S01E02 June 14 2021 -Pursuing Quality Movements vs. Quality Scores

Our second episode is with guest coach Adam Ramsden. We talk about something every CrossFit athlete wrestles with: pursuing quality movements versus quality scores. We discuss what constitutes quality movements and quality scores, and how do we determine what we should be pursuing in any given workout?

TRANSCRIPT
David Syvertsen: [00:00:00] Welcome back guys to the Herd Fit podcast, we got coach Sam Rhee, Dr. Sam Rhee on my right. Coach Adam Ramsden on my left back for episode number two. He's that good. Today's topic we're going to talk about is something that I think every CrossFitter wrestles with internally some more than others, some will some, we wish more than others.
When you come and work out, when you're talking about self evaluation, Are you pursuing quality movement or are you pursuing a quality score? And I think that's a topic that you can of go back and forth on when you come in here. It's I just got done with a beginner this morning, a high level athlete, college athlete, football player, very strong.
And one of the last talks we had prior to him leaving is Hey. When you're coming in here, even though you know what you're doing, you need to pursue the quality movement before you worry about what's on a whiteboard. And since day won at CrossFit Bison we've kept pretty much every single workout result on the whiteboard.
And we have pictures of it and you can go back and look at every single day we've been here minus maybe two weeks worth of workouts. And the reason is not the scoreboard. Obviously we don't put them in order on the whiteboard, who is the fastest, who's the slowest. It's just a name and a number.
And that's, it's one of the metrics that CrossFit uses to show objective progress over time. It's not a leaderboard right there. If we had a competition here, we would have a leaderboard. And I think that's one thing that people can improve their fitness here, their health and fitness for the long run. If they pursue quality movement over.
We'll call it a score. So we need to start off the topic with what is quality movement and what is a quality score. Sam, what is quality movement, in CrossFit is an opinion. There's no 
Sam Rhee: [00:01:54] To me I don't know exactly what a quality movement is, but I know some of the factors to me that define a quality movement. One is a movement that allows you to repeat the movement with minimal risk of injury. So anything where you're at high risk of injury for, I don't think that's a very quality. Yeah. The second one is efficiency. A quality movement is an efficient movement. There's no reason to do something extremely inefficiently. Yeah. If you can move well by being efficient and moving safely.
Yeah, those are some of the characteristics of what I think quality movement. 
David Syvertsen: [00:02:35] Okay. And what, would you term it? A quality score? 
Adam Ramsden: [00:02:39] So I would say quality score is something where you could say at the end of the day. Okay. Every rep, I met the standards that were given to me by the coach, and I feel like I gave a high effort.
So it's making sure that you're meeting the standards as far as your range of motion will allow. Cause we have some injuries where we have to we have athletes that can't lock out their elbows at the top of a push press. And that's totally fine. But if you can, I think you should strive to meet those standards.
And if you're doing that, giving your high effort. And not cutting corners and shaving reps. Then I think you can go home saying, you know what? I gave a quality, I got a quality score, whatever it is on the whiteboard. 
David Syvertsen: [00:03:23] And that's what I think these two topics can be, I wouldn't even say should be, but can be discussed and figured out prior to each day's workout.
Even more micro level, every class. And when does this occur at the whiteboard before the class starts? I always say, I think the most important first, I think the most important time of the class are those first five minutes. When they're talking about the workout with the class. And some gyms do it better than others.
Some coaches do it better than others, but that's the opportunity. So don't be late. All right. Make sure you're not late for those first five minutes, but the, that period talks about what the stimulus for the workout is. Because there are days that I'll come in or you guys will come in, you see a workout written on the board, you see the RX and you're like, I can't do that.
Or whether it's a movement, whether it's a load and. That's an opportunity for the coach to talk about what the scaling options are, right? If there's a high volume pistol workout and I'm not there, it just can't do them that day. For whatever reason, I need to listen to the coach about what the scaling your options.
Why? Because I want my score to be in a window. And I think that's what a quality is to me. That's what a quality score is where you in that window, it's not, Hey, we did Fran today. The quality scores are only those that were sub three. Absolutely not all right. You were in this time, you were under the time cap.
We can even say that's a quality score, right? And then you can make it more individualized with, Hey, I'm a certain level CrossFitter experience level. I got this score last time. I'm going to try to beat that time. Then you can get into this subjective, good score, bad score. But when we're here for fitness, I don't want this to ever be.
No your, quality of your workout, a quality workout quality score is not just how well you rank in the gym. And I think in a gym like this, it's tough for people to accept that because this gym is so freaking fit and bias aside. It's world. It's known now like worldwide. We're one of the top teams in the world when it comes to fitness.
So if you're only going to met, but if you take your score and go put it at a gym down the road in a different state, You might be the top dog there. Does that make it a higher quality score? I don't think so. 
Sam Rhee: [00:05:39] This is a really interesting topic because you can actually cut these definitions a whole bunch of different ways, right?
So you could argue, for example, a quality score is one where you personally, as an athlete, met the desired stimulus of that workout. Yup. For yourself. Yep. So for example, Fran, right? If you do it in. 20 minutes. You completely 
David Syvertsen: [00:06:03] missed ad quad is the 
Sam Rhee: [00:06:05] desired stimulus. Absolutely. If even if you had to scale it you want to finish Fran in X amount of time.
That's supposed to be a quality score now. How you get to that time range depends on your capability as an athlete. If you are exit you that's one thing if you can't for whatever reason but you still have to try to meet the parameters of a quality score. Then you're going to lighten the weight.
You're going to change. Instead of pull ups, you're going to do something else. So to me there's a very individualistic quality to what a quality score is, and it really depends on the workout. 
David Syvertsen: [00:06:45] Absolutely. 
Adam Ramsden: [00:06:45] Yeah. Yeah. And it depends on the movements in the workout cause if you have handstand pushups, we have people that are really good at handstand pushups.
They should be scaling that to make it more difficult to get that required stimulus. Absolutely. I think one of the great things that Dave does is that he says he programs a workout for the best people in the gym at that movement and then everybody should scale down to there, to their their quality movement and quality score from there which is difficult to do sometimes especially if you get to a movement that you really struggle with, whether it's handstand pushups, strict handstand pushups. For me if I see strict handstand pushups in a workout, I've got to think about what movements are paired with that.
Is there one place where I can push a little harder on another movement rather than to save time for that? So I'm still getting into the Into the stimulus, of the workout, but it are strict handstand pushups. Is it going to be a volume where I need to scale it even more to make sure I'm not doing a single strict handstand pushup, then waiting two minutes, right?
No. Cause then I'm not getting the stimulus of the workout. 
Sam Rhee: [00:07:57] I think things have changed also in CrossFit in terms of the emphasis of intensity and good scores versus good form. I was doing a little bit of backgrounding on this and for example, in 2012, Rob Orlando, and he has a very I don't know if he saw the video.
Yeah. He basically has a video about Fran and I keep forgetting, maybe not. Everyone knows what Fran is a 21, 15 9 thrusters pull ups. Yeah. At 95, 65 for men and women. But it's a fast workout. It's supposed to be really quick, fast intense. Yes. And he says, if you do Fran with perfect form, You haven't gone fast enough.
Okay. And and I've heard that in CrossFit a couple of times, like if you do the whole workout perfectly, you didn't workout at your appropriate intensity. 
David Syvertsen: [00:08:50] Yeah. You could say that and now the discussion, the rebuttal to that would be what are you here for? And that's what, like the one, the next topic I wanted to get into in, this episode or this, podcast.
Is, are you here for fitness or are you here for performance? They can be intertwined and I don't want to act like they can't be intertwined because a lot of what we do, most people are here, for fitness. Correct. All right. But we do care about performance. So yeah, I do want a PR I do want so, and my movement will get compromised.
Like I'm not going to act like it doesn't, when I'm trying to go really fast when I'm trying to go really fast, like my movement quality does suffer, but I think there should be awareness. That if that, if you are aware of that and you are going for performance and you know that you're compromising movement quality, there will be a negative, right?
That doesn't mean your ACL is going to rip into three pieces the next time and do a heavy squat clean. But every time you take a step towards performance, you are, you could likely be taking a step away from health and fitness. So this is where the next part of this is. This becomes individualized on the person.
All right. What is your personality like? What is your goal, right? Is ego a problem for you? Do, you realize egos a problem for you? Some won't admit it some will. And know if your goals do start to go trend towards performance based goals then. Yeah, there, there might be a position where Hey, you're going to have to push the boundary a little bit.
We can even take away a complex movement. They take burpees, there are, there is a right and unsafe way. There's a right and not right way to do burpees. A safe and unsafe way. When you're going full send on a bar facing burpee a burpee box jump, or is this where there is like a lot of rounding of the back and like lack of core stability and that things that can catch up to you after, a while.
And I think that's that this is where it becomes the individual's goal, and I think that's where the coach has come in a little bit. 
Adam Ramsden: [00:10:54] Yeah. And I think it also has to be Some self-reflection of, was it that last round that was crappy or was it the last five rounds where I was like, Ooh, maybe I shouldn't because if you're starting a workout with perfect form and as it gets two minutes into a 15 minute workout, your form starts to break down.
You need to dial it back. But if it's really just that end, maybe it's that last dead lift that you're just trying to rip off the ground because you're know you're moving on to something else that kind of mitigates the the, perspective of having, or the prospect of having an injury. 
If you're doing 20 crappy deadlifts, then we've got a problem. Which is something that I think the coaches are really good at saying you take a break here make sure you're setting up, make sure you're bracing before you lift that weight off the ground. Absolutely. If 
Sam Rhee: [00:11:46] As a coach, you want to see if there is a degradation of form, you want to see it in the appropriate setting.
Like you said not the whole way through and you can see it actually. Yeah. When you watch these pro athletes. So in the semis, I love it because there's such a range of athletes, right? So you have the Tia Claire Toomey's and then you have all of these lesser capable athletes and you see a Tia Claire Toomey crush it, but it does her form degrade, not even her one.
It never changes ever. So there's a false hood that you can, you like, that's where I think what we used to think about, like in 2012 is your form has to degrade, right? It does not have to degrade. It's just your capability as an athlete. So you see these really less capable athletes. Yeah. In order to try to push yourself performance wise, as he said, some you might have to do that.
But if your capability is really, excellent your, form, isn't going to 
David Syvertsen: [00:12:44] break down really, but 
Adam Ramsden: [00:12:46] grind up. But we also we can also look at, there was a, there's a workout in the games and I don't remember what it was, but it was shoulder to overhead right at the end and both TIAA and Matt failed a shoulder, it overhead right at the end of a workout.
Oh, they're both Olympic level weightlifters that shouldn't be happening, but they know they're finishing this workout. It's the last set. There is a little bit of a form breakdown, right? 
David Syvertsen: [00:13:11] So that's what the sport is. And even to a point, the fitness, like you do find your line like, and we, sh we all straddle it with certain movements and certain workouts where you're going to push yourself to the limit.
What does the limit mean? The limit means at some point you're moving breaks down. It's not always just failure. It's oh, I failed that clean. It was too heavy from where you could be like, Hey, I got the clean, but my feet went out inches on each side, my knees are caving. And I caught the bar halfway down my chest that's, a Latin, like you are at your line right now.
So I think as long as the athlete, this is where autonomy comes in. You need to be aware it's not just the coach's job to be like, Hey, that was a crappy place. Like you and you gotta make sure you don't build habits right now. We have. A lot of new people at the gym, we have a couple of guys, couple girls that high-level athletes, but they don't know what they're doing it.
And you can see after one fourth of the clock of the workout is gone. Like they're not even halfway through their movement quality breaks down. This is more range of motion issue. Like not squatting all the way down, not locking your elbows out. And it becomes. A race more than a workout.
And this is where I like talk about just the individual's personality is as coaches. You can, you have to try to figure these people out with knowing that you only see them for an hour a day, that you can tell certain people are here because they want the fast time they want the quality score.
They don't want the quality movement, but it is possible to pursue both. And I think if you follow the CrossFit sequence and this takes time, if someone wants an it's different for everybody, but if you want a number, I think it's at least a year of doing this consistently by as three to four days a week for a year straight, that you need to prove to yourself that you can move well.
And me moving well is you hit the standard. Yeah. And then you bring up efficiency and safety. Did you hit the standard? Did you lock everything out at the top of a thruster? Did you stand a bar up? Did you stand up on top of the box after you landed on it? Did you move well? Cool. Good for you.
All right, next up. Can you move well under some duress with a high heart rate with other movements, whether they're complimentary or not complimentary, can you continue to move well? Can you continue to hit that standard? Can you continue to hit wall ball depth? And every squat in a workout that also has thrusters like when you start to lose feeling in the leg, you really don't want to go all the way down.
All right, cool. Now you, pass that test right now. You are ready to start pursuing some scores. Like I think if we were like really military drill Sergeant here, like we wouldn't let anyone record a score until they proved all those things to us, but we're never going to do that. We'll never do that because I'm like, I'm saying the individual should be able, that's the mindset like, fitness is a quick fix for a lot of people. And I think that's where there's a disconnect with cross it. And some people is, if you really want to come into this and you really want progress and let's see what your body's capable of doing. Both you guys and myself included. Compare, what you understand now about movement and scores and RX and stimulus to what your first year across 
Sam Rhee: [00:16:25] the problem is, that I think all of us have gone through exactly what we're telling people not to do.
So for example, grace, for time, yes. It's a, 
David Syvertsen: [00:16:36] it's 30 clean and jerks at 1 
Sam Rhee: [00:16:38] 35 95 95. Yeah. So when I did it a couple of years ago, I could do 1 35, but not my, my movement was not quality. I was star fishing. It was like awful, but I could do it. And so I did it right. Cause I wanted to do grace.
Yeah. RX and I got through it. Yeah. No, that's an easy situation for a coach because as a coach it's hard. It's a hard and easy situation. The easy, the situation is easy because you know what the fix is, get the weight light enough until the athlete can move properly program themselves properly.
But it's a very hard. Solution to Institute as an, as a coach, because how, can, if someone told me, Sam, your movements are not good. I'm like, I'm good enough. Like I can do it. So how do you as a coach approach an athlete who's and this happens all the time. They are athletes who are getting there, but they're not maybe not there, but they really want to get after it.
And more often than not, we're just like, Okay. 
Adam Ramsden: [00:17:46] Yeah, I think I also think it's a double-edged sword for us, because if you're teaching somebody how to efficiently move a heavy barbell with a training bar. All of a sudden there's a disconnect there because you're just saying, okay, I know how to pick this up.
Like it's 15 pounds. I can pick this up and put it over my head in one fluid motion. I can have my arms out here. It's no big deal. We, tell them, okay, This is hard to understand because it's so light you won't really understand the efficiency of this movement and what it really means to fully extend your hips to get that barbell moving until you're under a heavier weight.
So we're toeing that line of saying we want it to be a little heavier, so you understand. Like how the efficiency tips that we're coaching will help you, but we don't want to go so far as to have those mechanics breakdown. 
Sam Rhee: [00:18:36] Yep. And sometimes though I have learned in those situations where I'm like, my form sucks.
I, oh, this is what he means by getting under the bar. This is what he means by the higher oh, this is easier now. So it was doing okay. Some reps at a not quality manner in order to figure under duress in order to be like, okay, now I can be efficient. I'm learning. 
Adam Ramsden: [00:18:59] So if we can tell it to the best athletes is that you always, when you're looking for somewhere to start, go back to the basics are there little things that you can tweak because we all have progressed at some point, chasing that good score.
Past a certain point of, an efficiency tip or the perfect form on a movement where we can always go back and say, okay, mechanics first, then consistency, then intensity which is something that, through all the reading I didn't hear until my first day at L one, which I think is something that a lot of people right, at the beginning.
Sam Rhee: [00:19:38] Let me pose another situation. You have think of someone at your, at the gym, who's pretty good. Maybe a little prone to injury, but can move well, can do pretty much everything. And, you program, 
David Syvertsen: [00:19:52] 75 snatches for time at 75 for guys 55 for ladies. So fast workout. It's fast.
Yeah. 
Sam Rhee: [00:20:04] The guy can chase it. He can chase it like he's going to back it. He's going to end up backing all of these snatches. It's gonna be really heavy on his back. Yep. What do you tell that athlete? 
David Syvertsen: [00:20:16] So my biggest move as worked for, so there's a thing an athlete can do in this thing a coach can do, I think what the athlete can do is I know everyone's a little different with videoing and feeling comfortable with that, but I think when you watch yourself, you learn a lot. And I really think that there are a lot of movements I've done. Oh, like I'm good there. And then I watch him be like, oh, that's terrible.
What am I doing? And I think that's one thing every person can do. Like you don't have to show anyone. You don't have to put it on social media, just watch the video working out. All right. What a coach can do is I've tried the, with so many different movements. Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn't is you literally, instead of talking just about the lift or the movement in relation to Randy, talk about all these different positions, your body needs to be in. At the start at the middle two thirds of the way through at the top. And you literally, you have the athletes hold those positions or you do tempo lifts.
And I think that can be a big part of, Hey, I feel comfortable with my snatch and Randy off the ground, but the second it reaches my knees. I can feel my shoulders are getting pulled down or when I'm going down for the touch and go reps, I don't feel my hips sinking at all. So what does that mean? I am literally just going to that
bent over position rounded. And like now I feel that. So that's what a coach can do is this is position one. This is position two, this position. Now does the athlete really pay attention and take that in? That's where this whole thing I've said this for years, this is a 50 50 relationship.
And I feel, I know you guys feel too there's pressure as a coach when we're doing nasty workouts. You do feel responsible, someone does well, or does not do well. They get hurt, they don't get hurt, but the athletes feel that way too because at the end of that, you can teach perfectly and if they don't do it right, or they get caught up and Hey, like I only have 25 left.
I'm just going to go for it. But I'll watch this. Like I'm watching the semifinals this weekend. There's a workout with touch and go. I think it was power cleans and like all those guys around in their backs all, every single one, it almost looked like they were trying to Travis Mary's in second place right now.
I've seen Danni Spiegel did that. Like they, it was like one of the most horrific things I've ever seen. I'm like, oh my gosh, like you're gonna have all these crossers watching her. Was it Gretel? The three, yeah, 
Sam Rhee: [00:22:44] the three power, the three cleans and then three burpees over Oakland jerks. 
David Syvertsen: [00:22:47] Yeah.
And it was, they were bad lifts. Yeah, they were. Yeah. And there's no way around it. So sometimes this is, again this is a, another topic that we're going to talk about down the road. The difference between sport and fitness and sometimes in sport, you do compromise that 
Sam Rhee: [00:23:04] making a calculated decision that they could be uninjured doing.
Cause it's faster just to round yeah. 
David Syvertsen: [00:23:11] Tap the ground. And a lot of those guys and girls have the muscle mass to protect their spine in that position. It's light 
Sam Rhee: [00:23:16] enough for them that they can get 
David Syvertsen: [00:23:18] where you're going to have to make a business lack of a better term of business decision here.
And I think if you're here for fitness, No, you got to maybe pick a couple of times a year where you're gonna actually act like that. Not in the normal Tuesday wad because your buddies here, 
Sam Rhee: [00:23:33] I would also caution that you got to remember, these athletes are getting. Tons of treatment. Yes. Or the workout.
That's a big, they're living super clean. And so if that athlete here decides to do Randy and round his back for the last 25, 
David Syvertsen: [00:23:46] he better be okay. Yeah. But they better 
Sam Rhee: [00:23:48] really take care of themselves 
David Syvertsen: [00:23:51] afterwards. It's all you're saying. People here 
Sam Rhee: [00:23:53] not sit in a chair for six hours afterwards so I think.
I don't really have a problem with a knowledgeable athlete, consciously deciding to push because I'm there. And that happens to me all the time. But if you're a knowledgeable athlete, you better know if you're gonna, if you're formed grades appropriately, and you're gonna push it. That you need to take care of yourself afterwards because you probably stressed out your body a little bit more than you needed to.
Adam Ramsden: [00:24:22] Yeah. And I, I think whenever you're looking at these professional athletes, especially in a workout like Gretel, which was announced a couple months ago. Yep. I guarantee every athlete on that floor has done that workout at least three or four times before just feeling it out, figuring out, okay, where can I push?
Can I you know, round my back on these and still feel fine tomorrow for my three training sessions and I'm going to be done. We don't have that if we're just coming into the gym once a day. So if it's the first time you're doing a workout, I would say. Take it easy and error on the side of caution and then do it again, three months down the road.
I had an open gym on Sunday, do the same workout and see 
David Syvertsen: [00:25:00] How you can. Yeah. 
Sam Rhee: [00:25:02] And sometimes you just have to get burned. You just have to touch the oven or the hot plate. And that's happened to me a bunch of times. My form is not great. I push it. I'm not taking care of myself and get injured.
I'm like, got to work on my form got to work on my quality movement. Don't worry about the score so much don't look at the whiteboard and try to compare myself to too many people. And that ha that has happened to me. Like more time. 
David Syvertsen: [00:25:26] Yeah. It's like being a parent, right? It's like kids like make these mistakes, but there are lessons in your life you're going to have to learn the hard way.
And that doesn't end when you're an adult. It doesn't like, you're, we're going to be going through that until, we die you're going to be learning lessons the hard way. And you'd take that as a learning experience, not something that's going to scar you and just want to push you away from ever pushing, I think is a big part of what we do is we push our bodies to the boundary and every now and then you're going to go over the boundary and something's going to happen.
But now, like you learn from that so that in a situation that comes up again down the road, don't go past that boundary. If you're making the same mistake over and over, we've got a 
Sam Rhee: [00:26:03] problem. So the Open aside and competition aside. Yeah. How many times a year would you say, you know what in a regular class workout, you're like I'm sending it for, this.
Adam Ramsden: [00:26:17] I try to figure out a workout that I want to really go for once a week with the weekly programming. And I think it's great to be able to look at a week's worth of programming and say, okay and, it's got to depend on the movements. It's got to depend on something I'm comfortable with.
How your body can change. Yeah. Yeah. If, it's a Wednesday workout where I know it's just, okay. Burpees and sit ups and all that stuff, I'm saying, okay, I can really send it on this, but maybe I'll wake up Wednesday and be like, Ooh maybe those squats got to my lower back.
Maybe I want to ease back on the sit-ups. So it's I, think it's a fluid kind of evaluation process that you constantly have to be going through. You can't just say, okay, I'll show up at the gym and I'm going to go. A hundred percent it's just, that's a recipe for disaster.
David Syvertsen: [00:27:05] I've seen people do that. And usually there just isn't long. You see the guys that come in, like they're just full send every day, unless you're five, six years into this. And you your training age beyond that before cross, it was high. So you have this really high level base.
I think that's the number I was going to say too. I like to pick one workout a week where it's like, all right, Going for it just kinda for multiple reasons. But I think to do it more than that, not going to tell you not to, but you better have some lifestyle habits that support that.