S01E06 - CrossFit Sport vs. CrossFit Health

Welcome to The Herd FIT Podcast @herdfitpodcast with Coaches David Syvertsen @davesy85 and Sam Rhee @bergencosmetic. This podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition, and most importantly, MINDSET.⁠

Our next episode sometimes difficult for all of us to wrap our heads around as athletes. We talk about approaching CrossFit as a SPORT versus CrossFit FOR HEALTH. What is the difference, and will knowing the difference help us as athletes?

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@crossfit #crossfit #fitness #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #agoq #crossfitgames #crossfitgames #clean #fitness #crossfit

TRANSCRIPT
S01E06 - CrossFit Sport vs. CrossFit Health
David Syvertsen: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the  fit podcast with Dr. Sam Rhee and coach Dave Syvertsen from CrossFit Bison. Today's topic is one that I've been really excited to talk about because when we first started talking about doing this we wrote a huge outline of topics that we'll discuss a huge list of guests that we're going to have on.
And this was my number one. I think it's one of the most important thoughts a CrossFitter should have throughout the year, not just a one-time thing and it is CrossFit the sport vs, CrossFit the health program. And it's a blurry line. And I don't think this podcast is going to clear up the line completely, but what it does, it's going to provoke a lot of thought that I think that should be front and center with your decision-making in relation to how you're approaching CrossFit throughout the next, however long you knew this for. Let's dive right into it. I think the first thing we really need to do is what is the difference between CrossFit sport and CrossFit health. CrossFit sport to me is competition.
And what is competition? It's winning. A ranking having someone judge you in official judging system and I'm not talking about competing with the person next to you in your day-to-day Watts, even though you can compete to help push yourselves, but a real competition, a real sport has a scoring system.
The whole world can see if they want, where you rank, whether it's the top or the bottom or somewhere in the middle. And there's an official scoring system. That is what the sport is to me. Any thoughts on that. 
Sam Rhee: [00:01:42] Yeah. I, this was a very interesting topic when you first presented it to me and I was thinking.
I had to do some digging about that. And I said, what is CrossFit or what is CrossFit health? And the first thing I thought of when I was thinking about it is competition. But the other thing is how you're training for it. So CrossFit as a sport to me is almost like training skills. So for example CrossFit as a sport has skill.
Which CrossFit as as for health generally, doesn't really focus on. So for example I was looking at other sports. So for example, snowboarding is a sport. It may increase your health, but you're not doing it strictly to increase your fitness, right? Marathon running can increase your fitness, but you're not doing it for fitness.
You're doing it for competition for. As a sport and there are, there's a skill to marathon running absolutely jujitsu. It can increase your health, but no one does it just for health and doing, there are major risks with it. You're competing. So when you think across it, and you say I'm doing it strictly for health, there is a subset of it that you're focusing on.
If you're doing it as a sport. It's not, there are some potential risks involved, which you wouldn't necessarily undertake if you were, we're just thinking strictly about your health.
David Syvertsen: [00:03:05] Yep. I think that's a good way of putting it. I think when I learned this from James Fitzgerald, I want to give him credit and found this from my OPEX course that I took and he said, and this page, and there's a great graph.
That we can maybe try to show on the YouTube video is the closer, so you can cross it the closer you bring, cross it to sport. The further away you're getting from health, the closer you bring cross it, the closer you've been cross it to health. They're further away. You're going to get from sport or slash being competitive.
And I think it's really important to know what you're in it for. So that's really going to be the premise of this podcast. Shed some light on why are you here? Why are you doing what you're doing? And is it going to benefit the sports side or benefit the health side? Is it possible that benefit both.
That's what we're going for here. And I think the line gets really blurry. So I'm really excited to dive into this and, help bring some clarity because I think one of the worst things about crumbs. Is, as you get into years, 3, 4, 5, 6, you're doing the open every year. You don't know what you're here for some days, you're here to get the best time on the white board or compete in the open where you get a rank.
Do you have an official scoring system? Other days, you just want to be healthy. You just want to be like, Hey, I want to live longer and prosper. I want to play with my kids in 10 years. I want to play with my grandkids in 50 years, it's, it goes down a lot of different rabbit holes, but I think it's something that we should all think about. 
Sam Rhee: [00:04:39] CrossFit first evolved, it actually was primarily directed towards health and fitness for law enforcement for firefighters for military, so that they could perform their daily activities better. It then it also evolved into every day, functional fitness for anybody. And there wasn't really a sport component to it until yeah.
Years into it when they said, Hey, let's start competing against each other and let's get together and have competition. And then it really, at that point started to really evolve as a sport. But I think when you look at what most of us everyday come into the gym to do I know a lot of us look to compete to a certain degree.
I think it is really important for us to see how we stack up against others, whether it's the entire white board or maybe three or four friends that you're like, you know what, let me, I measure myself against these people, but it's to realize your potential. Not only in terms of health, but it does start to bleed over more and more into competition. And then, yeah. 
David Syvertsen: [00:05:44] And thinking about this, the sport across it right now is still considered to be an infancy stage. If you look at major league baseball, the NBA, the NFL, you're talking decades and decades of being. And thinking about how much those leagues and sports have evolved over those times.
So right now, from our perspective, like we're in the sport of CrossFit, some of us are in the sport of CrossFit at its infancy stages where they're still trying to figure this thing out. And they're very open about that. They've Castro says that all the time, like we have a lot to fix and we know that, but you can't expect this to be perfect.
A decade in baseball. Wasn't if you knew what baseball and football and NFL were there. First 10 years, you would laugh and look at how much it's evolved from a player from a safety standpoint, from a rule standpoint, from a scoring standpoint. And so I think that it's interesting that, we're still very early in the stages of competitive CrossFit for those that want to compete.
And that makes it harder for someone that doesn't really know. If they're in this for fitness or sport. Now I had someone messaged me the other day. Like they're loving the tune. They just came here a month or two ago. And they said I've never been in such a competitive environment every day. And, he was a college athlete, so he has this like background of competing and training and he's never going do across a competition his entire life.
He said it was like, I'll never compete. He goes, but he comes in here every day to compete. Not because I don't think he's trying to beat everyone in the class, but it's the comradery, the group intensity there, if you're pushing yourself, I'm going to push myself. So this is where it becomes like, is he competing or is he just trying to push himself?
Because he's using the energy in the room to maximize his physical potential from a fitness perspective, from a health perspective. And I think that gets blurry. Is that competing to you? 
Sam Rhee: [00:07:40] Yeah, I think there is a level of the degree of competition to them. By definition, CrossFit is measurable and repeatable, right.
And if you could, it could be as simple as competing against yourself. Yep. And we often do that. We see how we did on a particular workout or how much weight we're moving and we're competing against ourselves with that. Yeah. That is not have any. That is related to our health increase, but it's if you just did your own workout, you could maintain a very reasonable level of health, right?
It's when you start to push those boundaries, that's that is the level of competition when you're pushing yourself beyond where you feel your health benefits accrue. And whether it's the people around you, whether it's against yourself. Being a competitive athlete doesn't mean you have to go to the games or go to semi-finals. It could just be the open, just be a local competition, whether, some people don't, but right. It's really your mindset in terms of how you approach your work. 
David Syvertsen: [00:08:44] Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of brings us to the next topic. I think it's important. And I know not everybody agrees with this, but I think it's important for every CrossFitter to know.
Are you in this more for health or you in this more for sport? Are you a competitor? And we're going to talk about what a competitor is, because I think it gets a bad rap. In a way that you pump them up too much oh, you're the best athlete, the gym, you must be competitive or absolutely not.
It has nothing to do with being to me, a competitor has nothing to do with how good or how bad you are at a CrossFit, right? It's about your approach and why you're training and you sign up to compete. So technically speaking, everybody that signs up for the open for those three weeks now, Is a competitor, right?
They are competing. Their name is out there for everyone to see they're getting judged. If you go to a gym that does it right. And you have a rank at the end, and you know that's a competitor to me someone that signs up for a local competition, that's a competitor to me. I disagree with one of the main voices of CrossFit, his name's Chuck Carswell. He's an OG. And I remember him talking about, and the he's talking about, in my opinion, more from a gym culture perspective, but he said, you're only a competitor if you're doing Fran and under two 30 and you ranked top 1% in the open you can squat clean this. You could snatch that.
I strongly disagree with that because there are such a small amount of people that can actually do that. And everyone that can do that now at some point could not do that. They evolved into that. You don't wake up out of bed doing Fran in two 30, your years across it in. So a competitor to me is simpler than these like micro level, metrics that you're using with lifts and workouts.
It's are you signing up for competitions and then are you training to try and pursue your optimal performance at that competition? Yeah. 
Sam Rhee: [00:10:49] There are degrees of that. Yes. I think the simplest thing I would think of is as a person on a personal level, if you're only invested in your health, When you approach a workout and you start and it goes 3, 2, 1 go.
If it's only for health, you don't care about your score, right? You don't care about your performance. You're doing it just to get your heart rate up, to get stronger. You have no adrenaline. Yeah. That's health. Yeah. Like when you go to the gym for example, if you went to planet fitness and you had your stuff going on and you did your treadmill, and then you did your bench and all that. Was there adrenaline really pumping through you?
Were you worried about that workout, right? You were not worried in any sense you just got through it, you checked off your boxes, health achieved. Yep. Great. Exactly. When you show up and if anyone has ever been a little nervous. Like, how am I going to do on this? And a little worry, what's my time going to be?
What's my time. Can I finish? Yeah. That is a competitive mindset. Even the smallest bit of feeling like that. Yeah. That is a competitive, 
David Syvertsen: [00:11:57] competitive mindset, and do you want to label that person a competitor? If someone. Like there, there are people here that they go hard, they get nervous, but they honestly in my opinion, they don't care that much about what the score is like.
Does it make them feel good if they have a great score shore? Does it make them feel bad if they get their butt whooped? Sure. Yeah. 
Sam Rhee: [00:12:15] There are degrees you can now. So the X like highest degree would be like, say a Matt Frazier who says, you know what? I got to work on my double unders and I don't want to work on my calves so much.
So they buy a rope that just swings and they practice swinging your wrists. Yep. Yep. Now you're a competitor to the nth degree. So there, but there are variations all the way between just being nervous for workout all the way up to. You know what I'm going to be. Number one in the world. 
David Syvertsen: [00:12:43] Matt Frazier is a good example of this. He trained as a competitor for a long time, had a lot of success, and he's pretty open about the fact that he's retired now and he's training more for light to for aesthetics, a, to get thicker, bigger, more muscular, get ripped, all that, but he's also, he's like my training now leads me closer to him.
Then it does competition and it's, I appreciate and respect that he can turn a switch off in the competitor room and turn the switch on and the health room. And it does change his workouts, but it doesn't mean he's not working hard. It doesn't mean that he's pushing the limits every now and then. There's this I bet he has a, rarely has a nervous tick workout where he's really trying to figure out.
So if you, if someone can take something from this. No. I think what it would do is easy. A lot of anxiety with people. Who's we have a lot of people here that are in this kind of gray area. They want to be competitive or they want to have a good score, but they also want to have, a normal life outside of car.
They just want to come here one hour, a day, five days a week and work out. Make themselves healthier, which again, we've talked about this several times that is more outside the gym than it is in the gym. And that's where I think you can tie these two together a little bit, but you're here for a hard workout.
Yes. You might get a little nervous here and there. Do you want to improve your capacity? You want to improve your scores, but if you're not bringing it home with you, you're just trying to, you come here, you check that box. And I think it's a healthy mindset to do that. Bringing stress here home, or you're not freaking out midwife because you're, you lost your muscle up.
Sam Rhee: [00:14:17] I think the other thing that people mistake is that being a competitor or training, like a competitor means pushing the boundaries of risk injury, which is actually. So not the case. Yeah. You do in certain situations. And Rich Froning one said, when I'm training I listened to my body when I'm in competition, I tell my body to shut up or something like that.
And there are very few situations in which true competitors will run the risk of injury. It's usually right before de-load, before a max like a competition where they're really maxing their volume, but 99% of the time, what are they really doing there? They're training to prevent injury, right?

David Syvertsen: [00:15:00] Accessory movements beyond the, like they're not coming in and doing Fran three times a day. 
Sam Rhee: [00:15:03] And that's what people who just say, you know what, I'm doing this for health and not doing it for competitive reasons. They could take a lot from that. 
David Syvertsen: [00:15:10] So I think I really do think if you're on the health side or you think you're more on the competitive side or the sports side, you can learn from the other side and the S and that's why I think there's a blurry line where, like the example you just showed talked about where a lot of these high level competitive athletes, I would say within training, 80% of it is injury prevention.
Load management, volume management, different tiers of intensity throughout the year. And then they pick again, they try to like, you're trying to peak at a certain time where I think if someone that's in it from health, what can they learn from someone that's here for performance? It's exactly that just on a scale down level a little bit.
And it's just basically what I think that the biggest difference between someone that's in it for health and more sport is. You don't need to work out two, three times a day. If you're here for health, if you're here for competition, you do have to do extra work. Know the days are gone where you show up once a day.
And I even say that for people that have a huge training background, there's this sport is too big. Now that you just can't get to a point where you're just working out once a day, there's just too many things you got to work on. So what can the competitor. Learn from the person that's here for health.
Sam Rhee: [00:16:28] That's a good question. I see it more from health learning from competitors. Yep. I think one thing that both have in common more now than they did, maybe five or six years ago in CrossFit for sure is accessory training. Yep. I think I see a lot of. People who are here for health, for fun, where they're getting frustrated, because either they worry about injury or they're not making the progress that they feel like they can make, you got to do some boring stuff, too.
That takes awhile. And either you can do the boring stuff. Healthy. Yep. Or you can do it when you tweak your quad and your shoulder, and then you're going back and rehabbing it and doing single leg splits, squats or regular, shoulder rehab type stuff. You have to focus on strengthening yourself.
Which does means not necessarily doing fun partner metcons like that. Right?  Addressing the fact that when you do a clean, you're leaning back and really getting into your form. So the health part of it is means you actually have to take some of those aspects a little bit more seriously, yeah. From the other side, from the competitors into the health side some of it might be mindset, maybe. It might be when to I think in the old days, especially a couple of years ago, you saw these competitive athletes just piling on so much volume and intensity.
And this was one of the big secrets and Matt Frazier said he, he really didn't hit big metcons for a long time. He would just do a lot of zone, two training. He would build up a base of conditioning and what a lot of healthy people do like that. We see, they do a lot of healthy condition just because they like it.
I know some of the fittest CrossFit athletes, they love running. And they just build up a base of conditioning 
David Syvertsen: [00:18:17] And, it's not just to get better at running. 
Sam Rhee: [00:18:19] No, they just enjoy it. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. But so there's, so CrossFit being a great competitive CrossFit athlete does not mean doing CrossFit yes all the time, 
David Syvertsen: [00:18:31] Right, yeah. And that's what I want to touch on too. Is I, the one thing I think a competitor can learn from the person that's here for help. Is one just the mental approach, like we have several examples of people in this gym that are here for health. They're still competitive.
They still do well. But they don't, they're not stressing out if they didn't hit a number for more than a couple minutes where I think the pressure of competitors sometimes take, gets the best. Where they're constantly analyzing their, how, what their weights are moving, how their gymnastics going, what their engine is, and they leave all these training sessions, just mentally beat up and it leads to a burnout.
Or they're just like, I can't handle this anymore. I'm out where from my perspective, I'm watching them just go on this nice long, slow trajectory. But in their head, they're constantly wanting to be here just a little higher. And the next time I wish I was just a little better. I was a little faster where the person that's here for health, just chill.
They checked the box, they went home and the competitor I think gets too caught up into daily results. And again, the sport is evolving still where. When I first started competing, I would say, like trying to compete at a high level three, four years ago now, like 2017, 2018, it was just like, go hard, go all out all the time.
And you know what? There was some short term benefit to it. I got fitter faster. All right. But starts to beat you up and then you start to mentally get ruined every time you don't have a good session, where the people that are here for health, like whether their score and yesterday's watch.
23 minutes or 19 minutes doesn't matter at all. And I actually think more competitive. Throughout the year would benefit from that mindset. Like it doesn't matter if you're a minute or two slower, it doesn't matter if your weight was 10, 15 pounds lighter than you thought I want it to be. It's just part of your training process.
And I think that's one thing I think competitors can learn from the people that are here just for help. I 
Sam Rhee: [00:20:35] think I get, I personally do get wrapped up like that too. I remember this past year I had set a couple of goals and one of them was handstand walks. Yep. And as it got closer and closer to the open, I was like, oh man, I was really stressing out a lot that I was just not getting it.
And in the past, when I was learning skills like bar muscle ups or something else, you hit it and then leave it alone for awhile. And then you circle back and you hit it and that sort of mentality. Less stressful. I wasn't like so focused on it and I think it actually helped me and physically helped it physically helped me because I think when, I think we're both guilty of it when we focus on trying to achieve something and get it right.
Keep hitting it over and over again, whether it's pistols or something else it's and you know what sometimes the health aspect of it should prevail where we 
David Syvertsen: [00:21:33] take a step back, 
Sam Rhee: [00:21:34] Keep focusing and then 
David Syvertsen: [00:21:36] yep. So we'll circle back to it. Yeah. Another thing I noticed this a lot that I think someone that's in health can learn from a competitor. It's just like in your daily workouts, a little bit of strategy, because again, if you're here for health, you don't always need to shoot for these, the fastest possible time, but you aren't trying to get efficiency out of your hour that you're here. And efficiency to me in most cases is getting the most amount of work done and the smallest amount of time with quality movement, first quality score.
Second something we've already talked about, but I watched someone like Ryan Radcliff like he was. Miss you already Ryan. But the he's so strategic, like with where he puts his bar in relation to his robe in relation to his pull-up bar and a workout that has thrusters, double unders and pull-ups. And I don't think it's necessarily because he wants to get the best score in the gym or beat that person.
I really don't think Ryan takes like that. I think what is it like, Hey, I'm here. I have a 20 minute workout. Like I'm going to maximize my time. And there are some people where I see how they set up or I see what they're doing in between moving. So I'm man, you'd be getting more work done.
You'd be getting  you're here to burn more calories or build more muscle, whatever, if you just simply put some thought into where your stuff was or what your paces were like, when you talk to someone that's a high-level competitor, they can tell you split. Of every round of every workout, like yesterday's workout.
Depending on when you watch this, it was the Friday grinder that had the toes of bar with bar muscle-ups with shoulder overhead bar muscle-ups run. And then, did the reverse order of the way back. I can tell you the split of all three rounds like that. And I'm programmed to think like that.
And it's not because anyone's ever going to know about it. It's because I want to see how much did I slow down. And then what was the reason I slowed down? Was it the heavier barbell? Was the gymnastics capacity. Was it the run? It was the run. And I think that's something that even if I'm in this for health, like when I don't want to compete anymore, at some point I know it's going to happen.
That health factor. Like I'm still going to want to optimize my workout and it's not going to be try harder. That's not what I'm talking about. It's set things up correctly. Know what my splits are. Maybe if I ran a little slower round one, I would have a faster time. Which means I did more work in X amount of time, which means I'm more, I'm fitter, right?
Like I'm still going to pursue high level fitness when I'm not competing. You 
Sam Rhee: [00:24:06] know, I think that's one of the most critical things that as you move from a novice CrossFitter to an experienced CrossFitter, is that efficiency of moving. And, you could make, for example, if shouldered, overheads, right?
Like there, if you can cycle the barbell catch dip, go back up right away. You're gonna get more reps done. Yep. Now, if you caught it stopped yeah. 
David Syvertsen: [00:24:34] And then brought it back up again. Yeah. Would 
Sam Rhee: [00:24:37] you it's harder. So you could argue you're getting fitter because you're holding the barbell longer. It's harder to, you're moving harder, but at the end of the day, you're doing.
Fewer reps. Yep. And your work capacity in terms of actually physically moving the bar bell is less. You should be incorporating catching it smoothly gills. Yes. 
David Syvertsen: [00:25:02] So the skill 
Sam Rhee: [00:25:04] of being a competitor is really important to the. Focused athletes because an athlete will be like why do I have to learn how to do this super smoothly or I'm still getting healthier just by doing it the way I normally do it.
But if you do learn these skills you will be able to increase your work capacity, know you we'll probably be able to avoid injury to a great degree. I know it's much. If I have to hold onto that barbell for that long while I'm doing that, it's going to kill on my shoulders. It's not good. I need to cycle, to, in order to to protect myself.
Yep. And and for a lot of these movements you should think like a competitor, even if you're a health guy and go I don't need to learn how to do that. Yeah. Try to learn those movements because in the long run, they're going to make you a fitter, healthier, more injury, less injury prone for, 
David Syvertsen: [00:25:58] yeah.
So like again, to echo this, right? If you're in this for health, more than you are sport, learn from the people that are in from the sport, because it can optimize your health, right? The difference between the health and the sport, like I said, it's really more about fault. And intensity and your mental approach, right?
Like you don't need to come back. If you do, today's wad, you don't need to come back tonight and do your accessory squats, and then you see you Monday, like that's the difference between the two. It's not the skills that you're trying to learn. It's how much you're doing.
And then a little bit more like mental approach. Now, as a coach, I have a few thoughts on this. I want to get yours first as a coach. All right. Put your coaching hat on. You have an athlete here that is, experience pretty proficient with everything still getting better, right? He or she comes to you and says I want to compete now.
Like I'm ready to compete. Is there a line where from a coach's perspective, you can say Hey, you're ready. Or are you ready? Day one to compete. And there's no right or wrong here. It's just try to maybe picture someone that's newer here to here for a few months, pretty proficient with most of the movements they move correctly.
They're healthy. I want to compete. What's the response. 
Sam Rhee: [00:27:16] You know, it would really depend on the individual. For example, if that person has, like, when they say compete, what does that mean? Does that mean to do really well in local competitions? 
David Syvertsen: [00:27:28] Like again that's one of the first things you should ask. What do you mean by compete? Do the open. We're going to do the open. So up for a local comp right. 
Sam Rhee: [00:27:36] Or to get to the quarter finals.
David Syvertsen: [00:27:38] Try to get to the quarter finals, and then you're talking semi-finals and you're talking games, right?
Sam Rhee: [00:27:43] So if they have high level aspirations, then their life needs to be built around high level aspirations.
That's it? You have to reshape your life. If you have a full-time job, if you have all these other responsibilities that are our time sucks, you're going to have to tell that person. Probably not going to happen because it's not what you do in the gym. It's how you shape your life outside again, to maximize what you do in the jail.
David Syvertsen: [00:28:09] Yep. That's a great response. 
Sam Rhee: [00:28:10] If you like partying, if you like going out on Friday nights. 
David Syvertsen: [00:28:15] The sport isn't for you. Yeah. You can't the high level sport, right? The high level scores is for you right now. 
Sam Rhee: [00:28:20] If it's just doing great in the bison bowl doing great every day on the whiteboard doing as well as you can in the open, you don't like, do you know? Yeah. 
David Syvertsen: [00:28:29] A little bit more like balance yeah. 
Sam Rhee: [00:28:33] You can work within whatever limitations you have in your life to, to do those. 
David Syvertsen: [00:28:37] Yeah. I agree with that. I very strongly agree with that. That was a good response. My, my thing that I will first ask someone is I have two questions and if you can't answer them, I won't consider you in the sport.
First one is why do you want to compete? And I think that there's not a need some sort of dramatic answer. It could literally be as simple as I just want to see how far I can take it. Awesome. Hey, I had this inspiration from this person that I want to try to match that. I want to dedicate this to this person.
Fine. Need an answer though, right? I don't want it to, if the answer is, I don't know, like I'm turning off the conversation or we need to go further in and why did you come to me and say, I want to compete. All right. Part two is what are you going to sacrifice? And again, I think that's the number one thing, because again, when you're here for health and you're here for sport, it's less about here and more about the big picture you have to put hours and hours, like things need to revolve around if you're going for high level sport.
Now again, Hey Dave, I want to sign up for the guard and said open October. Everyone should sign up for the garden state open 9 0 8 in October 23rd. I want to sign up for that and compete it. Awesome. So let's freeze next couple months, train competitor. You're going to do a few extra things. We're going to clean some things up outside the gym.
You're going to do extra volume. You're intense that your intentions are going to be a little more serious and there are going to be things around the gym, you in your life that needs to be altered. For a few months. And then you go that is to me, like that's a true competitor is that, some people want to sign up so that some people can come cheer for them at a comp and they get a free, t-shirt fine.
But again, that's just more you just want something to do on a random weekend. 
I think that the thing is, if you really want to do it, you won't even think of it as a sacrifice, like itchy you, that word sacrifice doesn't really come into your mind. It's if you really care about something, you'll do whatever you want.
You can do within limits to achieve that. And if someone says, you know what, you're going to have to cut it out, eating X. Yeah. Done. You're going to have to get to bed by X time. Then that's a big one. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have to structure your training so you don't get to do all the fun stuff, but you got to do crappy stuff that you don't like doing, sit on the bike for 30 minutes. 
You gonna be like, if you're going to spend more hours here, you're going to have to take hours away from elsewhere. And I actually think there's a lot of people that I know personally that want to compete, but they have a job and kids and they're like, Hey, I can't put the sport in front of my job and kids.
And I respect that. And, but be aware that, like that the upside that you have. Probably will not be reached because you can't put this in front of other things, 
Sam Rhee: [00:31:18] Athletes that we know who are pretty high level ish. Yeah. And they've basically incorporated this stuff into their lives for the most part I'm thinking of Matt Malone, right?
He runs his macros. Yeah. He run, a training program pretty carefully. He works his life around, like he structures his life, so he's able to do the things that he can do, it still has a full-time job as law enforcement. He's still super busy, but. I'm pretty sure he's not like partying every weekend or anything. And he's eating pretty, really super clean, like super clean. And and I think he, he legit enjoys it because yeah. 
David Syvertsen: [00:31:53] So he works on mobile. Like he works on mobility. He'll talk to you about his front rack mobility and all these things. It still sucks, but it's gotten a lot better than it used to be because like, those are the things I have a lot of people just don't want to do.
Right. 
Sam Rhee: [00:32:05] Is focused on it and he has goals and he wants to see how far he can go with it. And for him, he's going to probably look back at like, you want to be able to look back at it. This was great. I really tried my hardest at something you don't want to look back and be like man, I wish I could've partied. There are two ways of thinking like, oh, should I just wasted my life? Just eating clean and living like a monk when I could have more fun. If you think like that, then you really should be doing. 
David Syvertsen: [00:32:34] Yeah, you shouldn't be like looking at training and living to compete as something that's just like, weighing you down, like you're constantly missing out on things. All right. It's summer. There's going to be a lot of go down the shore pool parties, stuff that a lot of your friends that are not in this that you want to do, but honestly you probably should not be doing if you want to get to a high level. And. If you're constantly just weighing yourself down, being upset about not being involved in that stuff, then Hey, get away from it, get away from the sport.
And you could still be a very healthy person and go out and have some fun every now and then, you always have to put a cap on it and eat a bad meal, eat a cheat meal every now and then, but again, you got to put a cap on it. 
Sam Rhee: [00:33:17] So from a health perspective, though, those are the good things you can take away as a competitor, right? If you do incorporate some of these routines into your life as a health person, Or you're going to do so much better in your life, right? If you have to have a glass of wine every single night, and you're like maybe I cut that out and see how I feel. Or you're like, you know what? I'm going to really force myself to try to get to bed at a certain time every night. Like those little things will help you way more than that hour in the gym. I agree every day. And when you look at what these competitors do and you incorporate that and it becomes a habit, it's maybe so much of a snack. Okay. 
David Syvertsen: [00:33:57] So the last thing I have on my outline here is. Can you cycle in and out, I'm here for health, but these three months I want to be in it for competitive sport. And then I want to go back to the health. Can I go back and forth against a lot of people do that? 
Sam Rhee: [00:34:17] There are some high level guys who do that a little or used to like Matt Frazier used to like, let himself go like crazy.
Yeah. Has an off season. Yeah, like an off season so are you talking about an off season 
David Syvertsen: [00:34:29] talking more? I liked the Watts this week. I want to be the competitor. I'm talking about the people that are just constantly yo-yo back and forth. Matt Frazier was a pro athlete. I want to relate this more to the people that are in our gym that are confused on what they're in it for.
A lot of people don't think they're good enough to live with themselves competitor. One of the first things we said. Being a competitor does not mean you're good at cross it and being in it for health does not mean you're bad across it. Like we got to get that out like that. I think that's what I was taught, but there's a lot of gyms that say oh, it's the competitors over there.
They get special treatment. They're the best ones in the gym. No, absolutely not. Okay. They're just, their approach is different. They want to do more so that they can compete. Had a competition if someone's going to do, be in that mindset for a few weeks, but then they get their butt kicked. They want to go drink, weekend after weekend.
And they're like, ah, you know what? I don't want to compete. I'm just going to go I'm in it for health. And then they start feeling gross and discussing, and then three weeks later, they're like, you know what, I'm going to start really taking this serious. I'm going to do extra work. W how does one avoid that?
You 
Sam Rhee: [00:35:39] know, Consistency in life is generally good. Yeah. If you have to yo-yo between one extreme to the other you're you haven't found what you really want. Yep. I think I'm putting it. I think you're going to have to tell your listen being a competitor does not mean living like a monk all the time.
Right. But you have to say to yourself, I am a competitor. I am competing and that's my competitive mindset. I'm going to, for a period of time, let myself do X, and Y, but I'm never letting go of that mindset. And I'm going to come back to it, if if you're truly giving up that competitive mindset, and focusing on health only, you are not really a competitor in any way, shape or form, you and I wrestled with this myself because I like to see how well I can do, I feel like there's potential that I have, but then you go, you get through the grind and you're like, yeah, I really don't want to do this.
And then you're, and then you ask yourself what is your motivation? What is it that I want to do? Where am I going to go with this? And that's where those people have to have a a real tough self evaluative talk with themselves. And I'm in that process. I'm still every day asking myself when it 
David Syvertsen: [00:37:06] starts to hurt a little bit.
Like 
Sam Rhee: [00:37:07] Where am I with this? What am I going to 
David Syvertsen: [00:37:09] calve is hurting. Why do I need to go do these 800 meter run repeats like yesterday for health? They say for health, you don't need to do it, but right now, like again, when I program next level for you I'm not really looking, I want you to be healthy obviously.
But I'm training you more for competitive sport, right? If you ever say Dave, I don't want to compete anymore. I'm going to say Sam, if your calf hurts, don't run ever again, like there are things you can do, there are a lot of movements you can avoid forever. Like I think when I'm done, I'm never gonna do a pistol again.
And I won't even be a little upset about it because there's too many negatives that occur. And and it sacrifices other movements. And then I have, I have an orthopedic saying like you're knee left and he's really beat up. Like I like when I'm done competing, I'm not going to stress about not doing the pistol.
Sam Rhee: [00:37:54] I wouldn't be surprised if people hear us talk. What the F did they just talk about, because I don't, I'm not any more clear about training for health or training as a competitor. And that's okay. Because this is a very nebulous thing that I'm asking myself every day. Right? Is, am I training for health?
Am I training as a competitor? And it's a process that everyone has to come in 
David Syvertsen: [00:38:17] it's thought-provoking. Yeah. And I think that's something, a lot of people in general just don't do enough. We spent too much time on social media and looking at people's freaking stories where we should really spend some time thinking about why we're doing things, what we're doing them for, who we're doing them for.
And, we don't want to make this podcast about Sam and Dave,, but I will say this after. I qualify this year. I talked to you about this. I talked to a handful of people about this. Like I said, I'm going to take a month and decide if I want to pursue high level competition. Last December I thought it was there and felt good about it.
All of winter, all of spring. It's never felt right. Got my butt whooped in the online qualifier. And I got to a point I'm like, all right, do I want to spend another year? Because I will. A person trying to fit in athlete lifestyle rather than athlete lifestyle, trying to fit in, my priorities, the gym, Ashley Brock.
And, I decided, after a month and just like letting myself chill, like I'm going to pursue this for another year. And, what it does for me. I, it was a lot of thought, a lot of discussion on people. What it does for me is it answers a lot of questions. Should I be doing this with, on the weekend?
Should I eat this? Should I go to bed at this time? Should I eat this meal before I go to bed? Should I drink this much water to like, and again, it's partial health. Because my optimal health will bring me to my optimal performance level. Correct. But the difference is if I had decided, you know what, I don't want to pursue high level competing anymore.
I'm not going to worry about doing the two to three sessions per day. It's going to do one workout a day, maybe an extra run or two, maybe an extra lift or two, but I'm not going to snap. Do all these snatch drills that I'm doing these weekly pistol work that I'm doing. Because the only reason I'm doing that is for the sport.
I don't need pistols and squats snatch to be fit and healthy. So that is when my, if I decided that I'm not, I don't want to compete or try to compete at a high level. I wouldn't be stressing about that kind of stuff. And maybe I would go out for an extra beer on the weekends. I maybe I would have this extra meal, not again, not losing it and then losing track of health.
But it's an underlying, it's always there. And one thing, I think it helped people that yo-yo back and forth is my goal is long-term it's next year. So it's going to shape my decisions. Every day, every week, every month until next may. If I'm just going to make a competitive mindset for this week, there's not a lot of flow.
There's not a lot of consistency. And like you said, a lack of consistency just puts you in that, like that really dark gray area where you just don't know what you're doing right now. 
Sam Rhee: [00:41:00] You have to have mental clarity to do and I'm giving myself the grace right now. So after Aycock and everything, I just considered an off season.
Yeah. So I'm just I really enjoy working out. I really enjoy coming to the gym. That's a big part of my life. Even if I was just doing it for health, that would never change. Right. 
So I'm sitting there. Not in full idle mode, but assess self-assessment mode. I don't have, I know my time is running out because you can't just like, yeah. And we talked about this in summit. How in December be like, okay, now I'm going full send on this and I'm going to yeah. I know I'm going to have to figure out what it is that I'm doing.
But it's okay to mull it over. 
David Syvertsen: [00:41:40] Yeah, absolutely. You should. This is what we want this podcast. We want people to think about this. 
Sam Rhee: [00:41:44] And that's where life and gym to me intersect, because the way I think about what I want to do as an athlete is also the way I think about what do I want to do in my life?
Where do I want to go with it in my life? How you know, where do I want, what do I want to accomplish? Do I just go through every day and do my job and do this? Or do I actually have goals. And what are those goals and how do I get and how do I get there and have self direction in my life and the same analytical process that I think about what do I enjoy? What do I want to do in the gym translates into life. That doesn't mean you have to have an idea right now. And it has to be perfectly clear. But you do have to figure it out. Yep. And then you got to act on it. Yep. And that's important.
David Syvertsen: [00:42:30] Yeah. So as we close this off, like I think that this is a discussion. I like to have a lot of people, so if anyone from anywhere really wants to reach out to me and I'll, Sam's, Sam's got a lot going on too, but he's good at talking, too about this kind of stuff that if you find yourself in this I don't know where I'm at.
I don't think we're going to have the answer for you. Like this podcast probably didn't provide the answer for you, but we know how to ask the right questions to put you in the right direction. And I think that's what we hope this one did for you.