain things into your into your own situation, um, you know, go for it and get on discord and shoot me a DM and ask questions. You know I'm willing to to help within that way. If you're a subscriber of the program um, if you're watching on YouTube, seb's got the got the um remote coaching application pulled up here. Um so just misfitathleticscom coaching, remote coaching. Any final thoughts hunter?
Speaker 3:um, no, I think it's like one. One thing that can be helpful is like you don't like applying for remote coaching doesn't mean you're getting remote coaching. So if you're like I, I would just I would let me let me start over. If you're curious, I would just I would let me let me start over. If you're curious, you should ask. You should ask us about it. Join the discord. It's totally free.
Speaker 3:Um, like you know, applying doesn't commit you to it, cause, like I said, it's not a like personalized coaching personalized anything in this day and age is not super cheap, um, and if it's something that you're like thinking that might benefit you, but you're not sure, uh, it's always worth having a conversation to just say like and and and. One of the things that probably probably more to our detriment than anything that we'll tell you is like, this probably isn't what you want. Um, it's like you, right, maybe you don't need remote coaching. The number of people that I would, I would oftentimes direct to like, if you have access to it, getting in the door of a quality affiliate where you can receive good coaching in person, at least maybe initially, can really help move the needle for you.
Speaker 3:If you don't have access to that. Obviously, remote coaching is a really good avenue, and don't think of it necessarily exclusively as like I need to be a high level competitor. We talked about a whole bunch of examples at the beginning of the episode where it's just like I'm just a person who cares about this enough that I'm willing to pay a little bit more for some level of personalization. Maybe it's accountability, maybe it's just need this person to help me structure out my training so that I can train and move on with the other dozen responsibilities in life I have. So there's lots of different avenues that can be taken with remote coaching.
Speaker 2:Very true, can we do it?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. You can head to teammisfitcom to get signed up for our affiliate programming. That is available on PushPress, sugarwad and StreamFit with a two-week free trial. Just click the sign up now button on teammisfitcom. Obviously, all of the programs, remote coaching, all that good stuff that we talked about More in this episode will be available at misfit athleticscom. Um, all of this stuff can be found just by going to our Instagram clicking the link in bio. Um, and hopefully my Superbowl predictions and time at fitness of the coast is exactly what I want it to be. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 3:Later.