S01E07 - Bison Bowl VI - 2021 Intramural CrossFit Competition

Our next episode is Bison Bowl VI - @crossfitbison intramural competition this past weekend. We talk how athletes can assess their true abilities in a friendly competitive environment, as well as some behind-the-scenes discussion about how the Bison Bowl developed, teams are created, and what is involved in programming the competition. Shout outs to many of our gym athletes are involved in one of the best gym events of the year!

(One correction: Brittany Storms, @b_a_storms successfully completed 155# in the barbell ladder, not 145# as mentioned in the podcast!)

You can find more information at our website, HerdFitUSA.com, and make sure to like and subscribe wherever you watch or listen to our podcast.⁠

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TRANSCRIPT
S01E07 Herdfit Bison Bowl 6 2021
[00:00:00] Sam Rhee: Welcome back to the HerdFit podcast. This is coach Dave Syvertsen, I'm Sam Rhee as always. Our first topic is one that we're just going. We just actually finished. And so it's very fresh in our minds right now. And that is the bison 
David Syvertsen: Tyson bull seven. That's right.
Bison Bowl Six sorry, is our intramural 
Sam Rhee: he's already thinking about now next year. It's our intramural competition that we have here at the gym. And it's been a while since we had it because of COVID last year. So it's pretty exciting. I we're gonna, we're not going to recap it exactly. And go through every little bit of it.
Cause that would be really boring, but we certainly want to touch about highlights things that we think are important from it. And also some of the. Background to it. And behind the scenes, sort of look at it and sort of figure out, how it came to be and how it sprung from your head and how it came to fruition.
You wanna sort of talk about the bicycle? How many years you said six. Yeah. 
David Syvertsen: You started it 2015. So that was our second season. In business. First summer was in 2014. Obviously we didn't have [00:01:00] enough people that year to do anything, but it wasn't even a thought back then. But in 2015 we had a decent amount of people.
And I think some people started to they were in it for a while and they said like, all right, what is kind of like the next stage for me, if I want to kind of take this to a high level. And for most people it is, a competitive format, which we've talked about a few times. Signing up for a competition spending, nine hours at a gym that's an hour away just is not feasible for most people.
And most competitions are 80 bucks, 90 bucks, a hundred bucks. And you get a t-shirt, so yeah, we kind of wanted to just throw the idea out there that we can come up with a fully programmed for our gym, for our clientele competition. When I say competition, we've talked about this in the past as well.
That means there's judges and official scoring system. A balanced programming that basically exposes everyone's strengths and weaknesses. All right. And, we want to keep it as safe as, and as time friendly as possible. So we decided to do it back then. I still remember the first one. I think I remember the first [00:02:00] event being it was like a really fun, I think you had a, a mile of run a row and.
Rower facing burpees. And basically it was teams of three and basically everyone had to pick one move. And I just, I remember that event, especially because it was so intense and I was like, I knew right there. I was like, that's going to be a good, it's going to be a good day. People are cheering for each other.
And there's some community building type stuff that goes into it as well. We'll probably talk about that later on, but, without recapping every single athlete from every single team yesterday the premise of it is I want people to put themselves in this kind of environment, whether you're in the sport or not, whether you're competing or not.
I think it's a really healthy thing for people to do mentally and physically, because as diverse as CrossFit programming is day to day. It still gets monotonous. You're still, most of the time around the same people you have the same coach. The coach says the same stretches, the same warmups. And even though there's so much variety within the CrossFit programming, [00:03:00] there are still some stuff that are, there still are some things that are very repetitive.
So what can you do without having to change your workout program? To not make it too repetitive. And I think putting yourself in a competitive format can truly show athletes what they can actually do do 
Sam Rhee: physically. That's what we talked about before the whole sport versus health. Right. And feeling that competitive spirit, right.
Can sort of show you your strengths or your weaknesses and especially in a team format, which I love because. It one takes some of the pressure off of you as an individual, right? But two, it also is like life you're not living life in isolation. You have to work with people as a team in pretty much every everything that you do, whether it's school or 
David Syvertsen: education.
And I'll say this about team competing to build off. I'm actually going to throw a couple, a plug to a local CrossFit in the area across at Waldwick. They just released that they're going to be running a partner, same gender partner [00:04:00] competition in October. I think it's October 2nd or third, whatever that first Saturday is.
And I was just talking to Liz about it. I was like, man I would love to get some people here to pair up with each other, whether they're friends or not, I don't care and go there and compete. And I think one thing it does other than competing for sports. Is I think competing on a team like this, we did teams of three at, by some bowl.
It really shows you a different side of CrossFit and humble. It's humbling because at the end of the day, when you're on a team with three people, one of you is probably really good at something. And then you're probably really bad at something compared to them. All right. So you have to be humble enough to be like, I don't have muscle ups.
I'm not going to help you guys out at all. I have to do all the dumbbells. Right. And I'm trying to think if there's a team, the really good example, we had more girl teams. I had a good example of this, but I'll use my wife's team. Ashley had Ashley, Laura teary and Dakota, Carlo and Dakota. Carlos is coming off some time off from training.
She hasn't been on the rig and while a little bit of shoulder pain. So she, in an event that has muscle ups, pull ups, toes to [00:05:00] bar pretty high volume and a lot of dumbbells. She didn't want to go on the rig. And it was a smart decision a for their team, but B she needs to be smart about protecting your shoulder.
Yeah. And Lauren Ash are pretty good on the rig. I would say they're above average on the rig and they had to really, oh, sorry. You don't, you can just tell me. Yeah, I know we're on camera, but Dave, stop hitting the table. I think that it was really, it was humbling for all of them to be like, you know what, my weakness.
Is are the dumbbells. I can't do dumbbell thrusters, the lunges crushed me. I'm going to have somebody else do them for me so that our team can maximize our output. Right. Where Nicole had to be humble and say, Hey, I'm not doing anything on the rig. And I think the way they proceeded in that workout, Nicole did every single rep on the dumbbells.
Yeah. I just saw her. She just came by to pick up something from the gym and I was like, you gotta be dying right now. Like you gotta be so, and she was like, no, I'm fine. And she's a strong. So, and Ashley and Laura, if you had to really break them down as athletes, you would say, one of their weaknesses is weightlifting, just moving [00:06:00] exterior loads.
Right. But they can do really well as gymnastics, they would die. And I just think I look at that team and I watch Laura and Ashley dominate wall walks and Nicole was a little slower. I see Nicole had a huge weight on the complex and Lauren, Ashley got stuck, towards the beginning. And obviously in those moments, You get caught up and it's oh, I just hurt my team.
I suck, I can't do this. But you know what someone on your team is thinking the same exact thought about it in a different workout. And this is what CrossFit is. Well, I 
Sam Rhee: think some of it is. Ham and egg, which is sort of where you compliment each other and the teams that did well strategized exactly the way you did or they did.
And planned out, who's going to do what I will say. Nicole probably feels pretty good. And I want to just throw out a plug because she rehabbed well, in terms of just because you can't use your shoulder. I think she probably did 5 million lunches over 
David Syvertsen: the past couple of weeks, [00:07:00] just she was ready for the laundry, so she was ready 
Sam Rhee: for it because, so that's, that's a shout out for those who have injuries or, have issues.
You can always rehab something else and work on that 
David Syvertsen: and get stronger. Yeah, absolutely. When you have something that just doesn't feel right. Shoulder, knee back, whatever. Right. If, if you do cross it long enough, it's going to happen. Right. All right. That doesn't mean you sit at home and rest until it's better.
That's actually probably the, oh, sorry. The worst thing you can do. Right. And there's so much that you can work on that will help you out in the future. Right? If you really approach an injury, a tweak, soreness, whatever you want to call it. And say, all right, I'm just not going to use my shoulder. I'm not gonna use my leg.
I'm not gonna use my knees. I'm not going to use my, my back because there are other things you can wear. 
Sam Rhee: The other thing I also loved is even if, for example, those guys, their strength, wasn't their forte. They still managed to work as hard as they could on that barbell ladder and contribute as much as they could.
So it wasn't just. [00:08:00] Okay. I suck at this. So you're going to have in some situations with the lunges and whatever. Yeah. But for whatever weaknesses they had, they worked on them as well. And I felt a lot of athletes who said I wasn't good at the barbell and yeah. Surprised me, you a lot of themselves 
David Syvertsen: about what they could accomplish.
Yeah, I think I got a text. I think it was Heidi. I think she, that one of the events was a barbell complex where you had to do a dead lift touch and go clean, hang clean, showed it overhead. It was the complex on the cross. It open 21.4 technically, but it was right after 21.3 and we worked on it on Tuesday.
Leading up, it was programmed for bison. So four days before the competition, and I want to say, Heidi said she hits 60 or 65. And then at the comp she hits 75 or 80. So she PR that complex. Right? And she, she worked on that complex. She worked, she's been working on clean. She worked on delis. She's been working with Dan Dodd from tri-state barbell on, on all of her lifting techniques.
And again, when you're training day [00:09:00] to day, you don't always see the progress. The only reason she hit that weight was that she signed up for the comp, put herself in an uncomfortable position and I can speak for her. She was not comfortable going in, but what did you do? She put herself out there. She took, she made a brave decision to go out there and you know what, I'm going to put it.
And honestly, there are probably a hundred people watching at any given point yesterday. Yep. That's a lot of pressure. So that's an example of someone that, Hey, you work on things. You might not see the progress in the most. But when it really matters, that's when it shows up. 
Sam Rhee: The other thing I liked is when you see a lot of comps, you see athletes that are putting themselves in bed.
Positions primarily because of technique. Right. And I did not see that or at least very little, a little of it yesterday. 
David Syvertsen: Yep. You're always going to see it a little bit. Yeah. But what, but predominantly people moved very well. They've moved really 
Sam Rhee: well. Yeah. Listen comps by definition. Is it you're entering the realm of sport?
Yes. So the risk of [00:10:00] injury is always possible. Just if you ran a 5k. Yeah. It's different than your daily run. Your risk of injury goes up when you start in a 
David Syvertsen: competitive environment. And if anyone doesn't understand that, just watch, go watch sports for a week. Right. You're going to see people get hurt.
I mean, 
Sam Rhee: read a softball. That's a minefield. Let's put it that way. So, but in the situations that I saw yesterday I felt our athletes moved really well and I'm not, I mean, of course I'm bragging because it's my gym, but I want to say it was like for example, Heidi, she got to that point, not just by trying to muscle it and putting herself at risk, her technique looked very clean.
David Syvertsen: Good. Yeah. And we, we can say this we've, we've been to a lot of competitions, whether we've competed or comment and, or went and supported watch people. And at those competitions, That's the stuff you see on YouTube that gives cross at a bad rap. You're just like, oh my gosh, wish I was your wrist not broken.
Right. And for the most part yesterday, I really was happy with how well people moved on those heavy barbells and Hey, pretty much everyone got the [00:11:00] failure at the barbell. Yeah. We had a few people get to the end and finish the whole thing. I think less than five though. And so if you lift to failure, but your movement is still quality or you lift to near-field.
And you're moving to so quality, that's something an athlete should be very proud about. I even think more so than whatever weight that you have. I 
Sam Rhee: think the nice thing about an intramural is it's a safer environment. Yeah. For sure. And I want to run through the events a little bit because. I want to talk about how you thought of them and yeah, I mean, I was going to talk about that later, where we might as well talk about it now run through the events and why you program the specific 
David Syvertsen: events that you did big picture is you want to I always want to have an event that really gives strength, the true test course.
So what are, and you can go so many different directions with that. My original thought was we were going to be lifting off room. Like a complex off a rack, a squat overhead off the rack. Oh, like the four rep max squat, or even like a four rep squat, one rep mat jerk, like where like you have to just squat and then do a jerk at the end, that kind of thing.
So that was kind of like [00:12:00] the original plan, but no matter, I mean, we've done cleans in the past. We've done. We usually have done something like complex related. It was never really a one rep max. That gets a little dicey sometimes, but. I wanted the test strength. I wanted to test body weight movement, meaning, Hey, you're really tired.
Can you still move your body weight? Well, and then also, what is your capacity within moving your body? Well, because everyone can move their body well for a little bit of time. Can you do it? 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 minutes. So that was event to event too. A three round workout where somebody had to row 2 50, 200 meters guys who fed the ladies 200, and then you had to do X amount of wall walks and then X amount of synchro bar facing burpees.
That is a body weight workout, obviously. Right. And there's no exterior load moved whatsoever. So obviously your smaller athletes, your athletes that are more conditioned, they have their time to shine in that workout, right with the wall walks and the burpees. Where the big lifters, the guys that don't like the little bodyweight stuff, they had their time to shine event.
One event three to me always [00:13:00] should be something that's mixed modal or. A mix of strength and gymnastics and conditioned capacity, basically what you would call classic, cross it, where everything gets tested. So if you have a team full of people that can't move weight, you were kind of screwed yesterday.
If you have a team full of people that can't do gymnastics, their feet under duress, you were kind of screwed or if you had three. So that's kind of where. From like big picture without even getting specific with the workouts, you have a strength, you have a body weight endurance type workout, and then you have a mixed modal type.
I would say the 
Sam Rhee: body weight endurance. I mean, I'm hazarding a guess. I didn't take a poll, but it seemed like it was the most challenging 
David Syvertsen: for people. People got, were messed up 
Sam Rhee: after that. Yeah. Cause you know, doing all those bar facing burpees. Yeah. On top of the row, on top of the wall walks, as people were 
David Syvertsen: suffering in that third round.
So we did structure the workouts that basically everyone at some point could get about a minute of rest. Right. So we did structure that way. And we [00:14:00] also, we'll talk about this a little bit later. I think. We structured it, that you could game it a little bit, that the person that rode really did not have to contribute much on the wall walks.
Yep. But so synchro, burpees, I I'm pretty sure that was the first time we did that in the bison bowl. I love stuff like that. I do in the team competition because it really forces people to. Work to someone else's level, whether it's a level up or level down and it puts some pressure, but it makes people communicate.
I saw 
Sam Rhee: people whose motor weren't as developed as others. They tried so hard that really pushed them. And I think it, I hope it was a wake up call to some people like, listen, you can move a lot of weight. You're really strong. Dude, you got to build up that motor. 
David Syvertsen: We talked about this after the open, like how do I get better for next year's open.
It's like one of the foundations that you have to be able to move your body. You can't depend on exterior load to be going across it. The majority of the open was you're not moving an exterior 
Sam Rhee: load. I [00:15:00] love the fact that I saw. Every pre I can't think of a single person who did not push as hard as they could.
All of them were taxed at the end. Absolutely. Pretty much everyone was on the ground. Gasping, some ran out of the gym to 
David Syvertsen: maybe throw up. I don't know. I saw that. 
Sam Rhee: And I will say and then the teammates also had to learn patience to listen. You can't just sit there. Right? Get pissed off at someone because they're not doing burpees as fast as you you have to learn that you're a team.
Yeah. And I saw a bunch of people learn. There were no reps because people were down on the ground, they got up too quick. They were like expecting this other person much in their own zone they were in. Yeah. And so you had to be sort of getting your feedback from your teammates 
David Syvertsen: and I'll say this, this is where strategy is so important in team competing.
And you could tell that some of the teams. Really talk to each other about this in the week, leading up to the competition and the teams that did not. And Hey, it's for fun. [00:16:00] It's a leisure competition. I'm not criticizing anybody that did not communicate with each other. It was, but it was an obvious difference who talked and who didn't.
When you think about three people doing synchro bar facing burpees, who should go in the middle, what do you mean? Who should go in the middle? Like, why don't we just all pick our own bar, right? The person in the middle should be the person that does. That I would say your slowest Berbee person should be in the middle because you don't want the fast burpee person or the more conditioned athlete to have to look in two different directions where everyone is.
Right. So you have your faster people. They're on the outside looking in. Yup. They can see both people. All right. My slow person right now. They're getting up. I'll get up. Right. All right. They're struggling. I can slow down where the person, if in the middle, if you have to look in both directions, right.
It's just too much. You can't do it. You 
Sam Rhee: have to have some patients who like you can't just jump up really quick to jump down and wait. Yeah. If your teammates getting gassed slow the pace, this friend, and give them a second. Cause if you [00:17:00] red line them early, they will 
David Syvertsen: not recover. And I also seeing how people treat each other in that scenario.
Is it support? Is it a little bit of belittling because I'll tell you why. I know people, several people yesterday, they were the fast burpee person on their team. So they had to, they had to slow down. They probably want it to go faster. Of course, how did they act? But that same person. Was the one that got beat up on the bar bell.
Right. How did that person act on the barbell? Like through your thinking the same thoughts as your teammate, just in a different event, why can't you lift more? Yeah. Right. So what if someone said that to you, you'd give the double bird and be like, like I'm outta here F CrossFit, this is stupid, right?
This is an opportunity to buy some bowls and opportunity. I don't want to get too deep into this, but it's such an opportunity for people to build others. And realize, I think they did all of this for sure. Absolutely. That's why it's such a good day. Yeah. Yeah. It's unlike any other day that we have here because you're doing it together.
The opens a little different because we're all by ourselves. We support each other, but we're also trying to beat each [00:18:00] other. Right. And it's it's and we can get into like how we make the teams and 
Sam Rhee: how yes. In a second. But I wanted to also give a shout out to the judges because the judges were the athletes and I have to stay as the standards.
Listen, it's an intramural comp, it's not like it's not, no one's going to the games, but people cared about the standards. They really worked to meet the standards and the judges. Even if they weren't in the same division, they were really working to, to keep people to safe standards and.
Compete fairly. 
David Syvertsen: I mean, and every time we have a competition here, whether it's the bison classic, which is an out of gym competition and the bison bowl, we always start off the group meeting at the start that there's zero tolerance for arguing with the judge. And I actually do think I've done both I've judged.
I think judging is harder than competing. I really do. And especially when you have someone that's kind of like on the line of not hitting the standards and I do. We also had a lot of judges that they had to judge the heat after they just worked anywhere. They were so tired. It started getting hot it [00:19:00] later in the day, that third workout.
But I was like, Hey, we've got to keep this thing going. So, you're judging and yeah, I do. I echo what you say that I give them a lot of credit. For being honest. I heard a lot of no reps. I was walking around, videotaping a lot of things and I heard judges say no rep. And I'm like, you know what? It takes some courage to tell someone in an arrest because you feel bad.
But you got it, know, we've got to do things, 
Sam Rhee: right. Let me ask you on a programming note, how did you figure out the on the ladder, the barbell ladder? The, that was really tough because a lot of the women, especially did not like that jump. 
David Syvertsen: Yes. There was one in 25. Yeah. So, and honestly, I don't even know if I have this.
Right. But I saw I'm not going to act like I do, but I do try to keep certain ratios between. Guys weights and girls weights. No disrespect intended. We have more guys that can get further in that latter than the girls. All right. We just, we do, we probably have, we probably had 15 guys we're looking at the 
Sam Rhee: pro athletes at the same way.
Heaviest weights, men lift are greater than the really higher than, than the pro women. 
David Syvertsen: Right. I still think the girls here are better athletes than the [00:20:00] guys, but we went, we went, I agree with you. We, but when it comes to weightlifting yeah. And at the start, we did not know. We weren't sure if we were going to have guys and girls compete against each other.
We almost said that just one RX division, we decided against it per my consultant, San Marie that they, the night before the competition, that's really when we decided to do that. But knowing that there was a possibility they would be competing against each other. I couldn't make things lighter for the girls.
So I basically, I guys had a big jump. Two guys went from 1 55 to 180 5. That's a 30 pound jump and then the rest of the way it was a 20 pound jump. Okay. Okay. The girls had a 10 pound jumps and then they had one that was a 20 pound jump. But that was the, now that was like a breaking point for a lot of women.
It was the same barbell that had the big jump. You see 
Sam Rhee: that in the same for the guys though, going from 1 55 to now that's a big break. That wasn't a big deal. It was not 
David Syvertsen: a big break. It was not, but that's just because we have more stronger. When I like, and no, I'm not grammatically [00:21:00] incorrect that we have more men that are stronger.
That's really what it is when it comes to lifting. And in this gym, I'm not even going to make a broad statement with cross it, or even broader than that. It's just in this gym, we have more guys that can move more weight. That's just the 
Sam Rhee: way it is. I think I saw a couple athletes who most people would say are light.
Yeah. Thin. Yep. Framed. Yep. Like a Brit storms. Yep. They blasted through 1 25. They had some great lifter at 
David Syvertsen: 1 45 she's and she's a gamer too. Yeah. I've told her this all the time. She has a lot of grit and I know she's probably a good example of someone. Feels like she could do more three, four years ago, then she can now, and multiple kids will do that to you.
A full-time career will do that to you age. We'll do that to you. But when I watch her really get after it, I'm like, I don't see any difference between you and three years ago. And she has that. I think experience plays so much into how well someone does at a competition. And she's been in this environment a lot.
She's done the open a lot. I don't think she's competed a ton, but she goes hard [00:22:00] every time she's here. And I think that years and years and years of experience of doing that, it shows up at a, at a by symbol like that. 
Sam Rhee: I think this is where you can't as an athlete, look at how the. Event is set up and use that against yourself.
So you can't say, well, I can do 1 0 5. He should have had one 50. So I'll give you my can't even do 1 25. So why bother? You've heard 
David Syvertsen: that a few times. And I'm the breaking point for a lot of 
Sam Rhee: women and I'm going to self-defeat. Yeah. So the bottom line is there's not, I mean, I don't want to be an a-hole about it, but it's not a whole lot of sympathy on my point part.
You want to you, if you had broken into broken into 1 25, You could have got, you could, as a games type sports athlete, you would have broken through a big barrier that a lot of other people. And if you didn't do that, well, guess what you should be doing between now and next year is work on getting to 1 25.
And I will tell you that 90% of the people who are complaining about not hitting 1 25 can eat [00:23:00] could hit 1 
David Syvertsen: 25. Absolutely. Everyone that lives there, almost everybody. And I mean, almost everybody. If they clean up movement, they will hit more weight. They don't even need to get stronger if they clean up their movement, pattern their pull off the ground, their speed to extension their knuckles, their elbows through where their eyes are at the top of the lift.
Right? Like those simple things, not easy, but simple would elevate their lifts and. I really don't think I like, like you said, there's no sympathy. There's care on our side, know there's care and we will definitely do what we can do, help see people out. But I just want to also put this out there that I could have made 10 pound jumps.
Sure for the entire I could have. And for the guys but the ratios, if you do some quick math in your head, the ratios will get thrown off. If guys are always going up 20 and girls are always going up 10, right. You have to have one of those 30, 20 jumps. And that's what we did. And yeah, it's yeah, maybe if I made another reason why, if I always made 20 pound jumps and I always made 10 pound [00:24:00] jumps, I would have done one of two things I would have had to add another two or three barbells.
Because I wanted the, I know what I wanted the ending weights to be, because I thought a couple of people could get there and do more of that again, when you're 25 for the girl at guys and 1 75 for the girls. Okay. All right. Yeah. And. But if you adding more barbells, you're adding more time. There's some like logistic thinking here, right?
Like I want it to be done by X time. I also didn't want to have too much volume for the people that got to the end. Like we had a considerable amount of people get to those last two barbells. It's a lot of lifting. Right. And they probably made, maybe they couldn't have gotten to that last bar bell because they were just getting physically taxed.
So I, I just think that I'm not even going to say that, like I pick the perfect ways for it and I will never say it. But there's more to that than just like what you can lift. Right? Right. This is what we've talked about. Owning, owning your issues. Right. If you couldn't hit, if you could hit 1 0 5, you could not hit 1 25 or guys, you can hit 1 55, you can't hit 180 5, but [00:25:00] you get somewhere in the middle.
The only thing you should do is get stronger. Right. And that's it. That's the end of the discussion. There's no issue to be programmed. No, get stronger. 
Sam Rhee: The other thing is, is that it's nice that you. Use the open complex, because it tested a number of different movement patterns. It wasn't just, can you pick it from the ground?
Right? You have to do it from a hang. Yup. 
David Syvertsen: You gotta put it overhead. Yeah. It's funny how so many people get caught up on different parts of that. Eric, couple of people that like ripped through the cleans, no big deal can do the overhead. Yeah. It's 
Sam Rhee: well, yeah, I'm 
David Syvertsen: sort of one of those guys too, or other people that, if they get the cleans, the overhead one to be able to 
Sam Rhee: always make the, yeah.
It's crazy. So, so that was a nice sort of thing. Yeah, that was fun. So let's talk a little bit more behind the scenes. So making up the teams, I thought one of the reasons why the competition was so close Was because the teams were very, very, even in, in a lot of ways, but in ways that you wouldn't necessarily think it wasn't that everyone has an equal skill set or are matched.
Well, there were [00:26:00] some very unusual, I don't want to say unusual combinations with combinations of people. I wouldn't have thought that were super competitive. 
David Syvertsen: Yeah. So I think the, one of the things that you really have to do first is a, so if you want to really get deep into how we make these teams and you have to get people to sign up first, right?
And that's why we make a deadline, you have to sign up by this time. And then I take a day or two to make the teams, and then it's released. And then the workouts release released. After that, I already know what the workouts are kind of just wise. My generally before I make the teams. But I don't know who's going to sign up, especially in the summer, and that's why I always feel bad in some there's always people that are white every week, no matter what, like I know there's a lot of people that wanted to do it, but they were away. That's their family vacation and that'll be the case no matter what. So once you get the lists, then you have to figure it out.
Is this going to be teams of two? Is this going to be teams of three? Is it going to be teams of four? Is it going to be coed? It's going to be same gender. And you could only do that when you have all the numbers, you've had 
Sam Rhee: different 
David Syvertsen: combos and it's all based on numbers. It's never, I did not go into the [00:27:00] biosimilar thinking that the teams of three I did not, I have to I actually would love one year to be two guys, two girls on the same team, but they just, you need the numbers to match up.
And now we have ours and scaled in the past. We've done this two years. We did RX and scaled on the same team. And we almost did that this year, but those, I think those days might be done. It's just it's, it's really tough to run a good comp that way. But anyway, so these are all these things you have to think about and you can't literally plan it until you have, who's here.
So once you have that lined up, you make the teams, you want to make the teams that we had this situation yesterday. There were so many times. For first, second, third, fourth, fifth place in multiple events. But also at the end of three events, I had to go six or seven. Tiebreakers deep into to find out who was on the podium or who won like the guys, for example, guys, RX, they all finished with nine points at the end.
Right. You 
Sam Rhee: said that they all had the same placing. They 
David Syvertsen: all want it the event. Yeah. And then [00:28:00] all their other finishes were, I think we're all fourth, right? So that all that adds up to nine points and a couple of them were tied for fourth in that event. So it's like literally if one of them got just a little better ranking in one event 
Sam Rhee: and how much difference were there in some of those events?
I think it was very small 
David Syvertsen: within, I would say within 3%, three to 5%. That's crazy. It is crazy. So when you make teams, if you want to make a balanced team, you need to know the workouts or know the gist of the work. Yeah. Because, if that was handstand pushups, instead of muscle-ups yesterday, the teams would have been 
Sam Rhee: different.
So look at a team, for example, this was a weird the one that let's look at the two, like the winners on winning teams. Yeah. So one was Tim our tomorrow share Rob share and Sean. So how'd you make up that 
David Syvertsen: team. So basically you need to make sure you're going to put muscle-ups into event. And we had some difficult muscle-ups yesterday.
It was 18 total, but they were like tired Muslims. Right. And a lot of people think they could do muscle-ups but then doing them after it. Anything else? [00:29:00] Yeah. They don't have them. So you look at a team and you're like, all right, that's the first thing I made the teams on. Does everyone have at least someone that can do a muscle up?
And then ideally it's two. Okay. Unless you have one of those people that can really rip through muscles. Right. Right. And That's the first step of creating a team. It's look at the workout where you really need to know, because my worst nightmare would be, I make a team that's a balanced team, but no one can do a muscle-up.
So the whole team is just standing there. Now in 
Sam Rhee: that team, all three, I have seen do 
David Syvertsen: muscles and workout, right? So I would say, Rob is the best gymnast on the team, right? Tim can do them. And he's a strong kid too. So, and as young and show. Heather has made so much progress in our gym over the past few years, but I've seen several instances where he like, he'll fill them up.
Right. Yeah. And he gets himself up there. Tiredness. It's a fatigue thing. Yeah. But it's physically capable. Yeah. Right. So that's a team it's like, all right. I know Rob is basically going to be the guy that does most of the muscle ups. I think he did. I'm pretty 
[00:30:00] Sam Rhee: sure he broke off. He ripped off, I was his judge.
She's seven and a one set. 
David Syvertsen: And that's a huge for that workout. And then I knew Tim would be able to bank, but the thing is, I also want to create scenarios where the team needs to talk with each other about how they're going to break things up, because if they didn't talk or didn't really map things out, That might've just been like, Hey dude, like I'm going to toast bar and I'm going to dumbbell thrusters, I'll do this.
And then you get to the muscle-ups and someone can't step up. Yeah. Right. So that was that I will say the guys were, again, a little easier to put together than the girls, because most teams had two guys that can bang them out. Some teams have three. That was one of the teams that had three guys that have muscles.
I think there's, I think 
Sam Rhee: strategy played a big role and also the ability to adjust on the fly. So when they were getting tired on some of these. They would tag someone in rather than 
David Syvertsen: struggle to stand there, sit there for her. Well, I mean, we, we, so me, you and coach Adam, we all, we, we tested the workouts and [00:31:00] we had a plan for the first time through.
And then the second time through the workout, we were the AMRAP. We were just like, Hey, this is tight in and out. Go do what you can come back. Right. The only time that doesn't work is when you have someone that can't really can't do something. Right. So there has to be some thought in there. Another with the girls team.
So you talked about Liz, Susan and Marissa, Susan and Marissa don't have the muscle up yet. Correct. When Liz is on. She's got as good a muscle as anyone. Yeah. So they had to assume, and this is that at the end of the workout, right? You're 21 lunges, 21 toes, a bar two times 15 snatches, 15 pull-ups two times.
And then you had nine thrusters, nine muscle-ups two times, right? They had Liz is probably their best butterfly because their best pull-up yes. Athlete, because she can butterfly lock quicker, super fast. But should you really have her go do those, knowing that she's the only one on that team that has a muscle right 
Sam Rhee: now.
Right? I think they only had her do one set of five in those [00:32:00] two, out of 30, 
David Syvertsen: out of 38 out of 30 Paul. She did fine. So, because you had to know that she's going to have to get up there and she's not going to have she can't tag out. And the muscle-ups right. So they kept her fresh fish kind of fresh, right.
For the muscle-ups. And I think she did. I think she told me she had seven too, which is great. Yeah. Right. And then I think the second time through, I want to say it was 4, 3, 
Sam Rhee: 2. Yeah. Yeah. It's agonizing though. Because once you lose them yeah. It's 
David Syvertsen: yeah. But what Liz does well, when Liz gets tired, she doesn't change her mood.
It's true. She doesn't, she doesn't like, all right, I'm getting really tired. Can I can winging it. I'm going to try and get my elbow on top of the bar internally, rotate my shoulder and then come back up. She just, when she, when she fails her rep, she fails a rep that scares me when people do that.
No, I do too. And so another part of that workout is it's not just Liz doing the Muslims, like Susan and our wrists. I had to rip through a lot of dumbbell work. Yes. And Susan's a small girl. It's just picking up to 35 pound dumbbells. Right. Like how many people yesterday were dumbbell, lunging, dumbbell thrusters with what?
Two thirds of our [00:33:00] body weight. I was 
Sam Rhee: just surprised how many people actually ripped out so many unbroken, lunges 
David Syvertsen: and stitches. And we do a lot of, yeah, no lateral work here. That's something that we've pushed for probably two years now. And it shows up in an event like that. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, when I was watching Susan or through lunges, I was like, wow.
You can't go much faster than that. 
Sam Rhee: I saw a lot of teams ripping through those lunches. Yeah. It was really impressive to see them really big, and they usually did that. Most teams had to protect their bar muscle of guy. Right. And so they would had that same strategy. Yeah. And it was impressive.
David Syvertsen: All, all this like back and forth, we're talking about it's these teams, they strategized right. We we know that the bison bowl is not a huge deal, right? It's not publicized that much. You're not getting a lot. You don't get a lot of money for, for winning it. Candy bars though, right. Winners got a hundred grand, a hundred grand.
Sam Rhee: But the tweaks were, they actually, the better ones, people who are actually happier. 
David Syvertsen: Yeah. Shout out to next Squire. But [00:34:00] I do think that. W when you sign up for something, this is what we talk about. Sometimes it's like, why don't, why not go all in on it, meet with each other on zoom on a Wednesday night for an hour.
And talk about how to break these workouts down. We saw pairs here, meeting here Tuesday night at eight o'clock to practice synchro burpees. Yep. And for what it's just they they're just so used to putting a lot of effort into whatever they're doing and all these teams that strategize like Susan, especially like I've been interacting with Susan in a few different ways over the years.
She is very like, yo, let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. Sorry. I'm tapping the table again. And it, yeah. From the outside perspective, you might be like taking it too seriously, get over yourself. But why not? Why not strategize a little bit talk with each other because at the end of the day, when you're in the moment, when you're in the comp you do freaking care.
I think 
Sam Rhee: not to make this a gender thing also, but I saw only a couple of the guys teams that a lot of the women's teams really focused. And when we demoed them, there's no [00:35:00] doubt that practicing. Would it help anyone incredibly. And if you're a games type, like any kind of competitive athlete, not even if you're game like it, it really is a good way to strategize in general.
Why would you ever do anything in life that was important to you without putting some thought into it, planning it. We do that. We should be doing that for everything in life. I agree. So if you, if you do care about it at all, and listen, if you're going to, you may not care so much about your daily workouts, but that's why this is a step up because you will, we'll have a hundred people 
David Syvertsen: watching, watching you, other people are depending on 
Sam Rhee: you.
Yes. There, your team is depending on you, it behooves you to take your life strategy. Preparation is key. If you're going to tell your kids, Hey, listen, preparation is important. Make sure you don't go in with any situation with their pants down. This would be a good mini situation, microcosm of life to say, 
David Syvertsen: this 
Sam Rhee: is how I [00:36:00] should be executing everything else.
And when it does it, it, and it pays off for you in a, in a little way or in a big way that, that, that builds your self-confidence. So when I saw these athletes, maybe they didn't go through the entire complex, but they hit 1 25 for the first time on a, or 
David Syvertsen: a lot of PR PR a lot of PR I mean, how much 
Sam Rhee: confidence does that actually instill in you?
A tremendous amount of confidence? Yep. I completely agree. I mean, how can you be on a stage and not, and perform and do something you haven't done before and not have that 
David Syvertsen: Yep. That's what we want. We want people to be more confident 
Sam Rhee: and even let's suppose it was the opposite. And I've been in this situation and you seen me in class.
Double unders fuck 
David Syvertsen: up. She was very 
Sam Rhee: right. It really, it, it motivates you, it pushes you. And if I was a guy who said, wow, those burpees killed me, I'm going to be, and I slowed down my team. Well, you know what that would, just like I did in that comp before it motivated me to work on.
Yeah, I remember 
David Syvertsen: that very well. 
Sam Rhee: Yep. What, what bothered [00:37:00] me? What really slowed me down? What hurt me and 
David Syvertsen: everybody needs to know. Yeah, everybody needs to lose. Everybody needs to lose. I saw this yesterday. I see it a lot at competition with people that I work with that are competing, you have to lose, and I'll say this when you win.
And when you lose, you get equal benefit from it. When you win, the benefit is immediate. It's immediate gratification. When you lose the gratification, the benefit of losing probably will not show up. For a while, but you have to understand that if you had a rough event yesterday, you had a rough day yesterday, you came in last place and this like a, none of us are going to remember if you struggle with yesterday.
So don't worry about that. Don't let exterior opinions, right. Impact what your thought is on the, by symbol in relation to yourself. But if you had a struggle point or you're upset with the day in general, that is going to help. Right. I remember you were on the floor at Shrewsbury. You were terrible on the jump rope and you, and you had the blunders, but something happened and like you were frustrated, you were [00:38:00] embarrassed or 100 people that are watching, but now, you have, you use that for fuel to get better.
You benefited from that situation, even though you were probably mortified. If I 
Sam Rhee: had gotten by and skin through, right. I would never work on my double. Yeah. 
David Syvertsen: So like your daughter, Sasha. She was on the podium and our first ever competition yesterday. Awesome. Proud of her, really proud of her. That's not going to happen every time she competes, whether it's at the bison bowl or if she ever signs up for a competition on the road, she would've gotten benefit either way.
Yeah, absolutely. 
Sam Rhee: You're right. Every athlete is going to benefit either way. Yep. And the nice thing is, is the stakes are low enough, it's not going to scar you for life, right? Yeah. But it's big enough where it really does impact you in some way, shape or form, especially if you're an athlete, especially if you go to this gym, especially if you know everyone.
It's the little things that lead to the big thing. Yes. 
David Syvertsen: Yup. Absolutely.