Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Listener Q&A: Injuries, Hyrox, Bodyfat %, Mobility, Supersets, Identifying Weaknesses, FAQs - E.368
Does pushing your fitness to the extreme eventually circle back to poor health? How do elite athletes train through injuries and still perform at their best? When does scaling a workout become self-sabotage? The Misfit Athletics podcast tackles these thought-provoking questions and more in this comprehensive Q&A episode.
Drawing from their experience coaching Games-level athletes, the hosts share remarkable insights on injury management during competition season. They reveal how athletes have achieved their highest placings while working around significant limitations, emphasizing the power of creative programming, technique refinement, and maintaining general physical preparedness. The practical strategies they outline apply equally to competitive and everyday athletes looking to train through nagging issues without compromising long-term health.
The episode delves into the fascinating intersection of fitness and health, questioning whether there's a point where pursuing extreme fitness becomes counterproductive. Using examples from special operations forces and professional athletes, they examine how sustained physical stress can lead to hormonal disruption and other health consequences despite peak physical appearance and performance.
Perhaps most valuable for everyday athletes is their detailed breakdown of workout stimulus and pacing. By clearly defining duration categories, pacing approaches, and stimulus types (cardio, gas tank, muscle endurance), they provide a framework that helps athletes make intelligent scaling decisions. This knowledge empowers listeners to maximize their training effectiveness regardless of fitness level.
Throughout the conversation, the hosts balance technical expertise with practical wisdom, addressing questions about body fat percentages, running preparation, weakness identification, and even the irreplaceable benefits of sled training. Their willingness to engage directly with community questions reflects their commitment to supporting athletes at all levels.
Whether you're a competitive CrossFitter looking to optimize your performance or someone simply trying to make more informed training decisions, this episode delivers actionable insights that will transform how you approach your fitness journey. Listen now to gain the knowledge that can help you train smarter, not just harder.
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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 seen either podcast. On today's episode we answer your questions. We've got sort of listener Q&A to start and then, if we have time, we'll dive into some frequently asked questions, something we like to tackle as we go into a new year. A lot of you have been asking questions about how to execute on the program, so if we have time we'll get into that a little bit.
Speaker 2:And if not, I'll probably hop back on and shoot some videos for people to make following the website or not the website the program a little bit easier Before we get into that little bit of housekeeping, little bit of life chat. On the housekeeping side, you can head to the link in bio on Instagram to get signed up for our programs on Fitty Fitty I combined the two they're in one Fitter and Strivey your choice on where to sign up for your program and we'll actually get into. There's a few questions in here that are based on that a little bit. If you're looking for our affiliate programming, teammisfitcom, click on the sign up now button and you can get a two week free trial of programming on StreamFit, SugarWad or PushPress. You can also email me for a a sample. If you'd like to see the programming document that you would get if you follow directly on the website, you can email coach at misfit athleticscom. That goes for individual programs as well. That's another thing that we'll probably cover a little bit in this episode. But there's a there's a reason we don't do the free trials all of the time. I would love for you to see any program that you would like to have access to, just to get a little bit of a sample. So same thing. Feel free to email me, coach at Misfit Athletics dot com.
Speaker 2:Last but not least, here in the next week or two we are going to be doing a presale on gear, and it's essentially gear that I am making. I'll be honest with you guys. I'm making this gear for Paige specifically to compete in, and if we're going to print it, we might as well give you guys access to it. So Paige's favorite garments will be printed and you guys will have access to a pre-sale. So I know some of you want some of the more old school type of t-shirts that are a little bit more exercise friendly versus what's sort of in style right now with the big baggy and then some tank tops and some crops and stuff like that. So keep your eyes out for that. We'll talk about it on here. We'll post on social, but just a little bit of insider information. All right, I think that's it. Life chat Hunter. What's up?
Speaker 1:What's up? Yeah, rocking the 1960s tie-dye here. The pukey, classic pukey we were talking about that last week Got the headband to match, despite the get the oh yeah headband a match, despite the um, potential woosaw hippie dippy attire we have. Currently, I am the most qualified vehicle mechanic, assuming a 2012 mazda 3 and purely the driver's side front door. So, um, if you have that exact make and model a vehicle and you need somebody to disassemble and reassemble the inside of your car door multiple times, I'm your guy yep because, yeah dude?
Speaker 1:yeah, I don't remember if I talked about they say find your niche I dude to be honest, man, I was.
Speaker 1:I I was naughty, I was not mad to have to like disassemble and reassemble, because it was like the engineer in me was like basically, the long story short is like the, my inside driver's side door stopped working like you would pull the handle and there was no tension. So I literally, for like a week and a half, had to roll my window down, open the door from the outside, roll my window back up and then exit my driver's side door, the cable that attached from like the, then exit my driver's side door, the cable that attached from like the inside of the driver's side door handle all the way down to the door latch actuator. Obviously that cable had snapped so I needed to replace the cable. The problem was that like it wasn't difficult, it was mostly just like taking thing, like taking the pant door panel off, unbolting a bunch of shit, unplugging some stuff. But the problem was, is that in order to see if I did it right, I needed to fully reassemble the door.
Speaker 1:I do that. The first time I did that, I sat in my driver's side door and I'm like, please open, and I pull on the door handle, and not only does the door not open, but like the door is locked. Like the door is locked and the handle doesn't open. And I'm just like did I, in an attempt to save myself hundreds of dollars, in just taking this vehicle to the shop? Did I just cost myself hundreds of dollars, plus 30 for a component that I bought on eBay?
Speaker 1:Maybe, Crawl out of the passenger side around. Secondary prayer is that the outside worked and it did so. The long and the short was that I had to disassemble and reassemble multiple times. At one point I got to a place where, like you know how, if you're like you're sitting, the interior door is locked. You're in the driver's side. If you open the handle, the door will open, like it'll automatically unlock the door and the door will open.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, unlock and then open it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I got to a place where, like the door worked, the lock worked, but when I pulled the door handle from the inside, it did not like catch the lock, the locking mechanism, and that was the point where I was like like I don't need this to function on my 2012 vehicle. But then there was like the ego, the engineer part of me. That was like you just did like 90% of this correctly, like you can figure out what was wrong, and it turns out I didn't actually do anything wrong. The component that I bought was faulty, but I was able to Frankenstein, okay Parts from the new component, put it in the old component, and now Jasmine fucking drives like a dream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll just open the door from the outside, just because just for fun just for fun, just to show people what's up and I also actually like the uh interior master lock. Unlock was a little bit fickle on me for a while, like you had to push really hard and which was really just like dirt between like the two little contact pieces that you know closed and opened the circuit to do that. So so got that cleaned up. She locks on locks like a dream, looking to get another 100K out of her.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I love that. Yeah, I had a lapse in judgment at one point, but I'm definitely a ride it till the wheels fall off kind of guy. I had one moment where I got really excited about a car and I actually pre-ordered it and then I ended up canceling it. It's like. It's like the novelty effect for me is so high and then gone on things. It's crazy. It's literally a metal box on wheels.
Speaker 2:Like I actually went through something. I actually went through something similar to upgrade my car. I got a, a card that I had to wire into the um, into the like display system, to get it to have carplay, because jeep has something really annoying called uconnect where the screen controls everything. So, like, if I was to get a deck that has CarPlay, I wouldn't be able to like turn the heated seats on and shit Like. So I have to keep their version of it. But there's a company that makes this like wiring harness and this chip that you can put in and it essentially just runs another program on the same screen.
Speaker 2:But the instructions were. There was basically nothing to them. It was. It was like a hundred step process and they probably gave you like 30 steps and you just had to guess. So it was definitely a lot of that and it was annoying too, because to really check and see if it worked you had to put it all back inside of the car and put it back together and then test it. But yeah, I just like I do love the, love the carplay thing. That's. That's really the only thing when I'm driving a rental car, or I'm just like I like this is something. So I was like I need to figure out how to have carplay instead of buying a fucking sixty thousand dollar car and then, three days into having it, being like that was dumb, how the fuck did I do that? Yeah, so life chat. On my end. I've got some unfortunate news for the listeners. We had our fun last week.
Speaker 1:Listen to this again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, killing me. We uh, we uh had the fun last week of of showing you me digging wilbur out from under the deck while my wife was out of town. It was a wild night at the crandall household. He's pretty confused the rest of the week more behavior like that. But inside kind of found him in the closet. Found him in the corner crying a decent amount at night. Sunday night, yeah, sunday night, middle of the night he was crying again. Couldn't really figure out what was going on.
Speaker 2:Sleeps in bed with my wife and I and had a couple of seizures. Had to take him to the emergency vet in the middle of the night and had to say bye to him. My wife did. Can't both go anymore with the little guy. So I stayed home. And yeah, it's the true legend. Sir Wilbo Baggins, a lover of all things food, humans, other dogs, and he was either a teddy bear or sometimes a wolf. If you wanted his snacks, like he was weird about getting pet. Like if you started to pet him he would not leave your side and he would make you pet him, he'd hit you in his head or he would white.
Speaker 2:He would rub his ass on your foot. Yeah, to get pet, but if you went near his fucking bowl, he was eating it was not a fan oh my god, he was such a little fucking snapping turtle too.
Speaker 2:I he ate like we do the frozen, the frozen patties, where it's like raw food and like bone and organ and like vegetables and shit and you just like put it in the fridge and it thaws and then you and then they eat it and it's basically like a raw meat patty and sometimes he would just mash it into his bowl to the point where he couldn't really get it out of his bowl. So I went in there with a wooden spatula once just to like create a blob for him. He ripped that thing out of my hand and just to feel he probably weighed, you know, like 25 pounds, just to feel a bully breeds jaws at max. Anger point is fascinating. Like so much stronger than me it was. He ripped that thing out of my hand and it was like a jarring experience you should.
Speaker 1:He's like the grip tester in front of him. One day, see if you could get him to bite down on that thing. My god 812 pound force so huge bummer.
Speaker 2:We kind of knew it was coming. We had been talking about it a little bit, but to have it happen in the middle of the night, I didn't. I didn't not get to say bye to him, but I also didn't get to say bye to him, which is is a huge bummer, and at least with Cash we got to have Carter say bye to him in person and try to explain it, so it's going to be a little bit more challenging now, although he's older and at least has context for what's going on there In news that goes from matters a lot to not at all.
Speaker 2:the Steelers are mediocre again. For the 15th year in a row.
Speaker 1:They're not bad, and they're not good.
Speaker 2:They haven't won a playoff game in.
Speaker 1:I've been really into this, mike Tomlin's still running the ship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's funny because depending on who's on his. Yeah, they don't fire coaches.
Speaker 1:Depending on who's on the coaches.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't fire coaches. Depending on who's on the team, the statement about his coaching is either a massive insult or compliment. They're always pretty good, they're always kind of good, and he does it with like a freshman roster and then he does it with like a like an all pro roster. It doesn't make any fucking difference. Let's ask real quick here this is my new thing you can do a shortcut on your home screen to talk, to chat gpt instead of siri, so I can just really this little button here?
Speaker 1:is it a widget?
Speaker 2:and then it'll yeah, and then it'll pop up.
Speaker 1:So no shit when's the last time the pittsburgh steelers won a playoff game, so this may take some time when it was actually back win was actually back in January 20th Edged out the Kansas City Chiefs in a super close game 18-16. So it's been a little while.
Speaker 2:It's been eight years. It's been eight years.
Speaker 1:I like how you chose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's this whole. You get a lot of choices.
Speaker 1:There's a whole list there.
Speaker 2:You dog. Listen, I watch, listen, I watch, I watch, exclusively watch british television for the last, however long, and I'm like I can't go. I can't go american for this voice. So, yeah, that's, I should have brought it up. I should have pulled up the clip, but an identical.
Speaker 2:So jalen ramsey had an interception, an identical hit, where it seems like he intentionally lets those guys catch the ball barely so that it can look like he's blown them up like my god dude, he hit this guy so hard and the ball just went flying in the air and it's like I think he might have been able to go in and knock it down with his hand and he's like, no, I'm gonna fucking embarrass you did I ask you, have you watched the, the america's team, the?
Speaker 1:you did ask me, I haven't um, I have not dug into it yet yeah, all I thought about when you said that was like they obviously have a whole bunch of like highlights and and video clips throughout the series of of football which would have been in like the late 80s and early 90s, and just watching some of the hits and some of the like, like I even like at me, like not a football guy, like I understand the rules and everything like that but, like I'm watching and I'm like that's a, that's like 15 yard roughing the passer penalty.
Speaker 1:15 yard like hitting after the play, like the amount of contact after the play, like quarterback is going down, like secondary person comes in and like like just falls like, not even remotely similar to how it's not even the same game and it's crazy how physical that game was and obviously dudes have gotten bigger, faster and stronger, but like, holy fuck, that was a, that was a fucking man.
Speaker 2:They were hurt.
Speaker 2:They were hurting themselves in the process as well right, yeah, so now even if the rules were the same and they're bigger, faster, stronger, of course the hits would be crazy, but a lot of them would be more self-preserving in the way that they hit people fair, like when I was. I was five foot three when I was 12 and like close to six feet when I was 14. Like I had a huge growth spurt and when I played football on the smaller side, I tackled people with my helmet Like that's how I tackled. Like you learn that you can just spear people like head on head. And now it's like, oh, my short-term memory is not the greatest and yeah, the, the, they.
Speaker 2:One of the biggest issues with all the lawsuits, with the concussion stuff and the CTE, was the NFL being like you know, we didn't, we didn't profit off of this, you know kind of thing. And when I was a kid, if you turned certain channels on during the day, during a weekday, they had movies that were just the biggest hits of the season run by the NFL and you could buy them on VHS. Like it would pop up and it'd be like you know NFL hits, you know 2016 sort of a thing, and they were literally all like free safeties, like flying through the air, those are just like clobbering people early days of youtube.
Speaker 1:I was just watching nhl highlight reel, nfl highlight reel dudes just getting their clock coming across the middle. You're like I don't want it, but I do do, yep.
Speaker 2:Yep, fucking wild, absolutely crazy. So yeah, you got to figure out whether you want that 15-yard penalty, whether you want the fine, whether you want CTE, whether you want to hurt another human nowadays and Jalen.
Speaker 1:Ramsey seems to have you want to die at like 50.
Speaker 2:Exactly Figured some of that out. All right, we are going to jump into the questions now and we will start with how do you work with athletes with injuries in season? So this would be you're working your way through the open semifinals, quarterfinals, the CrossFit games and we have to make the assumption, without more details, that an athlete is dealing with a nagging injury and not something that is unsafe for them. Them to continue right, like, obviously, if you tear something, if something's really bad, we're not going to talk about necessarily how to deal with that. That would be kind of a different question, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, if somebody's assuming like kind of a chronic nagging injury is exactly how I interpret that um, I'll open just because I have a ton of insight because of Paige in the last handful of years. Yeah, and the really exciting thing about this conversation and it goes into what it takes to be at that level is that attitude of like we can get shit done and we can find stimulus if you're willing to do the work. But if you're going to feel sorry for yourself for an extended period of time and not sort of buy into like testing things out and communicating well with your coach, then that's going to be a problem. So the first round of this was a pretty significant back injury. We were kind of no squatting, no deadlifting, no Olympic lifting type of situation and she not only qualified for the games during this period of time but then had her highest finish. Now the thing that I'll put out there first is GPP is king and she got to put a lot more eggs into the conditioning basket straight up.
Speaker 2:We've talked a lot about her running progressions, how much better she's gotten. Did a ton of work on her running really put in the time Running? There is that time component to it. You can get a lot better at machines without below threshold work. You'll get even better if you do have the below threshold work, but what logging miles does for your running is extremely powerful. The other thing is, how do we match that stimulus of really waking the central nervous system up so that there's transfer into the sport?
Speaker 2:And we went with every fucking sled variation that we could cook up.
Speaker 2:I was writing essentially a strength program in mind, but with the sled.
Speaker 2:So we've got super heavy and short, we've got volume work, we've got forward-facing, backward-facing, we've got the sled push, we've got the straps up over the shoulder where you can go a little bit heavier, we got the long distance where you would attach it to the belt, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And then fast forward and dealing with essentially the same thing, with a pretty serious shoulder injury, and once again finished higher than she's ever finished at the CrossFit Games, top 10 at the CrossFit Games, with essentially very little pulling gymnastics and that sort of thing. So I don't know that that gives the best answer for this person, because we don't know, maybe, what they're going through. But continuing to work, continuing to focus on your GPP, and then maybe the last thing that I'll say is it can be unfair to compare yourself to an athlete that has that kind of base, because if you're not at that point in your career, say you are maybe like a weaker athlete and really need that strength work, then it's going to be a little bit more challenging. But I've also personally dealt with a ton of injuries and you can get stimulus if you're willing to kind of hunt for it and get the work done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I think the only thing I'll add is, like my first, I'm always somebody who's going to. I want, like, clarifying context and information. So like if because the answer is different depending on who this is this is an athlete who is like hey, I want so badly to compete at semifinals of the CrossFit games, I have this injury, how do I train and still prepare from now until the beginning of the season to give myself a chance to qualify? The answer to that question is different than I'm an affiliate level athlete, for example, who and you know this says in season, so I guess the implication is a competitive athlete.
Speaker 1:But if you're somebody who like, let's say, your competition is like I want to be ready for the open, or something like that, then it becomes a conversation about like, well, like how important is this to you? And therefore like you know what, because that puts a bit of a suspense date on what we need to do and what sort of progression we might need to have in order to go from where you're at right now to where you want to be in the, you know, in competition. Personal experience to Kelly's a great example of this. She had a similar to Paige, I'd say, probably a little bit less severe, but a combination of some neck and shoulder issues that prevented her from going overhead with any substantial weight, doing any form of handstand pushups. Lots of limitations with overhead stuff and she is not a particularly strong presser and we're talking like handstand pushups, muscle ups something that we've been working on.
Speaker 2:But we were able to and sometimes we can find a connection between those things right.
Speaker 1:For sure, yeah, not necessarily a great presser and more injury prone because of that, yep, and she worked a lot with a physical therapist that she's close with, so that's always a good answer. And then, but to your point, we were able to chase stimulus and she performed better at the CrossFit Games this year than she did last year, having done very few handstand push-up, muscle-up, that sort of thing leading up to competition. So at the end of the day, there's a way to work around those sorts of things. Rehabbing and making sure that you're kind of like you have your own self-interest long-term is paramount, in my opinion at least. Unless you're one of the number one CrossFit athletes who makes a living doing this stuff, you're going to have a hard time convincing me that your own bodily harm is less important than your longevity.
Speaker 2:I also something that popped into my head being technique obsessed when you come back to the movement is incredibly helpful and you have to really understand physically and mentally what you're trying to accomplish. Doing her first ring muscle-ups and squat snatches in months and I know the way that she moves well enough and also the style of movement that will hurt the least Shocker. It's the most efficient form typically, yeah, and we really went all in on that and I think that was incredibly helpful. She did some of the best-looking muscle-ups and snatches in that session in the warmup area that I'd ever seen her do, because we're kind of locked in Now.
Speaker 2:She has the benefit of being not only a student of the game for years but now a coach as well and I've found personally, when I coach a movement a lot, I personally perform that movement better because I've had to have it locked in in my mind's eye for such a long period of time. So I'd say the leveling up of coach wants me to. You know I hit extension in the muscle up but then as I turn over I'm doing the L-sit thing. Coach wants me to pull my legs back as I turn over on the muscle up, like I have to know what that means and feels and looks like. The instruction alone, the coach hunting for the right cue to give you, isn't going to be enough for you to, in the moment, change it. You have to have a little bit more of a, an in-depth understanding of why something is happening, and I personally find that watching movement is the easiest way for me to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's a really good point. It's like is the injury a result of? You know? If it's a chronic nagging injury, oftentimes that's either like you had a traumatic injury that you didn't let heal fully or you have a movement pattern problem in which, like, no matter how much time you take off of the movement, if you return to doing it the way that you were before, like that injury will persist. And I think that's super common in CrossFitters, especially if you're a competitor and don't have a coach with eyes on regularly, or if you're just an athlete who goes to a dog shit CrossFit gym and doesn't have a coach who can identify and correct, like poor movement patterns. That's the most common thing I see at like the affiliate level. On the competitive side. There's some other possibilities.
Speaker 2:All right. What do you think about doing classes every so often while doing the Hatchet program? I'll let you jump in first on this one.
Speaker 1:I mean, I love it. That's an easy answer for me the odds that you when training alone. This is a kind of a funny conversation because I've had it with a couple members who one of them he's a regular 9am-er goes home, went home for a month to visit some family he had access to. We made sure he still had access to the gym's program so that he could do the workouts to the best of his ability and stay in shape. And he comes back and was just like, holy fuck, like I'm out of shape. It's like he's been doing the same workouts, albeit maybe not quite the frequency, and there's some other factors that probably contributed to that. But the conversation very rapidly turned to.
Speaker 1:You really don't know how, like what like good intensity looks like, until you're working out around other people, especially people who are better than you and I think anybody who's ever had that experience knows what I'm talking about. They like they go work out on their own for a little while. They do the workout and open gym, even even on a daily basis, like a day to day basis. Like, yeah, I did the workout and open gym, I thought I did good, and then you all of a sudden look at the whiteboard or the leaderboard, you're like, holy fuck, I got waxed by everybody and it's like having that that in-person sort of competition and like, in theory, if you're following the hatchet program, then, like you should be able to do, say, an affiliate workout as prescribed and you should also be able to put greater intensity in that than an average affiliate athlete.
Speaker 1:Right, assuming you're doing the correct program. And anytime we can achieve a higher level of intensity versus a lower one, you're going to see results. So that's an. That's an easy yes. The more complicated one is, you know, try to find days where the stimulus or time domain or you know there's a crossover of movements and stuff like that, which is important when you're kind of toggling between programs. But like from a stimulus perspective there's. I'd always encourage athletes to get into class or just work out with other people who are going to give you a push. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I agreed on the easy yes. And then the best way to do it is you've got the week in advance, wherever you get our programs, and you get a look at it, and maybe you've got a deal worked out with the coach or an affiliate owner that'll allow you to see some workouts in advance, that sort of thing, and it's like all right, there we go. That's a great one for one swap. There's no need for me to add extra volume. The intention of jumping into the class implicitly states or explicitly states like hey, I'm not adding volume, I'm showing up to add volume. There's plenty of volume to be added on Hatchet with the variable training system. I'm showing up to add intensity. So do the one for one change, get after it and move on.
Speaker 2:All right, why do you use two apps Fitter and Strivee? Will there eventually be just one? So really quickly I'm going to punch myself in the face and then I'll come back to this episode. Here's how this goes as a business owner, why are you guys only on fitter? I like strivy, I like beyond the whiteboard, I like sugar wad, et cetera. You add one. Why are you on multiple places? Why isn't there a single leader board? Basically, what happens is you've got hundreds of customers and there's probably three or four camps of how they would want a certain thing to be and sometimes you like sugarwad, I like beyond the whiteboard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there isn't really a whole lot that we can do about that.
Speaker 2:So giving people choices is something that we've decided to do and, I think, are going to continue to do. We tried really hard for a long period of time, going as far as doing custom websites and apps, and it's just one of those things where people care about certain things. Like a lot of our a lot of our people don't like the platform they're on and log their workouts and still log their workouts and be on the whiteboard or another app, that sort of thing. They're like I, like you know WOD buddy and I'm like I don't even know what the fuck that is. I did just make that up. Here's a couple of things that I'll say.
Speaker 2:One there's been a little bit of an issue with this recently. When we added the comp bundle, where you get all three programs for the same price. There has split off and created multiple leaderboards. So if you guys want to consolidate leaderboards and you want to see more, you need to cancel your MFT or your Hatchet or your Master's subscription and sign up for comp. It'll be the exact same dollar amount. Just line it up with when your bill would be coming up so that you don't have any issues there.
Speaker 2:But right now there are still a hundred people on the hatchet leaderboard and less than that on the comp hatchet leaderboard. So if you guys want to consolidate, you got to cancel your hatchet or your masters again and go sign up for comp. That will be the easiest way to do that. That is the only way for new people to sign up as well. So I will put that out there and then, honestly, I think that there's another question that's similar that I'll just jump right down to where most misfits log their scores fitter or strivey. Right now it's fitter by a multitude of like 20. There's so many more people because we've been on it longer.
Speaker 2:And I can tell you from a remote coaching standpoint and a user experience standpoint, I personally prefer Strivee, but people go on there and they say, why isn't there anyone on the leaderboard? And then they switch and it sort of perpetuates the issue there. So, depending on what you're looking for, it is what it is. That's why we have the Telegram group. That's why I encourage people to go in there and post their scores and talk to each other and comment, because then you get to choose which platform just works best for you, which one that you like better, and I'll continue to punch myself in the face once a quarter to try and figure out what the best thing is for the community all right seems.
Speaker 2:Doesn't seem very often do you see an over-reliance on machines at the highest level? I don't entirely understand this question, if you do, when you want to try to answer it I mean my.
Speaker 1:My head immediately went to. We've talked about the, the, the machine crossfit games, so maybe in in the competition context. Um, so like I can answer, it from both directions, but I think I could, I could, I could as well.
Speaker 1:I think what you like this is maybe just a broader conversation, so that's how I'll answer the question is that, at the highest level, the problem is, the problem is everybody's getting too fucking fit. So, in order to create tests that span, you know, short, medium, long, that have the variance that would you know, that you could call, at the end of, say, the crossfit games, a true test of the fittest on earth, like he and but the, the like you need. So you need to have, you need to have a whole, a whole slew of, you know, movements, time domains, all stimuli across the spectrum. Problem is is that some of the at least there's a problem. Some of these athletes are so fucking fit that, like, if it's a 20 minute am rap we saw this in the open workout of burpee clean and jerk, lunge, right, it's like the fittest people on earth, just like, accumulate hundreds and hundreds of repetitions and it just gets to a point where it's, like you know, is, is it necessary for a fit, like a super fit athlete to have to perform 300 burpees, 200 burpees in an open workout just to like, move on to the next competitive level? And is it like when you get to the games, is it necessary to like. You know, if we want to do a long workout, like fuck, in 2020 we had atalanta, like you know 100 is it chest to bar pull-up, 200 handstand push-ups and 300 weighted like all with a vest.
Speaker 1:It's like whatever the version of that, the super murph was, it's like we, at some point there's no longer like.
Speaker 1:It's no longer smart, good programming, safe to just continue adding volume on for these athletes and running like has the potential to get to that point. We already have a whole lot of running at the highest level and, you know, at the games reason that I would justify the use of the machines as to like we can create stimulus, we can create either a longer or shorter duration of a workout without the impact of just asking athletes to do an egregious volume of repetitions Like. The alternative is like, hey, every squat clean is 365 to 55 because like, well, at least they're only going to do 10 of them in this workout instead of 300 at 135, you know, whatever it happens to be, so it's like yeah, the problem is that that, I see, is athletes are so fucking fit that we have to use machines in order to make sure that, like we can still test an athlete without beating the piss out of them with volume yeah, the I'm going to answer.
Speaker 2:This could be asked in two different directions and I'll answer both. So one would be is it over programmed? And I think the answer is yes. One of the issues that I have with it, and honestly with the entire season structure, is you can't really use the machines in the instances that you're talking about hunter, yeah, and like they've toyed around with, like okay, you're going to go run an 800, we trust you. Versus 6,000 shuttle runs the rower. I think they could probably get away with incorporating more machines, say at the in-affiliate semifinal level, like saying, hey, you need all of them that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So that bothers me. I don't like the like. Okay, the like little guy gets in and then can't use the machine. You know what I mean? Sure, like, like. So that part of it bothers me a little bit.
Speaker 2:World Fitness Project, I think, used every single machine at this last event, again, like I don't know. It's just that having that variance, I think, is incredibly important and we have tools where, if you're worried about reps like your burpee get over, like they're with their budget, like I can't imagine that making people jump over a 48 inch box would be a problem, that sort of thing. So there are tools to be able to do that. And I think if you're going to use all of the machines, or a majority of them, you better have quite a few events to spread it out over, like an old school games type of event when you go in and see all of them. It's just kind of and I think it's a potentially a chicken or the egg question and answer.
Speaker 2:But I personally have an opinion that we've found ways to manipulate volume to get athletes better at the sport without hurting them, and that has turned to an over-reliance on using the tool that we use to get them fitter in testing.
Speaker 2:So what I mean by that is I can give someone a bunch of zone two work, I can give someone intervals on machines, and they don't run the risk of hurting their back or their elbow or their shoulder as much. So it's a way for me to tack on volume and intensity. But it's intentionally there to drive stimulus when, again, like you said, if I program the wrong 20-minute AMRAP I could bury someone for the rest of the week. Or if it's just CrossFit, crossfit, crossfit, then that's going to be a problem during a peaking schedule. But then everyone is on the machines all of the time in training and people who haven't earned that right yet are doing that too much. And then the programmers are like oh, machines are the thing now, so we're going to program all of them. So that's a little bit of an issue in my opinion. I think people could be more creative and you can't really say that it's about like the budget that you have, because getting machines in a competition is extremely expensive.
Speaker 1:It's, it's one of, also a logistic. I mean when you start to think about other things like OK, burp, like a 48 inch burpee get over, it's like so does every lane. Do I need 30 jerk blocks at the CrossFit games? Like that's a fucking logistical pain in the dick.
Speaker 2:So I think there are other limitations. I mean, those stackable boxes are cheaper than a fucking.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the other side of it is is there an over-reliance on machines in training at the highest level? Maybe a little, but at the highest level, no, what I think it is is a trickle down. It's okay. Hunter is the four-time crossfit games champion and again he adds volume and intensity beyond crossfit mechons and intervals through machine programming. He does day in the life episodes. He's got a youtube channel. He's doing his thing. He's doing four and a half, four and a half hours a week of zone two work.
Speaker 2:We see that and we think that's what we should be doing and it's just that like tip of the spear needs to find that way to get up over the hump and get better. It's so detail oriented, fucking good at burpees, burpee, box jump overs, wall balls, double unders, box jumps, thrusters these movements that are so incredibly important that honestly create a better stimulus, especially when the volume's appropriate. That's when I think the biggest issue comes into play with the over-reliance. So there are probably people every once in a while an athlete will move to a new coach and they'll go from ninth to 19th and they're like what happened? And like I didn't really do any crossfit, like everything was segmented and it's like red flag alert. Alert. That's a problem, but I think that's pretty rare. I think athletes at the highest level know that when we get close to the season, they're like no, not actual crossfit, you're gonna make me fucking do metcons, are you? Because they build that engine and they're able to put themselves in an absolute fucking hurt locker.
Speaker 1:They can really put themselves in a hurt locker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, hunter, do not read this one. I'm going to reword it because someone asked me to actually make this helpful. So let's say, hypothetically, there is a member at your gym that takes 30 minutes to do a 15-minute workout and you're a coach and you want help on getting them to stop doing that. What would you do in that instance where it's like, hey, we've got this kind of nasty medium-duration workout and, honestly, at our gym we have a really great culture of people don't write Rx really anymore and honestly, at our gym we have a really great culture of like people don't.
Speaker 2:we don't write our X really anymore, like we just we come in, you get after it. Hey coach, I think I'm going to use 75 instead of 95. Like, more often than not that's what happens and we can keep people in that, you know, short end of long, long and a medium time domain. But then you do see, I would say two to four people on the leaderboard, that's like, or on the whiteboard, it's like what happened there. I just work out three times yeah exactly so what do you do?
Speaker 2:What should a coach do in this situation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean like obviously lots of like additional questions that you want to ask. The first thing I would say is like, does the athlete understand what they're doing and why they're doing it? So it's like hey, why do you think today it's 70-pound dumbbells for these farmers. Why do you think that's the case? And then that can give you a bit of insight into the athlete's psyche of like.
Speaker 1:Well, my grip strength sucks, so holding 70-pound dumbbells instead of 50s today is is obviously like the thing that's gonna make me better there's, that's a common one, right, it's like well, like I'm not very strong, so I should use 225 on the deadlift today instead of 185, because if I want to get strong, I should lift heavier weights. And that's become then. Then that kind of opens the door for the conversation of like okay, so like fair and like on the surface, that makes sense. I understand why you might think that here's what we're after today, here's why we're after it, here's what the stimulus is, this is the reason for it. And then again, this also can like, this should go, even, could even go further down the rabbit hole of like well, why do you want better grip strength? Like well, because I, like I stink at pull ups. Like well, why do you stink at pull up? And you could. You could start, just continue to ask questions and weave your way down a rabbit hole of an answer to the athlete where it's just like well, you have this very one specific thing that you want to get better at and you think that this is the way to do it, and in fact it's not. So that's an option. The other option that I like to kind of give athletes like a thought experiment of is like so today's example.
Speaker 1:Today's workout in the affiliate is 17 minute AMRAP of burpees to a 12 inch target and farmer's carries with 70 pounds for the men, 50s for the women. So an athlete who says like, well, I can do burpees to a 12 inch target, I can do, I can pick up the 70 pound implements and carry them for some distance and then they drop a score like they went through the workout you know want, like got one round and some change, so like bottom of the leaderboard and it's like. I want you to do a thought experiment in your head. If this was regular burpees where I don't give a fuck what the standard looks like, so barely open your hips, barely put your hands over your head, regular burpees, and instead of a 25 meters out, 25 meters back with the dumbbells, you're going to shuttle run, zero weight, it's just run out and back. How do you think how many more rounds and reps do you think you would have gotten versus like you decided to use the 70 pound dumbbells, you carried them 25 meters at a time, you took two minutes of rest because you couldn't actually pick them up and you took 20 minutes to do the 17 minute amrap.
Speaker 1:You know it's like so explaining kind of like, or having the athlete go to the thought experiment of, well, what's the very, very extreme version of scaling? What does that look like and like why might somebody do that? And then kind of like, okay, well, you under, so you understand. Now, if that were your workout today, it was regular burpees and like unweighted, just jogging, which would be far faster, like you could see how much more work you would get done in that 17 minutes compared to you know the alternative version, and I think so.
Speaker 1:I think it just comes down to explaining to an athlete one understanding as a coach, like what the athlete's goal and kind of mindset is as far as like both their decision making process and like what they actually want.
Speaker 1:Goal and kind of mindset is as far as like both their decision making process and like what they actually want to get out of like the workout and out of their fitness in general.
Speaker 1:And then explaining kind of the basic, the core concepts of like, hey, man, here's why we, here's why I'm going to suggest that you scale this workout.
Speaker 1:Here's what I think like I want you to maybe go like all of next week. I want you to scale the workout so far back that you have no choice but to like go fast. It's like make every version of the workout like borderline body weight and like what does that do to your intensity, your ability to stay moving to, to move quickly, versus like having to consistently rest, you know, like throughout the workout, just in such a way, that's like hey, your, your score is not only not like within the target range, but it's like not even close, like we're, we're, you're doing something completely different and it's not moving like the needle in the right direction for you. So I think those are like the really important conversations to have with the athlete to make sure that you, as the coach, or like the athlete feels like you are, as the coach, like want to help in a personalized way, not just like you should scale because those are too heavy for you. It's like sure, like you can go a little bit further than that.
Speaker 2:So that's you know that's kind of where I'd get started. There's this other piece, too, where there isn't actually a correct answer to this question, because it's preference, it's values, it's whatever. You're the head coach at a gym and you have one to three members that are just sort of on that list of like. We've had this conversation a million times. They don't really want to scale it. They want to do this super long workout. Do you let them continue to do so? And it's like there's a financial aspect. Someone's coming to your gym. Is this person like a dick to everybody?
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like they're doing their part in the community. And then there's just the. They're probably better off in my gym moving around for 30 minutes than me being like get the fuck out of here, sort of a thing. And I know that there are good, thoughtful gym owners that live way on one side of this conversation and way on the other, so it's not really like black and white in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2:But, that's kind of this other piece that gets brought into it and I think sort of knowing a bit more about this specific question. A coach kind of has to default to a coach that does not own the gym or is not in charge of the coaching staff, has to default a little bit to what is our, what is the group message related to this?
Speaker 2:You keep trying. You want to know what they're paying, that sort of thing. So that's something to think about and something I think that has to be personalized to your coaching staff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd also say that this Did we say this was a question pertaining to our gym, so I guess I just did, without being specific. We have a culture in which I remember a couple weeks ago we had a workout where an athlete did the workout rx, and it was a workout that this specific athlete really probably didn't have any business doing as prescribed and and their time was like three to like, in some instances like x, you know, top to bottom of the leaderboard, like three to four, x, as long as somebody else. And this person got like effectively roasted in like his school when he posted that score on fitter uh, or it's not on fitter on stream, fit like and it was. It was friendly, like the you know to, to the extent that people were like you did this wrong and like we're kind of laughing about it, but there was like there was a level of social pressure that was like community correction, community correction, a hundred percent. And I think it's a super valuable thing because it tells me like like I don't need to have a conversation with that coach necessarily because one I I trust the coaches and their judgment and I know the individuals that we're talking about and, like you, know everything that you said absolutely applies and it's like the. So yeah, the social correction will happen. And unless that is like the case with a whole you know segment of your membership, for example, where that's the culture, then that becomes like a broader coaching culture ownership. Did the coaches even understand what scaling is and like why we scale and stuff like that? Is there an educational component that's missing at the very top? If you're confident that the, you know, the generally the coaching staff knows what they're doing and the majority of the membership also understands, which I would say like in our case, they, like our members, are terrific.
Speaker 1:I almost never have to like confront somebody about going RX in such a way. That's like, hey, man, this might be dangerous. Like I don't think you should do it, like I can't think of the last time I got pushback on that. So the one or two odd members who decide to, you know, dump the 30 minute time in a 10 minute workout, it's like. It's like, yeah, man, I mean, at some point someone's going to make fun of you, someone's going to ask which rounds you nap between, someone's going to say, like I don't think you did this right. Yeah, and the course correct will will either happen or it won't. And like okay, like not the end of the world. My favorite new saying is the chickens will come to home to roost and you know the athlete who takes that long is also probably you know. Either weights are too heavy, movement quality is probably degrading. You know it's like that. I don't want the athlete to get injured, but, like, at some point you do, you have to take responsibility for yourself and like that is what it is so.
Speaker 2:One version of this that we see in the competitive realm is athletes. That don't go hard enough and don't understand what the intensity is supposed to look like, because every once in a while, someone will drop a cube test score.
Speaker 2:Well, even a cube test score which there's no scaling for four minutes on a machine will put out a score that is half of the amount of calories as the top score, and it's really just not possible for a male to you know, be at like 700 cals per hour competitive programming. So how is that even fucking possible, is a question, and in those instances it's just like that's why we would go back to like should you train in a bubble alone, that sort of thing, and the answer is no, because if you think that you know someone's zone to work on effort on a machine for an anaerobic test is good, then the answer is fucking no. So sometimes it's just like I've had this conversation with people and I like to do it privately.
Speaker 2:it's like you're not going hard enough at all like, yeah, this is not, this is not what we do here this one's interesting, and I have not thought about it before I I have, I love it, and I know who asked it, so I'll do you think on the farthest right hand side of the sick, well, continuum, it slips back to sick, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:outstanding question. I saw her yesterday in open gym and she said that she had a question. I asked her what it was and I was like that's a great fucking question.
Speaker 1:Um, let me, let me get on my l1 pedestal school me here, yeah, so I have not considered this yet yeah, so the brief kind of like CrossFit education for listeners out there is that one of the models of fitness that CrossFit uses is called the sickness wellness, fitness continuum and it is literally think about an arc like a rainbow. On the left side you are sick. So this is the individual who's highly sedentary. Their cholesterol, blood pressure numbers are you know, they're probably on medication. They don't move around very much. They are.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, more than half of the United States of America fall into what we would classify as sick. In the middle you have wellness, which is like probably you know you're someone who comes to the gym, you work out, maybe your biomarkers are in quote the normal range, such that a doctor isn't necessarily going to have to prescribe medication for you, but they could be better. You know you have some level of lean muscle mass, your bone density is where it needs to be, your H1C is in the normal range, all those sorts of things. And then you move to the far right side of the continuum, which is fitness, which is kind of like the goal for everybody to at least be moving to the right at all times and the idea being that, like wherever everybody exists on the spectrum of sickness, wellness fitness somewhere and basically, like the ravages of time, will move you to the left. And if you don't do anything about it, if you just kind of continue to move through life without addressing your fitness, you will just by nature move towards the sick, the decrepit and eventually being dependent on others. Conversely, you increase your fitness level if you are fit, quote, unquote. If you have extremely great blood pressure numbers, you're at A1C, you're fasting glucose, are super healthy, you have a high level of lean body mass and lower body fat percentage, like what we think of when we think of someone who's fit and healthy, that person. A lot needs to go wrong for them to fall left and they will become well before they get sick right. A CrossFit Games athlete does not wake up the next morning and all of a sudden their A1C is at 6.8% and they need to have their leg chopped off right. They have to progress down the continuum in the same way you have to progress up it.
Speaker 1:The question that Heather posed is like do you get to a point where and I'm kind of interpreting this a little bit where you pursue such a high level of fitness that it's actually sickness, you know, or you take it to such an extreme level that it's actually like this is no longer actually benefiting your health and it's actually detracting from it. So that's kind of the synopsis of the sickness, wellness, fitness continuum. I did think about this a little bit, not a ton but the answer, I think, is no. I don't think that becoming what the L1 manual would say as super fit would classify you as sickness. With a couple of caveats, I don't think that, like for the average everyday per, I think that this is also where you start to talk about like is a professional athlete healthy? Is a professional nfl player healthy? It's like they're fucking jacked, they're super strong, they're, they're super explosive cardiovascular fitness. Maybe not so much, but they're like. These are elite athletes. Are they healthy? It's like man you gotta.
Speaker 1:If you're getting pumped full of Toradol in between, you know, in between quarters you need to ice bath.
Speaker 2:And the linemen the linemen, from a physics standpoint are forced to eat an ungodly.
Speaker 1:You are a massive human right.
Speaker 2:They look like shells of themselves one year after retirement. And they're happy too, because they're like I don't have to eat melted ice cream anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you apply that to CrossFit Are the top 20 fittest humans on earth healthy? And it's like, well, if I took a blood panel, I would probably guess that most of them fall into the fit category. Right, and on this sickness, wellness, fitness, continuum, you base this on measurements, objective measurements of things like blood pressure, body fat, bone density, triglycerides, all that stuff. So I'm willing to bet for the most part, that those athletes, all of those biomarkers, fall into the fit category. So really good. My converse argument to this, and I think this is really interesting, that special operators, so American special forces, have some of the lowest testosterone levels of any. I would consider them a professional athlete and that has to do with the level of stress, the lack of circadian rhythm. So these guys often train and operate at night on little sleep, so heavy levels of sleep deprivation, a whole lot of training, and what effectively comes down to is stress, both metabolic and just traditional, like traditional, like these guys are pumped full of cortisol effectively.
Speaker 1:A lot of it, too, is PTSD and absolutely so yeah, so like the, what you might think of as some of the like quote manliest men on the planet, and obviously not to degrade like something that a special operator does, but they they have. Like I was reading something, I pulled it up on perplexity and see if I can find it yeah, I mean, they're essentially just to fill some space.
Speaker 2:They're are pushing their bodies to a point that they're you know that super compensation thing. They're just driving further and further under the line. And when do they get?
Speaker 2:that opportunity to pop back up and there are points of no return. My answer to this question is that you would need a time machine to answer it. It's a little bit of a cop-out, but when you take yourself to that place measurably. But when you take yourself to that place measurably, from what I've read in the last four or five years, there is no processed foods that they eat, because it's just not. It doesn't make the same impact on their body that what they the machine that they've turned it into does. So my question is can you take this so far that you get yourself to a point of no return mentally, where we check in on you 10 years after your career and you are trending in that wrong direction? So you could say there's like a causality to it and we see it in professional athletes on a very regular basis.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like everyone's on Instagram, youtube See collegiate athletes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're popping up somewhere and you're like this dude who is like the pinnacle of this continuum we're talking about. It's like yo, I know the camera adds 10 pounds, but dog, like holy shit. Like you see, your favorite professional athlete is now fat or, you know, dealing with alcoholism or diagnosed with diabetes and things of that nature. Can you take yourself to a point over there where your identity becomes how you perform and what you look like and when that starts to go? You've put too many eggs in that basket, so there isn't probably an argument for um, you know maybe why you're doing it and how healthy it is from a mental standpoint. Related to longevity.
Speaker 2:But if we're taking that snapshot in time, there is no one healthier. It's not possible for someone to get their VO2 max to that point where their body is working that efficiently to be as healthy as those people without putting in the amount of work that they do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's also some. You can find instances of competitive, high-level athletes who are fit, who do have, like, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high fasting glucose, because their bodies are constantly like utilizing and processing glucose, for example, that it's just like it's in their blood more often and so, like you can absolutely on the opposite end of what you were saying like you can find athletes who are super fit who might have like maybe it's due to genetics or whatever it is have have blood markers that are, you know, not normal or not optimal or not in the kind of quote fit category. It's pretty unlikely but it's certainly possible and it also depends on what metrics you're measuring. If it's just the, you know, it's just the blood marker printout that you get like maybe not. But to your point about the like, the mental implications, the stress kind of I was alluding to, like high physical stress, sleep deprivation, extreme operational conditions, caloric restriction, so like for a special operator, you can understand that.
Speaker 1:But I mean, just think about a regular everyday person who has a high power job, super stressful job, they've got kids at home, they don't sleep very well, they miss meals here and there, like all of that is compounding stress, and they might perform extremely well in the gym, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I would want to model their lifestyle for somebody else trying to obtain a high level of fitness. So I think it's a really cool question.
Speaker 2:One rabbit hole that I'm bound to go down again, because we have so much more information nowadays is just this idea of nervous system dysregulation and what can be done about it, because in today's day and age it is just so fucking common and the fact that there are methods to get yourself from a 40 HRV average to like an 80 is crazy.
Speaker 2:And that's like life-changing shit if you can get yourself to that point. So definitely something that will go down. And again, definitely an interesting question. And as I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about the sports that have the weight cuts and those athletes that end up having a huge issue there either being Like bodybuilders.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, so definitely an interesting question. All right, how much running should I do leading up to High Rocks? A lot, it's basically just running. I am a really big fan of the every other day model when it comes to running. I found really good success with helping people specialize where they run every 48 hours and you have to move the sliders around.
Speaker 1:Variable intensities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you move the sliders around based on what you're good at and what you're not good at. So if you can run all fucking day but're not that fast and you're probably only looking at a 90 minutes a week of zone two running, and you got to get your ass out there and run 400s and 800s and 1200s and obviously 1ks and things of that nature. Um, and I'll add to this by saying I'm still being a little cunty about High Rocks as a coach.
Speaker 2:I'll be really cunty as a High Rocks coach, it's just kind of eh, I'm still there and I know that I should be cooler about it because it's like thousands of people moving in the direction on the continuum that we're talking about and it is significantly more accessible than the crazy fucking thing we do. And it's less scary even though it shouldn't be, because how terrifying is an hour of 1k runs like just hoping it'll be a great people want the gyms.
Speaker 2:People want me to write a program for this and I'll tell you, right, fucking now, I will write a program for high rocks. That I'll tell you, right, fucking now, I will write a program for High Rocks that is significantly better than most High Rocks programs. I have no issue with saying that whatsoever, because I know how to get people better. Asking us to get people better at less things. It makes it easier. So I'll just put that out there. I haven't done it yet because it's just not what I do, right. But, like, if my customers want it and they're going to still do CrossFit most of the time, should I do it? I don't know the fucking answer to that. If you guys want me to write a high rocks program, it would be a one off thing that you can go buy on your own and follow on your own. There's not going to be a high rocks track on our programming.
Speaker 2:And I really don't think that I'm going to have to redact this or go back on it, that sort of thing. So, yeah, I'm a big believer in that. You run every 48 hours and, if you need a better answer, if you're a pretty good runner and you need to stay on the same weekly schedule it'd be like a Monday, wednesday, saturday situation. But I don't think that's quite enough if you're all in on High Rocks, because you literally just run the whole fucking time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you should do plenty of it. I don't have a whole lot to add for it.
Speaker 2:It's a single event thing, what do you guys think is a good body fat percentage to strive for as an athlete just wanting to be fit? Not your game's athletes, just your athlete that wants to be fit. Would you like to go first, or would you like me to go first?
Speaker 1:if you'd like to be in the fitness category. Your ideal body fat percentage as a male is between 6 and 18, according to crossfit I was gonna say thank god for 18. It's like six females 6 to 18. For women, where is uh, 6, 4, 20, which makes a little bit higher. That's typically how that goes If you are in the wellness category. Body fat percentage for men 18 to 25. Women 20 to 32 is considered quote wellness. Bigger than the upper end of the wellness side would be classified as sickness.
Speaker 2:My answer wasn't there, too far off. I think a great like life goal would be women to get into the high 20s and men to be around 20. You know what I mean? I I don't think that you're going to see this huge difference between 18 and 22. If I'm just sort of putting it out there. There isn't going going to be. That's like a, like a. You have say, you're weighing and measuring, you're doing a really good job. You're probably at 18 and you're not doing as good of a job. It's around the holidays and you get up to 22, that sort of thing. You said upper 20s for women Would be a good goal of like yeah, yeah, I'd say so. I don don't. I didn't agree with the, the wellness numbers for the women between 20 and 32.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah okay.
Speaker 2:So I'd agree with that. Between 20 and 32 I'd be. That would make sense there. But yeah, getting into the, you know, feel like I don't want to make this up but I feel like from a hormonal aspect there's research that 23 for women for some fucking reason is like ideal, that sort of thing. I don't know that that's actually accurate. But again, just thinking about the visual metrics and I go more towards can you put yourself in this range to once again increase bone density, muscle and VO2 max? That's where my mind goes because of the research on longevity related to that stuff. Yeah, can your body get to a point where you can turn it into the kind of machine that you want it to be to stay healthy for a long period of time, for your health span not necessarily lifespan to to increase? And I think, just from years of being around this gym and the sport, that dudes need to try to get into the high teens for that to happen and women need to get into the 20s for that sort of thing to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't have a whole lot to add. I also couldn't point out what a certain body fat percentage looks like on one person compared to another. And then that begs the question of like does that even matter? Is it just an aesthetic thing or is it a like actual thing? I think I would. I would steer somebody more toward like hey, here's the range that I'd like like to see you in, or maybe not exceed, and then like, do your other blood markers correspond with, like healthy, with healthy numbers?
Speaker 1:Because we we see, like you know, and I'd say it's a much, a little bit more complicated with women than with men because of the implications of like hormones, especially when you see like women on super low fat diets or who are just like very, very lean in general, I think that has the potential to cause like other problems where like, just because the body fat percentage is low doesn't necessarily make you healthy. Um, and I think everybody can agree like, there is a level at which, like you can be too lean, assuming that your goal is not to like win a bodybuilding competition, but since the question is for like general fitness, for life, like you want to have a level of body fat, and we even say that for competitive CrossFit athletes Like if you're a shred, if you're shredded going to the CrossFit games like you're fucked. Glassman said that it's like yeah yeah, sorry.
Speaker 1:She's. She's not going to win the CrossFit game. She's too lean.
Speaker 2:Um, that was like just an observation that turns out to be true, so yeah, the the only the last thing that I'll say, just related to you talking about the visual aspect of it, is you're typically, you typically guess a number that's too high for women and too low for men, just based on the ability to carry muscle mass. So like, if you think a woman is 30% body fat, she's probably 25. And if you think a guy's 15% body fat, he's probably 20, somewhere in that range, 25. And if you think a guy's 15% body fat, he's probably 20, somewhere in that range. Nice, yeah, all right, got any Misfit Camp details? The answer is yes and the answer is no. I am going to give you an accurate where we at All right, we are either going to be in Boulder, colorado, january 30th through February 1stst or February 6th through February 8th.
Speaker 2:This choice depends on coaching staff and elements related to that Logistics a little bit more than anything else. When we asked people to vote, unfortunately it was too fucking. Even there was not a clear thing. So I gave the gym three options. They whittled it down to two. It will be our job to whittle it down to one. If you are passionate about either of those dates, let us know, but if I can't get a coaching staff on one of those dates and I can't on the other. It's not personal. That would be the reason that we're doing it. So CrossFit Roots either that crossover January to February weekend or the first full weekend in February is when we will be there and there will be early bird tickets where you can. If you buy a ticket in the first month or two, it's a little bit cheaper, all right.
Speaker 2:Does Misfit have a specific mobility routine or is it your own mobility routine? This has been a funny thing over the years to deal with People, and I understand why, if they're going to pay a premium price for something, they want us to tell them what to do. The best thing that we've come up with is we have resources, we've done YouTube videos, instagram reels, things of that nature, of some of our favorite stuff but we have no clue what your needs are from a mobility standpoint. And then an example would be OK, I need a really good mobility piece for my hips. When I was younger, for the longest time I could not, because of how tall my shins are. I could not really get a good stretch in the couch stretch Like, even with my back pinned to the wall. But if I'm in like a dragon pose with my arm up on the rig, I can get a really good stretch.
Speaker 2:So it's nuance like that, where it's like, okay, I need a good hip stretch, and it's like all right, well, I might need to give you like three or four for you to find sort of the best way for you to do that. And it's just like are you good at warming up? Are you good at cooling down? Are you dealing with an injury? Are you not able to get into a position? Why aren't you able to get into that position? Yeah, so like so much of it's going to be related often to you know, kind of from the knee to like the like basically the middle of your body, and it's like, well, it could be your glutes, your hamstrings, your hip flexors, your quads, your low back glute, med, glute mat, I mean it's. It's the kind of thing where if we gave you generic shit, you should be mad because it's just us trying to sell you something.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The next question would be why does your mobility routine suck?
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly so you got to be. It's the give a shit factor on the athlete's end. How much do I care about this? How much does it suck being in pain every time I butt wink my way through Karen, you know what I mean. And then I can't walk that sort of deal.
Speaker 2:So you got to put in your work and there are a lot of amazing free resources just fucking everywhere. It doesn't have to be us, it can be. I don't know what K-Star is calling himself nowadays. He's a great resource. There's books, it there's, you know, literally just going on to youtube and being like what's the best way to stretch x? You know, voodoo floss is is amazing, especially as you get older, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, not really an answer, but the best answer that I can give yeah, I think k star has the best like still has the best resources out there. I think he's still the ready state looking really mobility wad. And then Aaron can remember his last name squat University physical therapist. He came out with a book as well, called rebuilding Milo, which we have on our like coffee table conference room. It's got a similar like hey, if this hurts, do this sort of thing. For better or worse, that sort of thing is super, super personalized.
Speaker 2:All right. Does it make sense to alternate speed reps with heavy reps for strict press if you can't get the second strict press session in on Saturdays? So we'll broaden this context. If your program has speed work and heavy work of the same movement, should you superset them? This is super easy.
Speaker 2:The answer is no and the research on it in my mind would come from we do the in baseball. We do the weighted bat. When we're warming up, you put the donut on it or you have the actual super heavy bat that someone fills with sand or whatever. When you do that and you swing it a bunch, it makes your bat feel lighter, right, and unless you have a placebo effect, the reality is it makes you swing slower. And if I were to mix, especially with something like a strict press, strict press is like you do those heavy ones and your body's, you're zapped right, you're going to slow down your speed and then you're going to render those other sets more like I'm adding volume and it's like bodybuilding and at that point you should be doing 12s or 10s or 8s, that sort of deal. So unfortunately, the answer there is no. They are very separate stimulus categories and if one is slowing down the other.
Speaker 1:That's a problem, basically both on the same day? Would you start with speed work? Would you do like an eight by three west side, rest five, six, seven minutes and then build to a heavy single? For example, would you build to a heavy single and then or do some you know five by one at 90% and then do speed work at 50, 60%?
Speaker 2:Probably not, mostly again because of how localized the musculature is for this movement. Like I can't like a deadlift or a squat, like later in the day, go you know, tap another resource to get into it and then, if I've already done 24 reps on my shoulders, which are one of the more poorly designed areas of the body, or at least for what humans use them for Spoiler we're supposed to throw underhand that's how our shoulder was designed, so I don't love that. For the longevity I would rather you get your accessory bench press or your pushups in or something like that, because we're using different muscles. Different plane of pressing gives you a more complete shoulder over a longer period of time, probably increases both your bench and your shoulder overhead more. So there are ways to add volume, but doubling down on the same thing probably isn't it.
Speaker 1:Okay. So last question then If it's I don't alternate and I don't do both on the same day sounds like I only have one day per week where I'm doing this what do I do? Do I only do? Sounds like I only have one day per week where I'm doing this? What do I do? Do I only do heavy or do?
Speaker 2:I only do speed work. I'm going to do a flow chart here. If you need two days a week of it, you're probably not already very fast and unfortunately that probably means that the speed work isn't as advantageous. Yeah, I would do the heavy work. Personally, I would get myself to a point where you can where when you put 75 to 95 pounds on a barbell and you press it, you can hear. You know, use metal weights and you can hear them clang.
Speaker 2:You can make it snap like that sort of thing, Because if that's not happening already, then that's going to be a problem. And it's one of the things where I've said it a bunch before like speed work works better for strong people.
Speaker 1:And I was about to say like the problem is is that speed work is best for people who can move it fast, Like it's not like I'm slow, so I should do speed work. It's like if you're slow, you're probably doing the speed work slow as well, which kind of sounds counterintuitive. But yeah, for sure All right.
Speaker 2:Quick review of duration, feel stimulus to aid athletes in scaling workouts for themselves. I'm going to give you guys a quick rundown of how you should think about it if it's in training versus testing, because those are two different things. So duration's easy. When we say short, we mean let's get this thing done in less than eight minutes. I'd say That'd be a safe way to put it Medium let's get this thing done in less than 16 minutes. And long congratulations. If you are so fit that you are an outlier on a workout and you go sub 16, good for you. Amazing stimulus, not really a big deal. But most of the time it should be 16 to 20, 16 to 25, 16 to 30 minutes, that sort of thing. So that part of it's kind of easy. We'll do the pacing part next. So the pacing portion of it is, you're almost always going to see, forever, sustain or reach. Forever is like what it says, right, like I can just do this for as long as you want me to.
Speaker 1:It's not going to be a problem. We almost rarely even plug that into programming anymore.
Speaker 2:We don't plug it into workouts, but it's written enough in the programming that I wanted to bring it up so like, if you're doing in-between lifts, if you're doing if I've got you doing a bunch of forever pacing stuff in the reps column, then it should not affect anything else, including itself. Sustained pacing is looking at a body of work, the whole thing. So it could be two minutes and it could be 40 minutes. I can hold the pace that I start at for the entirety of the workout. Hands down. I'm positive that I can continue to do this and that kind of pacing is incredibly important and underutilized, especially in long stuff. Now, can you audit sustained pacing in real time and go a little bit faster? Of course, right, I would rather, in sustained pacing, someone undershoot and negative split a workout than vice versa.
Speaker 2:Reach pacing is we look at the total volume of something and we go a little bit faster than we probably should, and that could be to get intensity, or it could be because we're looking at an interval and we're saying, okay, the totality of volume here is 20 minutes, but I get six minutes of rest during it. I can sort of up the pace there. So in all of these things we have to have an athlete IQ fully. Step back and see the total volume. And it could be obvious because it's an AMRAP or you're just on a machine or whatever. Or it could be not so obvious and you don't know how long things take. Like we've got a workout this week. That's fucking gnarly but it doesn't look that bad on paper. It's the 10 rounder where you have to do the echo bike twice, yeah.
Speaker 2:Every round that is a long fucking workout and it's a cardio stimulus. So like this, that's one where it's like you really got to back up and do the math on how many of these and how many of those you are doing. When we get into stimulus is when it really matters. It's like if it's a test, the onus is on the writer of the workout almost exclusively to hit the stimulus. If it's in training, a lot of times we are implying that we want you to have a part in the stimulus. So cardio is our merry-go-round style workout.
Speaker 2:We want the workout to be able to be, for the most part, unbroken, and unbroken could mean like quick singles on something, unbroken, smooth, quick transitions and sustained pacing where you could again do the same pace for the entirety of the workout. There are almost always self-pacing. There are pacing mechanisms built into the workout A machine, burpee box, jump over something where you can bring personal cadence to the party. So that, like I've written it a bunch recently and I'm trying to think of a specific workout, I feel like we've got a row dead recently and I'm trying to think of a specific workout. I feel like we've got a row deadlift, handstand, pushup workout coming up where it's cardio stimulus and it's like okay, you need to crush the handstand pushups and crush the deadlifts and row at a pace that allows you to do that exact thing the entire time.
Speaker 1:So that's a really good example.
Speaker 2:Another example is the open workout 20 minute deadlift, 10 deadlift, 50 double under 300 meter row, whatever it was someone who's way fitter than me by rowing at like 900 kals per hour. It just doesn't. You know, it doesn't compute for a lot of people. So that's what that cardio stimulus looks like, the gas stimulus is. We are trying to create a situation where if you attempted to make it a cardio stimulus, your heart rate would be at 206. So we are writing it where it's like like some of the some of our go-tos would be the burpee box jump over, would be the chest to bar pull up, would be maybe even like a push press, where sometimes you get that feel like, wow, I'm being dynamic, this is fantastic, I'm going to go unbroken and you feel good doing it, and then you drop and you just have that moment Right, and that's a bit of the intensity is freedom thing where, because you have to be dynamic and focus on your movement, you're not really thinking about the fact that you're putting yourself in a grave. So we're intentionally trying to give you a combination of movements or a rep scheme or a time domain or all of the above. That puts you in a situation where you are going into that reach category, outside of your comfort zone, and you got to figure out what to do in that moment. Right, I'm breaking up these chest of our pull-ups, not because my forearms are going to explode, but because my heart is going to explode and we want you to explore those places, the nooks and crannies in those workouts, and make them a gas stimulus, because it could be that the spectrum is this is gassy, I can't like even read it. Or this is wheelhouse and I actually might be able to make this cardio. I'm super fit and I think I could make this cardio and it's like, well, make it not cardio, right, like overreach on your favorite movement and then see what happens to your gymnastics. Overreach on your gymnastics because you're a bodyweight ninja and then have to go deal with the ramifications on the echo bike, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Muscle overload is really just the same thing, but my legs hurt, my arms hurt. We are putting you in a situation where the combination of movements makes it hard to physically perform a rep in another movement. Or you got to do 40 muscle ups in the middle of this chipper. Good fucking luck. You can be breathing heavy, you can be standing there because you can't do the dip or you know the turnover starting to go or something to that effect. And again, we're not always going to over-program this type of workout. So when you see it you want to think like, is this going to be? Like, could I make this cardio? And we don't write a whole lot of muscle endurance workouts that could be cardio. But every once in a while there's something again that could be wheelhouse. You love, you know, you love. You're either a puller or presser and we're trying to attack your midline or your grip or your shoulders and you're like you know, hold my beer, sort of a thing.
Speaker 2:So again, in those instances, I, from a remote coaching standpoint, give the instruction to the athlete. How do you make this muscle endurance? We're not gaming this. We're not getting the best score. You suck at handstand walking. I want you to bike hard on the echo bike and then handstand walk. I want you to know what that feels like. I want you to go past the line. I want you to go before the line. We're going to practice all of these sort of things. Anything to add to that before I talk about the competition workouts?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in a competition again it's more on the programmer and you are basically trying to do the opposite of what I just said and you're trying to game the workout. You're trying to figure out the best sets and reps. How do I chop this thing up? What is the exact pace on the rower? That's as hard as I can go without sacrificing in that cardio workout, Probably going to push a little bit harder to figure out what that is in that setting and you're really just trying to figure out the workout and there's a lot of trial and error in all of the different stimulus. When it comes to that Competition setting, you do not haze yourself in these workouts for any reason. Try to figure out the best way to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the one thing I'll add is that, for I think most athletes, whether they know it or not, fall into I prefer this style of workout like I prefer. This style of workout Me personally, I prefer I do well in cardio type stimulus, where it's like unbroken sets. Usually that also implies that the sets aren't huge. It becomes much more of just like can you sustain working at a really high heart rate? Those are good workouts for me. Muscle overload workouts not so good. Gas tank workouts not so good. So when the open, for example, comes around and I see a gas tank workout, let's just assume that I've been following the hatchet program or something and I've, like, identified and been working on it Like I've really, I've really been attacking the gas tank workouts because I know that's a weakness. I've really been trying to hold on for bigger sets of the muscle overload workouts because I know that's a weakness.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, I'm going to take all the information that I learned in training and then, when it comes time to compete, I'm going to game the fuck out of this to make sure that this is a cardio workout for me.
Speaker 1:Like I'm not going to.
Speaker 1:You know, you don't get points for going on broken, you don't get points for winning the first round, that sort of thing. It's like how can I game this workout to be, as you know, to get the most work done in the least amount of time, go as fast as I can? So I think it's important to like know the difference, not only for scaling purposes in training, but also like recognizing within yourself the stimulus that you suck the most at attacking it in training, so that hopefully it's less of a problem because the open also, like anytime we do a competition recap, we we tend to we kind of like talk about things in our language, and crossfit does a pretty good job of like distributing those stimuli. It's a little bit different at like the games level and obviously different the level to begin with, but most workouts fall pretty nicely into one of those three categories. So obviously some that are just kind of a kick in the nuts and it's a little bit of everything but um and Castro loves to present a workout as closer to cardio.
Speaker 2:That has you arrive at a bottleneck where the choices that you made earlier on in the workout are no longer great, right, you get those quarterfinals workouts where you end on, you know, lots of pulling gymnastics or something like that, and it's like, oh, we were just doing chest-to-bar and deadlift. I know?
Speaker 1:yeah, that was only 20 chest-to-bar pull-ups Exactly yeah, but now it's 20 bar muscle-ups and you're an idiot. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is. I wanted to put this one in here because it gets asked all the time are there good sled alternatives? The answer, honestly, is no. There are things that you can do to mimic a sled, but, like we, this is just on the strength side. It's a very low stakes way, as we already described to like like I can personally do sleds and I can't do any strength exercises without hurting myself. And then the other is just this elongated time under tension situation that we can create with people you know, like plate pushes are annoying as hell. Do you, do you want to put?
Speaker 2:on a rock and do like low step ups, like go for it. The banded marches is a good thing, all that sort of stuff, but I find so many of those things to end up being the kind of work that people skip. Yeah, like sleds are not super expensive. Like you can, you can. I would urge people. I guess one of the reasons why I'm answering it this way, and I even brought it up, is because I urge people to just figure it out. Get a sled, make a sled like it's. It's a great tool. It's one of the best tools that you can have in the gym you can find relatively inexpensive.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a find something that's just a fucking piece of metal like, or whatever the surface that you most often push it on, find something to use. It's like yeah, you could come up with a whole bunch. I've got a shitload of movements that will make your legs feel the way that a sled will at various weights. But there is, you know it's difficult to replicate the like, the feeling of pushing into a sled. Right, it's like run with a moderately loaded sled, like okay C2 bike on a moderate damper for the same amount of time, will make your legs feel the same, but it's not going to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:Like you said, from a time under tension perspective, like the variance in in dragging it versus pushing it, versus walking backwards with it versus marching with it, it's a useful tool that, like again, if you're, if you're trying to be competitive, you need a sled, you definitely need a sled. And if you're just an average everyday person, like fuck, that's a great, like you said, low stakes strength development tool. When my mom was coming in for like training, often like she didn't like it, but she's fucking pushing that sled. I don't give a shit, mom, you push the sled and you're gonna like it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean honestly. If your parents are over the age of well depends on where they are on the continuum, are over the age of well depends on where they are on the continuum. Let's say they were well over the age of 60, the best Christmas present you could ever get them is a sled with wheels. They got no fucking excuse Go push that baby Like so great, all right.
Speaker 2:Last question I have generally had the same weaknesses for as long as I can remember, but I feel like I'm closing the gap more and more on them. I was wondering if you have any material you would distribute to the masses to help assess strengths and weaknesses or pointing out holes. Completely fair If you just say a remote coach would be a best to assess this. That's the goal eventually. I mean, yeah, that is one answer, but it's not the only answer. I am of the mind that there's you've got blinders on or a bias if you are not aware of where the holes are. Because, like when, if you have something that's truly a weakness and isn't just sort of in line with your gpp, it's gonna be so fucking obvious during the open, during your local throwdown, during in-person semi-finals, that sort of thing. The next step to this is knowing why it's a weakness. That might be the thing that a trained eye is going to be able to do better with I'm also 100% willing to answer these questions for athletes on a personal level in Telegram.
Speaker 2:If you go in there and you say here's the weakness, I'm going to tell you how it goes or show you so, but knowing Better yet, attach a video.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So are you not good at it? Because genetically again, you're a squatter versus a puller, a puller versus a presser, that sort of thing. Do we need to up the volume of the accessory work on something? Do you not just do it enough? Is there just not enough volume of like? Hey, I suck at this particular machine or time domain. It's like okay, like, let her rip, let's do more of this sort of thing. Do you move like crap?
Speaker 1:Is there a?
Speaker 2:strength to body weight ratio issue. There's a lot of things that could be at play here. So I think what your weaknesses are better be pretty damn obvious, but then what to do about it is probably a bit more nuanced, and I think I would always be happy to answer that question. And if it's like I don't want to put this out publicly, coach at misfit athleticscom, send me an email, tell me what you're struggling with.
Speaker 1:I'll help you.
Speaker 1:That's something that I hang my hat on that people that follow our programming have access to me, so yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I would say that, like, given the question, the way that you distribute like a, what was it pointing out holes? It's like you, you just look at scores, so you have a whole shitload of benchmark workouts that the entire CrossFit community has a whole shitload of data on. You have open workouts where you can like open source, look on the leaderboard, like wow, I took you know, I was top 500 in all of these workouts, except for this 1000th place in the lift. Like I wonder what it could be that sort of thing. So those are where I would look to do that. And then, as far as what, the actual answer is yeah, there's, and there's, just that's way too broad. It's like movement quality. Like you know, I suck at handstand push-ups. Oh, your, your mobility sucks like no wonder you suck at handstand push-ups. Like it could be that it could be a whole number of things all right.
Speaker 2:My final thoughts are that we've been talking for an hour 43 minutes and 19 seconds. I did not get to faqs. I will at some point. We'll post them kind of directly on YouTube. Probably won't do it as a podcast, but just things like a sample day of programming and how to deal with the instructions zone. Two volume, things of that nature. Anything to add? Hunter?
Speaker 1:Gotta dig up my last video I have of Wilbur humping cash. Watched that a couple of times. I got a few of them that guy got after it. So he did and he only did it when people were over.
Speaker 2:Anytime some he'd like they were showing off they were best buds and he left them completely alone. And then people came over and he just hump him and then when you get him to stop, he would just air hump. He'd just be standing there in the middle of the floor just getting after it, Just laying pipe.
Speaker 1:All right, I think I got an air hump video around here somewhere, so did we do it?
Speaker 2:We did it. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the misfit podcast Link and buy on Instagram to get signed up for any of our program individual programs on fitter or strivey team misfitcom. Click on the sign up now button to get a two week free trial of our affiliate programming on stream fit, sugar, wad or push press. See you next week.
Speaker 1:Later.