S02E47 RECAPPING CHRIS HINSHAW - DEEP DIVE Part 2

Dave and Sam continue the deeper dive into their interview (Episode 43) with Chris Hinshaw @aerobiccapacity, one of the top CrossFit coaches in the world and founder of aerobiccapacity.com. Dave and Sam finish breaking down some of the more impactful concepts and discussions with Chris Hinshaw and how to apply it to coaching and training.

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S02E47 CHRIS HINSHAW DEEP DIVE PT 2

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the HerdFit podcast. I am coach David Syvertsen. I'm here with Dr. and coach Sam Rhee. This is going to be episode two of the Hinshaw reflection piece that it's a two-part episode last week. If you miss part one it's it's last week, just scroll back a little bit and it's right there.

We're going to dive into the next few topics that I have based on the podcast and what I took from it and what I hope you guys took from it, what Sam took from it. And the next part is really going to be about being strategic. And this is where you could start to separate support and fitness a little bit.

But again, I think you could always tie them two together a little bit, but this is where it separates a bit more than usual. And he said this on the podcast. Are you strategic within your workouts or are you just kind of there for along the ride? Are you. Are you just along for the ride? Sorry. And that, that stood out to me because I think a lot of people fall in that tier where they compete, but they're really just want to be seen or they're just there for the ride.

And to competing to me is always, you have a specific goal. It could be winning. It could be top 10. It could be top 10%. To me, that's when you're competing. Along for the ride is like on game day, you show up wanting to be there want it to compete. Competing to me is Hey, I trained throughout the year so that I can try to hit this goal.

And at the end, the process really enjoy, like I will do extra work or all put a lot of attention on my squat form and my strength and my reps per minute in July, August, September, and October. So that in March, I feel like I'm at my best. And that that's where I feel like you're really in it to compete and really try to chase after a goal where it's oh, the open starts in two weeks.

I'll maybe I'll start working on some muscle-ups like that is you're along for the ride. And that's where I think you can try to take your concentration on details to make you more strategic because at the end of the day, cross at workouts, right? When you're trying to achieve more work in a specific amount of time, it is almost always the smallest details that often get overlooked that are separating from you, from where your goal is, the smallest details, the things you don't really think are a big deal.

They, the sum of all of those are usually the margin between where you are and where you want to be. It doesn't need to be a life like a huge life change. It doesn't need to be like you quit your job and start working out four times a day. It can be the smallest of details. And he gave the story about Becca Voigt.

And he talked about this at the seminar as well. Becca Voigt, longtime games, athlete part of the seminar, he talks about the breath, the breathing cadence. He can tell by watching someone, or you can tell by listening to someone's heart to do in a gym, the music. If someone's about to red line or they're currently in redline stage, meaning they're not going to have to go faster anymore.

They're they're either going to slow down or stop and back avoid told the story that she thought that was full of shit. When Henshaw first said it, he was like, you can't tell by looking at someone or listening to someone like where they are mentally or physically in a workout. And then there was a games event on a run where she was next to someone, they were neck and neck.

And they were clearly racing each other and she just, there was no music. They were outside. She heard the breathing. Now there's a cadence, like a quick four count where you can hear the inhale, exhale. The girl is doing a two count. So couldn't really almost like hyperventilating. Right. She could not breathe.

And at back avoid at that point knew. All right, cool. I can go into my next gear now because she's not going to be able to keep up. She did that. She won the race and it was because of that, that she was able to take off with confidence and say, I got this.

[00:03:23] Sam Rhee: He, he did make mention that this was for.

Advanced competitive athlete. Yes. Yep. You have to get to the point where you can be strategic, just like Becca Voigt was, or when he said he was coaching Khalifa and jamming him on the runs. Yeah. But he said also for all of us, regular athletes, it's a whole lot. We need to learn in addition to just getting to the strategic part, even prior to, prior to, in terms of, he was teaching Philipa foot, strike mechanics, mechanics, pacing,

[00:03:55] David Syvertsen: here we go.

Classic CrossFit model mechanics, number one, consistency, number two.

[00:04:00] Sam Rhee: And then intensity number three, which is part of what the strategic yeah. Planning is. Right. I, when I listened to that, I felt like this would be perfect if you were going to legends comp or a high level athlete, and you needed to see where you were and you do this all the time.

I know you do. Just, Frazier looks at the same thing like breathing and how everyone is. And I've heard you talk about when you were at legends comp, looking at the people next to you. Sure. Where

[00:04:26] David Syvertsen: their status was. You like those big that they're about

[00:04:29] Sam Rhee: to slow down, right? Yeah, this is, and it's so funny.

How it's it struck me listening to him, talk about it, and then listening to you in the past, talk about how you look at other athletes. And I realized this is not just being a competitive asshole. It's about winning and looking at your competition and knowing where you can maximize your effectiveness.

Right? And to me, I'm more on the other side, I'm not sitting there. I mean, I've done comps, but for me, I've never really strategically looked at athletes and, and work that side of things. Right. But I could see if you were really chasing that. Yeah. How important that would

[00:05:07] David Syvertsen: be for you.

Yeah. And it's also, so you bring that up. It's also good for an athlete to know we'd done a podcast on this before. Are you more recreational or are you more on the competitive side? And this helps the coach, coach you. Yes. And we've talked about this. We talked about this off camera personally. Like sometimes it's hard to know because it's not always like a black and white.

We wish it was, but it's not, and it can be easier. It is. I'm telling you this right now. It is easier to coach and it will, we will provide a better service for you individually. If we know you want to get to that level someday, or if you're like, dude, no interest. I want to be as fit as I can. I want to be a bad-ass.

I want to look great. That's what I want to do. We will coach you. And I do that to this day. Like I can, I can know exactly like when I coached these long days when like the big classes, I know which each person for the most part, what they want and how to coach them. And that takes a lot of time and experience, but it also takes a lot of conversation and honesty from the athlete that you need to be real about.

Hey, I really want this. Or Hey, I want this to be my year. I'm really going to go after this year. Cool. I'm coaching you different for next year.

[00:06:11] Sam Rhee: I, this is also the difference between online events and live program. And this is why you shine at live programming, because this is exactly the situation in which you need to be strategic.

If I ever do another comp I might, I don't know this would be something I would really focus on because I feel like if in the events that I would be facing, if I had my basic mechanics down, my movement quality down then I would start thinking, how can I strategically podium? And this would be a very important factor in order for me to do.

[00:06:46] David Syvertsen: That's a great point. So the next thing I want to touch on is coping with success and failure. And I think you asked a really good question on this. This is like one of your standout questions my opinion was. When you hear Vellner and Olson talk. I mean, these guys are such good athletes.

Like we can't even relate to how good they are. They're always at the top. Right. But they haven't won the games, and there's always been someone else in front of them and they always struggled to come up with a legit good answer that you really find yourself like nodding to, and to me it's obvious, but when he, when Hinshaw responds the way he did it just reaffirmed something that I believe strongly in my head.

And he talks about, he said, he goes, I don't care if they win or lose. And I think sometimes an athlete can take that the wrong way. If I went to an athlete and said that, that came to me with a, I wanna win a cross at 9 0 8 goal comp is coming all the way across at 9 0 8. All right. Can I help you get there?

It helps for me to know that because I know what it takes to win that kind of competition what you have to be able to do, what you can't do, all this stuff, right. I don't really care that much. If you want to lose. The only thing that you really care about is if they put all the work in that, that's really truly what matters.

[00:07:58] Sam Rhee: So as a coach, if their goal is to win something and you know, what it takes to win, if they put all of that work in, it's irrelevant at that point, whether they win or lose. Right, correct. Because they put themselves into that position to win. Correct. But he said things can happen. There could be someone who's just flat out better than you.

[00:08:20] David Syvertsen: Yep. No, I have that written down in his quote. Sometimes you just get beat right now. Here's a question. What if I have two athletes at the same comp and they both want to win these? That's what he does. He coaches a lot of them.

[00:08:31] Sam Rhee: You should have followed up with that question.

[00:08:33] David Syvertsen: Yeah, I know. I know. I wish I did because that, that is a really unique thing.

Like how, like imagine bill Belicheck, coach the jets and the pats, like what that's really what this is.

[00:08:43] Sam Rhee: I mean, at this point he's not taking as much of a global role in coaching as is, as he brought in as the hyper specialist for endurance programming. Right.

For that particular athlete. I don't know. So you notice he never talked about the most recent athletes he's coaching, right? It's always these case studies from three or four years ago because we're finding more and he's also said he doesn't want to talk about performance of, specific athletes.

That's the one thing he doesn't share. And I think I'd be interested in three or four years to see what he says about the athletes that he currently is helping, which is not really talking so much about.

[00:09:17] David Syvertsen: Yeah. But I just like, from my perspective as athlete and coach, there, there's a lot of failure that you deal with.

And I don't think, it, it can't always be viewed as oh, okay. I failed my heavy snatches today. I failed my muscle-ups and I get that. No, I muscle up that we have a muscle update coming up next Tuesday and that workout does not look that bad on paper. I just posted it and it's going to be very hard and people are going to be failing muscle-ups and they're going to get, they're going to get frustrated.

They're gonna feel like they're failing. Right. And I think one thing the athlete needs to really step away from is that immediate emotion of I did well, I did Sam today was telling me that he was not able to string his muscle-ups together. Right. But what was the first thing you said after he goes Hey, like I just, I haven't done them.

So are you really allowed to be upset if that's the case? I've said that same thing with my pistols, right? There's only so much I can do until my knees hurt too much where I just can't work out. But I know that I've done everything in the past year. So if they come up in two weeks and trust me, I'm nervous about it.

If they, if they come up in a huge way in the qualifiers, I'm going to go forward. I'm gonna do his hardest. But I'm not going to be, I'm not going to allow myself to walk out of there being upset because I know I did everything I could in the past year.

[00:10:21] Sam Rhee: There's always two sides to this, which I always wrestle with.

And I, I haven't gotten, I've gotten more depth on both sides, but I don't think I've gotten resolution in terms of how to reconcile this conflict between. Listen, if you're not winning, you're losing. But then on the other hand, if you did your best and you tried your hardest and you didn't.

That's okay. Yeah. So which one is it? Because we're talking about both sides of the coin. And I honestly, for myself can only say sometimes I have to take that mindset. If I'm not winning, I'm lost, I've lost. Right. And take that Michael Jordan take no prisoners attitude, but in some cases I'm also going to have to go with the, if I really tried my hardest, I can take that as, I don't want to say a psychologic win or a moral victory, moral victory, but I can live with myself and not say I lost.

Right. I'm sure people have to figure out their own way of dealing with that because I don't necessarily know whether there's a good issue or not. I would love to talk to a Noah Olson or pat Vellner and say, what does it feel like never to win the CrossFit games, even though you got disclosed. Honestly, if I, I don't know, because I'm, I've never been that good of an athlete to be even in that position.

And if I asked them that they'd probably be like F you buddy, and you gotta know what it's like to be seconds you're 22. And so it would be very presumptuous of me to even, yeah.

[00:11:50] David Syvertsen: Yeah. It has, it has to be taken in the right context. It has to be delivered in the right context, too.

If you were to actually ask them that question,

[00:11:57] Sam Rhee: there are winners and they want to win so badly that I can only see that as being a frustration on one level to, and there are athletes in every sport who hasn't won a championship. Absolute. What does that mean to them? I don't know.

It's, it's definitely something worth looking into,

I just love asking Chris Henshaw this question and seeing what his answers are and yeah. And he, like you said, he does both. He has, he tells us about Matt Frazier. Yeah. He also tells us about Kara Sondra. Not winning and, and yet he right. Julia and, and he says, it's okay either way. So even Chris Henshaw is someone who looks at it from both sides.

[00:12:34] David Syvertsen: I think really what it goes down to is you have to, I think it's important for competitors to not define themselves by winning, losing. And that's tough. You can bring up Michael Jordan or I, but you could also bring up Dan Marino, right?

Like these are, these are people that are the elite of the elite and they're not getting to that act, but you can't not, everyone can win. And that's, that's the case. Like we have I'm pursuing something, not everyone can make the top 30 to make semifinals. It doesn't mean anyone. I don't really define myself as an athlete of success and.

Because are things I know that other people don't about what goes into it, what I did do, what I didn't do, because you're not doing everything perfect for absolutely. There's no question about that. And no, all of a sudden, Patrick Vellner might have the same answer, the key I did everything I could.

But did you really, did you really, on every Mo like every waking minute of every day really do what you had to do

[00:13:19] Sam Rhee: or be smart about it and figure out I have to do something different.

[00:13:22] David Syvertsen: Yes. Yeah. Yep. Because again, that, when he brings up these guys that are in hamster wheels, like every year, then there's in the same spot.

They never get better, but they never get worse. What are you actually changing? Right. And I think Noah Olson did, if I remember correctly, he did say he's on a big guy and he looks young, but he's small. He w he actually said, he's going to start losing weight. He

Cut weight. He said he did.

Yeah, I think so.

So I think maybe that's his out of the box thought this time, but I think it's important for people not to. Put their self-worth into it. I really do. I think that the self worth should be put into like, did I really put forth the effort that I wanted to write? And, and I think that if you, and only you really know the answer I don't really care what you put on social media or tell your friends, or even your family did I really put the effort that I wanted to in, and I think that's really where that answer is, is solved as much as it possibly can be, because I don't think there's ever going to be a black and white answer on it.

It's whatever you want it to put into it, to pursue the goal. Did you actually follow

[00:14:20] Sam Rhee: through? It depends on the individual. I know some people who only define themselves through winning and if they haven't won. It's as if nothing has happened, it's worse than anything. And

[00:14:31] David Syvertsen: we'll hopefully that person can down the road reflect on all the

[00:14:34] Sam Rhee: positive that came out of.

So brittle it, there that's really brittle lifestyle. It is to define yourself only through the act of winning and Shawna physical, correct physical. But we see that in CrossFit too, the people who have to be at the top of the leaderboard or beat someone else every day, that's how they define whether or not they have, they can't slow it down.

Right. They can't like, did they have a good workout? Well, did I beat Dave? Okay. I guess I did have a workout,

[00:14:59] David Syvertsen: but now here's, here's a good example. And we do have to tailor it to this as CrossFit coaches, even at a local box is on Wednesday's workout. We did that re active recovery workout. Right. And people did like it for the most part.

He got some good feedback on it. Those that have bad feedback, then they give it to me. So. W week, what did we do that day? We didn't record the results.

[00:15:16] Sam Rhee: Why, why? I thought it was just an experiment because you wanted to see what it, this was a new style of programming.

[00:15:22] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Yeah. So that was part of it, but it was also, I wanted everyone to chase after the correct movements and stimulus of the workout.

And I felt that if we were recording times up there, right. We told you guys to do a 32nd recovery route. Right. I bet some people, if there were times on the board to chase and they started to see that oh man, like I might be within 10 seconds of Owen, I'm going to make this road 20 seconds.

No, one's going to know. Or, all, they'll go

[00:15:46] Sam Rhee: ultra slow. I've seen this all the time. People do that all the time on the rest, on the workouts with rest the short,

[00:15:52] David Syvertsen: the rest. Oh yeah. And it's a mistake. There's

[00:15:54] Sam Rhee: no question that cheating themselves

[00:15:56] David Syvertsen: for a better score. Yup. So let's, we can make a little bit of a left-hand turn here and we'll talk about something that's probably not as much about mindset is actually it could be, I mean, everything can be tying back to the mindset, but it's about pacing.

Right where the thing I started off th this part was athlete, and this has comes from him. The athletes think they're working hard based on the result alone example. We just talked about the only thing that signifies my hard work is that what's my time. What's my score. What's my performance. And it really needs to, when it comes down to pacing, right?

I, we had, did a workout where I was really trying to teach about pace last week, too. And Elena asked me, she goes, why, why pace? That's so Elaine and I actually, we talked about it a little bit and I will say this, and I'm trying to get better at this. I promise, I understand it better than I can talk about it.

And I'm trying to get I'm actually starting to write thoughts down. And I started to write a post that I was going to put in Busa, bison, and I was rushing through it. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to save this. So I just saved it on my computer so that when I have a little more time to really put good thoughts into it, because I do, I want to get better at explaining this where things, if you really do want to get better at pacing, like you really do need to break everything down.

We talked about this, where Hinshaw was surprised, we brought this up mixed modal, like it's PR it's a little bit easier to pace running biking, like machines, right? Like splits, like really even splits. It's harder to pace mixed modal work, where there's like lifting and gymnastics and heavy stuff.

Right. I think right now I'm working with Liz on some like reps per minute stuff. And I, I feel like sometimes I'm giving too much information. She's like, all right. So I need to average 18 reps for a minute. I'm like, well, yeah, but not on muscle-ups she's my substance to movements. And it's a really high level movements that really has to be about 10 reps for a minute.

And I was like, but once the weight goes above 65%, you gotta be like, 0.5 breaths per minute. Like it's, it can get really overwhelming at a certain point, but that is what it takes like you, when you really, really trying to pace things, it's easy to pace a mile. If you have an eight minute mile, it's two minutes per lap.

Right. But w that that's an that's easy math to do. But what if we started talking about you know, how many meters you'd be running per step? That's really what you're looking at in a workout with burpees and kettlebell swings and wall balls is so he started talking about Laura Horvath's pace in 22.2.

She goes, yeah, here, her slowest burpee was 3.8 seconds. Her fastest was 1.4. Who knows that no, who thinks like that Chris and shadows. Exactly. And he's the best endurance mind in the coach. And he said that the contrast of that, that they call it rate of fatigue. And I have this whole thing on my computer that he sent to us through the seminar about that, that it's called rate of fatigue slash rate of slowing.

How much did your rate slow? So her fastest was 1.4. Her slows was over at three. So you're looking at over a hundred percent increase in how long the rep took. She goes that's terrible. You should never have that. And it's all about pacing to me is all about working with, especially in like day-to-day workouts.

It's all about widening your base. So if you have a water base to stand on, all right, you're going to be more secure as you try to elevate your performance in a workout. What are your initial thoughts on pacing?

[00:19:10] Sam Rhee: This is something that you need an athlete alone, cannot figure this out. I think the genius that Chris Henshaw presents is.

The formulas and the spreadsheets that he has, because that is literally pacing personified. Right? So if you want to get from this where you are now to this performance level yeah. You have to follow a progression, right. And that progression is is a pacing progression. So you have to finish this amount of time, like any talked about it.

If you run this far, what is your 200 meter? What's your 400 meter, what's your 800, 800. And, and so if you look, he, we peaked at the spreadsheets. He actually allowed us to see a little bit crazy, which was

insane.

That progression is very specific and it's based on his knowledge. And you're able to plug in where you want.

Uh, And I think it was a running scheme, but you could, and you could probably adapt similar strategies for other things, but then your pacing has to change and improve over time to where you want to go. Right. And that's not something that, as an athlete, even you working with Liz, that's fricking complicated, right?

So complicated. And as a coach, that's what this aerobic capacity courses probably helping people do is figure out. That or, you can also just sign up for aerobic capacity and for certain movements like running and so forth.

[00:20:38] David Syvertsen: Yeah. They put out free content all the time. Yeah. If you're not following aerobic capacity and Instagram, you're doing it wrong.

It's free content

[00:20:46] Sam Rhee: and it's. And the other thing is if I think when you do sign up for it, he does personalize it for you because that's what those formulas are. So you do an assessment, you do whatever it is that you want to do that you're doing. And then they program a whole series of workouts.

So you get to where you want it to go. Right. And that's what this pacing progression is. It's, that's literally what improvement in athleticism is, is improving your pacing.

[00:21:12] David Syvertsen: Yup. And the, another thing that has stood out to me, and sometimes I'm like, man, Hinshaw loves cross it. And I'm like, sometimes, like he hates CrossFit.

He goes that the. Of an Elena. This is for you. All right. But also most CrossFitters the concept of going slower. So you can be faster, is so hard for CrossFitters to understand. And he goes, this is how I took a minute off of rich. Froning mild time amended off of Noah Allison's Matan. And by the way, guys, their mild times are already sub six or like right over six, like elite mile times took a minute off.

It almost a 20% improvement. Right? Carol Saunders, Carol Saunders. He had guys and girls and he goes, I did it by making them run slower two days a week. No, there was no like, go run harder, get that mild on. And he talked about the aerobic capacity course about, there's a multiple things that you train and it's the different speeds, but he will also teach you like, all right, I want you to run the mile at this pace.

Eventually you're going to start. You have to get good at running a hundred meters at that time. And then walk right then 200 meters at that pace. And then there's longer distances at slower rates. And he goes, all these elite athletes that he works with. And again, I know not everyone needs to strive for that, but it does help to know the details of these guys and help improve their performance.

If that's what you're going for. They have 13 different

[00:22:27] Sam Rhee: speeds that they run at. Yes. He said that 13,

[00:22:29] David Syvertsen: 15. And that's again, these guys are full-time athletes. That's what they get paid to do. When I program, I give three, I'm like slow, medium, fast.

[00:22:38] Sam Rhee: And when I think about it and I'm sure a lot of people are like, I got one speed.

[00:22:41] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I hear that one a lot. And he goes, and he goes, CrossFit in a lot of ways is like endurance. And I think that's why there's like a marriage here between Hinshaw and cross. It it's very similar to the endurance world in terms of performance and had to enhance it. And he goes, there is not a single endurance athlete in the world that trains like CrossFitters, right?

Like we label high intensity as go hard for 20 rest for 10. And he goes, it's amazing how many CrossFitters think they're high intensity? And they spend over half of their workout with their hands on their knees.

[00:23:10] Sam Rhee: Half of our workouts are mostly rest.

[00:23:12] David Syvertsen: And he goes, he goes, wow. How is that considered high intensity?

What do you classify as hard, high intensity? And it has to go far beyond your heart rate. And this is where a concept that we're trying to get to the. Is that you Jack the heart rate up, not through your lactate threshold. All right. But you Jack it up, but then you don't come crashing back down via doing nothing.

You keep it, you let it come down a little bit, but you try to stay, your, your minimum, your floors higher. You're not crashing, going up, crashing, going up. You're going up, not as high. Alright. AKA pacing slowed down at the end of the workout. Try to maintain a nice, steady pace and finish strong.

And it really, it goes so deep. And we could probably, we could just talk it for an hour about this. I bet. And then how we can relate it to certain workouts, single movement, workouts, chippers for time workouts. Amwraps length of time, all that, but the pacing, anything over three minutes, according to him, all right, is you have to pace it.

So if you don't have a pacing plan for a workout, that's over three minutes, you are not going to get your. And I think that's something we should all adopt on a day-to-day basis. . So the data, okay. He's got a lot of data. What do you do with all this data? So this is where I think Henshaw is going to have a leg up on a lot of people that are trying to emulate him.

All right. Is he runs these programs and you can go on or what capacity you can sign up. You can sign. I think he has that relationship with mayhem where you might have to buy like one of their online memberships to really get like full exposure to some of this stuff. But he gets so much information and he said it, he goes, I take this information that I get from this assault bike program, our sorry, the rogue echo bike progression one minute, five minute, 10 minute tests.

And he goes, I get to use thousands of numbers. I put them into my spreadsheet, comes up with these custom paces that you need to follow. That's what he's doing with data. What are your thoughts on that? Because he is a numbers, nerdy kind of guy.

[00:24:58] Sam Rhee: The guy is a gene like. He is so enthusiastic about the numbers and the spreadsheets.

And the fact is, is that success is built on data, right? We know that you look at the world now. Okay. It's all data driven. The fact that he has told us he has thousands and thousands of athletes doing his programming, and he's able to see what their results are, custom, the formulas and the algorithms that he has in terms of progressions in terms of building aerobic capacity.

That's. What I asked about is why is he not scaling this up into some ginormous enterprise? And I think honestly, and we talked about this, is that it, because that's not the way he's built, he's not built like a Jeff Bezos where he wants to take over the world in terms of programming and athletics and CrossFit.

And he's repeated this multiple times, the Matt Chan story about wanting to share this information with everybody. Yeah. The only thing he doesn't want to do is he doesn't want to get ripped off. And I feel like early on. People were stealing his workouts on LA Froning Frazier. And, but if he could legitimately share it to the world and not feel ripped off, he would, he would totally do that.

Yeah. That's what he cares about.

[00:26:12] David Syvertsen: And he does, he, he, he said on the podcast, he's excited as he's ever been to share what he knows and all the information he's getting, because I think now that he has that relationship with mayhem, he's getting a lot of information and information to him is just people working out.

[00:26:26] Sam Rhee: I really hope that he also publishes it in some way, shape or form, and I hope that CrossFit pushes him to do so.

[00:26:33] David Syvertsen: So as of recent that uh, aerobic capacity is now an official cross, of course, again, exactly it was. And then it wasn't.

[00:26:39] Sam Rhee: And that now as an official CrossFit course, and he talked about talking to Glassman and Glassman was always so kind to him and so interested in what he had and, as a physician we're bias towards looking at research papers and research projects, making it statistically sound. And if there was someone that was willing to work with him and do that, I mean, I don't think he really has that interest of doing that. He's proved, proved it to himself. And I think he doesn't necessarily feel like he has to make it scientifically rigorous and run these sort of super big trials.

Yeah. But if he did. I think they would change exercise physiology. Yeah. I think the things that we intuitively are looking at and, and understanding, Hey, why aren't we taking advantage of the downside of the bell curve? Yeah. W all of these things that seem to make sense, he could make it more scientific if he wanted to.

I'm not sure if he does, or if you don't

[00:27:37] David Syvertsen: on the educational side, he is, he did say this in the podcast. So it's not like we're not sharing anything. We shouldn't be, but. He wants to create the robot capacity, a level two. So right now he's coaching the level one. And now he's grooming people to coach the level one for him.

And he's going to come up with a level two course. And that's a step in that direction I believe. And he did say off camera after he goes, I do think you're going to see a major shift in, I don't know if it was fitness programming or cross it programming in terms of it would be more, he didn't say this I'm speculating that it would be closer to what his aerobic capacity workouts are.

He said something similar to what we did Wednesday with not every time, but workouts. Like we were still doing it. We're doing interval work this week on one side, two minutes on two minutes off. Right? That's still going to be out there and that's still part of conditioning, but more workouts that have like intentional rest tasks

to take on.

[00:28:26] Sam Rhee: Yes. I think the first step CrossFit did take was programming rest in the open in the open. Yes. Now the next step is interval.

[00:28:36] David Syvertsen: Yeah. And yeah, in about task. And then also just filtering that down to. Crossfit.com programming. There have been some workouts lately. I don't know if this is a Hinshaw influence, but they were, they do send out a workout with some like slower pace running at the end of a round or something like that.

That could be Hinshaw influenced or that could just be general, there's just more people than him. That, that program, stuff like that.

[00:28:59] Sam Rhee: It says CrossFit is very traditional. Yeah. It is slow to change. I will say crossfit.com programming. I still see a ton of back squat. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, the, your heaviest weight.

And you're like, okay, great.

[00:29:12] David Syvertsen: Right. Yeah, I know. That's, that's always, those are always tough. I mean, they're important strengths important, but there probably are better ways to test it. I do wish we were able to talk to him more. I mean, there's so many things I want to talk to him about. I do wish we could get a little more reflection from him on, even though he's not a strength coach, I'm sure he has some valid opinions on how to enhance strength in relation to CrossFit.

Yeah. So I have two left here and then We could probably tie them together because number one is what the reflections he had on coaching men versus women and how he preferred coaching women over men. And also the willingness to listen. And I think the two really did tie together. I got the vibe when I really listened to it for the third or fourth time that willingness to listen.

And then we talked about men versus women. After that they were, he was basically just repeating himself in that it got I think that the fact that we were talking about listening and the willingness to do that, got him almost got the engine going on the men versus women. Like That meant women are much better

to coach them in.

[00:30:12] Sam Rhee: Yeah. And I don't think he meant it in anything other than women are better athletes because they are more coachable in general. And I think this stems from his direct experience of trying to train CrossFit games, athletes. The reason why he rhapsodizes over Khalifa is because he was one of the rare, super coachable guys.

Right. The reason why he talks about Frazier and Froning is because they are winners. Yeah. And they've adapted his training to, to win, but you don't hear so many of the other male athletes that he's trained in terms of examples of coachability.

[00:30:55] David Syvertsen: And he's not the kind of guy that would throw someone under the bus.

[00:30:57] Sam Rhee: No. And you could probably just speculate on all the ones he's tried to,

[00:31:01] David Syvertsen: but right. He did say this, he goes men. So initially men will respond saying, I already knew that I already knew that already knew that. And he goes, and then they come back to me. They tend to calm it down when they don't have the solutions to their problems anymore, where they think they can figure it all out, which is very guy-ish right.

And that when he said that I'm on the same page as you, it, their hat, their hats have been some specific guys that were like that.

[00:31:26] Sam Rhee: It always reminds me of that story where the coach is telling a guys' basketball team. Hey, listen, you guys, aren't communicating make sure you guys do a better job.

And then the guys on the team are like, yeah, all you guys, you guys aren't communicating better. And then you tell the girls basketball team and they're like, oh man, I'm not communicating very well. I, I need to do better. Like guys never look at them. And th this, these are such broad stereotypes. No, it is.

And it's not like I'm gender bashing in a certain way, but I,

[00:31:53] David Syvertsen: but if we're going to gender bash, we're going to find the best guy. It's

[00:31:56] Sam Rhee: just so we don't. And I, I would say from my own experience, I'm looking at my son's teams and my daughter's teams that

[00:32:05] INITIAL SYNC 20220224_211113: I

[00:32:06] Sam Rhee: didn't bring that up, that there, that stereotype tends to hold true, especially about coachability.

[00:32:13] David Syvertsen: My uh, I would say one of my personality weaknesses are like my brothers, we're all stubborn. And we grew up with all boys. I'm telling you, it

[00:32:19] Sam Rhee: probably has part of to do with it. I got, I tried coaching my, my son's soccer team and trying to tell those guys what to do, especially at a younger age is, is impossible, impossible.

And the, and the girls soccer teams, they would listen to the coach. You'd ask them to do something, show your shin guards, do this. Yeah, the kids.

[00:32:38] David Syvertsen: I see what I mean. I'll take my experience as a CrossFit coach has been a long time now. So there's some credibility there that. The women always ha I've I don't know if I've connected with them better or they're just easier to coach, because I have noticed that I coach more women in like, when it comes to the extra work, right.

If we want to bring up next level or just either pass stuff, women, I I've done more work with women than men. And I, I don't even know why that is. It might just be that there is less ego. Like a lot of guys could probably think that they can figure it out on their own. They're just

[00:33:10] Sam Rhee: going to show it up.

You're a thousand percent, right. Because

[00:33:13] David Syvertsen: the girls are, they're not, they're not afraid to say

[00:33:15] Sam Rhee: yo I need some help. Absolutely. I could apply myself and Susan as an example. Yeah. Susan is probably one of the people who has done next level with rigid religious. Yes. Yeah. And I have dipped into it and, and then not, but it's because I'm like, well, yeah, I need to figure some of this stuff out on my own.

Not like ego wise, but more that's just the way you're whiny. I need to try to figure some of this stuff out. Right. Susan is not afraid to say. Just tell me what to give me some help. Yeah. And I can do better with it. And if you look at all the athletes that may quarter-finals nine women made it, four dudes made it.

Why do you think that is. I think it's because the women are more coachable.

[00:33:55] David Syvertsen: Ooh, that's a bold statement. Sam's going to get the stink-eye from every dude coming to the gym from now on. No, but it's, there's no doubt. And this is the thing that we've talked about this before, like before the Hinshaw interview, we've talked about stuff like this and for him to say it too.

I do think some guys out there, if you're listening to this and you're whether you're in a rut or you do want to get better and you're trying to figure things, some things out, I think you've got to put the guard down and I'm meeting with two guys next week, three guys next week, actually. And one after the qualifiers that, so I'm not saying all guys do this, right.

I actually give credit to the guys that have said like, Hey, I'm like at this roadblock right now needs some help. And, but for every one of those, it's usually three or four girls.

[00:34:33] Sam Rhee: I don't think you have to hang up your manhood in order to be coachable, which some people do think, yup. Look at, Froning look at Frazier.

These guys. Yeah. Listened and followed what a coach said. Right. And I don't think that anyone would call them any less. Dude like than anyone else, and I CA I would speculate on the athletes that actually have more than ego that might not have podiums or, or gotten consistently for your guests.

No, I'm not going to say out loud.

[00:35:01] David Syvertsen: Do you want to say, yeah, no. I mean, I, I do. I do wonder, I know it's I don't know if I want to say to you, not that they're ever going to hear it, but it's more I, if I was an elite athlete, which I'm not, I'm not a games athlete. Right. Never been close. I would be all over him.

I would be on his front door, begging him to work

[00:35:18] Sam Rhee: with me. But if you were that talented and you've gotten so far on

[00:35:21] David Syvertsen: your own, that's the thing, a lot of these guys are here for the ride, right? They care about how many Instagram followers they have. They care, they care about, how many likes they get on a picture and a bathing suit more than their performance.

And I think that's a huge thing that it's almost like you don't want to go into Instagram to me is like social media in general. It's all like fantasy world to me. Like none of it, most of it's not real when, when you really surfing through stuff, right. It's just like highlights only. Right.

And it seems like there's so much attention put on it for some people that they forget that that's not what's, that is not what got them to where they are in terms of being a games athlete. Like it was a grind for a lot of years. I almost feel like if you lose track of that, you will, you'll never get better.

And. Pardon me is, is I would, I don't understand why any athlete at a high level would not go to him. I really, I just don't get it because it's a proven system

[00:36:12] Sam Rhee: that works. I think people, I think most of them have, and I think he's rejected a whole bunch

[00:36:17] David Syvertsen: of them. Yeah. That's what I think about some of the athletes that are always the strongest, but they never do on the engine.

Right. Danny Spiegel. All right. She's always one of the strongest

[00:36:26] Sam Rhee: athletes and she know. Okay. But we've heard enough anecdotal stories about her in general, from others to know that there's a lot of ego there there's. Yes. A lot going on. Well, yeah, she gets docked for cheating mate. Like major cheating every event.

Yeah, come

[00:36:42] David Syvertsen: on. No, I still remember the day watching her, Waterloo's a workout where she was dead lifting and Yung at her judge for getting no wrath where she was clearly doing, not even three quarters or a rep wasn't even close. And then you watch some of her open videos and our quarter of honor videos.

And she's, part of that whole YouTube sensation where they're docking her reps and stuff like that. Like she can't even do a bar facing burpee correctly. Right? Like where your feet and hands have to be on the east side of the line. If you can't do that, it's what we tell our athletes all the time.

If you can't do that, stop, go back to the beginnings and you wonder, is that like how many people around her are telling her this? I bet none. Right? Because you're afraid to, you're afraid to go. But if she, I would tell you, why is she always, always, always near the bottom on the endurance events.

And if it's Hey Dave, I gave my best effort. That's it good for you? Awesome. But if I was someone like that and I'm not right, I'm not strong enough to, to say yeah. When the strength events, but on to the endurance events, right. I'd be knocking on his door begging.

[00:37:33] Sam Rhee: I really would. A lot of this is psychology.

I think I see guys who are relatively high performers, but maybe they have some issues about certain parts of their performance. Maybe they got injured. We recently had a pretty high performing athlete who took a really long time off and came back. And I believe that a lot of that was ego. It was, was insecurity.

What, and, and I, I grapple and deal with that too. And I feel like when we, as people can come to terms with our self image, our self in terms of self-esteem about being secure in ourselves, it's it helps us reach out and get. Coached and help write better, but dude, that encompasses your entire life. Right?

Right. And there are so many factors that are involved with that. Yeah. So as a coach in CrossFit to expect to figure out how to make someone more coachable or work with them on that. Yeah. I don't think that that's always going to be the case. I think

[00:38:36] David Syvertsen: it's so it's tough to even speculate on right now because we just, at the end of the day, we don't have all the information.

That's the, that's the other part I have the real credible opinion about it. Yeah. But again, if you're going to ask us, like where, where does an athlete on the highest level come up short, if it's always the same thing, then you have to ask yourself what Hinshaw has in the podcast. Are you doing everything to attack

[00:38:55] Sam Rhee: that weakness?

I asked myself, why is it that I am avoiding something or don't want to do something? Why do I feel negatively about something in my workouts? Or what am I doing? And is it, is it stemming from. Something within myself. Right. An insecurity an unwillingness to show that I'm not good at something.

If that's the case, then I need to look at it myself and address it because I'm not a grown guy. I should be able to figure those things out. Right. And I think all of us should, if we want to be better as athletes and everything else, what, what is pulling in a negative, emotional response? Why is it that I don't want to do this, right?

Why is it that I like doing this right? And if it's because of some insecurity about what that is, then maybe I should flip it and you say, Hey, dad, I'm really this, I don't like this and I don't enjoy it, or I feel really bad about this. Let me work on this to make this better

[00:39:50] David Syvertsen: for myself. Yeah. So like you tie that back to th this topic of like willingness to listen.

I think the first part someone needs to do ask yourself if you're willing to listen, how often do you seek people to listen to? I think that's a huge thing and not, it can't be your friends, honestly. It shouldn't be your friends. And if you have a coach, that's a friend tough thing. Hopefully you're able to separate the two.

That's the one thing I've been working on a lot less past two years. I don't know if it's made some of my friends, less friends with me. I take my job so seriously as a CrossFit coach, that if that means I take a bite out of the friendship a little bit, that I'm fine with that. And it's because I know it's because I care about the person, what they need big picture and what they want big picture.

Right. And hopefully the two sides. So like, if Hinshaw is coaching you or Sam's coaching, or I'm coaching you when the coaching is occurring, when the conversation about coaching is going on, you're not friends in that moment because that's when you can really listen to them from that perspective and have it impact who you are, what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish.

If you're unable to separate friend and coach, I don't think that person should coach you or you shouldn't be friends with

[00:40:54] Sam Rhee: one of the two. I think. I've gotten to the point where I can separate the two. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, not a hundred percent, but in, in most instances I've heard you yell at me in workouts and I'm like not yelling, but like in my head I'm thinking that, but now I'm like, okay, this is the reason why, and I need to focus on this same with the other day, Mike Delatour.

I was doing those overhead squats and you know, it was at the end and I was getting tired and he goes 60, 40 on the heels. And I'm like, I know I am trying to keep on my heels. Thank you, Mike. But you know what? It did actually help. And I did sit a little bit more back on my heels and being pissed off now.

And I talked to Mike and I said, listen, I appreciate it at the very second when you said it, did I appreciate it? No, but I, but it helped me. And at the end of the day whatever emotion I'm feeling within anything it's okay. Because after it I love Mike, that was

[00:41:53] David Syvertsen: awesome for help. And you know what he's doing?

I a thousand percent and I, at the end of the day, that's really the only thing that matters. And

[00:41:59] Sam Rhee: they're trying to help you out. That's what athletes need to know is, is that, whatever you're feeling about anything, if we're on your ass, it's not because we hate you or we think you

[00:42:10] David Syvertsen: stink, right?

Yeah. It's emotional intelligence. That's really what it comes down to. You need to be able to be intelligent while being emotional. And if you can't like, if you take things personal, so true, then that's something you need to work on because then that, then there is no coaching, and that's where, I think that, and we're both athletes and coaches, so we can both, we can both work on that as coaches and athletes, but I really, I want every athlete to know that that there's emotional intelligence, that it comes into play when you're being coached and.

That's why women are better than men. There you go. So that, that kind of wraps up my thoughts. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add in, on, on the podcast with Hinshaw?

[00:42:47] Sam Rhee: Just a really smart guy. Yeah. He loves numbers and , it's so funny because the podcast was all done. He didn't have to talk to us anymore.

And he said, come on over here. And he, he, he pulled his laptop and he opened it up and he showed us these, his formulas in his algorithms and his spreadsheet was overwhelming. Right. And he didn't have to do these. He

[00:43:10] David Syvertsen: was so excited about it. He literally said w what's this what's the girl's name, Heidi.

I almost said Haley I'm, but that's not right. And he said, He goes, nothing turns me on like a spreadsheet other than Heidi. He does. He truly is in the most complimentary fashion ever a nerd when it comes to this stuff. And it's when I say that, I mean, he can look at his spreadsheet with all these times and numbers and rate of fatigue and his coding.

Whenever someone talks about coding, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming for me. He gets so excited about it and like that, that kind of passion is I think that's a big part of why he does well as a coach. You think about this, he was an incredibly successful salesman prior to getting involved with CrossFit, into aerobic capacity, CrossFit games, athletes were incredibly successful.

He noted it at the uh, at the seminar. He's like, I made a lot of money as a salesman and he was very vocal about that. How common is it for someone like that? To come into a CrossFit space, which is really more about like raw fitness try-hard high-intensity and he flipped this program up upside down.

[00:44:17] Sam Rhee: The funny thing is, is for someone who is so numbers oriented, he has an incredible amount of, as you said, emotional intelligence, empathy, the human side of things to work with people and work with them as coaches.

The fact that he uses his own personal experiences. For example, being scared about starting CrossFit when he talks about these athletes, he. I know he repeats himself in a lot of podcasts, but this is his reasoning. His reasoning is it's like business school and business school.

They have case studies of different companies. McDonald's Xerox, and, and you're supposed to learn from these cases. He puts these athletes up as case studies for people to understand this is why you build confidence in an athlete. This is why coachability is important. This is why pacing is important.

This is why strategic planning in a workout or, or an event or a competition is important. And he holds them up so that people can use them as case studies. And they are relatable because they're very famous people in the CrossFit space. Yeah. I don't think, I think if all you did was send him coachable athlete after coachable athlete and he just programmed numbers for them and got them to get to where they wanted to go.

He'd be a Nirvana. Yeah. But he realizes. Dealing with human psychology and, and people. And,

[00:45:42] David Syvertsen: well, he, I mean that story, he told about his, his dad being a litigator,

[00:45:45] Sam Rhee: he loved that store. And you know what, it's the first time he's ever shared that. So honored that he shared

[00:45:49] David Syvertsen: that story with Lee. He brought that up the next day when we were talking, he like, he's that was a, that's a very like

[00:45:54] Sam Rhee: personal thing that he shared.

And that was a very psychologic story. So the story was tying it perfectly. Yeah. You want, you

[00:46:00] David Syvertsen: want to say, yeah, I mean, I don't want to get it wrong, but basically the gist of the story was that his father was a big time litigator. One of the best, I think voted the best by Harvard and medical malpractice, litigator and defense lawyer.

And he basically in front of a jury was talking to an economist and he was circling like these questions like left and right. That basically. Made the economists look

[00:46:24] Sam Rhee: like a fool, right? So the economist was talking about how much money this person would be losing from whatever it was. Right? Yeah.

Whatever injury was sustained.

[00:46:34] David Syvertsen: And the, and the Henshaw, his father was basically asked him questions in a very strategic manner that the whole room knew this guy was full of it. That's right. But he never called them out. And Hinshaw said like, ask them after dad, why would you not call them out? And he goes, you never want to take the decision-making ability, the power of the decision

[00:46:55] Sam Rhee: maker out of their own hands.

He said, don't you think the jury knows that? And so by not calling him out and just letting the jury listen to it and come to their own conclusions and not telling the jury, this guys doesn't know what he's talking about. The jury, he said already knew the guy didn't know what he was talking about, which is why.

And then he tied that big back into JASA is 800 and Khalifa's workout where he said, I didn't have to tell Khalifa anything. Yeah. I

[00:47:21] David Syvertsen: showed it to him and we're going to tie this to something that we're going on this weekend right now. I don't, I hate to keep bringing this up, but we have these, the court masters quarter finals in two weeks, putting through the mass, most of them through a simulation weekend right now.

And. The simulation weekend is basically five workouts that will replicate what we're going to be doing in two weeks. And you have to do them two on Friday to Saturday. We want to set five workouts in three days, basically. And w we don't, they're hard. The workouts are really hard. The bison wad, if we're listening, we're listening to this a couple of weeks after it's the, it was the workout with the 51 launches 21 handstand pushups, 40 lunges, deficit, handstand pushups, right?

And then with the strictness and pushups, that's that weekend that these athletes are doing four other really hard workouts within 48 hours of that window. And it's not just because we love to work out right and love cross it. That's not really the reason behind it is. We want to show these athletes what you are actually capable of in a very short amount of time.

Very high skill, very high weight workouts. And how do you respond? Day-to-day how they respond, doing a workout an hour after a previous workout. How do you respond to eating and sleeping a certain way? And Sam, your 54 52. Oh, you're 52. That's right. He just PR his deadlift this morning. And how many 52 year olds know that I don't want to keep, always bring up age, but how many 52 year olds that have been doing cross it with a high training age to doing it for a long time, seven, eight years now PR their deadlift after a workout that had hang snatches at 1 35 and muscle-ups, this is what it's almost like.

And trust me, I'm not on the intellect level of Hinshaw. That's not like that's not, I was not thinking Sam's going NPR his deadlift today, but you do want to show these athletes what you're actually capable of and you don't want to just tell them they're great. Right? I did. I told them they're great after they qualify and say, Hey, good job guys.

Right. But when you show them what they can do, like we're watching Kathleen, Elena Reyna, and Kelly do that. The run rope climb front squat workout. And we're at the seminar. We're reflecting on it after we're like, holy cow, like these guys are monsters and they might not even know it. They're also hard on themselves.

I hope that some of this programming and coaching and prep for a weekend like that, it shows them like, yo, you're a baller and you have the power to make these decisions here of that to really go after and perform well at a performing high

[00:49:35] Sam Rhee: level. Well, that's, you're right. It's about confidence building.

And this is not the first time. And I talked to you about it, about this, not the first time I've gone through these quarter-finals. And the fact though, every time these, these prep weekends, it wasn't like I was looking forward to doing five workouts in three days. But doing that challenging one on Friday and then knocking out two today, you get into this rhythm, you get into this feel with it, adrenaline, the adrenaline, and you do wonder what is my strict press going to be?

What will my one-rep max be after doing this? And when you do it and you're you surprise yourself? Just because you're relying on your conditioning, the training and everything else that you've been doing, it is confidence building. If you told and Hinshaw is right. And the workout programming is right.

If you, if you show someone what they can do, that's so much better than saying, Hey, you're going to go into this right. Again, you're going to do

[00:50:35] INITIAL SYNC 20220224_211113: awesome.

[00:50:35] David Syvertsen: Imagine what if I just thought Sam, you could do five workouts in there. Days. Sam, you could PR your deadlift by, by yourself in a

[00:50:41] Sam Rhee: corner afterward. Right?

And it wasn't like, I w I told myself I was going to PR I just said, let me see how this feels. Yeah. I did take a big, a bigger jump on the last deadlift, just because it felt okay. Let's take a risk and see what happens if I fail it, I don't have to worry because I got the quarter finals coming up anyway.

So let me take a little bit of a benefit of taking a risk and you know what, I failed the first one attempt. And then you talk to me about it. And the tips you said, which was basically, listen, that bar ain't gonna move at first. It doesn't feel like it put you are doing something aggressive. You're making a progression because when I did pick it up, I felt like I'm dying.

I

[00:51:16] David Syvertsen: can't do anything,

[00:51:17] Sam Rhee: but the fall in there. Right. But then when you did it, I was like, okay, let me just keep powering through for another second or two. And then I felt the bar move and then I was able to get it up there. That's the kind of thing that as me as a coach, I want to help impart on others. And, and to go back to Hinshaw, if you have not experienced that on your own.

Or if you hadn't experienced it and you're coaching me through that, how are you, how are you going to relate that to me? And so all of these things improve us as athletes, but they also improve us as coaches because we can take these things and then also impart them to others.

[00:51:54] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Yes. My closing thought on Hinshaw is just I always wanted to get this and end it with this way.

If you want to say a closing piece as well. He, he challenged my way of thinking and he will impact the way I coach and program for pro for a long time, maybe forever, but he also reaffirmed some of the ways I've been thinking. Programming and coaching for the past seven, eight years. It like, there's a lot of things, both psychological and the actual, like programming, actual workouts for individuals, for a class fitness setting that it's really cool to see someone that you feel like you're on the same.

It's like you're in the same church, but he's in the, he's in the front pew, I'm in one of the rear pews, but like we're in the same room, you know it, but I also, because he's all the way up there in that front pew, I really want to try and get up there and progress my way. Just like an athlete would progress our way up there.

And, I'll tell him right now if he ever comes out with an Al two, I'm signing up, and hopefully I'll see him again.

[00:52:48] Sam Rhee: Yeah. He's, he's a coach, who's doing it the right way. I'm so looking forward to what he's doing for the next three or four years, I think he scratched the surface on some of this stuff and you're right.

I, , I'm definitely signing up for anything else that he has

[00:52:59] David Syvertsen: for sure. Maybe we'll get them at bison Sunday. All right. Thank you guys. And we'll see you next week.