MONTEZUMA: New Misfit Affiliate Phase - E.372

We lay out the Montezuma phase and show how deadlifts and wall walks, paired with smart cardio and GPP rotations, build a sturdy trunk and a stronger culture. We share why narratives matter, how PAP and reset deadlifts teach bracing, and how wall walks outperform handstand walking for GPP.

• Montezuma phase theme of midline and posterior chain
• Deadlift heavy days with PAP and reset mechanics
• GPP rotation and targeted in‑WOD lifting for expression
• Wall walk bias with test–retest and skill exposure
• Cardio days as shared suffering and measurable progress
• Culture of coaching responsibility and athlete ownership
• Competitor Extra for retention and smart added volume
• Engine program cadence work and Sunday long sessions
• Practical scaling, stimulus notes, and warm‑up guidance

Get a two‑week free trial at teammisfit.com—click Sign Up Now at SugarWOD, StreamFit, or PushPress. Or email coach@misfitathletics.com for a two‑week sample of the Montezuma phase. Join our Telegram to connect with coaches and affiliates.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Housekeeping, Free Trials, Telegram Shift
• 2:41 Community Shoutouts & Training Camp Details
• 8:44 Coaches vs Athletes: Shared Responsibility
• 12:40 Deadlifts, Sleds, and Real Affiliate Coaching
• 18:00 Montezuma Phase: Why “Sturdy Trunk”
• 22:20 Midline, Posterior Chain, and Injury Proofing
• 28:44 Culture Check: How Your Gym Deadlifts
• 32:03 Heavy Days, PAP, and Reset Deadlifts
• 38:24 GPP Rotation and In-WOD Lifting Strategy
• 43:32 Wall Walk Bias and Handstand Walking Exposure
• 50:05 Test–Retest, Stimulus, and Coaching Buy-In
• 55:16 Cardio Days: Shared Suffering, Better Results
• 1:01:10 Narrative in Class: Coaching That Moves People
• 1:04:43 Daily Notes, Scaling, and Competitor Extra
• 1:11:08 Engine Program and Seventh-Day Structure
• 1:16:15 Final Thoughts, CTA, and What’s Next

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

Good morning, Misfits. You are tuning in to a special edition Misfit podcast. If you were listening while we were our recording or after we record on October 14th, then six days from now, the Misfit affiliate Montezuma phase starts October 20th, Monday, October 20th, and you can get a two-week free trial to see what that looks like. Sort of dip your toes into the water, if you will, by heading to teammisfit.com. Click on sign up now, and you can get a two-week free trial at SugarWad, StreamFit, or PushPress. If you would like to sign up on our website, email me, coach at misfitathletics.com, and I will get you a free sample of the first two weeks of the Montezuma phase. And then that way you can have an open line of communication. Honestly, everyone gets an open line of communication. You want to do an onboarding call, you want to talk through why you should use our affiliate programming, feel free to reach out. And these podcasts serve a bunch of purposes, but I think mainly getting people excited. We're going to talk a little bit here in a second about the idea of narratives, but getting people excited about the phase and knowing that we do put a lot of thought and effort into the concept of variants and making sure they're good workouts, but we also put a lot of thought and effort into the structure of things because an absolutely perfect program that people find to be a little bit boring or redundant isn't going to work as well as something where we can get people rallied around kind of a concept and an idea. Before we get into that, as always, we're going to go through housekeeping, shout-outs, all that good stuff, a little bit of live chat, and then we will dig into Montezuma. Just a little bit of a reminder, especially for affiliates, we have made the full move from Discord to Telegram. If you are, if you haven't received that invite, we sent that out via email. If you didn't receive that again, contact us anywhere. I'm coach at misfitathletics.com. I will let you guys know that my hope is to get you guys a little bit more active on Telegram and then create that private group once again, like we had in Discord. But what I found is if I create a private group that takes you clicking an extra link and moving over there, it's going to have even less traction. So at first, let's just get on to Telegram. We've had a few sort of random conversations, that sort of thing, but keeping it going a little bit more often, um, I think will be helpful for everybody. Shout out to Nate Gordon and Katie Tavog, both podiumed at the 2025 Masters Fitness Championship. I think one of the coolest things is when someone puts in the effort to talk to people on Telegram and to show up at training camps and sort of really be a member of the community. When you do that, that's how you get so many people jumping into Telegram and congratulating you on all the hard work that you've put in and being able to put that on display. So just a lot of cool notes from people saying congratulations to both Nate and Katie. And that comes from putting yourself out there and becoming part of the community. Just cool to see people's hard work being put on display and cool to see people who take the time to uh sort of help usher the community, move it along, get the shout-outs. Sure. We also have, and this is this will I'll go in a specific direction here with this. We have Misfit training camp at CrossFit Roots in Boulder, Colorado, January 30th through February 1st. Yeah. If you click on the link in bio at Misfit Athletics on Instagram, the top thing there is for you to be able to get signed up. And early bird pricing is live through November, and then it bumps up about 50 bucks. We've said it before, I'll say it again. People wonder if this is for athletes or coaches. Um, and it's very much an and versus an or. And I will say that sometimes it's potentially geared a little bit even more towards coaches just because we are coaches and we are thinking about when we are creating the camp and the outline and what we want to do in it, it is from a coach's point of view. And if you were to attend camp with that perspective, you would get a lot of really good nuggets. And of course, the athlete is going to show up and look at it through a different lens. You are teaching me how to do this thing. But if I'm a coach and I go to something like that, I want to know how someone's structuring a skill breakout session, the way that they communicate with people, the way that they deliver information, the way that they have the like sort of presentation of something within camp. And our coaching staff, I'll put myself aside. We've got some really people who are really good at sort of running that affiliate type class and presenting things within that way. So it's just a a really cool thing to absorb if you have the right perspective for coaches. So definitely for coaches, definitely a very strong connection. If you are a Misfit affiliate gym and you've wanted, you know, sort of that in-person experience with us. This is this is gonna be the best place to do it. And we've joked already that we used to ask you to come to Maine in the winter and it's just dark and cold, basically, um, unless you want to fucking go snowshoeing.

SPEAKER_00: 5:26

I don't want to I don't want to fucking go to Maine in the winter.

SPEAKER_01: 5:28

I'm already scared. It will be cold, not probably as cold. It's also dry in Boulder, but it's beautiful and it's a really cool area, and it's definitely got a vibe in the wintertime. That's that's pretty cool. I went to college out there and spent some time there, and it's pun not intended, cooler than cooler than Maine. I'll just put it that way. So sign up for camp.

SPEAKER_00: 5:50

Yeah, the only thing I was gonna add on that is like I I thought your what you just said kind of made me think back a little bit just from like how camp has it's always been structured very similarly, I think, but like the with with chain obviously small changes here and there, but the like the you know who it's for, I think has probably shifted the most. Not that it wasn't never for like coaches. You could always like, if you're a coach and you pay close enough attention, you can always get something, but it was very much for athletes who want to compete at a certain level initially, and with like, you know, one over time to just like the nature of the sport has led that to be more people interested in. Yeah, it's like it's a there's there's a competitive aspect from from an athlete perspective, but like the focus has shifted a bit to being like, hey, this is equally, if not more valuable for coaches than it is for, you know, athletes. Because the, you know, the the athletes who really end up wanting to take it seriously from a competitive standpoint more than likely are either have a coach or maybe they're gonna it's gonna get them to pull the trigger on do something like remote coaching or something like that, which leaves kind of everybody else. And there's a lot of we've always had a lot of coaches or people who have maybe they just have their L1 or something like that. They go to a camp and they pick up some nuggets. So uh very much equal parts for coaching and athletes. And I think the lectures and the talking points and stuff like that has have also shifted, not even intentionally, but provide more like really good value to a coach who wants to, you know, just pick some new stuff up for for use wherever they use it.

SPEAKER_01: 7:27

Right. And we will, over a long enough time horizon, we're gonna adjust what's in camp for who shows up at camp, I think is probably an important point. But then also in real time for who's there, just the way that you're communicating, the way that you're talking, the side conversations are going to be driven by who is there and what sort of knowledge are they trying to get. And we do the thing where like Friday night is the lifting session, and honestly, more than anything, it's an icebreaker because it's you know, coming to camp is not cheap, and you guys only get us for two and a half days. And I don't want people to wait until Sunday afternoon to start asking questions and start to get out of camp what they wanted to be able to get out of camp. Yeah. So last week you joined Nicole from CrossFit Roots and Dave Castro randomly. I'll tell my my little joke that I that I said to you. I was in my office programming and I didn't have my noise canceling on, and Hunter's voice was like probably 25 to 50 percent higher than I've heard it. Especially higher or louder? Louder. Not higher, higher volume. And there were a lot of there's a lot of cursing, and I was like, wow, he's having like a very like it doesn't sound negative, but it sounds spirited conversation. I was like, what the fuck is happening? But I had to continue getting my shit done, so I put my noise canceling on and closed my door. And then his mug pops up on my YouTube. You and I was confused also, it said CrossFit Tupelo. I was like, come on, guys, you can you can't even get our affiliate name right, but there's a a reason for that. So, Hunter, why were you randomly the stand-in for CrossFit Tupolo?

SPEAKER_00: 9:05

Randomly selected by the uh maybe most recent text message from Nicole Christensen was probably just the the name that popped up. Yeah, the the background is that I was just Nicole had actually messaged me earlier in the day to thank me for the ski sled workout, sled sled ski sprint workout that our affiliates had last week. Her gym, what a fucking sadist, was sled assault bike. She said they didn't they either didn't have enough ski ergs or don't have any ski ergs or whatever. Yeah. And I was like, good fucking lord. Like that was I did I did C2 bike ski earlier in the day. And I think honestly, in like the tough part about the sled is like so peek behind the the programming curtain here. I want to use we have sleds, lots of gyms have sleds. Sleds are a phenomenal tool. It's difficult to program them in an affiliate setting because you have to make sure that they're available. Maybe you got 20 people and four sleds. So what are what are you gonna do? We want to program them, we want to keep the variants in there. Uh but I think the C2 bike version might have been fucking gnarlier. Anyway, she texted me, said, Thank you. I almost threw up. We're so happy with the programming. Everybody should follow it. I said, Thank you. Kyle actually wrote the workout. So anyway, a few hours later, it's like I have like 20 minutes until I have to coach. And she texted me. She goes, What are you doing right this minute? And I'm like, nothing really. Like, I got 20 minutes till I coach. Why? Assuming I thought she maybe had a programming question. Uh, and whoever whoever was supposed to be on with uh Dave and Nicole. Tough look for for them, but I got the uh I guess second round draft pick phone call to to chat about it. But I guess they had been talking about the workout as well. Dave was doing the the CrossFit games, connecting the strings to the thumbtacks and the whiteboard, doing the logistics thing, and he's like, I don't think it's not a good workout for this reason and that reason, but it's a great workout because it clearly was a great workout. And to his credit, he was just you know probably giving Nicole shit um and then just thinking about how this runs at an affiliate class. But anyway, um that is essentially how we I got myself on a phone call with Castro and uh and Nicole Christensen. Apparently got just having my vertical camera. Yeah. Interviewing it. Which is hilarious as like a YouTube channel. Oh, goddammit, CrossFit Tupelo. Come on, Dave. CrossFitMF, Misfit Jim Portland. But uh you gotta I was kind of bummed I would have if Kyle was here, Kyle can listen to this, but if Kyle was here, it would have been like Kyle, you you're the 330 guy now. I gotta keep talking, I gotta keep keep the uh the interview going here. Uh yeah. Interview's a bit of a stretch. A 15, 20 minute stand-in for a conversation is probably more realistic, but good good chatting with him for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 11:50

Yeah, I the the like the things that I picked up on is like one, his opinion of the sleds was kind of funny to me. And maybe because we don't use it as a crutch, I don't see it that way. But it's like one of the most it's like with the kind of thing where like if I could, you know, instead of stimulus checks, I would send everyone a sled. Like it is so accessible. Yeah, it every single person can use it. Like it's just to me that type of thing. Yeah. And to be able to moderate stimulus the way that you can, like, that's one of the reasons why it can be challenging at the affiliate level to program like the echo bike in the air bike as an inverse, because it's fixed in like how much resistance it gives, right? Yeah, sure. And and luckily you can use your arms and your legs, so that bites into it a little bit. If it was fixed resistance and it was just arms or legs, it would be it would get ugly. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 12:48

I think that's a good, like, really nice point too. And for any coach or athlete out there listening, like you can sprint with an empty sled, you can run with like a moderate sled, you can like trudge slowly as fuck for a short distance with something wildly heavy. It can be light, you can use it for accessory work, it can be light, you can use it for like cardio, like just literally dragging it for periods of time. It's so good for super deconditioned athletes who can't, you know, maybe safely load, whether it's putting something on their back or, you know, maybe maybe running, period, running with a maybe you've got a burden run type workout where you're supposed to carry something, pushing a sled's a little more accessible. It's a wildly useful tool in the same way as the assault and echo bike can be tricky to challenge. I think that's the can be the issue with the sled in the group classes as well, which is again, if I I think that that workout was great. I think people enjoyed it. I think it could have been, we could have programmed it maybe a little bit better, or it just it's just hard. You have to get that sweet spot of like it's loaded properly, the athletes have to go hard with it. So it I think it did its job. I think it was probably like a seven out of ten versus what could have been an eight or nine out of ten in hindsight, but still like a super effective tool that you guys should have in your back pocket.

SPEAKER_01: 14:08

As a natural segue to Castro saying Misfit affiliate is affiliate programming for big boys, I believe is what he said. Basically just insinuating that sales pitch. Yes. But listen, we can we've I don't want to say we've even tried, because it's probably not true, but there have been ebbs and flows in the way that we program and communicate in an effort to make certain things more accessible over the course of whatever it is, 13 years. And the programming that resonates with people that gets the best results is the one where we give a level of responsibility to the athlete and to the coach, whether that's affiliate programming or individual programming, because we're not trying to be like puppeteers. Like so we end up with a smaller group, but I think we have, we make a larger change, we have a larger effect on the greater fitness community by doing that. And the reason why that's a segue is just because there's nuance to what surface are you pushing on, what style of sled is it, how many people do you have in class, how many sleds do you have? Like there's nuance related to that. And if a coach at our gym ran a bad class and you had a meeting with them and they said, but you wrote it on the white, you wrote it on the screen, it's not my fault, we wouldn't accept that. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean seeing these things happen in real time, and if you don't understand it, you can run them through a warm-up or you can figure it out on the fly. Like there's just enough nuance here that the expectation is not for us to provide a program where you can set up a fucking recliner in the corner and get into it and watch people exercise in your gym. That we don't, I don't even I don't want that. You know what I mean? If our, you know, MRR, if our revenue was double in a month and we hated the product that we were putting out there, that would get old really fucking fast. So I just think that the idea that we are writing programming for experienced coaches plays into okay, this there's a lot of nuance to a sled.

SPEAKER_00: 16:19

Yeah, I don't even I wouldn't even say experienced is the requisite. I I would say like gives a shit is the requisite. You can be a you can be an inexperienced coach and like if you give a shit, that person is gonna read the notes, they're gonna read the scaling options, and they're in theory gonna do their best to understand what this is supposed to be. And that all is also going to, you know, again, you have a coach who's wants to be doing what they're doing, they're also gonna communicate that to the athletes. Odds are that that class is gonna be a good time and effective, whether or not it's people get the same scores as you know, misfit Jim Portland or not is way less relevant. And I think like your point is really salient. It's like if you were a if you were the judge, you know, literally in a in a legal case, and on you've got coach and athlete, you know, plaintiff defendant, and it was like coach is like, I like give a shit so much, I care, like I want the best, I tell athletes exactly what to do. And the athlete is just like, I only do literally exactly what my coach says and nothing else. The judge, I'm gonna be like, okay, athlete, like, what the fuck? Like, no wonder it's not working. Like, you're not, there's no responsibility on your end. If you're at the other side, the athlete's like, I'm here to work, I want to get better, I want to get better. And like, coaches in the recliner, coach looks at the whiteboard, says, Hey, go do the warm-up. Okay, here's the workout. We're starting in five minutes. Like, and then I'm like, hey, coach, what the fuck? Like, there has to be that that meet in the middle, that 50-50 kind of agreement, and it's not just because like you like it's not as much like our opinion as it is just like it like both people have to be invested. It's a fucking marriage. Like, if one person cares and the other doesn't, it doesn't matter how much the person who cares cares. Like, it has to be a mutual thing. And like when it comes to doing the like taking the step of like, well, what about a timeline? What about skill progressions? What about you know, this, that, and the other thing? Like, you know, other programs include that. And it's like, yeah, okay, like, got it, that's fine, and like good, good for them. You want to do that, that's great. Um, that's not to say that like we could couldn't do certain stuff like that, but it's it's more the idea that like, hey, the expectation is that you are doing your best to translate what we've done here. And like, if you have a third person in this group, like us the programmers, like if we didn't give a shit about it, then that's gonna trickle down as well. So it it you know, it starts with us giving a shit and making sure that we're writing a good product and not babying you. And again, it's like I was kind of explaining this with to Dave when he asked, like, you know, what sets your program apart. It's like, well, again, maybe the worst sales pitch in history in in hindsight after listening to it, but I was like, listen, like, I don't know what equipment you have, I don't know what your gym layout is, I don't know what the motivation level of your athletes are, what the experience of your coaches are. So I'm giving you the most, the most, but not the like I'm giving you the select number of tools that I think you need to run this effectively that requires you to think just a little further to take one additional step in the thought process. I'm not asking you to like, you know, if I didn't, if I just said, hey, write a 10-minute workout with three movements, like that's bullshit, right? I'm not giving you any value there. But it's like, hey, here's the workout, here's the stimulus, here's a bunch of scaling options, here's how you can do this if you don't have a bunch of equipment. Like, I want to take care of like the logistical kind of thought process for you. But as far as like the nitty-gritty of like, well, what do I teach people? It's like, I don't know. Do you have do you have 10 like brand new beginners? Because this muscle up progression isn't very useful for those 10 brand new beginners, right? And like, I need you to cater how you're gonna teach this class for the individuals. And like even at our gym, that the the demographic and the requirement changes from hour to hour. It's like I'm not teaching the 5 a.m. people the same thing I'm gonna teach the 5 p.m. people because they have different, that's a different group of people, they're at a different stage in their fitness, and they need a different kind of approach. So if you're looking for me to like plug the coach into the wall and wind him up and be like, yep, this is the coach for this class, like like you're gonna I'm willing to bet that that's the gym that also program hops and or caters to whatever members want, versus like, hey, this is the CrossFit methodology, this is why it works, this is how we do it. If you don't like it, totally fine. Crossfits for anyone, it's not for everyone. That's what we do here.

SPEAKER_01: 20:50

And there's a there's like insert teach Amanda Fish quote here, right? Like if we exactly if we baby people, we're not gonna end up with the retention or the you know the the pictures from you know Jesse's gym or Nicole's gym of the PRs. So show up at camp, email us, be like, hey, how did you think through this, that kind of thing. That is where we can help you like really execute as coaches and owners. Before one more thing before we get into it. So if you are already following the program and you're listening to this podcast on the day that it is released, tomorrow is 15 years to the day that I opened my the garage in my house, the garage door opened, and CrossFitMF had affiliate classes. I was 24 years old. I chose the house specifically because the garage had high enough ceilings for me to hang muscle up rings from this steel beam that ran across the top of the garage. So, like there were other houses that I liked. Um, and we were joking yesterday that the like the difference. I I didn't think I had a W-2 when they gave me a mortgage. I just graduated college. Yeah. So different times in in many, many ways. You guys have the um the 15th anniversary workout. Um, it's a bit of a doozy of a workout. Other variations of it that I wrote, like you would have needed like a two-hour class. So it did get whittled down a little bit, but I think it'll be spicy. And yeah, I mean, basically just a shout out to 15 years as a CrossFit affiliate and everyone who's been involved, and just the the idea of the like maturation process and what our affiliate has turned into now versus what it was is pretty crazy, but I can tell you that it's funny that you said the give a shit thing. I am designing the logo for our educational stuff, and it's like I won't release the name yet, but it is very much a juxtaposition between higher education and people who say motherfucker too often. And the crest has a flag in it that says GIS on it. That is the consistent thing that's been there, and you know, you're giving a shit about different stuff at different points, but the level of like we're super into this thing and we're drinking the Kool-Aid and all of that has been there from day one. So just bonkers for me to look back over 15 years as an affiliate screen. It's a long time. Yes, it is. All right. So one of the things that you talked to Castro about that I was sort of smirked a little bit was he really liked the idea of the bias because of some of the stuff that we've talked about before, because of the narrative. We gotta get people bought into this thing, right? Like people people post all the time online like a like a good program that is actually followed is better than a perfect program that no one follows. And I wouldn't slot us all the way down to just good, but just the idea of it in and of itself. So when I go to name these things, I'm trying to find what really pops out to me when I look at what the programming biases are. And when I see deadlifting and wall walk slash handstand walk, I see a really strong connection, especially because of all of the deadlift handstand walk, deadlift handstand push-up workouts that we used to get back in the day. And someone who might like one or the other, or one or the other in a certain form, when programmed together, you find out how much of this is about your trunk and about your midline and your ability to connect your lower half to your upper half so that essentially you can do the movement while your body stays in a specific position. Um, so the name Montezuma is from the Montezuma Cypress, which is the thickest tree trunk in the world. And if you look up pictures of it, it's like an entire school of children standing in a line left to right. They're like thirty one of the ones in Mexico's 30 38 feet wide, just the trunk itself. I mean, it looks like a bunch of different trees, but it's actually like diameter or around. Yeah, diameter. Holy fuck. Yeah, yeah. Um, so that's where that the idea of the sturdy trunk. Um, and I actually do want to talk a little bit before we get into specifics about core strength, core stability, that kind of thing. It's kind of an ever-evolving idea in my head of what it means and how to achieve it and how to express it and all that. But that's what I see when I look at these two things. The ability to set your body in a position um to then perform the movement, you know, the way that the way that it is intended to. But there's something about setting yourself up to succeed before you even do the movement that draws so many connections between upside down stuff and pulling off the floor.

SPEAKER_00: 25:50

Yeah, for sure. Um, and I think that like the the idea, I I think it's something that like it's been around in the methodology since day one, the idea of midline stabilization and in the deadlift, especially posterior chain engagement. Um, I wish it was like I wish it was posterior chain development was the word instead of engagement, because like then it might at least imply that like, hey, the goal is for athletes to actually make this area stronger, not just kind of use it as is. Because I'll I find that there are just so many athletes. And if you're a coach, you've undoubtedly struggled with working with athletes who either just can't flatten their back, you know, in the in the in the setup of a deadlift safely, you know, or maybe they're as they hinge to lower the weight down, they start to round a little bit. And it's just one of those things that's almost become like you you kind of accept a certain level of like, well, this that's just kind of how this person moves, as opposed to like really trying to explain like what does it actually mean to stabilize your midline? What does it actually mean to engage your posterior chain? And then what does that like what does that look like in reality? Um and like and then in practice. And I think just like teaching athletes that, and especially the way that we're doing the deadlifting stuff this phase, at least on the heavy days, with kind of like having to reset on every rep forces a level of like, you know, actually developing a proficient setup in your deadlift position and like learning how to stabilize your midline, engage your posterior chain. But I think it's it's a part of the methodology that gets missed and is maybe like arguably two of two of the, if not the most important elements of preventing injury. Um you develop your posterior chain, all of those muscles on your backside turn into stabilizers for your for your low back. And especially with you know, just kind of lifestyles in general for people today. Like I work at a gym and I still like you know find myself sitting often. So I totally get people, you know, glued to their chairs for eight to ten hours a day, but learning how to engage all of those muscles that get shut off, your butt, your hamstrings, and whatnot, like if you can learn and if you're a coach and you can teach your athletes how to use those muscles and develop them, like the I I'd be willing to bet, I have no evidence for this, but I'm willing to put put a lot put some money on the line that says that person is not going to experience low back pain. And it's also just going to get a hell of a lot stronger and fitter. And then all of a sudden the midline stabilization component becomes a lot easier because like if I if I know how to brace my belly, but I have no way of engaging my posterior chain, then I'm just like really good at holding air in my abdomen while my back rounds, and it's like that we we're kind of missing the point here. So um I think just to your point, and then like the midline requirement in the handstand walk in the wall walk, probably for more athletes, the wall walk, but like how often do we hear athletes complain my my back hurts when I do if I do deadlifts and burpees in the same workout? If I do a deadlift in a wall walk, if I do a deadlift, maybe if I do a deadlift in literally anything, my back hurts. And it's like there is a way around this, and like it might actually just require you to slow down and focus on this movement and you know reduce the weight and learn how to do it correctly. And if you're a coach to actually hold an athlete to account for that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01: 29:15

Yeah, the I just I feel like this could be. I'm gonna try not to ramble because this could be an entire podcast episode, but like you've got the athlete that can deadlift a house that can't do a plank for 30 seconds. Like those people exist. You've got the person who can do a seven-minute plank that deadlifts 60% of the average in your affiliate. I have I'm currently working with an athlete that has the most hypermobile mid back, I think, on planet fucking Earth, like could walk around upside down like a crab on all fours. Get him a fucking seven iron. It's it's it's crazy. So I'm when I'm looking at this, it's like we have the idea of strength, we have the idea of endurance. We have the idea of immobile. We have the idea of hypermobile. We have just athlete IQ of I could walk, handstand, walk, or wall walk in a stacked position. I just don't because I don't feel like I need to. And then over the course of enough rounds or reps or whatever it is, my midline goes. Like we see that all the time in these workouts where you see someone who has the capacity and has, I don't know, the tools or the machinery to be able to be stable in their midline and they're doing a classic 2115 nine of these style of movements, and they don't pay attention to it in the 21s and they rip through them, and then by the nines, they're, you know, hurt or stopping or whatever. There's just so much nuance to it. And I think whenever you get the opportunity, if you have the time in class as an affiliate coach, you have to talk through those different elements. When you get an opportunity to say, hey, you're going to feel like you don't need to brace or like you can scorpion in your handstand walk, but then this is going to happen. So we're going to think about this from the beginning. We're going to think about the way that we brace. Like the deadlift is so fascinating in that I feel like just like all of the work is done basically one inch off the ground. Like if you brace properly, if you grip properly, if you you know your scaps are down and your shoulders are in a position, if you're really bracing your spine to the point that you're not going to have slack in the system, and then you go to stand the bar up, it's just gonna, it's gonna go from point A to point B fairly effortlessly. And then if you don't do that and then bring all of the effort in the world to trying to move the bar from point A to point B, you're in trouble for X number of reasons. So you have a lot of opportunities in this phase to talk to your members, just little nuggets, you know, for doing these things weekly, little nuggets over the course of seven weeks. If you get 20 opportunities to talk about midline bracing and endurance and the way that you breathe and the way that you move and the way that you set up, maybe you get some osmosis by the end of it and they're thinking about it from that perspective. And you can also say, like, hey, people love to have a fucking jacked back and a six-pack. Well, want to know how? Here you go.

SPEAKER_00: 32:13

Yeah. How about a fucking ass and some hamstrings? Like, that'd be cool. Instead of instead of some fucking pancakes attached to the your pelvis.

SPEAKER_01: 32:21

There's a uh there's a catcher in Major League Baseball who just went off this year, hit an absurd amount of home runs, and his nickname, which is called everyone calls him this, like they call him this, and the the announcers call him this. Big Dumper is his nickname. Fuck. He has a giant ass. And it's hilarious because it's like, you know, it's a decent, it's a decent situation he's got going there. But like I I'm in going in CrossFit circles here, and there's a couple couple of lunges and RDLs later, I'll show you the dumper. Yeah, exactly. So that cracked me up. So so it's almost like like counter to society now for someone to have glutes at all.

SPEAKER_00: 33:00

Oh my god, fucking brutal. Did you um while we're still just derailing this podcast completely, did you listen to um Peter Atia had a round table with Mike Boyle speak if you're talking about it? With Mike Boyle, Gabrielle Lyons, and I don't remember the bodybuilder. Um I just thought it was funny. They let's see if I can find it. I don't remember who the other one. It doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01: 33:29

Can I assume he's still as much of a dipshit as he was when I used to argue with him on the internet? Mike Boyle? Yeah. Well, I mean, so don't squat with two legs, don't teach movements that take more than one second to teach.

SPEAKER_00: 33:43

Well, so that was that was a large part of it, and like I'm I'm a as much of a Peter Atia fan as one can be for just listening to the sound bites and appreciating what he does for the like community and like the longevity space. But they yeah, they were they were talking about it, and it was like he, you know, his just his thing was like, I just got to a point where I was like, the risk reward is no longer there for a deadlift for a back squat or whatever. And he kind of continued with like, well, I you know, I I started as basically like at the time I had no idea what it was, but like as soon as he started describing it, it was like I was like two floors in a basement, two floors underground, there's no windows, and it's a dungeon. I'm like, Yeah, you're in the fucking right place if you want to get strong, right? And it's like, you know, that's where you learn to lift and whatnot. And it and and he kind of went on to say, like, you know, I'll do a deadlift day and then I'll be in pain for a couple of days. I didn't injure myself, but it's like, where's the like the risk reward is no longer here? And you know, Mike Boyle has a similar had a similar perspective, and you know, we can we can skip over the squat talk, but there was plenty of that. And all I could think to myself was just like, like, this is this is a this is the problem. And this is a problem because we have four highly qualified individuals having a round table talking about how the deadlift and the back squat, for example, are not like just in general, maybe not worth the risk reward for the general population to do. And I'm like, this is the fucking worst. Like, because it's like the you want to know why? Because you have no competent individuals teaching somebody how to do it and say, like, hey, you're deadlifting with a rounded back. Let's elevate the bar a little bit. Let's get you deadlifting from a 12-inch riser until you can deadlift to an eight-inch riser until you can deadlift to a six-inch, four-inch, and then the floor. Like, okay, you can't squat, can't back squat without because your hips are tight, you're whatever. It's like, well, like, let's start with goblet squatting. But and then it's like, well, then we could just, you know, the argument that they seem to present was like, well, we can just do the same thing with far less dangerous or just like risky movements. And I'm like, you will never be able to match the strength stimulus of a back squat versus a deadlift. And one thing I found super interesting was Mike Boyle was like, we had athletes split squat more than they could, like as much as they could front squat, for example. And all I could think in my head was like, there's like half as much range of motion. And if that's true, what the fuck did this person's front squat look like?

SPEAKER_01: 36:17

You know, and it was like would it be for me to put 390 pounds?

SPEAKER_00: 36:20

And it was like, well, yeah, so we we got hockey players. But I'm like, well, I because they don't back. There is just something not lining up here. And it just like it was again like the broader in the broader thing was like these these are like some of the most qualified qualified people in the space of strength and conditioning. And it's like I'm a I I have seven competent CrossFit coaches here that would know what to do with a grandmother who doesn't know how to stabilize her midline when she's deadlifting, and I will still get her to pick something up off the ground. It might not look like a deadlift yet, but like you will not convince me that like, yeah, we're just not gonna deadlift because it's not safe. And I'm like, so like how are they gonna how do you how do they pick up a bag of dog food off the ground? How do they like, you know, we don't squat because like we can develop just as much leg strength? It's like, yep, like, yep, we can lunge, we can develop leg strength, but like there's a coordination aspect, there's a midline stabilization aspect. It's like if you're only lunging, like I'm guessing we're probably not elevating a foot in order to get like a deep range of motion component to this. And I'm just like, I'm in my head, I'm trying to think of my own like rebuttal to some of these arguments. And it's not to say that they wouldn't be like, oh yeah, that's actually a great point, but it it was just it was astonishing to me that we have set four like individuals with a level of experience of ranging from like professional athletes to training, you know, bodybuilders to a legitimate, you know, medical doctor. And it's like this is representative of like the viewpoints on these sorts of lifts, and it's like it's just like fuck. We needed, we needed like give me, give me on that, give me on that interview. Like, shoot me a text, Atia. Like, let's let's chat about this. And it was just it was just mind-blowing to me. And I get it, like, there is a line at which, like, yep, maybe, maybe this is not worth the risk reward. I'm not saying that doesn't exist somewhere, but I don't think that line is nearly as close as like some people might have you you believe. And it's just like, we're just gonna do the same like seven super simple movements that require no teaching or athleticism in any way. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 38:40

Yeah. I've got two comments. One of them will lead us into the Montezuma phase.

SPEAKER_00: 38:44

Okay, yeah, sorry about that. We're 43 minutes into this bad buddy.

SPEAKER_01: 38:47

The first comment is this weird, well, this has been a lot of affiliate talk. This is a good affiliate podcast. Uh there is this weird, I don't even know what to call it, reverse one size fits all trash built into this, where if you walk out into our gym, has a large enough sample size, there might be 10 people out of 150, or if you want to call it 160, 170, 10 people who putting a very heavy barbell on their back on a regular basis and squatting to full depth is not a good idea. So, do we change the programming at the gym to get rid of that for that cohort of people, or do we fucking coach? You know what I mean? Yeah, there are definitely people who, from a genetic standpoint, have something going on in their back and their hips that that movement is troublesome. And you can make the call about whether you want to continue to work through it or not. But the idea that you would switch to we only split squat for that reason is insane to me. And it was it's easy for me to say that now after he doesn't do he doesn't teach the power snatch because it's too hard to teach. So I just as a as a coach, especially someone who works with professional athletes, I we I don't even need to debate you. I don't know how you got your stripes, but I'm not going to that university. I'm not interested. I'm good. Like, pass. The second thing that I'll say is I challenge if you are a head coach or an affiliate owner, I challenge you, every single one of you, to go to the class at your gym that has the highest attendance. And I want you to watch all of them do heavy deadlifts. I want you to watch the warm-up. I don't want you to say anything. I want you to watch how it's coached. I want you to watch how they move and how they move as they start to add weight. I think to me, I probably know what is going on in your gym, top to fucking bottom. If I walk out and I see that it's beautiful, or maybe we're on the right track, or unfortunately, can I get the middle of my spine to be the highest point in my body at any given time? And there are these like bless their hearts, there are these like dungeon CrossFit gyms where some certain things take place in those gyms, but it's a group of passionate people trying to better themselves and probably rallying around each each other. So they're on the right track in that regard. I there's just something about the deadlift and the way that it's executed, because honestly, it is a really big deal that someone's walking into your gym and trusting you to teach them to move the needle on that kind of movement because you could fuck their backup for 100% the rest of their fucking life. So when I walk out into our gym and it looks like iRobot, it looks like the scene where they walk into the hangar and there's all the robots and they do kind of the same thing at the same time, it's crazy. Like, and that took time to get to that point to create the culture, to not have it be there's the like weekend warriors, there's the meatheads, there's this group, there's that group. You cannot tell the difference anymore in our gym. So it's not like we've always been perfect. And when we reposted the video of Roots showing all of the different people at all the different classes, it was this beautiful representation because genders, ages, you know, just sort of what they looked like, you know, what you know demographic they would fit into, or, you know, that sort of thing. Like that to me is the ultimate representation because even though there are higher skill movements, the barrier to entry and uh honestly, just again, that idea that like it's kind of a big deal that they're trusting you with teaching them that. Like to me, that puts it at the top at the affiliate level. So that would be a that would be a challenge for everybody to go in and do that. And that is the segue now into our heavy days for the phase, uh alternate sort of weeks. We do deadlift with PAP, and you can talk a little bit about what you've got in there, Hunter, for the PAP options. We will deadlift in workout on even weeks and heavy days on odd weeks, and then the even weeks, heavy days are just a GPP rotation. You got some bench press, you got some snatch, you got some back squat, etc.

SPEAKER_00: 43:08

Yep. Yep. So the the heavy day deadlift stuff, again, that's kind of on almost like the odd numbered weeks leading into you guys will get to do a one rep max at the end of the phase for the deadlift. Um, the nuance here is one, the PAP. So after every set, you do PAP stands for post-activation potentiation. Basically, it is a short explosive movement done after your set of deadlifts. In a like, you know, you go to Google that post-activation potentiation, you're gonna see a bunch of different like formats and structures. Most commonly I've seen is like you do a set of squats, for example, and then sprint, like literally go run. And that might actually be like I I did some reading and like a true PAP program might be like do a set of squats, rest five minutes, go sprint, rest another five minutes, and like okay, so at an affiliate class, like congratulations, you have two sets of back squats. Like, we can't do that. So after every working set, you'll do something explosive. Week one, for example, is three explosive box jumps. So just jumping as explosively as possible, whereas the height doesn't matter. This isn't an exercise in how how high somebody can bring their knees up to their chest to reach a tall box. How high can you get your hips, right? It's how high can you get your hips, how explosively can you time the extension of your hips, knees, and ankles together in order to be explosive. So you have that. And then the deadlift format for this year is because the emphasis is kind of on that midline stabilization when you're doing. So again, for example, week one, day one, you have five sets of three. We're asking athletes to, so you get set up, you deadlift your first rep, you're gonna lower the bar under control. So you're getting one, some of the midline stabilization and the eccentric loading, the lowering component down. But once that bar touches the ground, athletes need to release their grip, stand up, and then reset again. And all of a sudden, we've taken away that stretch reflex. So we've still given athletes kind of the strength development portion of lowering the bar under control, not skipping the eccentric, but we're gonna force athletes to reestablish kind of bracing their midline, get their hands back on the bar, and generate force kind of from a dead stop versus using the stretch reflex. That might mean athletes aren't deadlifting maybe as many as much for their sets of three as they might for touch and go, but because kind of our end, yeah, the stimulus and the end goal here at the end of the day, pulling a single rep, like we don't need to be quite as concerned about the lowering phase. It's all about kind of force generation off the floor. So, not to say obviously that there isn't a ton of value in touch and go sets, but for this phase, that's kind of what the focus is on. So if you take nothing else, like this is where you have the opportunity to really teach athletes how to brace properly. And then also like by forcing athletes to lower a heavy weight down to the ground under control. Again, it's like athlete can deadlift it all the way up, but can't lower the weight under control without rounding their back, like then they can't deadlift the weight. Like, again, how to play devil's advocate to that round table conversation? It's like like if you deadlift poorly or with a rounded back, like absolutely the lift is not worth the the risk to reward. And the iRobot comment, like the coaches are coaches are excellent, but the athletes have also taken to the understanding that like what the fuck purpose do I what do I gain by deadlifting like shit on Monday, October 20th in like my CrossFit class? Like, there nothing. Like I literally gain nothing. That whiteboard gets erased at the end of the week, and literally not a single person remembers what you lifted. Your back remembers what you lifted if you did it poorly, though. So teach athletes the fundamentals and then try to ingrain that idea of like athletes. Like, there is there is something to be said about like at what point does this lift no longer become as useful as it is dangerous? It's like, well, it's at the point at which you start doing it horrendously. That's the point.

unknown: 47:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 47:14

And what you want to look out for, I think K-Star was the one who made me really understand this is not necessarily as much like you're gonna have people in your gym that have a little bit of like a turtle shell going on. Um that's the way that their musculature is, that's the way that that's the way that their spine is. It's when we are changing the shape of our spine under load.

SPEAKER_00: 47:34

Under load, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 47:35

And and I think that's really important. The other piece here to double down or maybe even triple down is there's a culture element here. The amount of monkey see monkey do inside of a CrossFit gym is huge. And if you show up and you're new and you're the one person sticking out like a sore thumb doing God knows what, you're gonna notice, your peers are gonna notice, and your coach better notice. Um, if that is, again, if there is a culture of movement there, then you see it happen. You walk out into the gym and you're just like, how is everyone doing perfect wall balls? It's because the only reference point that they have is this movement, right? We don't have as many people throwing the ball up and you know doing a breakdance in between reps and that sort of thing in the gym as we used to. All right, the GPP lift for anyone new, basically we have some weeks we have just the heavy day. Um, and then other weeks we have a heavy day and a GPP lift, and we're basically just making sure that we are getting the variance and the stimulus that we're looking for. And one I think note that would explain it somewhat well in the GPP rotation is there is a sneaky, incredible stimulus strength session that I think could go a few different ways. We're doing farmers' lunges, so you holding on to dumbbells, dumbbell in each hand in the farmer's carry position and you're lunging. Is it six sets of ten, Hunter? I believe. Here's what I'll say. If you do a lot of lunging just, you know, in your own time or whatever, you can do a six by ten at moderately heavy weight and you'll be okay. If you don't, we are suggesting that set four is the first one where you really are worked into maybe you got 70s or 80s in your hand, something like that, and it's kind of like warm up to three by ten. But we just make sure that we are either we have the variance, we have the practice of something like a squat snatch, that sort of session, or we have just this stimulus bomb like this super low barrier to entry, but farmers lunges, especially during the time where we're working on the deadlift and we can really kind of smash the posterior chain and the grip simultaneously. Um that's that's a doozy. Asses can't avoid that one. No, no, and the funny thing too is you don't really feel it in real time. You really gotta torture yourself to feel it while you're doing it, and then you're like Yeah. Wow. If you feel it while you're doing it, you're that's whatever that whatever the muscle is that runs diagonally across my ass cheek. I am well aware of my anatomy 48 hours after that. I'm like, God, what is that thing? And then the other thing that I'll say, you can speak to how intentional this is, Hunter, but there is a lot of really good, what sort of Misfit Athletics, not necessarily Misfit affiliate, has always referred to as inwad lifting, where we're making sure that you're gonna be able to express the fact that you can move heavyweight and bring some technique to the party under intensity with inwad lifting. And there are, I put in quotes, there are some really fun, quote unquote, inwad lifting pieces where, you know, maybe the GPP rotation doesn't take you to a clean, you know, because there's only you know four or five of them in the phase, but you got a heavy squat clean, you got a heavy clean and jerk, these things happen in workout. How intentional are you when you're writing of like, okay, it didn't make its way into the rotation, now I'm gonna put it heavy in Wad? Like, how are you thinking about those things?

SPEAKER_00: 51:09

The lift, like the deadlift or like, or another lift.

SPEAKER_01: 51:12

No, so so the GPP rotation does not have any cleans in it, but then I see heavy squat clean day, heavy clean and jerk day in Wad. Like as you're going through, are you thinking about making sure that people are exposed to those things over the course of the year?

SPEAKER_00: 51:26

I mean, just from like a program design standpoint, if we know that the deadlift is gonna be the focus for the next seven weeks, and we're gonna basically athletes are gonna pull either really heavy or more than likely a decent number of reps off the floor at least once a week, you have to be mindful of when and where they're pulling off the floor on the other days, right? So this is one of the reasons that we, you know, previously, maybe maybe 10 years ago, it would have been, hey, every single week you're gonna deadlift heavy, like as a standalone lifting session. And then also we probably would have made people lift on the other four days of the week as well. But instead, it's like the from a GPP perspective, like if I'm an athlete who doesn't get in on those days, or like again, if that's the only heavy lift that I'm doing, how much of how much capacity and other lifts, what might we be sacrificing here? And again, like a super heavy deadlift day every single week can and somebody who actually does attend those days, that can really fucking do a number on your nervous system and just general fatigue over the course of those other days. So having kind of like a little bit of a reprieve as a programmer, say I can do heavy deadlifting on Monday of week one, and then in week two, well, three rounds of 26 lighter deadlifts in a METCON, I can still achieve the GPP kind of stimulus. I can still say, like, hey, deadlifting, you know, we're deadlifting in in a workout today. We can still practice like the midline stabilization, the posterior chain engagement here. We're just doing it for more reps and lighter. And then that frees us up as, again, programmers to say, like, well, like, let's make sure that we're still hitting other stimuli so we can actually lunge heavy, we can bench press heavy, we can do, you know, a heavy squat clean MECCon, you know, that's far enough away from the deadlift day so athletes, you know, aren't pulling off the floor excessively over the course of you know, a five-day week. Um, so it's more about like knowing what we're gonna focus on for the phase and then trying to plug in, make sure that the other stimuli are met somewhere here and there, right? It's like, okay, if I'm pulling from the floor on one day, well, can I do a hang power movement? Is that is that still considered hinging, or is it like, ah, you're kind of pushing it a little bit here? We had to rearrange a week where it was just like, we're gonna kill people if someone, if someone comes in here four or five days in a row. And we have to consider that too. So I don't know if that answers the original question, but it it all kind of stems from like what the focus is, and then what can we put on the other days that are going to mesh well across the entire week. Right. And then with the understanding that, like, hey, I want we're the o if you know we're if we only if the only heavy lift that we do once a week for the next seven weeks is a deadlift, like we're I don't, you know, we're not we're no longer biasing something and we're we're maybe, you know, actually just I don't even like special I would call in the affiliate setting would be we're doing this. Yeah, and like you have to like an affiliate, someone maybe who does the program or is an athlete might listen to that and say, like, well, what the fuck, man? Like, I want to get better at deadlifting. And it's like, I understand that, but like, devil's advocate, if let's say if I want to get you better at deadlifting, then like maybe it's twice a week, maybe it's a heavy day and maybe it's a speed day, maybe it's a you know, a volume day and an accessory day or something like that. But if you know you are somebody who are if you are the outlier and you come to the gym five days per week and two of those days are predominantly lifting, 40 percent if 40% of your CrossFit program or general physical preparedness program is a single lift, like it's not a general physical preparedness program. Totally understand why somebody might be like, no, I want to get my deadlift up. Let me, I want to specialize in this for a period of time, got it. But as far as like programming for the general population for the purpose of broad, general and inclusive fitness, like that doesn't match. It also like doesn't work as well as you think it does, um, which is the other thing.

SPEAKER_01: 55:41

I was I was gonna say, I was just gonna jump in and say that's not even gonna fucking work.

SPEAKER_00: 55:44

And then there's the other, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 55:46

Go ahead. Your GPP is not high enough. Your GPP isn't high enough. Yeah, like the people who aren't bought into the idea of if you get fitter, you also get stronger, and if you get stronger, you also get fitter, they don't get it. Yeah, right. And they want that kind of specialty program because they can back off and do a movement that moves a bar a few feet instead of hunkering down and taking their medicine, whatever that you know sort of looks like. Yeah. So we don't I would push back on a structure that went back towards the lifting every week versus the lifting and in wad, only because I think it doesn't work as well in this setting. Like that's typically what PR their front squat. Yeah, like yeah, I mean at the end of yesterday. Yeah, the the level of PRs keep rolling through, and especially at the gyms that are doing a really good job of putting this stuff together. All right, so gymnastics. I would say I sort of re-categorized the phase structure notes hunter. It's very much to me seems like a wall walk bias. We have what I refer to as a sprinkling of handstand walking. You're basically giving an opportunity to your more skilled athletes 40 to 50 percent of the weeks, roughly, to go in and kind of use what they've worked on. I I would refer to that a little bit more of an expression of something that you've worked on. But I've really come to enjoy the wall walk for its stimulus. It doesn't really beat up the body. Like I I really enjoy the wall walk, and I think one of the reasons is because I made it a staple of the GPP program. Like I want people upside down, but in the GPP program that we put out, like we don't get to coach those classes. I don't really want to do too many handstand push-ups or handstand walking. And the way that we've been able to progress people from like shit, wall walks again, really, to like wow, I went from maybe one or two to like a set at like six or seven or eight is really fun. And I think that that can be replicated really well and even better, honestly, in an affiliate setting. So I am all for because the like what a wall walk is to a beginner versus someone who's like repping them out is almost kind of like it takes care of multiple stimuli within a single movement.

SPEAKER_00: 58:07

Yeah, it's certainly more obviously more inclusive than the handstand walk. And I think your point that the like the handstand walk is a bit more of an expression of a combination of proficiencies and and you know, in in some of the 10 general physical skills, there's obviously a like there's a I guess there's a mobility component to both of those things, but like, you know, again, from like a class experience and programming perspective, like everybody can do some form of wall walking. Five percent of a given class can do some form of handstand walking. And as far as getting somebody better at handstand walking, one like super, you know, nuanced movement. And honestly, like the tough part about that is like I'm gonna tell that person, like, you have to practice, you just have exposure. Like it's an existing, like you it's just it's just exposure, it's like a double under. It's like you got it, you you don't have it until you practice enough and you got it. And handstand walking is very similar. And any any like, you know, uh something reason that you cannot handstand walk is not like is either if it's capacity related, then like, well, we can do more wall walks and improve shoulder stamina, for example, or whatever it is. But for like, we have plenty of people who can actually handstand walk or at least take a few steps in space who can't wall who can't perform a full wall walk because they don't have the upper body strength. Like, if I can kick up into a stack position in a handstand walk, like I might actually be able to skirt around a lack of upper body strength, midline or midline stabilization that I actually need for a wall walk. So we still give the opportunity for people to do handstand walking. There's still skill days in there, but yeah, what like what you said, it's it's just like that covers everybody an athlete who can do 12 in a minute versus like the athlete who can master. Max out at four in a minute, like they're getting the same stimulus. Someone who can, you know, in a workout where there's 200 feet of handstand walking, smack in the middle of a Metcon, like that, an athlete who can handstand walk proficiently and get that done in two or three minutes is very different than someone who kicks up and holds a handstand for 30 seconds or something like that. It's not the same thing anymore. And it's like we still want there, there's still value in getting upside down for sure and working towards the skill of handstand walking, but from like an accessibility standpoint, stimulus standpoint, like it's really difficult to match like the wall walk and what it what it can do. One thing that I talked to mentioned on that podcast with Castro and Nicole was like, like when I'm programming, I'm looking at it right now, like I have every movement that I have gets categorized. Like there's weightlifting, monostructural gymnastics, the classic WGM. And then within all of those movements, those are organized by high frequency, medium frequency, low frequency. That's why, you know, you do not see nearly as many pistols as you do air squats, for example. You know, we don't there are a lot more wall walks than there are handstand walk. Wall walk lives in the high frequency column, you know, handstand walking lives in the low frequency. And it's not because I don't want to do it, but it's because, like, from an efficacy standpoint, like there are some movements that like everybody can do these and it increases capacity for everybody. Like, these have to be movements that are just regularly in the programming. We're regularly throwing ring dips and pullovers in the program. It's like what the fuck.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:37

I'm gonna give a marginally stupid analogy. Love it. A used to love box jumps because you could rebound and they were very easy for a power athlete. Like my fave maybe my favorite movement. Now that you have to step down, you have to be fit to perform box jumps. And I hate them. They are so hard. Yeah. And I think about the wall walk versus the handstand push-up or the handstand walk in the same way, especially in an affiliate, because I know a lot of people, let's say it's Echo Bike handstand walk, a run handstand walk, that will be mid-pack to bottom of the pack and come in, even still just gassed because it's about their fitness level, and cruise across the floor, knock out their handstand walks, beat everybody out the door. When you are gassed, you know, people did this in the open last year. When you are gassed and you go do wall walks, they suck. You don't get ungassed. You because you turn off and on back and forth like you do when you step down, right? You gotta go back down, you gotta start over, like you aren't just upside down and then not upside down as you're doing it. So in this setting, because of what we are chasing, longevity, GPP, etc., I think it's better. Like actually better, not just because it's accessible. Like I I personally like wall walks because I have pretty good upper body mobility and upper body strength. But man, when they get hard, you cross this threshold that like I just it's weird. It's just a point where they go from like four out of ten to eight out of ten, and you wondered where five, six, and seven went, like at that, you know, at any given point. So it's I think it's a cool movement, cool stimulus.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:25

I think the only, yeah, the only real like comparison of them, I guess, is the fact that there's an inverted component and there's a midline component, which is great, but from a stimulus perspective, they're you know, almost they're essentially two different things, right? The same athlete who can handstand walk and wall walk, it's very difficult for me to write a workout, everything else being equal, instead swap in handstand walk for wall walk. It's gonna be a different workout. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:50

One nuance here is that the wall walk comes with a test retest workout. So me on the narrative building side, love it, love a test retest workout. We have run into pushback when the test retest is the fucking haze. Yeah, just yeah, exactly. Just getting their asses handed to them. And honestly, you tests often do get a little bit overprogrammed because you want that wow factor. And I do think that they create a narrative and sell well once. So it's like, yeah, I'm gonna haze you with this thing, I want you to remember that feeling, and you're gonna need to do the work on your own to say, like, oh wow, I really did get better at this movement over the course of the phase. Whereas if it has, you know, a lot of times like a triplet's a little bit easier to digest or a chipper, there's certain durations and styles of workouts that are a little bit easier to digest. I think that work really well as a test retest. And man, there are I spend too much time on the wall walk here, but uh a lot of people in your gym that you consider to be the upper echelon, you know, the fire breathers that suck at wall walks. And like a lot of, you know, this gets emailed out to the Misfit Gym Portland members. They're gonna hear this, you know who you are. You kick everyone's ass in every workout, and then there's wall walks and you regress to the mean, which is good, you know, you gotta be humbled every once in a while. But another teaching opportunity is is what I'll say. Really get people to focus on the way that they move instead of moving like a spaz for one round and then dying every round after that. All right. Uh, we're kind of cruising now, coming towards the end of the podcast. Cardio days, we don't have a specific bias this phase, like a running or when we get closer to the open, we kind of lock in on rowing. Sorry to put that out as a preview. I know everyone hates that. We just write good workouts with different modalities. And they're just they're those days I think that are so important in the program because of the barrier to entry. It's just like you just did one, Hunter. You just had a grand old time doing yet another iteration of a cube test kind of vibe, four on, four off by four. We're just gonna keep writing stimulus bombs. I think they're good for the community because you kind of just suffering to the left and to the right. Like I find that I know it's part of it's because it's an interval, but like I'm really in conversation. Now you get a you get the fist bump, hey, nice job. I peeked at your screen, I saw that you were doing this. Like, I think there's a lot of reasons why they belong in the program. And then every once in a while you'll have members who will be like, I could I could go to a globo gym and do my rowing intervals, or I could do this. And it's like, yeah, I want you to do the same workout alone and then do the same workout in this environment and tell me if it's worth it to come in and the shared suffering thing. It's 100% worth it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:42

There are days when they look back when I come to the gym for a 5k when I can do it at home. Because you're gonna be four minutes faster. Go ahead. Let me yeah, let me know, let me know what your time is. Let me know when you're gonna do that. Or if you even do it, or if you're gonna do it. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's what the actual question is. Like, yeah, okay, well, post your score for everybody to see. I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:01

Sure, you're gonna do that. You learn after enough time. You see a piece and you go, you know what? The version of me that I want to show up to this has to be in class. I don't care what my schedule is, change it. Sorry, I gotta move that meeting. I gotta take class because if I do this alone, my splits are gonna be worse. I'm gonna be sadder, I'm gonna feel like I have an out because I'm hiding in the corner. Like, very important part of the program. And I think honestly, really important days for your community if you can once again sort of build the culture around that like shared suffering idea.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:34

Yeah, I think that that was gonna be my only comment on the cardio days is that because of the accessibility, and they're they're not designed to be accessible for the purpose of being accessible, they just that's just kind of like how they turn out. When it's like they the the goal here is a very specific cardiovascular stimulus that we can get 100% of members to achieve. Right. The way the best way to do that is with these low, low skill, low barrier to entry movements that everybody can do. And then, like you said, it's like it becomes a hell of a lot easier when 100% of the class is doing the same thing, suffering together and in a similar way. Everybody experiences the same thing, everybody commiserates the same way. And from a coaching perspective, like one, that makes it way more fun to coach. And it can be just it can be easy to or it makes it like all you have to do in those instances is like just a little nugget. It's like, hey, like you have a score to beat, try to beat it this round. Hey, I want you to like you're gonna get on the machine and like where the last minute of every interval, I'm gonna tell you like to pick it up every 20 seconds. Like you're gonna finish this interval a little faster than you started. Like just little things like that can get one the buy-in from the members, and two, like get them to just push harder than they obviously would if because you're definitely going as hard. Like, I I didn't go as hard. Like, there's no way I fucking did it in open gym after I coached nine before I did this part of the city. Love Pettit. I'm sure he's listening. He's definitely listening to this for sure. But yeah, Pettit was uh it was maybe not my my pace boat for that, but yeah, probably not. I hope not. Yeah, but the yeah, those card the cardio days are those that fucking Nicole and Dave were talking about. That's that was a cardio day, which is a sprinty cardio day. But those are I I get more we get more messages about those days than we do the fucking muscle up, squat clean, like not the same thing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:28

You know what we need to do for an episode? We need to do a in-class, like individual class narrative building episode with Mark as our guest. Oh man. Like I'm just fascinated by the little things he brings to the class to get people to buy in on that day. There's like a there's a story attached to it. He claims it's all off the cuff. He's thinking on that drive-in. I know he is. I know he is. I bet it's a combination of the two. I think the actual wording is you gotta let him cook. I think he probably works better if it's off the cuff.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:01

But we're gonna we'll have him on and we'll dig into that a little bit because it's at the very least will be very entertaining.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:08

For sure. Yeah, I came in today and I saw the I looked at the whiteboard and I was like Same. Classic, a classic Mark Kubek risk risk risk assessment matrix. And by risk assessment matrix, I mean there's a line that says like good job, the other end says you're dead, and then there's like an X that's like an inch left of you're dead, and it's like that's the that's the Mark Kubek, but the yeah, the you look at the PowerPoint, it's not that great. You show up and listen to the story and the narrative, and all of a sudden Kirk's right getting ready to fucking run through the wall for the seventh time this week.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:45

It's just like, okay, I guess I'll just go kill Eric now. So we always finish up this podcast. This is for new listeners, new affiliates, and just let you guys know that there are, while we undersell the perks of this program, aside from it just being really effective, there are actually a lot of add-ons and benefits to signing up for the program. So we've got daily warmups, we've got strength and skill notes, workout notes and scaling. So basically, when you are looking at your day, um, again, if you listen to the interview with Hunter and Dave and Nicole, he sort of insinuates that you should be building your own warmups. But we want to let you know how we think about the idea of building a warm-up for you to then either use it or reverse engineer it, that sort of thing. We're always gonna explain the strength or skill that is in addition to the conditioning or in place of the conditioning, and then do the same thing with the workout. And the in the workout notes are very much like this is how this is what we're expecting of this workout. And you do get target scores that are in there. We don't suggest always putting all of this information on the whiteboard, honestly. A lot of it's more for coaches and scaling. But basically, what is this workout supposed to be? And then all the way down through the movements of how would we think about scaling these? And we give you specific scales, but again, a lot of it is about reverse engineering. Hey, I don't quite have this tool in my toolbox yet as a coach. How are they thinking about this? Yeah. And that's how you can sort of work your way through those notes. Make it your own, make it your own thing at your own gym, the things that you want to focus on, the things that you want to preach to your members. But we are giving you a lot of information on a daily basis about how we are thinking about this stuff. And last but not least, you get a competitor extra six days a week. One of those days is either gonna be a makeup day or zone two work, which would be really important kind of for your weekend warriors. And then what we're doing with the competitor extra is we are rounding out the program with, hey, if it's only strength, it's probably gonna be conditioning in the competitor extra. If there's no strength, it's probably gonna be strength or accessory. Do we scan the week and we're like, hey, if they're gonna compete, we got to make sure their, you know, higher skill pressing or pulling gymnastics are being rotated in enough, that sort of thing. And then I try to build, I this is what I write in the program, and I try to build in some potential athlete IQ exercises, things that you probably wouldn't notice if you only took affiliate class that you probably need for information to go into um a local competition, the open, that sort of thing. And I view this wholeheartedly as a retention tool. A lot of gyms have open gym culture where I don't know, like they people pay for a membership and there's 20 or 30 I've seen at some gyms, people in the different open gyms throughout the day following a different company's competitor program. And that's a fucking lonely road for all the athletes that have done it that are not, you know, the psychos that are professionals, and you end up losing that member because they don't get the community aspect, they don't get the coaching, they're basically just paying to use your facility. So if you can keep them in class and then give them something that's going to help them sort of go towards their competitive aspirations, and it's actually well-rounded and it fits, you should be able to hold on to your to your members a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:04

Yeah, I think the only thing I'll add to the competitor extra thing is for me, it's always I'm always thinking of it as an opportunity to like talk to the athlete about what their goals are. What's the what's the rationale for doing the competitor extra? And it's like, hey, I want to, I've got some time, I want to do a little bit extra work. There's nothing wrong with that, but it again it gives you an avenue as a coach to talk about like, is is the goal to get better? Are we trying, are we working towards something? Hey, how's your sleep? How's your nutrition? Are you gonna be able to recover from this piece? And it just opens the door for other conversations. And then obviously what you said is is super important, just giving athletes who want to do a little bit extra the easy, like, hey, here it is, and it works in conjunction with the rest of the week. It's not just pulled off of fucking Instagram written by someone trying to get likes, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:54

So the other piece I'll say is is I for any Misfit Gym members listening, permission to cherry pick for coaches. You can tell members, like, it's not I'm either the competitor extra person or I'm not. It's like, oh hey, yeah, I would like to practice my muscle ups. I like want to get better at snatching, I want to get better at back, whatever it is. Like you're gonna get five chances every single week to work on strength, skill, or a particular thing in a Metcon. You don't have to stay after every time. In fact, I would encourage people to only do it once or twice to start, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with like, I don't like being sore when we, you know, this is like an annoying example, but I don't like being sore when we do GHD situps. So now I'm gonna do them nine times a year instead of twice. You know what I mean? Like, like that kind of thing. So permission to cherry pick. Last but not least, we have the engine programming. This is a really cool program, really thoughtful, well thought out program by one of our coaches here, Chris. He is very good at the narrative building, the idea of, hey, this is what we're chasing within this given phase. This is what we're gonna work on. And he's very thoughtful in his progressions of how to do so. And I just I like looking at it because he thinks outside the box a little bit. And people who think outside the box often overprogram or it looks gimmicky, and he's able to present things a little bit differently with them still, you know, just working really well. And the joke that I put in and sort of every single time in this podcast is the engine people are annoying because they kick your ass on cardio day every single time. And that's just proof that it works. And for people looking for that seventh day of programming, that's how we do it at our gym. Seventh day of programming at Misfit Gym Portland is uh engine class that gets run on Sundays. So and honestly, the kind of workout a lot of members want to do on the weekend as well.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:47

Yeah, yeah, that the days one and day two typically have that kind of focus. The the engine program's a three-day-a-week thing. Day one and day two kind of has a focus for the phase. There's usually a test-retest component. That third day is kind of the like, you know, usually a little bit longer, low skill, get your sweat on sort of Sunday workout. Our our members really like it. That class is usually packed, does an awesome job running it. But like to your point, you know, there he he creatively plugs in like important components of you know fitness, like day one, for example, this phase is is a combination of like grip grip like a grip focus. And it's like, okay, well, like grip into functional fitness, like how do we how do we do that sort of thing? And it's like, well, I could just make you row and carry stuff and like just kind of bias, like uh again, just like our the regular programming. I'm just biasing a certain thing that I want to get people better at. The day two thing gives people like cadences to focus on on their machine work, whether it's a rower, a C2 bike, you know, strokes per minute, revolutions per minute, all those sorts of like just little small things that give an athlete something to think about while they're doing this, while they're doing the p what would otherwise be like, hey, if I just said 12-minute machine, rest two minutes, rest three minutes, 12-minute machine, like that gets nowhere near as much engagement as like, yep, it's 12 minutes, but three minutes you're rowing at 22 strokes per minute, the next three minutes are at 26, then 30, then back to 26. And then it's similar on the bike, and it gives the athlete one, distracts them from what is essentially just cardio, but again, like it teach it, it teaches you something, and that's kind of how all these these pieces are. So it's a really creative way of getting people again, and it's a super low barrier to entry program as far as the skills, the weights, the stuff like that is concerned.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:47

I think that's it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:48

Any final thoughts on the phase? No, I got so many thoughts on deadlifts and midline stabilizations and posterior chain engagement, but I'm gonna I'll put everybody to sleep for another day.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:00

Yeah, I think the final thoughts are just going all the way back to the beginning of a wall walk and a deadlift are fairly low barrier to entry movements, and they can set the foundation for movement culture within your gym. If you are not going to get into the details of movements like that and how they need to be executed, when you go to teach complex movements, the buy-in's going to be lower. People aren't going to have the foundation of how to safely pull from the floor or get upside down or hang from the rings. You need to start with the basics as a coaching staff and get those really dialed in, and they will trickle down in ways that I think honestly you wouldn't even believe unless you start to do that. So it's just another nod to kind of the brilliance and the basics thing. And luckily, they're two huge needle movers, which is you know what we're going for at the end of the day. Really cool phase. Um, you can get two weeks for free by going to tmisfit.com, clicking on the sign up now button um at sugarwatch, streamfit, or push press. If you would like a two-week sample emailed to you, um I'll coach at misfitathletics.com. It's also gonna be something on Instagram where I do the same thing. I usually get a pretty long list of emails um from people that want to see it. So you can also just go that route. I'm gonna, I don't know, tell you to post a pirate emoji or some shit and I'll email it to you. So those are the options for for getting the program. Obviously, the note going all the way back to the beginning to existing affiliates and new affiliates. Um, I'm here if you want to talk through the things that you think you're struggling with at the affiliate level. Coach at misfitathletics.com. If you want to bring more people into the conversation, the telegram is a great place to do that because you can talk to other affiliate owners as well as Hunter and I. Uh but yeah, I'm excited to it's always fun to kind of turn the page on a on a new on a new phase. And we've got our doozy of uh 15th anniversary workout tomorrow. Cheer. And then we get started on the new phase. Did we do it? Cheer. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. If somehow you listen to this entire podcast but you want our affiliate or our individual programming, head to the link in bio on Instagram and get signed up on Strive V or Fitter. I will not say the instructions for signing up for teammisfit.com. Click on sign up now again. Um, or you can email me. See you guys next week. Later.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:31

All right, you play take bunch of misfits.