The HERD FIT
Coach David Syvertsen discusses all things CrossFit, health, fitness.
The HERD FIT
S8E223: Crossfit Quarterfinal / Semifinal Programming Analysis
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We break down the age group quarterfinals and semifinals with Bobby Wallam and ask what those tests really reward. We land on a clear takeaway: the workouts are fine on their own, but the season feels repetitive in time domains, loading, and key separators.
• blending coaching, programming, and competing to sharpen decisions and cues
• reframing injuries as constraints that can improve weaknesses and mindset
• redundancy across tests and why variance matters for fair sport programming
• why three-week testing can reward luck more than completeness
• the case for mixing for time, for reps, and for loads across a season
• time domains explained and why missing long tests changes who advances
• strength testing options beyond a one rep max and how caps distort results
• why light loads still matter for speed, technique, and high-level racing
• repeated separators like strict handstand push-ups and what gets left untested
Be on the lookout for next week's episode.
Welcome And Season Setup
SPEAKER_00Hey everybody. Welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr. Sam Marie and myself, Coach David Siberson. 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 Podcast. I'm Coach David Siverson. I'm here with Coach at CrossFit Bison, also 2025 Games Athlete. We just got done with the semifinals at CrossFit Bison, the age group semifinals, I should say. Bobby Wallam. What's up, my man? How are you?
SPEAKER_01How are we doing? How are we doing? Doing well.
SPEAKER_00Good. Good. And what we're going to break down today is we're going to break down the quarterfinal, semifinal portion of our season, the age group season. We know that the individual online semifinals are coming up in June. And there are a lot of different ways we can talk about this post-open sport competition season. There's age group, there's in-person semifinals for both age group and open individual. And then you have the individual side. We're going to try to bias the conversation towards what most of our listeners like to listen to, and that's the age group type stuff. But as we get into this discussion, you're going to see a lot of different parallels to what you hear out in the in the landscape of the open division, the games athletes. And what we're not going to do, or at least we're going to try not to do it, is we're not going to sit here and bash programming. We're not going to sit here and say the fittest did not go to the next level. That's a very subjective term. And uh, you know, you never want to come across as bitter athletes, or like I got injured because of this, or Bobby's on the outside looking in right now because of that. Um, it's I think what what's interesting between the two of us in terms of when we have a conversation, I notice this almost every time we start talking programming at the gym, Bobby, is we have a unique perspective. We're not just coaches, we're not just people that program, and we're not just people that compete. We literally both we do all three. It's a trifecta. And there are not a lot of people out there that do it. The highest level coaches that are well known in the sport, a lot of them don't compete. They might have used to, but they don't currently compete. Most of them don't coach classes at an affiliate day-to-day. And we all know that most coaches, high-level, they have some sort of programming background.
The Coach Programmer Athlete Trifecta
SPEAKER_00But can you let's touch on your experience and how you blend those three sections in together? Like I truly believe part of the reason why you're such a good athlete is that you coach and program and you see what works, what doesn't work for different kinds of athletes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, how do I blend those together? And it kind of just lends to each other. So I have found a lot that if I'm coaching something, sometimes I remind myself, like, oh, you know what? I should do this myself a little bit more. And I start doing that, and then I'm helping myself in a way. Um, so it's really good to be on the floor and actually with these, and I could see what athletes what um where they struggle, where they're making mistakes. And I sometimes, you know, I fall into the same mistakes that they're making, or um, just little cues that I remind myself by giving them. So it that all just kind of blends together and they help each other out. I found nice.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I I've I made a post about this long time ago. This is uh man, 2017, 18. And I remember saying, like, if you really want to, being a coach will make you a better athlete. Yeah, if you're mindful, and if you're if you're really trying to be a better athlete, it can make you a better coach because there's all these different perspectives that you see and take in. And I know sometimes as a coach, especially you, Bobby, humble guy. Sometimes you're on the quiet side, you don't want to come across, I don't want to come across as, hey, do what I do, or this is what you need to do. You never want to come across that way. But you also, while you're teaching, preaching, whatever you want to call it, it's not just coming from you, it's coming from these experiences that you've seen other people go through. And I mean, how many times can you say you've taken someone that's gotten hurt in the past? And you're like, hey, like it's in your memory bank of like, hey, this person got injured doing this. I had this experience coaching this person through it. I'm gonna share some stories and tell them, quote, what to do. But it's really kind of based on your history personally. Can you can you apply personal experiences that you've been through? Injury, disappointments, success, and apply that to how you coach athletes?
Turning Injury Into Better Training
SPEAKER_01Well, as far as injuries, I mean, my my biggest one was when I tore my bicep a couple years ago. Um, so I was out, you know, I had one arm to use for for, I mean, it was uh it ended up being a pretty quick recovery, four months roughly. Uh, but it felt like, and going into it, like mentally, the the toll it took at first. I didn't know it was gonna be four months. I thought I was gonna be out a year. I wasn't sure if I was ever gonna be the same. Um, but it ended up being uh being fine. But throughout that process, like I was just figured, okay, what can I do? What can't I do? How can I continue to train and get better? Um, and so I was just able to work on things that I might not often do as much. Uh running was one thing that I really, you know, maybe I shouldn't have been running as much as I was in a little sling against my arm. I was able to do it. So so I um so I pushed that and I was doing it in a safe way. So uh basically just doing things as safely as possible that can yield results that you need to work on. Uh that was that that was just the best thing for me. So I got better at things and I was actually very fit afterwards, um, even dealing with that injury. So yeah. Oh, there's oh sorry, I was but one more thing that I actually through that process because I couldn't do live, I couldn't lift, I couldn't do cleans, snatching, any of that. I completely just revamped my entire um approach to lifting, and I'm much better now than I was back then because of that. So it was like kind of a blessing.
SPEAKER_00There's always light at the end of the tunnel, and when when you get injured or any life situation comes up, we're talking to a lot of masters athletes, there's a lot of different physical things that happen to men and women's bodies after you ate 35, 40, 45, 50, and beyond. And it's easy to get down on yourself. I think it's common to get down on yourself. I mean, we hear it weekly. Uh, it's the body doesn't feel like it used to, or uh I can't recover, or I can't do what I used to do. And there's two ways to approach it there's one, you know, negative and and two positive. There's light at the end of every tunnel uh that you have to go through. And we're this isn't going to be a sob story masters, hey, you know, you can bounce back from injuries too. We're kind of introducing the idea of if you got smacked around in this season, right? There is a response to it that can make you better in the long run. Um, but to do that, I think you really need to break down what happened in quarters and semis. And Bobby and I, and I'm really gonna kind of interview Bobby because Bobby is he's I love talking programming with him. And we're gonna talk talk about the program, what this programming did to you, but also in the same breath, what we think cross-it programming can be, uh, what it can do to to kind of serve the master's community in particular a little bit better. And it's not necessarily our ideas are better than anyone else's, but it is a different perspective that I hope everyone can kind of take in and hopefully apply to yourself, whether you compete or
Quarterfinals And Semifinals Overview
SPEAKER_00not. If you're gonna be in the cross-it game, there's a lot of similarities between people that compete and people that do not. So I'm gonna share the screen here for the rest of the episode here. And I'm gonna kind of go through these quickly. I'm not gonna break down every workout, but if you're watching on YouTube or if you're not, you want to, I'm gonna scroll as we go and I'm just gonna touch on a few different elements to workouts that can help you kind of break yourself down, break the workouts themselves down, and then where do we think that the programming shortcomings were? So in quarterfinals, so I'm gonna approach this from the open on. I'm not gonna address the open, uh, especially because it was a 25% uh made it to the next stage. So here we are. We have four time. We have the shuttle runs, overhead squat, burbies, over bar. We're gonna go over the time frames in a little bit. Second workout was four time, hang dumbbell, squat cleans, bar muscle ups. That was the one you could partition any you want. Okay, so we have lightweight, medium weight, we have four time again. This was the strength workout of quarters that was mixed in with jump ropes, but the deadlifts got heavier and heavier as you went. Um, I'll talk about how I define these as light, medium, heavy later on. Fourth workout, the final one was again four time, and it was a thousand meter row, cleaner jerks, thousand meter row, strict hands and push-ups. All right, so the quarterfinals, okay. I'm gonna scroll down a little bit. Um, you know what? Gonna go right to the semifinals. Sorry. Semifinals, okay. So now we have four time again for workouts one and two. Um, one was squat snatches, medium weight, rope climbs, four time, three rounds, burping box jumpovers, shuttle runs, three rounds, 100 double unders. It's a handstand with a handstand walk. Third workout, four time. Um it's purposely exaggerating the four time. I'm gonna talk about that first. Thousand meter row, 50 thrusters, 30 chest bar pull-ups. Uh the fourth workout, four reps, emom 10, kinda one deadlift, medium to heavy max weight, the light clean with the tiebreaker. And then the last one, four reps, 10-minute ladder with walking lunges, medium weight, and two Shirtan Sand push-ups, adding two reps every round. So, Bobby, before I start breaking these down kind of section by section, when you look back on post-open sport programming, quarterfinals plus semifinals, what was your one paragraph response to what that programming truly was?
SPEAKER_01I think that it was they were good, fine tests on their own. I think that the tests in combination with each other were a little redundant. I think that there could have been a little bit more uh variance once you got to the semifinal level versus uh quarterfinals.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Good. Now it's important to note that quarterfinals was they were the same workouts as the open division. And what what are your thoughts on the fact that because masters, you know, me, you, people that were in their 40s and 50s and 60s, they had to do the same workouts as the best CrossFitters in the world. Yes, they scaled them down, but because you had so many different groups of people doing that workout, I think a strong case can be made that the workouts were not hard enough for the quarterfinal athletes in the open division. Do you do you see that, or do you say, hey, no matter what, fitness will rise to the top? Don't worry about how hard things are at that stage.
SPEAKER_01Um, for for the quarterfinals, I mean, that one, I don't think it matters as much. Like, yeah, it might have been easier for the open division athletes, but I really for them it's you know, semifinals is the main stage. Anyone that is gonna advance is going to advance. Um, so that that's what I think with that. But I think once you get to the semifinals, like that's when things should change, and which obviously they did, yeah, since it's a different workout for everybody.
How Inclusive Testing Changes The Open
SPEAKER_00Now, I'm glad you said that because to circle this back to something we hear literally every year in after the open, is and this happens a lot with the lifters, that that the open has become something that's a little too inclusive, they don't go heavy enough or they don't go high skilled enough. That would be hard to say this year because of the rain muscle up factor. But uh what is your response? I don't know if we have the same response or not, and there's no right or wrong here. Yeah, if someone comes up to you after the open and says, in this 25% era and says, Hey, I I don't think these workouts are good enough tests to get the fittest people to the next stage, what is your and what is your response to that?
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's probably not a good enough test because it's only three weeks, but that because but still the the fittest are going to they're gonna be there regardless. It doesn't matter. Now the the problem I I have this argument in my head constantly about like the about the open itself. Because the open, uh while it is the first stage of the CrossFit games, right? That that's that's where we start. It's still for everybody in a sense that this is a worldwide competition. Everybody is there to display that their skills, especially people that have acquired skills throughout the previous year and they want to test those skills, and maybe it's getting stronger, uh, and they didn't get the opportunity to showcase that. So I can see uh and they don't care about quarterfinals, semifinals, anything else. They're just there, they want to uh be part of the community, they want to showcase their skills, and if they can't, I can understand why they might um be upset about it.
SPEAKER_00Understood, uh agreed on that. And again, I do think it's important you said that the three weeks, it's really tough to come up with a great program test in CrossFit in three weeks, especially when you you and I are used to the five-week open. And when it's five weeks, it's really hard to hide all five weeks. Three weeks, you can definitely get lucky and unlucky uh with what you're good at, what you're not bad at. Uh sorry, what you're good at, and what you're not good at in terms of what shows up and what does not. Five weeks, it's really tough to hide at some point. And we always know in the open in the old days, when it was five weeks, there was usually at least one workout that a lot of people just couldn't do, right? Whether it was at the scale or they got to a part of the workout where they just got stopped by a movement, a load. And I do think that those were quote the glory years of the open. And I do think it takes about five weeks. Um I do think it takes about five weeks to truly test an open crowd. Now, if you're gonna make it top 25%, I agree with you the fittest will rise and make it to the next stage. I apply this to quarterfinals that if even if you thought quarterfinals was too watered down, open athletes I'm talking to, because you have all us old people that have to do the same workouts, and they kind of have to keep that in mind, right? That if you're fit enough, you will get to the next stage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Example, example A, and I'll say it so you don't have to. The the top two athletes in our gym for the open, open workouts, right? Dumbed down, watered down, were you and Amy? And you two are the fittest people at our gym. So when I see those results, I don't really pay attention to anybody that says uh the open's not challenging enough. Because now, if it was not you two, I still wouldn't disagree with it, I but I would give it another look. I'd be like, okay, let's see what the workouts were. Why didn't Bobby and Amy you know rise to the top? Were they too dumbed down? Were they not too basic? Are they you know doing Cindy or basic workouts type like that? Um, but they weren't. You guys were at the top. So for anyone that was feeling a certain way about the quarterfinal workouts not being challenging enough, it shouldn't matter because there was another stage. If they made the games from quarterfinals, then we have then we have a serious problem on our hands, and but that was not the case. Now, um, let's see.
Too Many For Time Workouts
SPEAKER_00First opinion on these two workouts. Now we're gonna start breaking this down section by section. Okay the of nine workouts, I'm actually curious to your opinion on this because I disagree with people like uh Rich Froning talks about this. I think JR Howell talks about this. Out of nine workouts, seven of them were for time, two of them were for reps, and I I put the asterisk there because uh one of them was that deadlift workout where it was a clean tiebreaker. So it was really how heavy can you lift? And wherever you got caught knocked out, you had the the max cleans at the end. Do you think that amraps should be kept out of sport because of the the fact that the fittest are going to be doing a lot more volume than the average and below average?
SPEAKER_01Uh I don't think so. I think you can you can have I've I've heard this before, yeah, that amraps should not be in the sport because yeah, what one person if they might do I don't know 50 more reps of whatever the movement is. I get that. I I don't think though that you should keep it out completely. That's part of the sport. Um and again, your fitness level will dictate how much you how far you can get through something. And if you get much so much farther than someone else, you're probably just much more fit than they are. And I don't think it's gonna have that much of a extra toll on your body. Right.
SPEAKER_00Like if they're all AMRAPs, then that's a different story. It could be a different story. But one thing I've seen with richest workouts at Mayhem and JR with the syndicate is they have workouts that have time caps and really tight caps to the point where some people don't most people don't finish the workouts, but the the fittest of that workout, they did finish it, so they did do more work. Yeah, but I feel like once you get into this range of everyone has to do the same amount of reps, no matter what, you're actually gonna take away a lot of the art of programming. And I think it it's more art than science. Now, I'm gonna get a little scientific here, as you as you can see. Um, but I'm glad you kind of feel that way as well. Because I I not that you know I need you to agree or we need to all agree, but I believe back in the day, again, glory days of the open, where it was growing, most, if not all of the workouts were amraps. That was a lot. I want to say, man, I may be wrong on this, but I think the first four-time open workout was five or six years in, meaning all of them were AMRAPs at a certain point, different in that they're a week apart. So I know that you have everyone has a week to recover before you do another workout where these are in a tighter time frame, but a huge part of cross-it methodology needs to be put into the sport, and a big part of the methodology is variance in how you score things. When I see this right now, my solution for this, because I'm big on you know, not solving the world's problems, but don't bring up problems if you don't have a solution. I think generally speaking, in sport, CrossFit, right? Beyond the open, okay, is 50% of them should be for time, 25% should be for reps, and 25% should be for loads. And I know loads can be a hard to test. It doesn't always need to be a one-rep max, but it could be a load that prevents you from moving on. Your score can still be reps. Do you do you believe in that kind of blend of art science? Can it change year to year? Uh, because right now this ratio is way off. Seven out of nine workouts were for reps. So we're not even close to that variance that I have in blue for those watching on YouTube. Any thoughts on having some sort of scientific uh requirement for what sport programming should test?
SPEAKER_01I don't I don't think I have a formula for that, but I I mean what you just laid out, I think that works. I think it could definitely change year to year. I don't think it needs to be the same thing across the board every year because that's the very definition of CrossFit in general. You're never gonna um know what to expect. So maybe it's uh it's all AMRAPs, maybe it's all for time, maybe it's a per broken down load for time the way you have it. Um so I I wouldn't want to put a cap on that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But um I think there should be something in terms of um for if they're all this many seven workouts for time, the time domains for all of them are, you know, there's like the same time domain for them all. Yeah. So so if you're gonna have multiple four-time workouts, the domain should at least change a little bit, whether it's you know, a three-minute workout, a 15-20-minute workout, it should change more than um than we saw.
SPEAKER_00That's a great point, and that's a great uh segue into our next section.
Working Times And Missing Long Tests
SPEAKER_00That I'm I'm I broke down your working times. Zoom zoom in here a little bit. Okay, yeah. Okay. Um, so these are Bobby's working times for those watching from all three stages. Okay. Um, I'll say them for those that are not watching. Okay, and I did throw the open in there. So you worked for 12 minutes, eight minutes and 47 seconds, and 16 minutes in the open. That was an average of 12 15. I did a breakdown years ago of every open workout, and the average workout was between 12 and 13 minutes. So, look, this was a very average open working time. Cool, that's awesome. We go to quarterfinals. Here are bodies four times, four different times, four workouts. 714, 846, 526, 1108. Um, his average working time in the quarterfinals was eight minutes and eight seconds. Now that doesn't that alone is not enough information to say, like, hey, these are not long enough. Like, if that was 11 minutes and eight seconds of rowing, right? Of just one movement, you could say that's like a sort of a an endurance workout. Hey Brocky, you gotta be quiet. All right. Um, but it that was not the case, and I don't want to break down every single workout. I kind of that's why I went through these at the top. If you guys want to um go look at the quarterfinal workouts, you can. Um semifinals. Now we have five tests, okay? Seven minutes and 37 seconds, 12 minutes and 41 seconds, 1342, 10 minutes, which was uh Imam, not almost all that time was standing around just deadlifting. So that really wasn't 10 minutes of working out, but it was 10 minute workout. And then the last one was an AMRAP 10. Okay. Average working time in semifinals was 1048. Why am I using Bobby as an example? Um, but Bobby is he's just very consistent, whether it's the open, the quarterfinals, semifinals, games. Like literally, if anything, he kind of gets better as the workouts get tougher. And I think this is so I know that not everyone listening can relate to Bobby, but it's good to know where an how long an elite athlete is working. Like I know many of you, myself included, we worked longer on on average. But when you look at the ratios and you look at the longest time that Bobby, who was trying to make the gains, the longest he worked in quarterfinals, semifinals, was 13 minutes and 42 seconds. That that doesn't sit right with me when you when you're trying to get the fittest people to the next stage. So this is where I am somewhat critical of CrossFit. I'm gonna show you. So, you know what, Bobby, before I go into that breakdown, I want you to touch on, I'm assuming you didn't know what your average working time was for a quarter semi. No, I did not. You did know a lot, you do know a lot about programming, you know yourself, and you know the tests. And we talked, and we're gonna break down these tests a little more specifically, but where do you stand with if I'm trying to find the fittest person at bison or in the world, where do you where do you start bringing up time domains? Like what should be tested and what should not, and why?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I think I I think you do need to have some type of long test, whether that's an amrap or whether it's something that it's a a 5k run, a 5k run like just one single modality. I I think you do need to have something that's gonna be longer. Um, I think you need to have something short as well. Um, I uh even these short tests are probably longer than like a really like a hard sprint. Uh, and I think then there needs to be you know a bunch in the middle. So I don't think that like I said, I think these are fine tests, but I think that there's just kind of some missing pieces. Um and I would have to, and and I definitely a strength component would need to be tested as well in some capacity. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll have to I'm gonna get to the strength, I promise, because that's actually something that I I think also missed the boat. So I'm gonna I'm gonna try my best to define time domains. Um just so we could put no man's land, yeah. Yeah, just so we could put some sort of definition on what long medium no man's land is short. Let me explain, all right. Long in CrossFit sport, okay. I know high rocks and endurance athletes are gonna laugh at this, but when you look, when you look at long workouts for CrossFit, I'm I'm defining them as 16 minutes or longer, okay. Medium, which is where a lot of CrossFit workouts reside, 11 to 16 minutes, and then short is three to six minutes. Like, think Fran type workouts. Now, I left one out. There's called No Man's Land between six and 11 minutes. And I love that this is a great time domain to test fitness, and but I don't know if we can call these long or short or even medium. Like sometimes a six to seven minute workout can be really quick. Like we have one of these on Tuesday after we front squat. I think you're um, I think that's the day I put that workout, the half route.
SPEAKER_02It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that that's a in a really intense six-minute period. Uh, but it it's it, I can't call it short, but it's definitely not, I can't call that medium or long either. So I call it no man's land. No man's land is a workout between six and eleven minutes. So in quarterfinals and semifinals, that long workout by definition, which Bobby just touched on 5k run, 5k row, whatever, 16 minutes or more, zero. We had zero, not one of those was tested. And that's not the first time this has happened at the post-open stage. The medium, which is where a lot of people are comfortable programming hard, longer, long-ish workouts. Three of three of the nine were between 11 and 16 minutes. Again, we're using Bobby's clock here, the elite. Okay. No man's land, five of the nine workouts over half were in that time domain. And then short was three to six. Now it's it's important to know, and and someone you could probably could combat this a little bit. One of those no man land workouts, six to eleven minutes, was that 10-minute deadlift test where you were doing one lift per minute and then mass cleans toward at your last in your final minute of the workout. So I really don't even know if I can classify that as a uh a no-man's land. That could be another short one, but that you know, in terms of length of tests and how long you need to be ready to work out, that's where that was. So that now that you see that kind of breakdown, we could see people getting to the games that have a very questionable engine. And I I think that I scroll down a little bit more. I would love a balanced test of fitness to be 25% of everything. So time variance, long. Bobby, let me think about this. If if by we just had nine workouts, let's pretend it's 10, all right, just so the math is easy for everyone. All right. Um, actually, that wouldn't be easier, but it's okay. The long workouts, quarterfinals, semifinals. This would basically mean this. In quarters, we had one workout where everyone worked for 16 plus minutes, and in semifinals, everyone worked out for 16 plus minutes. That could be a long row, it could be a long row, jump rope, burpee, it could be it could be so many different things. What do you think about putting that length of time into a workout, not once but twice?
SPEAKER_01Why not? Yeah, exactly. I don't I don't see anything wrong with that. I think you could do it. Um, again, like I don't think it's it has to be done, but I think why not do that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and medium in that 11 to 60 minute range, you have another quarter, no man's land that kind of I don't know if it's short, I don't know if it's long 25, and then short. This is one area where I think I think John Wood talked about this with Hiller. I don't know about a max vertical jump or broad jump. I don't know if I want to get into that at the quarterfinal stage or semifinal stage, but I think this is an under trained and uh untested part of CrossFit that really is one of the roots of CrossFit, where it means like everyone, there's no pacing in these. Like it's like Fran, yeah, you get Fran, Diane workouts like you are sprinting until you're done. We rarely do that. I'd love what what are your thoughts on putting more workouts like that into testing for the sport? You know, a a three to four to five minute snatch burpee box jump over workout where it's just go, go, go, and and practice how fast you can get shit done.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think there's definitely a place for that. I remember a um, I think it was a quarterfinals workout a couple of years ago. So 30 calorie row, 20 burpee box jumpovers, 10 snatches. Yep. That was uh, you know, the best for finishing that under three minutes. And that was, I thought, a great test, a great workout. So there's ways to do it, and you could test multiple components of it. So I I love it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So when you look at this breakdown, if you're watching on YouTube right now, in again, I don't want to be scientific that every year it's got to be 25% of everything. But I would love to say over the course of five years or even three years, this is where it kind of came back to. And when you break all of these down, especially this year, you have nothing at the long and you have way too much in the no man's land. And short, just getting one. I mean, one out of nine, that's that's a little over uh a little over 10%, uh, about 11, 11, 11, 12 in there. It it needs to be more than that. And I think that that's something that when we try to teach people about training, when we're coaching people, we want to be able to point to something and say, like, hey, no, it is important for you to come to the gym on the four-minute workout day, where a lot of people are like, Oh, I'm not gonna burn enough calories, I'm not gonna go, I'm gonna go for my 5k run again, right? Where these are days where I really do think it could help us coach athletes to say, like, because right now, if you're an athlete, why wouldn't you just train over and over in these medium to no man's land time domains? And a lot of people do that. And and I actually think you don't give enough credit to the people that have more endurance or have a really short burst. There's a lot of athletes in our gym that if there were a couple workouts, even in the open, that were in that short time domain, three to six minutes, we would see a very different leaderboard. And I think that is a challenge for programming. If you were gonna program 10 fitness tests for bison bobby, you would in your ideal world, you would have someone different at the top in every single workout because that means you had enough variance in that in that test.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00I agree with that. Now, this is one where I think you're gonna have an opinion
Loading Problems And Strength Standards
SPEAKER_00on. Okay, loads. Now, again, subjective, I know what's light for Bobby is not light for a lot of people, and you can go down the chain. There's a lot of different levels of strength, but as you see, that's why when I when I talked about these workouts at the top, when I was just talking about how many, how often we were seeing lightweight and medium weight and lightweight, uh, lightweight again. I want you guys to this was based on athletes that were potentially qualifying for the next stage, all right, or at least had a shot at it. So there were 11 different loads in the uh quarterfinals plus semifinals. Okay. Four of them were I would categorize light, meaning whatever reps you had to do, you were doing unbroken, pretty much every um, or at least like sets of like 20 to 30 reps, right? Again, six example, a 65-pound thruster is incredibly light, but you had to do 50. I'm not expecting 50 unbroken there, but it's a light load. Um, medium load would be one or two sets basically every single time you're there. And then heavy with an asterisk is either um a max lift or loads that uh increase to the point where you are getting held up by that weight. When I look at what we did in quarterfinals and 70s, and I'm not a strength guy at all. I actually prefer to not see a lot of strength. I even have to admit that light and medium were almost the entire test of CrossFit. I want to hear your thoughts on how often, not the movements yet, but how often do you think a true strength test should be tested? That's part A. And part B, um, should it be in workout fashion or a max lift fashion? What are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_01Uh I think it um depends on what you're defining as a strength test, um, as far as how many times I think it should be applied. But in terms of one rep max versus like a uh testing a workout, I I don't I know a lot of people get like, oh, there needs to be a strength test, it needs to be a one rep max. I don't necessarily think that. I think it could be, and there's they've done multiple examples of this last year testing heavy Isabel. Like that was uh that was cool. It was a it was a great test. That was a strength test for sure. Um, so there's definitely different ways to do it. And I think they could have done it this year. Um yes, there was just I think not enough variance in terms of loading to to make a big difference. Um, so I do think that they missed a little bit with that.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And I I completely agree with you on the hey, should we just tell someone you have 10 minutes to find a max lift? Should we do a workout and then right after part B is a max lift? Um, or should you do the workouts where the loads just get heavier and heavier as you go, or an Isabel type with just a crazy weight? Um again, the answer that you and I are always gonna circle back to, I think is there is no right answer. There is no weight that you have to do it. You could again, you want variety, you want to have a one-right max test one year. One year they tested across the total. I thought that was awesome. Yeah. Um but again, those were for loads. Like those scores were for max loads. Um I I believe that in any CrossFit season, you should be able to look at the you should be able to look at the programming from post-opens competing, whether it's regionals back in the day, quarterfinals, semifinals, and I think at least a quarter of it should have a heavy feel to it. Stimulus-wise. Now I know that a 185 snatch for me 30 times would be heavy. That would that would take me a long time. For you, that would be a little bit like, hey, how fast can I get that done? But if that was thrown into masters competing, all right, especially my age group, that's that's heavy. That that's a heavy load, okay? So it does, but it doesn't next year, fine. We can go one rate max clean and jerk. That's also a heavy load. I think two uh sorry, one out of every four tests should be a hey, the heaviness of the workout is going to stop people or slow them down, or it's gonna be a a max load test. Um, lightweight, the 65-pound thruster, the 50-pound dumbbell snatch. Um, hold on, something just popped up on my computer. Sorry. Um, later, please don't record. Okay, good. Um, like those things, those should they should also show up. I want you, a strength guy, to touch on lightweights in sport and how important it is to have them in high-level sport. A 65-pound thruster, Bobby. When's the last time you did a 65-pound thruster in a workout? Be real.
SPEAKER_01Oh my 65-pound thruster. I have not done for uh quite some time. Uh 45 I've done be just because uh a couple workouts have had them. Jackie for one, which we tested, but just not with a 65-pound barbell. Um, it was you know, a surprise to see that programmed, but again, you just deal with it and do it, you know, just do it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, so I wanted to touch on as a coach, even as a programmer, why is it important to see those light loads thrown into workout sometimes?
SPEAKER_01Uh the lighter the load, the faster you could go. So it's you know, as as long as it's um your technique obviously is sound, you should be able to maintain better technique with a lighter load. Um, but if you're competing and you want to move faster, the only way to do that is with lighter load. So moving with speed can translate and help you and make you stronger as well. Um, but you just have to move faster. So that's what makes the workout harder. So it almost hurts more when you have to deal with a lighter load.
SPEAKER_00I judged you on that Jackie workout. I watched you do 50 thrusters twice, and I remember thinking while you were doing that, after rowing a thousand meters, by the way, and I think you opened with a set of 30 or 35, but it was amazing to me like how fast you were moving. And you said the word in your answer. I was hoping you were gonna say you were gonna resemble it. Speed. How often do crosshitters practice speed? And that was not a short workout, that wasn't a five-minute Jackie workout. Jackie is how fast can you go? It's what you know, with the empty barbell one time through. And I like throwing light loads into workouts on occasion like that because I do think that it makes it it tests someone's quality of movement, but also recalibrate how you moved so much faster doing those than you would have if it was 95, 115, 130. Hey, look, Bobby, I know you could have done that at 135, it would have been a different workout, and you wouldn't have been thinking how fast can I go? It would be what's my ref scheme? What how how tall how tired are my shoulders? I still got to do chest bar pull-ups. Where I think that was a really cool thing. And now I I circle back to the medium load, and that that is, you know, if I circle back to what we saw in the quarterfinal semifinals, we saw just about half of them. So I think the medium loads were tested uh uh correctly in the in the quarterfinal, semifinal, about half of the workouts, which is basically just traditional. Now, medium is different to everyone I know, but I think that is where CrossFit's secret sauce is. It's basically light enough to do big sets, maybe unbroken sets, but heavy enough that it's gonna hurt you if you're not strong enough or you don't move well enough. Where do you sit with medium weight barbell? Meaning, hey, I'm going unbroken, it's gonna hurt, or I'm gonna break it up and maybe lose a bit of time. Makes it kind of people make a decision.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the medium is pretty much like that's where you want to live, I think. Uh for the most part, training-wise, uh, that's really where you'll likely get better because you can test a little bit. Like, yeah, it's not that light, so I need to be careful, but it's not that heavy. So if I want to take a chance, I can. So it's uh it's something like you can't you can get comfortable, but you shouldn't get comfortable with it. Something you should constantly be practicing and tweaking. So uh you need to be training that, and so obviously it's going to be showing up in terms of um the sport because that's what most people are gonna be training with, so yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00And like again, there's no substitute for experience. So we have a lot of people that are just getting into the competing game right now at bison, and we they want to take it to wherever they can take it to. And the and like I look at them, I watched them some of them compete yesterday at 908 at Barbells and Beers, and you can see like the they the you can see the talent, you can see the fitness, you can see the mobility, you can see the end, you can see the grit. It's all impressive. There's no substitute for experience to the point where I actually think there's a lot of athletes that are not as fit, not as capable as some of these athletes that haven't been doing along, but they beat them every time because of the experience game. And with the more you do crossing, the more you train those medium weights, like you basically need to have it down to a perfect science of what you can do so you can strategize around them. And the only really way you can do that is to just keep throwing yourself back into that medium training zone with your loads and you start playing around with different ways to approach it. Now, the last one that we're gonna do to wrap this up is again not breaking these workouts down one by one, nobody wants to hear that, but it with some of the thoughts that you have discussed, I'm just gonna slowly scroll down.
How To Make Strength Tests Real
SPEAKER_00And I I know I've talked to you about this a couple of times, and I think you were a little bit more opinionated about either the load workouts or the um the semifinal workouts in particular, but this one right here, this strength workout of quarterfinals, would you have done anything different with this workout in regard to, hey, Bobby, like if I came up to you and I and I programmed this, I said, Bobby, this is our strength test. You know, for our divisions, it was 225, 275, 315. Would you have done anything different in this workout to make it more of a strength test? Because to me, it was less about strength and more about being unbroken on jump rope and just how fast you can go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if this was going to be a strength test, I would say the heavier load can be more rounds. Um, you could do two rounds of each. You could do instead, you do one round of the light, two of the same, and then three of the heavy. Um, there's the definitely different ways that you could have done that, or just changing changing the loads in general to make them heavier. Um, but this definitely was not a true strength test.
SPEAKER_00Agreed. And yeah, yeah, yeah. I think one thing you and I both agreed on was like you could have just made all the bars heavier, right? Or two rounds of everything. So basically you're swapping out a 225 round and putting in a 315 because we saw athletes that are, I wouldn't say they're uh big lifters, they got to that last one quickly, they struggled, but hey, it was only one round. They had to do 10 heart heavy imagine, yeah. Yeah, that would have been very different. Yeah, that would have been a different test. And again, I think when you play things out in your head, you have to try to say, like, hey, I'm trying to make the strongest athletes do the best in this workout. And I think you would have seen a different result if uh you made them do that last one a Couple times rather than the that first light load. Um three times. Uh let's see. Let me sorry, wrong mouse. Um this workout, okay. Again, this workout did come down to so I'm looking at everyone. I'm looking at the thousand-meter row, 30 cleaning jerks at lightweight, 30 strict handstand push-ups. Again, I know subjective lightweight, but basically you were trying to get through those in very quick singles. Everyone was right. This one came down to the strict handstand push-ups. When you're just looking at this workout, did you think it could have been done differently? Like, could it have been ascending cleaning jerk weight? Um, does that make it too complicated? Or did you know do you think it's fine? Because I'm going to circle back to the strict handstand push-up. Uh, do you think this workout by itself was fine too for the next level?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do. I think this one was fine.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so let's just go to the semifinals now because again, I do think we saw everyone get to semis that should have gotten there. And again, any workout modification could have changed things if you were on the bubble, good or bad, a little change here, a little change there. We know that that that's the case every year, but we didn't see anything egregious in that regard. You had some cool thoughts on this workout. First workout of semifinals. Again, yeah. What what do you mean? No, I don't want to break it them all down. What what do you think could have been done to this workout to make it a little a little different? And maybe, hey, Bobby, if I said I want one more strength element, two semis, what would you have done with this one?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think that because the one strength element they have had that, which I'm sure we'll touch on, um, wasn't quite enough, I don't think. Uh, this one in particular, I would have started five rounds same way, same squat snatches, but I think I would have done nine reps on the squat snatch for the first one at 135. Okay, seven at 155, okay, five at 185, okay, three at 225, and then one at 245. Oh, nice. And that would have been that would have been your squat test, yeah. Uh the uh the squat snatches, and you would have done the same three rope climbs every time after them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love it. I and and would have kept the cap the same. I think the cap was a little, it was a long cap for 15 minutes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Would have kept that same cap, I think. Yep. Um, I think that would have definitely obviously been a different test, and I think it would have been a better um better strength test for um for the semifinal athletes.
SPEAKER_00Completely agree. Um, because this one, tell me if I'm wrong, this one came down to grip capacity more than anything, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it came down to grip capacity. Um, I would say for the most part. Yeah, of course. It well, you definitely were heavy breathing. Um, I mean, I said that I this was a great workout overall. I loved it. I just think that it could like if you were gonna make it a little more strength-oriented, that could have been a way to do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and again, Bobby's not looking at the workout individually, he's looking at in his head, he already knows what semifinals tested. So if there was a different if the semifinal programming after this was a little different, it probably this workouts fine. It was a Fran. I like I've had Fran long after that for example.
SPEAKER_01100%.
SPEAKER_00So the the problem with it, um, I kind of want to skip this for part right now because when you go to let's talk about the strength test again. Because again, right now, what you did to that workout, Bobby, was you made it a strength test more than anything. Now, and you could have had tiebreakers, and you know, people could have done well enough if they can't snatch that final weight, or even in my case, can't snatch those final two weights on on a day-to-day basis. So I would go after the tiebreakers. But if this was the primary strength test, I think Bobby's workout was really important to make heavier because you already know who the best deadlifters or who are really good deadlifters are in that gym from quarterfinals. Um, Imam 10, one deadlift, medium to max heavyweight, light clean tiebreaker. I want you to touch on what your thoughts were about this workout when it came to testing strength and where it might have fell short.
SPEAKER_01It could have been a great strength test, but I in my opinion, you can't put a cap on on the weight. Um, you know, they put a cap, of course it was heavy, it was 500 pounds. It's not like everyone's lifting that, although I think in my division, nearly everybody finished it. A very large chunk finished it. So then it just becomes a test of cycling a barbell. Yeah. Um and you know, those reps can get a little bit dicey. And if I'm six foot and someone is five foot seven and we have the same exact fitness level and a you know, similar strength level, and they could just move faster because they're uh smaller than me, and it's it becomes a cycling, uh barbell cycling test, and the deadlift doesn't matter. So they definitely, I think, um, could have just allowed the athletes to keep building or give you 10 minutes and build to a one or a max, which could have been different. Uh, but they I think they they dropped the ball with that one for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, or they could have just made it even heavier, right? Like start at 350 and you're going up to 600 or or something. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01Exactly if you want to keep it the same idea and put a cap on it, like make it so no one's gonna finish it. Right. 800 pounds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I like that because again, I do think that brings some of what we touched on earlier, it it makes everyone get to failure, right? Like it almost wasn't fair, like in some ways, that you would deadlift the bar five more times than someone, and like I know the scores reflected that, but it it does the rest of the weekend could be affected by that. Uh, what I actually liked your idea that instead of the tiebreaker being 135 cleans, which at this level, the semifinal level, that's that's something most people are holding on to for the full minute. So why not make it a 185 clean and jerk?
SPEAKER_01Where 225, you know, make it make it something that if it's going to be a strength test, yep, keep it, keep it a strength test. So while you know the deadlift still won't really matter, right? You know, you still get to your 500-pound deadlift, and then you'll move on to the barbell, right? Um, and you yeah, make it make it a heavy, heavy cleaning jerk.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I wonder if they're afraid of people getting hurt, and um, I'm gonna try to wrap this up soon. But the because again, I can do this all day because again, I when I second guess, and I know you're the same way too. I want to make sure I'm not coming across as like they're wrong. This is what I do to myself when I program, yeah. Of course, yeah, like you try to do that. Yeah, yeah. And I love when people second guess me too. But the the uh like yesterday's bison workout, the I got a couple of texts about that one. But do you I no, you don't want to program recklessly, right? Like Bobby, you if you were programming semifinals, you wouldn't do like one rep max back squat, max pistols in 10 minutes, and then um you know 150 thrusters into 150 wall balls, you wouldn't do that. You don't want people getting hurt, but I do think there's a line you definitely wouldn't do that for a gym, but when you go to sport, and I like what you said, if you're gonna make it a strength test, keep it a strength test. Meaning maybe you can't even clean 225, you know, after all that, but and like, or you're gonna get hurt trying. I mean, I literally got hurt doing this LF workout, and I don't like I don't look at the programming and saying, oh, so dangerous. Like it's sport, it happens. You know, when you go watch a football game later, someone's gonna get hurt. It happens. So, where do you stand with that in terms of like do you just say, like, screw them? If you're signing up for sport, you're throwing yourself into the fire. But yes, I have a little bit of responsibility, but no, I'm not gonna think about your low backs on these Delta for counts.
SPEAKER_01Um, I don't think that the programmers, I mean uh CrossFit really cares, to be quite honest. If you get hurt, I really don't. I mean, they maybe, maybe they do. Maybe they try to do things in a way that, oh, let's, you know, let's be careful here. Maybe they do. Um, as far as like if I'm gonna program for an athlete, yeah, I'm gonna be mindful of that. But when it comes to sport, yeah, you know, there there is inherent risk that you're taking. And I think it should be done, obviously, the programming in a way that they're gonna try to limit injuries. But the the nature of any sport is that injuries can happen. So, like you, while you want to be mindful of it, you can't let that dictate how you're gonna control certain things. They could have made even to go back to that deadlift, it could have been the same exact test, but that the last barbell, you're just doing max deadlifts at that bar, so you're keeping it still a deadlift test, you're not just throwing a light barbell cycling because it's it just doesn't make sense to have done that.
SPEAKER_00Yep. All right. Last thing I want to ask you about the programming. I mean, I was the only thing I was gonna touch on this workout, workout two, the three rounds of burpee box over shutter runs, 100 double understanding sandwich. I do think this was a cool opportunity to make it um an endurance workout with those movements. Like, endurance doesn't have to be sitting on a row for 20 minutes. Like, I think you can make it fun where that this just could have been like an 18-minute amrat where you just say, like, if you finish that, you're you're back to the top, and you just go back to it. But that's the only thing I would have would have liked to have seen for this workout. But I want to get your feedback on this this one back here, okay.
Repeated Separators And Lost Variety
SPEAKER_00This 10-minute ladder of 50-foot dumbbell dumbbell walking lunges and two strike handstand push-ups. Are you in agreement that the handstand push-ups were the separator? Yeah, okay. Yeah, so and it's coming from someone that I don't I hate lunges, it wouldn't have been an issue because you're going down and back one time. I'm not saying they would have been easy, definitely may added intensity to the workout, but it was what it what's your strict handstand push-up capacity. When you are talking about blending quarters and semis together, and it feels like they didn't talk to each other, there were some similarities. You know, we rode thousand meters twice. I don't think you know, the in in both quarters and semis, but would would this have been a better workout, Bobby, if this turned into either um a pull gymnastics, meaning ring muscle ups, same ref scheme, right? Bar muscle ups, same rep scheme, or you could have even done toes to bar and just started, you know, you could have done five toes bar and add five per because we didn't do toes bar at all on all three stages. Because do you do you do you agree that not that having strict handstand push-ups as a separator at both quarters and semis, and then for most people, the deadlift was a separator for quarters and semis, you you just you feel like there was something like missing from the variety from the variance of who was doing well and what was being tested. Do you agree, disagree? What do you what are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_01No, I definitely agree with that. Um, you know, the strict hand stand push-ups, and I agree, and I've gotten much better at strict handstand push-ups these days, and this was my best workout uh in the semifinals, and I agree with that. I think that there should have been a different test if we already had the strict handstands as a separator in quarterfinals. Why are we testing the same thing again?
SPEAKER_00Yep, and that's where I wish I don't know who does what. If I I don't even know who to believe when I talk about it, like who's programming what, who's programming the open and the quarter semis? It seemed like the quarters and semis were almost either I would assume they were done by different people because they kind of test the same thing. Yeah. And it's all like if I think, in my opinion, the especially the post-open, more sports side games, semis, and quarters should be programmed by the same person, and that same person could definitely have people cross-checking, like, hey, this is too repetitive. Hey, you know, this this is uh we're we didn't touch any heavy Olympic lifting at all. Uh now people are going to the games. We said we both said this. There will be people at the games, very possibly, who cannot snatch 200 pounds. Like to me, 30 in our age groups, probably.
SPEAKER_01It's gonna be though, yeah. And they they should be able to, or not, yeah, yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_00Um, we someone might not be able to run a five cans or 25 minutes, you know. Like, that's not allowed. Let's say uh let's say 30 minutes. That's it, but like that's not allowed for the highest level in the sport that people are putting a lot into. So the challenge I would get crossed it is to try to get a few new perspectives on programming and seeing not having them change things for you, but see if they can challenge what you're truly testing. And um, you know, everyone's got opinions about programming. Mean, even people that show up to across the gym two days a week, like they have strong opinions on what we should do and what we should not do. And it I think it takes a special person to be able to fill like take everything in, filter things out that really don't weigh that much or don't matter that much, but still listen to everything without getting personally offended, right? No feelings allowed in this kind of stuff. But I I think that there's something missing in a sport that they're trying to keep alive, especially for masters people who, myself included, were being pulled in 11 different directions. And every now and then you ask yourself, is this where I should put my attention? And I will say that some win does get taken out of the sail if you feel like the programming side of it is not really taken as serious as it should. Closing thoughts for you on any of this.
Accountability And Final Takeaways
SPEAKER_01Um, I think that they should look to whoever programmed Magic City because I think those workouts were awesome. That was a great job. All really, really good tests, I think, of fitness. Um, and again, like we've I started with these workouts are not bad in any sense. It's just the the landscape of where we started to where you you finished with the semifinals, just it's felt disjointed and disconnected. Um, but yeah, I I think that there's definitely some stuff to work out.
SPEAKER_00Good. All right, well, guys, thank you. That went a little bit longer. Bobby, thanks for the extra time. Um, I really do love talking programming with you because I think the perspectives that both of us have, um, I do think we're able to remove our bias towards what we're good at, what we're bad at, what we like, what we don't like. We could take experiences from competing, coaching, programming, and trying to evolve this thing to a higher level because programming does dictate a lot in terms of enjoyment, fun, coaching, planning, um, that it really can hold the keys to the bus for the the health of CrossFit sport and even on the affiliate side. So we hope that at some point uh with new leadership in CrossFit, there is a different way to do some quality control. That's what that businesses will call that. Like what is who's being held accountable? Who can be questioned? Everyone can be questioned at any given point. And if there's ever a point where someone cannot be questioned, whether it's intimidation, whether they're too argumentative or they're defensive, they get personal, um, that's the beginning of the end. And I and I hope that CrossFit's not heading down that path. All right. Well, thank you guys, and uh, we will see you next week. 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.