The HERD FIT
Coach David Syvertsen discusses all things CrossFit, health, fitness.
The HERD FIT
S8E231: What YOU can get from the Crossfit Games
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We connect the CrossFit Games to real training at the affiliate, using the weekend’s biggest lessons to expose what actually drives progress for everyday CrossFitters. We dig into nutrition, recovery, pacing, mindset, and healthy competition so you can train harder with fewer setbacks and more purpose.
• Why Day One at the Games proves you cannot outwork poor nutrition
• Hydration, summer routines, and alcohol as hidden recovery killers
• Recovery as a skill you can build like any lift
• What affiliate athletes can learn from how Games athletes pace
• Staying locked in mentally instead of chasing misery mid-workout
• How outside noise and side-by-side racing ruins pacing
• Using inspiration wisely without adding reckless training volume
• “Unsexy” work that raises your ceiling: strict strength and technique drilling
• Negative splits as a simple tool for smarter intensity
• Competition as data and intention, not just beating others
Be on the lookout for next week's episode.
Welcome Back And Summer Rhythm
SPEAKER_00Hey everybody, welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr. Stan Reed and myself, Coach David Syverton. 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 am Coach David Syrton. I'm here with my today's co-host. That is Coach Adam Ramsen. Uh it's been a, I think, a two-week hiatus uh since we put out a new episode. Both of us actually went away. Um Adam went so looked like he had an awesome trip out west with his family, a lot of cool hiking. Um, I was up in New Hampshire and I did get a death threat yesterday that I better be putting out a new episode for Herd Fit this week. Um, this is not a reaction to that, by the way. We did talk about putting this episode out away uh out before we left for vacation, but scheduling was a little bit tough there. So uh we're back in it. Uh Ramsen, A, how has summer been and how was that trip away?
SPEAKER_01Good. Uh summer's been busy, but good. Uh you know, my schedule for the 10 months of the year when I'm teaching is very routine, and then I get the two months of the summer where everything's all over the place. And I like both, but I'm always ready for the transition to the other one, like almost immediately. So once I get to like the once I get to the middle August, you know, it's like I need the routine, I need the daily structure again. Yeah, um, but yeah, we were out west in Utah for a week. Um, you know, a couple hiccups with traveling over there, but that seems to be the norm nowadays. Yeah. Um, but we had a great time and uh looking forward to talking about the games now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I mean, in regard to the games, right? So the Cross at Games are not we're not far removed from it when you look at the schedule, but it does feel like we're far removed from it. Um, we watched the I think it was the Friday night games, we watched them together, and that feels like it was two months ago already. And I guess it's because of how uh lack of routine we both have uh in terms of our schedules for the summer. But there has been enough time to reflect on the games, and this is not gonna be a programming review, we'll touch on a few things here and there. Um, I could do that all day, but I think there's not as much interest on, hey, let's break down the programming. And there's already people that do that at a really high level. But before we get into how we're gonna approach talking about the games in regard to you, the normal CrossFitter and the affiliate. What was your did you have one or two takeaways from the games itself, the programming, anything?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think like the biggest takeaway that I think I got, especially from day one of the games, that long day. They had seven events, they were traveling from here to there. If you're a normal CrossFitter, it just shows you that how important nutrition is because everybody that seemed to struggle on that first day, they were saying, like, well, I didn't know when to eat, and we were moving from here to there, and we had the 7200 meter trail run, and I couldn't, you know, focus on where I was getting my food, and I was just trying to shovel in calories and stuff like that. Um, and we always talk about how you can't outwork poor nutrition, and you can see it with the best, the elitest of the elite athletes in the world struggled with that when they can't when they break out of their routine of normal nutrition.
SPEAKER_00Great point. And and hydration can fall under the umbrella of 100% nutrition and that staying hydrated, my opinion, is a little bit easier to do because I understand the whole like when to put calories in, when not
Day One Chaos And Fueling
SPEAKER_00to put too much in prior to certain events. That's uh a little bit more scientific and the margins are a little bit less. But more staying hydrated is a little bit easier to do. But I would throw that element into it as well because this is the time of year for as a coach and programmer where I do hear a little bit more uh I would say negative feedback about certain like programming and workouts, even at the affiliate, of not necessarily complaining, but more man, this is really tough. Man, I am so sore. Um, I can't move my legs, I can't move my arms. And whenever I hear that more than a few times, I will uh cross my heart, I will go and like, all right, did we do a little too much? How many lunges did we actually do on Monday? Why do people keep saying they walk like they crap their pants? How many lunges are people doing per set? 12 to 14 times four. That's not that many. But um I do always circle back to I think this is a time of year where a lot of people do kind of take a step away from really monitoring their nutrition, uh their hydration, and maybe even some of the alcohol, just because of the amount of times you're in a social setting in the summer, typically or vacations. Yep. And I think you know, we're gonna try to tie the CrossFit games to the affiliate in this episode. We're gonna talk about it in a lot of different angles. I'm glad you brought up that was your first takeaway was how important it is. Is if you are someone that is just you feel like you're in a rut, it's not because you lost your kip, it's not because your shoulders are a little achy. Um, there's usually a lot of different elements that go into it. And the first thing we should all look at is what has my nutrition been like and hydration been like, not yesterday, not two days before, for the past two to three weeks, right? And that that's a really good assessment of wow, some some games athletes use that day one as just another day, others didn't recover, it seemed like for the entire weekend. So uh it was a 20 event game. It's it's already, I think. Cross it put their Ash just sent me yesterday. I didn't read into it yet, but I think they put their documentary out or they released the documentary behind the scenes.
SPEAKER_01The Buttery Bros put out one.
SPEAKER_00Um, I don't know if yeah, but that was the one I saw. The tagline said the hardest games ever. Yeah, um, I feel like I've I've heard that nine times in the past 12 years. But how do you think this stacked up with how hard the games have been over the course of you know over a decade in which you've been involved in and been following the games?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, I think if if you've been involved and you've been following the games for a long time, this was a fun game just to watch because there were so many different things going on, so many different things were tested. Um, and you know, if you wanted to go back and watch an event, you could watch, you know, a handstand sprint if you had 15 minutes. You know, it wasn't like you had to dedicate uh a long amount of time to watching these long events, um navigating the the videos, especially with the flow elite and all that stuff. Like the presentation, I think, can always be better. Um, but I was a fan of the the 20 events, you know, having a lot of long events, a lot of short events over that span of time. Um I I wish, you know, I I think if you're trying to get a lot of people to watch day one wasn't great, and then not having anything on day two was was tough because now if you're getting people that are like, okay, I'm in for the weekend, they go to turn it on on Thursday, and there's nothing, there's no event. So um positives and negatives there, but overall I thought it was a good games experience for the 20 events.
SPEAKER_00This reminded me of when I first started following the games 2013, 14, 15, where they would crush you with an endurance event or two on that first day just to ensure that for the rest of the weekend nobody really felt 100%. Now, because the progression of CrossFit athletes, the games, CrossFit in general, how fit people are getting, you know, CrossFit keeps on moving that needle. That the day one, I mean, I'll see if I can share it real quick, but the the amount of work that they did, you noted it on that day one, which some people saw. Hold on, I'm still an amateur with this stuff. Um and share screen. Cool. All right, so this day one, they did a workout that bison did actually as a workout, which was a lot of fun. People got pretty sore from it too. But um, you got that thousand-meter row, 25 pull-up, seven push shirk workout, which is basically how many unbroken pulps can you do at that level because the barbell is pretty light. Then they did this ranch 7,200 meter run up and down hills. You had people cramping and collapsing and falling. Um, then they go for three max lifts, all worth an event, another endurance type race that's gonna blow up the lower body. This 20 laps on the track, by the way. For those that didn't follow, this is on a bike. Um, not exactly a road bike, it was on grass. So I'm I'm sure the lower body engagement there was pretty tough. And then the swim standard. Um, Adam's a swimmer, he'll tell you this is not a lot of swimming. I will tell you that's a lot of swimming, but mixed in with burpees, intensity is pretty high. You even saw people falling apart on this because of how much work they did that day. Yep. And so basically, what this turned it into is it almost felt like a Hunger Games type feel that we're gonna try to obliterate you without ruining the rest of the weekend. That's why they build them that rest day. Whether we agree with it or not, I do think it does lose momentum. I agree with you on that. But this is what I remember the games being. I thought they got away from this in recent years, and I like this because I think one of the most under talked about and overlooked components to high-level elite level fitness is how well you can recover. Either in between workouts, um, in between days, and I even see it on the gym side. This is where one of the things I can blend to the affiliate that if we have, quote, a tough week at bison, we have some weeks that are tougher than others. There's people by Friday, Saturday, like they're done. They just they can't move well or they're banged up. I don't want to say injured or hurt, but they just can't move as well as they're used to. And then you have other people coming in like it's a normal, they're coming off two, three days' rest because they recover well, and because we can't put a number next to recovery other than those that wear, you know, the wearables, the whoop, which is subjective in in many ways. Um, you have people that are just much better at recovering, and I think that's such an important part. If you're going to actually measure fitness, let's not just talk about what you're good at and bad at in the gym, in the pool, on the track, is how many can you do back to back to back to back and still have that 90% plus threshold? Yep. Agree with that, disagree with that. Um, do you do you like how long this strung out from that regard?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I and I like how they avoided using, you know, we did a couple an episode a couple months ago about you know the over reliance on machines, and there weren't really a lot of machines
The Hardest Games And Recovery
SPEAKER_01in that first day. It was that thousand-meter row, and that was pretty much it. You know, now you're on a bike, but it's a road bike, you're out on a track. Um, you know, you have the swim and the burpees, so there's different aspects of what you're asking your athletes to do, um, but you're not falling into that same rut of machine, barbell, gymnastics, machine, barbell, gymnastics, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So now this age-long debate of kind of blending the CrossFit games and the affiliates together, it this is no longer 2011, 2012. We are no longer the same. In some ways, like we are, but in many ways, we're no longer, and I think the margin is growing as time progresses, right? Like, if I go play pick up basketball, like I'm not LeBron James, I'm playing basketball, but I'm nothing like that. There's so many more elements that go into being a games athlete. Um, and and this, I just feel the margin, it widens in the affiliate between the good, average, bad, um, and also the games athletes and affiliates. Do you where do you stand? We are normal CrossFitters, we are coaches, we've been doing this a long time. Um, we've been in and out of competitions ourselves. Where do you stand on what we should get out of watching the games? Like, is that something we should be paying attention to, or is this something that should be kind of distancing from each other?
SPEAKER_01I I think you could take it in both directions. So, you know, you take any sport, like Major League Baseball pops in my mind. They just added the pitch clock a couple years ago. Like every sport is getting farther away from the professional area to, you know, your everyday pickup softball that you're gonna play on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Um, but also you can take things from the games and put them into the affiliate. You know, uh, I was watching an interview about the other day, um, had nothing to do with CrossFit, but uh an actor was talking about when he was training and learning to do accents and all this stuff. Um, his teacher talked about unconscious competence. Like you have to do something so much so that you don't even have to think about it. And we talked to a lot of athletes in the gym and the affiliate about that. You know, they're like, well, this person looks so good doing cleans, like they're not even, you know, it's not even taxing them. And I got to worry about every single rep. And it's just putting in rep after rep after rep after rep, session after session. Um, and we see that at the games, you know, it just looks Amy Amy Kringle looks like she's never has to struggle through anything. Yeah, but then you get to an event where it's the handstand sprint, and everybody's saying Danielle Brandon's gonna crush it, and she got crushed by the L Sit to Parallelette, you know. Um, and you could just tell that wasn't something that she had drilled, you know. Maybe some people got lucky and just happened to be able to do it day of. Um, but you've got to practice everything, and that's a lesson that I think all members can take back to their affiliate, whether you'll you've been in the game for 12 years or you know, it's your first uh gym experience tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I am a huge believer, supporter in that for us to truly understand anything. I mean, you could bring up analogies in and out of the gym, your career, your relationships. You should always be looking at what the tip of the iceberg is. Yep, not necessarily to emulate every single factor into it. There's a lot of faults in pursuing that that we'll get into. But golf, for example, uh for the for the record, Adam and I are we're not scratch golfers, uh, neither one of them, not yet. Not yet, but we will watch professional golf, and it does motivate us to A, just go play, but B, you might pick up on something, and it's not necessarily how to dress or how to walk or how to wear your hat, but there might be, you know, out of 30 things that you'll pick up on watching a professional golfer do, you might be able to apply one of them to what you're doing day to day or the next time you play, or it gives you something outside of your own scope to apply. Here's an example there was an event that Bison did last week, uh, two weeks ago when I was away. What was it? No, I was gone last week. The run squat clean workout. Um, entertaining and fun in that it's very simple. And some people said it was really tough. I'm like, they're supposed to be tough, absolutely. And we made it a levels workout, so you didn't really have to do a certain weight, but we gave some guidance on how heavy should this barbell feel because even the games athletes were doing singles. But to me, the takeaway from that workout that I can apply and you can apply, and anyone listening and watching can apply. None of them ran hard, right? All of their run, they almost I think this is actually said with the group of people that we were watching. Why are they running so slow? Man, they must be tired. And what do we you and I are very big on talking about this as coaches? If you're not pacing a workout and you're not at least putting some thought into it prior to and even during, and our x plus effort on this would be put thought into it after, breaks you break yourself down a little bit. You are, I'm not gonna say you're doing it wrong, but I am gonna say you're leaving meat on the bone. All of you guys are trying to get fitter, better for all your different reasons, and they're all valid. But if you're not putting thought into pacing on a workout that's measurable, aka time, you're doing you're gonna you're leaving yourself short in terms of hitting that goal, no matter what it is, games are not. And that's something that you can take as a normal crossfitter from watching them that they're not sprinting and trying to hold on for dear life. That was really cool 15 years ago. Yeah, and it is admirable that people try hard, but it's not the best way to do it if you are actually trying to get better, and that's something I really take away from watching these guys, they're so almost scientific with how good they are at applying a pacing goal to every single workout. You're pretty thoughtful. We call you the professor for a reason. It goes beyond just intelligence, it just you're thoughtful. You can break a lot of things down quickly at a high level. Do you apply lessons that you learn in the CrossFit games from a pacing perspective to your own?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, you know, if we're talking about that specific workout, um, I have a pace that I know I'll run for 200 meter runs. Yep, different from my pace for 400 meter runs for 500 meter runs, 800, 1000. Um, and I think the athletes, the games athletes know that, you know, if I push the pace on this 600-meter run, I'm gonna end up saving maybe five seconds, but I'll have to break up the barbell one more time, and it's just not worth it for them. Yeah, so they know themselves and they know the pacing of the workout, the volume that they're gonna have to do, you know, however many rounds it was. Um, I don't remember five rounds, five rounds. Yeah, like that's 50, uh, 50 hang squat cleans, like you know what you're gonna have to do. Um, and then there's also the idea of well, you were allowed to squat clean that first one, right? Right, you didn't have to establish the hang every time you picked it up, right? So for some athletes, that might be easier for them to do those quick singles, be able to get that momentum off the floor, and that's gonna change that workout for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and there are
What Affiliates Can Copy
SPEAKER_00some workouts at the games where all of them they just drop like flies, like those really high-intensity pieces. But another takeaway I take from fitness, and this is not a mental strength thing, that that's part of it. I don't even want to get into that. It's a lot of times these athletes, it's not that they didn't try as hard as they could, but they were not in shambles for over half the workout. The shorter the workout, you know, you start getting machines involved, like the bike, then yes, everyone's gonna be collapsing at the end. But we talk about this at the gym all the time. You being and me being dramatic, I don't want to say you, like I'm dramatic after workouts. Sometimes trying so hard, you're getting tired. That's not necessarily the sign that you tried really hard. It's not the sign that you got the most out of it. And that's another takeaway I have from a lot of these workouts is like, you know, maybe they take a knee or they go into a squat, they take a few break breaths, and they stand up like they're laughing, high five in, saying hi to the crowd. Part of that is fitness, we know. But I actually try to take it as they're so locked in mentally during their workouts on what they're doing, they're so concentrated that it's not a lot of negativity creeping into their brain. Where I actually think, and I'll speak from personal experience on this, a lot of times the dramatic ending to a workout was that I spent more than half that workout miserable. Yeah, like just having a lot of negative thoughts. I can't wait to get to the finish. Oh, I'm 60% there, I only have 40% left, only 25% left, there's only two minutes left, there's only one round left, there's only eight reps left. That's what my thought is during workout, rather than locked into the movement, locked into the pace, locked into the transition, locked into my breathing. Oh, I'm done. And I and I know when I'm mentally locked in, quote, you know, Rafi with his mindfulness, when I'm really locked into that stuff, I'm not dramatic after a workout. I tried hard. I'm tired. Trust me, I'm just as tired as the times I am dramatic. That's something that's like a different level of watching games athletes and trying to apply it to your own. That being dramatic after a workout, not looking down on anyone for doing it, but it usually is not the result of you working hard. Can you apply some of this? This is becoming more and more popular now. The mindfulness training, when you watch it, do you feel like these guys are a lot more locked in during the workout than a normal crosshair? And can we kind of really maybe learn from that?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. And uh, you know, it's interesting that you hear the reaction when somebody fails a rep at the games, like there's an audible gasp from the crowd, and you know, Chase Ingram is like, oh no, like it it hardly ever happens, right? You know, their form never breaks down. I can remember a couple years ago going back, um, and it was similar to the last event this year where they were doing the kettlebell overhead walking lunge, and Tia was like two steps away and would start to shake and lost it. Yeah, Carl Webb was all like on her tail trying to finish the workout. Um, you hardly ever see that just because the games athletes know themselves so well, and not only that, they probably know the other athletes so well that they know, oh, person next to me is not counting. Like I'm going to be able to work out my workout, shut everything else out, and I'll be able to come in this place and that place, and that's going to put me at this point on the leaderboard. Um, so it's very scientific, but it's also putting the blinders on, just focusing on your workout, not worrying about any of the noise outside of it, and just doing the pace that you came up with. Because we're sorry, not the affiliate all the time, is that you know, everybody's got an idea of how they want to start the workout. And as soon as the person next to you starts box jumping faster than you are, you're like, oh no, I gotta catch up. And now you've just immediately ruined it. And that's when you get halfway through the workout and you're like, I just want this to be over. Over on toast because you went out too hot right at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And that is something very, very applicable to crossfitters on a day-to-day basis. Is that I do think most of them are capable and actually will start off being like, hey, I'm locked into what I'm doing. But the outside noise, the lack of ability to stay in your lane, quoting Kathleen Staunton there, um, it derails you. It derails your workout and it can ruin the quote experience that we always talk about from a coaching perspective. Um, in that same tier, that same same section of discussion, after the games every year, I feel a little extra energy, not from everyone, but from some people. And I've been there before where you see something, you're like, next year, next year, or or just this upcoming year, I'm gonna try to lock in, not to make the games necessarily, but just to be like, I'm gonna put my best foot forward because it's really hard not to be inspired by watching the games. Um, from someone brand new, Amy Kringle coming in. I mean, not brand, brand new, but she meet she dominated, and nobody really saw that coming from. I mean, I I'm not in tune with what everyone predicts who's gonna win, but I don't remember her name being brought up by many, if any. And I mean, she now I'm asking, like, who's gonna beat her next year? Because a lot of the programming was not set up for her body type, and she still just crushed everyone. So I get inspired by that kind of stuff because you know that's not talent that got her there, it's the work that nobody really sees, not everyone appreciates, they just see the tip of the iceberg. Now, so I'm all about being inspired by that. The problem that, from my perspective, been doing this 13, 14 years now, coach, owning, being involved in competition myself, noticing my own mistakes and noticing mistakes of others. I I hope that most of what people are inspired by is not someone doing well at the games. It's that the 98% of what that girl's process was, you have no idea. But that is what created it. And I hope people can be inspired by showing up to the gym with none of your friends, with music that you don't like in a zone you don't like, with a gym that's too hot that doesn't have air conditioning, and you're still there, you are locked in. That's what it takes. That's what I hope people are inspired by. Do you think there's a negative for athletes to be inspired by the games? Or do you say, like, hey, let them figure it out on their own? Any inspiration is good inspiration. Let's see what happens.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it it can be a negative if you're coming off the games and saying, okay, now I'm gonna start going twice a day. I'm gonna go to open gym and I'm gonna add in, you know, I'm gonna start doing 75 butterfly chest to bar every day, or you know, a hundred GHC sit-ups to get my core stronger and all that stuff. Right. I think you have to be very mindful and intentional about how you do it. And I think the best thing to do if you're inspired by the games and you want to make those leaps in your training is something we talked about at the beginning. Like look at your nutrition, look at how you recover. What are you doing outside of the gym? You know, if you want to add in extra training sessions, good, but you got to up your recovery game then too, if you're adding volume. Um, so I think it's great to be inspired. I think it's good to put a focus on what you're doing in the gym outside of just let me go to class and get through it and see my friends. Um, but yeah, it can it can be a double-edged sword if you get into the overtraining aspect of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that that's something that I really wanted us to touch on at some point. I'm glad you brought that up. That the what to do if you are inspired. Like, where do you go? And most people just go to more training, like it because it's I hate to say that's the easy part. That that's the part everyone can do. They show up and just do more. And I want to throw some caution into the wind of doing more is gonna get you better at CrossFit. I do think it's the best way to get better at CrossFit in the short term, but that short term has a very short shelf life, and you're gonna open your door to overtraining injuries, um, you're gonna open your door to burnout. That I think step one, you brought it up, is just the lifestyle. And especially if your goal is next year, if it's like next open, I mean, we have, I mean, they are starting it early next year, but I think we're about six months away from it. That's a long time. You could use two months, you could use two months and not train extra at all, not once in two months, but try to use two months to dial in what is your weekly routine? And we both, I mean, we're both in this, we sing the same tune. Like, I love the lacquer routine, and now I'm done with it. Like I said it yesterday, like, can't wait for September to get here. Um that let let's use these two, three, four weeks to figure out what is the routine while you're doing that. Figure out what is your your uh nutrition plan, what is your social plan? Like, how much are you going to be drinking? Can it does it impact your sleep? Um, you know, can you actually find time to add more training, but also put more effort into the recovery component because you can't just do one. And that's where these athletes have that down that stuff down to a science years ago, by the way. We're seeing A.B. Kringle now. She figured that out seven years ago, right? And she probably has a training background. I'm pretty sure she does. That was pretty high-level stuff as well. So, again, I don't want to use the games as the barometer. You're just looking for gains, you're looking for another level up. That's step one. But let's say someone does have that locked in. Is there something you think you can take from a high-level athlete and to a normal CrossFitter? And again, games not being the goal, just a higher level of performance in the next year. Is there something that either you've seen, you've heard of, you've done yourself that can help you go in that direction of actually taking on more volume?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think it it can be skill-based, you know, um, something that's, you know, no but none of the exciting stuff that people want to do, but work on strict pull-ups. You know, the more strict pull-ups you do, the more, the stronger you're gonna be. You know, if you're gonna drill lifts, drill light lifts, yeah. Um, you know, work your positions, do you know tall cleans, do clean pulls. Um, just you know, you don't have to go after that intense, intense feeling of, you know, I'm almost gonna throw up at the end of a workout. You don't have to add in more of those workouts throughout the week. You know, if you're um approaching our weekly programming with intensity, you're gonna get that feeling. Um, but use that extra time to, you know, get better, get more efficient on the row, get more efficient on the bike, you know, work in some GHDs, but don't worry about going crazy with the amount of volume you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I the best when I had a coach, the best I like, I would say there was like a three to four month stretch where I was like, I really felt like I was getting fitter every week. And something that we were doing every week at least once, it was usually twice, was just a normal, like every three to four minutes, do this three rounds of this workout wall ball, jump rope, toes bar, nothing high volume. You know, I would say for me it was average volume, but it was negative splits. So every time you're gonna add in test, you're getting more fatigued, but you also now have to add more speed to it. And it did two things for me. It really taught me how to dial in my pacing early in a workout so that I really know how I would feel halfway through, but it also gave me that blood in the mouth type feeling and that last round or two. And it created some competition, not against anyone else, just against my previous time. And that's a really good way of approaching training in the kind of same tune of what you just said. It doesn't have to be max, it doesn't have to be what was your score. And I think of a couple of our younger guys and girls in the gym right now that you know they just have not picked up on that yet. And the sooner you pick up on the value of negative splits, the value of pacing, the value of working on things that are not sexy, they don't look good on uh social media, but they are going to make you better in the long run. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you're gonna get to that top goal that you're actually looking for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you can also analyze as you're doing that workout, okay, where can I save two or three seconds so that I'm just a little bit faster the next time through this? You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now to to wrap this up, there's kind of like this is, I mean, this could be its own episode, but this is just more of like opinion type stuff. Um, I mean, all this is opinion, you know, we're not the Bible here in terms of what we think, but we do have a lot of experience between the two of us. Um what when you uh my early days across it at Hoboken, and I think bison has a little bit of this. Sam tells me this all the time that like you know, you really wanted bison to be something that leaned into competition and really leaned into let's say performance. I wouldn't even say competition, more about your performing. What are your scores? What are your times? We still write down everyone's score that comes to the gym on a day. I don't know many gyms that do that. And back then when I started CrossFit, I I really thought that's what cross it, that's part of what made it different. That's part of pursuing the intensity, that your score is going to be somewhere, yeah, for other people to see. And yeah, sometimes you're gonna be proud of it, and sometimes you're gonna be disappointed or embarrassed. And I think that's why cross it is a great way to just humble people. That if someone's a little too arrogant and too cocky, like I always say, at some point it'll take care of itself because um there's a lot of people that do this that are a lot fitter than us, and but so I I I feel like I don't know if this is a world thing or it's just in my head, but I feel like the tide has changed a little bit in that the sport used to be what would look down on people that are not fit
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SPEAKER_00enough, and I hate that too, by the way. I hate competitors that think they're better than others, I just do, I always have. But at the same time, I feel like in some ways the sport is being looked down on now, and that might be our generation, Adam. We're in our 40s, and a lot of guys and girls our age, they no longer want to compete, they don't want to train to compete, or they just they can't, and other people can. And it has a negative connotation behind it now. Do you feel that? Do you sense that? Do you think that's in my head? In that there's too many people thinking that this is now a bad thing, the sport, and I just I don't see it.
SPEAKER_01I think people will use it as a crutch and an excuse for some reason of oh, well, the the competition is just, you know, it's so outside of the realm of what I'm trying to do, or you know, maybe just don't feel as competitive as you used to. Um, and so you're gonna look down on the sport aspect of that or the competition sport aspect of it. Um, but you know, there are different levels to the competitions, you know, you have people that are gonna train for bison bowl next year, yeah, which is just you know a throwaway Saturday where everybody's having fun. Um, but people want to get better for that next year, you know, that's that's a goal for them. Um, so you know, goal setting is going to be something that is a competitive aspect of yourself, you know, trying to get better in whatever your goal is, make those improvements. Um, and if your goal is to be more competitive, then you know, just know that the person next to you might not have the same goal. So you guys can't be aligned on that, but you're both working towards improvement in your own avenues.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I meant to actually say this to you yesterday. I think I I had to run out of the gym um after class, but I had a conversation with um a teacher that I know he's entering his final year, he's gonna retire at the end at the end of this upcoming year. Sorry if you hear my dog. And um, Rogue, hey, rogue, no. Um, and I asked him, I was like, what's the biggest difference between kids you've taught now and kids you were teaching 20, 25 years ago? And he like quickly said, he's like, just the response to adversity. And like they they just they give up, they want to quit, they don't like take failure as something that's gonna help them get better, they just stop. And it's not even like they don't even give it a second shot sometimes. And I was thinking about that, that when I watch people really want to enter the competing space, whether it's bison bowl or literally the cross at games, that's something. If there's something I look down upon when it comes to the sport, it's that when a lot of people don't understand how hard it is to get to a higher level. And I again it could be your bison bowl next year, it could be the cross at games. And you start to realize how hard ever it is to be good at everything or good enough at everything. Yeah, and when when I see people that they give up so easily, or they kind of and this could even be like I got nicked up, my shoulder hurts, I'm done. My hip hurts, I'm done. I pulled a muscle, I'm done. You know, I've been I've been burned a few times, and I've always like I get upset by it, angry by it, frustrated, just like everyone else. But I I do question how many people look at the sport and be like, hey, I truly want to, I want the process of hitting a goal. Whether you ever get there or not, that to me is not the goal. It's really kind of staying in it. And the the sport to me has made a lot of CrossFitters go back and forth. I'm in it for a month, I'm out of it for a month. I love this programming, this cycle we're on, I hate this cycle. Yeah, I just told someone yesterday that or two days ago that our next strength cycle, one of them is gonna be the deadlift um for eight weeks in the fall. And immediately, like a couple people like, oh my gosh, I hate it. And you know, to me, I would have this very similar approach to a back squat cycle. I don't like back squat cycles or front squat cycles, but I I I view it as if you truly are trying to compete or get better at something, you kind of have to take everything in as an opportunity. Yep. That's where I have a disconnect with people in the sport that you see these lofty goals by some ball, games, whatever you want to through, but you don't see everything underneath it. And it kind of gives people a very inefficient, inaccurate path of what CrossFit training can do for you. Um that that's where I stand with that in some ways the games and the performance side is bad for crossfitters, they don't truly understand what goes into it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think that you know, we can see that in the gym is that you know, there are people that seem to always have something that's a little bit issues. I don't want to name names, but like yeah, they're just there every day and they're changing what they need to change, and they're just saying, you know, I'm uh I'm dealing with this, but you know, it'll be I'll be back soon and full, um, you know, 100%. Um and then you see it with games athletes, you know, games athletes after the games will respond and they'll put out an Instagram post about, hey, you know, I was got nicked up on this event, but that's all right. That just lets me know that I have to work in this area, other area. And then you'll have other athletes that be like, oh, the programming just wasn't good this year, and that's why I finished 25th out of 30, you know. Um, so dealing with adversity is something that you know you train in just as much as you train any exercise at the gym. Right. Because everybody's gonna run into adversity when you set lofty goals or you have any anything that you're working for, uh, you're gonna experience setbacks. So it's how do you deal with that when it shows up?
SPEAKER_00And your top fitness gains, we talked about this already. I think it was with you and it was in the program, it was in the um the survey one as well. You know, your quickest path, your quickest path to becoming fitter is doing the things you're not good at. Yep. But it's also the time that you could be, quote, unhappy if your mental approach to that workout, to that training is poor, then yeah, it's gonna suck when you're there. But it's also the number one path you can take to getting to what your actual goals are. Um, last question is should competing be a foundation of CrossFit training? And I'm talking the affiliate, I'm not talking about the games, I'm not talking about bison bowl. The day-to-day operation, the class I took with you yesterday, like I made the joke that like literally everybody in the class was done with their first set of box jumps before me. And yeah, I'm human. I noticed it. Um, that and it's hard not to get competitive in that. But I also think it helps push me towards, dude, hurry up a little bit, you know, push push the pace a little bit, don't be reckless. Um, should compete there, there's a lot of foundations to cross. I think everyone's got their own opinion on it. You know, I think intensity is pretty widely considered, quality movement over quantity movement. Um, but I think competing is an absolute pillar of real CrossFit training. And I will say this, sorry if it offends anyone. If you're not competing ever in CrossFit, you're kind of doing CrossFit, but you're not actually doing the real thing. And this this could be competing against yourself, by the way. The splits that we just talked about, your first round versus your last round, it does not need to be against other people, especially when there's no judges. Like if anything competing day to day, other than playful banter and pursuit of intensity, is kind of pointless. But there should be a competitive mindset in your training when you do CrossFit. Do you think that's right or do you disagree with that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it it's data at the end of the day,
Why Competition Belongs In Training
SPEAKER_01and how are you measuring progress if not using data? You know, we repeated uh 23.2 this week. I did worse than I did three years ago. But you know, is that an effect of Monday's lunge workout and all those things and those different factors? But if I didn't have those scores to look at and say, where would I try to save time? Would I do my shuttle runs a little faster, or would I try to, you know, stay more consistent with my burpee pull-ups? Like that's stuff that you need to know, and it's stuff that you should be competing at least against yourself with. Yep, looking to improve throughout the years you're doing this because otherwise you're just kind of showing up day to day and not knowing what path you're on. Right.
SPEAKER_00So and it's I mean, it's pretty obvious that if you were doing all these workouts by yourself in a garage with no music, no coach, and no one next to you, your intensity would be less, your results would be less. You might be like, oh, I'd get hurt a little bit less often. Um, not I don't know if how factual that is, but part of a big part of CrossFit, I think a big big part of working out. I mean, take out CrossFit, right? You should be pushing yourself. You should you need to find ways to be pushed by uh, and you're not you're not always motivated and disciplined to try hard every single day. Very few people can can even bring that into the discussion. And I would even say everyone needs a little exterior push at some point, which if you want to sum this down, it's that is what competition is. I think the word competitive and the word competition is not defined correctly by many people. I think that's the issue. Maybe that's the disconnect I have with your people that are listening right now. It's like, no, I'm not competitive. I've been great with CrossFit. I don't compete at all. I it's not me versus you, it's not first place, second place. You know, it's uh today's example is actually a good uh workout, is a good example with um that you're gonna be doing soon, actually. Uh the levels 800 meters versus 500 meters or 400 meters. Um, you're gonna see a lot of different times up there, but you don't know who did what level until you click on it or go look at it. But it does no matter what, it creates the stimulus of like I am trying to hit a certain number, I'm trying to get a certain time, I'm trying to get as far as the workout. Um, that I think being competitive, it's it's another way of just saying I'm gonna truly try really hard for reasons that are outside of just just me and my workout, right?
SPEAKER_01And I think that's really a big part of that, is absolutely a pillar to real CrossFit training, and doing everything with intention, you know, it's like if you're not focused on what you're doing, whether it's your running splits today or how you're breaking up push-ups and all that stuff. Um breaking them up, of course not. No, in fact, I'm gonna do the handstand uh ring push-ups yes now, because uh although that's a that's a positive thing that came out of this year's games. I haven't seen anybody try a back roll into support or anything like that in the ring. So I've seen someone I see someone try it on the bar. Okay, maybe we're getting maybe we're getting a little bit smarter, um a little bit more educated and seasoned in our years of CrossFit. Um but yeah, it's it's do it just doing things with intention and knowing what your goal is, what you're what you're aspiring to is something that you need to constantly be checking in with. And that's the best thing you can do for progress moving forward.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right, well, that's gonna wrap it up. Um, I I believe that the CrossFit Games is very good for affiliates. I think it's good for us to maybe um learn from games athletes, not just how good they are, what their lifestyles are, it could just be how they approach movement. You can apply everything from the top level to yourself, no matter who you are. And I think coaches should pay a lot of attention to this, by the way. Um, I think coaches should be every now and then go and look into a games athlete's, whether it's their Instagram, like what are they doing to warm up? What are they doing to cool down? How often are they actually really going hard and mixing uh lifting to a max, right? And and how can you apply that to coaching? Because a lot of these conversations that we're talking about right now, this happens in the affiliate. There's opportunities to talk about when uh on a day where we say, hey, go heavy, not heaviest with our lifts, and we see 37 people go to failure in a certain day. Like, this is an opportunity for a coach to be like, hey, that's not what the top athletes do. Right. And and we know you're not trying to be a top athlete, but what's the point of going to failure if we tell you not to fail? You're missing out on reps. And like it's that's a small example, or you're burning out after the first 25% of the workout. Um, there's a lot that a coach can take uh from from watching the games and a lot of stuff that a CrossFitter can take. And you combine those two people together and put some brain power. I think watching the games, being involved in the games, and being cognizant of what's actually happening can make you a fitter person. Yep. Uh physically, mentally, emotionally, everything. And I hope people will see that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and a quick note I uh I forget her name. What was it? Who was the games athlete we had come to old bison? Heather seek us.
SPEAKER_00Heather seek us, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And somebody asked her when we were doing a quick QA, and she they were like, What's your normal Saturday look like? And she's like, Oh, I do my training plays, blah blah blah. And then I spend three hours with old crossball just mashing everything out, you know. She's like, I sit in front of the TV for three hours and and mash with a crossbow, and you never think about doing that, but that's just like no, that's those little accessory things that maybe yes, three hours is probably excessive, but like how many of us are sitting on a foam roller at home while we're watching TV? Just sitting on the couch, you know. Um, so it's just that stuff, you know, outside of the gym that you can add in to be a great point.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I I just right now, like I'm gonna work out. I think I have to wait till I think 4 15, and because I have a lot of work to do at home. And I know that after I work a lot sitting down, I'm so stiff. And I wonder, like I've
Simple Recovery Habits That Add Up
SPEAKER_00been thinking about this a lot lately. It's like there's probably things I should be doing when I'm sitting down, you know, whether I'm listening to something or reading something and getting on lacrosse ball or roller. And I'm telling you, I could probably count on one hands how many times I do that in uh in a year. Yeah. So again, again, like that's the kind of stuff what Adam just brought up. It's these little things that I think all of us can apply to just our general fitness and how our how we feel about ourselves physically and mentally, uh, that can go a long way. So I'm a huge believer in CrossFit and the games being tied together. I know there's a whole business element to it that we might touch on down the road. Uh, but to me, you know, CrossFit is very much the games, and the games are very much CrossFit.
SPEAKER_01Yep. You can't separate the two.
SPEAKER_00Yep. All right. Well, thank you, Adam. Go crush today's workout, and um, I'll probably see you tomorrow at some point. Sounds good. All right, thanks, Bub. 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.