S02E63 WHAT CAN MORTALS TAKE FROM THE NOBULL 2022 CROSSFIT GAMES

The NOBULL CrossFit Games 2022 is done and dusted! What can we take away from one of the most innovative and exciting Games yet. Where do we go from here? Dave and Sam discuss lessons learned and how the Games can guide our thinking regarding fitness and training starting today.We discuss all that and more!

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S02E63 WHAT CAN MORTALS TAKE FROM THE NOBULL 2022 CROSSFIT GAMES

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the herd fit podcast. After a two week hiatus, I know you've missed us. We've missed you guys. But thanks for sticking with us.

I am coach David Saron. I'm here with Dr. And coach Sam Marie just fresh back from vacation. I'm fresh back from a really nasty workout that I'm still trying to recover from. We were just talking about a hundred percent efforts and I just did one. I kind of wanted to get in the moment with cross the games, athletes and feel tired of fatigue.

So that's why I did it right before this episode. And Sam actually did the workout this morning. And as simple as today's workout was at cross at bison, this was the uh, row step up kettle, a swing max burpee workout. If you're listening and come to bison although it seemed a little light this morning, if you're asking me attendance wise,

We are going to break down the CrossFit games. This actually happened. We are sitting here recording on a Friday night. The games ended about five days ago. So we've had about a week to digest the noble CrossFit games 2022. And we want to kind of break down. Yes, we'll probably go through each workout.

We're not gonna break down the results of everyone. A that would be really boring. B a lot of people already do that. So if you want, if you really get into that kind of analysis, you can find several different podcasts that do that. We kind of wanna dive into the workouts. What you can take that from them as a novice CrossFitter, as a competitive CrossFitter, as an aspiring competitive CrossFitter, whatever.

Or even if you program for your gym, you program for yourself, you program for others. There's a lot that I took out of the CrossFit games from that perspective, both for my own training and for the training of others both in, you know, a fitness. Perspective and support perspective and maybe some things to anticipate for us as open athletes in the future.

Sam, any opening thoughts on the cross? The games. I know you were we, and you probably didn't get to watch them as closely as you usually do, but I know just knowing you, you kept tabs on it. Any, any thoughts? Yeah.

[00:01:51] Sam Rhee: I've been deep diving it lately when I got back. And my first takeaway was there was a lot of new things for me to digest as a CrossFitter.

I think I know CrossFit after being a CrossFitter since 2015. And I said, wow, this changes a lot of my head space in terms of what I think CrossFit is.

[00:02:10] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I mean, so we had somebody else program the games this year, and I think you saw Adrian Bosman. Who's been working with CrossFit and the CrossFit games since basically inception.

And this is the first time that he programmed the games himself. I know he's always had a hand in it and I'm sure he's had plenty of feedback and input. With Dave, Cashio the former director of the games. But this is the first time that he programmed from start to finish. And you could immediately tell, we even talked about this in the quarter final semifinals, but especially in the games, you felt the different flavor.

And Sam said, there's a lot of new things. A lot of new elements, that's really what the changes to the games were this year. And before we go into each workout, I just want you to kind of maybe listen for you. So you can have some perspective on how many new things we're in the cross at games.

This is a sport that's more than a decade in now. You're talking about maybe 15 years in now, and you're still introducing so many new things. And what I like about it is the system has started to be gamed a little bit by these elite level coaches and elite level athletes that kind of know what to expect.

You can clearly tell that some of the best athletes in the world had no idea what was coming this weekend. And a big part of cross it methodology. We talked about this at our gym the other day when we did single unders as an RX. And this is a very scaled back version of what we're talking about here, but you are fitness level should always be able to take over when it's something is new, thrown your way.

And that's a big part of cross, whether you agree with it or not is relevant. That is a part of cross it methodology. So I just want to really quickly go through a couple new things. I'll be quick with this and then we'll start breaking down some of the workouts, what we could take from 'em, but you had Legless.

Pegboards right. So the pegboard has been in the cross of games for a long time. This is the first time where you were not allowed to use feet for assistance. You had unbroken single unders you had pistols that were, you were not alternating. You were just going on the same foot over and over.

You also had the, what do you call the, the crossover double under crossover, double under crossovers, which was a train wreck for a lot of the athletes. But again, this is we're gonna, I wanna touch on that a little bit later. You had lifting off of blocks not racks. You had jerk blocks.

You had parallel bar traverse, parallel bar traverse. You had parallel bar dips. Yep. Dips off the parallel bar. You had wall facing handstand pushups. You had a one rep max that did not include a barbell. It was actually a sandbag. You had high wall balls where guys were throwing to 12 feet. Ladies were throwing to 11 feet.

You had indoor swimming. They had swimming in the games almost every year, I think every, almost every year. But this was an indoor swim. You had, one of my favorites was they had a thousand meter row a workout, but they had a minimum of how, how fast you had to get it done. Yeah. So they basically told you how and like little elements like that.

So some of those were movements, some of those were kind of different rules within workouts. Some of them were just different approaches. I, I love that. As much variety as there is in CrossFit. One of the biggest things I took away from this was there's always something you can try. That's new. And that's a big part of the original definition from Greg Glassman on CrossFit is try and learn new sports, new sports, new activities, new movements, and you have to be a really educated mind to implement that into the cross of games because you gotta make sure you don't get too cute with this.

[00:05:26] Sam Rhee: I think of myself as a pretty decent CrossFitter. I've made age group a couple times. I know I can do bar muscle ups. I can do a few ring muscle ups and everyone, and I've been aspiring to be quote a good CrossFitter for years. I keep saying, okay, once I get double unders I, I I'm a better CrossFitter once I do a ring muscle up, I'm a better CrossFitter once I can clean and jerk X amount of weight, I'm a better CrossFitter.

And then I look at these movements and especially like that single under workout. I didn't know. I was really suffering on those single lenders in that workout year program. Yeah, one second, a couple days ago. And so what does it mean to be a good CrossFit or good CrossFitter does not mean, doing bar muscle ups or doing a ring muscle up or doing this.

It means what you said, being able to be fit and do a bunch of different movements, adapt and adapt. And I don't know what a lot of these movements, how I'm gonna feel or what, I can do. Yep. And for me to try all these new movements, it's going to really blow my mind as a CrossFitter.

I am not a good CrossFitter. I am as good as anyone else who walks in the door who is pretty fit mm-hmm and. Has a skillset that might be different from mine.

[00:06:34] David Syvertsen: Yeah. And I I've always wondered this, right? Like I I'm biased towards CrossFit. And I do think the fittest CrossFit CrossFitters are the fittest people in the world.

And, but that is still, it's very subjective. And obviously I'll admit that I have a bias when I say that. And. The reason why I don't know if that's completely true is yes. I know a lot of fit people that run, you know, 17 minute, five Ks and can bench press 400 pounds and can do all this, but they can't do what we do here with conditioning and all the different movements in the gymnastics and all like the mixed model work.

But I would also say that if we got thrown into an F 45 gym, a Pilates class, an, an orange theory fitness class, or we went to some sort of endurance club and tried to do what they did, we probably would not exceed. We would probably come across as not in good shape. Like I know a lot of good CrossFitters here that they did go, went and did an Ironman.

What Reno just did, they would fall apart. Yep. So it, it's funny how maybe we should kind of get away from we're the fittest people in the world. And just say like, we should kind of stay humble about this and keep our open mind about, there are always things that we should try to do with our bodies while we can to try and prove or try to elevate our fitness and try to adapt to new ways of.

Exercising and challenging our bodies. So let's talk about the workouts again. I promise we're not gonna like break every workout down results, but there are a few highlights that we'll probably want to talk about that you guys would probably wanna hear about. I've been asked a few times over the past couple days, like when are you guys doing no games?

Breakdown? When are you guys doing games breakdown? So I know a lot of you guys wanna listen to it and just bounce some ideas off each other. So the first workout could not have started worse for the regime of, the new people running the, the cross, the games and programming, it was 75. It was called bike to work 75 to a bar, five mile bike, 75 chest, the bar five mile bike.

So we work out that the vast majority of the time was spent biking. And this was kind of like, I wouldn't call it mountain biking, but it was not road biking. It was kind of like on a trail, grass, dirt, that kind of stuff. And it was somewhat entertaining to watch, but long story short. These athletes had to a do the gymnastics with a helmet on which just looked funny and, but when they went biking, I guess the lap, the loop that they had at the complex was a mile approximately.

So they had to do five loops. And on the back half of the workouts, several athletes, not several, a handful of athletes only did four loops. They came in back into the arena. The stadium did the dramatic run down the field. I finished, I, I crushed it, but they were not in first place. They were not in second place.

They were probably closer to the back of the pack and they, you know, they cut their, the rep short by, by a lap and they didn't know. And there was a lot of confusion, even the announcers. Did you watch the

[00:09:12] Sam Rhee: event? I I did watch it late. I mean like the recording?

[00:09:15] David Syvertsen: Yes. So you saw like the recording of Sean Woodland and chasing room were both like the commentators, by the way, they were like, we have no idea what's going on.

And I remember watching it, I was cringing. I felt bad for Boz and all these bees, I know on a much lesser scale, like when something bad happens like that, logistically at a, at a competition, you feel so helpless and you need to think fast and react fast. And here's the thing now that there's. You know, I, I listened to Boz after the athletes were responsible for counting what laughs they had.

That's right. They were, and a few of them just messed it up. They couldn't count to five. Yes. They could not count to five. And you wonder, I mean, I don't think anyone, I, I can't put that on anyone saying, oh, they cheated, they tried to get one pass. I see people here miscount all the time. I've I've miscounted

[00:10:00] Sam Rhee: all the time.

Yeah. And I can't count to five during a wa

[00:10:02] David Syvertsen: myself. it's amazing. How something so simple from our seat? It looks, but it really isn't when you have all these and all the pressure that you're under, and it's not like they're riding a bike around the NASCAR track. There's there was not a lot of fluidity to the track, a lot of turns, ups and downs on grass, on dirt.

And it's hard to keep track where you are, but that event was not the most ideal way to start the games. For sure. And were there any takeaways you had

[00:10:30] 2022_0812_1649: from

[00:10:30] Sam Rhee: that workout? Well, yeah, one is, there was one athlete, some young Choi who did six laps yeah. She had extra work. Right. So she was what I would say as a model CrossFit athlete, if you can't keep track of your numbers, you just, just do one more.

Yes. Yeah. So props to her, the second thing is, is I know it's not a great look. It's like, ha look at these CrossFit athletes doing bike. They don't know what they're doing. Yep. But listening to Boz afterwards, talk about it. Mm-hmm he was very. Calm. Yep. He said we made the corrections the best way we

[00:10:58] David Syvertsen: yeah.

Could. Yep. And, and by the way, did you hear what they did? Yeah. They added the slowest lap time yeah. To the athletes that skipped a lap. Right. So they did have a time marker out there to, for their own bookkeeping to say, this lap took this person X amount of time. So they had everyone splits of every lap on their computer system.

So they just looked at their slowest lap and they added that to their time. And that was basically probably the best way to do

[00:11:23] Sam Rhee: it. It, was reasonable , obviously would their last lap have been even slower than their slowest could've been, could have been, maybe not though, because you know that that's your last lap.

So you're just going to pour it on for that last lap. So I think that was a reasonable compromise.

[00:11:35] David Syvertsen: Do you think it would've been a better resolution? My thought was, Hey, if you didn't finish the workout, if you didn't do all the work you would immediately come into last place.

[00:11:44] Sam Rhee: Only if it was intentional in some way.

And I don't think that the athletes that did that, that there was any intention of shorting the

[00:11:51] David Syvertsen: work. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's always hard to tell. I, you know, you always have to keep feelings and emotions out of it best you can. And I, that was my initial reaction. Was you, whoever did not finish that fifth lap, you immediately go to last place and just, I don't even care about your time just for the sake of the scoring.

But it might have been too harsh because there, there were some people at the end of that workout that were really far back and it, you know, those people that shorted, it probably could have walked their bike around the track and still beat them. But the actual workout itself, this is one that I'm gonna try to put into bison programming.

I think we're gonna start playing around these in September. Once the legends qualifiers are done. Cause I don't wanna do both at the same time. But what I'm gonna do here is I'm probably gonna, and this is what I think Jim's can do with this. You can do the whole volume if you want, you know, just 150 reps for a novice CrossFitter on the rig is a lot on their hands.

Five toes of bar, 75 chest bar. Yeah. So it's 150 reps on the R like I'm I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make it 50 of each 50 toes bar, 50 chest bar pullups and instead of biking, you know, we can't have. Bikes come to the gym. I'm probably gonna make it a mile run in between. So it is like a scaled back version of the workout.

But again, you're going after stimulus of the workout and you're trying to get a feel. But what I think a lot of CrossFit gyms don't do with gymnastics is create big set workouts. Like this it's one thing we do 50 toes of bar and 50 chess bar pull ups and a workout all the time. But it's spread out over the course of four or five rounds.

Yeah. Like work like five sets of 10. Yeah. Or even 10 sets of five. Right. And I think it's a different stimulus. And I think it's something that a lot of novice CrossFitters should get exposed to because it can help or hurt your training. Or I should say it can, it will definitely help your training, but it can, might humble you in the moment where if you never train big sets of work, I feel the same way about jump rope as well.

You really can impede the overall long term progress of it. So I think that it's important. You don't even have to do this workout, but I think it's important for coaches that program to throw big sets and, and I would ease your way into it. Maybe make a workout or two that has 25 at a time. 35 at a time.

All right, guys. Now we're doing a workout with 50 toes of bar in a row. And honestly, for someone like Elena, that's two sets of work. Right. But for some people that are doing, you know, they get to a point where they get to doubles and there's still 25 left. That's that's gonna take them six minutes to do.

[00:14:01] Sam Rhee: The first thing is, is after that please I'm gonna need something for my, to up hands. Yes. And the second thing is all those toaster bar, please don't make me laugh afterwards because I think I'm gonna,

[00:14:11] David Syvertsen: I'm gonna die after rap though. cause because my core will be shot after that. All right.

So the, the next workout was also the initial, there were supposed to be three events on that first day, they had a, a rain issue. So they had to the next one that we're gonna talk about after this was push back the next day. So this skill speed medley was a really interesting workout. So try to stick with me, but in the past, they've done these lifting workouts at the games where you had to run through a Squaw clean ladder or a snatch ladder, as fast as it can in the past.

It's been one of the, one of the most fun events to watch where you see these athletes have five barbells in front of them. And they, they escalate and wait as they go up and you have to snatch go to the next bar snatch, go to the next bar. It's like a quick, I don't know, 15 to 45, second race to the end.

Really intense. And then basically you, everyone does the first round, you know, in different heats. And then the top 20 move on to the next heat, heavier barbell, top 10, move on the next seat, top five, move on to the next seat. They did that concept, but with a very different way of working out the, the workout, the movements were pegboard as sense.

Jump rope, unbroken pistols on one leg, unbroken pistols on another leg and then a handstand walk course. All right. So what escalated in difficulty here was not weight. Like I just talked about with the snatch. It was the jump. and it started off with single unders. We had CrossFit games, athletes doing single unders at the games.

And did you watch that? I loved it. I watched it. It was hilarious. I watch it multiple times. Yes. And it was, it was funny and I've always struggled in the jump rope. So I was like, huh, Tia, you stink. As I was eating an ice cream sundae. What made this workout even more interesting was the fact that the jump rope they had to do the volume had to be unbroken.

That is an enormous factor that throws in a mental component to this that you don't normally get with just a normal, Hey, get your jump rope done. So when they did single unders, so they had to do three peg board cents for the guys, two for the girls, 75 unbroken, single unders, and then 10 pistols on each leg.

And then the hand. So, well, course, right. I don't wanna get too much into volume. But if you qualified for the next round, they made it 50 unbroken, double unders. So what that means is if you got to 49 double unders and you tripped up in your 50th rep, you were back to zero and. The final round of this was one strict pegboard ascent.

So they were not allowed to use their feet on the wall. Really difficult to do by the way 25 double under crossovers. And then back to that pistol handstand wall course. So the double under, I can't even, maybe you have more luck at putting this into words, but the double under crossover was basically you, you get yourself jumping normal jump rope, and you have to cross your arms, have the jump rope, go under your feet and then uncross your arms and then have the jump rope under your feet again, right?

Yes. While you're still up in the air. Yeah. So it's a lot, it's just a lot of skill and it's something that you would see like in fifth grade recess, you know, and almost nobody could do it. And it was, I remember I was texting multiple people that night and this is the first night of the. After they just had a train wreck with the, with the bike event and were like, and you're watching almost every single games athlete, not even get to the handstand walk course.

All right. And they, it was, it was a different kind of handstand walk course. I don't wanna get too much into it, but they had to start on these parallel bars. It was a very complex hand and I really wanted to watch them do it. There was only one guy that got, or a couple guys that got to that course. And I think only one girl got to that course out of all these athletes, they had all these things, all this stuff set up, but no, we were watching a bunch of athletes trip up on a jump rope, trying to cross their arms back and forth.

And Danielle, Brandon yell, judge , you know, that's, that was the, that's the level of frustration. Yes. That was the opening. And here here's the thought. I remember so many people texting me and saying, this is, this is the games like, Dave, what do you think, Dave? This is stupid. It's like a circus. What'd you think about that initially?

[00:18:10] Sam Rhee: I loved it because I loved the fact that I know Boz is a, is a gymnast sort of guy and that. You know, to tell people to do 75 unbroken, single unders, which is like, I mean, that's what people do when you start at CrossFit. Yeah. Right. Is you just, you do 75 single unders and, and to see, yeah. Like to see Tia, Claire to me messed up and have to restart.

I mean, it was only like 10 that she got into and then she had to restart.

[00:18:38] David Syvertsen: I think she tripped up twice. Yeah. It's Tia amazing. Yeah. The fit, the most dominant athlete at the games, female male is Tia, right? Yes. She did not qualify past at first round of forget, she

[00:18:47] Sam Rhee: got passed the first round, the quartered and round.

And to me that, that shows you that fitness can take multiple forms. Yep. And it's not just about how many double ants can you do? Yep. No, listen, you, you can't get through learn how to do a double in crossover. Yeah. You're not getting to the other

[00:19:02] David Syvertsen: parts of this, so that, that's the kind of takeaway we want from an event like this.

It's not necessarily just about the event itself. Like what can we take away from it? And because of that, the way I sold Wednesday's workout, we just did workout that had a lot of single on there's a thousand of them in, in the workout on Wednesday. If you finish the whole thing. And I remember telling the classes saying, Hey, when a lot of you started off here, almost all of you, you did single unders and then you figure out double unders and then, you know, never go back to single unders.

All right. And Hey, part of that's programming's fault. It's not the athlete's fault, but it's just truth of the matter, right? Same thing with pullups you come to the gym, you don't, you know, you do ring rows, then banded pullups then new pullups and then your quote, too good to do ring rows. Right? What if we throw a lot of ring rows into a workout, you haven't trained that in six years, guess what's gonna happen.

Right? Like a lot of the accessory polling work that I do with next level athletes is ring rows. And I think it's one of the most beneficial movements for upper body strength. Especially if you wanna get better at muscle ups. And it's something that it's a concept that you can apply this to a lot of different movements that, you know, yes, you, you walk and then you run, but you should always go back to walking at some point because the basics and fundamentals always matter this

[00:20:10] Sam Rhee: legitimizes single unders or any other movement in the workout.

So when you program them for the workout this week, If, if the games hadn't happened, I would've been like Dave. Yeah. What's going on with these single unders yeah. Yeah. What's the point. What's the point. And the fact that, that you, they were programmed in the games, I'm doing them and I'm having a hard time because I was really good at single unders yeah.

I was wicked fast. Yeah. Yeah. And I haven't done them in years. Yeah. And now I feel. really silly. Mm-hmm and it also helps the younger or the newer CrossFit athletes feel like, you know what, what I'm doing right. Matters. Yes. It's not like this is a step to something else. Right. What I do right now matters.

Yep.

[00:20:51] David Syvertsen: To my fitness, there are people good and bad single others, and it matters. Right.

[00:20:55] Sam Rhee: And, and I want the newer athletes to feel that way. Right. I want them to say, oh, I'm just doing ring rows or, oh, I'm just doing single. No, you're doing a movement that everybody needs to know how to do.

[00:21:05] David Syvertsen: Absolutely. And we will be doing, I agree.

[00:21:07] Sam Rhee: And to me that's the, and Boz said that you, you said, and I know that affiliate owners came up to him and said, thank you for programming. All, all of these different things. Yeah. Because it makes our programming ability so much wider. Right. Legitimizes, so many other movements. And, and I feel like that that was the biggest plus

[00:21:26] David Syvertsen: yeah.

From the games itself. Yeah. And I remember BOS was watching there, so I think there was one. or I think the females, no, no one came close to finishing it. I, I don't wanna be wrong about that. There might have, I don't think there, I think the first person to finish it was a guy was at Nick. Matthew. Yeah. And Boz was watching and he, you can tell he so badly wanted someone to finish this because if every single athlete didn't finish, you could make the case that it was over programmed.

He said that on the

[00:21:55] Sam Rhee: Sivan podcast. Yeah. He's like he

[00:21:56] David Syvertsen: told. Thank you. Yeah, so yeah, he was probably so elated, but I remember watching it live. He was like clapping. I'm like, oh, that's probably not the most professional look, but he was so elated that, and it's funny when they interviewed him, because he, he dominated the crossover jump rope, the guy that, that finished it.

And they asked him in the interview after, like, how did you do that? And everyone else. And he is like, oh, you know, like I have little kids, we go to the playground. And like, that's just a result of us playing around in the playground. And that is. To the core of what CrossFit definition is. And that's like, that was probably one of the cooler moments of the weekend.

Absolutely.

[00:22:28] Sam Rhee: So just don't ask me to do 10 on broken pistols

[00:22:31] David Syvertsen: on one leg. Yeah. That that's a different challenge. My right

[00:22:34] Sam Rhee: leg is okay. Don't ask me to do that

[00:22:35] David Syvertsen: left leg. Done. I'll never program pistols ever again. See you. Bye. So the next one Elizabeth elevated the rev scheme. You are going to see this rep scheme.

I don't know if it's gonna be in bison program. Well, yeah, it'll come in bison programming at some point, but you're gonna see this again. And I think this is gonna become pretty popular 21 15 9. Just that rep scheme is one of the most popular CrossFit rep schemes. Fran Elizabeth. And this one is called Elizabeth elevated.

Elizabeth is qua cleans and ring dips 2159. This one was 21 15 9 9 9. And I love the fact. it's just a more complex way of saying, Hey, we've done the 2159 for 12 years. We're too fit for that now. So we're just gonna add that nine, nine again, and just add a little bit more strategy, a little bit more capacity to the workout.

So they did squawk things at 1 35 95, which just funny watching such strong athletes do that. Like at our gym, that's a pretty heavy barbell for that much volume. Like the, it was like almost like a twig for them, but it still turned into like a conditioning movement for them. But what made this workout tough was they did dips with parallel bar verses.

So basically I was at a playground yesterday and they had one there. It was kind of cool. And I tried them and they're really tough, but basically you have to walk from one end of these You know, two cylinder bars that about, you know, about waist high off the bar. And then when you get to the end of it, you have to do dips.

And the, there were some athletes that were very comfortable with it. There were some that got absolutely smoked. You could tell that they've never done these before thoughts on

[00:24:01] Sam Rhee: that workout. Yeah, they also said that that 21, 15 999 really felt like 2115. 27.

[00:24:07] David Syvertsen: So yeah, that's a tough rep scheme. It is. Yeah, it is.

It really is. When you talk, when you talk about 2159 S at the gym, I always tell people like, you know, you get through that 21, 21, you're almost halfway done with the workout. You know, it's a 45 rep workout for each movement. That's, you know, once you get to 21, you're almost halfway done, you can really just kind of, you know, go through the 20, it's usually a quick aggressive workout.

So it's a pretty high intensity high rate of movement. But when the fifteens are always the most challenging piece, but if you get through the fifteens, you're usually okay. I wouldn't say that about this piece, because when you're done with the 21 and you're done with the fifteens, you still have a decent amount of work to do, and you're ready at like the top end of your capacity tips are tough and

[00:24:46] Sam Rhee: we, you have program ring dips for us.

They're always a challenge. Yeah. I think especially for women, like just, that push strength you. Triceps Peck that

[00:24:56] David Syvertsen: that's always a challenge. Yep. It is. It is. So the shoulder, the shuttle to overhead workout, which was by itself on a Thursday, they were supposed to do this on a Wednesday.

And they were supposed to have a rest day Thursday, but because of the weather, they bumped this back. This was a really unique workout and this would be hard to program for your gym. But I do think it's doable. I think you could take the concept of the workout and apply it to your gym. Mm-hmm, , I'm thinking of a few ways to do that.

The run might not be the case and you know, not every gym has, you know, 15 pairs of jerk blocks, but again, concept wise, I think it can work, but basically these guys had two minutes to run 400 meters in shuttle run fashion, and then they had to do max jerks. The rest of the minute, the next interval was three minutes long, but they had to run 600 meters and then do max jerks.

They got a two minute rest. And then the last one was a four minute interval where they had to run 800 meters of shuttle runs and then do max jerks the catch. Is that the barbell was on jerk that was on jerk blocks. So basically what that means, if you don't really understand the concept or why jerk blocks are used is you can front rack that barbell, get it above your head and you can simply drop it without it going all the way to the ground.

You don't have to re rack it. Like we just did heavy jerks yesterday. And the worst part is, bring it heavy bar back on their shoulders. You don't need to do that. But the biggest catch to the workout was guys, there's a 300 pound barbell lady. A 200 pound barbell. So, and with that time domain, just know this, like you could trust me if you don't really understand how long four meters takes, that is a quick run to do, especially in shuttle form fashion, where you're stopping and going multiple times, you have to run hard.

And they did this a couple times. They basically said, Hey guys, Because all of you are on Chris Henshaw's program. You guys are all so good at pacing, but guess what? You don't get to pace this. You have to run your ass off and then get to the barbell and lift a really heavy barbell above your head, over and over.

And for a lot of people, they were only getting 3, 4, 5, 6 reps. It wasn't like they were cycling the shit

[00:26:51] Sam Rhee: out of it. The problem also is, is what is your jerk technique? I think the most efficient people were able to push jerk. Yep. For the women 200 pounds. I know

[00:26:59] David Syvertsen: it's crazy. And

[00:27:00] Sam Rhee: men, 300 pounds.

Can you push jerk 300 pounds multiple times? No, because I'm telling you yeah, there were even the guys, they were split jerking failing. Yeah. 300 pounds. Yep. So the good ones were just push jerking at getting it back down because you don't have to reset your feet. Exactly. You can leave them wide, lock out, drop.

Do that again. When you split your, you have. Split

[00:27:22] David Syvertsen: get your feet back into position. Yeah. You're basically holding the bar above your head an extra second. And that adds up. That adds up. That adds up big time for sure. I, I, I loved

[00:27:29] Sam Rhee: watching it. It made me cringe how

[00:27:31] David Syvertsen: hard that was. Yeah. Yeah. So that, I mean, that was a really cool event to watch.

That's when Tia started, it was funny after the first day, I think Tia was an eighth place and everybody was like, oh my God, it's the end of Tia. And like, you're just kind of smiling. She got screwed in that single other event. And this was the event where I think she took kind of like showed everyone.

I think she won that event. She showed everyone like, Hey, I'm still here. I'm still faster and stronger than all these girls just watch what happens. And then she kind of took off from

[00:27:59] Sam Rhee: there from a program programming standpoint. What you would wanna do is you're forcing people to run fast. Yes. And do something.

Heavy afterwards. Right? So how would you scale that to, so

[00:28:10] David Syvertsen: this an affiliate? So these are my thoughts on this workout is I would, if you have a really consistent and easy running path at your gym, I would do something along these lines. Although I would increase the time domain just a little bit, because a lot of athletes in our gym, especially with our run, if we told them to run 400 meters, get back and lift, you know, it.

And again, think about most gyms when you come in the door, some people are right by the door, some people in the back of the gym, like that's an extra 20 seconds, right. Sometimes. Right. So what I, I would actually rather do this event with rowing. Everyone has their own rower and you have something next to you.

It could be shoulder overhead. You can go lift off a rack. If you want. You can do squat cleans again. You pick the lift that you want do, but I would have, you have to have a general idea with what people can row, but basically like my thought on this workout would be from zero to two guys, row two 50 ladies, row 200 meters.

All right. Give or take. That's gonna be about 45 seconds to a minute. And then max, whatever lift you want do. All right. I would give them probably two minutes rest. I'd probably make this one to one work, rest ratio. So I would give them a two minute rest. And then the next period, I would go up to a three minute interval.

But every time I add a minute, I would add another two 50 meters for the guys, 200 meters for the girls. And if I wanted less time, like those guys at the games, they only had 30 to 40 seconds to lift. So if I wanted that di domain go to 300 meters for the guys and two 40 for the girls, I always go 80%.

[00:29:39] Sam Rhee: The problem with the row is, is that with a run jerk, they're very complimentary yes. With a row. Some barbell type. Yep. You're gonna be burning out the

[00:29:49] David Syvertsen: shoulders. Yeah. You're gonna have to be selective with what you do. Like you, you have to you know, the, ideally you would do this, I'm just thinking about R gym.

If we did this with a run shoulder, overhead, a run Squaw clean or run power, clean run, deadlift, whatever. Right. I think that it would just turn into something that would be a lot, this sounds funny, but a lot more difficult for people in the back of the gym than the front. Yeah. It's an

[00:30:09] Sam Rhee: extra 20 what?

[00:30:09] 2022_0812_1649: 25

[00:30:10] David Syvertsen: meters or so. Yeah. Yeah. But extra 25 meters. And it's it's, you know, if you're, this is where it gets hard to program the gym. Like this would be a lot easier to program for like your. Next level athletes who are doing this on their own at open gym, right. That would be a lot easier to do. But you, when you, when I program for a gym, when some of you guys program for a gym, I'm sure you have to deal with this too.

If you have 24 people in class, like it's almost impossible to do this, get the same stimulus for everyone. That's why I like the idea of rowing. Or, you know, burpees or jump rope, jump rope, there's skill. Like you're not gonna get tripped up running. You're not gonna get tripped up rowing the jump jump rope.

You might have a bad day. And then it kind of ruins the workout. Like you should always give the athletes the opportunity to get to that movement. So I think that's one thing. Every affiliate owner or person in that programs could do is get engaged for something that takes about a minute to a minute 30 and then give them two minutes to do then give them another 45 to 30 seconds to do a max wrap portion.

And it would be a fun, it would be a really fun workout to do. You just had to kind of program and, and plan it properly. So the next event was I think a top five moment cross the games history. It was called the capital mm-hmm , really long workout. They had 20 pig flips huge women it's 350 pounds men, 510 pounds.

If you don't know, it's basically a big rectangle that's heavy. And then you have to kind of flip it up, up on its high end and then push it back over. I would say. Lift wise, it's probably most comparable to a power clean or a cleaning jerk about, I don't know, half that weight of whatever the pig waves.

That's not that important. Then a three and a half mile run kind of into the city of Madison. This was like the coolest part about it. They have a strong relationship with the city now, so they had a good enough relationship where they could shut down the city and close roads and all this for the runs.

200 meter Jerry bag carry 200 meter SEL. Yeah. Carry mm-hmm . Yeah. So basically these, these really heavy bags, I mean, I don't wanna get into too deep into like the actual analysis of the bags that they're carrying, but just take it for, for from us. The bags were really, really hard to carry after all that work that they'd done.

Yeah. And you could see the smaller CrossFitters got their butt kicked. I mean, for a

[00:32:14] Sam Rhee: woman to carry 150 pounds. Well, first it's two 70 pound bags for 200 meters and then 150

[00:32:20] David Syvertsen: pound bag. Yeah. And going upstairs, hugging it. Yeah. For 200 meters and go, and like, I don't know if everyone really realize, if you don't realize this, take one of our sandbags here or at your gym, go walk 200 meters with it.

It crushes you and that, and they did this after a lot of work going into tired. And then the, the kick in the nuts was that SEL Carrie, that they had to bear hug the last, I would say hundred meters. You were going up all these different flights of stairs. Yeah. A bunch of stairs. However, it was like just the picture of it going.

It was up the capital steps in Madison. It was amazing to watch. And the last place girl, Rebecca Fu yeah. Yeah. She's awesome. She's one of my favorite follows on Instagram. She's hilarious. She's a young girl. She's probably the smallest competitor there. I think she was 125 pounds.

Rookie. Yeah, rookie. But she came in last place by a wide margin and they had the entire crowd. You gotta say, there were hundreds of people in the city watching her as she was going up. Those final, last flight of stairs. It was a spontaneous decision by Boz. He had all the fans coming from each side and get behind her and they were just going nuts for her.

And one of the concepts, I think it's one of the. The most unique components of CrossFit is that the people that finish in last place probably get the loudest cheers. Yeah. Or at least as loud, a cheer as the person that comes in first, nobody

[00:33:41] Sam Rhee: gets a cheer. If you come in first, it's only for the people who finish at the end.

[00:33:44] David Syvertsen: Exactly. And I think that's where like the CrossFitters that go and watch this, they relate to these people on that level. Yes. They're higher level athletes than all of us. They have different lifestyles than all of us, but we all know what that feels like. You know,

[00:33:57] Sam Rhee: they did not have a time cap on this, so she had to finish this workout.

Yep. She wanted to keep going in the games. You, you, she didn't have a choice and I'm sure everyone, especially I mean, I have very, very vivid memories all the time of being the last person to finish a workout. Yep. Yep. And when you have people cheering, you have mixed feelings, you appreciate people cheering.

Yep. Most of us also effing hate the attention that you have when you're the last person finishing. Right. But the inspirational part of watching her with the crowd, that Boz let go behind her, going up these stairs, finishing it, it put a thrill in my heart. Like I, my, I watched it not live and still, like, my hairs were standing up you know, this is literally what you said.

It is what CrossFit really embodies. That spirit of last person gets cheered the most, it doesn't matter who you are. And if you are that last person, you suck it up and you do it. Yeah. Right. And that's the thing, like, when you have that many people watching and you don't like being in that situation, doesn't matter.

Yeah. You gotta push the pride aside. You just keep going

[00:34:57] David Syvertsen: and you finish the workout. I remember think talking to someone at our gym about this a while ago and. You know, the, the term humility comes up a lot and it comes, I feel like it comes up more now in discussion than it used to with like just the gr the surging social media and, and how some people come, come across and how we judge people with that humility to me, part of it is letting other people do nice things for you.

And I think that's one thing that you have to really realize that yes, you might not want to be cheered on at the gym. You might not want the people to come over and clap your hands, but guess what the other people want to do that for you and you have to suck it up and let them do that. Yep. It's not just about what you want.

Like you can't shoot people away and say, this makes me uncomfortable. Right? Like I don't even wanna get into the comfort first discomfort, but let's keep it on that topic of humility. If someone. To come and cheer you on that makes them feel good. They're trying to do something for other people. You have to let them do that.

Have the grace to accept it. And like, imagine, imagine she was saying like, no, no, everyone get away. Like it would've been a really bad look for her. Right. She just kind of stayed in her lane. She was suffering. I would say this about that workout, watching people cross the finish line that was comparable to the hill, run ethic ranch at the original cross of games when they had to run up with those sandbags, like people were collapsing at the end of that workout.

And so you can imagine how she felt at that point, physically and emotionally. And she did a great job. She handled it like a champ. She just kind of stayed focused, let the support kind of get her up the steps. And she did it. Awesome.

[00:36:26] Sam Rhee: You know, I have to admit that three and a half mile run. Is from the Coliseum back into the state capital.

Right. And my hotel last year was right by the state capital. Oh really? Okay. So when I got outta the Coliseum, one day, I said, oh, I looked, I did Google map. It's like three miles. Yeah. Three and a half miles. It was three and a half miles. I said, okay, well, this isn't so bad. This it's a mad house by the Coliseum.

I'm just gonna walk home. Yeah. I went about a mile and I was like, oh, I'm tired. I

[00:36:50] David Syvertsen: need an Uber. And I Ubered it. So that's funny.

[00:36:54] Sam Rhee: So when I watched them do it, I was like, if I had only done it, I could say that I actually did that three and a half mile walk and, and I didn't even have

[00:37:02] David Syvertsen: the Without, without carrying, carrying a bag.

Well, without the

[00:37:06] Sam Rhee: pig flips and everything else, but

[00:37:07] David Syvertsen: yeah, well, so this is all, so the next one we have up and over, this is another one we're gonna program at bison credit. Shout out to coach Adam Ramson and Ashley. They actually did a version of this workout at open gym on Sunday. And they threw me their suggestions at how we should do this for the gym.

Obviously we have to change a couple things about it. But the workout was three rounds for time of 12 muscle ups, 25 jump overs, 30 GD sits. And at the end you had to do a pretty heavy walking lounge with an axle bar. Guys was 180 5. Ladies was 1 25, yep. With an axle bar, which axle bar is just a really thick bar.

And it's harder to keep the bar over your center mass. So it feels a little heavy, heavier the term jump over, which was after muscle ups before the GDS, what they jumped over was something different. Every time they jumped over a 50 inch log. So I think it's about more than four feet off the ground.

So you have to use your arms to get over it, women. Yep. And then it was a 30 inch box guys, 42 inch box, basically just a really high box. I'm pretty sure they were allowed to use their hands to prop themselves over. And then the last one was they jumped over that pig, which is kind of broad jump ish.

You know, they had to it's only 20 inches off the ground for the guys and girls, but there's some distance to it. So we might kind of play around with a version of gorilla box, jump overs, regular box, jump overs. And you know, we're still kind of mapping that out a little bit, but this is a, and then instead of GD sit-ups we had the, I think they did 50 regular mat sit-ups oh, you mean this Sunday when they did it?

Yeah. So I think like, again, that's how I think a gym can play around this. Most gyms should not be every, be throwing 30 GD sit-ups at athletes in a row. Well, three rounds of it. That's 90 GD sit-ups yeah. Yeah. And again, it's, to me, I think GDS are a great movement, but I think you have to be really careful about how many you have athletes do in a row that are.

Here for fitness. If you're here for the sport, you're gonna have to play around a little bit, but it

[00:38:57] Sam Rhee: depends on what volume you're used to. Like, if you've built up and you do like maybe, you know, a 70, a hundred a week. Yeah. You could do this for

[00:39:04] David Syvertsen: sure. Absolutely. You could do this, but, but if you've never

[00:39:07] Sam Rhee: done PhDs and

[00:39:07] David Syvertsen: you suddenly bang out 90.

Yeah. I'm big on like, and I'll even, I've subbed out PhDs for straight leg sit ups before. And I just up the volume a little bit, and it's a little bit more hip flexor, which is, that's what the GD gets. You gets you in the hip flexors and abs a little bit. But this was a workout. I mean, there's not much to talk about it other than the fact that the 12 muscles with long straps, if anyone's done muscle ups with short straps and long strap, It's I wouldn't say they're that much easier or harder, but it's a different movement.

And I think the dip portion is a little bit more difficult with long straps than it is short,

[00:39:40] Sam Rhee: Watching these guys, there are ways to do muscle ups that are energy saving. Yeah. Maybe not as fast mm-hmm and then there are ways of doing it where you're just going really fast for speed. Yeah. But you're, you're expending a lot of energy and I kind of watched 'em and I said, they look like they're really efficient and not wasting a lot of energy doing these ring muscle ups.

And I said, I gotta go back and watch this

[00:40:00] David Syvertsen: a little bit more. Yeah. And I will say one, there are, like Sam said, there's so many different ways to do them. And like you could watch 20 games, athletes do muscle ups and see 20 different techniques really. But one thing they all do that. I think a lot of CrossFits do not do when they do ring muscles, especially is hip extension.

I see it so much time. Like the one thing I look for the most is when their, their feet come. You now have this acute angle of torso to thighs and you never see it extend fully before they turn over, they start to expand, but then they try to pull themselves through. And the amount of power that cross sitters have in their hips is enormous with the amount of, with the programming that we do just on a general basis.

But if you don't use that hip extension, it's really, it becomes a really inefficient movement and you're using smaller muscle groups to get yourself on top of there. So I think that's one takeaway I always take from what, especially when they do like slowmo, like the really cool slowmo muscle ups of Tia, you will see that like max hip extension as if they're doing the same hip extension, as you do as a one red max push press like that, that power that you exude from the hips there is, is enormous.

The next event was one of my favorites, probably my favorite, my personal favorite to watch, even though it wasn't that fun, it was just the test itself. It was called echo press. So basically that you had to do so 30 cows guys, 25 cows ladies on the echo bike, 10 block handstand. Push us. Talk about that in a sec.

And basically the echo bike calories went down all right. To 20 and 15, 10 handstand pushups, 20 and 15, 10 handstand pushups. And then they had to end with another long bike, 30, 25, 2 reasons. I like this. The handstand pushup are not what you thought thought about. When I saw block handstand pushups and text form, I thought it was basically deficit, handstand, pushups, where your hands were, you know, higher than where your head was gonna be when you're upside down.

Mm-hmm they were wall facing strict handstand pushups, a first in crossroad games, history. So they

[00:41:53] Sam Rhee: combined a wall walk. You actually had to wall walk yourself up into the handstand pushup. Yep. And then you had to. Bring your head down two and a half, two inches or three and a half inches, men, or guys or girls to,

[00:42:05] David Syvertsen: and then touch your head.

Yeah, it was a weird standard. I'm still not completely clear. I don't think any contact was required. It's hard to describe and without video, but they had an, they cut out a piece of the rubber. Where people's heads were going. And basically there was a white line where, and the judges were all like really close to the ground.

And it was almost like squat depth where they had to kind of pass this, this subjective line. Ah, so they had to pass that two inch line or three and a half inch line four pushing themselves back up. Got it. No matter the case, this workout was blow your legs up on the echo bike. All right. And then get to the handstand pushups and do strict handstand pushups facing the wall.

I've done them in training before, and I am not a, a high level gymnast at all, but I would say if I can do 20 right now, probably 24 strict handstand pushups in a row, I can only do about five of these. Like they are that much harder. And what is

[00:43:01] Sam Rhee: it about not, I mean, about facing the wall versus

[00:43:04] David Syvertsen: not facing the wall.

So two things about it. I think one of 'em is just lack of experience. Like I think there would be an adaption if I trained them a lot, the numbers would go up just like anyone else would if you've never done them. But I think that when you are. Facing out like your normal handstand pushup, I'm big on kind of turning the elbows in just a tad.

You really can activate a big muscle, your, your Peck when you press, when you're facing the wall, your elbows have a tendency to flare out a little bit. Like you could see everyone's elbows were flaring out as they're going up when the, the more it flares up, you almost don't activate the pecks at all. So you're only using triceps and, and belts on that.

And it's just a much, much lesser muscle recruitment than the actual handstand pushup where you're facing forward. And you could see, I mean, I think the games athletes were on the same kind of wavelength there where they would go bang out three, four reps, and then it turned as singles and doubles.

Even the highest level athletes there.

[00:43:57] Sam Rhee: You know, what I like about this is that a lot of people, when they learn handstand pushups, they don't like going upside down. It it's hard for them to go upside down. Yeah. With this it's very easy cuz you're wall walking yourself up. Yep. The other thing is, is that you can scale the handstand pushup by not.

As vertical and still doing a handstand pushup. Yep. And so I, I feel like a lot of athletes, this is actually a safer movement. Yep. And it's, and since you're doing it strict, you're not constantly banging your head against the floor, which I hate, like, I, I detest keeping hands down pushups and I feel that there is cervical spine trauma that yes.

Lasts from people doing a ton of keeping handsy on pushups. Yep. Yep. And I would, I would love to see this program. Yep. Because I feel like it scales well and

[00:44:44] David Syvertsen: it's really hard. Yep. So there, this is a movement that we're gonna, I'm gonna start putting into buy some programming, but like everyone guys, like a.

Let's not only use games, athletes as a gauge for what we do, but they were doing deficit. They had to go further down. Right. And they had to do a wall walk on top of a target. I think what we're gonna do is just kind of work on, get into that wall, facing handstand and then work on, you know, scaling the range of motion, just like we do with throwing people with handstand pushups, like put an AMA, put plates underneath your mat and get that feeling of all right.

This is what it feels like. Again, we'll do it in training. We'll do it like part one warmup part two, all or cool down. And then we'll put into workouts later on. And you know, we don't so most gyms that I know of you guys don't have. You know, 15, 16, 17 echo bikes or assault bikes. So how do you do this?

Like you, I do think you can get away with doing running instead of just in terms of like, think about the movement, pattern of biking. It's especially not the C2 bike, the actual assault bike, or echo bike, like you're pumping your arms, but the legs are doing the majority of the work. I think you could add that in.

And then if you want, if you wanna do this on your own, this would be a lot easier to do. Especially if you had a gym like this, we have, you know, five or six bikes. You can go do something like this on your own. But here's a thought if you're gonna program this for yourself or for the gym is 10, how many reps are appropriate for someone.

If you're trying to get the stems outta this workout, what is better? And I don't have the answer. What, what are your thoughts? Sam is five strict handstand pushups, full range of motion, better than 10 reps, half range of motion for me.

[00:46:16] Sam Rhee: I think I would have a hard time with five. So I would rather scale to do ten first mm-hmm and then if I got better, then I might

[00:46:23] David Syvertsen: try to do I agree.

I think the first thing you do is go after volume and then just get the feel, because I think the more repetition you do, you adapt to just being in the position of facing the wall scale, the range of emotion a little bit, and then work your way down to the full range of motion, but less reps. And because I think that I think the first thing someone needs to do with something that's relatively new is just get comfortable in the position.

Not necessarily the range of motion yet. And then once you get com, because it is, I will say this it's hard to stay on the wall. Like you constantly feel like you're gonna fall forward. Really? Yeah. It's pretty scary. Once you start getting tired. So like, I'm actually gonna be somewhat scared to program this in the gym with a lot of people, like too close from each other.

you know, you get next to like Steve O'Day and he falls to the left or right. Like you're kind of screwed if you're next to him. He's got long legs. Yes, he does. All right. So we have a few events left. Rinse and repeat not much to talk about this one, although I, this is something we're gonna program into bison, obviously not swimming, but the concept behind it, every two minutes, I already had this one mapped out, but every two minutes they had to do a 50 yard swim.

So it basically was at the indoor. So if anyone has seen the pool in the Olympics, right, you watch it on your screen and they go, they swim long ways, right. They swim from one end of the pool to the other. Basically what they did here is they set up on the, out on the side of the pool. So they swam the short distance.

They went across the pool that did two things for them. You could create more lanes that way you could have. I think 20 people go at once or even more. It might even been 40. But basically they had to swim the short distance of the pool. And back that's 25 over 25 back. Yes. And when they got back onto, they had to do, you know, get onto the, the platform and ski eight cow.

All right. Cool. That definitely did not take two minutes, but the catch was every round they had to add two calories. So the next round was 10 cows the next round. So we've done workouts like this before. Yeah. Where it's like interval based and we increase your work. So this ha this, this hits you in two ways.

You're doing more work every single time, and you're getting less rest every single time. And that's a killer. Like those are one of those workouts. It's like, it's a death buy really? That's what these are. This is called a death buy. If anyone's been across it for a while, we've done death buy. And there's a lot of different ways to do death buys.

And they're great. It's a great way to test capacity. And it's fun. I think it's a good test, but I've always noticed in these workouts. And I notice while watching this, it goes from kind of hard to impossible at the snap of a finger. Yeah. That's what all these death buys are like. Yeah. So the, the catch here though, and I think Some of the women did not finish.

Yeah. This, so basically what they did, they didn't keep sending these guys up in cows until they couldn't, until they failed. Basically once they got to rounds seven and eight, seven and eight. Yeah. It BA it turned into ski as many cows as possible. Next cows. Yeah. Time remaining. Yeah. So basically if they got to the skier and round one was Eight CALS.

Yeah. Then it went up to 10. Then I went to 12, 14, 16, 18, and then it turned into all right. Cool. You're awesome. You're killing this. Do as many as you can. So everybody was suffering on those last two rounds,

[00:49:16] Sam Rhee: especially the, the seventh round, because it's max cows for two minutes, then you gotta

[00:49:20] David Syvertsen: swim again.

Yeah. And I'll tell you what, man. Like, I am not a good swimmer, so I'm not a good gauge on this, but I I've been in the water during workouts before, and it is scary. I don't even, I don't care if you're in a pool or, or in the bay at night in, in Miami. It's scary to go swimming when you're breathing really heavy, but also like your arms and legs are just like, you feel like they can't move.

It's one thing to feel that way or in a rower or running. But when you're in water, it's a whole different level of fitness,

[00:49:44] Sam Rhee: most CrossFitters are not awesome or have a huge background in swimming. Yeah. And you could tell just. A bunch of the guys were not doing flip turns. They were just basically reaching the end and then kind of pushing off.

Yeah. The way most non-swimmers would

[00:49:59] David Syvertsen: Uh, But you're

[00:50:00] Sam Rhee: right. It's uh, swimming is about breathing Henshaw would know more than anyone, but you know, how do you control your breath? Yes. While you're swimming. Yep. And then get up there and just blow yourself out on the skier. Yeah.

[00:50:14] David Syvertsen: That's, that's tough.

It really is tough. And if you think about like what your arms are doing, when you swim freestyle swim, like most of 'em are doing and ski, it's a very similar movement pattern. So you know, that, that at that point it really probably became more muscular endurance than cardiovascular for most athletes or you just, the arms really got tested there.

Adam Ramson sent me a text. He goes, I can't believe some of these people are breast stroking I was like, that would be me or I'd be like that. Like just like doggy paddling my way on, back and forth. I will say this so. I, I swam, I think I trained swimming twice, like on a regular basis. Once was before waap blues in 2016, once was before the French Throwdown in 2019.

And no, I'm not good at it. I could swim hard for about 50 meters, but it's very inefficient and I can't do, I remember I had to do a 400 meter swim. I had to stop three times like, and that was just 400 meters. Like swimming is a, is a skill that if you wanna be at the highest level of the sport, you have to be a good swimmer.

It's not, you have to be good in the water. And it's something that if anyone out there is kind like I wanna get there someday. It's gotta be part of your regimen. I

[00:51:15] Sam Rhee: swam a little bit in high school. And the two things you really need is one stroke efficiency. So you need someone to really look at your stroke.

Yeah. And how you move through the water. And the second thing is just pool time. Like you just need to swim. Yeah. It's all about yardage. Yeah. And the more you swim, the, the more proficient you are at it. But I mean, if you add that on top, Everything else you have to do as a competitive games athlete.

Yeah. And it's only literally one, one event then, and not even the full event. It's really more of half event. Yeah. Yeah. Then it's like, okay, so how much time am I really gonna devote to,

[00:51:45] David Syvertsen: to swim? I mean, you start to see like what you really have to put into time wise. If you wanna get to that high level, it's gotta be at least a part-time job, but probably even more than that, if you wanna get to that level I will say this the few times I did swim though.

I replaced it. I didn't add it necessarily add it. I, I took a session away from the gym and I went there. I, what I did like about it was, it was completely different stimulus training wise, but it doesn't beat the joints up at all. And you kind, you feel good when you get out of it. Sometimes when you get on a rower, a bike run, especially you don't always feel great after, right?

Like things could hurt a little bit. I never felt that way. Getting outta the water, I swam a lot

[00:52:18] Sam Rhee: on vacation and to you, it really wipes you out. Yeah. But you don't realize it because like you said, your joints

[00:52:25] David Syvertsen: are not messed up. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just something to think about. Alright. The next one I think was, might maybe tied for my favorite event.

And when I first saw it, I admit, I thought it was stupid. But it was, and I didn't really understand it either. This was Saturday. Yeah. So I remember watching this in my backyard. You did three rounds for time. So just think you as an individual athlete, this is what you had to do. Okay. You had to sprint and I wanna say the sprint was maybe a hundred meters, probably less like 70, 50 to 60 meters.

Mm-hmm then you had to do 20 wall balls. Talk about that in a sec, six dumbbell snatches. So when I'm thinking about this workout, I'm like, that's weird three rounds for time and you had four minutes of rest in between. So I'm like, what, what is going on here? Like, I, I couldn't understand it. This was the thing you had to run about 60 meters.

Get to your wall ball 20 wall balls. Ladies. You had to throw your normal weight wall ball, but it was to 11 feet, 11 feet. If anyone wants to try that here across at bison, just know it's about, if you go to the windows on the outside of our gym. On that one side where the windows are, you would have to throw it above that window.

If you wanna go get a feel for how hard it is. All right guys. And then they had to snatch a 70 pound dumbbell. Talk about that in sec, guys, you had to do a 20 pound wall ball, same as normal, but you had to throw it to 12 feet. I've done 11 feet before. I've never done 12 and Eleven's really hard. Just adding one foot is really tough.

Adding another would be really tough and their snatch was a hundred pound dumbbell. Now here's the catch. The dumbbells had to be touching or had to be alternating. Squat, snatch, dumbbells, squat, snatch. That's a really heavy, like, I don't know how many dudes in our gym could snatch 70 pound dumbbells, no offense to them.

And the ladies were banging these how touch and go like, no problem. Mm-hmm and the guys were doing it too with a hundred pound now. So you had to do three ounce for time. Each one of these was a sprint all out. Like the fastest times were like a minute 15. Right? You had to do this. And then the other heats after you would go.

So you would just chill, but you got, let's say you got one 15, your next round. Let's say you got one 15, again, your score is now two minutes and 30 seconds. Let's say your third round, you got one 15 again. So your total score is 3 45. What I liked about this was like Bo said, there was no pacing here. You had to sprint all like no one paces workouts that are under two minutes long.

Right. And you really kind of knew round to round where you St stood up stacked up with your time, but it was, you didn't have the awareness of what place and what, how long everyone else's round took you round to round. So you were really doing this entire workout blind in terms of where you ranked.

Right. You just had to go as

[00:54:54] Sam Rhee: hard as you could. There's no game. It's not like you look to the person left of you and say, okay, as long

[00:54:57] David Syvertsen: as I'm ahead of them. Yeah. You have no idea. Yeah. Because like you could say, oh, I'm head of Sam on this round. Cool. I'd just beat 'em five, five seconds. You still have two more rounds to go.

And the margin for error was zero in this. A couple of people got no wrapped on wall balls. Like, it was amazing how watching these guys, like they'd missed the target. You know, they were all swatting fine, but they would miss the target or come off or wouldn't hit correctly. And just that one little mishap would add two or three seconds to your time.

And that would be enough difference for three other people to pass you. So I think it was like a really high stress workout. It was fun to watch these athletes. A lot of them, most of them from my perspective, stayed really composer in this one. It was fun to watch. Yeah.

[00:55:33] Sam Rhee: Performance during a competition is a skill.

And this probably tests it more than anything else, because one slip up and you are down. And if that compounds and suddenly you, you get down because of that, cuz we see that all the time, you know, I mess up and then it just compounds. I think about it. Think about every sport, every sport where you mess up, you know, golf or basketball and it, it, it carries over.

Yeah, you can't, this is so fast. You have to just execute, execute,

[00:56:00] David Syvertsen: execute. And another thing that I think gyms can relate to this and your novice CrossFitter how often do we truly train sprinting? And I don't mean going outside and like, you know, going out and, you know, doing a 40 yard dash and pulling your hamstring.

I'm saying how often? I mean, that is part of it too, but right. How often do we say go as fast as you can. We'll give you a long break after, but you have to go as like, literally as fast, you can know the last time I did this, when remember the workout, it was seven rounds for time. It was I think it was 15 of everything.

It was bar facing burpees cut, be swings and wall balls. But we said you work for 30 seconds and rest for 30 seconds until, until you're done with the workout. Okay. Yes. I think, you and Squire were going after it. Yes. With each other on that one. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember telling people like, Hey, simple movements, you do get a lot of rest in here.

The concept behind the workout is not necessarily like, you know, try to pace things out. It's go as fast as you'll ever go in a workout. Yeah. Knowing that you're never gonna go for more than 30 seconds. Yep.

[00:56:54] Sam Rhee: That was right. Yeah. That was perfect because you were dying, but you only knew, but you knew it was, you were only gonna die for 30 seconds.

Right? Right. Yep. And you just wanted to get all of that. Stuff done as fast

[00:57:03] David Syvertsen: as you possibly. Yeah. And this was even like, I mean, these guys were working for a minute, 15 getting four minutes rest. Like that really is like, when you talk about anaerobic workouts, you know, assault, bike, sprints, like you do need probably three to one or four to one work to rest ratios.

I can remember back to a workout that we did twice at the old space. It was every six minutes. All right. You did, you had a two minute working period, so you had twice as much rest as work and you did a two 50 row guys, 200 meter row ladies, max thrusters at 95 65. The one difference in that workout.

Very few people actually did like a minute straight of thrusters. They would do like a set of 10 quick breaks set of sevens, quick break. But that contact was full send. There was no pacing. You rode your ass off. As FA as if you were running away from someone you got on the barbell, you did as many thrusters as you can, and people were crawling, but you got a four minute rest.

And that's really it's like, I like doing it because it shows people what, how, what your actual max speed is like when we tell people to go, Hey, go half speed on this workout. Just trust me. I don't think a lot of people know what half speed is. I think they overestimate, I think they go 60, 70%. Yeah. When, when we're telling 50 SP 50%, I mean,

[00:58:05] Sam Rhee: you can only do that for certain movements.

Yes. Like you're not gonna be asking us to. 70 pound dumbbell, squat snatches are like as fast as you can. Definitely not, definitely not. That's that's a recipe for disaster. I can only really think of maybe like five or six movements that you would ask

[00:58:20] David Syvertsen: athletes to go handle. Yeah. Yeah. And that, yeah, you have to put some thought into that, but again, I think it's something, again, macro level programmers, coaches, look at looking at trying to find ways to get your people to actually go to a full speed.

You know, we've done this on a much lesser scale with our rowing lately. Hey, Cal per hour pace, how high can you get? We'd actually record how high could you get your number? That's on the monitor, you know, over a 15 to 22nd period, because again, now you see, all right, that's my max speed. It wasn't the max speed and yesterday's wad.

That's my max speed. And I think that can really help out a lot. So the next event, Saturday night we had some people over at our house watching this event. It was a one rep max, and I, I remember seeing it, I'm like, this is stupid, but again, I've trained myself over the years to try to not actually believe it when my first impression is this is stupid.

Let it play out because these guys that run the games know a lot more than I do. One rep max sandbag to shoulder, the lightest women's bag was one 60 and it went all the way up to two 50. The men bag started at two 40 and went all the way up to three 40. This was

[00:59:20] Sam Rhee: awesome. This was my favorite event.

[00:59:22] David Syvertsen: Yeah.

I loved it. This is where like, I feel Boz and not that Castro would never do this, but this is where Boz says, you know what, like CrossFit, if you listen to some of these guys, Boz Castro, they think a lot of CrossFit games, athletes, and just competitive athletes. And maybe even on our level, that novice level.

they're too barbell dependent when you're testing strength. Well, this was

[00:59:43] Sam Rhee: the equivalent of a one rep max snatch last year. Yeah. But with a sandbag.

[00:59:47] David Syvertsen: Yeah. And basically it had a strong man element to it. You're still testing strength. There's still, there is tech, plenty of technique to picking up a sandbag.

You could see some had much better time with that than others, but it was really fun to watch these guys. And there was two parts about it that I really enjoyed. One of 'em was just seeing how different ways, but how heavy these guys could go. Like Danny Spiegel crushed it for the girls. I think she could have done the guy sandbags and still made some noise there.

Mm-hmm but. The, the coolest part about this was the tiebreaker. Yeah. So basically at some point I, I'm not, I can't quite remember how they figured out who, but once you got knocked out at a certain bag, if you couldn't

[01:00:24] Sam Rhee: lift a bag, you were out. Yeah. And if there were two more than two ath, two or more athletes, right.

Who couldn't do that? They were

[01:00:30] David Syvertsen: all in the tiebreaker. Yeah. Okay. So they all wanted the tiebreaker and they had basically a yolk. All right. And they had three sandbags and

[01:00:38] Sam Rhee: it was 5,000 and 150 pounds for the women and the men hundred, 1

[01:00:43] David Syvertsen: 5200. Yeah. So basically went up by 50 pounds. They had three sandbags and the rule was 3, 2, 1, go get all three of these sandbags over this yolk, which is probably about, I don't know, 48 inches above.

Yeah. Off the ground. Yeah. They didn't really have any time to really figure out and strategize and game it. And you had to throw these three sandbags. So the strategy looking at these guides was what do you do? Do you throw the heavy one over first, which tastes longer medium light, or do you start with the light one go to medium, go to heavy.

And there were a lot of different ways to do it. And it was, I mean, the amount of time it took these guys to do, it was 10 seconds. It was so fast. It was the margin fair was zero again, no, no margin. And you, it was just a really fun way to kind of break those ties because again, and cross the competition, you want the fewest amount of ties possible.

And that, that was really, that was probably one of the more intense moments of the, of the whole weekend watching those tiebreakers. And in fact, the last,

[01:01:33] Sam Rhee: the last lift was a tie. Yep. And not only was it a tie, the tiebreaker was a tie. Yeah.

[01:01:37] 2022_0812_1649: Which

[01:01:38] David Syvertsen: was crazy down to a hundredth of a second to a hundredth of a second.

Yeah. Yeah. That, that was so exciting to see. Yeah. That was fun to watch. Now, can you do this at your gym? Honestly, probably not. You know, I don't think that this is something that maybe you like get a few people together and have some fun with, but I, I feel I have filled sandbags at the gym before and that, that process is pretty strenuous.

And I think most people don't have a lot of bags that go that heavy. If you wanna do this, it would probably be fun. I think it's probably more worth than it's worth. And I'm not really sure you can take the concept of. To the gym. This is really a sh a competition only type workout. Like you're not gonna have a class of, you know, your mom and dads doing workouts at 5:00 AM and do tiebreakers once they get to a barbell, they can't lift, you know, I mean, what you could do is say, Hey guys, we have a snatch ladder, clean ladder cleaning jerk ladder.

Once you get to failure, take X amount of pounds off the barbell and do five reps for time, something like that. You know, like if Sam gets to 2 25 clean and he fails 2 35, we tell him to go down to 180 5 and do five reps for time. You know, if you want, is there really a point behind that for, for fitness?

Probably not. But if you have someone that you're training for the sport, I think it's important to be able to lift 80 to 90% of your one at max Fest.

[01:02:48] Sam Rhee: What I really love is the odd object part of it. Yeah. I, I haven't lifted a sandbag in years. I did it for a comp and in training for a comp. Yep. And. I now, after watching this, I want to go back and start incorporating that a little bit.

Yeah. Like I feel like you're right. It's a different skill. Yep. It, it is a little back intensive if you're, it is. And so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everybody. Yeah. But it is such an awesome functional type of movement. Yes. They, most objects in life are more like sandbags and not like barbells.

Yeah. That's true. And so if you can be very adept at lifting a heavy sandbag. Yeah. You probably, it probably might help more of us in life than just a

[01:03:26] David Syvertsen: barbell all the time. Yeah. When you talk about safety, right. With, with I, it is pretty, it is pretty back intense the sandbag, but I will say this it's a lot safer on your wrists.

Your shoulders, that a snatch it's a lot safer on your knees and a deep quale. So I, I think there's a little bit of catchment into it and like, I think Sam brings up a really good point there that there's a lot of times in life you're gonna be picking up something like that than a barbell. So, yeah, I think that's a really good point.

Something to think about, because again, it doesn't always need to be about what can your gym program, it could be just you, the CrossFitter in general. All right. The next event was on a Sunday. Again, the rain had to mess with. This this event a little bit, but basically this is a little hard to describe.

They basically were pushing a sled with a lot of Keta BES in it, and then every now and then they had to stop and take KES out and put them back in. But the movement that they were doing with the Keta bells was, and this is for guys was a 70 pounder ladies, 53 pounder, one in each hand, they had to do 35 45 total cleaning jerks, hang cleaning, jerks, hang cleaning, jerks with a kettlebell in each hand.

And I love watching people work out with kettlebells because even some of the strongest athletes there's technique to lifting kettlebells that like Mike Gerald has down like really well, because that's, he can't use the barbell anymore because of Azel elbow. So he is been training with Keta BES for years, there are certain ways to kind of maneuver your.

An elbow around the bels that some of these athletes were really good at. And some of these athletes were really bad at, there was a legless rope climb in this workout where they had to start in a seated position. So they weren't allowed to jump their way up. They took it out because of the rain. It was too slick.

But I still think it was a really cool event to watch

[01:04:59] Sam Rhee: the alpaca sled was basically, it looked like a basket in, in a sled. And so you could just load it with stuff. So at first they loaded the two kettlebells in which was like, maybe in total, a hundred or 60 or 200, you know, for the girls 200 pounds for the guys, then they kept adding the kettlebells into it.

So at the end, the last sled push was like, 400 pounds for the women and like 500 plus pounds for the guys.

[01:05:23] David Syvertsen: Yeah. To

[01:05:23] Sam Rhee: push that 42 feet, like you saw, I told you the most inspiring moment I saw, which really increased my respect for Justin Maderas was him neck and neck with Ricky garage. Yep. At the beginning.

It didn't look like he was gonna beat guard. Like he was suffering on the, on the kettlebell cleaning jerks, you know, at first you had to do 20 and he was breaking him up a lot. Mm-hmm the 15. Yeah, he had, he broke him up a bunch. Yep. But then when it got down to the 10, at the end, he went on broken. Yeah.

And he, and he managed to push his way past Ricky guard. They were like neck and neck on the sled push at the end. Yep. And he just knowed him out and you saw he was in pain mm-hmm and you know, Ricky ARD can suffer a lot of

[01:06:04] David Syvertsen: pain. Yes. Yeah. He's he's one of those guys.

[01:06:06] Sam Rhee: Yep. He couldn't

[01:06:07] David Syvertsen: beat Maderas on this one.

Yeah. Yeah. That, that was a really entertaining back and forth battle to watch there. I agree. And Maderas we were talking about him right before we started recording. Probably not the most talented guy there. Not the strongest, not the fastest, but I do think he has as much, if not more grit than he has more competitor in him than every other guy in the field.

This is a guy that's won the games two years in a row now. He's never won an event. No, the last event last year he did. That was the only one. Okay. The one. So he is won one. He didn't win any events this year, none this year. And he's at one event last year he won, which is like coming from Matt Frazier who won several events every single year.

Yeah. And I just think like that goes to show a how balance and of an athlete he is. But I really do think a lot of the reason why he wins is pure mindset on the guy

[01:06:52] Sam Rhee: side, like Tia, Claire Toomi wins everything. Yeah. But on the guy side, the competition is really high. Yeah. And you have people that are so good at certain things.

Yep. He never lets that hurt him. Mm-hmm he is just good enough

[01:07:05] David Syvertsen: at everything. Yep. Yep. And that's a big lesson for us all to take. Like we all love training our strengths. I need to, I love getting better at what I'm good at and I hate training what I'm not good at, but that doesn't mean I don't do it. And that means you sh you shouldn't avoid what you're bad at for that reason alone.

If you do kind of just improve the weaknesses, not to the point where you're great at them, it just like Spencer Hendel said the best years ago. It's like, you just can't suck at anything. And again, we're talking about the sport, but I do think you can relate that to yourself as a, as a fitness CrossFitter is that if you can get better at the things you're not good at, and just kind of find like the happy middle ground between strength of weakness, your overall fitness level will be elevated.

The great

[01:07:43] Sam Rhee: CrossFit athletes can endure a tremendous amount of pain. And you saw that in some of these events and, and that one really sort of showed that to me

[01:07:52] David Syvertsen: for, for him. Yep. So we have two left here. Last one, the back nine, they brought back the yolk. It was a 54 foot yo carry. Two front squats, three deadlifts, two front squats, 54 foot.

Yo carry. When I saw this workout, I'm like, that's gonna be a heavy workout. and it was, the women had to carry a 485 pound. Yo guys, 6 65. Oh gosh. 54 feet twice. Oh. And like my spine, it just like started to break. Listen to that. Right. The barbell for the women was a 215 pound front squat. The deadlifts were three 15.

That's the women's weights. They had to clean it and do a front squat. Yes. The bars were on the ground. I was like, oh, their bars will be on a rack for sure. They weren't guys 315 pound front squat, 4 75 deadlift. And this workout, this, these workouts are kind of tough to watch because one of my favorites Hailey Adams, she got the yolk.

Off her back, got to the barbell, didn't get a single rep. So she stood at her barbell for the entire workout staring at it. Tried. She tried to lift it a few times. Danielle, Brandon, who? This surprised me a little bit. She got smoked in this workout. She, I think she failed the front squat multiple times.

She, it took her forever to just do the carry. Yeah. And yeah, it's amazing how some she's strong as hell too. It just, there there's a different level of strength with the yo than there is with the barbell mm-hmm . But thi this kind workout, this is where I want to talk about Hailey Adams a little bit for, I would say three, four years in a row.

She's been probably arguably either the best or second best endurance athlete at the cross games. And she's young. I think she's 21 or 22 years old, very accomplished trains at mayhem, but for multiple years in a row, it's not even that she is one of the weaker lifters, which is the truth, but that's not even the case.

She is below the minimum. What, what, what seems to be required for, to, to be a games athlete, but she's so elite at the other areas that she can get by. And when I say get by, she's still top 15, top 10 athlete. Where, where do we from the outside without knowing anything about her training and what rich makes her do?

I don't even know who programs for her, to be honest, what she, what she's biased towards doing. We just talked about training her weaknesses. Why can't she like get to a Barb about, and still move these, these weights at least once or twice.

[01:10:09] Sam Rhee: This is the second year in a row. We watched her stand at a bar sting at a barbell.

And you would think that an athlete would say, okay, this is what I have to address. Yeah. I have a year. And I don't know what the answer is. Yeah. I mean, what would you think? Because she, obviously, she's not an idiot. Yeah. And her coaches are not idiots. Yep. Why do you think this would be? Yeah. If you were a really smart, capable, accomplished athlete yeah.

That you would look at this and say, Yeah,

[01:10:33] David Syvertsen: 215 pounds. It can't do this. And honestly, the answer might be that she does work on it and she's just tapped out. Like it's not a simple fix for everyone. Oh, I'm gonna work on my strength. Like I've been a week lifter of my entire competitive career. Are there things that I look back on and say like, I wish I spent more time on this.

I wish I spent less time on this and more time lifting. Absolutely. But there are that I, I still can walk away from all this and look back on my personal career and just say like, Hey, like I have worked really hard in it. I'm just not that freaking strong. Maybe that's her answer. And so I never want to come across, especially when I don't know any of the, the information that's needed.

That's to say like, oh, she's just not doing well enough. She's not working hard enough without actually knowing that. Right. Like, I would love to ask her questions about it, but it's just something. I wonder if at some point you see a lot of athletes after a few years, they, they change who they train with, whether it's a coach, whether it's a program, whether it's a training partner and there is a rumor out there, I have no idea if it's true and I'm not a huge rumor guy.

And, but you know, that you could tell CrossFit is becoming a bigger sport because there's like a rumor mill in CrossFit now that she might be changing to the hard work, pays off program with where Frazier is with ma O'Brien. And I heard that on the Savan podcast and from Taylor herself. And I, I wonder if that's something that would, you know, some athletes do need to change a scenery.

That's the case in every single sport.

[01:11:51] Sam Rhee: The games, one of the biggest functions it serves is for these training programs to showcase how good they are and to bring not just the elite athletes, but all athletes to. To their training program. Mm-hmm, , that's how they make money. You know, if Tia, Claire Tomi is doing well, a lot of people will flock to proven mm-hmm if ma O'Brien does great hard work, pays off benefits, right.

You know, brute strength. I don't really know where, or what these elite athletes are gonna do, but I really do know these coaches, their lives depend on the publicity, the performance of their athletes. Yeah. How they do it. It it's really important. And the fact that at Haley Adams has. Been able to lift this heavy barbell for whatever reason.

I that's,

[01:12:37] David Syvertsen: that's been, what's really prevented her from getting on that podium for podium and maybe

[01:12:40] Sam Rhee: even winning and like, you know, I'm sitting on my sofa, eating potatoes, just like

[01:12:44] David Syvertsen: 215 pounds. What the, pick it up,

[01:12:46] Sam Rhee: pick it up, come on. Like that's, I, I totally understand my perspective. Yeah. Is completely uninformed.

Yeah. But

[01:12:53] David Syvertsen: you all, as spectators of the sport, I think it's still something we can talk about though. Absolutely.

[01:12:58] Sam Rhee: If someone's in a slump in basketball, I still talk about that. Yeah. I, I can't shoot a jump shot to save my life. Yeah. But I'm still gonna talk about it. And I think in this case, it's not that we hate Haley Adams were hating on her.

Yeah. It's it, it was me. What, what would I be doing or, or

[01:13:12] David Syvertsen: what, what is going on? Yeah, because she is so elite, like here's the, here's the million dollar question that we ask ourselves. A lot of the time I ask athletes that I coach athletes myself. Should you take a bite out of what you're really good at?

Like she's a 10 out of 10 as an endurance athlete. What if she got to eight outta 10, but she went from one outta 10 lifter to five outta 10. Would she would that average out to a higher level? CrossFitter in the sport. That's the question. And I think it's something I would love to hear her input. She's not a big talker.

I don't think she's gonna go out and put that out there, but I would just love to hear someone's opinion on that. That is a little bit closer to that. Situ. Cool. Alright. So the last event, this was the last event of the individual CrossFit game, noble CrossFit games thousand Jackie pro thousand meter row 50 thrusters, 30 bar muscles.

One of my favorite CrossFit benchmark workouts is Jackie. Jackie is 1000 meter row. 50 thrusters with the empty barbell 30 pullups. All right, they've done that at regionals. I think it was 2014 and 2015. Cool workout. We've done it at bison. A bunch of times there was two catches to this work. Three catches to this workout as hence Jackie pro.

All right. The thousand meter row, the guys had to row it in under three minutes and 20 seconds, 15 seconds, three 15. And the girls had to be under 3 43 40. So basically guys had to row a sub 1 37 pace, basically 1 37 0.5 pace. So just guys, if you've ever been on a rower and you see that pace in your number, you had to row faster than a one.

If you didn't, you weren't allowed to go on for the rest of the workout for a

[01:14:44] Sam Rhee: thousand meters. Yes. Not just for two 50 or

[01:14:47] David Syvertsen: like a thousand meters. Exactly. Right. And the ladies you had to row under a 1 50, 1 50 pace for the entire thousand meters. And after that, then the hard part of the workout begins 50 thrusters, not with the empty bar belt guys, 95 ladies, 65 and then not 30 pullups, but 30 bar muscle ups that this, this was.

A nasty, nasty workout that they actually showed on CBS. We talked about how the cross of games would be on CBS. I didn't think they did a great job with that, by the way, but whatever mm-hmm they showed this one on, this is very classic cross hoodie. It's very mixed model. You have your you have your row, you have your barbell, you have your gymnastics.

That looks cool on TV. Right? Thoughts on the concept behind trying to do something like this at bison? Obviously I think the times would have to be different. I've gone back and forth in my head already about this. I, how to properly do this. But I love the concept of saying again, CrossFitters are so they're like machines.

Now these games, athletes, like they know exactly what to pay so they can maximize their time. But when someone from above says, Nope, I'm gonna tell you how fast you have to row things change. I don't

[01:15:52] Sam Rhee: know how to incentivize the average athlete. These guys have a lot of incentive to do this. And even with that two women.

Did not make it past the road. Yeah. Furry Helga daughter and Rebecca Fu Fu

[01:16:04] David Syvertsen: I don't even know her, her name. Right. And this, you know, this is also the last event over the whole weekend. Right. Keep that in mind. So

[01:16:09] Sam Rhee: these guys were smoked yeah. Smoked to try to get, and they, they couldn't even get past this.

So I don't know how you would scale that to an athlete. Yeah. Because if I was the athlete who had to row under a certain time, I'd be like,

[01:16:23] David Syvertsen: couldn't do it. Yeah. Yep. See you later. I will. I, I, more, I'm thinking for fitness. I don't think that needs to be implemented if you're training someone to be a competitive athlete.

I think you have to know what their row splits are for, you know, 500, 1000, 2000, 3,004,000, and just kind of come up with a personal number for them.

[01:16:39] Sam Rhee: Okay. Yeah. So for training purposes, that would work. Yeah. Right. How would you scale it to a class to get them to feel that kind of stimula I

[01:16:45] David Syvertsen: honestly, I, I would think, just say no there, the, the talent level on the rowers is too different, you know?

, I just don't think it's worth trying to, you could suggest it. I think if you guys, like you could say, Hey class, like if you want to really get the feel out of this, take your one K PR time. Like maybe the week before that you do a one K PR. Oh. And just say like, or sorry, a one K time trial. Yeah. And say like your time has, you know, you make a chart in Excel sheet, put it on a whiteboard somewhere and say like, your time's gotta be faster than I would say 90% of that.

Okay. You know, so if you're, if, if my, I think my PR in a one K is like 2 55. you would say you'd probably say like, Hey, wrote that under a three 15. And you know, so I, I think that would be some easy math to do that. All right. It's a row that I know you guys can do. I'm telling you to go slower than the row you did last week.

Right. But you're gonna feel like shit after no matter what, and now you have to go do the hard workout, a bunch of thrusters. And so I think that's the way you'd have to do it at a gym. Would you

[01:17:43] Sam Rhee: program the 30 bar muscle ups

[01:17:46] David Syvertsen: into that? I, I told people we're doing the muscle ups 30. Yeah. And just, we'll just cap it.

We'll cap it at 15, 18 minutes. I mean, these guys were getting this done. I think it was eight or nine minutes if I remember correctly. Well, time cap was 10, 11 minutes. Yeah. I think the fastest were in the eight or nine. So I think our cap for the gym would be like 18 minutes. I think there are some workouts that you don't always have to get the same stimulus.

If you're gonna program stuff for your gym. I don't think you always have to get the same exact stimulus as the athletes. I think there are some workouts. It would be cool. You know, and again, you have to be humble about this, but like, see, like I wanna do exactly what they did. I don't care if it takes me three times as long, you know, and just kind of get the feel.

And I actually think some people, yes, it would suck for it to take that long. And I don't think I would let the cap go up to 24 minutes, but I would say that, Hey, maybe someone in our gym would be kind of surprised that the last place games, athlete. You know, got capped out at 11 minutes only got 20 muscles and I finished in 13.

Like you were actually kind of close. There are workouts, there are plenty of athletes, even in our gym, but around the world that a workout or two you are in that tier, you know, that doesn't make you a games athlete obviously. Right. Because this was a 13th out of 13 events. Yes. And sometimes like, they, you just have wheelhouse events.

Right, right. Like I've been falsely led myself like, oh dude, like I could beat that person at workout. You know, like shut up. Don't if I ever hear someone say that, I'm gonna tell you to shut up. But like, it's, it's kind of cool just to see how far even how, like we do this in the open every year we do the same workouts that these games, athletes, like, I, I don't mind seeing how much I got beat by, you know, Sam dancer and workouts, but the workouts that you do well in, and you're kind of close to 'em, it's kinda like, all right, cool.

Like that's just like a kind little like feather in your

[01:19:16] Sam Rhee: cap. What are your big takeaways now, now that you've we've. All of these events have thought about

[01:19:22] David Syvertsen: all of these things. I mean, I, I think that this, I love being challenged programming wise. You know, as long as it's coming from like a respectful and constructive critic critical way you know, I've, I've experienced both, you know, being, it was more of disrespectful with the talking about programming, but also the respectful side of it.

I love having different ideas thrown at me and saying, all right, I need to get these athletes not ready for wall facing handstand pushups. But I think that if you're every single time you're doing a handstand pushup, you're doing Kip and you're facing the outside of the gym. The repetitive patterns not only can impede your overall fitness level, but it can lead to overuse injuries.

As versatile as the CrossFit program is you are doing the same, I don't know, 30 movements. And then if you're only talking about movement patterns, like five or six movement patterns, and that can lead to overuse injuries, but it also take the injury out of it. I think it could. Put a cap on how fit you can actually be.

And I think that's like one of my biggest takeaways is I probably need to get a little bit more creative without being over the top with what actual movements we do and certain types of workouts. Yes. Programming can be very easy. Am wraps rounds for time lifting days and you would get fit. You'd be healthy, you'd be doing CrossFit, but I think it, it can help people spin their wheels as athletes when they have something new thrown at them.

What do you think?

[01:20:40] Sam Rhee: I think it helps change my definition of what good. What a good CrossFitter is. Yep. It changes what I think makes me a good CrossFitter and it's going to just looking at these. It makes me realize, listen, just because I know how to do one thing does not mean I'm good or that, you know, I don't need to push myself on all these things and, and I have, and the other thing is humility.

Yeah. I think that was. The benchmark word for the games yeah. Is humility. Yep. And you see these athletes being humbled, you see these movements humbling

[01:21:11] David Syvertsen: and some of 'em handle it much better than others. We'll we'll talk about that in another podcast, maybe. Yeah. I I can't stand that, so okay. And. And to me, it was like, whoa, I should not be proud

[01:21:23] Sam Rhee: that I know how to do this stuff.

I need to be humble and really work hard at everything. Yeah. No matter if I suck at it, if I'm good at it, if I think it's beneath me. Yep. Just,

[01:21:32] David Syvertsen: just keep working. Yeah. I mean, it's fitness, let's not overthink that kind of stuff. You're just exercising, you're being fit. And I think that the more mental concentration, the more mental capacity you can put into your training sessions the, the better it's gonna be for you.

I think gone are the days where you just show up and work out and just like, oh, let someone else do the thinking for me. There are always those days. Trust me, I have them too. And some workouts. That is what you'll do. But I think if you spend just a little bit of time, just kind of breaking things down, like you're moving patterns, like your stability, your positions, different movements.

How are you gonna tackle a new task? That's never been thrown at you? Instead of complaining about it, I think that it really can just elevate the fitness. And again, humility is a great thing. I think it makes all of us better people, but you really have to go through some shitty stuff for that to happen.

All right. Thanks Sam. We'll be back. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode and we got the legends qualifiers coming up soon. We'll be talking about that soon. Thanks guys.