S02E71 WHAT TO DO DURING OPEN GYM

CrossFit athletes are used to having a WOD (Workout of the Day). But what happens during open gym sessions? Do you come up with your own programming? Try something you see online? Go back to chest and triceps? Dave and Sam discuss different training options for open gym and what you can do to optimize your time.

@crossfittraining @crossfit @crossfitgames #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #agoq #clean #fitness #ItAllStartsHere #CrossFitOpen #CrossFit #CrossFitCommunity @CrossFitAffiliates #supportyourlocalbox #crossfitaffiliate #personalizedfitness

S02E71 WHAT TO DO DURING OPEN GYM

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: Welcome back to the Herd Fit Podcast. I am Coach Davidon here with my coach. So, and Coach Sam Re, we have an interesting topic today that I think a lot of people, a lot of CrossFitters, I would say most can relate to. And I think just getting the ball rolling on your thought process in relation to it can help out.

And that topic is, what do I use open gym for? What should I be doing at open gym? And Open gym? By definition, if we wanna put a term. Means that you go to the gym to work out, but it is not in a class setting. There's no structure. You just show up and you do your own thing, which when most people start going to a gym, that is your first process, right?

Like the first time you've ever worked out at a gym. My first six years of working out at a gym, there was no template. There was no plan. There was no workout plan either. It was just kind of go and do what I wanted to do, and then eventually you find your system, you find your routine, you find some new goals, what you want to do, right?

But the CrossFit. Model is very structured to the point where people almost struggle to do anything on their own or come up with anything on their own. And that is part of what a CrossFit CrossFitter pays for. It's the gym, it's the programming, but it's also the structure of a class where you literally just show up with whatever equipment you want to bring in whatever you have, and the coach basically directs traffic.

Teaches, You know, every gym does it different, but everything is structured. You show up to open gym. If you do that for a long time, you show up to open gym. Sometimes you wanna work on something but you don't know what to do. For example, when we did, . During the pandemic, we used to send out weekly programming for at home workouts.

Remember that? Yep. We also posted workouts on our website for people that had home gyms and equipment at home, and one of the constant things was people would say like, Yo, I don't know what to do for a warmup. Like, what do I do? I'm like, They've been CrossFitting for five years. , you know, like, and it, it's not because they're dumb, it's not because they're, they're irresponsible.

It's, they were just so used to that I don't need to plan my warmup. I don't need to spend, you know, draw out a 15 minute stretch plus warmup, plus plus activation piece. It was just do what the coach says and then I. And I, I think I've paralleled that to when people show up to the gym to work out on a, at cross.

Advice in our open gym is on Sundays, and I'm gonna get more into that before we get into some advice. I see this a lot. People kind of come in and they see other people working out with others and they kind of feel a little lonely. They sit on a roller for 15 minutes, they hop on a salt bike and you can tell they don't know what to do.

Like, what am I doing here? Tomorrow's wad looks really hard. Yesterday's WA was really hard. What should I do? So we're gonna get into a few different approaches that you can have. You don't need to pick one, two, or three. You could pick all of 'em, but I think if you can kind of put yourself into one of these tiers, I think you could help you make a lot of decisions in terms of what to do at open gym.

Opening thoughts, Sam? Yeah.

[00:02:57] Sam Rhee: Now that I have structure as a coach, I structure myself a little bit better with open gym. Mm-hmm. , but yeah, CrossFit bison. Sundays are the one day we don't have classes. Right. There is an open gym session. Mm-hmm.

different gyms probably have different Yeah. Schedules. Yeah. Some gyms have open gym almost every day. Yeah. Or several times a week and. I feel like if your gym has a class, Why are you not taking that class? Yes. I mean, you should take the programming that you're assigned. Yep. And I'm sure we'll talk about all the different options about that.

Yeah. Yeah. But that would be the first thing I would say. Yeah.

[00:03:30] David Syvertsen: I mean, we've had a lot of new people come to bison in the past few months. From other gyms and I, and people that have either own gyms, coach at gyms or have been CrossFit for seven, eight years. So a lot of experience and what, it's one of the first questions we go, we get when someone from another gym, longtime CrossFitter comes in, they're like, they're kind of like almost.

Tippy two old. They're like, So, well, what's the open gym policy here? And I'm like, Sunday's eight to 10. And they're like, Oh, that's it. I'm like, Well, hey, if you want to go work in the back during a class and get some extra work in, like, Hey, you did the wa and you had the capacity, time, and desire to go do some extra work on your own, do it.

But class always has priority. If the class is full, you gotta get outta here. If you're gonna make, no, you're gonna have to not make noise while the coach is coaching all that stuff, right? It's just one of the most common questions that we get, and a lot of gyms do that open gym every day. And we're actually gonna send the email out today that the gym will be open from eight to nine 30, Monday through Friday for open gym.

But we'll talk about that later. It's a funny story. Back when we opened the gym in 2014, One of Ashley's rules was like, Hey, the schedule's weird. You're up in the morning early, you're late at night. We're there on the weekends. We're then on the holidays. No, Sundays, like the gym is closed on Sundays and a lot of people don't know At bison.

We did not have open gyms structured actual open gym for years. Oh, We actually started open gym, I think in year three. We had two years of like, Hey, the gym's not open on Sundays, and that's it. And we knew that the second we made that decision to provide open gym on Sundays, it's gonna be there forever.

And not a bad decision at all. Don't regret it. I think it's a good decision and I'm gonna get into why I think open Gym is good. But yeah, let's dive into some of the things that you can do. I'm gonna list a few, and again, you don't need to pick one, but I think this could help some of you guys make a decision that maybe these two months I focus.

My number one thing that I would say it's macro level is do something, an open gym that you don't do in class or that you can't do in class. Right? Example would be a 45 minute workout, you know, where it's an endurance piece, right? A lot of CrossFit workouts by nature have to be short and intense.

That is the CrossFit methodology, but it's also. You know, classes need to be done in X amount of time. Logistics. Yeah. So I would try to try to do movements or kinds of workouts, and one of 'em could be the length of a workout, a 45 minute workout, if it, I really do think that if you want to improve your engine, you have to go long and let's, if you want a number, I'm gonna give you one that's subjective, whatever timeframe that you want to get better at all.

Right? If it's a 15 minute am wrap, if it's a 20 minute am wrap, if it's a 10 minute am wrap Right, you need to be able to. at a sustainable pace for two to three times that number. So if it is a 20 minute am wrap that you just always get crushed in workouts. You gotta be able to work out for 60 minutes and do it well and at not at that intensity.

Okay. Thank you. But yeah, no, no, you're not gonna go do Fran for 60 minutes straight. But it would be more like a, a low to moderate. Maybe even interval piece that last 60 minutes where you're not actually stopping after eight minutes and just falling on the ground and being like, Hey, I worked hard. I also help that think that can help your recovery.

We tweak as well, just working for long at, at low, low paces. And I also think another way of looking at it, What don't you do in a gym is what equipment can you not use in your classes, right? We have bikes here. We don't put bikes into, into workouts. We don't have enough for classes. And you know, we use them in scaling options all the time.

I know you do as a coach, you always write them on the whiteboard when people can't run or people can't jump or whatever reason, we'll put them on a bike. The skier, the glute ham developer, the jhd, right? We don't use these things in classes. , try to think about things you don't get to do in your CrossFit classes.

And that's like probably one of the first things I would kind of hone in on is I want to do this kind of workout or use this kind of equipment that I don't normally get to get

[00:07:17] Sam Rhee: use. Yeah. When I workout on Wednesdays after I coach. Yep. , I have about an hour, and I will almost always include GDS in there.

Yeah. For a bunch of reasons. I think GDS provide a lot of value, but yeah, we're not programming them into our daily classes. Yeah. So it's something for me to work in on my, on my off day. Yeah.

[00:07:40] David Syvertsen: Awesome. Now, another thing that we, another avenue we go down with, what can you do in open gym is. Wh what your, your schedule during the week, if you have a certain day of the week, that it's really tough for you to get to the.

Whether that's future or past, right? Like I can't, I couldn't get to the gym this past day, or I can't get to the gym on Thursdays. Look ahead at your gym's programming, or if your gym does not provide programming that far ahead of time, look back at previous days that you've gone, because if you're at a gym with a responsible programmer, right?

There's probably, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, they should not always program the squat days on Mondays. The gymnastics on Tuesdays, the body weight workouts on Thursdays, right? It should, it should vary day to day. And because of that, you know, you should be able to find, like, you should never be like, Hey, I can't get this gym on Mondays.

That means I always miss squat day. Like, that means the, the coach that's programming is messing that up, but because of your schedule, If you missed the back squat day on this week, like we're in a little bit of a back squat routine at bison, right? And if you came and you couldn't get here on Thursday, because that's just one of the days you can't get there.

Or it's a program rest day for yourself. And that was the day that within our cycle we back squatted. But next week we're on Tuesday, you could come to an open gym and try to make up for a class that you really felt like you should have done. And I think that's another thing that a lot of people do. I think Ashley and Adam just did the.

This upcoming Tuesday workout and Adam coaches Tuesday. So we probably now have really good feedback. That's really just for coaches to do the workout ahead of time. Sam does that a lot. But I think that's something another, you know, we're all busy people, right? And there's things that always come up or it's, you know, for people that work.

Sometimes it's nice to get to home from work at a normal hour and just be home for the rest of the night. If you're looking for something to do and you're really just like, I have no idea. I'm not good at programming. I don't want a program. That's what I would suggest is look at a workout from the past, or if your coaches provide them for the future, look at something that you can't get to and go for it.

[00:09:41] Sam Rhee: I think I see a lot of athletes do that, and that's pretty smart. They missed a workout the week before. They're gonna miss one. Upcoming. Mm-hmm. , My piece of advice is if you can find someone to do that workout with, right, like Adam did with Ash. Do that. Right. Because I will often do Wednesday's workout on Sunday Right.

Beforehand to, to prep for it. Mm-hmm. and I, I will get my number and then I will look at the Wednesday whiteboard. Mm-hmm. and I am so bad every time I do it by myself. Right. I never, I never can bring that same intensity that I would've in class. Mm-hmm. and. I know it's just a subpar workout a lot of times when I'm just doing it on my own.

Mm-hmm. , if you can bring someone to your open gym and say, Hey, listen, let's do this together. Yeah. Or a couple people, you can help bring that intensity that you normally wouldn't if you were an open gym just doing it all by

[00:10:28] David Syvertsen: yourself. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. The, that. That's really another kind of bullet point under this topic is, you know, there's a lot of people in the Shin that you might be friends with that you used to be able to work out with, but because your schedules have changed, you're now in the morning, they come at night.

This is really a great opportunity if you guys can line this up to meet people. And we see this all the time at Open Gym, you know that people are in group workouts and you know, sometimes you get a little like, Oh, I hope these people don't feel left out or, But at open gym I feel like there should be no rules there, right?

Like you can just really find some people that you really wanna work out with. Hey, we never get to see each other at these points. Let, let's go out there and do it just kind of enhances the social component. But yeah, to Sam's point, it makes your work a little bit harder, right? And, you know, you're a CrossFitter, you're probably used to being around other people.

My next thing that you really wanna work on at Open Gym is skill slash strength work. And this can go, I mean, everything we do in Cross It. I always say this when I coach, is a skill, like everything, like down to your back squat, down to a road climb. They're all skills, okay? But. If you really want to emphasize something, we have a lot of people that wanna work on butterfly pullups, handstand walking rope climbs these wall facing strict handstand pushups.

This is a great opportunity to come in, take the intensity down a notch. Right. And it could still be considered strength work if you're not working to a, you know, lifting to a really high percentage. Right? But I think there's a good opportunity for you to slow yourself down and just work on a skill.

And if I really wanted to list some of the skills, I just listed some, but others that I think would benefit and open gyms double unders Handstand walking toes, the bar pullups, butterfly, pullups, handstand pushups, rope climbs, all that stuff. Again, it's hard to program. I will tell you this, in a gym like this, it's hard to program rope climbs in our gym because we have six, we have classes of 25, right?

It's hard to program handstand walks in our gym. We try it throughout the year a few times. But you just have more space and. Because there isn't structure of a class and timelines that a coach needs to hit, and 18 scaling options that need to give everyone, you can really just focus on an imam of just you focusing on your handstand walks, right, Or your, or your pistols or your jump rope, and my suggestion is always 20 to 30 seconds of.

and then twice that of rest. That's, so if you wanted to go 20 on 40 off, that's like a good time period to work on a skill if you did that with jump rope, because it wouldn't be the point of trying to match yourself out to the point where your nose was bleeding on the ground. You do enough of that, the high intensity work during the week.

Can you take a skill? Work to me is your controlled heart rate. You're not that tired and it's really just trying to focus on these fine points rather than you're breathing so heavy. I can't concentrate on anything.

[00:13:04] Sam Rhee: I you, It's not like you read my mind. Yeah. Cause that's what I program for myself. Every time I have my own workout to do, I'll do an eam and I pulled a lot of that from, I think I saw a lot of professional CrossFitters when they're doing their training.

Mm-hmm. , they don't chase high intensity all the time. Right. They're doing interval work. Yeah. And especially I don't feel very motivated by myself. Mm-hmm. , if I, if I'm in an IAM setting Yeah. I know. And I will usually program like four to five movements I need work on. A lot of times I have double unders, but if I don't touch on them at least on a regular basis, I'll lose it.

So I'll program, you know, an eon with gds, double unders, I suck at box, jump. Sometimes I'll, I'll work on that, on whatever I need to sort of brush on. Mm-hmm. , four to five movements, maybe five rounds of it. Right. And I program usually 20 to 30 seconds of work. Yep. And. And I try to hit that same number every time.

Mm-hmm. . So if I'm hitting like HDS per round Yeah. I'll try to stick to that. Yes. That's awesome. Yeah. And and then I just go through it and by the end you're pretty wiped. Yep. And you've worked on your weaknesses. Yep. And you brought a level of intensity you would not have. Yeah. If you just sat there and said, Okay, I'm just gonna do.

Handstand walks for 10 minutes. Yeah. Well, how many, how much handstand walking are really gonna do. Right. So if you force yourself to interval it. Yeah. And then you mix other stuff in, Because we're CrossFitters, we like mix modal. Mix modal. Yeah. It's, it's so easy for me to sort and then I'll look at the programming for the rest of the weekend and be like, Okay, well we're squatting here, so I'm not gonna do a squat movement.

I'm gonna do this Right. It, it really helps me to just fill in some of the, the gaps that I know

[00:14:38] David Syvertsen: I have. Yeah, no, that it's a great way to approach, like, Imams are great because again, when you're by yourself, you can at some point in eam, like say, let's make up a number, right? Eam 10, 20 seconds. 20 seconds of doubles.

All right. Not gonna be a ton of work, but at the end it's pretty tough. Right? And I also think there's a lesson to be learned there about pacing something we talk about all the time, and it goes on in one ear, out the other for a lot of people, but. You get that taste at the end of the eam like, man, this is pretty, this is pretty tough, right?

But because you weren't going that hard early on, you felt like you could push, at the end you felt safe and you could really concentrate. So it's another, there's multiple lessons you can learn from these eams, but it makes it kind of fun to chase after a number, right? Instead of chasing after a person, and then the back of your head, you're like, That person's squat isn't going all the way down, right?

Like you're just let, let's say Sam gets 37 double under in the, in that first interval. It's kind of fun. It that adds intensity to your group and it's measurable, right? And it's as simple as it gets. So yeah, I love the guideline of working 20 to 30 seconds. I think Imam 10 is great. If you wanna start adding other movements, you do the alternating eons, right?

The odd minutes. I do 20 to 30 seconds of jump rope, the even minutes. I do 20 to 30 seconds of GD sit-ups, or I work on my handstand walks, right? Or different skill components to those movements. So that's a great thing to do at open gym because you are training, you are working hard, you feel like you're tired at the end, but you didn't, you know, feel like you just put yourself through a, a typical CrossFit workout blender.

The strength work, I think, can kind of follow the same format probably not as. Time based. It could be more, a little bit more about load based, like your cleans your snatches. Right? We're at a gym where we simply do, do not snatch that much. We do a few points throughout the year and it's, we usually don't go to a max, I would say in a year.

You know, we're probably telling people, Hey, go for a heavy snatch twice a year. Right. And some gyms are not like that. They like to snatch. It's a huge part of the programming We. It's just not a big part of our programming. But I do have people that like, Oh wait, I need to snatch. I'm a competitor, or I, It's one of my favorite lifts.

I really wanna do it. That's the opportunity to do it. So how do you format your workout? A strength workout in open gym in that whole 20 to 32nd kind of analogy is I think that lifting an open gym is 70 to 80% is where like that fine tune would be like that's, you wanna get perfect at those weights.

And I really think people would get so much better at lifting. They would get stronger in the long run if they used an open gym period. It's a master. 70, 80%. Now, when you talk about volume, it sets a five, sets, a 10 sets a two. That will dictate how much rest you need in between the macro level thing.

I'll say there is, the rest should be longer than you think. So if you're used to doing like, you know, a minute or two of rest in between your strength sets, take two or three minutes, Sit down. And I think that would benefit a lot of people with open gym. And sometimes you just don't have the time to do that in a class.

You know, if you're gonna rest two to three minutes in between every single set and you warm up in your setup, that's, you know, might be a 45, 50 minute thing. You can't really do that during a class. You

[00:17:36] Sam Rhee: know, I rarely chase heavy lifts during open gym. Mm-hmm. . What I will usually do, and I learned this from you, is I.

Do something to get my heart rate up. Mm-hmm. , so one of my emo, like one of my movements for an eon will always be a row or a bike or something. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that just makes my. More challenging. Right. So, Right. And we, you do that all the time to us. Yeah. If it doesn't have to be a ton of like, I'm dying on the floor every time I do that, Iam a heart rate elevator movement.

Yep. But I just wanna do that and I usually will program that for myself right before my lift. Right. So if I'm

[00:18:10] David Syvertsen: snatching that day Yeah.

[00:18:11] Sam Rhee: I will do that first. Mm-hmm. , so at my heart rate is up. Yep. It actually warms me up a little bit. Yes. Yeah. And it makes me focus on lifting. Fresh, which, how often am I really lifting

[00:18:23] David Syvertsen: fresh in CrossFit?

Yeah. Never,

[00:18:25] Sam Rhee: rarely. Yeah. So, you know, so I always wanna make sure if, you know, cuz I could always just do five by five back squad or something. Yeah. But for me it's almost normal to mix something in. Yeah, absolutely. Just so that I make sure that I'm, I'm feeling like I would in a workout. Yep. When I'm hitting that bar bill.

That's

[00:18:41] David Syvertsen: awesome. I love that. And, and to build off that, I think. People do that a lot with strength, like what we just said. And I program that for people a lot too. Like be strong when you're tired, but I'm gonna use tomorrow's bison benchmark workout as an example of the flip side of it is I don't think a lot of people practice or even are aware of practicing their high skill movements when they're tired.

And that's, that is a big part of what the b benchmark. Gonna be testing. You have thrusters paired with jump rope. You have thrusters paired with gymnastics of your choice on the rig, muscle up chest bar. Pull up a regular pull up, right? I think that that same format is, is really trying to build awareness in yourself.

Whether you're breathing really heavy, muscles are burning that, you know, the idea of the concept of midline stability, accuracy, timing, it's all vital to, to skill progression with any movement. Right. I just watched we have a couple people prepping for Legends and Master's Fitness Collective, and I had them come in and do a really hard workout paired with handstand.

Brutal workout and you can tell that there is a lack of development of skill under duress with a couple of athletes. And it's something we need to work on. It's something I need to work on as a coach with these people. And I've noticed that at competitions, very high level athletes, like they can post all these video videos of them walking up and down ramps and weights and in and out, left and right, walking squares and circles on their hands, but the second they put into a workout, it's just not there.

And I think that's a huge part of what you could do. In relation to Sam, if you want to come in and work on a strength or a skill, yes, work on the skill, but if you feel like you're trying to get to the next level with it, or you want to be a mixed modal monster with that movement or with that lift, it's gotta be mixed in with something else as well.

So I love that. So another thing I wanna get into with. With gym training. I wanna use Nick Squire as an example for this is, we call it accessory work, right? And a lot of times accessory work gets grouped in with boring, you know, not intense. This isn't CrossFit stuff. Where you come in, you're just doing nothing for time, nothing for max weight, but you're building muscle.

And a lot of muscles that are really hard to train, hard to get to, but also are a huge part of keeping you safe. And in the game, Nick Squire, for about two, three years, Nick had a pretty significant back issue. Herniated disc never had anything done, but he had to really slow himself down for a long time and, He came in, I wanna say, for two years straight on Sundays, while everyone else is doing fun ring must loves and hero workouts.

And Nick was like just in the back corner doing tempo, Bulgarian split squats and glute ham bridges and crossover symmetry. And the other day lifted with, We back squatted and we did heavy cleans and he had no knee sleeves on him. Like, man, like at some point, like one of my goals in life is be able to like never have to wear a knee sleeve again because I just, I feel like I'm so dependent on it with my knee pain and the volume I'm doing, and he's like, Dude, the.

The two years of all that accessory work that like my knees have never felt better and he really, he just built his hamstrings and his glutes up so much and it's something I think CrossFitters get. We, we almost get too obsessed with like what our movements look like, what our times are, what our weights are, and that it kind of accessory training.

It's, there isn't like a high that you get, it's just come in. There isn't like this objective like, wow, my hsr like are so much stronger. There's no one can see it and you can't see it yourself. It's just, hey, I'm doing the work and I know it's gonna help me down the road. And the accessory where coming to the gym for an hour and a half and just doing boring stuff while everyone around you is doing fun stuff and you're by yourself.

You don't have music or the music's that on that's on sucks. Right. You come in and you still get the job done. I, the benefits of that kind of training will go so much deeper than coming in and putting yourself through a hero workout. It takes so much discipline, so much

[00:22:34] Sam Rhee: to come in and do single leg work.

Yeah. Single, you know, rehab, sort of physical therapy style training. And I've, I've done it when I've been injured and I will say, Nick Squire. The model example for sure. I was so bad at it. Yep. And I feel like I'm a pretty focused, very, you know, disciplined person. Yep. That was really a challenge. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think if you're gonna do that, first of all, you're gonna have to help get someone to hold you accountable. Mm-hmm. . I know I didn't and I had a real problem with it. Yep. You also have to kind of really follow. Real workouts, right? Like, if you can't feel like you wanna, you're gonna program what you need for yourself, you gotta find someone to help you with it, Right?

Right. But you're right, the, the single leg stuff, the, the rehab strengthening stuff. Mm-hmm. . Single best thing you could do for your hips. Your knees. Yep. You know, mobility, range of motion injury prevention. Yep. I, I can't think of a better modality to do as a CrossFitter if you really want to focus on injury prevention.

Right. To

[00:23:40] David Syvertsen: get for the long game. Yeah. To do that during open gym and even while. Even as Nick came back from a back injury and he was doing the accessory stuff, he's still over the course of a year, year and a half. Had to, every now and then in the middle of a workout, be like, All right, you know what? I'm not there yet.

I gotta stop. It's, it's starting to bother me. Like we're doing all these cleans off the ground, like, and knock on wood, like he's been, as, you know, as healthy as I've seen him and he's performing really well, but he is still, he's very respons. He still comes in and does it. And he was here last week doing sled pushes and farmer carries, right?

There's, there's a lot you can do with that, and I think that, You know, if you can shift your focus way, this is one thing about a CrossFitter that we have to be careful with. We love that high intensity group effort, like that dopamine spike, the endorphins that run through your body. You accomplish something when you come here that's so hard that so many other people can't do or don't want to do.

I think that op, if you're a regular CrossFitter that comes in five, six days a week, , I think that should either be the rest day or if you feel like you gotta come in that this is the best approach for your long term. Is it the short term best thing in the world that's gonna get you outta bed excited to go?

Probably not, but if you've been in this for a long time and you know the high intensity capacity is there and you know, you work hard with the classes, this is probably the one thing I would probably, it doesn't have to be every week, but it should be a part of your rotation. Like we're giving you all these different options in terms of what to do at open gym, but this, this should be a part of the rotation.

Like I've seen Jiffy come in here and do these farmer carries. I sent her a farmer carry Iam like long time ago, and I still see her doing it. She's walking up and down the rig with the keta balls in her hands, and I'm tell you what man, like she's made significant gains across the board. I see you're on the road doing road climbs and I think like just the farmer carries, it's not just your grip strength that gets.

Strengthen like your upper back time under attention. She's, she's gotten a lot better with a lot of different stuff with CrossFit and I think part of that is like that she comes in on Sundays and just kind of works on things and does some of that accessory work. I think it's a good example for a lot of people to have.

And you look, you look at Open Gym, there's always someone doing Shawn o Heroes here today doing the crossover cemetery stuff, and, you know, that's, that's really important stuff. And I, I think that if you are someone that's constantly beat up or you feel like every three weeks you're kind. Going forward, two steps back or two steps.

That's, this is something I think you could really benefit from. It just might take a little bit longer than, than you want. Another thing that I think you guys could look at in terms of, you know, I know that we have some athletes here that are on some extra programming. Some of it's with the next level, some of it's with other stuff.

This is probably. One of the best times to get that work done because I have some ambitious people in the gym that are like, All right, yeah, I'll just come in on Mondays before nine 30 or Tuesdays after my wad and I'll do it then. It doesn't always work out that way, like life gets in the way, whether it's your kids in the morning or you have this plan that you're gonna do something after your six 15 wad, but the six 15 wad blew you up and now this extra work that you're doing really just did not have the intent or intensity or you know, the, the capacity behind it because you're so tired.

And I think Sundays are a great day. Because especially at a gym like this, we don't have classes that you can come in and just kind of focus on that task rather than it being an afterthought to some other things that, you know, could potentially get in the way. I

[00:26:52] Sam Rhee: think it's really hard cuz if you're a competitor and you're following a, a competitive programming track.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. . And you're also taking classes here at bison. Mm-hmm. , you need to balance that and figure it out. Right. You need to figure out where to work in the classes, where to work in your competitor's programming. Yep. I don't. Ever. I've never, I mean, other than doing next level, I've never really followed like a mayhem or proven or anything like that.

And, HPO and that stuff has so much volume. It does.

[00:27:21] David Syvertsen: And it's so much time, It's so heavy.

[00:27:23] Sam Rhee: Yeah. I wouldn't even know where to start with that, honestly, you know, in terms of figuring out how to work

[00:27:28] David Syvertsen: that into an open gym. So, Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that, that's where I think it. This may be a topic for another time, but trying to get on your yourself on a different programming in addition to your gym's.

Programming is usually at some point a losing battle, and you're talking to someone that's tried to do it. Multiple times and it just doesn't work and it stresses you out. You end up doing things you shouldn't do and it could lead to injury. That's just one of the few things that could happen there. But I, I think that the programming that anyone else should be on that's in addition to a class should not be a full blown program.

It should have a couple of specific focuses that you can kind of sprinkle in and ideally, The coach that's programming that does both, You know, you're not taking programming from this person and that person unless they're talking to each other on a regular basis. So that, that's gonna wrap up my open gym talk guys.

Sam, do you have anything else that you think I'm missing out on or what other people could view open Gym as something that they could do that we didn't talk about? There are two things. One

[00:28:25] Sam Rhee: is I know a lot of people who train for aesthetics and they use it as a. Bicep Curl day. Yeah. .

[00:28:33] David Syvertsen: You know what, I should have thought about that.

I'm upset ,

[00:28:36] Sam Rhee: which happens a lot, which is totally fine.

[00:28:38] David Syvertsen: Awesome Body building. Yeah. I mean, body building 1 0 1. We should, I think crossers, like look down on people that do curls and stuff. The, you want, you want as much strength in all of your muscles as possible. You know, Like your bicep. Yes. Biceps. Do. Some people want that for aesthetics.

I think it can go a long way in protecting people from injury. I really do. The other

[00:28:58] Sam Rhee: thing is, and I know Adam Ramsden did this for a while mm-hmm. and stopped, and I think there's a good reason why he's programming a hero workout every Sunday. Yeah. And a lot of people did it cuz it's cool, you wanna do hero workouts and it's fun, but the, the amount of intensity that it took to do that, it beat you up for Monday.

Mm-hmm. , you started the. In pro, you know, following class programming. Right. And he just

[00:29:21] David Syvertsen: felt beat up. Yeah, I know. And that was tough. It was tough. I think what Adam did really well with that is he didn't, most of the hero workouts he chose were not the, the big long ones. Like, I didn't even know some of the hero, Some of the hero workouts he found were like eight minutes long, nine minutes long, or they weren't heavy.

The volume wasn't crazy. And. You know, we, we as crossed always associate hero workouts with like the ones that just absolutely crush you. I will say if, if, like you said, if you're gonna build off that, if you are gonna go that high intensity piece on Sunday, I think it should be, it should come at the subtraction of a workout.

Either the day before or the day after. So if you're a normal Saturday workout person and you wanna come in and do an workout on Sunday, a hear workout, you should almost always take off on Monday. If that's your float, I say go for it. But to just simply add another intense workout because you had that addiction to the feeling it could be a detriment for sure.

You know, I mean, that, that's, we've talked about that several times is like, you know, hero workouts by nature. You, You know, they're bigger than you, right? They're named after fall and soldier you, you're not gonna jog through those. But you know nothing against anyone that would want do that. I would say it's gotta take some extra planning in terms of when you're gonna rest.

So like, if you're gonna do the hero workout on Sunday, don't come into the Fun wad on Saturday. You know that, that kind of thing. But if you're just constantly saying yes to everything, just, you know, be included in something or you had that addiction, I think it's gonna go, you know, it's gonna go. All right.

All right. Cool. Guys, thank you for the open gym talk. Hopefully this can help you out. And we'll see you next week.