S02E57 SHOULD YOU HAVE AN ONLINE CROSSFIT COACH?

If a little is good, then more must be better when it comes to CrossFit programming, right? CompTrain, PRVN, HWPO, Invictus, Underdogs - there are so many online programs offering remote coaching to make you a better CrossFit athlete.

Dave and Sam provide their take on online coaching and whether having an online CrossFit coach is right for you.

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S02E57 SHOULD YOU HAVE AN ONLINE CROSSFIT COACH?

[00:35:54] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the Herd Fit podcast. I am coach David Syvertsen here with Dr. and coach Sam Rhee. We are going to discuss today, what is it like to have an online coach? Over the course of time, there are a lot of people that, especially when they get really specific with goals, especially in the competitive

space. There is a huge market right now for online coaching, virtual coaching one-on-one coaching. And I'll, I'll say this back in 2014, 2015, when bison opened and I started to, , really want to get into the sport a little bit more. Once we got this place off the ground, that's when I was, , really tight with Dallas.

And that's all we talked about was competitive CrossFit. There were a. Three blogs online that had a competitor program. And Invictus was probably like the main one back then. And that was really the first time where I, as a coach and programmer at cross at bison would do my workouts and I really wanted to do some more work.

I wanted something else. Not, I would say in place of my programming at bison, it was in addition. And back then, that was the infancy of the sport still. And it. Just do more, do more, more intensity, more intensity, more volume, more volume, do everything you can. There's so many things you gotta do in the sport.

You gotta do. 'em all right. And we had the capacity back then. We were young. Didn't have kids and our bodies were covered a lot easier back then. So Dallas and I would do Invictus programming in addition to bison. And it was like two to three hours a day of training minimum. And it was really just bison wad, 15 minutes later, strengths, Invictus strength session, and then Invictus Mehan and then something else.

And it was. That's basically what we were doing. We were just doing your traditional mix, modal CrossFit Metcons over and over and over again. Do you remember that kind of era back then? Yeah.

I remember Invictus programming being super popular and a lot of people adding that on. Yeah. I think now it's more individual coaching.

Yeah. Not so much following a programming track. Everyone wants to have a coach that specifically train training you, which I forgot to tell you, I hired Shane or for 15 grand a month and I'm gonna become a games athlete.

Yeah. Because

that's what happens, right? Yeah. You hire a super awesome coach and suddenly.

You're gonna be

games bound at this point. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that's where this business kind of started off, you know, you had, I mean, crossfit.com was that was like the founding father of all this right. A workout that would appear on a website, you would just do it. And then these comp train Invictus mayhem, they basically had.

What I would call template programs and what a template program is. It's a, what a gym program is at bison. It's a workout for a group of people, not for you as an individual. And it works to a certain point, and this is where the OPEX model comes in. And they like to say that they really are the founding fathers of training think tank proven all these companies that kind of like, you know, that take like bits and pieces of what craft it has done with individual coaching.

And the template training would bring everyone together, do the same workout, no matter what your strengths or weaknesses are. I remember just listening to this made a lot of sense in the OPEX course it's sometimes yes, you get lucky that that program really focused on a lot of your weaknesses.

So you left that program saying, wow, this is a great program because it helped me get from point a to point B. But the person next to you did the same program has a different strength of weakness repertoire as you. And they did not get better. They did not see the gains that you did.

And it was because that program was not made for them. So as the sport grew and more and more people really wanted to get to a higher level, you started to figure out. Pretty pretty simply that I need specific program for what I need work on. Like the big strong lifters that can't move their body.

Well, they need to have program. Programs that help set themselves up for better body movement, guys that are really good gymnasts and can move their bodies well, need more strength, bias program. And so that, that kind of started more and more. I wanna say I started to see that more and more 2000 16, 17, 18.

And then now it's, I would say here we are 2022 it's rampant. I think you

can find specific track programming for competitors masters. Gymnast you name it. There's a, I can't believe how many there is, but that has always been the knock. And I see more and more people, like, for example, I was on the com train Facebook group, and there's just more and more people saying, yeah, if you're lucky and this fits your needs, great.

It's like a shoe. Yeah. But if that shoe don't fit, then

you know, it's not gonna help you. Yeah. So you know, that, that's where I kind of. I, I, I wanna say the fall of 2019 is when I started to kind of seek out a coach. I wanted an online coach F.

For one reason was kind of selfish was I just wanted to not have to plan everything out. I would just have a lot going on and I wanted to outsource the amount of time and energy to just have someone plan my stuff for me. And I would just do it. Right. I open up my phone. I see the workout, like I'm envious of people at bison and even some people on next level where it's like, Hey, here's the workout.

All right. Done. And you don't have to think about, oh wait, I'm doing this today, but I'm doing this on my own tomorrow, but I'm doing this from that program on Wednesday. Oh crap. It's the same movement, same movement patterns. I'm gonna get hurt. That's what kind of like my, my thought was to go into that on, it was a competitive program.

It was called conquer and conquer kind of also STED from OPEX and have a lot of respect for those guys. Jason Laden from CrossFit Milford, big time games. Coach has been a CrossFit games coach for a long time. Very well known in the sport community. And he hooked me up with one of their coaches, kind of under him.

His name was Dom and. Awesome guy. Great story too. I would love to get him on at some point once we start doing some virtual stuff, which we have some stuff in the works with that. But that was the first time I had my own online coach. And that was a cool introduction for me. And I'll, I'll kind of just reflect on that process a little bit.

Having that individual coach, it meant a lot early on that, like you had someone checking in on you and your scores. And I would ask them all the time. I'm like, dude, how am I doing? Like, I need to know like, am I doing well? Am I doing poorly? Like, like I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, but how bad are my weaknesses?

How good are my strengths? Like where do I sit? And the reason why I would ask. Was, sport a is at some point you're gonna be compared to others, right? Like that really is you rank here. You get to qualify for this. You don't rank here. You don't get to qualify for that, , and they have. So many athletes under that umbrella where you can really get a legitimate answer.

And I think that's one thing that when you enter this online coaching service, that's a, a big perk of that comes from it is there is a whole nother bubble of athletes that you never had exposure to, that you can either compete with online, compare with online, and that can kind of set you up for your sport, whatever your goal is,

[00:42:45] Sam Rhee: Remember you also come at it from the other side of it because.

started on next level with you as an athlete, 2017. Yeah. And you first started with basically just the way this programming has evolved. So at first it was basically a track. It was set for everybody. Yep. You did workouts. You didn't have to do all of 'em. You could, you could sort of pick and choose a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. But it wasn't that we got so much customization yeah. Or feedback from what we did. Yep. We'd log what we do. And then It progressed and changed. Yeah. And then you started customizing it. Yeah. You, it became more athlete specific and, and feedback specific. Yep. I would say your role as a online coach has also evolved along with the

methodology.

Right. And I've always tried to blend my experience as an athlete and as a coach and really intertwine them. Like I never want to have a disconnect from athletes that I coach. And that's why I like, like some, there are coaches that say this, that you cannot compete and coach at the. And I'm not gonna argue it.

I mean, that would be a cool topic to talk about sometime just, you know, talk about both sides of that argument, but I've always felt this way, that if I am trying to get better as an athlete, it should make me better as a coach. You know, if I can track that mentally, right. If I wanna become better as a coach, it should make me a better athlete.

Because I've been on that experience of, Hey, I'm paying a coach now and it was a gym membership, but I was, it wasn't 30 bucks a month, 40 bucks. It was a gym membership. Like what a bison gym membership is. That's what I was paying my coach. And it was a template program. And at some point you start to really

almost sympathize empathize with what I've heard from athletes on next level that I've been coaching. It's like, Hey, Hey, these workouts are cool. And my capacity is getting a little bit better. Like I love the intensity. I love the feeling that I'm doing extra work. I feel more prepared. I feel that I'm recovering better.

I remember that's one of the first things you ever said, just because you're simply doing more volume. Right. And, but then you start to realize like there's something missing it. I'm not really. And I still remember the early days of, of next level, like what it was basically I wrote a program and then I would send it to everyone

via email. And I would start crossing things out like, Hey, you don't need to do this, but do that. You don't need to do this, but do that. And that's when the slight individual track started, but it wasn't an individual program yet. And that's another reason why back then it was much cheaper. And so after a while, and this was also, the pandemic came Brock was born, walked away from that online coach conquer nothing personal against him at all, loved him.

It was kind of like a schedule thing being, having a kid going through the pandemic. But that was one thing I started to realize you're by yourself a lot, if you really are going to buy into an individual online coaching program, you're by yourself. And when you're at a gym like this, where it's like such group fill the classes are awesome.

The competitiveness in this gym is as good as you're gonna find in a gym. You're by yourself. And at some point discipline. I hate to admit this, but sometimes you lose your discipline a little bit. Like you just can't get after it as hard as you can with a group of people. Absolutely. And I think let's, let's talk about that.

A little bit of that process of being by yourself and the advantages and disadvantages you've done a lot of, of next level workouts or whatever. Yeah. I have. And, or even like your own training on your own. Yep. Let's talk about the difference of being in a group, doing a template program that is not for you, Sam Rhee mm-hmm and.

But comparing that to a workout that is for you, Sam, Marie, but you're by yourself. It really depends on

the type of workout and the situation I'm. I mean, I'm lucky that I have a lot of equipment at home, right. So I can, I can do whatever I want. I could probably do most of the class programming at home.

And when I first started with next level my experience was this. It took me a while to figure out how to coordinate everything. Mm-hmm because if you're doing.

Additional programming in addition to class program. Right. And if you like class programming, like I like class programming.

Yeah. Yep. Then that becomes a challenge. And I would wanna ask you later about doing that doing the programming for bison. Yep. Doing the programming for athletes at bison who were also doing additional programming, right? Yep. And I know you had a lot, you were wrestling a lot with that, but for me as an.

It was great because it helped me shore up. The shoe fit for me for a lot of things. Yep. It stinks when you get injured and then you have to drop a lot of stuff. Right. And then you have to kind of figure out what you need to pick up on. I would say the things that worked best by myself mm-hmm was the strength training.

Okay. So anything that was programmed, like working on. Hang cleans mm-hmm and like percentage weights. Yep. You know, deficit dead list, technique work. Mm-hmm you know, where I had to video myself and, and work on specific forms. Yep. That really works well by yourself. Yeah, because

there's no motivation needed, right.

There's not like it's not adrenaline based. No. Yeah.

But if I can guarantee you any kind of wad based or AMRAP or

like short circuits, circuit conditioning.

Yeah. Med pond stuff. Yeah. Consistently 10 to 15% below what I would probably do

in class. Yep. Minimum. Yeah. So, and that, that's what I've that that's so that's the same thing I kind of struggled with too now.

As I, I started, I took that OPEX course in the fall of 2020. And then in the winter of 2021, I went into OPEC's competitor program. It was called big dogs at the time. They've rebranded it to crafted coaching now, but it's the same coach, same company. Right. And that's when. That was the first time I had my own personal online coach that was making my own personal program.

So it was not a template. Yes, you would see people doing the same workouts, but he kind of would tweak things here, tweak things there and whether it's percentages weights. Like I know he had a lot of other clients too that were in the sport and every now and then I'd be like, oh, we're all doing the same workout, but it's, after, and the two sessions after that were our own kind of like, all right, this is what you need to work on.

This is what you need to work on. , this is where I struggled with the most in regard to this program was I went all in on this guy and everything. I did everything he told me to do for 18 months, unless there was an injury that popped up. We had to kind of move things around. And I, I never wanted to, as a gym owner, I never wanted to get away from the gym.

This was probably my biggest struggle. I tried to do all of my training outside of class times. You know, if I had to do stuff during a class, like if you have ever seen me doing my own workout from that coach in a class, it was because I absolutely had to, you know, Brock Ashley, the work the gym, my coaching schedule, sleep schedule.

And,

and I know you don't like that because I've been at other gyms. Yeah. Where. They have competitors in the back. Yeah. Doing their fancy special stuff. Yep. And then the, normies basically in the front who are just like doing the regular one. Yeah.

And you didn't want the, that feeling. So now we can bring this back to next level is whenever I have someone come on next level, I do say like, Hey, I, I'm not gonna make you only come to the gym.

I, we have 10 to 11 classes a day. We have more classes than any gym in this area. And we start at 5:00 AM. We end now of, as of this week at 8:15 PM. That's right. When the gym closes, there's only. An hour and a half. There's only three hours during the day where there's not a class going on.

If you're a normal person with a normal nine to five, you have to do your extra work during classes. And I don't tell people that you're not allowed to, but I do tell them that the class always has priority. Don't make noise while the coach is coaching. Whether they're doing the whiteboard talk, the warmup, like you can't be a distraction because our gym we've always like our model here has always been the class.

And the people in the class are the most important people in the. at the time. I don't care who you are. Right. Are there little exceptions here? Like Dan Coda is doing a qualifier. If we have quarter finals semifinals once a year, twice a year. Yes, but day to. the most important people in our gym are the people that are taking class.

So I've told people that are doing a let's for an example, a, an assault bike sprint interval piece. Let's say every two minutes for 10 minutes, you know, 22nd sprint, they are not allowed to, I will stop them mid out if a coach is trying to coach. So I always tell them like, That's like one of my first talks with anyone that wants to come on, it's like, can you get here during non-class hours?

And then also if you are during here class hours, you need to make sure that you wait till the class is in the middle of their wad before you start making noise. I kind of respect

that. And I respect the fact that you could probably have set up a competitor's track for maybe 20 or 30 athletes that are particularly good at bison and to track that.

And I think a lot of the better athletes, would've been more than happy to do that. Yep. But you have been very firm in terms of keeping the group together. Yeah. Which I think in the long, like it's tempting

to so tempting, trust me. Yeah. I know. I love coaching the sport and it's not because I like it more than I like coaching health or the people that don't wanna compete.

I just love the sport. Right.

But the fact in the long run that. All levels, recreational beginners. Yep. People have been, high level mm-hmm, all together and we've talked about this before. Yeah. About it elevates the, people who are, learning a lot mm-hmm and it also elevates the people who are extremely experienced and very skilled yeah.

To have them all together. Now in the long run, if you are truly competitive, you have

to like, do your own thing, Joe Piero do my own. Yeah. Like, like Joe had to get away from classes. Right. I had to get away from classes. Yeah. But the

philosophy that you've had for the gym, I think ultimately has been

For the benefit of all.

Yeah. And again, That's, it's a very interesting debate to have, like, I've talked about this with Chris since 2015, we've almost gone down this path of doing a competitor class or, and just the experience that we have with people. It usually doesn't work out for the gym. And there's a lot of negatives that come there would be positives.

There are people that would benefit from us having a competitor class. But this is where we have to try to , think about long run, what is best for bison. And I hope everyone listening this from bison, but I think if you go to a gym too, a good cross at gym, I'm sure your owners would say the same thing.

We're 10, 15 years into this, there's a lot of case studies that if you really try to separate competitors, operate competitors from your normal gym goers. It, it usually does a lot of damage and I, it, you can fix it by doing kind of what I, I think what we're doing right now is working, which is, and having a, if you want to go into your own personal program to make you better at CrossFit slash the sport, you do the bison programming, but you also will get some individual programming made for you that you have to do on your own.

In addition to the

classes, you have to be able to handle additional volume though. Yeah, because there were times when I was struggling, I would substitute as an athlete. You're. Yeah, I would have to sub I, I didn't have to, but I chose to substitute a next level workout for a class. Right. And I feel like that once you, once you start going down that road.

Yeah. It's

detrimental. Yeah. It is tough, especially if If you are, I don't wanna say fragile, but I, I, if you don't have the durability that used to, or like, I'll say that I don't have the durability that I used to, and I wish I had more durability. Right. And I have had to choose days to not bison wad, and I will still continue to do that.

If I know I'm doing something on my own, that could impede that. Right. Like I did a workout today. It was body building conditioning. Based on what I know I'm doing at bison this week, you know, you have to, and like, I have a lot of experience. I know it's easier for me to just naturally do that and not put a lot of thought into it.

And this is where having an online coach can get a little dicey because they're not there for you at all times. So if you're gonna have, so when I go back to my experience with crafted coaching yep. I had that online coach for a long time. And the way he programmed was, Hey, this is all you're doing.

And I would be honest with him and like, Hey, like every now and then I'm hopping into these classes. And did I always tell him no, did I, it wasn't that I was hiding it from him, but it was in my head. I'm like, I can handle this. I can handle this. And I mean, who, who knows, maybe that's why I started to break down a little bit, this, this past spring, but I have a moral dilemma in my head of saying, I feel like I need, I should be involved with the.

Is that right or wrong? I don't know. I mean, what's your opinion. There you go. There's your answer? I don't know. Well, you're the

programmer and if you don't eat your own dog

food, you kind of feel weird. Yeah. Not doing your own wa and I get these, these com I've got this on Friday. I think it was bill Sanders said it, or mark Ali or both of 'em the programming at the gym's gotten a lot harder.

Over the past few years. Oh my God. So much harder. And we're gonna talk about your L two experience in, in a future podcast. And I still remember that day. It's like one of my biggest takeaways is that you do need to program for the best athletes in your gym at that specific kind of workout. And everyone else needs to scale down and.

[00:55:10] David Syvertsen: If our gym is going to get more and more fit or fitter and fitter in the years. Yeah. Our program's going to get more difficult. If I have 40 people in our gym that can do 10 muscle ups in a minute I have to program that stuff at the gym, even though we have. 230 people that can't

do that.

I'm telling you when you program in just a regular Saturday, six matches at 1 0

5. Yeah. For 30 minutes. Yeah. After wall balls after

kettlebells. And when I know four or five years ago, it might have been four at 75. Yeah. Or 85 tops. Yeah. Like, I mean, 80 80 was what the women's weight was. This past week.

Yeah.

So let's, that's insane. The devil's advocate is if I don't make the programming tougher, as people get more, as people get fitter, right. Then those people that do want to continue to reach for the stars and just try to get better and better, they have to go outsource their programming, you know, and I know you're gonna have some CrossFit old school truthers say like, Nope, if they just do exactly what the gym program is, but these CrossFit truthers are my, are the seminar staff, in my opinion, like they're the superstar coaches.

And they're the ones that tell me, James Hobart. Says, you got a program for the best athletes in your gym. And you know, I, at some point it might ruffle some feathers early on to hear that, because we don't like to talk like that way at bison best, you know, like we all know who's who the towers and who you don't need to talk about it that much, but you do need to program around it.

I just have empathy for the newbies cuz being a newbie four years ago. Yeah. Way easier than being a newbie now. Yeah. I mean, it's not that you actually are doing. More or less as a newbie. Yeah. But just in context of everyone else. Yep. You're just like, oh, I'm so far behind everybody. Yeah. And it.

That's where ego becomes more and more important. Yeah. In terms of learning. Yep. Because you'll, you'll cont you have to start the process. You will have to start and, and improve somewhere. Yep. But it just gets harder when the gap seems

bigger. And, and this is in your head, you see someone that has an online coach

in addition to the actual CrossFit class programming that they're doing, and they're saying, wow, that's the only way I'm gonna get better, right. Is if I go hire another coach that I do more work and it's. There are very few people that need more CrossFit to get better at it. Very few. I think if you've been in it for 5, 6, 7 years, and you feel like you've at you're at your peak within the current CrossFit programming, then sure.

We could talk about more work. But that's another thing I struggle with as a coach is when someone comes out to me and says like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing some extra work, whether it's next level or just some extra work on their own. I found this online program. I'm never against it, it's not always the solution doing more work because we've talked about this too.

The lifestyle comes first and then the training comes second. And I think that needs to be really cleaned up with a lot of people before they go hire an online coach. Cause I'll tell you what, when you have an online coach, yes. They like crafted help me out with like nutrition, recovery, all these things like, and I never really abused my coach.

I'm very low maintenance. I would hear from him once a week. Unless I really needed something. I'd send him a message. He would always send me something back pretty quickly for you. Like if I had a question but otherwise like week tweak, it was he'd send me feedback on a Monday about last week's workouts, maybe two or three sessions, nothing crazy.

And I didn't ask, I didn't hit him up every four hours asking how much water I should drink it between my workouts. What time should I eat my dinner? How many macro? Like we did talk about it occasionally. But it wasn't something that was constant. You really are on your own for a lot of that time. And then you're also working out on your own without anyone watching.

Other than videos and no offense, some athletes are terrible at taking videos of themselves. I've seen videos from athletes. I can't even get anything out of it because the angle's so bad. They're not even in the video sometimes. And that's where I think there's a lot of personal responsibility that people don't understand.

They're gonna have, like when you hire an online coach, you're hiring help. Right. You're hiring someone to do something for you and you're paying them. They're not doing you a favor. You're paying them right. There's still a lot of stuff you have to do by yourself. And that, that's what, in my opinion, if you're gonna hire an online coach, if you're thinking about doing it, that is going to be really hard if you're not anticipating it.

Right.

[00:59:12] Sam Rhee: So one of the things is you probably might have given more feedback and talked more often to your coach to help him. Help you. Yeah. I know that you're transitioning or have just transitioned from your own online coach to your own programming again. Yeah. I will have to say my experience has been for when I was doing next level.

Yeah. I was definitely doing more volume mm-hmm

I was better at a lot of things. If

you saw my numbers back then and you see, you know what I might be right now. Definitely improved,

but

similar to you when you add that volume things start breaking down. Probably like two opens or three opens in a row.

There was something that was nagging. Yeah. Elbow.

Yep. Knee. Yeah.

And you'd get through it, and generally do. Okay. But then once I started cutting back yeah. And just sticking to class

programming. Great. This is a good point. I'm gonna build off this. Keep going. I. I

got healthier.

Yep. And I actually

performed better. Best open ever for Sam. Yes. Now

the, the downside to it. And I could see this, especially when I went to L two and we were doing squat cleans. Some of my numbers are way, way down. Okay. Cause we touch , almost everything in class programming.

Yep. But probably not as often on my weaknesses that we should. Yeah. And I'm not coming in every day. Mm-hmm so there are some days I end up missing. And I really should be going back and touch pointing those things. Yep. Yep. And a lot of that is basically squat programming, lift programming, technique programming.

Yep. And so even though I know I feel better not adding all that extra volume, which is why I haven't been doing it. I'm now reevaluating and say, Okay. Maybe not three days a week. Yeah. Just one or two, maybe one or two. Yeah. And, and really touch pointing to things that I'm not touching so much.

Yep. And I think for a lot of athletes, they might

be in the same type of situation.

[01:00:58] David Syvertsen: Yeah. So two things off that I'm gonna build off that was, there was good thoughts there. Number one, the, the fact that you were on next level for a while, and then you got off it and then you actually started to feel better.

And even, I would even say perform better in some ways, in most ways, I would say not, not in some ways, in most ways, Sam built up his base, his capacity by doing extra work and he got better at a lot of things and it was just because he was doing it. Right. And it wasn't always these hard MES. It's not like we were having Sam.

Do you know Karen every week? Our Murf yeah, our Murf everywhere. It was just like a slow, steady two to three year ride of some extra things and it really built up. You as an athlete and this is where it gets tough as an online coach, right. Where that, that eventually is might start to catch up. Yeah. You might get to a point your threshold where you're kind of blowing through it and now you're becoming worse because you're banged up.

You can't get to the open and really send it and go for it. Or you're fearful of getting hurt all the time.

I'm not 25. I'm more. I'm older than Dan Bailey. Who's

afraid of a injury. Yeah. Yeah. And so now Sam takes a step back from next level, starts to feel better day to day. It's not like all this extra work that you did that you're no longer doing didn't mean anything.

No. It helped it really built up that base. Yeah. And the OPEX model, they teach you this in our course. And I really have taken this in as well. They say at some point after we work with you as a client for years, maybe a year, two years, three years, five years, 10 years, whatever. you shouldn't need us anymore.

You, and that's one of our goals and in your head, I'm the taking this course and I'm like internally, I'm like, yeah, but then you're not getting their money anymore, you know? And they bring that up. They say, Hey, we're one-on-one coaches. And to be a successful online coach and their program, I think if you have 30 to 40 clients like you're doing well, and I think they actually recommend like 15 to 20, you have to do some math in your head.

Are you making enough money to pay your bills and all that, all that stuff. Right. But he goes, think about how many people are in this world right now. He goes, you know, 15 to 20, 25 to 30, 35 to 40 people. It's not a lot. If you can work with someone for three years, like that person will get replaced at some point.

And that's where my mind started to go with Sam was Sam does less than he used to. I think he's better than he was two years ago. All right, but here's the spinoff to that. Where the second part of what you were talking about, there are things that you need probably more work on, definitely that you did on next level, but you don't do anymore because we don't do them in classes there much.

I will say this right now. There are going to be things in classes. At the gym that we cannot logistically do, or we're just not going to do. Cause I don't feel good about it. We don't squat snatch a lot at the gym and we're never going to, I'm never going to ignore it and we will do cycles.

Like we usually do one right before the open and one late summer, early fall. Where and I, what do I usually say when we do snatching. Optional squat, snatch optional. The only reason I like to keep it in sometimes a year pistol, same thing. They might show up in the open and I don't want to be the coach that would like, no, no, no, we're not doing 'em.

And then all of a sudden, oh guys 23.1, you guys all have to go for a max snatch. And everyone's like, what's that? I don't wanna be that coach. I would feel responsible for that. So now that Sam's circling back, his head's been spinning a little bit, GD sit ups, high volume road climbs a lot of pistols.

Like in his head, he is like, okay, that's gonna hurt my knee. That's gonna hurt my shoulder. No, but if he really wants to keep on top of that capacity, heavy lifting, right. Like we do lift every week, but we don't lift that much. In my opinion, we don't right. We don't do, we don't do a ton of strength work and we do enough in my opinion.

But if you want more, if you ha. Strength is a weakness of yours. You're gonna have to do more. Yep. Whether it's on a program or you just do it on your own. Yep. Does Sam know enough now? To do this on his own because he had an online coach because he's an L two coach. Now he's been CrossFit for so long. No,

not really.

Actually. I'm thinking I'm, I'm coming back. I'm coming back to, I know I'm gonna need additional outside help and right. At some point

it's just, I don't want to do more volume yet, so I know, but that's, I'll figure, but I will. I know that's thank you for being vulnerable like this though, because this is a tough thing to figure.

and I'm on the same page dude. And like, I know there's a lot of people listening, whether they're from bison or from other gyms, like all of our worldwide listeners. You, we all want to be as good as possible with this stuff. Right. And it's just, it's a blessing and a curse where sometimes that online coach, that feeling of someone's doing more for you and giving you more attention and helping you out, it's all good and dandy until you wake up something and something hurts.

You know what it is is I know I have more potential about certain things. Okay. Yeah. And I'm not reaching it. Yeah. I don't have to. Squat clean, 2 65. Right. But I used to do 2 25 for reps. Yeah. And I don't now, and I don't know if I can, but I know I can do more than the 2 0 5 I'm doing right now.

Here's a

question. All right. Remember that question you asked me, would you add, you know, three, just to your waistline, if you might could snatch. And then here, I just got pummeled in the strength events

and you're like, maybe I would add three

inches to my belly. If I could snatch trust me, I would 300. Do you feel good?

So what would you rather have right now? Would you rather feel the way you do right now? Like you're feeling pretty good right now, right? Yeah. Generally speaking, right. With this current strength level that you're at, you're not weak, but maybe you're not as strong as you were a year or two ago.

Absolutely. All right. Would you rather that strength level with your current body feeling or wake up with that achy knee take you forever to warm up, start to be like, do I really wanna do this anymore? I don't know, but you can squawk the 2 25, 2

35. I don't know. I, I, you know what I was doing, I was cleaning up.

I'll tell you. All right. I was looking at my Instagram and I was cleaning up and getting rid of some old posts and crap that I didn't like in there. Okay. You know, you have to present your best image all the time. Yeah, yeah. To look at all your old posts. Yep. And I saw maybe two years, the quarter finals, we are, it was a four rep max.

Front squad, . Yeah,

front age, online qualifier last year.

Right. Okay. And that was, you know, and I was squatting pretty heavy. Yeah. I didn't make four, but I, I hit what two for 2 75 or something like

that. Yeah. And we, I remember talking to about this, on this podcast and back then, I was like, dude, you can hit that for four.

Yeah. And I was like,

holy cow. Yeah, I can't do that now. I, I haven't been on a squat program. I haven't been squatting heavy for a long time and I don't know. And I wouldn't. Want to, or couldn't program myself to do that. Okay. Now, how bad do I want? I want it kind of bad, but do I want it bad enough to injure myself?

Yep. No, but do I know enough now that I can give better feedback to a coach and Institute something and, and add that back in?

Yeah. Yeah. I know what this Oscar do, having a coach, an outside voice, because again, I've done some reflecting for myself. I'm also talking to Adam Ramson about this. Dan Coda about this is, Hey, what are your thoughts on this?

Just that conversation of like, Hey Dave, I was able to squat this two years ago. I can't do it now. Like, but I don't wanna go into this heavy Molo squat program three days a week and then have to take those off from bison. Like that might happen. Right. If you start squatting a lot, right? Yeah. Yep. And.

With just the conversation helps. And that's one thing I loved about my coach that, and I'll be honest with this. I I'm trying to have as many conversations with people on next level as possible as a coach. I think it's, I'm a little short there, but I used to have a monthly call with my coach. And it was honestly, it was probably every six weeks and it was a 30 minute, 20, 30 minute call.

And we talked about things, but like sometime after those conversations, I always felt. About like, all right, maybe this is a good idea. Now I'm gonna be doing a lot of sled work this year. That's one of my reflections that I had that I want build strength, but I don't wanna squat. Like if I do like a lot of squatting, a lot of cleaning, a lot of snatching, and this might blow up in my face.

I'm not gonna guarantee this gonna work, but you know, I've done some research on this and looking some big time coaches sled. Work's a big deal for building muscle mass around the knees and hips. And that's where I feel like that's where I break down the most is the muscle mass down there that I just get sore around the knees.

I've had a couple strains and soft tissue strains, and I think it's just overworked because my legs aren't strong. Right. So when I'm using them, I'm just over exerting. Yep. So this would be a conversation we would have. You wanna get stronger? Cool. Let's not squat four days a week. Let's squat once or twice and do some sled work.

Right? I think

some of it is also, and when I know I'm gonna do it, it's just a question of getting ready for it. Okay, let me build it in to my schedule. Let me make sure I'm not eating like crap. Yep. Let me make sure my sleeping and recovery is on point. Yep. And I can figure out because a lot of times it wasn't so much the volume.

It was my inadequate life recovery system. Yes. My work was driving me nuts. Yeah. And it was probably the stress of all of that. Really hurt me in terms of stress as a killer pro you know, progressing well in terms of my yep. Athletic progress. And so, you know, I know we have cycles and you, you yourself are planning when you're gonna start to like dip and then rise.

Yep.

And I'm, I'm doing the same thing. Good. I'm gonna plan that. And as long as I got my outside life conditions, Set up, which I, I am figuring out much better now. Yep. And whatever you wanna use devices like a whoop or, look at your macro macros or ring. Right. You know, making sure your nutrition is on point tracking macros and making sure all that's good, then I'm like all now I'm ready to go to my coach and say, let's hit something and chase after it for the next

cycle.

Ding, ding, ding, right there. He he's lining other things up. He's not just making the decision today. Like I wanna online coach let's start tomorrow. I'm Mo I'm motivated Dave. Like let's. Get the other shit ready? Because if your only plan, like I have someone new starting next level this week, right?

If your only plan is to just work out more, it's not going to work. all right. It will not work. And that's where the online coach, especially if you're hiring someone that's satellite, they don't see you. That's most programs you're on your own. You can lie every single time you text.

But if right now, like that's why I like, we're gonna kind of turn this conversation to what I'm doing at the gym now. Yep. Again, not promoting anything. I'll tell you this right now. Taking in on anymore at next level people for a while, just cuz I have too many right now. And so like the so I'm not promoting anything.

The, when you are texting a coach, emailing a coach, messing your coach through the app and that's really your only means of communication. I have found that. It's very easy to lie about that kind of stuff. And it worked as hard as I could. And again, you're just looking at scores. You're not looking at the other 23 hours a day and I can tell right now there are certain people.

I work with that when they say they really, they got the nutrition lined up. They're they're paying attention to sleep. I see it physically on them. Right. Not that they're. Ooh, they look good. They're leaned out. They're like, cut. They're shredded. They're moving better. They have more energy. They're not, they don't look like a train wreck in the middle of a workout.

Like they look like they actually have fixed the lifestyle. So, and honestly, I'm Instagram. I, I Instagram some of these guys see what they're doing on the weekends. If you're getting trashed every weekend, but you tell me that you really are dedicated to become a better CrossFitter.

I'm like in my head, like you're a liar, you know, that's true. And I don't say anything to you that I've never said to myself, you know, like I've lied, I've lied to myself and saying I'm working my ass off, but I look at some outside factors. I'm like, I, I came up short there, I, I didn't fully commit to this part of my life to make my body recover better.

Right. I'm I'm not trying to cut out stress in my life to help recover. Right. It's so that that's a big deal with an online coach that wet, I like what I'm doing right now with bison is I get to program both. . when people come onto a next level program, I program their bison Wass, and I usually will start to steer them every now and then, like I told Amy this week, I told I've told Coda, I tell Liz every week, like, Nope, that workout looks fun.

Right? Yeah. You're not doing it, you know, because you're doing the ring muscle up Imam the day before. Aw. Yeah, I know. So, and but that's where if you have an online coach who doesn't know what you're doing at your gym, you start to make some immature decisions like that. Wad looks cool. Right guys, we're always gonna have cool wads and you're not gonna be able to do 'em all.

And that's just it, you know, and I like having. A focus in the gym that if I know the gym's focusing on it, I'm not gonna put that much attention on, like right now, we're going through this to bar wall, ball, power, row circuit in the gym and cleaning jerks. That's our strength focus for the summer. I'm not gonna have the next level athletes work on that, that much over the summer.

I'm gonna kind of cut that out. And if you really wanna work on it, if we feel like it's a weakness of your it's, like, make sure you get the B on those days, how

honest would you say you were. With your online coach. And now that you are transitioning off mm-hmm , did you give your online coach a fair shake cuz you tried to take stuff off your plate in terms of stress and, and burdens and responsibilities for this last 18 months?

Yeah, competitive cycle,

but. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But did you really, and how are you going to clean all that stuff up even more for the next competitive

cycle? Yeah. So one thing I think I, wasn't very honest with my online coach about was, you know, again, like I always, I'm gonna try to like, almost, I should just be honest about this now.

I, I never really liked to tell him if I was banged up. Not pride. I wasn't like embarrassed about it. I just hated the feeling of making him do more for me. And then I've told him that before, and he's like, dude, like, this is why you're paying me. Of course. I know. And I'm like, all I get it, I get it. It is a shortcoming of your personality.

Yeah. And it it's like all, so I gotta be a little bit more honest and blunt about that, but like that, that quad strain, like I'm still dealing with it today. Like, and this happened six weeks ago. Is that Norwegian stoicism? my Vikings. That's right. No. And I'm not bragging about either. Like I know it's actually, if you have an online coach, you have to be overly honest.

And that that's one thing I think I came up short with because you know, that training leading up to semifinals, it was, it sucked, it was like, I didn't do everything that was handed to me and I didn't wanna be the guy that's like, Hey man, I'm hurt again. And the stigma of being a master's athlete and I've told him before, I was like, I know you deal with, like, I remember it was almost embarrassed when I had my first call with.

And he's like, what are your goals? I was like, I wanna make the games. I wanna win the games. That's what I wanna do in the master's division. And I was almost embarrassed to say, because like, I, everyone wants to say that. And is it realistic? Is it realistic for me? I don't know, but sometimes it's embarrassing for me to say that because I know

thousands of people say it just because they don't know what to say. You know, like they don't know what, what their goal should be. And I've had conversations with my coach about that. But now that like legends is coming up, master's fitness collective, it's a little bit more realistic to make those things.

Or now that we have this top 10% goal, which I've always said, I think most people can get there. It just might, you know, could take ears, you know, depending on where you're at right now, but it's not an unrealistic goal. Okay. Making, making the games and winning the games. It's a little unreal, realistic for most people, but it still drives me to, I want to get there, you know?

Yeah. I think making the games is realistic.

Yeah, no, I, I do too. And I like actually feel more confident about that right now, even than I did last year at this time. Yeah. So I don't want make this about me, but the, what I wasn't good about was being completely transparent with how I was feeling, because maybe he could have helped me.

Maybe he could have been like, dude, like we have to change a couple things up because he did my first conversation with him was Dave, just so you know, you're nowhere near your potential and like it wasn't typical coach speak. It was, you're doing you're at this level right now. And your sleep is garbage.

Your schedule is garbage. Your training schedule is garbage. You're not really on a program. You're just, you know, you're a grinder, like you just got to this level by working hard. He goes, if we refine things and look what happened, I did refine things and had my best year ever. And so I think that if I was more honest with him and I wasn't embarrassed to tell him that I was hurt.

Or something didn't feel right. Maybe my path would've been a little different this year.

[01:16:11] Sam Rhee: One of the great things about having an

online

coach, like you said, is that you are handed workouts. You have, and you don't need as much discipline in terms of self discipline to right. To do this.

I know why you're, you've decided to go on your own at this point. Some of it is flexibility in terms of working your own programming in mm-hmm class programming. Yep. Not having to listen to, or disclose everything to someone and have them spend all this time with you. Yep. Okay. Fine. Yep. But.

How about your own self discipline? Is it also because you just hated working out by yourself all the time?

[01:16:43] David Syvertsen: So that's where I think I became, I almost started to feel like I didn't enjoy training as much because I was by myself and like, I am motivated, I worked my ass off. I never felt like I wasn't working hard, but I always felt like there were a lot of sessions where I felt like I had something more to give that I didn't give, because I was by myself.

I didn't, you know, maybe a little bit too much time on my phone in between sets or, you know, Like someone would come up to me and talk to me in the middle of a session and like all this 10 minutes later, I'm like, oh man, like I'm training right now. Where in a, when you, and you're in a class setting that doesn't happen because why the coach and our, we have good coaches in our gym.

They're very good about warmup demo. Five minutes starting 3, 2, 1 go. You're actually, you don't get to choose. You don't have the freedom to go and back and forth. Like when you're on your own in the gym. It's on you. And in some cases that's nice, but it's also nice to have someone like when I'm here as an athlete, like, I don't view myself as owner, as coach.

Like I am one of the athletes in the class. I don't feel myself better or worse. I hate being singled out when I'm in a class like, oh, like Dave's here. Like I hate it because I don't feel, I don't want anyone else to feel that way. I don't wanna feel that way. I am one of, one of the people in class. And because you get to be a soldier, you just get to be like, yo, do this, Dave, yo do this.

Yo Dave 3, 2, 1 go like, I'm literally gonna tell you when you're allowed to start your workout, where. You're in, on, on your own. You're just kind of like you have almost too much freedom and you can lose track of your discipline a little bit.

[01:17:59] Sam Rhee: So what are the characteristics that you've seen for people that are well suited for online coaching?

Cause you've seen a lot of athletes, so which ones are the ones that are good at doing it this way?

[01:18:08] David Syvertsen: Good question. I would say the people that are suited for it are the people that have very specific goals and they've tried something for a long time with a healthy lifestyle and it's just not working anymore.

And it could be like very, when I say specific, it doesn't need to be like, I wanna make top 10% or I wanna make semifinals or games. It could just be like, I wanna work on my muscle ups, handstand, pushups, my gymnastics, my aerobic capacity, my strength. Right. Very specific things. And then that's part one.

And within that part, one umbrella is. You have everything lined up lifestyle wise. All right. And part two is you are very disciplined when you were by yourself. And I was, I actually feel like I was more disciplined about a year ago than I was now about just getting in there and feeling like, all right, hungry to train, where I would say for the past six to eight months, I felt like it was another job.

and it was partially because we talked about this earlier. I was trying to get in outside of class times and the way my schedule works and coaching schedule it was tough. It was tough to get here at certain times and I always made it happen, but then it just, I felt like I was like overly rushed because I was trying so hard to be done before classes.

Like there are a lot of sessions I cut short because of that reason. Mm-hmm . And so if you're someone that has a really tough schedule or you have a lot going on, I don't know if it's a good idea because there's less structure. Where, when you're in a class, like we're pretty good at 50 to 55 minutes. Yep.

You know, and, and you're out and you got your full session in, so that's where I think the two candidates. And then for someone that can sustain it last one here, the, the person that can sustain it for an X amount of time is you have to be cognizant of your mindset. And I'm not talking about good training.

Today is bad training days. We all have. Both both of those throughout the year. But if you have weeks, months of stretches where you just aren't having fun with it you don't feel like you're full sending Joe Piero training by himself. And all of a sudden it blew up in his face a little bit at granite games because he is always by himself.

I think that that's where you should take a break from it. And I, I think when people leave an online coach, it shouldn't mean forever unless they are really confident they can move forward without the coach. It could be like, Hey, like I tell my next don't I tell next level people all the time, like, yo take a couple months off, week off, two weeks off.

And then some people realize like, all right, I really miss that structure. I need to get back on it. But I think it's smart to kind of cycle on and off an online coach, if you are getting to the burnt out stage,

[01:20:19] Sam Rhee: I would say, for example, with Joe, not so much blowing up, but he's he maxed out what he could do by himself? Yeah. On his own. Like, he really did max that out and he got to a very high level on it, like crazy high, but you're right to, there are probably are things he could do now, in addition to

that yeah. To push him up even a little higher than that. Yeah. The other thing is

we've always talked about enjoying the process.

Yeah. And if there have been many days in the past, when I would train by myself and I truly enjoyed it. Yeah. Like it's just fun to go, go here and do something. I just did one today. Loved it. I loved it.

And you have to be able to find that joy mm-hmm . And if you don't have that joy working out, either in class or by yourself, mm-hmm then you're

probably not gonna really, yeah.

[01:21:00] David Syvertsen: It's like an additional stressor. Right. And I'd like to be able to modify things on the fly, whether it's a day or a week, based on how I feel. And again, I'm so like when a coach sends me a program, I feel guilty if I don't do it. So if I know something's not feeling right, and I'm kind of fighting through it a little bit, because the coach sends it to me, like I don't have that free.

If I do now have that freedom. If I like I have my next three weeks mapped out, you know, for between a blend of bison and a blend of some of my own stuff. But I know that if something kind of flares up, I'm not going to push through just for the sake that it was programmed. Right. And I don't need to answer to anyone for that.

It's not about like, having to love every workout. Oh yeah. And it's, and there are certain days you definitely just have to drag yourself in and do stuff, even if it's a class workout. Yep. But if it's constant and if you have a sense of dread and like you said, it's like a job. Yep. Then.

Yeah, it it's. I would go back to the group training.

Yeah. And then hopefully have a good gym, you know? But yeah, that, that's kind of like where I want to. Wrap up. My, my thoughts on the online coaching. Do you have anything else?

[01:22:01] Sam Rhee: No, I learned a lot from watching you train. Yeah. And seeing your thought processes and what you were going

through.

Yeah.

[01:22:08] David Syvertsen: And I'm really I'm looking forward to my next year. I'm I'm like really fired up right now. Like just, I think that whole week off being away. And then I didn't train this past week. The didn't eat this week and I feel just like. Kind of happy and excited to be back in what I think is gonna be my best situation for the next year.

But it I'm not for, or against the online coach there. I've so happy. I did it for the, for the past couple years and I think it may be better athlete and it's going to make me better coach, and I'm gonna progress with both down the road. Cool. Thanks guys.