S02E43 Special Guest CHRIS HINSHAW, Coach of Champions

Meet the only coach from whom Mat Fraser pirated his workout programming by getting it from Rich Froning!

HERDFITUSA welcomes Chris Hinshaw @aerobiccapacity, one of the top endurance coaches in the world. Chris Hinshaw is the founder of aerobiccapacity.com, and is one of the top endurance coaches in the world. He is a former All American swimmer and a 10x Ironman Competitor with multiple top international triathlon finishes. Chris Hinshaw has coached nearly every elite CrossFit Games Champion and podium finisher, including Mat Fraser, Rich Froning, Jason Khalipa, Camille Leblanc-Bazinet, Katrín Davíðsdóttir, Tia Clair Toomey, Kristin Holte, Kara Webb, Sara Sigmundsdóttir, and Julie Foucher.

In a wide-ranging episode, we talk to Chris Hinshaw, the coach of champions, about what he considers key qualities for winners, the concept of utilizing active recovery instead of rest to increase endurance, and topics extending from why women are more coachable than men, to how he programs confidence for his athletes.

"If you had to create a Mount Rushmore of CrossFit coaches, Chris Hinshaw is going to be on it."

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

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S02E43 Special Guest CHRIS HINSHAW, Coach of Champions

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the HerdFit podcast. I am coach David Syvertsen with my co-host Sam Rhee, and we are, have the honor to have coach Chris Hinshaw, um, on, on the, our podcast today. Chris, thank you for coming on.

[00:00:13] Chris Hinshaw: Thank you. I appreciate it.

[00:00:15] David Syvertsen: This, uh, for those that don't know, Chris Hinshaw, that means you live under a rock.

Um, he is I'll, I'll speak for him and make him a little uncomfortable here, but he really is. If you had to create a Mount Rushmore of CrossFit coaches, he's going to be on it. Um, he's the founder of aerobiccapacity.com. Um, Widely considered the top endurance coach in the world within the CrossFit space.

Um, currently resides in Cookeville, Tennessee, and he's, I'm actually going to be taking his Aerobic Capacity course tomorrow. So that's why we kind of cross paths. So we're in Morristown, New Jersey right now. I'll be at the Aerobic Capacity course tomorrow. Um, he's a frequent commentator at many CrossFit events, including Wodapalooza,, the CrossFit Games.

He's a coach to 32 CrossFit Games champions. 32. Alright. With repeats. Coach to 50 plus CrossFit Games podium athletes. A 10 times Iron Man competitor. All right. And, he has 12 plus years of CrossFit experience. Um, just want to give you guys a quick, uh, just background on who he's worked with. Um, Who's who of CrossFit competitors.

We have Mat Fraser, Rich Froning, Jason Khalipa, Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet, Katrin Davidsdottir, uh, Tia, Claire Toomey, Kristin Holte, Kara Webb, Sara Sigmundsdottir, Julie Foucher, several more. Um, so basically if you follow any CrossFitters on Instagram, Chris Hinshaw has probably coached them at some point, Chris, thanks for joining us today.

[00:01:34] Chris Hinshaw: I'm all rattled now.

[00:01:38] David Syvertsen: You know, we're going to, we really want to get into a lot of what Chris has done as a coach and how it impacts us as athletes, us as coach. Um, but I really want to just kind of give you the opportunity just to talk about the Aerobic Capacity seminar and what you really are. What's the purpose of the seminar and what you try to instill both athletes and coaches.

[00:01:58] Chris Hinshaw: I'm still stuck on that whole list. You know, what's funny, this is like I sit and I think about it. A lot of work went into what you just said and it doesn't, it, one of the things that people say to me periodically is, are you surprised at how fast things happen? It's like, we'll be out of that twenty-five years.

And yeah, there's no gifts. I mean, it's, it's, it's a lot of hard work in there. And, and it's interesting that when you look back and you look at your work, um, what you've created, but there was a lot of effort that went into it. A ton. Yeah. And that's, what's happened with the course, that course. Um, you know, what's interesting about the seminar is, is, is it was Matt Chan who got second in the CrossFit Games in 2012. I was having dinner with him in Santa Cruz, California, and I had, had done some workouts with him and he took up an interest. This was in, in 2014. Uh April-ish and he said, uh, you know, at dinner, he said, I'd really like to understand how it is that you do what you do.

And so I started sharing with him these thoughts, and he was scribbling down some ideas and he had six napkins going. And at the end of dinner, he flips these around and he says, this is your content. These are your lectures. And you need to share this with the community. And I'm like, I'm not ready.

There's no way. And he's, I'm telling you, when you do decide to share, you gotta share everything.

[00:03:32] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:03:33] Chris Hinshaw: Don't hold back. I know you're developing what you think is intellectual property, but you got to show the community, that you're confident in developing the next generation concept. So give them what you've learned, share your data, prove it that it works.

And I'm like, I'm not. No way. Well, that was on Saturday. Yeah. On a Tuesday. I got a phone call from him and said, I just want you to know that I have booked you on Saturday from nine o'clock until five, o'clock a full day seminar at my gym, CrossFit Verb in Denver.

[00:04:04] David Syvertsen: Oh, wow.

[00:04:05] Chris Hinshaw: This Saturday.

[00:04:07] David Syvertsen: You guys prepare.

[00:04:08] Chris Hinshaw: And I'm like, there's no way you got to cancel it as I can. We've already got four signups. And that's how it actually started. And you know, it's interesting to me when I think, um, that I had, uh, we had an hour break for lunch and I got in the rental car and I went around the block and I fell asleep for 55 minutes.

I was so crushed in getting in front of people. And it's hard because when you're by yourself, when you stop talking, there's no one bailing you out. Yeah, that's kind of where to hide, right? Yeah. So that was the start of it. And we've done, I don't know, maybe 4,000 people at the month, 5,000 through our course.

Wow. Um, I've taught them all so far. Um, you know, we're grooming people to, to take them on okay. Where then I can go into, um, more advanced educational concepts, like a level two version.

[00:04:58] David Syvertsen: Awesome. So yeah. So here we are eight years later, it's funny, April, 2014 is when you had that conversation two months prior is when our gym opened, at CrossFit Bison in New Jersey.

So, you know, just like put that frame of we're in the middle of a podcast series right now, going over the history of our gym and how it all started. And so much happens in those eight years. And here we are. The S the, I had people from my gym that signed up for tomorrow's seminar, and they're on the wait list, you know?

So you go from four people have to go, because those four people. To, you know, a seminar that is sold out. So, you know, you also have an extremely accomplished background as an Ironman. Um, All American swimmer, um, international fishes, uh, finishing second place at the overall finish a Hawaiian Ironman world championships.

Second place overall finish Ironman world championship in Canada, and then a first place overall finish Ironman Brazil. You know, you are coach now, how do you blend your experience as an athlete into your coach? Okay. Because you're also coaching a different sport, right, then the Ironman. How can you blame your experiences as an athlete, to who you

coach,

[00:06:04] Chris Hinshaw: You know, early on triathlons being three sports. I thought that there was a lot of similarities into the CrossFit space that you're, you're not a specialist when you're a triathlete, because you're doing three different things. Right. Um, and that's the same holds true. There's nobody in CrossFit that's that, that truly is committed to this concept of functional fitness that specializes in one activity.

Right. Um, But that part of it was, is that wasn't the case is that you were a specialist in those three events. I mean, I was swimming 25,000 meters a week. I was riding three to 400 miles a week and I was running 40 to 50 for eight years. Wow. I was a specialist. Yeah. And you know, you look at CrossFit games, athletes, if they're swimming a mile, 1600 meters in a pool one time per week, that's a lot, a lot. Yeah. Right.

And if you are doing a 10 mile run as a, a CrossFit games athlete, that was a lot. 10 miles was nothing. I mean, I would do 20 miles on a Saturday after doing a race because you have to hit your numbers. Right. And so part of it was, is that I learned a lot from those days. Um, and it gave me some perspective in writing workouts.

To me, I feel that it's very challenging if you are a coach, and you're you hadn't been an athlete or you're not an athlete, you don't have the perspective. And what happens and what you see is the way in which workouts are written. And I'll give you an example. So I, the hard, one of the worst workouts that I gave Fraser one time was nine rounds of 300 meters in roughly 54 seconds.

And then he had to do a a hundred meter walk.

[00:07:43] David Syvertsen: So 300 meter run, 100 meter walk. Okay.

[00:07:46] Chris Hinshaw: So 54 seconds for his 300 and then a a hundred meter walk. And he texted me afterwards and he's all, the thing was a disaster. That was a disaster. And I'm like, I, of course, so part of it is as a fan of the sport, you know, I have to have my better half Heidi read my messages going back, because I don't want to look like a knucklehead when I'm responding to a Mat Fraser as a fan.

Right. But inside I'm like, I'm like, that's impossible because I go off of numbers and I'm a math guy. And although I don't control all of his variables, I'm writing workouts that he thinks are impossible, but I believe are possible because that's how you create confidence, right? If you be an athlete to do something seemingly impossible, then that's where they create their greatness from.

That's how you do it. And it's a very difficult thing. You must challenge all of the qualities in a workout. So that that athlete feels that pressure. Got it. And one of the things that I just said to you was is the recovery in that workout was the hundred meter walk.

[00:08:48] David Syvertsen: Correct.

[00:08:49] Chris Hinshaw: But what did I do in that?

I prescribed a time didn't I, yeah, fit together. Coach had said, don't know, we'll just say, do a hundred meter walk. And I've seen people walk a hundred meters in 10 minutes. Right? Right. And so when I, when Fraser, when, when I, when he finally starts communicating, because he'd let me stew on it all day, he said, you know, what I realized was is that I cannot walk a hundred meters in one minute, I can't do it. Okay. My PR for a hundred meter walk is a 1:02, so I'm not walking anymore. So I always told Dave Castro it's like, you know what, if you're really trying to write workouts to get Mat to lose, just do nothing but walking.

[00:09:31] David Syvertsen: So, I mean, it's touching on Fraser but also some of the other champions you've worked with and, you know, I know you are a numbers guy, you know, I listened to it so much.

I've listened to

[00:09:39] Chris Hinshaw: so I can show you what's.

[00:09:41] David Syvertsen: Yeah, I know this, this thing's probably worth a million bucks right here. If not more right. If I can sneak this out, maybe I'll give you my computer. But the, the, the mindset of a champion in my, just my experience with coaching and competing in the sport, there's been, there is so much that revolves around the mindset of, of, you know, going through the grind day to day, week to week, month to month.

And you know, the whole, the aura of online competing, it can get overwhelming sometimes as you're not live with so many people, and that's how the sport starts. And that's how you have to start success. What are some just traits of the champions you've worked with and you've worked with so many, is there a common ground to, you know, when Mat Fraser says I want to win on the assault bike, I don't want to get better at the assault bike.

Um, what, where are you in that regard? Because you are such an objective coach. I do this and this many seconds do this and this many seconds, how sensitive or not sensitive do you be? Where do you find the, the, the black and white areas of like, Hey, be objective here, be empathetic here. Um, in regards to the mindset.

[00:10:44] Chris Hinshaw: Great question. So there's two things there. One is, are they coachable and two, is, are they willing to take risks? Right? So this, this whole concept of coachability, I think that it's, it needs to be clearly defined. And, and because it's talked about a lot. Coachability, right? Yes. Like, are you coachable? And, and, you know, we were talking earlier before the start about Jason Khalipa that was an athlete that I was so spoiled by having a chance to work with him because he was so highly coachable, right.

He said to me, before we even started, this was in December of 2012. I want to know what you're doing. I want to understand it, meaning he wants to understand the purpose, the reason behind it. So I'm not wasting his time, but he said to me, he says, I will never question you.

I will do everything you ask of me.

[00:11:36] David Syvertsen: And that's a coach's dream right there.

[00:11:38] Chris Hinshaw: I made him run 20 miles, three weeks before the 2013 CrossFit games. Now you have to think about back then. I had them do 10 by 800. Yasso 800s, which is a marathon predictor workout before the CrossFit games. All right. And he held in those eight hundreds, 2:57, Garrett Fisher held 2:53s..

[00:12:00] David Syvertsen: Wow.

[00:12:01] Chris Hinshaw: Which is incredible. That is so for people that don't know, Yassos 800 it's, it's 10 by 800 with a work to rest ratio of one-to-one. So if you do it in three minutes, you get three minutes of rest, right? So Jason went 2:57. The deal is, is that you take that 2 57, you convert it from minutes and seconds to hours and minutes, meaning two hours and 57.

And then you could add another five minutes on there as a buffer, which means that Jay, if he had the stamina, he should be able to go somewhere around 2 57 to 3 0 2 for a marathon. What Jason did is took heat. He's ruining you. And he stood by and he defended me. I had Garrett Fisher and Neil Maddox at that time.

And they did exactly what I asked them to do. And it changed the sport forever. That is a coachable athlete that is so confident that they're willing to do whatever that coach and they don't deviate. They stick with the plan. They want to understand the plan. But they stick with it. Right. And that's what is coachable.

But the other thing is, is that, that what I identified was look at the risk he took. The risk, Mat Fraser, same thing, Mat Fraser and Rich Froning, you know, I've told this story before that, that Rich Froning, there was not a question of whether or not I would make them a better runner. That wasn't an issue that would be easy.

But what if I ruined him as a CrossFit athlete, he won the games four times when we started working together.

[00:13:30] David Syvertsen: They would ask what happened. All this coach came in and this pressure.

[00:13:34] Chris Hinshaw: And so, um, I happened to end up meeting Mat Fraser. He came to the Aerobic Capacity course, in January of 2015 at CrossFit New England at Bergeron's gym.

[00:13:45] David Syvertsen: Okay.

[00:13:47] Chris Hinshaw: And lunchtime rolls around. He comes up to me and says, hey I got some questions. And he starts talking about his running workouts that he's been doing. And he wants to get a better understanding of these running workouts and how he's doing them, because he didn't understand the reasoning for them. He didn't understand like, like pacing and he does didn't cause he came to the weightlifting background.

[00:14:09] David Syvertsen: Right. And then right into CrossFit. So it was just go or go home kind of mentality.

[00:14:12] Chris Hinshaw: But he was defining workouts with such precision, like he had distances and he had times for those distances. And then he had, like, we talked about earlier the recovery with set times for the recovery, the only person that's doing that even now is me and how was a weight lifter doing this?

And so I asked him that and he's all well, Rich Froning's programming my running workouts. I'm like, wait a minute. He's ripping me off type of a thing. And I was really like, I was bummed inside. Cause I Rich is as good as they come. Right. And. I said, you know, do you have an example? And he had 40 pages folded up in his back pocket and he shows me and sure enough, it was all Rich was doing this, forwarding my emails to him.

But he then says, oh, you're doing these. And he felt like embarrassed by it. And he then says, Hey, so you just send them direct because Rich is sending me these things like three weeks, four weeks behind.

And I said, well, let me ask you something. Are you concerned about this interference effect? Because in weightlifting, especially if you went to the Olympic training center, right?

The amount of, of propaganda telling weightlifters that if you do too much cardio, matter of fact, they ushered them around in golf carts. They're not allowed to take the stairs. They've got to take the elevator because of the potential conversion. And, um, I said, are you concerned about the impact it's going to have on your strength based upon that?

He said, Chris you know what, I never want to finish second ever again. Ever. And I know if I don't fix this, I'll never win. And if this drops me out of the top 10 drops me out of the sport. That's on me, but I need to do something to fix this.

[00:15:59] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:15:59] Chris Hinshaw: In order to win.

[00:16:00] David Syvertsen: Thinking outside the box.

[00:16:01] Chris Hinshaw: That's risk.

[00:16:02] David Syvertsen: Right. Yeah.

[00:16:03] Chris Hinshaw: Doing something that your others are not willing to do. And it shocks me that athletes are surprised they finished in the same spot.

[00:16:11] David Syvertsen: Yeah.

[00:16:12] Sam Rhee: Now, as a coach, you said you don't charge when you're coaching CrossFit games, athletes, because some of it is just experimenting or you're learning along with them.

So when you did this with Khalipa, was that, what was your thinking, why you made him run 20 miles a couple of weeks before the games. And do you routinely say this is a good, um, approach or was it special just for him because of his capabilities and what he needed to do before the games. And do you customize those types of workout specific or you're like if you're games, athlete, if you do this, this marathon simulation. Couple of weeks before the games. That's a very good way of helping know where you are.

[00:16:51] Chris Hinshaw: You have to. So with every athlete you have to get what's behind what they're saying and really understand. And Jason, he lacked confidence. I mean, here's a guy that passed out in 2009 in the seven K run. Like he would get dead last in every endurance event.

And imagine that level of confidence that, you know, the sport is evolving and it's turning into an endurance competition. I mean, let's face it. Even if the events are short, you stack up 14, over three days, it's an endurance event.

[00:17:24] David Syvertsen: How, how strong are you on the final day?

[00:17:26] Chris Hinshaw: Right.

[00:17:26] David Syvertsen: Because usually what it comes down to.

[00:17:27] Chris Hinshaw: And so Jason knew he never win.

[00:17:31] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:17:32] Chris Hinshaw: That was in his head. He was convinced of it. So as a coach, your job is to create confidence. The number one thing that you are creating is this, this level of confidence. Imagine if Jason Khalipa is doing things that are seemingly impossible, I picked Yassos 800 because it was recognized in the running community as a key indicator workout for a marathon, not a 5k, but a marathon.

[00:17:59] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:18:00] Chris Hinshaw: And he dominated. It was so intimidating what he did. Imagine how that turned around Jason's mindset.

[00:18:07] David Syvertsen: Absolutely.

[00:18:08] Chris Hinshaw: I didn't do it. And that's a trick is like, so my dad, he was an attorney and, uh, as a kid, I would go and I've never talked about this before. I, as a kid, I would go down and watch him in the courtroom.

And he was one of the best voted as like Harvard law school, the best litigator in the US. Loved litigating. Okay. And he was a medical malpractice defense lawyer. And I would go in there and I would listen. And he had this skill of circling the wagons, meaning, he let's say he was cross-examining some, somebody, an economist of saying that, you know, this person, they lost out on a million dollars.

Well, what he would do is he would start picking apart this economist. And pretty soon you realize the guy was full of it. He wasn't telling the truth, but my dad would never pull the trigger and, and it was masterful. And the first time when I saw it, I at dinner that night, I'm like, dad, I don't understand why didn't you, you had him.

Did you not know what he, you had him and you didn't just, bury him?. He said, do you think that the jury knew that? And then the light bulb kicked on. You never want to take the power away from the person making the decision.

[00:19:23] David Syvertsen: Interesting.

[00:19:23] Chris Hinshaw: Let them make the decision and now they control the card. So all I am doing is writing workouts to showcase what I already know. He's the one that's not convinced.

[00:19:35] David Syvertsen: So is that ingrained in you now as a coach is like, Hey, try not to overstep that bound and let him learn it for himself.

[00:19:41] Sam Rhee: You don't have to tell him. He found out himself by the workout you programmed for him.

[00:19:47] Chris Hinshaw: And what's more powerful?

[00:19:48] David Syvertsen: 100 percent.

[00:19:49] Chris Hinshaw: You know, so I was in sales for 25 years. And so that's what I did in sales is that if I was selling to you, you were a commodity manager, purchasing manager. I let you think that you were actually in charge. Yeah. And that's the.

[00:20:04] David Syvertsen: You're a step ahead.

[00:20:05] Chris Hinshaw: Because everybody falls into patterns unless you're crazy.

[00:20:08] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:20:08] Chris Hinshaw: And it's pretty easy to figure out their behavior. Right. Is your touch point quality? Is it on time delivery? You know, do you need to adjust in time program? Do you want me to put engineers in your facility? Pretty soon you figure out those slots and you solve those things in advance.

[00:20:22] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:20:23] Chris Hinshaw: That's all you're doing with an athlete is you're trying to get to understand them to what category they need to drive in.

[00:20:30] David Syvertsen: Yeah.

[00:20:30] Chris Hinshaw: So Fraser was notoriously nervous about the CrossFit games. Yeah. I mean, it's publicly said it, like he would throw up. He was so nervous before going on the floor that he'd throw up in the corner because to him it was first place or last place.

[00:20:43] David Syvertsen: There was no, like I finished on the podium. It was first place or nothing.

[00:20:47] Chris Hinshaw: Well, he's going into war and he would really take ownership of that. Part of it is, is that athletes that don't take ownership. They don't even know what I'm talking about. Right. And there was a reason why they never make it to the games because they don't take the same responsibility.

[00:21:01] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:21:02] Chris Hinshaw: Mat Fraser took the ownership piece. And so part of it was, is that that would make, it was stressful for him that would create this level of anxiety. And what I had to do for Mat was, right before the games create programming. That was so like on the edge where I wasn't confident that he can do it. But if he did it, something that was truly impacting, imagine carrying that, that momentum into the games. Yep.

[00:21:34] David Syvertsen: That's the next stage.

[00:21:35] Chris Hinshaw: And that's, that's what a coach should do, but it's a very difficult thing, but because I was at that level of, of, you know, top few on the world, I know what you need. I know that stimulus that we're trying to achieve, and it's a delicate thing.

And if you're, I, I look, there's plenty of coaches that were never athletes that are great coaches.

[00:21:56] David Syvertsen: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:58] Chris Hinshaw: I don't know how they would be able to do it.

[00:22:00] David Syvertsen: It's a different perspective. And if you had to pick one that was more valuable, I would think as an athlete and as a coach, it has to be, if you had to pick one, you know, Bill Belichick never played in the NFL. All time great. But if you have someone that was an all time, all time, greatest player, now they're all time greatest coach, you do want the one that was in, you know, that highly successful and competitive environment.

[00:22:20] Chris Hinshaw: Of course. The same, just a deeper relationship. Right? Well, for me, it's like when I have athletes and they're saying, you know, looking at this, you know, like I I've worked with Kara Webb when they had that criterium and she calls me up at, they had their athlete briefing.

It was eight o'clock at night in Madison, she calls me up and she says, they're doing a criterium. And I, I don't know how did even do that? I don't know how. So Heidi and I, we went, and went over to where she was staying. And at nine o'clock at night, we rode the streets of Madison and teaching her how to ride.

And I told her, I said, you're going to have to realize that the key will be the draft and getting behind somebody. And what you need to do is get one to two inches from that wheel in front. And there is a high risk that you are going to crash, right. And be ready to crash. Well, I've crashed enough on my bike where I don't, that doesn't bother me anymore. You know, it doesn't.

[00:23:15] David Syvertsen: That hasn't.

[00:23:17] Chris Hinshaw: Because I've done it. Right. So I'm telling an athlete who could win the CrossFit Games, you need to be prepared to crash because it's the reality. And don't be afraid because it's the sport. Yeah. And that's what it takes to win. And I know that, I mean, there was plenty of times on mountain passes where, you know what, unfortunately, I'd lay my bike out, you know, 40 miles an hour. It happens.

[00:23:39] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Those are some of the most violent, crashes you see.

[00:23:42] Sam Rhee: Do you think that CrossFit is unique and as a sport, as a coach to have that perspective, because it's not, it's so generalized and it's about fitness and it's about exercise physiology. And it's about a lot of very scientific principles in terms of endurance that if you don't have a personal experience with it, it, you know, maybe you can't truly program, teach, get into the psyche of an athlete as a coach. If you don't have that part of it, maybe that might be unique to CrossFit or not?

[00:24:15] Chris Hinshaw: Well, it depends on what your motives are. So if you want to stay recreational, then that's fine. What you're always going to do is be in a state of learning. But at some point in time, if you want to become a competitor, you must change your mindset and be strategic.

And are you strategic or are you just along for the ride? For example, if I am, so one of the things Becca Voigt, I did, I did this CrossFit, aerobic, I mean this aerobic capacity, of course. So it's part of CrossFit back then at her gym and in LA. And one of the things that I do is I teach this, this, the breathing. Principles of breathing.

And when are you in control? When are you hyperventilating? And the breath is the tell. Yeah. And I taught her that and after the CrossFit games in 2019, she calls and this is that right after on that Sunday. And she says, when I have coffee with you tomorrow. She won. I'm like, okay. So I didn't know. We'd go and meet her and her husband and amazing couple. Incredible..

We're sitting there having coffee. And she said, I just want you to know. Um, so I don't swear, but I've got to repeat what she said. I, in the seminar, she says, she says, you know, when you were teaching that breathing thing and I'm like, yeah. And she's, I thought you're full of shit. I'm like, what? Now, Becca Voigt is one of the nicest people in the sport.

And I alert my wife and I am valued our relationship with her since we got to know her in 2013.

[00:25:46] David Syvertsen: Awesome.

[00:25:47] Chris Hinshaw: And I told her that I value the relationship so much that I'll do a seminar at your gym for free, and you can invite all your members. Yup. Like that's how much I value her. Well, and I'm like, and my heart just sank.

And Justin Bergh was there. He walked in, he sits down now next to us and I'm like, oh, like the actor, just stick it in there. But I got to tell you, and this is the thing that I'm telling you that about. Are you strategic in your thinking? Do you have weapons to call on to win? Right. And so she said to me, she says, you know, you're teaching me this cadence thing and you're teaching me the breathing patterns and all of that stuff.

And I find myself in that ruck event and I'm going around on that final, the fourth lap and I am in second place. And what I am doing is I'm neck and neck with the person that, that is really my main competition to win the CrossFit games. Right. And then I remember what you said.

[00:26:47] David Syvertsen: Breathing is the tell.

[00:26:48] Chris Hinshaw: And I listen and I hear, and I knew I won. I knew.

[00:26:56] David Syvertsen: That simple.

[00:26:57] Chris Hinshaw: That's a weapon. And she took off right then exactly what I said. And she says, you know what, that's why I won.

[00:27:05] David Syvertsen: That's awesome.

[00:27:05] Chris Hinshaw: Yeah. And that's the difference between a recreational athlete, who is just working on their running technique, who isn't even ready for breathing mechanics or tactics, foot strike all that. Right. Right. Those things need to be automated if they're not on autopilot and you're not ready for that next level. Got it. And that's the same thing like I did with Jason Khalipa, you teach these things in parallel because you don't have unlimited time. So while I'm teaching Jason, his mechanics, I'm teaching him as pacing, I'm teaching his breathing. I'm also intentionally bumping him in turns and I'm jamming him.

[00:27:43] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:27:44] Chris Hinshaw: Until the one day when he realized that I was actually messing with him and then he threatens me and I never, I never, I never treated him the same again, because now he was a threat to me because that is an athlete that is now, he's thinking strategically,

[00:28:01] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:28:01] Chris Hinshaw: He's a threat, that's a competitor. That's who you don't want to compete against.

Are you a recreational athlete or you're a competitive athlete and there's nothing wrong with either one, but a coach needs to know. And too many times coaches will take this recreational athlete who doesn't want to compete. Like my Heidi.

If you insist on her doing the open, she didn't ever work out with you again, because she doesn't want to compete. Right. But I liked that action. I like that. That's the kiss of death, but a coach needs to know.

[00:28:33] David Syvertsen: That's awesome. Yes. So now your, your success and failure, right. And failure is in like first place, second place, right. As an athlete. Okay. And then you have athletes, games athletes that have won the games, then not won the games. Okay. Do you th that the satisfaction fulfillment that you've gotten from both of those situations as an athlete, but then as a coach, was there one, are they completely different from each other?

Do you prefer one over the other, just kind of blending? Is it all kind of tied under one umbrella?

[00:29:01] Chris Hinshaw: I don't care if they win. Yeah. I don't. Part of it is, is that you want, because you know, the work that was put in.

[00:29:08] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:29:08] Chris Hinshaw: And like Kara Webb, Kara Webb, one of the things that, that I look back on and inside of me, I feel like the job wasn't done. You know, she calls me, so she finishes two points behind Tia. And then she calls me that, uh, October from she was on Australia. And I remember I was driving down. I-40 on the phone. And she asked me if I would be willing to help her. And I, I knew Kara before that. And to fast forward, she ends up getting fourth, you know, working with me. Well inside that, that it, it hurt me in the sense that I, I really believed in my heart, that Kara could win and the events just didn't fall her way.

They, they didn't. Right. Um, but one of the things that, that, you know, I think back on Kara was just like, when she called me, she didn't say as her number one goal. Cause part of it is I want to know what your goals are. And I have no problem with an athlete. Like when Camille last year we were working together, you know, before she dropped, you know, retired.

Yep. I asked her about what's your goal. And she says, you know what? I want to go top 10. I just want to get into the top 10, if I can get into the top 10. And that's, I respect that. Tell me if you want to win, and then you're not going to do what it takes to win. Right. I'm out of there. Okay. And so with Cora, I asked her, well, what's your number one?

And she says, you know what? I want to break six minutes in a mile. And well, what about winning? And she's all, that's second. I'm like, well, what's your mile time? She's like, it's 6 42. Wow. How's that possible? But five months later she went 5 47. Wow. That's why I was disappointed because she was, she did everything, the best fitness that she's ever been in, in her life and her confidence. Her weakness was her running and here she ran 5 47.

That's legit as a lady. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:31:04] Sam Rhee: Did you talk to her after that, and how did she feel?

[00:31:07] Chris Hinshaw: Um, you know, we still talk to her. Matter of fact, we're trying to get out to her gym and, and, um, and spend some time with them. You know would really amazing cultural.

[00:31:16] Sam Rhee: Does she look back at that and say that was, it was the best.

[00:31:20] Chris Hinshaw: So part of it is, is that's where being an athlete, like the world champion Canada, I was in first place until a mile ago and I got beat by somebody better than me. Did I underperformed it? But no, I deliver greatness at the highest level that I could. I ran some three hours for my marathon. I mean, I, it was an amazing event and I just got beat by somebody better.

And that's the number one? Is that, did you like make mistakes? Did you not pay attention to the rules? Did you go off course? Did you get no rep those types of things? Those would irritate me, but if you're delivering to your fullest potential and then there's no regret and that's where, sometimes you just get beat.

[00:32:15] Sam Rhee: I listen to these athletes sometimes. There was Noah Ohlsen and Pat Vellner and neither of them have won. And they are always asked you're second, you're second, how does that feel? And they struggle to come with a, uh, like a, an answer that's palatable that makes them look gracious. And, but you see, you know, and then you see it in the NBA with, um, basketball players who've never won a championship. Like how do athletes come to terms with that? Because like you said, if you gave your very best performance and there were no mistakes, and yet you did not come out on top. How do you reconcile that in your life and move on and say, that was great?

[00:32:58] Chris Hinshaw: That's what makes CrossFit very difficult because you let's just say at the games you have 14 events, it's pretty easy to find where your weaknesses are.

And did you do the work in that weakness. I mean, and that's the problem is that CrossFit athletes and I do it too. I hate sprinting. I rather do a five mile run. To me that's much more enjoyable than doing five by 100 meters with three minutes of rest. Right. I much rather do just to go out and run a nice five miles.

The problem is is that those athletes, they're not aware of what they don't know they can fix. Because they're athletes. And that's the hard part for me is that you look at it and it's like, oh man, like I like Rich Froning, you know, in hindsight, anybody can say, when he walked in that triple three in 2014, like now in hindsight, anybody could've come in and made him a better runner, but not back then.

[00:33:55] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:33:56] Chris Hinshaw: Nobody thought that.

[00:33:57] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:33:58] Chris Hinshaw: And yet in 12 weeks we take them from six minutes to 5 41 by doing what running two times a week and running slow. How did that make them go from six minutes to 5 41 by slowing them down? I know how to do that. Rich, he's got a degree in exercise science. He used to be the strength and conditioning coach for, for Tennessee Tech.

He won the games four times. Yet he didn't know, but athletes should know, right. Their job is to do the work.

[00:34:24] David Syvertsen: And do the work.

[00:34:25] Chris Hinshaw: Right. And understand the purpose. That's their ownership piece. Mine is to figure it out the puzzle. Okay. And my problem is, is that when I look at athletes, it's hard for me to be impartial. It's really hard because I'll look at an event and it's like, ah, they should fix that. Yes.

[00:34:45] Sam Rhee: I see that on the Wodapalooza, like counting their their the other announcers are making fun of you, because you're counting their cadence. You're like, their breathing, you're talking about their stride.

[00:34:53] Chris Hinshaw: That was a good one. Right. Then I love that. It was great because that's the only one I've ever gone back and listened to. Cause I'm like, did I call it really an advanced?

[00:35:00] Sam Rhee: And you did. And when you say relaxed running, and then I hear what you talk about in terms of efficiency, And getting your, um, elbow to, you know, sort of auto come back and, you know, be efficient with your motions. Like those are the kinds of things that, um, I think you said it sometime you look at everybody everywhere and you just have to fix, well,

[00:35:24] Chris Hinshaw: thank God. You're not Heidi. Cause every time we were going down the street on the way from the airport here and it's like, it just burns in my head. You know, it's like pull over and let me just give him a little quick advice.

[00:35:35] David Syvertsen: So here's a question in that regard when you, you know, the pacing idea of pacing and we can talk about mixed modal work, right? We get right now, we're in the middle of CrossFit Open. We're actually recording this the weekend of 22.2 and last night we all got to watch, uh, Laura Horvath take on 22.2, the deadlift burpee ascending descending ladder.

When you watch that work out, I want everyone to know you can watch a workout like that and truly break it down. Deadlift burpee, it's not just, you're not just running swimming, biking. Are there, what are your thoughts on athletes when they take on a workout like that? Um, high level like that versus someone that's trying to get to the high level like that or recreational do we overpace do you, is there, should there be a plan for everybody should be a custom plan?

[00:36:20] Chris Hinshaw: That's uh, so I'm going to give you, so we went out, um, Heidi and I went to Australia and we stayed with Tia and Shane back in 20, before she won and she, she needed some, some mental work. Okay. She, and she stayed at our house. And, uh, before that, and one of the things that Tia suffered from was, um, her, her definition of high-intensity wasn't truly the depth, the, the definition of it.

Right. She thought she was working hard because of her rate of improvement. So let's just say that you were a Kara Webb. Well, you're a 6 42 miler and now you're 5 47, right? Well, I know when you run a 5 47, there's more there because you didn't just make it under six, right. You had 5 47, meaning you made it easy.

So at some point in time, you backed off. And I know that. Okay. So when I saw Tia, her definition was that she believed I went 5 47. I PR'ed. I'm fast. I'm working hard. No, there's more there. There's more there. And so part of it was is that, you know, I know that that athletes, when they, when they, they think that they're working hard and, and the ones that are most likely to do this are the elites, right.

They believe that they're working hard because look at my numbers, look at where I am, look at where I was. Right. And that's not the case. Okay. What you need to be able to do. And, and, you know, everything should be measured. You need to be looking at things. And so if you break down that workout, you should be looking at what Laura Horvath was doing, what Justin Medeiros was doing.

And what was the, the average time that they were taking to do an individual burpee. To do an individual deadlift. What was the longest time to do it? Burpee versus a deadlift, for example, like Laura, the longest, the longest amount of time. And one of the rounds was 3.7 seconds per burpee. Okay. That was the longest amount of time.

Well, if you look at the fastest time, you could see a massive contrast there. You shouldn't have that kind of rate of slowing. We refer to that as a fatigue factor. Got it. Right. How much are you slowing in these movements? And so you, but part of it is, is you need to have the first workout, right? If you don't do it in a warm ups, then you have no data.

You have nothing to pull from. You're just guessing. And so now you could go back and look at what she did and. You can come up with a sound plan and that's what she was doing there. She wanted to win number one because of being, you know, on TV here. And number two was this. She wanted to see where she would blow up and test it.

Okay. And so that's what you have to do is that if, if you're trying to be the best in the world, you can't make mistakes. Okay. Ever.

[00:39:16] David Syvertsen: So you think the mentality there is for an athlete of that level, Hey, I'm doing this workout twice experiment. First time, learn from a mistake and do it again.

[00:39:24] Chris Hinshaw: Okay. Or if you're not, then what you need to do is you need to practice it. So in that workout, you know, it's a 10 minute workout. Yep. That means that you have to pace it anything over three minutes, you have to pace because you don't have enough energy to just go out hot and think you're going to finish. Right. So that's one, you have to have a pacing based strategy for, right.

So now that's the case. Well, how are you pacing it? Right. What's your speed. You have to have a benchmark and then it has to be measurable when you get to that checkpoint to know whether or not you're too fast or too slow. Right. It's kind of like if we were doing laps around the track, and let's just say that I wanted you to do one lap around the track in two minutes.

Well, I want you to check your split at a hundred meters. And if you're at a hundred meters in 26 seconds, if you're too fast, you need to slow down by the time you get to 200, right.

[00:40:15] David Syvertsen: That was a big part of the 22.1, that 15 minute kind of grind workout, where we really drew out paces for a lot of people. And it's like, Hey, if you do your first round in this, you're going to have to slow down because you're, you can't sustain anything close to it.

[00:40:27] Chris Hinshaw: But that's a hard concept for CrossFit athletes because it is, it is because it's ingrained. Especially like I came in through the era of 2008 where it was like high intensity was like, when you blew up in a workout.

[00:40:41] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:40:42] Chris Hinshaw: And that, that concept never made sense to me. Wait, you're telling me I'm doing high-intensity yet. I am literally got my hands on my knees sucking down air. I'm not even moving, yet you're telling me that I'm doing high intensity.

[00:40:56] David Syvertsen: It was just heart rate dependent. If my heart rate's high, I'm doing high intensity.

[00:40:59] Chris Hinshaw: That's the problem though, is that that CrossFit athletes blow right through their lactate threshold and then they blow up and then what do they do? They free fall back down, and then they recover and then they blow through it again, instead of up, up, up, up all the way. And that is how you get your best time.

There's not a, there's not an endurance athlete in the world that does workouts like CrossFit athletes. Right. Ever, ever. Yeah. Yeah. Could you imagine, it's like, you're going to do the 5k I got, I've talked about this. You know, like my favorite event I'd love to do back in the day would be a 5k in the Olympics because you know, they don't break for commercial.

I get a lot of TV time. You imagine I go out hot, you know, and I'm going a hundred meters ahead, eight laps into that 12 and a half lap. You know, and the announcers are like, look at Hinshaw, he's got this thing back then. Next thing you know, I stop. And then one, and then it's like, would they applaud that? Yeah.

[00:41:49] David Syvertsen: Right.

[00:41:50] Sam Rhee: What really surprised me is that CrossFit has not adopted more of your philosophies in terms of programming.

Because when you talk about, uh, I have, I can CrossFit in for a while. When I started listening to you, I said, wow, this is so obvious and clear about how to make yourself better, but why are we not doing this where you say, if you, if you rest a lot and you'll get better at rest and how you train Mat Fraser with the D balls and how he couldn't only do what, like 12 of the really super heavy ones. And then you had them do them, but then you also in his rest do lighter wall balls in order to train his recovery period. And also like, why are we not doing that in more workouts? Because every workout we do, we sit there and we're just like spent down there and why are we not? And I feel like in another three or four years, that principal is going to be universal. Like all workouts will be a program with some sort of recovery mode, hypo, adaptation response.

[00:42:49] Chris Hinshaw: For sure. Because it's because of what we're trying to do is get, while we have an athlete coming into the gym, we're trying to get them to do more work in the same amount of time. So why would you do a Metcon where you get this buildup of blood lactate, all the way to the peak of the peak of the peak, and then they finish their Metcon and then what do we do?

We let them lay on the ground. Why not do the mirror image of the bell-shaped curve and work the recovery side. Now we're getting more value. The thing is, is like, CrossFit and we've talked about like Jason Khalifa and this, this concept of pacing. I was highly criticized by CrossFit back then. I mean, highly criticized. But in 2016, Nicole Carroll calls me and wants to partner.

So you've got to realize that CrossFit, it, there it's, it's a conservative organization and they're not going to just drink anybody's, Kool-Aid. Prove it, that what you're doing is creating value for our community. And now we look at pacing, which I was highly criticized. And it's the whole sport. It's the foundation.

Right. It changed the sport. And that's one of the things that is hard for me is that I have these concepts that the elites do, but they're just not trickling down yet. They're just the cause it's not ready. And like, one of the things that, that I am the most proud of is in interval style workout. And we're seeing it now in the open.

And the truth is, is that we do intervals because we can create a higher level of intensity for a longer amount of time because we're giving them rest. Right. Obviously. But back then, it wasn't. And so I think that, that in fairness to CrossFit, they are aware, um, you know, Glassman was always kind to me. Always.

And the only time he wasn't kind was whenever we would get together, he'd never let me leave. He wanted to talk and talk and talk about like, he loved what I was sharing and he wanted to hear more. Talk shop. Yeah. That was classmen. He was really interested in, give me the evidence. Not only from the scientific community, but what is your evidence?

Yeah, a lot of data. And where are you going? Like when Camille won the games in 2014? I, I, you know, I started working with her 13 months prior to that, and it was a huge highlight for me. I happened to walk past Heidi and I walked past the CrossFit booth in LA and Glassman was out in front, he's all and puts his arm.

I've known him since 2000 high with me and we get sucked into the booth. I missed the whole word ceremony because he wants to talk about what we're doing. So there's the founder of the sport and into it, loved it. And that's why I think that it just, it changes. It just takes time. And that's where, you know, you look at what Mat Fraser and doing those types of words.

Think about that was six in 2016. He's been doing those things 2016. That's why athletes, when we were talking about Vellner no Olsen, you know, I mean, I helped fill in her last year of going into the games and I mean, I hope know it too, but part of it is, is that if I haven't worked with an athlete, they just don't know.

They have no idea what they they're missing out on. And that's the shame because their career will end and they could have been better.

Are you working with CrossFit now to do more data driven projects? Because I know you're such a data guy, you have a lot of data you've done work with so many different athletes.

I, you talked about, um, doing different programming for large numbers of athletes. And is that something that you're interested in to sort of demonstrate how these principles can, can work in

actuality? Yeah. So I'm a numbers guy and like I said, Nothing turns me on other than Heidi, more than a spreadsheet.

Like I, I mean, I love a good spreadsheet and if we could open tabs, multiple displays,

[00:47:15] David Syvertsen: what a compliment,

[00:47:22] Chris Hinshaw: um, part of the problem is, is that people don't know what to do with the data. What do you do with it? Like, for example, you know, it's interesting, like we were just talking about Roger Bannister, picking four minutes for a mile in 1953. And what was the wearable technology that you had back then? You had a stopwatch, that's it.

And yet he broke four minutes and the miles went 3 43 now. And look at all of what we have available to us. The problem is, is like this, this garment watch is an incredible, incredible product and what it, it can provide me. But what does the average consumer do? Like if you download. And you could look at your Stripe frequency.

What does that even mean to you? For example, your ground contact. If you're 52% of your time is on your left foot and 50, 48 is on your right foot. What does that even mean? It's collecting it and it's telling me, but what is the actionable plan? The heart rate information. Should I follow heart rate? What, or should I do?

They don't even know. And so part of the problem is, is that Google, apple, Microsoft, they're all collecting this data mountains of it, but there's no actionable task coming out of it. What do you do with it? And that's the problem is that you have to, if you collected, you have to have something that you're trying to gather.

So I'll give you an example of that. I just did an echo bike progression, right? And I do a lot of white labeling of workouts and many have my, the deal we have since I, you know, the relationship, they publicized that I write them for them. Well, I just did, uh, I did an echo bike progression. It was two workouts a week.

And what we did is we started with a five minute max effort for cows, and then it ended 10 weeks later, I think, uh, with a hundred cows for men and 80 cows for men. Okay. I had to over 2000 people doing this and what I did was I took the result, the initial result of five minutes, and I started creating personalization for every single person every week, every workout, I personalized it for.

Wow, for free, there was no extra costs. They got it all for free because that's how you maximize the adaptation is through personalization, right? And the only way to personalize is to manipulate the workouts. This is important. You write the workout to get the data you want. So part of it is, is that, you know, we've talked about fatigue factor.

Well, I have one data point at five minutes. What I'm trying to find out. Each individual athlete the rate of fatigue as they progress into different time domains. So you can't maintain your, your speed for five minutes that you would for one minute, right? You slow down that rate of fatigue tells me a lot about your physiology or strengths and weaknesses.

So what do I have to do? I have to do another test somewhere in the middle, like a one minute effort. Now I can compare your speed, right? Your wattage at one minute and your average wattage at five minutes. And now I have a fatigue factor there, but what do I really want? I don't want just a linear line. I want a curve.

Yeah. So what I have to do, I have to do another test. So I do a peak power test. I do, you know, 10 seconds max effort get right. And so what you're doing is, is that you are, are driving the workouts towards a better understanding of the population that you're seeing. Because CrossFit athletes, they're not specialists.

And so what we want to do is better understand the recreational athlete and their rate of fatigue. So like for example, in the movement running, you slow down between 400 meters on a mile. And what I'm talking about is the slope, right? So you slow down roughly 21 to 22%, you know? So from 400 meters to 821 to 20 to 800 to a mile, you slowed down 21 to 22% runners, slow down somewhere around 10, 11, 12%.

Okay. Well, if you are looking at the running community and what they publish, you'd be sitting there going wait, rich Froning I'm at 28% right now. And I got to get all the way down to 12. That means I got to run a 4 45 mile. That's never going to happen to a guy that's going to run two times a week at most.

Right. So that's where part is understanding who your audience. But then writing workouts in a way where, when you collect the data, you already know what you're looking for. So it's usable. So when people ask me, you know, do you have evidence of what you're doing? I have evidence on every single thing I'm doing it because all my work that's a written for proven my principles.

Interesting. Do you have to,

[00:52:15] Sam Rhee: now that you have outlined so much of this in your head at least, and you've demonstrated it to your satisfaction, is it about getting it to the masses? Because that's what part of this is, right? You're coaching coaches to coach athletes, but from a recreational all the way up to a competitive level.

Because when I listened to you talk about running, you start with the basics. You say, you have to video yourself, you have to look at your foot's, right. You have to look

[00:52:42] Chris Hinshaw: to prevent injury, and these are all

[00:52:44] Sam Rhee: the basics, but then you're also talking about way more complex. Uh, physiologic, uh, performance issues.

In addition to, like you said, with Khalifa, you talk about mechanics, you also bring in all the other things as well, recovery. So you're sort of paralleling CrossFit in the sense, like they have an L one and an L two, and now there's going to be a headshot or one and a half.

[00:53:07] Chris Hinshaw: And then

[00:53:08] Sam Rhee: they're going to have these people out there who are going to help all athletes, just like CrossFit does in terms of endurance, in terms of learning how to run properly.

I will tell you I hated running, but when I started listening to you and especially Mark Bell, because you were in yeah. And he's a powerlifter and he H he was not a runner, just like

[00:53:30] David Syvertsen: bill, if you could get him encouraged about this, that, that sounds like something that I

[00:53:35] Sam Rhee: I could do maybe. And so it's that sort of, um, approach that you have, where you have the knowledge, the.

Sort of compassion, um, the away to, um, low, not lower it, but to make it digestible. And then also teaching coaches that approach so that they can bring it out to everybody. Is that your ultimate goal in terms of like in 10 years? Like what you plan to do?

[00:54:02] Chris Hinshaw: I don't have that kind of a plan. Like, so part of it is, is I've taken what Mat said.

Matt Chan told me early on was if you're going to do it, share everything. And I do, the only thing I don't share is athlete results. I don't, it's not my, you know, that's not something that I talk about and, and that way I, and I never have, I don't share that information, but if I know something, if I, if I I've learned something that works, I share it, I share it with the community and it, and it, it, it makes me want to go out and, and learn more to continue to push the edge of the envelope.

[00:54:37] David Syvertsen: But, uh, yeah, I was going to ask you were next step, like you have shared so much. Does that challenge you to say, Hey, what's next on my

[00:54:45] Chris Hinshaw: plate to share, but what did I say before we rolled the cameras mall? I mean, what I have going on right now is so incredibly, it's so beautiful is I sometimes when I finished the day and I'll go grab Heidi and I go, I know, just, can you just like, I know, I know you don't want to just look at the spreadsheet that I just got to show you.

It's so beautiful. Like the flow and, and, and, and how, like where I am. And, and that's why, like, I'm more excited now and what I'm doing than I've ever been. That's awesome. By far by far by far, what I am doing and part is is that I understand our market. I know our consumer and, and it's a real sport. I mean, you know, we used to be a joke where it's like, oh, CrossFit, something that other athletes do.

That's as supplemental training, you know, it's, there's no difference of doing CrossFit and rolling out or doing a stretching routine. And what, what now you, we are realizing is one of the largest sports in the world is training in the world. Well, what we also must realize is that those are never going to be the Olympians.

These are the athletes that sit in the middle. They weren't genetically born. Like I was with a predisposition, you know, with the lung capacity, that's 50% larger, a VO two max it's in the mid eighties, you know, or slow Twitch fibers. That's 85%. I mean, I was genetically born that way. You are never going to be able to do those things because of genetics, but you know what CrossFits proving training has proved.

That you could dip close to the endurance end of the equation, and you can dip close to the strength end of the equation, mutually ends of the spectrum. And you can take a bigger swath where mine is just super narrow and defined what I believe. And what I'm excited about is that that person, that marketplace, I want to be the best in the world at targeting them.

How can I drive adaptation more efficiently to that consumer firefighters? I, you know, I, I was just here last week. I do a lot of work with the FDA and why, and I'll go and it's, it's, uh, uh, uh, really, it's, it's a tough space because of tradition, bureaucracy, but they all know that the number one cause of death as a firefighter is cardio respiratory disease.

So what do they do about. High intensity interval training because you know what we can do. Sabata, you know, eight rounds of 2010 and we're done. And then I can do some heavy bench press type efficient. Right. But the problem is that they are also a recreational athlete, but their job requires them to do incredibly demanding a robot work, but they don't have an enrollment development.

Right. They think doing eight rounds of 2010, it's going to do the trick. And unfortunately it is not. And so what you have to do is you have to think of those things as a puzzle. Like you look at it like an athlete, any athlete it's like, okay, so what are you doing as a firefighter? How do you help them?

So we do our programming for firefighters, military. We do it all for free. Everything's free for them, for what they do for us. Even with that, that's a step. But that doesn't mean that you're, you're, you're going to penetrate that marketplace, you know, to help them. You have to come up with something that they buy into.

And so I just did five seminars with Matt Chan and at north Metro, um, for the firefighter community. And it's like, how do I do something that resonates? And they wear a cylinder, you know, for air that, that air cylinder, when they fight a live fire, it lasts on average 20 minutes in every single one of those five seminars.

I had a variety of chiefs that were sitting in there and everybody's waiting for the chiefs to get a signal like this guys. Okay. Okay. Right. But I'm an outsider. I'm not a firefighter. Right. And so I started talking about the cylinder and I said, you know, what, if I can improve the aerobic capacity, the efficiency that's one of the major measures of aerobic fitness is how fast can you clear up the team?

And I know that sort of these fundamental principles, I can improve your ability to utilize air morphine. In other words, instead of that date in 20 minutes, I can make it last, last 22. Okay. Well, if you have 10 people on your firehouse, you all improve by 10%. I just hired a new firefighter for no money intercept that appealed.

Okay. Business. Yeah. You have to solve the puzzle. That's called being

[00:59:35] David Syvertsen: ahead of the curve again, you know, it goes beyond the surface level of, Hey, these guys will be in better shape. You're thinking of

[00:59:42] Chris Hinshaw: step-up but you need buy-in and that's the problem historically like with the military is that they historically have done things the same way, because that's the way we've always done it since Vietnam.

I've heard. I can't tell you how many times we hear. Yeah. You know, my guys just, you don't want to command and obviously just, you know, it's just, we've got to just do it Vietnam day here at school. Right. And it's like, do you not even realize, like, you're going to give me a 90 pounds. And do a sprint across an intersection.

I'm not your diet for that, but if you need me to go in 20 miles with a 50 pound rock, do something and then 20 miles back, I hear a guy like that. Right. Treat them all the same. And so part of it is, is that you want to like some way somehow create something that resonates, but is still have someone making decisions and they have to be reasonable.

You know, this general turnaround, I was at camp Pendleton and he came out to the track and we had an incredible conversation. And one of the things that I asked him Marines have to do a three mile run. And he told me, he says, fitness is my number three priority. And first thing I asked him was, well, why is that?

And he said to me, he says, well, because you know, we all, and this was at the award ceremony for marina in the here. And he says, we've all been in combat and we've all made really tough decisions. And the one thing that we will all agree on is that if we make that life in depth, Under less fatigue, we say lives, which is obvious.

Right. But it's nice that a commanding general, a major general says this well, so when I thought, man, here's my chance. Like, let's find out what this guy's reasonable. So I turned around and I asked them, I said, so you're three miles long. I'm your BMT? You're your physical fitness tests. Yep. I said, what would be your dream for every Marine?

Just to see, because you know, I'm thinking, it's going to say, you know, 18 minutes, you know, a hundred point score or something like that without like a hesitation, he says 24 minutes. Now I don't care who you are. If I have you captive for four years, I can make anybody run three miles in 24 minutes. And that's what you need.

You need somebody that's being reasonable, reasonable, because what will happen is, is what's happening in New York. You know, the original standard was, is that firefighters should be able to run a mile and a half in Tennessee. But yet they're passing the academy at 14 and a half minutes. Hm.

[01:02:11] David Syvertsen: CSO. They're not correlate with

each

[01:02:13] Chris Hinshaw: other yet.

That's a problem. That is a major problem. How much of this

[01:02:17] Sam Rhee: job is, it sounds

[01:02:18] Chris Hinshaw: like as much of your

[01:02:20] Sam Rhee: job is knowledge. It's also an overwhelming amount of psychology and trying to get, like you said, buy-in is coachability. You're trying to get these people to be coachable. And it's so hard, especially when you're up against established systems.

And if they weren't the army, if they, I mean, you know, armed forces that they weren't, people that we rely on respect care about, it would be something to be almost so disheartening to, to work

[01:02:50] Chris Hinshaw: with those systems. It kind of is, but part is like, so I'm a math guy and, and you think of it as an equation.

There's an answer there somewhere. There's an answer. You just have to figure it out. Like, that's why I love spreadsheets because you're sitting there and. How can I write some code that can take this fatigue factor with these other results? Probably all of them, and then populate all these time domains and not only time domains, but distances and do it for any person.

There's an answer there and it's doable. And it's the same thing with the relationship. The problem is, is sometimes they're just not ready and that's where you have to be patient. And that's where CrossFit, sometimes people just aren't ready, which there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that we're not a fit, right?

I mean, I've had athletes, you know, that I, boy, I look at them and it's like, I shake my head and they should win the CrossFit games. Okay. And they're near the end of the career. Next thing you know, the phone call comes in and it's always the same thing. I don't know. I don't know what to fix and how to fix.

And they're lost because you know what, eventually that you fulfill. Were there on top of the world, arrogance, you know, that they think that they, they know everything and you can't communicate with them there. You should just walk away. And I do. I walk away all the time from elite athletes because I was going to ask, they're not willing to listen.

And if they don't listen, how do you explain the purpose of a workout? Like press your paces were too slow. You told me in the recovery, you run eight minutes, but I ran seven. You know what you're I'm out of here now. And attention to me, I'm making you do eight minutes because you need to be able to run an eight minute mile pace.

If you get a workout that requires eight minute mile pace, and yet you're now creating no muscle memory, Rich froning Mat Fraser, all of those champions they have at minimum of 13 speeds, they're trained 13. Mm. Like Frasier we've talked about it. He can't block them. Unfortunately, you know, at a 16 minute mile pace.

He can, he'll never be an army ranger.

[01:05:06] Sam Rhee: Our men or women were coachable or the same, just the individual. It just depends on the

[01:05:12] Chris Hinshaw: person women aren't for sure, because I think the boys, I tell the story about Jason Hopper and going swimming with him. So Jason Hopper, I worked with him and, you know, he's a football player, big kid at Clemson, you know, Southern boy and a nice guy, you know, came and stayed with us for a while last year.

And, and he, when he, when he wins that the, it makes, you know, what's Knoxville and he makes it to the games and he starts talking to me and, and, uh, Mat O'Keeffe put me in contact with him. And I said, oh yeah, I'd like to help him. And it was just a nice, good kid. And, um, he loves what means all I've never slammed.

Great. I mean, I'm very athletic that I'm not like I know how to swim, but I'm not a swimmer. How good do you think I can get by the time I get to the games I'm old. So first of all, don't ask the question. If you don't want to know the answer. No, no, no. I want to know. And I'm like, you're not going to do well, not, I mean, you just don't have enough time.

They saw bro. I mean, he was super bummed by it. Like that's why I always called bro, because it was the first thing like it, bro. But she, he, I wanted to know. So he comes and stays with us and we go to this, I mean, amazing place where beautiful lake and, and where we go. This guy lays out buoys every 50 meters along the shore and it's incredible.

And then he goes out on a, um, like a Powell type of boat and he can be side by and video and all that. It's just amazing what happens there. Awesome. So. We're going to go in and we're going to work on power boarding, you know, and different types of things. But one of the other ones we're going to swim.

Well, the buoys were laid out where it was 650 meters to the end. So he's got a suit on and I'm a hold on it. And you have to go down this ramp down to that dock. Um, so from the house out to the water, it was probably maybe 40 meters. Well, he's got a suit on I'm like, hold on. So he's down at the ramp, you know, on the dock.

And I go and I, I just take off the, you know, my, my sweat pants and I get my suit on and I go down the ramp and he's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, what do you mean he's alone? You have your suit on. I'm like, I know Jack on my suit on. And he's like, yeah, but are you going to swim? He had no idea, like no idea.

And.

Yeah, that's a good thing. I just go join you out there. And he's like, dude, bro, it's like 650 meters down there. I'm almost 1300 round trip. Right. And he's like,

and I'm like, so I'm gonna just get in the water. And he's like, okay. He had no idea. I mean, and then when I dove in the water, like you notice one of them and just how they die. And he's like, and he wasn't being rude, like surprised by that. He's like, how'd you dive in with the goggles on like, he was mystified at that moment.

So I told him, I'm like, dude, you got to get some fins and we're going to swim. You use spins. I'm like, yeah, that's hilarious. That's a great story. That's where they just don't know. They, they don't, they don't know. Yeah. And that's what the problem is with the boys. There's that, that, that arrogant confidence that, that they, they don't.

And, and that's when I, I look at a Mat Fraser, who was, he was confident, but never arrogant would always listen to me. He was a neighbor of ours for three years and he'd come over and we would just talk and that's what you need. Right. Because none of those, they're never going to know what I know. And that's why I don't go into all these other types of panoramas in gymnastics.

Like when I started, you know, doing, you know, those, those five minute types of workouts, I partnered with Chad bond and Olympian weightlifter, and Dave Duran, Olympian gymnast. I don't want to learn those things. My space is enough. Right. And I want to be the best I can in my space. Okay. And that's why I don't want to be like a dedicated CrossFit coach.

I want if, if you are in the lead of. You need to have a coach that's coordinating it. So we're going to CrossFit, Fort Vancouver, meeting up, you know, with the adamant and all of that. Yeah. I would not work with adjusted Madeiros one-on-one anymore. It's the sport has gotten too complicated. Okay. You need to have somebody that is looking after your wellbeing and managing the house of cards.

Got it. And so you feed it, but it also goes into that coach, like my relationship with Catherine Ben saw everything. Right. And I don't have a problem with you seeing what I'm doing. I don't have ramen at all, but I need your help. And to make this happen, because I don't want to micromanage either work together.

Right. And that's where I'm not territorial at all, but women by far are, are more cooperative. They're more willing to listen. Okay. I think that men, it may be where irony that got it. And. That they're not willing to listen, but

[01:10:43] David Syvertsen: the guard down with the ego checking you out the door, our

[01:10:46] Chris Hinshaw: most coachable

[01:10:46] Sam Rhee: athletes are women always in our gym.

[01:10:48] David Syvertsen: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I've been coaching 10 years and women are, are easier. No offense

[01:10:52] Chris Hinshaw: guys, but it's the shame is, is like it, you wish that it, and the men will always calm down. Yeah. When their career is on the back end and now panic comes in because they're like, wow, I'm not what I used to be. I thought my body's breaking down.

I don't recover as fast as I used to. They don't have solutions on our book. Right. Like, so I started working with no Olsen. Um, he called me in and he wanted to work in, works with train think tank. And I have no problem working with max and send it off to them. I said, you know what, here's the deal. And this is what you need to do.

And I was crystal clear. I slowed him down. Well, he turns around and runs a five or nine mile after working together several months. And all I'm doing is having to run slow. She can't wrap his head around it, but to me it was an obvious. And so that's where, um, as, as a specialist, I'm very confident in what I do.

Yeah.

[01:11:49] David Syvertsen: And this, this has been, um, probably one of my favorite hours across it since I started. Yeah, it really is. So I just, again, I want to thank you so much just for the time. Um, I can't wait for the seminar tomorrow. Um, I know I'm probably gonna be the luckiest person there tomorrow because I got, I got this, I got the appetizer to create the meal.

So, um, thank you, Chris Hinshaw, aerobic capacity guys. Um, take it from us. It it's, he's um, just a godfather in the sport for, from the endurance side and anyone, and everyone can take something from it, whether you're high end, low end, new to cross an older cross it, um, but like you said, put the ego down and, and, and try to learn as much as you can.

All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you,

[01:12:26] Chris Hinshaw: you guys. Thank you.