Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Open Prep: 2026 Programming Continues into Phase 3 - E.381
In this episode of the Misfit Podcast, Drew and Paige walk through Open Prep / Phase 3 — what it is, why it’s structured the way it is, and how athletes should actually execute it.
They cover:
- How to choose the right program and track
- Why stimulus matters more than chasing scores
- How to use gears, instructions, and athlete IQ properly
- Mandatory vs non-mandatory work (and how to personalize)
- The role of accessory work, volume, and repetition
- Why buying into the narrative of Open Prep actually matters
This episode is part programming breakdown, part coaching philosophy — and a reminder that execution, not just fitness, determines results.
If you’re heading into the Open, Quarterfinals, or just want to train with more intention, this is required listening.
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Good morning, Missfits. You are tuning in to a special edition Missfit podcast. In just a few days, the Misfit Athletics Open Prep program starts. Phase three gets going on Monday, January 5th. We will have the one-week free trials turned back on for all of you for all of our programs, all of our offerings on Fitter and Strivey. Before we, so here's a piece of feedback that we've gotten. And this is typically from like non-rain or shine misfit crew people. So I'll call you out a little bit, but like give me the meat of the episode immediately. So we're gonna do read, list, and watch at the end. Uh when we know the real ones, we'll stick around for that. Um, but after housekeeping, we will jump straight into open prep phase three stuff. So there are four main ways for you guys to support what we do. If you like the podcast, if you like the content we put on social media, on YouTube, et cetera, here are the four ways that you can support us. Number number one are training camps. And we have one coming up. We're exactly one month away, which is really exciting from camp at CrossFit Roots in Boulder, Colorado. Open and quarterfinals prep camp style, and you can find the tickets in the link in bio on Instagram. Number two, obviously our programs. We're gonna be talking about programming the entire episode today, and you can find our individual programs through Fitter and Strivey on our link in bio. You can also find our affiliate programming there, or you can just head to teammisfit.com, click on sign up now, and you get a two-week free trial at StreamFit, Sugar Wad, or Push Press, or if you'd like to see the PDF version that we do for the website, just email me, coach at misfitathletics.com. Number three, sharpenheaxco.com. I got quite a few DMs. As always, the amount of emails and social media posts that I do related to a new gear collection is feels borderline obnoxious to me. And then I still get the DMs of like, I missed it. What do I do? Um, we always do extras in case there need to be exchanges, or honestly, for you people that I'm that I'm talking to. So sharpen theaxco.com. We have a handful of, and and honestly, I posted this in Telegram yesterday, so some of the stuff's gone and maybe in your size already. But we've got still got some sweatpants, hoodies, crews, long sleeve, t-shirts, crops, all that good stuff. So sharpenheaxco.com. Um maybe you even use the code word page to save yourself 10%. You could, could if you want. And last but not least, we have a podcast sponsor that I I don't want to say I begged them, but I annoyed them for long enough. Yeah, there it is. Mine was mine was in this. The podcast sponsor is Gorilla Mind. GorillaMind is a supplement company that essentially inspired me to start my own supplement company, which now does not exist. So I am back on the Gorilla Mind. Honestly, I was the whole time, aside from a few products. And the product of the day today is their Omega-3 Elixir. It's a really good way to explain what they do. They basically take ingredients that everybody knows works and they give them to you in doses that actually do something. I take fish oil mainly for mental health benefits. So a maintenance dose of EPA would be around one gram. And then if you're going through a tough time or you're under a bunch of stress, two grams. So I would take pretty often I do a double serving. I take two soft gels twice a day, and then I get like 2,500 milligrams of EPA. And of course, a bunch of DHA in there, but just really great products, really cool company. So gorilla mind.com forward slash misfit, or just use the code word misfit at checkout. As always, thank you for following our programs, for going to training camps, for using the codes, all that stuff. We do really appreciate it. Okay, it is open prep time. Again, Monday, January 5th, we get started. Seven-day free trials are turned on. One quick little note that some of you know, some of you don't know. This phase is six weeks long. CrossFit HQ loves to make us wait until like the day before the open to know when the open is. It's like slightly tongue-in-cheek. There was one year where like no one knew when it was, and then they were two in the same year. I don't know. Yeah, basically. And then after that, instead of the nine-week phase, we go straight into a five-week quarterfinals peaking prep phase. And we won't spend too much time talking about that today, but I just wanted to let you guys know. Not a traditional nine-week phase. This one's six weeks long. We basically just get right into the meat of everything right at the beginning of the phase. We don't really draw stuff out quite as long. And obviously, this podcast is dedicated to letting you guys know how that all works. So when we we've been doing shout out of the week, my shout out of the week is the Rain or Shine Crew. Because as of next Monday, you've made it through monsoon season. It's just a little bit easier. Yeah. Um, so I love the idea of a narrative related to something like an open prep. I think back to when I would be listening to like slipknot and notorious B.I.G in the parking lot before going in for a football game. Um, I just like the idea of that extra moment that you take being in your car and then walking through the threshold. And this could be your garage gym, heading in for the first time for open prep, or it could be, you know, heading into your actual gym. But I just I think it's so powerful to let yourself buy into stuff like that because you can get a little extra pep in your step. You can vent, you can convince yourself now that it's not, you know, Tuesday, October 19th or whatever, you can convince yourself to really buy into what you're doing and knowing that, like, hey, we are now locked in on open prep to go do the open and then quarterfinals prep to go do quarterfinals and we continue on in that way. And I just think that those narratives are very special and very powerful. And don't be cool, too cool to like let yourself buy into that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I just like you said, like you we we've made it out the mud. Like this, that's the the tough months of like, why am I doing this? What am I doing it for? Like all those questions are now you're you're answering them. You've been answering them. But um, you know, I think phase three also being a bit shorter can I think it'll be a little bit more exciting. I think we can get people to buy in just like that much more. Um and you know, using Telegram, like we have some ideas that we're we're coming up with here to help you guys kind of stay accountable through these weeks, which I think will be fun and exciting. So I'm really excited for phase three. I'm just gonna give a shout out to my remote athletes. Like, I I like to kind of call them at least once a month and make sure that like, you know, we know we're we're both alive and well, even though we talk quite a bit. But I've been calling all of them today, tomorrow, and everybody is just in a really good headspace of like, I'm excited for what's to come. Like they're excited for phase three, which for us as coaches, like and as programmers, it's like it's exactly what we want to hear that helps us, you know, continue to move the needle for what we do as well. So yeah, I mean, I'm excited. I I've I've had four calls today and all nice and long and chatty and positive.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, that's awesome. So we are gonna open the podcast explanation of open prep with talking about say you're new to Misfit Athletics or you're rejoining us, how to choose what program, program and subscription. And then we're gonna do some FAQs. And I'm not like calling people out, but I think even seasoned Misfits could use some reminders in these categories. And I think it'd be really helpful. And I'm actually probably gonna chop this part and put it as a standalone video on YouTube that we can kind of share. So keep your keep your eye out for that. A lot of times in Telegram, a quick little copy paste of like, I think you should probably go watch this segment could be really helpful for somebody. So with choosing your program, there's actually differences now this time of year. So when you go to Fitter or Strivey, you're gonna be presented with three options pro, comp, or GPP. GPP is our unsung hero, this like really cool program that is sorry, don't really care about the open quarterfinals, et cetera. I want to be, you know, healthier, happier, stronger, fitter, all of that stuff. And moving up a step from there is our comp bundle. So that basically gives you access to Hatchet, which is gonna be our open and quarterfinals level athletes, masters, and GPP. So you're gonna get all three of those. And last but not least, you can sign up for pro. Now, I will do my usual anti-businessman speech here by saying, normally we tell you, hey, straight up, semifinals games athlete, go to pro. That's how this works. This time of year, if classic CrossFit is not your bread and butter, you should be on Hatchet. And I move people from pro to Hatchet in a way where I will take, hey, we're actually not gonna bias this certain thing. We're gonna bring something like the aerobic CrossFit in. So if you are, and Paige, you could be an example, like you like the more athletic and complicated it gets as you get to the semifinals level and the CrossFit games level, that sort of thing. And Paige might not know it yet, but she'll she'll be on some of the uh some of the more open style um programming. So it's not just like there is enough work on Hatchet. The volume could be exactly the same. We are just giving you more of an opportunity to cycle through things at a faster pace. So we'll get into the differences in what is biased in the different programs today on this podcast, but I just want to make it very clear that unless you are a semifinals or CrossFit Games athlete that likes classic CrossFit, you should switch over to comp, pay us less money, and follow the hatchet program. All right, FAQs. So we open all of our phases, phase one, phase two, and phase three with test week. There is a difference in this phase because there is no retest week. We are going to follow the progression that we would normally follow over the nine weeks, and we're gonna jump right into quarterfinals prep. And your testing is going to be the open and quarterfinals and the open simulation stuff that we do during this phase. So a lot of you already have things like your spiders on Mars scores or your rowing cube test scores. So there is still very much an element of it feels like retesting, even though it's at the beginning and is test week. And then the whole virtual training partners thing is huge here. So if you are new, you can still compare scores on Telegram and on the leaderboards with people to see where you're at and what you really need to work on. From there, weeks two through six, you are gonna see what we refer to. And honestly, like a guiding principle of Misfit Athletics, one of the reasons I started the company 13, 14, 15 years ago, something like that, is the idea that there's no one size fits all. So you are going to sort of arrive at week two, day one, in your first normal week, past test week, and for the love of God, read the instructions. If you see that wall of workouts in Fitter or Strivey and think we are asking you to do all of them, that's Paige doesn't do all of them, McKenna doesn't do all of them, like don't do that. That's not what is happening here. So you're gonna have instructions and they're gonna tell you mandatory work is complete this, this, and this. And then based on your remaining time and energy and you know, ability to attack the piece, add zero to two additional pieces or something to that effect. One really cool thing that I'm happy to bring back now that quarterfinals is back, is open athlete instructions and quarterfinals athlete instructions. So when you are on hatchet, you are going to see instructions based on what your quote unquote Super Bowl sort of looks like. So if you don't think that you are going to advance to quarterfinals or there's an outside chance, you should be following the open track because in those moments, less is better. Like more is not better, isn't even the right way to say it. Less is better. We want you in there attacking and learning how to use your athlete IQ and your habits and your fitness to crush one single thing because that's what the open is. And then we have the idea of the phase-long progressions. So on a given day, you might just have something like this Metcon or interval or bitchwork piece looks like my weakness, and I'm gonna add it as one of my additional things. And that's very much a day-to-day case-by-case basis. But then there are things like our bench press, split jerk, echo bike power output progressions, where we will explicitly tell you, like, hey, this is something that's going to build week to week. And if you are gonna add it to your program, it should nine times out of 10 be every week or not at all. Like mixing in blasting yourself on an Echo bike is fine, you know, if you have the extra energy and it's usually buried towards the end of the week. So maybe it's a weekend and you can do it. It could be a smart ad. But if you are going to take the time to do the power output test, we want you doing the every other week Echo Bike power output stuff. So keep your eye on that. And we try to be really explicit in the instructions there. Stimulus. So, stimulus is for the coach and programmer and the athlete. And I think that this is something that is missed on a very regular basis. So we make sure that the workout that we write is has the ability to be done in relation to the stimulus. We can't make you do it that way. We can write cardio and you can stomp the gas pedal at the beginning of an 18-minute workout, and that's not cardio. So when we are looking at these three things that you're gonna see on a daily basis as a descriptor, cardio is merry-go-round style workout. We want your rounds to be the same over and over and over. We want it well paced. We want fast transitions. We often want movements unbroken. There is almost always going to be one movement in there that is that is paceable, right? So, like if we're asking you to do an unbroken set of chest to bar pull-ups or handstand push-ups or a barbell movement, then my time to do it and Paige's time to do it are probably gonna be fairly similar. But if we are vastly different fitness levels, then that other movement, the, you know, the burpees, the running, the rowing, that's the thing that you need to do slow enough so that you can go crush those other movements. So that's what the cardio stimulus looks like. Muscle endurance stimulus, pretty straightforward. We drop you in the desert a lot or we run interference with movements. But what we are looking for you to do is kind of lock in on the movement that is not your friend and overreach a little bit. Like if you don't love handstand push-ups and I'm your remote coach, I'm gonna say, I want these handstand push-ups unbroken, and I want you to adjust your rope pace to continue to make that happen. You can slow down your transitions a little bit, but we are going to work on pushing and overreaching your threshold with that movement. Um, and the cool thing is there's a lot of sort of mental adaptation and confidence adaptation related to that. So you are trying to make it so that, like, again, the single movement that is high rep or the movements that conflict with one another, make it so that you are executing it so that it can't be unbroken and smooth. Is that a good explanation, Paige?
SPEAKER_03:I think so. Yeah. I mean, and yeah, like they're very different too. Like you need to remember that like that cardio stimulus, like we really are looking for like even paced rounds, things like that, and um a sustainable effort, the muscular interference, like that's where it's like, you know, sometimes you hit those oh shit moments, and it's like, all right, well, those are like that's where you're finding your learning points in those as well. Um yeah, I know. And then we have one more, which is our gas stimulus. So that's kind of that one that, you know, your lungs are on fire, another body part's on fire, you, you know, the movements kind of interfere in a way that take it out of your lungs. So, you know, again, creating that a different stimulus from the other two. It's like there are different things that you're looking for with within each one.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah. And the gas stimulus, you can think about it as I will go into in a remote coaching setting, a gas stimulus piece and be like, damn, this is kind of wheelhouse for this person. So I need to give this specific instruction of you're gonna go hard in your burpees today. Like every time you arrive at them, like if round one takes 47 seconds, I want round two to take 47 seconds or 46 or 45. And again, the other stuff around it needs to be paced in a way to allow that to happen. That's how you make that happen. But you should have moments during a gas stimulus piece where you are like, holy shit. Like, this isn't quite how I would do this if this was like a workout that I was gaming to try to get the best score. And this is how you can get better at things within a program and personalize it, even though it's a mandatory piece. So, again, really important for you guys, we write it so that like it kind of naturally happens, but if you don't execute it that way, it's not going to have the same bang for its buck. The one that we get the most questions on, and I want to make this so simple, is the gears. Okay. The gears are a way for us to tell you in a particular workout, this is your pace. This is what you're gonna hold. And it's very similar to your one rep max is this, your 80% is this. And if you are new to the program or don't have your gears matrix filled out, and we'll resend that out via email, we'll put it in the telegram group. But if you don't have your gears matrix filled out, all you're gonna do is the first time, you know, they're every day, but like the first workout that you have. So say it's a fourth gear row, you are gonna do your best to know how to pace that. And then the average number that the monitor tells you you held across all rounds is your fourth gear. Now, if you go up to fifth gear, you're just gonna go a little bit faster. If you go down to third gear, you're gonna go a little bit slower. It's very straightforward like that. And that's how you fill that out. And you can guess, like, okay, I actually had to jump from first gear to fifth gear. How do I do that? Well, if it's just, you know, one to three seconds per 500 meter split faster, then I can sort of do the math on that. Running is typically in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 seconds per mile pace. Um, but you don't have to get too crazy with it. We're trying to fill this thing out and make educated guesses so that when you re-arrive back at that workout, it's like, I think I can go for 146 today. I think that's like I'm feeling good, my rowing's feeling better, and we're using linear progression and we're using some of those kind of meathead mentality strength principles in bitch work. So in your monostructural conditioning.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I am especially with the gears too, like as you become more familiar with it and you've you've gotten it filled out and you've been fairly consistent at using it. Like now I have, I'm at a point where I'm like, you know, it's a random Tuesday and they have a fifth gear piece. Well, I'm gonna give you three options and it's kind of based on how are you feeling today? Like, are you feeling kind of like meh? Like, okay, can we just hold our pace? Are we in like a 202 to 204 range? Can we stay within that? Um, am I feeling great? Can I push for a new gear? You start to ask those questions, and sometimes you just need that guidance from a coach that's like, you know, really you have two or three options of like, am I feeling good? Am I feeling great? Am I feeling meh? So you kind of have that in there. Um Um, you know, just as giving you things to think about for the gears as well, once you get familiar with them. And then the other note, too, at least for phase three, that I kind of am excited about as far as stimulus goes, we're putting more notes in there for you guys. So, you know, with the cardio stimulus, for example, burpees, right? Like it's not a machine. You don't have a monitor to stare at to tell you what pace you're at, but we want you to hold a cardio stimulus for a workout where there's high volume burpees. So, like knowing that the burpee is kind of that pacer, like we're putting notes in there for you guys to think about. Like, okay, this is that movement that I need to adjust pacing so that I can maintain the stimulus that they're asking for. So I do like that we're adding more notes as far as like giving you guys things to think about. I think it will help you as far as your athlete IQ. And we've gotten a lot of questions in Telegram about, you know, how do I work on my athlete IQ, things like that. So this phase specifically, especially the open style workouts that we're gonna do, you guys should expect to see more athlete IQ info and exercises from us, which I'm excited about. Yeah, same.
SPEAKER_02:All right, uh, accessory work, another one, a lot of questions. The mandatory work every single day has an accessory attached to a lift. Now, if you are in a serious time constraint, but still have, you know, goals that are extremely important to you, that's when you need to make the decision of is this lift specifically something that's a weakness? And if it is, you need to take the time to do the accessory work as written because we are trying to give you, you know, stability and strength in certain positions that you really need to be able to excel in that specific thing. If you are in that same category and you're like, you know, I got a lot of athletes that that I coach that love back squatting and, you know, the speed work that we do often is almost like maintenance work there. So I'm gonna keep a close eye on how often we do that and how often we do the accessory related to it. And then the non-mandatory lift, we have three non-mandatory lifts this phase that you could use to personalize your program. Those also have an accessory attached to it. Don't think that you need to do the lift to do the accessory. You can add that piece as one of your zero to two additional pieces. Um, and I think a lot of people would benefit from doing an accessory piece over adding more volume if the intensity is not gonna be there. So that's another thing that repeats all of the accessories repeat every, you know, on the same days in weeks two through six. So you, there's a reason why we give you a full week in advance. We want you to take a look at it and kind of circle those things that you think are gonna help you make help make you better. But we do realize that it is a lot of accessory work and it's typically going to be our pros that have the ability to do, you know, seven to ten accessory pieces per week. Like we understand that, but we also want to make sure that you guys have access to the things that can make you better.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think too with the accessory is like they can kind of be put aside fairly quickly by somebody who's following the program. But it's like, give it a chance of following dumbbell farmers' carries for an entire six to nine weeks in linear progression of adding weight each week or adding weight in some sets and then going back to the previous week week's weight in the following sets. You, the difference it makes in how your your grip is, how you're holding on to barbells, how you're holding on to the pull-up bar, you won't realize that if you're only doing it once or twice randomly throughout the phase. If you stick to a progression of an accessory movement in there, like you're gonna really see benefits and you're gonna see it, you're not gonna realize it until later in the phase or later in the following phase. But if, you know, there's always those times too where it's like, I'm adding this piece in because this has been nagging me a little bit and this is good for injury prevention and that kind of stuff makes sense too. That fits in there. But if there is an accessory piece and like the dumbbell farmers carry is like a huge one for me, I'm like, those the what that does for your body and how it transfers to other movements is like insane. So give if you're gonna do one and like you actually want to see a progression of it, follow it for the entire phase and you'll see the benefit. So, you know, accessory is kind of like on the back burner for some, but like don't underestimate what it can do for you either.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and like people will wanna know like at this point in her career, how does McKenna add 20 pounds to her push press?
SPEAKER_03:Me and my friend are like, we're speechless.
SPEAKER_02:She listens to cues and she does accessory work and she does the, you know, she does the dead hangs and the handstand holds and that stuff all coming together and having that trust built with the coach. That's how you do that, right? Like it's that whole like must be nice thing. And it's like, I don't know how nice it is to be hanging up, hanging out upside down as much as she is, and doing all the accessory work that she is, and you know, there's plenty of notes that just say ouch, you know, after she's doing the things, but she buys into it, and other people are like, accessories are dumb, they don't do anything. And it's like, well, you know, you can you can keep doing what you're doing, I guess.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry, I need I need to cough.
SPEAKER_03:If I mean, guys, a 20-pound PI, she texted us today and she's like, guys, what do you do when your push press is the same as your slit jerk? And I was like, that's not possible. And she's like, here's the video. And I'm like, You're insane. So clearly, we, you know, I have a feeling we'll see some split jerk in her near future.
SPEAKER_02:Is that yeah, she's doing heavy split jerks and open prep. Yes, yes, she is. We're gonna we're gonna fix that real quick. All right. The final category that we have is we have skill and reps. And our skill progressions that we will go over later are mandatory. We are basically pulling the movement we're biasing out of intensity and doing a progression there. And the reps are always non-mandatory. This is very important. What are we doing? What the heck is reps? Reps is a not-for-time piece where you get accumulations of reps of movements and maybe some machines under low intensity for quality. Think really thinking about the way that you're moving. Honestly, the idea came from Hunter and I having a conversation about like how you get better at sports is by practicing and doing these kind of drills. And that is just so removed from the way that we do things within the CrossFit community. And putting those back in and saying, hey, this week's program does not have toes to bar, double unders, box jumps, whatever it is, whatever movement it is, could be high skill, could be low skill. Um, but they're movements that you have to be good at to perform at the stage of the program that you signed up for. So we are going to give you exposure to those movements. Now, I rarely ask athletes to do things in the reps column, especially this close to competition season, if it's not a weakness. Okay. I know some of you use it as like a kind of a warm-up thing and maybe you modify it a little bit. I think that's cool. Gets you exposure to the movement and get you a little bit more warmed up into potentially some more like compound type movements, but that is what that's for. We are trying to get you exposure to a movement. It should not be super challenging. We never want to sort of stretch the limits in that piece. We are saving that for skill progressions, intervals, metcons, etc. Last but not least, if you are following this program and are really like trying to improve and you are missing the community element, you are insane. The alchemy of CrossFit is built on the idea that, like, yeah, we are gonna do a couple of mandatory pieces together as an entire community. And we're gonna talk about them. We're gonna talk about the athlete IQ related to it. We're gonna commiserate about how rough it was to do that thing. Being part of something bigger than yourself is very powerful when you're, you know, open gym boy and you're at your gym and you have no friends at your gym and you're in there by yourself. Like, monsoon season is every day. Like it's so hard to get yourself to that point. So maybe you don't have those training partners, get in Telegram. Telegram is free. We will provide links to it as we always do. It's free. Honestly, if you're listening to this and you want to know what it's all about, you can sign up. You can go right into it, whether you're signed up for the program or not. We don't kick you out afterwards. So please, please, please download the Telegram app on your phone and join the Misfit crew. Again, it's free. You get access to Paige and I, but probably more importantly, you get access to your virtual training partners, which makes, you know, things just go a lot smoother.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. On the last podcast, we talked about habit stacking and how to slowly add little by little of good habits for in the gym, outside the gym. So throughout phase three, we're gonna be doing some of that stuff. Now, we reached out in Telegram to ask you guys what do you struggle with in the gym? Is it warming up, cooling down? Cooling down is actually a big one, which I'm not really surprised by, but sleep hygiene, you know, are you getting enough hours? How do I fuel before or after? So we are gonna do a lot of that stuff throughout phase three. And, you know, you guys have given good feedback on wanting to do it. I'm also like, it sounds promising that we'll get a lot more conversation going around that kind of stuff too. And this leading into the open, I think there's no better time for you guys to really dial in these things. And again, you're you're out of monsoon season, you're into the fun part. So yeah, that's that's all I got there.
SPEAKER_02:Cool. Before we get into the biases, one new thing for phase three this year is open simulation. Every Friday, Pro, Hatchet, Masters, the whole gamut, we are going to be doing the same open simulation workout together. It is all of the major open movements in the workout style that they do, in the durations that they do. Part of the scaling will be time caps, you know, sort of like they have in the open. The only caveat here is we have deadlift, wall walk, thruster, and bar pole gymnastics as a phase bias. You will not see those within the actual open simulation, but you will be overexposed to those things. So don't you worry about that at all. And I think this is gonna give us an opportunity to deliver something meaningful to the feedback of how challenging it is to have that athlete IQ. Um, and we want to do these competition simulations before we sort of fuck up the real deal. So you'll have a sort of PDF worksheet every week. Um, and you guys can let us know like, do you want PagerI to fill out like a fake one before it starts, that kind of thing? Like, we will do a basically straight up nerd talk. It's the scientific method. How do you think this workout's gonna go? How did it go? And what would you do to fix it? So you're basically creating your hypothesis, you're testing it, and then you're retesting it. And the cool thing is they program the same movements every single year. So you are gonna have at least one workout where you're like, aha, like I think I got it. I think this, yeah, I think this combination, I know how to execute on it. Um, and there's a pretty good chance you're gonna be able to go a little bit harder in the open because you know, we can say it's open simulation, but it's not the same, you know, as being on your affiliate Friday night lights, that whole kind of thing. So I think that's a fun addition. We've got some doozies in there for sure.
SPEAKER_03:They were fun to write.
SPEAKER_02:Peek behind the curtain. I completely cheated on the first stimulus and acronym, and I just changed it after the fact because I love the workout so much. Um, so week two, I think it's like day five, maybe it'll be like Friday for most people. And then that was intentional, you know, sort of coming off that rest day. Keep your eye out for that first one because I feel real good about it. All right, let's get into the nitty-gritty, the bias for each category. We will talk a lot more about Hatchet than we will pro. And if you listen to the beginning of this podcast, you probably know why. So our mandatory lifting begins with two days a week of peaking your one rep max squat snatch. And I love the challenge of okay, we know how to peak it over the course of nine weeks. How do we do it in six weeks? And we actually know exactly how to do this because we get told four, five, six weeks out from a major, major competition that we are going to be doing this movement. And whether, again, it's very short period of time or we're going like three days a week, maybe, or out across these six weeks. Um, and it's actually kind of five weeks, to be honest, after test week, but triple double single, triple double single, triple double single. And we build on the weights that are used. The goal is to build on the weights that are used across each one. Wow, does it work? It goes all the way back to myself and two friends at the gym signed up for a local competition against semifinals and games level athletes because we knew we could beat them in event one and it would really piss them off. And it was one right max, one person did shoulder overhead, one did clean, one did snatch. And I think my one right max snatch before the comp was 230, and I snatched three days a week on this program, and I hit 255. And like we we got ourselves in the finals by accident, though, which really did not belong in the finals at all. So, like, I think I think one of my teammates had had a beer um before the final. It's a little old school crossing. Old school for sure, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, but this works really well. And another piece of feedback that you guys have given, and something that's in competition prep a lot more often, just because of what happens to your nervous system as you're trying to overreach, is we have percentage ranges. So it's not gonna be the typical 70, 72 and a half, 75, 77 and a half. You're gonna have a range, and those ranges only go up on one side. So, like if it started at 80 to 82 and a half, then it goes from 80 to 85. So you could still start at 80. You could stay there, and your linear progression could be I'm gonna move better with this barbell um than I did before, as opposed to adding weight. So I know that the one rep max clean um stuff that everybody's just done, that like the true Olympic lifting style phases are pretty brutal. And again, it's written this way because in competition prep, um, we want to make sure that you truly are seeing how heavy you can go for one rep if they put it into the open or quarterfinals.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I really like the exposure twice a week too. I think um, you know, especially starting at the lighter percentages. You could say the same for squat clean, but getting your barbell therapy dialed in prior to the lifting session can really go a long way, especially for for snatch, excuse me. It's such a technical lift. Um and you know, just really dialing in those those small little things.
SPEAKER_02:We gotta bust that video out for you guys.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So something to keep in mind, like, you know, figure find those things that work for your warm-up, what makes you feel good, and get after those sessions. Cause six weeks goes by pretty quickly too. So you get the exposure in.
SPEAKER_02:I am so happy with the way that we have tricked athletes into moving way better with the complexes that we've done recently. So, like before it would be this many weeks at this position, this many weeks at this position, and then at this position. And there's something about starting at a lighter weight and working up over time where you're asking a crossfitter to be a little bit more dynamic and hold on to the barbell. They're gonna learn, they're gonna be forced to learn how to move. And I'm really excited to see how people go into Squatch Snatch, Squat Snatch Survivor, finding their one rep max and the way that they move based on doing those things. I've just really liked the results, and you guys' videos have been really good. And I think better than the more linear style progression that we've done in the past with the positions. So hopefully that theory actually comes true. But I've been really impressed with how people are moving.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Peyton, a couple weeks ago, she's like, tell me how I'm moving a positional em right around my one rep max. I'm like, all right, that's it's pretty impressive.
SPEAKER_02:Peyton intensity is freedom. There is just something different about something that requires your attention and requires you to be dynamic as opposed to like, why don't we do this drawn-out skill session that takes 27 hours and isn't challenging? And that's how we find flow state is the challenge has to be big enough, then you're the one supplying the effort. And so that's how that works. And I was hoping it was going to work that way, but seeing it happen in real time was super cool. All right, volume work. This has been a staple of our programming and something that I think we've gotten our athletes better at over the course of, I would say like two to three years. My brain doesn't do well with time, but like I remember starting to be like, you know what? Volume work isn't for a crossfitter, isn't really always just taking a back squat out and doing sets of six or eight or 10. Volume work is, oh my goodness, I have to do another power clean single in this workout. Like I'm gonna die. We got to overreach there. We gotta add heav, we gotta go heavier, we gotta do more reps, and that's where this sort of came from. So the rotation that you're gonna see is basically like touch and go squat cleans, then volume singles with power clean, and then vice versa as we go. I did backload a lot more of the power cleans because we are getting closer and closer to prep. And I don't want the like as we get really heavy with the squat snatch to overdo that movement pattern because we've got back squat, squat snatch, squat clean, and front squat. So you'll notice that as things progress and get a little bit heavier, you're gonna be doing more of the power clean, but the power clean volume happens significantly more often in the sport than squat clean volume does. And I I don't really know how those feel, to be perfectly honest.
SPEAKER_03:They're rough.
SPEAKER_02:Paige, you probably do. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:They're rough. I mean, and there's there's different things you can think about. Like if you go back to some either open or quarterfinals or even semifinal style workouts, it's like, all right, you have 30 squat snatch for time, you have, you know, a ladder of 15, 12, nine on singles on power things or whatever it is. It's like, how do you attack those to like minimize the amount of time you're working? And it's like, I'm gonna try and do a rep every 12 seconds. I'm gonna try and do a rep every five seconds. Like there's different ways you can also think and strategize these volume singles, which I like. I think back to it was quarterfinals and online semifinals. There was the uh, I don't remember how many reps it was. It was like 10 clean and jerks at whatever weight, rest a minute, 10 clean and jerks. And it got up to like 165. And, you know, McKenna and I are doing that workout. It's like when you are hitting fatigue at that point and you're tired, it's like, all right, well, what is the least amount of time between reps that you can still do another rep? Like, is it eight seconds? Is it 10 seconds? So, like there is still a lot of learning happening in these volume singles of sets of 12, sets of 10. So again, we want you moving well, but and flirting with that fatigue factor, but still finding, you know, kind of that upper limit of like, all right, I can I know I can hold singles at 185 every six seconds. Um, and knowing those things when you go into a a Metcon or an ascending ladder can be really, really helpful.
SPEAKER_02:And this is why it's so important for the listeners that you are joining me for these podcasts now, because they want to know how you get the athlete IQ. And I can tell you what I think works, but there's it's different coming from the athlete. And it's not just how heavy can you go for 12, 10, 8, 6 of drop and reset power clean singles. It's what is the exact weight? And then when you do the math out, how often do you need to pick up the barbell? Because then when that exact scenario is presented to you, you can say to your, you know, coach that's there with you, look, tell me to get my hands on every six seconds, like that kind of thing. Tell me if I'm, you know, you know, behind or ahead, that sort of things. The athlete IQ is just buried in every single piece that we do. And we shouldn't be writing pieces that don't have the ability to further your athlete IQ. Um, positional work is going to be the front squat. If you were an OG misfit, you know how I feel about the relationship. Between the back squat and the front squat, I think that the front squat is a skill movement. I think that if you can back squat a bunch and you can't front squat, then you probably move like shit. And it could be, you know, a mobility sort of thing. But you need to learn how to move better in the front squat. The back squat will move the needle on total strength significantly more, especially if you have the like true Olympic style high bar back squat that then translates over to your front squat. But basically, we are taking, if you did the positional overhead squats, we are taking that and putting it into the front squat from phase two to phase three. And while I loved the 20 second squats, they they weren't heavy enough.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:In certain instances. So if I had like a really strong person, I loved the 20-second squats. Like, cause that really forced them to figure out how to move through space. Yeah. But if someone is more, yeah, if somebody's a little bit more worried about actual strength accumulation, I found that that variation made it significantly easier for someone to follow a true progression and add weight over time. So as much as I want to haze you guys with the 20-second ones again, and I'm not saying they're gone. I'm not promising that they're gone, but these are 10-second front squats. Last but not least, we talked about it already, but basically we're going to move the needle a bit more with our, you know, sort of squatting movements by doing the back squat, but we are surrounded by all of these other squat movements. So we really need to make sure that we're just doing the maintenance work here. That being said, do not do the back squat work if you don't understand that it is down under control and stand up as fast as you possibly can. It's a glorified warm-up. Otherwise, we are looking for you to have that like violent knee and hip extension and that click in the barbell every single time you stand up. One thing I have noticed on social media is some of you guys take the tempo thing way too literally and you lower yourself like on like a 400 count to the bottom. And I think there's going to be too much fatigue in that situation. It is just be so under control that you can stand up as fast as possible. All right. Um, so normally we have this little section in this list where it's like these next lifts are only mandatory on pro and they will be non-mandatory on Hatchet. Cool thing this time of year is we're about to go do actual CrossFit. So having 10 lifts in the program is not necessary. We have what we think over the course of those five days to be exactly what is necessary to get ready for in-season programming. And then the non-mandatory is the same for pro and hatchet. We have a hang power clean complex. It's very similar to the complex work that you guys have been doing, but we are stretching out the rest period a little bit and asking you to go a little bit heavier. And again, this variation, doing the hang power clean is just another way for us to make sure that we are not overdoing it in that like squat or lunge pattern, but we are making sure that there's enough pulling happening within the clean work. Next would be the heavy split jerk. This is the time of year where you got to make sure that you've brushed up a little bit on that skill. Again, making sure that you guys have ranges to work through. I know we're gonna get the questions. No, they're so annoying. Please get the blocks out if you have them, is a completely different session to lower 80%. And like that is just not, that's not where it's at. So it's cool if you don't have it. I have instructions in the, you know, in the workouts where it's like, hey, if you don't have blocks, this is probably a better percentage. And the really cool thing about movements like split jerk is they're a little bit more of an expression of strength and skill than they are a true strength builder. So if you move faster and move really well and sort of have that bent back knee and you're not overextended and you're pressing under the bar as opposed to trying to move the bar up, being at 70 or 75% versus 80% is totally fine and will move the needle and honestly might move the needle more for someone who's a little bit less skilled when it comes to that movement. Last but not least, heavy bench press. If we are going to go overhead, we always finish with that amrap set. But again, you don't have to take it so literally as like, I might drop this thing on my neck. It's just athletes who are a bit more power output based are gonna get a little bit fewer reps there, but they don't necessarily need the more reps if they already have the power. And then the athlete who isn't quite as powerful but has the muscle endurance, eking out those extra reps, you know, say I get four and Paige gets six, we're kind of getting a personalized stimulus when it comes to that. So there's gonna be an AMRAP set to finish the bench each time if you choose it as a non-mandatory piece, but just keep in mind that it doesn't need to be truly two failure. You want it within the context of what strength work is supposed to actually feel like.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I um I just want to touch back on the speed work with the back squats. I love pairing that up with the snatch because the movements are so similar. Like obviously one is a squat, one is a pull, but the way you're moving through your lower half can really, really benefit from the back squat, the speed work into your snatch. Like I I still to this day I did tempo. We did, it was the 10 by threes tempo back squats. And I to this day I'm still convinced that like that is the reason I added 15 pounds to my snatch that year. Just the speed work really, really can go so far if you can do it right.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's it's we'll do it at camp. I do it at every camp. I do the thing where I get into the bottom position of a clean or a snatch, and then I just put the barbell on my back down in the bottom or put it up overhead, and I'm like, why are we back squatting if it's not even in the sport? Well, here you go, right? Exactly. Way to move the most weight in the exact same position. So your drive off of the floor is a squat, and your catch is obviously a squat. Your stand up is definitely a squat. So that's why that can really help move the needle there. All right. So it was a sad moment for me to transition from the meat head work to the bitch work. This is where the money is made. This is where magic happens. This is the, you know, this is a lot of the rain or shine crew. Like when we do the affiliate, we have our version of it in our affiliate programming as an engine program add-on. And at the gym, we used to have three, we used to have three engine classes a week. So they would follow the three-day program. And those people whooped everyone's ass in CrossFit. And part of it is just because, again, like like they're, you know, you're in and you're doing that work and it's very steady and it's well paced. But Chris is also very good at teaching the pacing and explaining the different styles of workouts and building progressions into it. And that, you know, just as a coach and a programmer inspires me to try to bring the same thing over here. So there are points in the year where you might wonder why we're still doing three to five days a week of mandatory bitchwork. And I can tell you right now that I still have my athletes that are really good at bitch work do that. Like, unless there's a really explicit reason not to, it just it just moves the needle. I think too many coaches and programmers do the like, well, my athlete's good at this, so we don't really do it all that often anymore. And then they like take seventh instead of first. And it's like, that's a lot of points, that's a lot of points. So even if you're good at bitch work, it's just the stimulus is incredible. Oh, we'll just quickly go down through here. Our zone two bias for hatchet is the C2 bike. Um so you will do the Misfit Athletics threshold tests. Let's be real clear on this. That's a 40-minute AMRAP. That's as hard as you can go for 40 minutes. Should it be paced? Yeah, 40 minutes long, right? It's really, really long. Um, but people are like, what should my heart rate zone be? Nah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, right? If you're the type of athlete that gets good athlete IQ feedback of like, oops, 172 beats per minute in minute four, that was a bad idea. But that can also be like, hey, why don't you start maybe stop holding your breath? And that's that's usually not very helpful, or your RPMs are off, or something like that. But just being very clear here, that is an AMRAP. That is a true AMRAP. It just, it's hard to pace because it's long. I personally, when I do the the 40 minute tests, I come up with what I think is the right wattage or RPMs to hold, but I break it up into four 10 minute sections in my head. No matter what, unless it's like egregiously slow or fast, and I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and I should probably be fired if that's the case. For those first 10 minutes, I will hold what I set out to hold. And then I will say, hmm, yeah, that's that's right. That's pretty close. Or it's a little slower, it's a little fast, and I will adjust up or down an RPM or two, X amount of watts, that kind of thing, and move on and sort of make my way through that. So it helps me personally mentally to do that. It's like four 10-minute workouts, and of course it'd be nice to jump off the bike seat and walk around for a little bit in between those 10 minutes, and you don't get to, but I don't know why it helps me mentally, but it does. So Hatchet is the C2 bike and Pro is the Echo bike. Those are going to be your mandatory weekly zone two pieces over the course of the phase. The aerobic bias for Hatchet is going to be CrossFit. It is based on the progression of Spiders on Mars. Spiders on Mars is uh a real fun workout. And I will say, let me make sure that this is actually true. I have a third version of it this year. Um, so we get some people who don't get through all the double unders or don't get all the way through the row before the double unders. Um, if this is a huge weakness and you're an open athlete, I have a third version here. Um, so there's the pro version, there's the hatchet version, and then now there's an open athlete version. Um, and I really do want people to like the goal for an open athlete, top tier open athlete, would get 60 slash 50 calorie row at the end. It's adding another segment. That's kind of the intention there. So just just something to something to keep in mind there. And then over the course of the weeks, you're gonna be rowing wall balls, double unders, burpee box jumpovers, all that good stuff. In the eight to 12 to 15 minute time range. Yeah. Did throw you guys a bone. I really did try to make most of those workouts in the progression change up enough while you're doing the workout that it's probably a lot easier mentally than just rowing for 15 minutes.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think I think that's a really good one too, to to really kind of kick off some athlete IQ work. You know, first movements, 50 burpee box jumpovers. Okay, you're gonna do a rep every five seconds. How long is that gonna take you? Do the math, you know? So kind of calculating all that out and then figuring out a little bit of transition time can give you an idea of if you'll get to the max calibrow or how much time you'll have there. So if you can do that prior to even hitting that kind of workout, that will help you decide if the hatchet version is appropriate or if the open style version, modified version is appropriate. So something to think about going into that one.
SPEAKER_02:I want to call out Kyle Malin. He broke the hatchet version and then the pro version broke him. So I'm just interested to see what happens this time, whether he's just gonna annihilate the hatchet version again, which probably hurts. I don't know, maybe more. He'll have to let me know. Or we're gonna see if he can get back to the uh get back to the row on the pro version. Pro aerobic bias is rowing. Surprise, surprise. Anaerobic bias. Um, this is going to be your cube tests. So you're four minutes on, four minutes off for four rounds. Yeah. Where's your output at? Anaerobic bias is hatchet. Uh, we've been following this progression year long. We started with zone two, then we went to aerobic. Now we're at anaerobic. We are just really rounding out our energy systems and getting ourselves to the point now where we're going to be going harder in these workouts than we would go in almost any CrossFit workout. And that can do one of two things. It can make it so that Paige and I are rowing at the same pace, and then we get off the rower and she's 20 beats per minute lower than me. Because oftentimes there's a pace in an open workout or a quarterfinals workout that you need to be able to row at to sort of be at on the leaderboard where you want to be. But what happens outside of that is very different for different athletes, right? So I'm not always telling an athlete if they're really good at rowing, hey, they're gonna be at like an 1100. Why don't you go to the 1200? It's like, why don't you go to 1100 and then laugh at them when you get off and go crush the other movements and then just show back up there? So when we are overreaching, um, we are raising that ceiling. And it could be to go actually go faster in a workout, which is often appropriate, or to go at the same pace as somebody else and then be able to really double and triple down on the rest of the transitions, unbroken movements, all that good stuff.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. McKenna and I have talked about rowing and like McKenna is a very strong rower. Her and me in a 20-minute AMRAP, where the row is recovery for her and the row is pushing for me, like it changes it, it changes the stimulus of the workout. So if you can become that person that's like, oh, I could hold 1100 and this is recovery, but also helping me stay consistently on pace with where I need to be, it's like, yeah, you're a step ahead there. So um, even building on your strengths, you know, with the bitchwork, the monostructural stuff, like keep doing that. Keep building on your strengths.
SPEAKER_02:So that is one way to really demoralize another human that you're working out with. Cause like you see the videos of oftentimes I get videos of training partners together. And let's say it's like row wall walk and they both get off the rotor at the same time, and one of them's doing those, like it almost looks like a fucking burpee that they're slamming themselves against the wall, and the other person's like, no. I am in deep trouble right now. So that's kind of how that looks at play. On the pro side, it's going to be running. If you are signed up for pro and you are following that season-long progression of running, it is important to note that I would want you to either be all on the runner or all not on the runner. It's very hard to convert those two things. And I think a lot of people have to be on the runner this time of year. That said, there is a version of the cube test that's just four one case. So you do four by one K run and then you rest four minutes in between. Um, and it's more about getting those splits to come down to pace those really well, that sort of thing. So if you don't have a runner, you can still do that. Last but not least, at this point in the year, if you're gonna be doing power output work, it should be because you need it, either on a specific day because you're not good at sending it on a rower or a ski erg, or in this instance, every other week you're gonna see because it's the power output bias on all programs, the echo bike. Again, non-mandatory on all programs because this is a weakness that is very specific to certain people. The cool thing here is if you're on the fence, what a stimulus bomb this is. I did my first power output workout at elevation, and I did 29 calories in 30 seconds by accident in the first round. And I s like I have never whatever that whatever that low 20s, like maybe 23, all right, something like that, somewhere in that range. But like I was laughing when I got done because I have never felt like that in my entire life. I was like, what the hell just happened to me? Like, cause it didn't feel hard. Like when you are that when that's your bread and butter, like like for again, just for one bread and butter for one. Like, I probably could have done, I feel like I could, I don't know if I could get 40 in 30 seconds if I went all out, but I could get close. But it was a very bad idea for three by 30. I was in very rough shape for the last one for sure. Um so again, stimulus bomb kind of thing that you know, you know, you know you did some work. Anything to add on the bitchwork stuff page before we move on to sports specific.
SPEAKER_03:But at some point, all of them are uncomfortable. So just keep that in mind of like you guys are pushing intensity. You're trying to, you know, find adaptation here. There shouldn't be anything that's like a breeze. And then kind of the second thing I go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:No, go ahead. Keep going.
SPEAKER_03:I was I was gonna change change gears a little bit there.
SPEAKER_02:Uh so what Paige is talking about is like so important here. First gear, if it's a mandatory piece, is ham wrap 15 minutes times two, rest one minute. I want you to be 100% positive that you can hold your average pace for all 30 minutes of work, but I want it right there. Like that's I want the stimulus to be right there. If you're getting up towards seventh or eighth gear and you want to play around a little bit and see if you can actually hold, you know, a 135 or something like that, that's totally fine. There's no place for that in the first gear, second gear, third gear stuff just because it's not gonna work. It's not gonna happen. You're teaching your body to go slower. We want you to go to the same speed and have it hurt a little bit more every minute of the entire workout. And by the end, you're like, if I had to do a few more minutes of this, cyanora. Like, yeah, no bueno, not good. So, really important to know, again, it is very aerobic, as honestly, all of this stuff is aside from the power output work, but it's it's not going to be in there if it's supposed to be easy unless it says zone two next to it.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Kind of the second thing in this is more some experience with some remote athletes, and I won't name names, but you guys will probably, you know, you'll know if you if this uh hits home. Like the power output, if you are cherry picking it and you know, it's you know you should probably do it, do it, do it this phase and kind of, you know, get yourself used to that. Like get uncomfortable with that. Um, make that choice of like I'm not gonna take the easy way out. Like if it's in my sheet, I'm gonna hit it, or if again, I'm thinking that I'm not gonna do that, I'm gonna skip all those. Like, that's kind of a good reason to try it if you haven't done them yet, especially. So uh, you know, not to not to really kind of point fingers, but just a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, yeah, I I understand. Okay, sports specific. Last but definitely not least, probably the most important here, we have a MetCon and skill and an interval and skill bias each phase. And what we've done this year to really make sure that we're moving the needle is instead of alternating weeks of those things, those are all going to be within the same week. And there are ways for us to make sure that that's actually appropriate that I will address. So MetCon and skill for all programs is going to be deadlift wall walk. On the pro program, Paige has written you just a lovely skill progression where you end with some pretty hefty sets. On the hatchet side, I converted those to am wraps. And I'm basically making sure that if you are good at wall walks and we want to push the moment that you can actually get to those pro numbers in hatchet. Like, I like wall walks, but I want to move the needle on them. I want to make them even easier. So that's what that looks like. So you're gonna have an AMRAP where you're gonna be able to personalize the progression in skill for yourself, basically by going in and being like, okay, this week I got six per am wrap, and next week I'm supposed to get seven, and then I'm supposed to get eight, and then I'm supposed to get nine. Um, and as the weeks go on, you might jump more than one single rep, but we're making sure that that is appropriate for everybody. And then we made sure when necessary to put time caps in the deadlift wall walk workouts because we want you to be able to work through them and we do need you to be able to work through through them in sets of, you know, two or three, all the way up to maybe like a set of 10 or something like that, even on the hatchet program. But keep in mind there is, we're not, we don't want anyone doing wall walks for 40 minutes. Like that's never going to be necessary.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I had fun writing those. Um, you know, especially the progressions, you know, you guys can think about what we talked about as far as the volume cleans, the singles. What is the least amount of time between a rep to another rep? Do I need to stay consistent? Can I do a rep every five seconds? Is it every eight seconds? And, you know, in your test piece, that's gonna become a really Valuable learning piece for you when it comes to your strategy.
SPEAKER_02:So she's a doozy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it is pretty bad. You know, and then through the rest of the phase, you're going to have that couplet. It's going to be, you know, maybe paired with a machine here and there. It's not always going to be just straight deadlifts and wall walks. So you're going to get a lot of different variety as far as what weight is on the bar, how many reps you're doing at a time, but you're going to get a lot of exposure to a lot of different, I guess, ways to figure out strategy. So I'm excited about that. Yeah. Same.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Interval and skill is very similar for hatchet and pro, but hatchet is thruster chestabar because we have already biased the toe to bar and bar muscle up. And then pro is thruster bar pull. So thruster, chestabar, bar muscle up, toe to bar. I mean, if I need to explain to you why interval versions of thruster chestabar is necessary at this time of year and how it will work, maybe that athlete IQ needs a little bit of improving. But essentially, we are using interval style workouts to overreach. And I can tell you right now that the mental adaptation is cut and dry more important for most athletes than the physical adaptation. I thought I was thinking about this while you were talking about the grip work. You need to accomplish something before you know that it's possible. And I like to, athletes that struggle with holding on to a pull-up bar or a deadlift bar, I like to put them in so much pain that it feels like someone is uh taking pliers to the tendons in their forearms to know what it feels like when you need to stop. Because grip fatigue is very, very uncomfortable and it's loud mentally. It chirps at you. It's like, I'm not even breathing that heavy. Why is my forearm like filled with blood and why does it keep feeling worse? But then I want to know how long you can hold on to some dumbbells or a pull-up bar. And I want you to feel what it's like to feel like you're gonna slip off and realize that if you are in the last round of a workout and something is on the line that if you need to, you can hold on for longer than you think you can. And there's a like a real, not literal, but like mental correlation to the thruster chestabar thing. You gotta know how, you gotta have the athlete IQ, you gotta know how to break up your sets, you gotta know when this is like, oh no, this is one of those ones where I don't break up the sets, or this is one of those ones where if I don't break up the sets, then like I will lose to somebody who's significantly less fit than me. And you know, the thing that comes to mind is is watching Matt and Tia do the super long one at that open announcement. That was a masterclass in like what happens when athlete IQ collides with like the fittest people that have ever lived. That was like so cool to watch.
SPEAKER_03:It was wild.
SPEAKER_02:And I honestly would recommend people go back and watch that. Like watch the whole workout, watch it twice and watch both of them, like take some notes because it's like they are you might beat them through the first portion of the workout, which is a real bad idea, right? Because they're not just Matt and Tia, they're Matt and Tia in a thruster chesta bar workout, which wheelhouse, bread and butter, the whole deal, like that kind of thing. Um I'm excited for it for so many different reasons. Athlete IQ is is like you can really move the needle on athlete IQ here. The stimulus bomb is massive, and they're gonna ask you to do something like this at some point during open and or quarterfinals. So it's just one of those things where in an interval setting, it's a home run, stimulus-wise, athlete IQ-wise, like across the board for everybody.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think too like having it as an interval while you're overreaching is I think still friendly in a sense that like you're gonna go through all the emotions of like, I hate thrusters or I hate pull-ups, or like this combination always wrecks me. But like as an interval, you get to kind of push that a little bit more and have that safe zone of, oh, I have rest coming up, you know. So again, if you're one of those, you know, kind of like the the power output with Echo Bike, if you're one of those that wants to shy away from something like this, then that is the exact reason that you should lean into it. So, and again, you're you're doing this with the, you know, the Telegram community with us. So you're gonna have a variety of different weights, different sets and reps and all that. So could take away a lot of information from this if you really are good at taking notes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure. Another thing where I'm excited about sort of our notes and instructions. There are definitely ways to personalize this. If you're gonna do a lighter thruster and chin over bar pull-ups, which is an incredible stimulus, keep doing that over the course of the phase.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And you can do the same thing in the chat, the weekly chestabar skill progression. You can either do the entire thing as chin over bar pull-ups, or you can do like set one as chest to bar and the rest of it as chin over bar pull-ups. And you don't need to memorize this. It's in the instructions. And the last thing I'll say here is I made the chest to bar skill progression very manageable. There is no reason to hit you over the head with a hammer and then hand you the hammer and say, congratulations, you won this hammer. Like it's not going to do anything. So if you aren't very good at them, it will definitely move the needle. It's plenty. If you're really good at that, I want you to move just incredibly well, have none of the like, you know, no hip extension, flopping all over the place, reps, and then put way more eggs in the basket of the actual workout every week because that's what's going to get you more ready for the open than anything else. Well, that is open prep slash phase three. If you maybe you don't want to follow that and you just tuned in to hear us yap and clicked the little uh chapters situation, we are we've now arrived at the fun part of the episode. I mean, the rest of it was fun for me. Read, listen, watch. Like zoom in on this thing. So this was a quote um that I saw on Instagram this week, and it's a little bit long, but I think it really explains what it's like to program with other coaches for me to read the messages and observe and telegram to meet you guys at training camps. The collective is just so much more powerful than the individual. So um, this is Brian Eno, who I believe is a musician. And the quote goes as such although great new ideas are usually articulated by individuals, they are nearly always generated by communities. All I think, and I think what I see is the waste, the waste that we make of that possibility of cooperative intelligence. Being an artist, you hear a lot of talk about genius, which is the process of singling out certain people in art history and saying that those were the important ones. You know, Picasso, Rembrandt, whatever. Whenever you look at any of those artists, you find that they lived and drew from a very, very active, flourishing cultural scene, and that they're only one of the elements in that scene. All these people that are called genius actually sat in the middle of something I call senius. So just as genius is the creative intelligence of an individual, senius is the collective intelligence of a community. Really cool quote reminds you to join Telegram, reminds you to, you know, embrace other people in a personal setting, in a work setting. The correlation I can draw is early in my career, there was a little bit too much of a competitive nature between the coaches at our affiliate. And when we started thinking about it from the standpoint of like, okay, there's say five categories of what makes a good affiliate coach, and you are amazing in one of them, but there's someone else in the gym who's amazing in those other categories. And instead of being like, they're not as good as me at this thing, or saying that they're a cheerleader because they're actually a better performer than you in front of a group, try to watch all the other classes and bring, steal those elements from those people. Um and I think that that had a really big impact on our coaching staff. Um, that is an account that I love on Instagram. It's niche, but there's like underscores before it. I think if you search for niche, it'll probably pop up, you know. Goodness, what happened? I like copied and paste that thing like 12 times in here now. That's okay. Listen, this is this is kind of cheating. We went from read to basically read, but it's I'm recommending Audible, so it doesn't count. The War of Art is a book that I used to gift to people on a very regular basis. Um, it's by Stephen Pressfield, and it is centered a little bit more around art again, but the idea of resistance and that voice that's telling you to stop what you're doing or it's not gonna work or you're gonna fail, that sort of thing, um, and how to deal with it is very profound in all of life, but definitely in the like CrossFit, competitive CrossFit type setting. And I think that he does a really good job with narrating it. And it's only like I don't want to call myself out here, but it's only like two hours of listening. I don't know if that's a lot for some people, but not too bad for a book. So The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Last but not least, I'm a bit of a movie snob and it's not intentional. Uh I'm it's not intentional. I don't mean to be. I just I just like it a good way to explain it would be I don't really like small talk. Like I actually have like having meaningful conversations with humans. Um, and that freaks some people out, and that's okay. But like that's how I feel about art as well in a lot of instances. So one battle after another is my movie of the year. I am a business owner and parent and just moved. So I haven't seen, you know, Marty Supreme and Hamnet and all these other movies that might win the Oscar. So I'll update you guys, but I try to do the like like at least one of these things is fun. And if you like this kind of movie, oh my God. I loved that movie. That movie because I like Leonardo, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, Leonardo, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so good.
unknown:Yep. Very good.
SPEAKER_02:I like it. So one battle after another, obviously, not like groundbreaking to throw a Leo movie at you guys, but I know a lot of people don't watch Paul Thomas Anderson movies. And once you watch this one, hopefully you like it and you'll go watch the other ones. But fantastic movie.
SPEAKER_03:I am the worst person with like movie quotes. Do you know who this character, this actor is? You got you just like you name them off the top of your head.
SPEAKER_02:Well, do you know what this post is? Obsessed with movies, but also one thing that is great and terrible about social media is you definitely find out nowadays that you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake because like everyone has the same fucking problems, and like there are just these like groups of like different things. So, what I'm referencing is there was this woman on Instagram who was like, Why the fuck do dudes know who directed a movie?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Like, why?
SPEAKER_02:And she was talking about her boyfriend, and she was just like, Like, do I know, you know, so and so? And like, what do I think of this movie? And it's like, how do you even know that? So that that kind of hit me a little bit. I was like, damn, I'm special. And then I'm like, I'm not special, I'm just a fucking dude. So I love movies. I love Paul Thomas Anderson. Go watch that movie.
SPEAKER_03:All right. Um, my read, it's a quote, it is much shorter than Drew's. It is without haste, yet without rest. And it is a German poet, philosopher. Believe I saw this a while ago and I put it in my notes app. So, but I believe it is from one of the atomic habits emails that you get like every Thursday, and there's like quotes and references from other people. But I really like it because it talks about like steady intentional progress, right? And I'll just relate it back to what we talked about earlier in this podcast, you know, following dumbbell farmers' carries for nine weeks to see the benefit of it. It's just that steady, you know, we call it sharpening the axe. You show up daily, you refine the fundamentals, um, and you trust it. You trust that process. So that quote has kind of really stuck with me for how simple those five words are without haste, yet without rest. So if you kind of take time to just sit with it.
SPEAKER_02:That quote is very you and very like rain or shine gang. Yeah, that's a really good quote.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So I I really like that one. Listen. So I've been doing a lot more sitting at my computer. I don't always love to sit in silence, but I can't listen to like actual music or I'll get distracted. So this Dominique Hammonds, he is a violinist and he'll actually take like today's top hits and he'll just do like a violin version of it. And some reason it's just very soothing, and I can really kind of lock in, even though it's something that's familiar. Yeah. So I'll even I'll post that on my on my Instagram, his artist on Spotify. And I'll post this link I have to a YouTube video. It's called The Power of Teamwork. I was on YouTube earlier and just saw like a hockey video, and it started off with that. So I clicked on it and it's just talking about how essentially big results don't come from like one big heroic moment. They come from those small, consistent actions that are essentially done together as a team. So can also go back to tiny habits from last week, what we talked about, you know, focusing on those small behaviors and you know, repeating them over and over again every day. Um just that compound effect it can have, especially when you have the right kind of teamwork and dynamic surrounding you. So it kind of relates a lot with, you know, starting, you know, a new a new position here with misfit, a new position out of gym here, just that teamwork aspect and that support has been really, really um helpful and beneficial for me personally. So but I'll post those on my own.
SPEAKER_02:Unintentional common themes.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It's funny. I mean, these, you know, kind of like you said, like you wanna when we first talked about doing the read, list, and watch, it's like just something that, you know, within the last week that you found or whatever. And I'm just like, yeah, I do have a lot of common themes that, you know, maybe it's just based on the amount of I mean, a lot of the work is similar, right? So sure.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure. I think honestly, that is that has redirected my final thoughts for the podcast. Whether you guys know it or not, we lean heavily on you guys. Your Instagram posts, what you post in Telegram, working at your computer when you are in the fitness industry can often feel like screaming into the void. And seeing it happen and come to life and you know, getting feedback and changing the program is super powerful. And so we're leaning on you. We definitely lean on each other as a, you know, as a coaching staff. And if you want open prep to work and quarterfinals prep to work and off-season blocks and all of this stuff to work, start buying into the idea of participating in the community. You'll find out really fast. It's like like it's it's what happens at a training camp. Like you have those moments of like you can see the people sizing each other up and like like we joke about it, Paige, like we often think somebody's a dick because they're quiet. And then we're like, aren't we quiet? And then you realize that's not the case. So, like, put yourself out there. It's a lot easier, honestly, a lot easier to do behind your phone or your computer at to start than it is in person. But people just want to know that there are more people like them out there, and your score is not relevant. Like some of the people who are closest on Telegram are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and your score has absorbed on the leaderboard has nothing to do with what you bring to the community, right? You're bringing a personality. There are some people that are jokier than others. There are some people who like are a bit more rah-rah. Like, bring your personality into the Telegram group, you know, post your stuff on social media, you know, DM Page and I, DM the Misfit Athletics account, like put yourself out there. I know that it feels like a weird thing to say about a program going better, but again, part of the alchemy of CrossFit is rooted in that class setting. And if we want to be able to bring that to the online program, then we need to be able to put ourselves out there and communicate with one another. It does make you fitter. And we can argue about how that actually happens, but it's pretty low-hanging fruit and it feels a lot better to be part of something versus just doing your thing and open gym by yourself.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. That might just become part of our habit stacking, post and telegram. It's true. Yeah, that'll just help you guys. But yeah, I mean, like remember, we're all misfits in this group. Like we all have our our quirks and our our you know, our things. So, you know, everybody's welcome. I think my final thoughts again, you guys are out out of that, out of the mud, you're out of that monsoon season. It's into the fun stuff, it's into you know, seeing that light at the end of the tunnel with competition now. So yeah. Fine. Let's uh it's you know, find those little things to dial in and make those habits stick through these next six weeks.
SPEAKER_02:Love it. Did we do it?
SPEAKER_03:We did.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Misfit Podcast. Like we said at the beginning, we really appreciate your support. And there are four ways that you can do so. You can come to training camp, you can sign up for one of our programs, you can go to sharpentheaxco.com to buy gear, or you can head to GorillaMind and use the code word misfit to save on what we believe are the best supplements in the game. All of that stuff is going to be available through the link in the bio. Can't wait to see you guys on the leaderboards for the beginning of open prep. And we'll see you guys next week.
unknown:All right, you big big bunch of misfits.
SPEAKER_00:You're a scrappy little misfit, just like biggest bunch of misfits I've ever said either.