Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Strength vs Conditioning: The Perfect Training Path - E.347
The secret to athletic improvement isn't finding the perfect program at the perfect time – it's showing up consistently and putting in the work day after day. This powerful truth forms the foundation of Misfit Athletics' Off-Season Block One, launching March 24th with a two-week free trial that arrives strategically on the heels of the CrossFit Open.
In this special edition podcast, we're joined by CrossFit athlete Paige Semenza who brings her unique perspective as both competitor and first-time programmer for this groundbreaking training block. Together we unpack the philosophy behind offering two distinct tracks – Strength Bias and Conditioning Bias – allowing athletes to personalize their approach while still following structured progressions that build foundations for long-term success.
We dive deep into the programming methodology, exploring how volume progressions in lifts like back squats and strict press can yield remarkable strength gains without the psychological barriers of one-rep max attempts. You'll discover why we're emphasizing running and C2 biking during this block, with Paige sharing how Zone 2 training transformed her competitive performance despite initially seeming counterintuitive to many CrossFitters.
The beauty of this off-season approach lies in its simplicity and focus. Rather than attempting to improve everything simultaneously, we've created a framework that allows you to prioritize either strength development or conditioning while still addressing gymnastics skill work through weekly progressions. This isn't about flashy, ego-driven training – it's about building the foundations that will support dramatic improvements when competition season returns.
Whether you're recovering from the Open or preparing for the next stage of competition, this programming block offers the perfect balance of structure and flexibility. Sign up for your two-week free trial on March 24th and discover how consistent, purposeful training can transform your fitness journey one training session at a time.
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We're all misfits. Alright, you big, big bunch of misfits, you're a scrappy little misfit, just like me.
Speaker 2:Biggest bunch of misfits I ever said either. Special edition Misfit podcast. This week has been a doozy. We did the 25.3 recap show, we did the Misfit affiliate phase podcast and now we are jumping back on to talk to you about off-season block one, and we have a special guest today. Now, normally we would talk about Paige, we would talk about your athlete accolades, but this is actually the very first program at Misfit Athletics that's being sent out to the masses and diagram, sort of crossover of athlete coach, and now we're adding programmer to that. Um. So, first and foremost, welcome to the show yeah, thanks, I'm excited.
Speaker 2:I'm a little nervous, but I'm excited you know I haven't been nervous to do one of these in a long time but I was nervous to do the first like hundred, so I don't know when you hit your stride. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Me and Sebastian talked about that.
Speaker 2:The good thing is you know what you can't tell. Typically Like that's always been my tip for people I'm like when you watch someone, can you tell that they're nervous? And like sometimes you can, it's like, oh shit, but like more often than not, nothing, like you can't tell at all, and that makes me personally feel a little bit better. So when we started all this, like I would never have been the kind of person to get in front of a camera, microphone, anything, no fucking chance.
Speaker 1:Now me and mckenna. Yeah, now me and mckenna, like we love listening to drew, took me a little while, um, all right.
Speaker 2:So monday, march 24th, misfit athleticscom link in bio on social media. Take yourself over to fitter. There is a two week free trial to get signed up for offseason block number one. And I want to open the podcast by talking a little bit about why would we put a program out on the heels of the open one week later? Hey, jump back in, let's go. Hey, jump back in, let's go.
Speaker 2:Um, and it really has to do with send, like setting the right narrative, putting the right idea out there into the world of what it takes to improve. It's not the perfect program at the perfect time. And the stars align and I'm finally motivated and I'm going to go into the gym and I'm going to work my ass off for one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, five weeks. It's because our examples, the people that have the quote unquote tricks, um, like page show up and then they show up again, and then they show up again, and then they show up again and hopefully they learn while they're doing that and that's basically it, like that's the whole idea. So I don't know if that resonates with you page, but I'm just like we're gonna jump right back in and it's very intentional, um, because we got fucking. There's always work to do always, yeah, I um.
Speaker 1:You know, usually, year after year, my season is extended, right, I, I get to the, the next level of, but I think back to 2021 when my season ended with the virtual semifinal Um, and I was disappointed. I was also very fueled by it to get to, to stop taking shortcuts and to really dial things in and go all in, and that started when that season ended. So you know, whether it's the open or it's the next phase of the of the season or whenever, that is like you, you'll start slow and that's okay, but you're starting. So I think there is a lot of excitement that could come from that with reframing your mindset to you know it's something positive.
Speaker 2:People that don't go through anything are kind of boring. Like, adversity creates a level of complexity, it teaches you about life and I don't want to talk people out of trying to be great, because that would be a bad promotion for offseason block one but the mountaintop actually isn't even the mountaintop. And that's when you start to realize like, once again we come all the way back around at the beginning and it's the process, it's the thing. You wouldn't have been able to make it there if what you do on a day-to-day level wasn't special for you. Um, so again, like, come on, man, it's like six, seven, eight days after my retest, yes, it is like, and it's not gonna be. We're not gonna like. Like blow you out of the water with the things that you have to accomplish. Um, and obviously that's kind of the point of this podcast and we'll get into it One of my favorite times of year because of the strength bias track and conditioning bias track there will almost always be unless it's competition peaking a way for you to personalize your programming at Misfit Athletics.
Speaker 2:One size fits all no, no, no, there is athletics. One size fits all no, no, no, there is no one size fits all for this thing that we do, especially because there's so many things that you need to be good at and the strength and conditioning bias is is a way for us to narrow in more because there are less choices, like once you decide strength or conditioning bias, then you have no choices, like your program's laid out for you, and I think that can be fun for misfits sometimes, like I won't fucking choose my third piece, my fourth piece, whatever, like coach, tell me what to do that sort of thing. I'm wondering. You have remote clients, you have people that reach out to you.
Speaker 1:You have remote clients, you have people that reach out to you. What is your path to helping someone decide or you deciding for someone which they should follow open? Um, you know, maybe we didn't have a strength component like a strength strength component, so it might be kind of hard to dictate dictate based off that. But, um, especially with my athletes that I'm working with, a lot of it comes down to um just kind of listening to where their mindset wants to drift towards. Um.
Speaker 1:I have an athlete specifically who, um was really kind of bummed out that his conditioning didn't feel like he was up to par.
Speaker 1:So to get him to buy in, I know that like, okay, if you are motivated to get better with your conditioning, I think we're going to start there. That's kind of like, you know, I think if you have the mindset of one way or the other, I think that's one way to easily dictate which way you're going to buy in. So if I know that I am really attracted to lifting right now and I know I can buy into that and not have to fight the resistance so much, okay, let's start there. You have two nine-week blocks that you get to zero in on one thing and if you feel like you're primed up from those first nine weeks. You can switch over to the conditioning from there. Um so, but as far as working with my athletes, specifically, I want to know what's going to get them to buy in the most and if, if I'm not in agreement with them, where can I sprinkle in things that I can kind of show them? Um, you know where they may have some weaknesses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a extremely important and powerful answer and, I think, one where you have to go through trying to force an athlete to do something. Um, you have to kind of go through that a little bit. It's, you know, there's I don't know, some sort of quote here and horses and drinking water and all that. And, like most of the people, most of the coaches and most of the athletes, know the answer to these questions already. But it's more complicated than that and you just addressed exactly why, like, do you need to be fitter from a cardiovascular and muscular sort of endurance standpoint? Most people are probably going to say yes, like I think there's probably 60 to 70 percent of the people should be um, in a black and white scenario on the conditioning track, and then there's 20 to 30 percent who should be on the strength track, and then there are some people that truly are sort of living in that gray area.
Speaker 2:But if we're talking about the idea of delayed gratification and putting work in and chugging along and making incremental growth over the course of an entire year, should you feel motivated and excited about the first step in that process?
Speaker 2:Probably, um, and one of the reasons why there are two off season blocks that are like this um, you get the opportunity to say I don't need to be a strength bias athlete, but I want to, um, and I'll hopefully be in the right place mentally and physically when OS2 comes around to be a conditioning biased athlete. So that's a really, really good answer and a really important one for people to understand. Now, that doesn't give everyone permission to go on the opposite side of the coin that they should be on. But if you are, you know, sort of down in the dumps a little bit about the open or something to that effect, and or just want to switch up the style of training that you have but like, have it, have you know, sort of a concept behind it and a progression to it, then there's nothing wrong with kind of sticking with what you're already good at.
Speaker 2:Um, okay, one of the things that, if you listen to this podcast on a regular basis, um, they've heard me talk about um I think we talked about it quite a bit in the energy systems podcast was how could we get somebody better at monostructural conditioning, um, when some of our sets and reps and rest periods just seem like a lot when you first get started. So like, if we use an example of someone and I'm going to completely make this up so let's say it's three rounds of seven minutes on two minutes off on a machine if you're not a misfit or you're like not as great on machines or maybe not quite as aerobic just kind of feels like a lot, like it really feels like kind of an aggressive start to things. If you take that exact same workout and cut it in half and it's three and a half minutes on one minute off, you're going to get over the course of however many rounds you do the same work to rest um throughout, but it's just going to feel much more manageable. Um, and this is actually something that I've personally tested. I already tested off season one all the way through and I'm in off season two right now. I'm doing a lot of it on the concept to bike and, like my leg endurance has completely changed and it was. It's been like 10 or 11 weeks.
Speaker 2:Um, I did a assault bike sprint piece in my garage the other day and if you know me, by the way, just shout out to that fucking machine like it is a nightmare maintenance wise. As an affiliate owner and I know that the echo bike is like the thing and it's really well made and it counts probably more. You know one-to-one but that as a tool, like I hadn't done it in a while and I was doing 20 second sprints and like I my recovery was walking, I was. I would walk all the way down my driveway and then come back and then you know kind of flush on the bike, the, the feeling that I had in my chest is just like you forget what the assault bike feels like. But back to the point three 20 seconds sprints like four ish minutes rest, 23 calories, 21 calories, 20, 19 calories, me doing 23 to 19. If you have any idea who I am, paige saw me do two sprints on a rower and they were like six hours apart.
Speaker 1:That's true, that's true.
Speaker 2:It's like holy shit, and I used to not be able to sprint on the C2 bike at all. I'd have to do like a very controlled send like three or four notches off. So if, like, I can get that thing down to like a 110, my sprints have to be at like a 130 because I just I can't do a second one or a third one, my legs just like lock up, and that's also been working. So basically, what we're doing here is we're we're taking those more manageable chunks in off season one. They're going to be cut right in half and then in off season two we're going to put you halfway between that and the real gears chart, which will start kind of in the fall. And man, it works really well.
Speaker 2:Like one trick that I do have in the programming notes you guys will be able to see, but like start somewhere where you're positive you can hold it and use the projected distance. So it says you know, I got 2, got 2146 meters on this interval. I use the projected finish to just just one more, two more, three more, five more meters, whatever it is, and I try to do that in every single round. Um keeps me closer to that like zone four and out of, like I'm a point of no return kind of guy, like you know, a couple rounds, mix it up and then I'll see you later, like way later.
Speaker 2:Um, and it's, it's worked incredibly well for me and it's weird because I like started as an old school CrossFitter, like head through the wall kind of a thing. Um, but it's working incredibly well and, um, I'm just really excited for you guys to get to follow the full progression. Normally we sprinkle them in as non-mandatory. This is, every single person is following the progression all the way through off season one, off season two and then into phase one. Like right now, it's a bunch of words on a piece of paper that people are going to read.
Speaker 1:But if you guys execute like it's going to make a huge difference. It really is. Yeah, I I usually get like a little I won't like, I won't say jealous, but I do get a little jealous this time of year because people are all, a lot of people are getting ready for that off season block and again I'll be moving on to the next phase of competition with semifinals. So I never truly get that off-season fire. You know a lot of people can come in and I think the best thing about this time of year is less is more. So being able to give the intensity to those one or two bitch work pieces, being able to give the intensity to a Metcon, you really can get a lot of quality work out of that. And I think that's the one thing that I do love about the offseason is you don't have to go and spend hours in the gym, you get to get in there, get after it.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, the machine, you know, obviously we love, we love our bitch work here. So, um, always an exciting thing to talk about.
Speaker 2:I get a lot of buy-in too. Um, let's say, uh, semifinals or games, athlete, they were injured or didn't get the. You know, things didn't go the way that they expected them to go. I tell them, I put in a lot of notes of like rp6, seven things like that, and they do that over the course of the whole summer. And then phase zero comes around and they pr every single thing because none of it is like insurmountable on a daily basis. Like you go in, you do the work and and that's why I'm I'm really pushing for an off season one to have a lot of negative splits, um, only because that proves that you didn't overdo it or like misjudge the entire situation.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and it gives you those mental wins as well. Right, like to know that. I went in. I started at this pace, I ended at this pace and I increased my effort each round, but did it consistently. Um, those are. Those are confidence boosters. Whether you confidence boosters, whether you know it or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's run and bike season. Man, the running should speak for itself. Like it, it's you on your own two feet, it's you moving your body through space. It's like such a natural form of expressing your fitness, your skill. Like, like, obviously we see some CrossFitters out there that you might want to get some insurance on your pavement cause they might just, you know, pound their foot through the earth, um, so there's there's so much to it, and being able to give people the space just to to get out there and run um to express their fitness and to improve their fitness, I think is really powerful. Run um to express their fitness and to improve their fitness, I think is really powerful. And then the C2 bike.
Speaker 2:Like the amount of times the sport asks you to have the like, the most absurd leg endurance um is, you know, that's like basically the sport you know they talk about. Like, like quad, quad dominance in the sport of crossfit, um, and being able to move your legs in that 80 to 90 rpm range, um, the amount of times we're about to ask you to uh, just manipulates musculature and the slow twitch stuff and the ability to flush waste in such a powerful way. But we need time, like again. That that's why this is a good thing that we're so far away, because these things it's not like like. It's not like you try page, you try way harder than I do on those days. You've just logged way more hours than I have and had way more sessions to it. That sort of thing Cause like, if I'm making the progress that I am in nine to 15 weeks, what happens if I do that for a year or two?
Speaker 1:that kind of thing. Yep, yeah, yeah. That's how I felt kind of with the zone two sessions, our Maffetone session, starting those way back and fully buying in again after 2021, when I didn't qualify and just telling myself I'm going to commit to these. It's one zone two session a week eventually became two and then in a peaking schedule there might be three. Um, but just getting to log time on my feet help me learn like, help me fall in love with running, like I love going on a zone to run when it's now springtime and the sun is out and you get to go out on a running trail or you know, just get out in nature, put some headphones on. Yeah, it's just, it's. It's fun when we get to take our fitness outside and this is that time of year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people, what you're saying sounds foreign to people, but like I'm a meathead through and through and I started to like running and it's like, hey, maybe you sucked at pacing, maybe because the every like four years when I was a kid and he just cooked down the road and never run again, come back just dying. And it's like such a beautiful, like exaggeration of why people don't like running. Like when you get on the C2 rower and it says 132 and you're doing you know long repeats. Like that's dumb, like that makes absolutely no sense, but those alarm bells don't go off with the running. So you get a chance now to because there is weekly zone to running for the conditioning bias people. You get the opportunity to kind of slow the fuck down and realize that like it's actually better to be outside and in the sun and all that than it is to be cooped up in a gym on a machine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and spoiler alert, you are going to go slow. You like you have to and it gets better over time. I remember talking with McKenna when she first started all of her zone, two running, um, and you guys biased that for a while but it was like I feel like I'm trudging through mud, I'm going so slow, but again, if we're going based off heart rate, um, you have to check your ego and just accept that. Okay, this is where my heart rate is at, this is the pace I'm going and it's going to get better over time yeah, a lot of people will have to walk in bouts and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2:What would be wrong is if your ego was invited to this session and you just pushed into zone three, zone four, so that you could keep running, like that's not going to help anybody of the block. Is this idea of segmented training versus sports specific? And the only reason I want to bring it up is because the programming that was happening, leading into the open, is very different from the programming that happens coming out of the open in a traditional sense. Sports specific training is an athlete playing their sport. Um, so they're in the gym and they are doing machines and bench press and whatever it is that they would do for their sport, but then eventually they actually are going and playing a traditional sport.
Speaker 2:Ours is weird because the sport and the training it's a little confusing knowing what is what, but we can lay some really incredible foundations if we pull the pieces out that we struggle with under intensity. So if you do struggle with the weightlifting, hey, let's do two lifts a day instead of one and really focus on them with no intensity outside of it. The only intensity is the focus and the sort of power output that you bring to it. Gymnastics is a huge one, right? Like we have skill progressions, that that basically build on each other every single week for the nine weeks or across the entire 18 weeks. And learning how to practice that thing before, like, like a fresh set of muscle ups, is not the same as either muscle ups after rowing or muscle ups when your heart rate's in the 170s 180s like two just completely different things.
Speaker 2:Um, so we're going to be able to do that. And then we've already addressed the machines a little bit. But, like you want to find out how to like the idea of showing up and having incremental process and learning, like it's hard not to learn on the machines. It's easy not to learn in a crossfit workout, like what the fuck just happened to me. The machines, like I'm staring at that stupid number for maybe 30 minutes, maybe you know if it's zone two, maybe an hour, hour and a half. So, like, um, we will still have Metcons, intervals, all that stuff, but they're simple, like, they're very much just like stimulus based, because we are checking the boxes off already with the skill, with the lifting, with the conditioning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I again like, like I said before, with less being more. Um, in addition to that, knowing that you have nine weeks of progressions or potentially 18 weeks of progressions, like give yourself grace to actually start small. So like, if I'm going into a toaster bar skill piece and it's, you know, six sets of smooth toaster bar or whatever we're going to have popping up here, I don't have to hit my grand number of. I'm going to go 20 reps for six sets, like okay well, what are you going to do next?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like, what are you going to do next week when it's meant to go up in reps? So, um, you know saying, all right, I'm going to start off with six perfect reps for six sets, Um, and you're going to see that over time nine weeks, 18 weeks, whatever it is First of all feel better and then eventually feel better at a Metcon, and then you're hanging on for sets of 14 or 16 or whatever the number is.
Speaker 2:So, just like the running, it's okay to start slow or to start small For sure. So I have 50 bullet points on these notes to my left here and I could. I could talk a little bit about each bullet point, but we're not going to. That would be, that would be dangerous. Maybe we'll do like a Patreon for people that want Drew's nine hour episodes at some point, which I honestly would be fucking stoked. I was joked that like I would love an affiliate class to be like four people in two hours long, that would be my idea. I don't know what the membership I'd have to charge to make that happen.
Speaker 2:But, like we're, I want to. I want to go deep. So here's what I'm going to do. I am going to read all of the categories to you, paige, and I want you to let me know what sort of comes to mind. It can be from a macro, like overarching, like oh wow, we're squatting and pulling. Or it can be like, oh, I like this specific progression, that sort of deal. So we're going to start with strength, and this is for everyone. So this will going to start with strength and this is for everyone. So this will start to help people wrap their minds around the difference between the conditioning bias and the strength bias. These five lifts on the five days of training are for everyone. Everyone will do these five. So we have the five rep max library deadlift progression, strict press volume progression, tempo pull snatching, positional squat, cleans and back squat volume progression. What sticks out to you on that list?
Speaker 1:Probably positional squat cleans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know why that one just kind of like day one, day five. We have the back squat volume progression. We will do the quote-unquote slow lifts and get you stronger. Now, if that's the case, then we also simultaneously probably should be working on getting you better at the more technical lifts. That's really when things come together, like when your back squats feeling really good and you've dialed in your technique is a lot of times when you PR your squat, clean your squat, snatch, you know shoulder to overhead, things of that nature.
Speaker 2:And here's what I'll say. I'm going to say volume progression three to five times, and I'm really excited because this is the very first time that this will be fully implemented on the website, and the reason why is because the instructions can be confusing, but it's like the best lifting program that exists, so I think it's worth it. Um so, basically what you would be looking at, let's say it's day one it um so basically what you would be looking at. Let's say it's day one. You have three sets of 12 on the back squat and it says 12 at 50 percent, 12 at 50 plus five pounds, 12 at 50 plus 10 pounds. All that means is each set that you do. You're going to add five pounds and then the next week you're going to add five pounds to all those sets. So it'll start at the plus five and then go to plus 10 and then go to plus 15.
Speaker 2:When and if you fail, you then have to go to tens or eights or sixes. So the issue here from me writing it for everyone is super easy to do as a remote coach. You just keep telling them what weights to do. They say, they say I didn't get it this week. You reverse back a couple weeks and you start on tens. Super easy, um, and it works very well. Like we've had, people on sets of 12 ride it for like eight to nine weeks, which is just crazy because it's the like, the old like. If you have, you pick up the baby cow and walk it up the hill, but then you, you pick it up every day. You should be able to pick it up by the time it's a full grown cow Probably not going to happen.
Speaker 2:But linear progression is very powerful. So there will be a video where that basically says click me if you failed and I will explain to you where to go.
Speaker 1:At that point oh my God, it works so well, though I couldn't like shoulder pressing right For sure Press.
Speaker 2:I did it for for strict pressing. I've done it for the people who have that block on, like like the dudes who can't squat 405, but they can hit 375 for 19. Like it's those numbers that really get in the way. So we start and we ride to a point where it's like so obvious that their max or their 10 or max or eight or six or four or two, like, are so much higher than they perceive them to be.
Speaker 2:There isn't really much danger in a set of 12, which is funny because it's way worse, but it's not psychologically worse failing a single. Oh my god, it's the end of the world. My masculinity points have dropped through the floor. I'm a fucking loser. Um, that's what's cool about the sets of 12 and the sets of 10 is like, oh, all right, fucking might as well, you know, cinch up the belt and get this started. It's not the same like psychological warfare as a one rep max. So we're doing that on strict press back squat, and then you'll hear here in a second that the strength bias people are also doing it on bench press.
Speaker 1:Um, and now I see how that sticks out.
Speaker 2:It just works. It works so well and I am willing I'll fuck.
Speaker 2:I'll fuck it on a phone call with all of you. Call me, email me, dm me. I know there's 46 places to contact me now, but do all of them. I will explain to you exactly how to do this. It works that well and I think I've got it handled, but you guys can let me know. All right, strength bias additions. So this will be the second set of lifts that all of these strength bias people will follow. We have bench press, volume progression, touch and go power clean, heavy front squat, strict press, speed work you know I'm going to talk about that for two hours. Um and heavy power snatch. What do you see here, paige?
Speaker 1:The speed work stuck out to me, I think at first the positional squat clean and the heavy front squat I would pair up and that's more. I was biasing towards the athlete in me, knowing that I've been working on my front squatting so much. But as far as this goes, the upper bot, like I just you know CrossFit's become so much of like a gymnastics pulling, pressing, like having that upper body strength, uh, preventative maintenance, all that you know good stuff, along with just being strong as shit. Um, I'm going to say strict press, speed work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you do it right, it's like the return on investment is absurd, um, and we do our best to coach it, to create videos around it, to talk too much about it on the podcast, um, and I will say that it does work a little bit better for athletes who are already powerful. It's almost like doubly unfair. But if you can convince yourself to get in a really good position and press the bar up as fast as you can, as if it does way close to your, you know, one rep max and you do that for eight sets of three and you do it for nine weeks, you're going to notice a huge difference, especially because we are also doing the volume progression. Like that brings those two worlds together and it's actually those two things that made me a hundred times better at wall walks, even though I didn't do any wall walks. Like, get good shoulder mobility, know how to do a wall walk and then you know, increase your upper body, basically strength and endurance, like that's, that's what's going to help those things. The thing that sticks out to me is it just reeks of stimulus because the, the, the things just go together right, like like if it was just heavy, this heavy, this heavy, this, heavy, this. As a coach, I know week three you're going to have a mental breakdown because you spilled some milk and you think it's about the milk and it's actually because I've taken a giant. I don't want to say that, I've really fucked with your central nervous system, right, you know what I mean and Paige knows exactly what I'm talking about right now.
Speaker 2:Pages, pages in the deep into competition prep. So she knows. But I just see upper body volume touch and go power cleans. That's got some sticky kind of conditioning vibe into it. Heavy front squat hey, like, heavy squats always work. Strict press, speed work, coming on the heels of doing something that has a higher CNS demand. This doesn't but it still gets us you know us to progress. And then the heavy power snatch it's good, but it doesn't fry the nervous system again because there's a limiter to it. There's only so much that you can power snatch right, like if we turn that into a squat snatch or potentially even a heavy power clean, it is possible that we could recruit enough energy and musculature to kind of start to mess with the central nervous system a little bit. So that's a lot right, there's a lot in that, if you were to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you were to do those 10 lifts weekly for nine weeks and you stuck to the ideas of what should be lower percentages, more skill-based, that sort of thing, that's where we can see the programming happening over. You know, a 15 to 16 year progression. Like that's how we know how to move the needle. Like if I get 10 lifts with someone, you're going to get a lot stronger, as long as you're not dumb about it.
Speaker 1:Basically, I think that might be part of it too, of like, okay, if I am choosing the strength bias track and knowing I'm going in doing 10 lifts a week, um, I have to remember not every lift is going to be at a hundred percent of what I'm capable of. Like, if I'm gonna, you know, really focus on, say, going positional on my squat cleans and like I really need to again check my ego and know that I'm not hitting a hundred percent weight, I'm not going, you know, 90% on those lifts I'm. I'm focusing on exactly what it says it's positional work, and that is where my intensity is going to be, is within that focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. I do want to address the accessory work fairly quickly. We get a lot of questions about this and there aren't strict rules surrounding it because some people will take them too literally and they'll do like V-ups instead of their conditioning piece and that's not the answer to the question. Um, there are two. There are two accessories every single day. Um, the way I like to look at accessories from a remote coaching standpoint is is this pair in the off season? Is this paired with a weakness intentionally? Um, then I'm probably going to do it. So, like you know, if we're doing midline work related to the back squat and you struggle with the back squat, I'm probably going to ask you to do that. Um, but of course, we still need to do the lifts that we're good at. Um, we can get better at them and they can sort of lend a hand to other things, the stronger that we get. But maybe we're skipping that accessory piece related to that due to time doing to make sure that we're doing our conditioning. So, um, choose them based on how much time you have. First, like, if you only have time for lift, lift conditioning and no accessory, do that. Like, do not skip conditioning to do an accessory movement and then there'll be days where maybe you have time to do one, not the other, that sort of thing. So that, I think, is really important.
Speaker 2:Um, the other thing with the accessory is it is a weekly rotation. Normally you're looking at them rotating either biweekly or less often. This is going to be the same ones over and over and over, and we're going to lean into that idea of linear progression. Paige talked about it in relation to the skills, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but it's the same concept here. If I'm going to do sets of strict pull-ups on a weekly basis for nine weeks, I need to give myself a little runway. What I'm currently capable of should show up in like week five, six, seven, eight, something like that. The runway to get there is what's going to make us fitter, better at it. We're not pushing our boundaries because it's an accessory and then we can PR, sort of after that. So again, there's notes in the program, but just make sure that you're treating it actually like accessory work and not like, oh, I get four lifts a day, great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also like to think of the accessory work as some preventative work as well. Like, if we're doing you know the amount of pressing that we're going to be doing I want to make sure the shoulder is healthy, I want to make sure the joint is moving the way it should be. So I want to prioritize those specific accessory pieces for an athlete that you know has a specific bias three pieces for an athlete that you know has a specific bias.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. All right, we're going to move on to skill next. I'm going to tell you basically the five, the five things that we're going to be doing, and then we'll talk a little bit about the instructions related to it. So, on a weekly basis, we have chest-to-bar ladders, we have rope climb, amraps, muscle-up volume sets, toes-to-bar volume sets, and then we're going to alternate weeks of strict and kipping handstand push-ups for the entire 18 weeks. You're still going to get nine, but we actually like the way that they lend to each other back and forth. We get a little bit more sort of pressing volume and then we get to overreach with the kipping, which actually can help the strict. You know, in terms of the lockout and how much volume we actually do.
Speaker 2:What we tell you to do on the blog or I say the blog, and then people are like where do I find the blog? That's not what it's supposed to be called anymore. I apologize. What we do on the program is we ask you to choose zero to three of these things and the.
Speaker 2:The reason why it's not one to five is just like hey, you might not have time to do this and then if you're focusing on everything, you're focusing on nothing like choose your weaknesses here. You're still going to do the other movements within the conditioning pieces. We have so much time to get better and you don't need to try to tackle all of them at once. You're going to have very similar options in the next block and you can decide what you need to do. So I don't know if you have any advice here related to this page, but it's really just like for me. I would probably try to space some of these things out a little bit, because there's the sport is so pulling gymnastics heavy, um, so I might even choose them based on like I'm going to do chest to bar, muscle up and toe to bar, because I like pressing and I like rope climbs and that will give me 24 or 48 to 72 hours to recover from those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like to think about it from a headspace perspective. If I know that I just ended my toughest part of the season, what's going to get me to buy back in relatively quickly? So if I were to choose, say, two to three, I want to choose one that I definitely enjoy, um, even if I'm already good at it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to choose something I enjoy, but maybe I'm going to also, you know, play devil's advocate and go with something that I really don't like. So I know, each week I'm going to do something that I like I can still continue to get better at it, um, but I'm also going to have that one that, like, maybe I don't look forward to it each week, but I'm going to get exposure to it. So if I'm choosing, say, two a week, um, I, I, I like to go that route, um, but if there is, you know, just an exposed weakness to gymnastics pulling, like, yeah, that's, that's gotta be, that's gotta be in there quite a bit got to be.
Speaker 2:That's got to be in there quite a bit, yeah for sure. And there's also the other side of of the strengths and weaknesses idea here.
Speaker 2:I've had athletes in the past or like I don't need to train that anymore, and it's like 80 points is okay, 100 is way better yeah like, like, like you notice those home run hitters at these events and they like bomb half the events, but then they also have those home run swings and they actually end up higher up on the leaderboard than someone who's a little bit more well-rounded. So I really don't like the idea of, like this person's not going to do you know, they're not going to run because they're a runner, they're not going to lift because they're a lifter. Like that sort of thing usually doesn't end up working all that well yeah.
Speaker 1:As someone who's like not like I, my home runs are not first place, second place, like they are pretty high on the leaderboard, but like as someone who doesn't have home runs, like you still have to work the things that you are good at, because like you said they're going to show up Like, so why not be really good at it? Why not have that confidence going into it?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure, all right. Um, last but not least, we're going to talk about the bitch work. For anyone new to misfit athletics, that is what we affectionately refer to um model monostructural conditioning, that's. That's what we call bitch work. Um, if that's offensive to you, then I apologize. The misfits have asked me to keep it and I love them for it.
Speaker 2:So every single person which is sort of the same concept here every single person on a weekly basis, will have power output work on either an air bike or a C2 bike. Talked about that a little bit real, lovely. Not going to let you use your whole body, we're just going to torture your lower half um zone two, c2 biking. On active rest days, we're actually um doing something new where we're not going to do the progression of time. We're going to let you work with your own schedule, um to figure out when you do go longer. So we need to be able to. The more time that you log, the better. Better, as long as it doesn't eat up your other training. So it's going to tell you to bike for 45 to 90 minutes as your working window, um, and I don't think there's anything wrong with, like you know, in one of those first few weeks doing a 90 minute session, even though you haven't done it in a while, um, so we're going to, we're going to let you guys decide when you do that, and I will be a proud parent the first time that I see someone post on the active rest day that they went the full 90 minutes.
Speaker 2:Um, anaerobic work weekly. We already talked about it's running and biking seasons, those progressions we'd spent a bunch of time talking about. That is going to be the majority of our anaerobic sessions, um, and there'll be an even mix of the other machines. So like you'll get to ski, row and echo bike, like once. Each same concept on our aerobic work. Um, those windows are going to be broken up. Um, just like we talked about at the beginning, and a lot of running and a lot of biking and a little bit of rowing and skiing and echo bike. I'll ask you, before I move on to the conditioning bias is there anything that sticks out to you there from a coaching or athlete perspective? It's just like I feel like so ingrained in you from both sides. It just keeps showing up and keep showing up, keep showing up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's. You know, if you are someone that doesn't like running, keep showing up, keep showing up. Yeah, I think it's, you know, if you are someone that doesn't like running, I think it's. I think a little bit of reframing in your mind can kind of help a little bit. Like, when you think about getting close to the season, we are constantly on rowers, we are constantly on skiers, like we are constantly in on a machine.
Speaker 1:Um, and within the sport, we want to be good at everything. Like we want to be well-rounded. So like, if I'm cherry picking all these running pieces, I'm actually missing a huge part of my fitness simply because I don't like it Isn't like a good enough reason not to do it. So, um, I think if you can reframe in a way that, hey, I'm on a rower all the time in the gym, all right, this is my time to get out. I have nine to 18 weeks to just be on my feet, all right, I'll give that a go. And I think for people who aren't doing running a lot, it could kind of be a beating on your body. So taking that extra time to if, say, you have time for an accessory piece that day, well, maybe, instead of the accessory piece, I take the extra 15 to 30 minutes to focus on mobility. Uh, smashing out on my shins, my Achilles, my calves in doing the recovery work instead, um.
Speaker 1:I think that's one way you can prioritize the running Um, if that's something that you want to improve.
Speaker 2:The running warmups are so important to like that's such a big part of it.
Speaker 2:When I I had a stretch, like a few summers ago, where I was in the 20 to 30 mile a week range and I found that the cool down just from a like keeping my heart rate up standpoint was important and that the stretching you know sort of after helped.
Speaker 2:But the way that warmed up, like if I started running and it was supposed to be my working window and it didn't feel good, it was a sign that something was wrong. So like I would, I would, you know, make sure that a decent portion of my my, you know, 12 to 15 minute warmup was walking and jogging, and then I would have just this idea of like, yeah, I probably need to go roll my arches out, or I'm going to, you know, get the floss band on the Achilles or whatever it is. Or you know, smash the anterior tip and game changer, like huge game changer, and also already you know, we're trying to convince you to do it, but it does kind of suck. So, like, having it also hurt is not like a great way to be. Like I'm going to start loving running Like my ankles hurt, my feet hurt, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, the recovery. It goes a long way and obviously, from being competitive in the sport for so long, I can truly attest to that with how much I need year after year, like I have to add a little bit more into the time that I recover, but, um, just solely on on the running. Uh, get a good pair of running shoes.
Speaker 1:Make sure you're comfortable in them Um yeah, I, like I've had, I use like foot glide, like body glide for feet, like there are a lot of things you can do to help you be more comfortable getting outside. So, um, and of course, like, never hesitate to ask. Reach out to Drew, reach out to myself. Um, like we can try to figure it out and help you out.
Speaker 2:We might need to do a running episode Cause then I'm like, all right, we got to talk about hydration, like. We got to talk about like how much you should be eating before, how much you should be eating after, like that whole deal. So there's an idea, seb, I'm going to need you to mark that down. It will leave my brain in five, four, three. All right, Conditioning bias. Additions for the bitch work.
Speaker 2:We got that 45 to 90 minute window once again on zone two, where we're going to be running, we kind of just addressed a decent amount of the things related to that. We'll just double, triple, quadruple down on the idea that adhere to the paces or the heart rate that is so incredibly important for you to do. And I've done the version where my ego lets me continue to jog and I'm more. Zone three, zone four, and I've done the version where I walk and then start running again and the progression is significantly faster, like on the version where I allowed myself to walk, where I allowed myself to walk, and I don't know if anyone's nerdy enough to do this or to figure this out, but you can set heart rate bands on your Garmin that play into your headphones, so I would upload a Spotify playlist to my watch and then I would set my run to be essentially the 160 minus your age, up to 180 minus your age, and this little like whistle sound comes in and it's funny because it pitches up if you're too fast and it pitches down if you're too slow.
Speaker 2:So you basically just jog and, like you don't have to look at your watch as often which you actually typically keep your heart rate lower if you don't look as often so you jog until it tells you and then you, you know, get your walk going and then it will tell you that you've dropped below and you can start jogging again. Basically, um, you just have to be dialed in enough to start jogging at about a 10 to 12 minute per mile pace. That's something that some people don't necessarily know how to do a little foot shuffle, um, and again, if the ego is along for the ride, it's. It's not going to be pretty, um, especially if you see yourself doing it, if you see a video of yourself doing a zone two run, man, that's scarring, it's rough, and especially as a CrossFitter, right, like it looks like it doesn't work, yeah, yeah. And the funny thing is it works so fucking well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I played hockey my whole life. I was 45 seconds sprint work. Go back to the bench, rest Like running was never my thing. I bought into it with, with doing CrossFit, with training for for the season and I again. Those are some of my favorite pieces each week, especially when I get into a competition block. It's just that they've elevated my fitness so much. Um, there's not much that there's. I don't have anything negative to say about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, um. And then the last thing here for the conditioning bias athlete, when it comes to bitch work, is multi-gear aerobic rotation. And we do multi-gear work or, if you don't know, our gears, progressions, basically just different speeds. We do the multi-gear work in a lot of instances so that we can force negative splits. We give you a time window that is long enough with short enough rest that you're kind of forced to slot in at, say, like a nine minute mile if you're running, and then we're going to drop you down to a shorter duration with more rest, and then an even shorter duration with more rest and that allows you to understand how you can get faster as you do something. Um, so that will be aerobic all the way through.
Speaker 2:And that's just the kind of thing where we know the whole go slow to go fast works and we're going to bias it more during the offseason. Is it actually matters a ton what order I program things in, because each decision that you make when you're programming informs the next one, and if that's true, then the first decision you make you're sort of weighting it as more important than the second and the third, and then the fourth, the metcons and intervals come last in off season, one which is interesting. It's different, like if we're getting closer to the season or doing a competition prep, that sort of thing. Like we're probably getting some ideas into the Metcons and intervals to make sure that those are like the most important piece because they are sports specific no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Like a lot of high level crossfitters would have preferred more weight, more skill. You know, just this is what the version of the sport they're used to and that they train for is that? So I think that's one cool way to do the like. The nod of simpler is better at this time of year. So you're just gonna see, like like one of the things, one of the notes that I gave to the programmers is even if it's muscle endurance, let's not like bury them and drop them in like in the desert, as we like to say that we do, especially competition prep leading into a season Like still a little bit closer towards like cardio, like that kind of thing. Like you can probably pick the wall ball back up If we told you that they were 165 thrusters. Maybe you're not picking that bad boy back up like that kind of thing. To wrap this up, I want to ask you about your experience the first time through writing programming.
Speaker 1:Like what was that.
Speaker 2:What was that like for you? What did you think?
Speaker 1:Um, so I really enjoyed it. I you know you kind of the way we do it with Misfit, like there were still, there were some Metcons already in there, so um, but like getting to just kind of zero in on like one cell block of like these are your movements, muscle endurance, whatever you know the the different stimuli that you're working with. Um, you like, when we went into the meeting you so quickly picked out the way that I biased programming workouts and I was like man, that was like and I don't see it until I take that step back and I'm like, damn, that's actually a lot harder to like pick up on those things and I've always been like I always love why, like knowing why we're doing the training that we're doing, and I think that's a reason that's that I've been able to stay so successful within you, successful within the realm of Misfit.
Speaker 1:But now it's like I have to really really put my brain on to think about these things, because I like to just get my programming and go do it. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And now it's like, okay, well, now I'm telling someone to do this, why am I telling them to do it? Um, so it's. I do like the critical thinking aspect of it. I just, you know, need more exposure to it.
Speaker 2:Like if we go to a training camp or people listen to the podcast, they're like, what books do I read to? Like, know the things that you guys know? Or how did you get to do this? And there's an element of putting yourself out there that's important. There's a piece of vulnerability to it, right, because like you wrote those pieces and you went into a meeting with people who have been written, like I don't know how many workouts I've written, but it's a lot, and like a lot of people aren't willing to do that. So people are like, oh, I wonder why page is like programming and and you know, sort of going through this, I don't know internship, whatever you want to call it, apprenticeship. She asked, she asked to, and like there's like it's just a nod. It's not saying like like a thousand people reach out and ask if they can program for misfit athletics, but like it's a nod to putting yourself out there. You know, in your training, you know be willing to go over to the conditioning bias side if you need to, um, or just in general in life.
Speaker 2:Like you wonder how people get the opportunities that they do and they ask like yeah they sort of put that out there into the world, and I think that's important for sure yeah, yeah, I had fun with it.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean, you just never know, right, and if I want to continue to explore opportunities and explore where my interests are, what do I really want to be passionate about? Like I've played a competitive sport my whole life, I do know that I love competitive sport. And being so passionate with CrossFit like I have, like I have misfit right here, right? So, um, you know there's a safe place to ask and, if you know, the opportunity presented itself. So here we are.
Speaker 2:Awesome the opportunity presented itself. So here we are. Awesome. Um, I will do a live chat to explain to you guys why we don't have time to do live chat. Um, I woke up this morning and could not fully open the right side of my mouth. Something bad is going on back there and I think they are finally potentially gonna have to take my wisdom teeth out. I'm one of those people where they'd be like, yeah, go see the receptionist. I'm'm like guy, there's no way, don't tell me that I need to. You know, I was just like 13 year old boy, telling him he's got to schedule his wisdom teeth appointment. So I just walked out of the dentist every time without a new like. My mom would be like oh, where's your little card for the next appointment? I don't know, I have no idea. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:Oh boy.
Speaker 2:So I have to go to the dentist right now. I'm not excited for it. I'm guessing they're probably going to stick needles in my mouth and all of that good stuff. I've been putting food over to this side and luckily I can still run my app.
Speaker 1:I've been able to do that for the last hour. If you do have to get your wisdom teeth out, just make sure Maya gets you on camera afterwards. No chance, no, never oh my God, such good videos that go viral.
Speaker 2:People don't want to peek into my subconscious. You guys don't want to know what's back there. All right, let's keep it superficial.
Speaker 2:All right, paige, thank you. It's really cool to have your perspective again on this stuff, because you are looking at it from a bunch of different angles and I like to fancy myself an athlete, but when I think about myself as an athlete, I'm sprinting six feet at a time and throwing balls, um, and not doing actual CrossFit. So, um, really cool to have you on board doing the programming with us and all that good stuff and, um, yeah, I'm just, I'm just excited for people to get started, like I really really think this is a great program.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited for people to get to get started too. I think, again, with just a little bit of reframing, if you're coming off, you know just a lot of CrossFit, this is a time to you know, take a step back from CrossFit specifically and focus on your lifting or you know your monostructural stuff. So I think there's a lot of slow, not so sexy stuff ahead, but can really make a wave in your own fitness.
Speaker 2:Very true, listen, if we've gotten you this far and you're not going to sign up for a 14 day free trial, two weeks for free, monday, march 24. Well then, I don't know. Congratulations, thanks for thanks for listening, but, like, that's a lot of information there and I hope that it was a solid sales pitch for for new misfits and that it was, you know, maybe motivating and inspiring for for the, the misfits that are jumping back in for the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, however many times. Um, but yeah, off season block one one, monday, march 24th, two-week free trial on fitter. Let's get after it let's do it.