S02E32 - Is CrossFit Individualized?
Is CrossFit individualized? This controversy continues to rage in the fitness community as James Fitzgerald, founder of OPEX Fitness, recently spoke on several podcasts stating that CrossFit is NOT individualized (and how OPEX is). This has been disputed by many within the CrossFit community, particularly Dave Castro. We provide our take what "customized" programming means, and how athletes may (or may not) benefit from group versus individual classes and coaching.
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S02E32 - IS CROSSFIT INDIVIDUALIZED?
[00:00:00] Sam Rhee: Welcome to another edition of the HerdFit podcast with coach David Syvertsen and I'm Sam Rhee. Our next episode is about the question is CrossFit individualized? And I will say, when you sh shot me this topic, I always what do you mean by CrossFit individualized lame topic. And I started Googling it because every time I do some prep work, the first thing I do is just Google is CrossFit individualized, and then I suddenly.
Oh, now I know why Dave asked this it's because James Fitzgerald who's the founder of OPEX fitness had a podcast with Servon and then subsequently with others where he basically said CrossFit is not individualized. And if you don't know David Syvertsen, he is a crafted coaching. Sorry, crafted coaching, right?
Yes. Crafted coaching. Yep. Athlete his which was founded originally as big dogs. Founded by James Fitzgerald. A lot of OPEX, his mindset, their philosophy, their teachings have obviously filtered down and through into a lot of their coaches. They have basically doubled down and said, CrossFit is not individualized, oPEX fitness is, and there is a real difference between the two. So let's open with that. And go ahead and you tell me what sparked this interest
[00:01:22] David Syvertsen: in it for you? So I'm cross it bias. All right. But I took the OPEX course to improve my coaching, but also I have a little bit of a side business that's called next level program.
And that is an individualized coaching program. Primarily done online, but a lot of the people that are on that program are from the gym. So I do get to see them. And Sam and I did a an episode on Botox and burpees season one episode nine came out December 18 to 2020. And it was about online programming and online coaching and all this stuff.
Basically what I'm trying to say is a lot of my money, time and effort has gone to open. A lot and a lot of, and a lot of my time after energy has gone to CrossFit. So you have two sides here. And I see so many similarities between the two, but from my perspective, it seems like they're constantly going back and forth with each other.
So when James Fitzgerald said CrossFit is not individualized, Dave Castro got wind of. Got really angry and went online and made a bunch of posts, stories about cross it being individualized and, in his normal, passive aggressive, sarcastic way, made a few digs at them. There is, I don't want to go into the drama behind it.
There is a backstory between James and Gerald, the original winner of the cross. And they've Castro and CrossFit, they clash. And in my opinion, they're competitors, in the same market. But they are both founded on the principle that they're trying to help people serve people through health, fitness, and exercise.
So that's where I see a lot of similarities. I am a CrossFit affiliate owner, but I pay a lot of money to the OPEX brand for my own training and for my own coaching education. I do think that I have a unique perspective on this that I don't really want to side with either one of them.
I think all this comes down to a pride fight where James or Gerald is missing a lot of points on how individualized CrossFit is and can be. And Dave Castro is missing and a lot of CrossFitters missing a lot of affiliate owners, coaches, guys, that program. The masses, they miss out on a lot of principles on how individualized training does help people that don't get any of it.
That's where I'm at right now.
[00:03:33] Sam Rhee: When I started looking at this, I saw OPEX believes that they can assess athletes and then they create a program individualized for that athlete. Yep. What I would say CrossFit does is it takes a program and then adaptive. To individuals. And I felt like and analogy would be if OPEX was like a custom tailor.
So they measure you and then they create a suit from scratch. CrossFit takes a suit off the rack. They make alterations and then they make it to fit you. And as an athlete, is there an advantage to OPEX? They're saying it's better to do it
[00:04:10] David Syvertsen: this way.
Yeah. And you also have to keep in mind, James Fitzgerald OPEX in our opinion, but I'll say it does not exist without cross it. And if it does, it's on a much lesser. A much smaller scale. I think almost every single athlete that I've talked to, that's been on crafted coaching. Formerly big dogs is a CrossFitter.
They go to a CrossFit gym. They just wanted some extra program for themselves. But you never hear that. It's always like us first, them, me versus you. So yeah, I think that, is there a in van, is there an advantage to either one of them? It always comes down to the client or the person themselves, but I do think that there's.
There's a medium ground that needs to be accepted on both sides.
[00:04:53] Sam Rhee: When I first looked at this, I said, okay, OPEX is claiming that this is all individualized. Yeah. But they're not looking at Sam Rhee and saying, oh, I'm going to create new movements and rep schemes that no one has ever seen for Sam Rhee.
[00:05:09] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I mean, their template and this is out there and not like giving any inside information. They have a very good, they do have a good assessment for mobility. They'll have certain mobility tests that if you can't do, they're like, okay, you're never going to squat.
Snatch. Oh my God until you can do this piece and okay. And so we need to fix that first before. So from that regard, it's a very responsible way, but the workouts, the actual workouts that they put you through an assessment. I think I want to say it's 10 different tests.
And then once they get those results, then they have a lot of individualized programming based on.
[00:05:40] Sam Rhee: As an individual athlete, I was thinking if I were to choose a program here, OPEX or CrossFit, I feel like more people. And I'm talking from someone who's never experienced OPEX would benefit from CrossFit only because of the aspects that I enjoy about CrossFit.
Which is the group setting. Yes. OPEX craps on the group setting because they're saying, how can a coach figure out your needs, if you're sitting in a class of eight or 10, they can't. And
[00:06:10] David Syvertsen: I I've heard people bring that to James' attention on a podcast. I'll tell you this. Whenever James is on podcast, I'll listen to it.
I don't care who it is. I will listen. If you ever have James on I'm listening. And it's like Chris Henshaw, like I learned something new every time I hear from him. And. That's been brought up. He said so what about the people that really feed off other energy in the room, doing things together and his response?
I remember one time was, well, that's a lie that you've been told, it's like something that's it's like a fake thing that kind of took over like a subconscious, which I don't agree with, but I've done
[00:06:43] Sam Rhee: it both ways. Same. I've had to work out by myself a lot, especially during COVID and.
I can't bring. Okay. Maybe I'm lying to myself. Yeah. Maybe I've been, I've been tricked, but I will never be able to bring that same, especially for certain types of right. Workouts that I can't bring that same kind of energy in solo that I can in a group
[00:07:05] David Syvertsen: setting for sure. And I'm the same thing.
Grew up on the group setting and cross it grew up right for, I want to say nine to 10 years and that I fed off it. And the second I started hiring a coach so I can, help me get to my competitive goals. It took me, I want to say, right now, I feel like I'm in a good spot with it where I can attack things when I'm by myself, but I'd be lying if I said that came right away.
Once the initial endorphins of something being new and fresh, once that's good. Being by myself was it's still to this day. It's hard. I asked people to come join me all this. For selfish reasons. But when I do work out now hard and I need to go after it, I can do it, but I will say it took me over a year to get to that state on a consistent state.
[00:07:46] Sam Rhee: I have a pretty complete garage gym. Yes. And,
[00:07:50] David Syvertsen: Nicest one in Bergen county. Thanks.
[00:07:53] Sam Rhee: We haven't seen what others are, but I appreciate that. That's very nice. And I will. Drag Susan or someone else to work out in there. If I have to work out solo, I know what workouts will work for me. I can do eat moms by myself.
Yes, yes. I can do some lifting programs by myself. Very true. But if I have to do an AMRAP or something, if I have to do it by myself, if I know others are doing it. For example, if I'm following bison programming and I can't get into the gym. Yeah. I can work out harder only because I know I will look at my score and compare it to others.
Yes. So there are ways I can trick myself as a solo person to pretend to work harder. But I think what James is saying is a fallacy. We are social animals. Yeah. And one of the biggest reasons why CrossFit exists and is so successful is exactly because of that group setting. I would say the biggest, the biggest, yeah.
I agree that it is hard to individualize training in a group setting. But I believe there's a spectrum of individualization. Yeah. You can go one-on-one with some. And the other thing is who can afford one-on-one training, right? That's
[00:08:55] David Syvertsen: expensive. That's something that James won't bring up either is, their memberships, like what you have to pay.
There are generally speaking twice as expensive as a cross. And I hear it all the time. I'm like, man, your Jim's expensive is expensive. It is, it is. And these guys are almost twice as much, wow. And it's really. Some people like that, that just prices them out immediately. I
[00:09:17] Sam Rhee: feel that if you are a novice, even a intermediate type athlete, whatever you want to call intermediate there is way more benefit or bang for buck to be gained by doing a CrossFit class setting.
Agreed. You do have to be smart. Yes. What OPEX calls structured building progressions is basically learning how to do these movements well and to improve your capacity on these movements. Yeah. And you will need some individualized attention in order to figure out how to do a ring muscle up, how to do a handstand pushup, how to do a snatch and
it's true. If you only show up for group classes and those group classes have 12 and you don't actually spend any time or more, or 15 or 20 sometimes a morning. Yep. It's going to be hard to get that care and attention that you're going
[00:10:15] David Syvertsen: to need completely agree. And we see that sometimes, there are some people that don't care about the individual attention. There are some people. Literally needed every day. They need something every day from a coach, from an outside voice. And this is where it's partially on the coach, partially on the people that own the gym to make sure you're not jamming too many people in there at once putting your coaches in a position to succeed.
But also it's on the athlete's shoulders that this is where my opinion of cross it being individualized. It is individualized. You can come in like yesterday, Matt, why track back in. Getting his groove back and we had snatches in yesterday's workout. He's not there yet with the shoulder.
He did dumbbell snatches. Carly does that a lot. That is an individualized component to that workout, but he was still in the group setting. I didn't tell him to do the on bell snatch. He did himself. Matt knows. I would say net, Matt knows more than your traditional CrossFitter about what to do, what not to do true scaling workouts.
He programs cool workouts from cell sometimes. And Terry does too. But he knew coming in. In my opinion, we call it scaling. And that's where Dave Castro said that is what individualized is, it's scaling. I can tell you this right now, my coach programs workouts for me, that he programs for other people, but if I'm less capable or more capable, certain volume is tweaked.
I did a workout today that had skier again, eight ring muscle ups that eight wasn't pulled out of. Where, maybe the guy that's much better than me did 10, the guy that's a little lesser than six. That is an individualized program that, because it's a scaled number, according to his max reps on broken.
Where, we do that in the gym all the time with all right, we scaled the weights. We scale movements. The one thing I do think can get a little dicey is there are some people here that should not be overhead squat and that overhead squat, something like. And that's where OPEX does a good job.
It's until you can do this, we're never programming an overhead squat for you. Whereas if you come in on overhead squat today and you can't keep your armpits from facing the ground, while you'd go to the bottom, you're going to have to make that decision yourself. And that's a tough spot for us to be
[00:12:17] Sam Rhee: in.
I think that is that gray area for CrossFit is. Where OPEX does do better. Yes. I have hurt myself because I thought I could do things. And I was either my ego was cashing checks. my body couldn't handle, or I just wasn't knowledgeable enough and coaches can see what you do.
[00:12:38] David Syvertsen: And you could honestly I have no problem with you saying Hey, a coach probably should have told me I shouldn't.
And I struggle with that pressure all the time. Dude. Trust me. I know there's people. It's like when I watch Erin overhead squat, Aaron's responsible, he'll do with a PVC pipe or an empty barbell, but even the empty barbell, he's never in a good position at the bottom. Like he tried the overhead squat last week with a dumbbell and it's a 45 degree away holding a 10 pound dumbbell.
So what, I don't feel like it was a dangerous thing for him to do, but there are times where I wish I was more objective as a coach because OPEX has influenced me and saying Hey man, like I know you want to do the muscle, but Here. Here's a big one. The chicken wingers on bar muscle. I see a bunch of them.
I mean, majority, no offense to anyone that's listening to it. It's not, you guys know who you are. Yeah. I'm not sitting here blasting anyone, but in my head I've seen so many people get hurt from that. And in my head, I struggle with this. I'm just being honest with you. I don't have the answer in my head.
I wish. I should probably go over to you, grab your shirt and say you're done. You're not doing those anymore.
[00:13:35] Sam Rhee: That's where that grit. That's exactly what I'm talking about in that gray area. Athletes have to take the ultimately athletes take responsibility of their body. Yes, always.
[00:13:44] David Syvertsen: Yes. I always call it 50 50, right? I'll do my part. You do your part,
[00:13:48] Sam Rhee: and coaches, can't see what's going on inside your shoulder. We can see what you're feeling. If you're feeling something. And I think CrossFit is getting better at this, for sure. They are saying stop
[00:14:01] David Syvertsen: change, do something, build the muscles around, like how many people in our gym are doing crossover symmetry and band work, like what we weren't doing that 2015. Oh my
[00:14:09] Sam Rhee: God. So many people are doing accessory work to protect themselves more. Now
[00:14:13] David Syvertsen: remember 2015, there was none of that. No, it was him now
[00:14:15] Sam Rhee: every day, every day. And I'm seeing high level at Natasha. One of our best athletes said, shoulder's not doing great. I'm going to switch to GHD is instead of this.
Yep. That mindset was not there several years ago. And I feel like it's more pervasive now. And I think most people realize. Listen, my shoulder's not feeling great on the rig. I'm going to do leg lifts. Yeah. And I think that helps all of us in terms of our culture, in terms of new athletes, looking at people saying.
That guy's really good. And yet she's
[00:14:49] David Syvertsen: scaling this right. And I even think that's one of our goals of this podcast, is we've had, RX first scaled. What does RX mean? Does scaled mean you're bad? Does RX mean you're good? I think that's something we never talked about back in 2014, 2015, maybe in 2016, but now hopefully as someone that listens to this podcast are influenced by the fact that, it can't always be a badge of honor.
If it can't be done safe, yes, you can always have it as a goal to RX every workout that we ever do here. The very few people that can do that. But , the stigma behind, Skeldon RX has changed because of leadership because we have so many athletes in this gym, not even coaches, just, there are good examples for other.
But we've been put through things we've learned from mistakes. As much as I want to say, we've been in this game for a long time, we're still figuring things out.
[00:15:33] Sam Rhee: Longevity is super important. Yeah. And listen, I still get bit all the time and it's still a learning process for me and my body too.
And I think I know what I'm doing at this point but I'm still being very careful for everything. And I think that culture is now permeate.
[00:15:50] David Syvertsen: Better and better. Yeah. And so with OPEX, this is another thing where individualized programming can be a detriment is sometimes you don't really know what you're capable of physically until you're in the environment.
Now Fitzgerald's is France would probably be, well, that person needs to suck it up or figure out how to really test himself by himself. But I think this all the time that, I don't want to put rules on people. All the time. I know that we're working with adults, that's partially why I like working with adults as opposed to kids.
I don't feel as responsible for their decision-making because kids are immature. They're not developed yet. Or so you need to really hold their hands, where if you're a 20, 30, 40 year old adult and we give you a suggestion and you decide not to listen to it. All right.
I'm not even gonna feel disrespected. You're an adult. You make your decision. But you're on OPEX, I follow a lot of their coaches and I respect them a ton. And coach Sam Smith. I think he's now the head coach had crafted coaching the competitive side and he made a post. I'm going to read it.
It's going to take a couple minutes called, should you compete in the open? And I'm going to try to tie this to my interpretation as a CrossFitter cross a coach, cross it owner across it athlete. But also someone that's in crafted coaching as a competitive athlete. I feel like I'm like cheating on someone, but should you compete in the open? If you can't perform the work required to prepare effectively, then you aren't capable of competing it. If someone says otherwise, they're probably trying to sell you something. That's a very OPEX way of saying things in early October, Ahmed told me he wants to compete in the.
So that's a few months ago. I met him halfway and gave him specific benchmarks. He would need to hit by the end of the year in order to be able to compete in the open. Here they are snatch 1 65. Plus his PR at the time was one 30 clean and jerk. 2 25 plus needed. His PR was 1 75 front squat, 2 45.
His PR at the time was 180 deadlift, 400 for, to his PR at the time was three 50 AMRAP on broken ring muscle ups. He needed to be eight plus his PR at the time was for five minutes of strict handstand pushups. He needed 40 plus needed. His PR was 20 to five minute of strict pull-ups. He needed 50 plus his PR at the time was 38 and then he has a couple other workouts with.
I'm not going to get into every single workout, like what is times needs to be in certain things. And again, I nerd out on this stuff all the time, like objective numbers. So I would like to read it, but I'm not going to bore you with that. All right. Throughout December, we hit a good chunk of these.
He missed a few due to some sickness and exams here, his hair or his results snatch one 60, missed the goal, clean and jerk. 1 95 missed the goal front squats for 2, 2 25. He missed the goal. And then he checked all those gymnastics, the ring muscle ups, handstand push-ups pull-ups. All those things in my head.
So the last thing he ends the post with this. Majority of the successful metrics came from gymnastics and the cyclical tests. This gives me some insight on what areas might have potential for faster improvements. All things being equal, strength and power adaptions are the long-term game. If you have a goal of performing well in a competition, it would behoove you to prepare for it.
Goals have various prerequisites in order to prepare effectively for them. The open is no different. If you aren't capable of preparing effectively for the open, then why do it, why not train and work on getting better? This is the approach I take with my class. If you can't perform the requisite training and preparation for the task, you are not yet ready for it.
Stay patient, stay consistent, keep training.
[00:19:33] Sam Rhee: What does
[00:19:33] David Syvertsen: compete for the open mean? That is where I almost messaged him or commented, but I don't like commenting on social media is I never want to come across a certain way, questioning his intelligence season. One of the most brilliant coaches I've ever listened to.
I think there, in my opinion, Imagine I did that here. I mean,
[00:19:48] Sam Rhee: how many athletes at bison
[00:19:49] David Syvertsen: could hit those numbers? Those like all of them. Maybe.
[00:19:54] Sam Rhee: And so are they the only ones
[00:19:55] David Syvertsen: competing in the open? And this is where I think this is the difference between the individual group versus group feel we are here for community, but we want individuals to make themselves as fit as possible.
Chase after goals individually. Where these guys are just about objective measurements. And this is the problem with individual training, in my opinion, it's too objective. And when James Fitzgeralds talks down on the group training, the CrossFit side of it, he always likes like, oh, just throw a bunch of people in the room, go 21, 15, 9, have fun go puke after, that's almost a disrespect to what we do.
Absolutely. And I think there are probably some shitty gyms out there that do that that way. And that is the 2007 version of CrossFit, but you're stuck in those times. There's a lot of sophistication and cross it now.
[00:20:39] Sam Rhee: Yes. James Fitzgerald is crapping on the 2007 version of
[00:20:43] David Syvertsen: CrossFit, right? Yeah.
Which is giant and he can't get over
[00:20:45] Sam Rhee: it. Yeah.
[00:20:46] David Syvertsen: But imagine we were like that. Imagine we were an individual training. There are like if we took cross it out and we became an OPEX gym, We lose half our members, probably more because our memberships would go up, probably, twice as high.
These would be all individual training. You come in, it's like an open gym feel every day and it's not fun. No, it's not fun. This is the most
[00:21:04] Sam Rhee: unfun type of training. I think I've
[00:21:06] David Syvertsen: ever heard of, I know a gym and CrossFit and Naples he gave it a shot and he drank that sauce. Got rid of his crossword affiliation, changed it to OPEX.
I think they closed it. Like they, it just wasn't working. I understand the desire to individually program for every single person. This is not a plug I have no anywhere between 12 and 18 clients on next level. And that is all individual. But note it is it's individual. In addition to their cross programming.
It's and I tell all of them, Hey, CrossFit, first, this is side work. This is what I think a lot of OPEX people don't understand that group feel fuels a lot of fire, but yes, there are people that want to work on snatching long endurance, certain cyclical work conditioning workouts, specific things that those people need work on.
Susan. Sam's wife works on things that are very different than they've both, right? Like they have very different weaknesses and strengths. I individually program templates for them, and every now and then they do do the same thing. There's a couple of conditioning workouts that are similar or the same, but the common ground between the two of them.
Is that I know they're going to bison, why 3, 4, 5 days a week. And they love it. Yeah.
[00:22:23] Sam Rhee: And they love it. I love watching Dave Bo come in at 5:00 AM and chase
[00:22:27] David Syvertsen: after it. Yeah. And I'm seeing as a coach, I'm seeing his improvements in CrossFit, bison workouts, because of next level. I remember you
[00:22:36] Sam Rhee: said for Kathleen, you said for training for the legends.
If I pulled her out and had her in a corner doing her own thing, she would get worse. She got worse, she got worse and up and. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline to try to follow some sort of individualized, very, very difficult. And some people might be able to do that, but even the high level athletes, the thing we were talking about before their programs, the higher level, you get, start to all.
The same because you're hitting those numbers. How can you hit those numbers? There aren't 15 different ways to train, to lift heavy, to do more gymnastics. Right? Those methods are timed tests. There are programs that are time tested. You look at all of these top athletes and you looked at their weekly programming.
Not the structural build progression, which OPEC says, but when they're actually training for the games, they're probably really
[00:23:33] David Syvertsen: similar woefully similar, like, the difference between yes, this girl is doing 20 pound wall balls and that guy is doing 75 pound thrusters. Yes, you can say the workouts are different, but they're not.
I would, I think that if you put every games, athlete, or every high level athletes training on the team, They w they would be big picture. They would be almost identical. And everyone's who? Who's got the secrets now who's got the secrets. I mean, Matt Frazier is coming out with a book soon. I pre-ordered it.
And maybe there'll be some secrets in there, but I can't stand it when people say I'm not going to give out my secrets, shut up. You don't have secrets. You just have to train, be consistent, stay healthy. And you want to know what a lot of these big time games athletes now are doing.
And these big time training. They convince the masses that if you do what, Danielle, Brandon does, you're going to be a gifted athlete too. Like they're getting together these training camps, they're grouping. Yeah. They're calm. They're group fitness, yeah. They probably all have individual things that they get programmed for.
Of course, sensory of course that's what individual training is to me. It's accessory. But then they come together and they do CrossFit. And I think that's one thing that gets lost on a lot of people. And that's why I still, if it makes sense for my body, like I get in too many, as many classes as I can.
At the end of the day, you want that taste? I don't care if its thrusters and burpees or if it's rowing and muscle ups, I don't care if it's pull-ups and box jumps or double unders and wall walks. I want that taste. And it's the same exact thing. It's just different movement patterns, and yes, there's a lot of responsibility needs to be put into.
And you do want an engineer at the top of whatever coaching program you have making sure you touch on everything different time domains, different moving combinations, complimentary, not complimentary. I think that , the beauty of this is that it really can be anything, but
you're really going towards the same goal. I
[00:25:13] Sam Rhee: almost feel James Fitzgerald reminds me of some of my mentors who had so much knowledge about stuff
[00:25:20] David Syvertsen: that is really one of the smartest
[00:25:22] Sam Rhee: people I've ever listened to started obsessing about little things, it is true, but in the broad, messy practicality of life,
[00:25:30] David Syvertsen: Doesn't really make a huge difference.
It's out of touch. That's where I really do feel like it's out of touch. And even I've heard my coach, Henry Toronto, who I respect a lot. He's even said this he's sometimes like that comp train program from Bernburg drawn, that thousands of people are on, it does work for some people, but it's more out of luck.
Hey, they focus on things that, that guy is sucks at. So he got better, but the person that was already good at it, didn't get better. That's not as individualized. We just talked about big picture with we're all doing the same thing. It's just we're coming from different roads, but we all converge at the same path at some point. And I think what happens a lot is you have a bad streak, right?
You have a bad open, you didn't do as well as the person that you always want to beat, or you just didn't do as well as you did last year. And that's where it's like, all right, it's the program's fault. I'm not individualized enough. And trust me, I've gone down that path. I have a coach right now, so I'm not coming down on that thought process at all.
I wanted a different voice, what's unique about my situation is. I program everything here. I programmed all of next level. I program all bison. I want it to get away from myself. That's why I wanted to do it. It wasn't because I'm like this guy is going to get me to the games, he's definitely helped me.
And that's a topic of debate that I have with Ash all the time. Maybe as a finances, it's like, all right, you're paying this coach. Do you really think he's going to do things for you that you can't do for yourself? If you consider yourself good at programming, but I do think there, so yes, like that individualized side, it does help me to have an outside voice.
But it has nothing to do with the fact that cross it can't be individualized and scaled and changed per person. I agree. All right.
