Welcome And Workout Context

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Hey everybody, welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr. Sam Marie and myself, Coach David Siverton. This podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition, and most importantly, mindset. All right, welcome back to the Herd Fit

Why 26.1 Is A Leg Test

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Podcast. We are in the CrossFit Open in 2026. 26.1 just came out about six hours ago. We just had our first two heats at CrossFit Bison. We've talked about the uh the workout with the coaches and a few other people as well. And this will be the first of three workouts in the open that I and maybe a couple other coaches will hop on in the future. It's kind of a tough ask to ask these guys to stay up past nine o'clock to talk about it, but maybe we'll try that next week in point three. But I really just wanted to share a 15-minute breakdown of the workout, a little bit of coaching/slash advice on how to approach it mentally and physically, maybe a couple angles that you might not think of on your own because a lot of people just kind of go into it blind and kind of hope for the best, which in some ways has a lot of value. But the point of this is just to maybe help you guys think about the workout a slightly different way so that you can get more out of it. Uh, hard to do because a lot of people have a lot of different skill sets and even goals. Um, we do, I'm sure, have a few people in our gym at bison that think they can finish it. So that's a whole different approach to uh than someone who's trying to get through the set of 66 wall balls, for example. Um, so I'll try to keep this macro level and then we'll throw a couple uh pacing ideas based on what your goal is towards

Workout Structure And Reality Check

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the end. Um, when I first saw this workout come out, my first thought was this is not going to be an engine workout per se. It's gonna be more about lower body stamina, kind of an obvious thing, right? You're squatting and jumping or squatting and stepping up the entire time. That's all you're doing, the entire workout. There's no upper body pull or upper body push, really. Wall ball, I would say maybe a little bit. There's no machine that you could escape. You're not going on the rig or picking up a barbell. You're just squatting, pushing the ground with your legs and jumping slash stepping up, pushing the ground with your legs. So that is really what it's gonna come down to. Point one last year and the year prior was very much about heart rate. Had burpees and a light dumbbell, and you were just trying to move as fast as you can for as long as you could. And this is gonna have a very different feel to it. Um, after watching the first two groups tonight, that was confirmed. They were tired. You always are. Your heart rate always gets jacked up in an open workout, but it wasn't that kind of I can't breathe type. It wasn't I'm crawling all over the ground because I just put my heart rate at 200 beats per minute for five minutes straight. It was really what can my legs handle? And that's really going to be the determining factor here. Uh, what is your lower body stamina? Um I've had a lot of conversations on the podcast as a coach with people about developing your engine. How do I get my engine better? Is it more rowing splits? Is it more running? And there is value in those things, absolutely. But the number one key to getting your engine better is move better, move more efficiently. And that's what's in my head right now with a workout that starts off with 20 wall balls. I'm gonna put the workout on the screen for those that haven't seen it. You have 20 wall balls, you have 30 wall balls, you have 40, you have 66, and then if you get this far, you're going back down 40, 30, 20. I mean, this is well over 200 wall balls if you finish. Before you freak out about that, Rafi just did the workout. He said you get saved by the bell at some point, because at some point you're just like, man, I can't do any more wall balls. That set of 66 is really difficult. That at 12 minutes is gonna creep up pretty quickly. Almost everyone, and I mean this, almost everyone that does this will not finish this workout under the cap. I'll help you figure out some goals for yourself. But let's just keep that in mind that the movement stamina on the wall ball is gonna determine a big part of what your score is in this workout. Even if you hate box jumps, that's okay. You're not doing that many of them. The wall balls, they get more, they get increased as the workout gets as you get deeper in. And uh the more fatigued you are, the more reps you have to do. They throw workouts like this into the open sometimes to test capacity. Not just are you capable, it's how well do you move.

Wall Ball Mechanics That Save Energy

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So I want to talk about the wall ball and say, hey, what can I do there to make sure my movement efficiency is good? I think at some point in the warm-up tomorrow or whenever you're doing this, throw in a two-round warm-up where you're doing 10 wall balls, 10 box jumpovers, 10 more wall balls, and then 10 uh of the med ball stepovers. During those wall balls, the the number one thing I want you to think about is your weight distribution and your foot as you squat. Squat 101 is drive through your heels. Your toes are on the ground, but you're driving through your heels. What happens a lot in wall balls as people get tired and fatigued, though because the weight is in front of you, in some cases too far in front of you, it's almost inevitable that you're gonna get pulled forward in your squat. So as you're squatting in that warm up, you're not tired, you can really hone in on your technique. Pay attention to your feet, even more than the ball hitting the target. Pay attention to what's happening to your feet as you squat. Are you getting pulled onto your toes or are you able to stay on your heels? That's wall ball one and one. That's the most important component to it. It's something you could ask yourself mid-workout. Hey, am I moving well or not? You can very you can easily assess where's that weight distribution in your feet. Part two, where are you catching and holding the ball? Um, your hands need to be under the ball somewhat. Hand size is absolutely a part of it. If you have small hands, it's hard to get really underneath it. But even if you do, you that has to be a thought because you want your elbows under the ball. You don't want them flared out. When your elbows are flared out, your pressing motion is a lot weaker. When your pressing motion is a lot weaker, you have to work harder to throw that thing to that target. So as you're warming up, pay attention where are my hands when I catch it. You're not trying to trap it on the side, you're trying to absorb the bottom of the ball as you go into your squat. And that'll keep your elbows in a good spot and you'll have a little bit more natural pressing position when you actually start to throw that thing above your head. Part three. I'm not gonna give you too many things. You don't want to, you don't want to overthink at a in uh in open workout. But number three is how high do you keep the ball as you're going into your squat? You never want from a side profile, you never want your thumbs going below your shoulders. If you're in line with your shoulders, you're in a good spot. That gives you a proper launching point uh to throw it. If you are someone that brings the ball and hands below your shoulders, in towards your chest, even some of you towards your belly, you're gonna start hinging. And that makes a very inefficient, inaccurate throw. Whenever you see someone miss the wall on a wall ball, um, it's usually because their position as they're throwing is flawed. Uh, the ball's not in the right spot. And it's usually because those hands became below the shoulders. So as you're warming up, work on that as well. Don't let it's almost like you're doing a thruster where your hands stop at your shoulders, your elbows go up. That's kind of this a very similar position here with the wall ball. Last one you can easily practice in your warm-up, core to extremity. All right, it's one of the founding principles of CrossFit movement, meaning use the stronger part of your body before you use the weaker part. As big as your upper body and as strong as you might be up there, your hips and your legs are much stronger, much more capable of moving that weight. So as you're practicing, you should feel hip extension before you throw. This is something I see very often as a coach, is that people start launching that thing off the shoulders before they actually extended their hips. It works fine, but it's inefficient. And when if your engine is an issue in this workout, it's not because you are not good at controlling your heart rate, it's because you're moving inefficiently. So if you can get through those first 20 reps, throwing it instead of extending the ball up, fine, good for you. The four the 30s will be tougher, the 40s will be way tougher, the 66s are gonna knock you out. So focus on that technique early on in your workout, core to extremity. Feel the hips open before you throw it. So those are the tips that you guys can think about with the wall ball. Um, let's talk about the box. Um, I want to touch on something that we are all doing. We're all doing these med

Med Ball Stepovers: Carry Options

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ball stepovers. Um, some of us are doing box jumpovers, um, some of us are doing regular step overs. Let's talk about the movement that everyone is doing first, and that is the med ball step over, a new movement for most of us. A lot of times we've done this with a dumbbell, and that's a lot tougher. It's twice the weight, usually, than what a wall ball is. What's tricky, and you're gonna have to play around with this in that warm-up that I suggested is you're gonna have to play around with either holding it on your shoulder or bear hugging it kind of belly high slash chest high. The people that I spoke with, and I can see this and I can feel this because I have done a lot of sandbag work uh in my life. It feels more natural to bear hug and hold it tight to your belly and tight to your chest. But because you're really wrapping your arms around something away from your body, you're gonna feel like you have to press it into your lungs. If your lungs are trying to open up to get oxygen and you're pressing in with that wall ball, it's gonna make it really uncomfortable. And that's actually something that could really jack that heart rate up. So maybe you do that for half because it's more comfortable. But at some point, you might want to try the arm uh putting it on one shoulder and you're a little tilted because it is a lot easier to kind of keep yourself tall, keep your chest elevated, which makes it easier to breathe if you're trying to get that heart rate down. If you're someone that's very hinge dependent, you are good bent over. You can your back and lower uh your posterior chain can handle that, then sure, maybe you just hold that ball really low and just hinge the whole time and stay hunched over. But that is gonna beat up the back a little bit. I did have a few people say that their midlines went, their abs got tired. So it kind of messed with their posture. Um, you're not gonna make your midline stronger in one day, so don't bother doing V ups or toes and bar prior to the workout. But it's something that you can pay attention to early on, is really trying to lock in your core and make sure it's in a stable position. Because if you're inefficient early on, just like with those wall balls, it's gonna catch up to you at some point.

Box Speed, Breathing, And Control

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Now, if you're box jumping or stepping over, let's all be on the same page because you have to step down from the box, you're not gonna make up a ton of time there. You going really fast there versus kind of medium speed is probably the difference of 10 to 15 seconds. Some of you that are trying to get really far and maybe even finish, that will matter. But most of us that you're just trying to get maybe to the top and then back down to the second set of 40, for example, you don't need to sprint through that. That's almost where somewhere you can get some of your win back. I think it's more important to get through the wall balls smooth and efficiently and not taking too long of a break there than I do um thinking about trying to do the box jumps quicker. If there was, if you were allowed to rebound and jump off the box, you could definitely see a factor there. But I wouldn't worry too much about how fast you're going. Um, last part of this is gonna be about your

Pacing By Reps Per Minute

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pacing. Um, this is something that a lot of people are gonna need to at least think about prior to the workout, but don't be a victim to it. Don't write out a mapped out plan that you can't start this set until this or that set until that. You don't want to be a robot here. You go based on field. That's what athletes do. You're gonna hit a struggle point. Yes, you are going to hit a struggle point. How you respond to that struggle point will dictate about 15 to 20% of your score. You suck it up, you get through it, or you don't suck it up and you get crushed by a workout. And then you kind of look at it, but man, I could have done better. Don't be that person. Suck it up and get it done. Okay, that there's a lot of gut check on wall balls. I see it all the time. I don't like them either. But you don't have to stare at the ball for 30 seconds every time you take a break. Are you able to be disciplined for 10 seconds and then pick that thing back up? Whether you're doing sets of five or 10 or 15 or 20, I don't care. How long are your breaks in between your sets? That's the biggest thing. Um, when it comes to finishing this workout, I want to uh go down with I'll go down to the score sheet so you guys can follow with me. It's a pretty easy workout to come up with a pacing plan. Um, if you want to finish that workout, it's 354 reps. Okay. 354 divided by 12, you essentially have to average 30 reps a minute. Okay, just for the record, most people, if they did a minute of unbroken wall balls, it's somewhere between 30 and 35 reps. Um, same thing with those box reps. These reps take around the same time, they have a very up and down motion to them, similar ranges of motion. So if you are aiming to finish, you probably have maybe three shots at a five-second break here and there. Everything else is gonna have to be unbroken. Um, what you could do on this score sheet, guys, this is available on the game's website. Those reps that my cursor is over right now. Um I don't know if you guys can see it. Well, whatever. Okay. 354, 334, 316, 286, divide that number by 12. And that's how many reps you have to average per minute for yourself to finish this workout. Okay. So let's let's use an example. Let's say I want to finish the 40 wall balls on the second time through. Okay, so that's 260 eight reps divided by 12, 22 slash 23 reps per minute. That's something at a gym like bison, our best athletes are usually around there in workouts like this. We do have a couple freak shows that can definitely do more than that. But I would say of the top 10 athletes in the gym, that's about where they live in the 22 to 23 rep per minute range. So if you think that you're really good at both of these movements, maybe that's something you aim for. And maybe I always like reaching a little bit. Maybe you aim for the 18 box jumpovers after, and that ends up being 286 divided by 12. Now you're talking 23 to 24 reps per minute. Maybe that's where you're trying to aim for. Um, but what that can do is it when you figure out a reps per minute prior to a workout, what that can do for you in terms of pacing is don't be done with the 20 and 18 in a minute 10 in. You know, you don't want to try to get through those so fast to get a head start because it could actually make you a little too tired too early, and then you crash and burn. Um, that also can help you come up with a plan. If I am trying to do 20 refs of wall balls per minute, you don't need to do any sets of 20. You can do sets of five. If you did a set of five and rested five seconds a few uh four times, that you're done under a minute. You know, and again, it comes down to the discipline of how long are you resting in between those sets of five. So that's the way for you guys to come up with a pacing plan. I'll take a stab at this because a lot of us have a 25 uh a quarterfinal goal. What is a top 25 percentile score in this workout? I think it would be getting into at least halfway through the set of 66 wall balls. I think that that will be a top 25 percentile score. I think getting deeper and maybe even finishing that, um, you're a sure thing to be in the top 25%. So I always like to maybe aim a little higher than what I could do. Uh, because to quote Rafi, what if? You know, what if you can do it? What if you go into a workout and say like maybe I can get through that? Maybe I can suck it up, maybe I can get to that box and fly through those stepovers better than I think. Um, so always overshoot your goal a little bit. Figure out the reps per minute, just so you can have a general plan on not what

Setting Goals And Mental Grit

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am I actually doing per minute, but what can I do with these sets of work that promote that. Remember, it's about two seconds per rep. That's around how long everything takes. So if you start figuring out your reps per minute, um, let's go a little lower. Let's say I'm trying to get done with the 18 stepovers the first time through. That would be 144 divided by 12. That's 12 reps a minute. You have time to do four reps at a time, take a break, four reps at a time, take a 10-second break. You could do that the entire workout and you will get that far. So that's something to think about. You don't need to do the set of 30 wall balls in two sets. You could, but don't, if that's your goal. So again, overshoot the goal a little bit. Give yourself a feel for what you can do. Anticipate the lower body discomfort. There's not a person that won't go through it. You are going to be sore from this. Um, but that that's where I think I've been reading a lot of Chris Inchraw, some old stuff from back in the day over the past couple months. And everyone hits the struggle point in every single workout they do in the open. Everyone does. The games athletes do, and how you respond to it, what goes on in between the ears, and how focused and how disciplined you can stay with quality of movement and a general pacing plan is going to get you your best score.

Closing And Next Week Teaser

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Good luck, guys. Let's get it. Thank you, everybody, for taking the time out of your day to listen to the Herd Fit podcast. Be on the lookout for next week's episode.