S03E104 TEN THINGS EVERY CROSSFIT ATHLETE SHOULD TRACK

Dave and Sam discuss a question posed by one of our @crossfitbison athletes - what are some metrics should CrossFit athletes can or should measure when tracking their workout progress or performance year to year? They discuss 10 possible points. Agree or disagree?

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S03E104 TEN THINGS EVERY CROSSFIT ATHLETE SHOULD TRACK

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the Herd Fit Podcast. I'm Coach David sif, and I'm here with my co-host, Dr. And coach Sam Marie. We got some new swag here right in the middle of the table for you. My YouTubers, my YouTubes art YouTube subscribers. Uh, we just got a really cool gift from CrossFit hq. What does it say?

Actually? Oh shit. 2023 CrossFit Games. Open official host site 23.2 really heavy too, so you could tell it's a very high quality product here. So thank you CrossFit games for sending that to us. I'm gonna try to set this back up without breaking Sam's audio set up. My bad.

There we go. All right. All right, Dave, don't touch it. Okay, good. All right, go ahead. All right, cool. So, uh, today's episode guys. This actually came from a recent conversation that I had with one of our members here at CrossFit, bison, longtime member, um, really good athlete. Really good person too. And also a dedicated CrossFitter that has found, in my opinion, a really nice blend of pursuing performance, but also like, Hey, I'm here for health.

And it's Scott Sweeney. He's a firefighter, he's been a long time member. Um, he's actually been a topic of our conversation a few times with, with you and him just as athletes, kind of. I love him comparing with each other and kind of, you know, those are the kind of guys, a guy like Scott, and it's not just Scott.

We have dozens of them at Bison where they're a little under the radar. Like you don't always hear them when they come in, but they mean a lot to the gym because of how consistent they are, how hard they get after it. And occasionally you'll come in and just smoke everyone in a workout. And I have one example but Sam opening thoughts on Scott and, cause I wanna get some opening thoughts on him.

And it's gonna help those that are listening kind of understand why we're gonna talk about what we're talking about today, which we'll get to in a sec. But opening thoughts in Scott. You know I'm

[00:01:48] Sam Rhee: a Scott fan. Yes. You are a big Scott fan for a long time. And he is as busy as anyone else is. He's, uh, high up on the fi, uh, as a firefighter and his ranks.

Um, I know I would get the rank wrong, so I'm not even gonna try to guess like whatever, captain or, or general or something. And, uh, he. Uh, has kids. He's a relatively, uh, he has a new, like, maybe a couple years old now, or a year or two. Mm-hmm. Yep. And so he's really, really busy, but he makes a lot of time, uh, to make sure that he gets his health in and he's just progressive.

He's quiet, um, you know, in the gym, like, you're not gonna see him like showboating or anything. Right. But the, the guy kills it. Yeah. Um, I've known of days where he just like every other new parent, like was up all night, but managed to come in, you know, get some fitnessing in. Uh, I just saw him last week and he was working on his split jerks, and I swear to God they are so, yeah.

Smooth.

[00:02:42] David Syvertsen: He's one of the best movers

[00:02:43] Sam Rhee: in the gym. Yeah. And I used to compare myself to him on the whiteboard, but nowadays I'm just like, you just go, Scott. Don't just

[00:02:49] David Syvertsen: keep going. Yeah. And, and, and every now and then, I think one of the workouts that, um, He just absolutely annihilated was 21.1. It was the wall walk, jump rope.

The first time the wall walks were put into the opens. We were wearing masks back then for that open, if you guys remember that, ptsd. And he came in and just shattered the workout, like crushed almost everyone in the gym. Everyone's like, whoa, Scott. Um, so like, and ever since then you, you see a few workouts.

That, you know, are kind of in his wheelhouse and you know, this is a guy that, like, he's a firefighter. Those guys, they're hours. The stress that comes with that job, the pressure that comes with that job, a lot of respect for those guys. But like Sam says, he just comes in and he's always the same guy. You can't always tell if he's in a good mood or bad mood.

And I kind of like

[00:03:31] Sam Rhee: that. I, the other thing I wanna shout is he makes people around him better cuz his wife, I met her during the open. Yeah. She, uh, after her pregnancy got, uh, back into fitness. Yeah. She does orange theory, which is. That's fine. Absolutely. Yeah. And everyone finds their own thing. Yep. But just because of what he does around people.

Mm-hmm. Like, they're like Man, I need to

[00:03:48] David Syvertsen: be better too. I gotta do too. Yeah. It's awesome. So, you know, we were talking and Scott is a thoughtful guy. Couple conversations with him over the years and he came up to me and he says, I have an idea for a podcast. And he's someone that if he comes up with an idea, I'm always gonna listen to it.

He goes, track workout tracking. And my mind immediately went to where many of you are thinking about, should I track. Every single thing that I do every single day beyond the whiteboard, sugar, wad, all this stuff. Uh, but his idea slash question slash uh, seeking of guidance was, what should I track over the course of the year?

To make sure that I'm still on a good fitness path. Right? Should it be certain workouts? Should it be the girl workouts? Should it be the hero workouts? Should it be murf? Should it be the open only? And it got me thinking that as we were talking about this, we had a five to 10 minute conversation about it.

I started getting excited talking about it because this is a really cool topic that it can change from person to person. But let's just kind of intro this topic as. Tracking workouts when I started at CrossFit Hoboken. I think a lot of you guys did this too. You're motivated, you're trying to always get some more input and information on how to get the most outta this.

I logged everything I did from every single workout on beyond the whiteboard. I think I could still go back and look at some of my results from back like 2011, 2012. Especially some of the benchmark workouts that we have in Cross at the girls, the heroes, the open. Um, so the, these are things that I, um, You know, I, I, I can understand that someone new to the gym, I've been asked this a lot, what can we use to daily track our workouts?

Like Lisa Sarti does this. She writes down every single thing she does at the gym in a notepad, and that's like a very old school way. Of tracking your workouts is you get a notepad out pad and paper and your memory works the best when you write things down, type things out every single time you come in.

So I think that's a part of it as well, A benefit you can get from work, workout, uh, tracking your workouts. But Sam, what are your thoughts on, you know, your years into this, almost like probably a decade almost, right? Do you really feel like you should slash want to track every single result from every single day?

[00:06:00] Sam Rhee: Uh, I think it's better to do that than to not to do it right. Okay. Uh, so, and the problem is, is that I do record what I do every day, but I don't log it in a useful way for me. Mm-hmm. Like, I pretty much take a picture of my, what I write down every day. Mm-hmm. And every week, month I'm like, okay, now I gotta find a way to like, Dump all this into something, right?

Yeah. And I don't, right. I just go back and look at stuff every so often. Mm-hmm. You know, oh wait, we did this on what day? And then I go back and look at that day. Uh, I think data is always helpful.

[00:06:35] David Syvertsen: Absolutely. Um, How and what's the best way to organize it? Like I, I, we're 10 years in, I still don't know the best way.

That's the problem.

[00:06:42] Sam Rhee: And I keep waiting. We, we talked to Don Fall about this. I want a CrossFit app where they can put all this stuff in that makes it easy for us to do it. And I've been waiting for 10 years for it and we don't have it. I've tried beyond the whiteboard, I've tried. Uh, spreadsheets. I've tried all sorts of different things, notebooks.

Mm-hmm. And, um, most of them are not easy. So the people that are actually logging, like it's an extra effort. Right. Especially for CrossFitters. Um, because we don't also log our, like as a gym, right. We don't use a system. Right. Um, which honestly wouldn't make things better. But there are pros and cons to that as a gym also.

Yep. Yep. Uh, so I would say start, if you're not doing it, start. Tomorrow or today, and, and we don't have a really good solution that we can offer you that is the best for everybody.

[00:07:32] David Syvertsen: Right? You know, I, I compare workout tracking to macro uh, tracking. So right now, for the past four to five weeks, I've put myself on the macro train and I'm logging every single day.

Every now and then, I miss a day of logging. Um, And it's something that like to kind of get me back on track, right? Because the training has amped up a little bit and I always say when you amp up your training, you have to amp up other things as well. And I compare this to workout training in that when I'm very motivated and I have to get myself back on the right track, on the right road, even if you feel like you're on a good path, sometimes you just don't know until you really start tracking things and.

I compare this to the workout tracking is it gets old after a while. It gets time consuming. You know, it's like another job, especially with some of the workouts that we do here. They're so detailed and a flaw that I have in tracking daily workouts to track your performance are the amount of variables that come in, especially when you're working out with a class example.

Like I, I hear this every time we have a running workout. If you're in the back of the gym, right, and it's 10 round workout with two, a 200 meter run in every single round. Well, I ran an extra like 800 meters today cause I was in the back of the gym. And I'll tell you what, if you are tracking times and trying to compare things to the past or even compare to people that were here early in the day, late in the day, to kind of see if you're kind of in line with them, that's a variable that you had no control of.

That does have a significant impact. It's at least 50 meters back and forth. And you know, you'd multiply that by eight rounds, 10 rounds, like that's two minutes right there. That alone. And so it, it's, and then you don't want to go down that path like you're here for fitness, you're here for training. But there are flaws in trying to track everything from every day.

So what the question was from Scott and what this topic is going to be about, what are 10 things that you should keep track of over the course of a year to make sure that you are being accountable to something? All right. Now this can be like, Hey, I want to be somewhat close to my best score of these 10 topics, which I'm gonna go over them individually really quickly.

Right. Um, and if you see a really big decrease in output, right, whether it's a time, a score and an am wrap, a ranking in the open, then you can go back and be like, all right, what happened this past year? Why was this the case? Did I not work on my strict pull-ups? Did I not, you know, did I take two or three breaks from CrossFit and all of a sudden I can't breathe during my workouts?

Did I get injured? And it took me a long time to rehab these things. I think it's important to have some metrics that you are keeping track of. So do I think you need to log everything from every day forever? I do not. I don't think you should. But if you are trying to get yourself on a track, right? Get yourself on a consistent pace forward.

You should be tracking during that period of time, or at least at the start of it. But then on a big picture perspective, there are 10 things here that I came up with that I think if you kept track of these 10, you're gonna have a really good gauge and accountab accountability system of your progress and performance within a performance.

You know, uh, centered program, which is CrossFit. So let's get into the first one. All right? The first one is just breathing, conditioning, single modality. I have three options here, and that is not the case for all these, but these, you know, I'm, I'm gonna give you three options. You have a 2000 meter row for time.

A one mile run for time or a 10 minute cow airbike for, uh, cows. Guess which

[00:10:56] Sam Rhee: one people are gonna choose?

[00:10:58] David Syvertsen: I don't know. I'll be honest with you. Oh, come on. It's obvious. I think if we took a, a pole of the gym, I think you would have, it would very much a big split between the run and the row. What do you think?

Anyone

[00:11:09] Sam Rhee: who's actually done a two K row for time? Yeah. Would never do that

[00:11:13] David Syvertsen: again. So I do agree. I do agree that, you know, I've done a two K row for time, I wanna say probably about eight or nine times in my cross career. Like I generally don't wanna do it ever again unless it. It's in a competition setting because I know A, I'm not gonna beat my time because it, it won't mean as much.

And b, it hurts. Like you, you're hurting for a long time. I'll say this though, if we really truly ran a mile for time, like remember we did that at the track a few? Uh, yes. A couple years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At in Glen Rock Track. Yeah. That hurts a lot too. I don't think it hurts as much, but when you run a real mile for time to the point where like you can't run anymore, you, you really empty the tank on that last lap around the track.

That hurts a lot too, especially if you're not a runner. So why do I think these are important? What are your opening thoughts just on these, you know, Especially the two K Row, one mile run. What do you think about those? As, you know, kind of like short spurt conditioning tests that you should be able to track throughout the year.

Like you should always know approximately what your mile is and approximately what your two K rows.

[00:12:17] Sam Rhee: Uh, yes, I do know what my mile run, well close to my best time was. Mm-hmm. I haven't tested it in probably years. Yeah. Um, what is it? I don't know. I want to say it's around seven. Yeah. Um, and then, Uh, I've never really actually tested a 10 minute cow bike and I can't even remember what a two car I probably did and I don't remember what it is.

[00:12:40] David Syvertsen: My guess, would you be around seven to seven 15? Yeah. Is my guess. And

[00:12:44] Sam Rhee: do I want, and so my other question to myself is, do I want to check in on

[00:12:48] David Syvertsen: these things yearly? So that's why I actually, the first thing Scott came up with was like, is a two K row or a one K row, even one K row? You can make a cases worse, but the.

It's funny, I, the first thing that I said to him was the same. I don't want to go and test this again, and I, I'll say this. Do you need to pr these the questions? That's the problem. Yeah. That I think there's a disconnect with all of these tests. Yeah. And the answer is no. Yeah. It's not about the pr. Right.

I'm all about the pr I love prs. Right. But I, the more you do CrossFit. Okay. I, I think once you get past that six, seven year mark. It's possible you're never gonna have one again. Some from some from your past, or especially as you're getting older, or that the gains are gonna be so small, it's gonna be like a second or two.

And do you want to put yourself in a seven minute pain cave so that your two K row time is one second faster? So I think on all of these, on all of these metrics that I'm gonna throw at you, I would say if you're within 10% of your all time pr I think it's a win. Also, if you're within 5% of your previous, now these are numbers.

I don't have an algorithm. I don't have, uh, a spreadsheet that came up with these, come up with these, but I just use it, my personal prs on these scores that I have, and I'm like, you know what? I'm cool with that. If I'm within 10% of my all time best, I'm in a good spot. That means I'm still working hard.

I'm not ignoring a certain area of fitness. Right. Like a two K row. I think my best two K row ever was six 14. Mm-hmm. Okay. Wow. So I, if I ever were to try and. Pursue that score. All right. I don't think I could do it right now, even though I do feel like my wrong is still strong. My conditioning is still there.

It's about the mental part, like it's about really trying to crush my soul to try to get a couple seconds off of time in a competition setting. You can't simulate that when I'm by myself on a Wednesday in August in the gym, in the middle of the gym. So if I can be within 6 30, 6 35, it'll still hurt, but I won't be feeling like that near death stage.

I consider it a win for me. What do you think about that? That kind of with rule for all these, I'm willing

[00:14:54] Sam Rhee: to put in a 90% effort and give it a go. Yeah. Like,

[00:14:57] David Syvertsen: yeah. I wouldn't wanna sell my sold. That's a good way. That's another good way of saying it. Yeah. A 90%

[00:15:02] Sam Rhee: effort. Yeah. I could try that and I would be willing to do it.

Would you be willing to pro, are you gonna program any of these anytime soon?

[00:15:08] David Syvertsen: I could. I mean, I had Franz coming up. Um, And we have the body weight barbell wad that we did last June. That's coming up after hero

[00:15:17] Sam Rhee: week. But how about the two K Row or a mile run, or 10 mile a

[00:15:19] David Syvertsen: minute, Cal? Yeah, I, I think we could, I don't have it planned right now.

Okay. Thank God. But yeah. Um, but I could definitely throw a two K row in there. Those are always fun days to coach you. You, you learn a lot about people on those days.

[00:15:30] Sam Rhee: There's no cheat. You, you.

[00:15:32] David Syvertsen: That's, that's just raw as performance. Yeah. There's no, no cheating the reps on that. No. That's why I like the machines.

They don't lie. Mm-hmm. All right. So that's my first one. The second one is the ultimate body weight workout of CrossFit. It's a girl workout. It's very simple. We've, we've done so many versions of this over the past few months, uh, leading up to Merf, and it's Cindy. Cindy is a 20 minute amrap of five pullups, 10 pushups, 15 air squats.

Again, a really challenging workout, but I've done this workout. With like 80% effort, hard workout. But I felt great after I've done this 100% effort, especially my early days of CrossFit where you're hurting eight minutes in, you still have 12, 12 minutes left. And, um, again, great workout for a different reason.

So if I use that 90% Sam rule, 10%, uh, rule of try to get to the my best score, I think that's something I should be able always to do if I am on top of my pullups pushups, air squats. What do you think about that one?

[00:16:25] Sam Rhee: Yeah, this one is, uh, more accessible because I think you program it almost every year in preparation for Merf anyway.

Yep. So people should remember or know. Much more what their Cindy ish kind of time is, or I mean, rounds reps. Uh, so absolutely that one is an easy one. Uh, it comes up at least once or

[00:16:44] David Syvertsen: twice a year, and I always say a, a sign of a good CrossFitter is someone that can move their body weight well. And it doesn't need to be muscle ups.

Doesn't need to be butterfly pull-ups. Doesn't even need to be Kip Pullups. Like you could do banded pulls, ring rows, whatever, like just being able to, pushups need pushups, you know, air squads full range of motion. I think that's something, as you get older, you know, and range of motion becomes a little bit more difficult for you, especially in a squat.

It's something that you can safely do. Over and over every single year and just kind of give yourself a little check-in. Um, the next one is another girl workout. I promise it's not a bunch of girl workouts. I think I only have two of 'em up here. Yeah. Uh, the third one is Fran. And the reason I bring up Fran, is it's for two reasons.

It's probably the most classic CrossFit workout in the world, right? If you walk in anywhere, in any country and you say, Fran, everyone knows 2159 thrusters. 95. 65 and pull-ups. Um, but Fran to me, Is is two things. A, it's a workout that everyone sees progress in over their first year or two. Um, because not a lot of people have a lot of history with thrusters when they come in.

And we, generally speaking, get better at pull-ups as we go, right? And I know that's not the case for everyone, but this applies to anyone that's does this workout. RX scale doesn't matter. And the reason why I like this one, it's only 90 reps. And it's probably one of the shortest four-time workouts you're ever gonna do in CrossFit and I, when we start CrossFit, we're all about high intensity, going high, going hard, high heart rate, gone to the days of your 55 to 60 minute body building sessions at New York Sports Club.

This is, go as fast as you can. And my line for this is your goal should be to try and finish this before you realize you're hurting that and you don't. And I think. As CrossFitters get more and more comfortable with CrossFit, or they get more and more afraid of high intensity work while they're doing CrossFit right two K Row that we just talked about.

You get afraid of doing it. It's something to make sure that you still have that gear in you physically and mentally to move your version of your fastest. Um, pacing is a part of Fran. Absolutely. But not to the point where you're jogging at any point. You're running pretty hard from the start and you're trying to hold on for dear life.

The descending rep scheme, six reps. Um, On all, you know, from set one to set two and from set two to set three. It does keep it very possible to maintain that, uh, foot on the gas type approach when you see Fran and it is coming up, and I know your shoulder's a little banged up, so prepare, you know, pretend that you are in a really good spot with the shoulder.

You'd be a little nervous for this one, right? Yeah,

[00:19:21] Sam Rhee: I, I'm always nervous for two reasons. One is, um,

[00:19:26] David Syvertsen: Uh, I, you, you do have to

[00:19:28] Sam Rhee: let the limiter off. Like you just have to like go. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, am I gonna?

[00:19:33] David Syvertsen: Blow a piston doing this one. Yeah. Like, cuz I would have

[00:19:36] Sam Rhee: to warm up a lot. Yeah. And get really like, fully in, cuz I've seen people who just go in cold and you hurt something.

Yeah. Like you, you know, they strained something or whatever. Like you have to really warm up for it. Yeah. And second. Um, but I would be excited. I would be like, uh, let me, you know, if we really, if it was in a comp or something. Yes. Like, didn't we just see this in quarters? Um, I just, I think it. Of McKinney doing something

[00:20:04] David Syvertsen: similar to this.

Well, we saw 27, 21 15 cow er.

[00:20:07] Sam Rhee: Right. So we see variations of for sure, Fran, all the time. Yeah. That pole push

[00:20:12] David Syvertsen: combo. Yeah.

[00:20:12] Sam Rhee: We, we rarely see just naked Fran, just classic Fran. Right.

[00:20:16] David Syvertsen: Uh, very often. Yeah. We've seen heavy Fran, we've seen Fran with like ascending weight and ascending complexity of gymnastics and those are all cool workouts and they all have their intended stimulus, but the stimulus as Fran is like, yo, two movements, 90 reps go as fast you can.

Right. A lot

[00:20:31] Sam Rhee: of this is technique cuz your, your pullups have to be perfect. Yep. And then you just have to grit your teeth and get through those thrusters. Yeah. Like you said before you even realize you're

[00:20:43] David Syvertsen: dying. That's really, that's the goal on this workout, is try to get it done before you realize you're in a lot of pain

[00:20:48] Sam Rhee: there.

I mean, Fran lung is a thing. You hear people talk about it all the time. Just heard it this past week. Yes, yes. And, and it's a common term and this is the reason

[00:20:55] David Syvertsen: why. Yeah. So I, I really do think if you're a CrossFitter you should be trying to get Fran in every year and. Um, the last thing I'll say about it is, If you feel like you've gone backwards on Fran, I want you to do one of two things.

Assess, hey, have you lost some fitness with this workout? Which is possible and you're, you know, it's not the end of the world if you have, but also, have you mentally lost some of it? You know, we talk about the mental approach here on this podcast so often, and I try to be as nice as possible. I also want to be bluntly honest at some, at some point that I think a lot of people will lose.

Seconds, maybe even minutes on their Fran time because they're not mentally tough anymore. They don't want to go into that pink cave. They'll come up with a reason why like, oh, I'm older, or I have kids, I have a job, don't wanna get hurt, blah, blah, blah. Right? And I don't want you to get hurt either. But I do think a big part of CrossFit training is that you should be able to have that switch every now and then.

And it could be once every two, three months. It does not need to be every week. But if you've lost that switch, I think you've, you lose out on a lot of potential benefits that you get from CrossFit. Okay. Um, so that's, that's really, I think that's the main reason why I put Fran on here. So, number four, um, not gonna be the most popular one on here, but the, the open rank slash percentile and.

You know, as you know, Sam and I are both, both masters athletes, so are many of you that listen to this and we love that Every five years you get put into a new age group, and I think you can kind of use that with this percentile thing, right? If you get put into a new age group, and I'll get to the non masters, don't worry.

Um, you know, you're in an age group for five years. If you go down by one or one or 2%, that kind of coincides with what's happening in the real world, right? You're getting older and. Younger people are coming into your group, but when you get to that new age group, you should see a spike in your percentile.

And CrossFit has done this. They, they've tried, and I don't love the lack of clarity and even consistency from them when it comes to, you know, you get a number next to your name. I think they did it for one or two years. Like a, kind of like a, on a scale of one to 10, we, based on your open scores and some of you guys that make quarterfinals and semifinals, you are.

10 outta 10, nine outta 10, eight outta 10, 4 10. And it does. It kind of makes you say like, all right, next year I'm gonna try to get to that five outta 10 tier, whatever that is. How you get there, it's kind of based on a lot of different variables, but I do think the open, we've talked about this a lot, should be a gauge for you.

Every single year, and it doesn't necessarily even need to be. Where did you rank in your gym? Where did you rank around the world? It doesn't have to be that. I think it can be, but it could even be, you know, did you get in really good shape prior to, were you really disciplined with the RESET program, the nutrition?

The lifestyle stuff leading to the open. Did you get to RX everything? Did you get to RX anything? You know, we've seen that kind of progress. We got asked that during the open announcement, what's one of the coolest things about the Open? And I talked about it. I was like, it's so cool to watch last year that people couldn't do Toast Bar.

They just did 50 toes bar after 60 cal row. That's something that you get from the open, so it doesn't necessarily have to be your rank, although I do think it's as objective as you're gonna find based on the fitness test where you don't know what the workouts are gonna be.

[00:24:03] Sam Rhee: This is one that no one has any excuse not to use because I assume you're going, if you're a CrossFit or you're signed up for the open.

Mm-hmm. Even if you write nothing down or log nothing or any, you don't log anything. Sorry, you. We'll have this because you're logging it into the CrossFit website and you can see your ranking every year. Right. Like even if you write nothing else down. Mm-hmm. Um, we've talked about the, the how to use the open to sort of gauge your pro your progress and your performance.

And it is imperfect. Mm-hmm. Maybe the workouts didn't line up with your strength this year, or maybe they did last. Year and now you, they went down this year. Like there are so many different little things about it, but it's an easy, easy measure to use. It does also expose your weaknesses. So may like you're saying, well, why did my percentile go down this year?

Oh, there were this movement on there and that's why like, these are all easy, like very low hanging fruit for a CrossFit athlete to sort of look at and use. Um, and you're right as a. As a masters, I have seen for the past three, I was in the 50 to 50. I'm in the 50 to 54 division. Mm-hmm. Uh,

[00:25:06] David Syvertsen: last one more year in that division.

I do. Yeah. So I just keep sliding. See it a couple

[00:25:12] Sam Rhee: years, Bob. I know. Exactly. And that's the one great thing about Masters. I cannot tell you how many masters have told me I can't wait to

[00:25:18] David Syvertsen: move up Division. It keeps you. I already can't wait till I'm in 40. That's

[00:25:21] Sam Rhee: couple years. That is the one thing to look.

For forward to, as you get older is that you can, you can crush it again in a, in a new division. Yeah. And so, um, I feel like it is a struggle, but it is also good to gauge yourself, uh, against that whole group of people. Um, I think if you're under 34, uh, you could probably also use it as a metric. Um, Probably

[00:25:46] David Syvertsen: a little differently.

Yeah, a little differently. Definitely a much more competitive division. But what I like about this, and this might only happen after you're in the game for a few years, you know, like maybe year three you could start, really start looking at, but I love how you can go back and look at where your percentile was every single year.

Like I've, I've done that for I think 12, 11 years now. And you, yeah, if you have an off year, it happens. Whether it's injury based, programming based, and you can come up with a list of the excuses there. You should have a very good feel after three years and beyond where you kind of stack up. And again, let's stay away from the top 10%, the top 20%, it doesn't matter.

What are your numbers? Are they 41, 58, 36, 72, 34? That to me, is a really inconsistent CrossFitter and that can come from a lot of different reasons, but sometimes those reasons are you. You need to fix some of your consistency habits. Um, And you know, tho it's information that I think everyone can use. Like Sam said, the best one is why did I drop, why did I increase?

Right? Like, it's funny how when we. Have a bad open, and your percentile is a lot different than it used to be. It's programming's fault, right? Like, ugh, like this. They didn't have handstand pushups, but they had rowing. Uh, they didn't have heavy lifting at all. Like, come on, what are we doing? Aren't we lifting weights?

Like, what are we doing? Um, but then when that person has a good open. They never say like, yeah, I got a little lucky with programming. It's always, I'm a victim. I'm never, you know, the beneficiary. So, but no matter what, if you see a lot of varying numbers, like I think that's something, especially over the course of years in that open division, because you are using everyone's data at that point, not just in age group.

Sometimes the age group can lie to you a little bit. Um,

[00:27:31] Sam Rhee: the other thing is, is that I look at our gyms rankings. Yeah. Of athletes. And you know what that helps me as a coach is one, identify athletes at. Maybe you're not on my radar, but if they're higher than I would've expected, I was like, they're more complete of an athlete than I thought.

Absolutely. And I also like seeing it because there are a bunch of young guns and newcomers and you're like, woof. Look at those guys starting to shoot up the ranks. Yeah. Ladies, watch out for

[00:27:56] David Syvertsen: Tara.

[00:27:56] Sam Rhee: Yeah. I'm telling you. So, so I look at those, um, rankings of the open performances within our gym every year.

Yeah. To see who's consistent. Mm-hmm. Who's. Moving up, who am I sort of missing in terms of who's sneaky good and because pretty much everyone in the top 10 or 15 or 20, they're pretty good at almost everything. Right? Right. Like they're not one trick ponies. Like they got, like there's certain people who are just so awesome at one or two things.

Yeah. Like a heavy lift or they, but these are people who are consistently good over a wide range of movements.

[00:28:28] David Syvertsen: Yeah, that's a great way of putting it too. And like I always wanna be sensitive to. You know, ranking people in the gym, but there is a ranking system that we can use in the open and you can go check it out yourself if you want to.

And you can look at it year after year. And Sam's right that the people that you do see at the top, you know, Every single year. It's not because they're better, it's not because they are more gifted or they have this background or they've been doing CrossFit this long. They're just consistent, you know?

And, and that's, uh, that I hope that inspires people. It doesn't make people bitter or angry or jealous about it. It has nothing to do with they're better or worse than you. It's, it's a habit. That comes from consistency. It's a result that comes from consistency. Keith Andrews, look out for that kid. Yeah.

Watch out for Keith Andrews. We'll see. Um, yeah, Kayla, Kayla's the one that should watch out for Keith Andrews, you know, she doesn't want him working out here that often, just in case, you know. Um, so, all right, so my lifters, I can hear you in my ears right now. They're saying, why aren't you talking about lifting?

My next three are strength based. Um, but one of them is just raw strength. Very important that we all keep track of these. Okay. The CrossFit total. Now the CrossFit total, I'm gonna talk about this two ways. The CrossFit total is a workout. They generally, I think we've only done it once in the history of bison, um, logistically and safety wise, don't feel great about it.

Uh, but I do, I do go back and forth in my head. Just so you know, the CrossFit total is essential. You have 30 minutes. Sometimes it's more, but in a class setting would be 30 minutes. To find your one at max deadlift, back squat and strict press, you add all those numbers up together, the successful lifts, and that is your CrossFit total.

And I remember when I first started CrossFit, I always wanted to like, uh, have a long-term goal of getting that number over a thousand pounds. And that made me work on my strict press back squat, deadlift. When I started CrossFit. We were huge on that at Hoboken, we were basically always throughout the year working on a deadlift or back squat or strict press like throughout the entire year for multiple years.

And there, I can see why there's a method behind it. But there's also, it's really important to have three different lifting patterns, movement patterns. Think about what that deadlift is. It's a hinge. The squat is a squat. Press is a press, obviously, right? So three completely different movement patterns.

And if you are strong in all three, you're doing a really good job. If you're strong in two, but really weak in one. You know that that should set off, you know, a little bit of an alarm in your head. If you're only strong with one of 'em and you're really weak with the other two, then you could basically say, all right, I cherry pick everything when, when I do this raw strength work.

And there's not a ton of technique here. That's why I do think there are, and we will get into some technique strength lifts coming up, but just raw strength. I think it's really important, especially as you get older.

[00:31:10] Sam Rhee: Uh, great numbers and I agree a thousand percent with this one because most people actually do know what their deadlift number is, what the back squat number is.

Maybe not so much with the strict press, but you know, most people like, probably there's not a huge variation with strict press. Yeah. Like, and we press a lot. Yeah. So most people will know around what they can get with a strict press.

[00:31:31] David Syvertsen: Yeah. And what, what helps, what I like about the strict press as opposed to even the bench is you get no help from anything other than your, your shoulders.

Right? You can't use your hips, you can't use technique, you can't even use mobility really. Can you press the bar or not? The one thing I will

[00:31:45] Sam Rhee: say is when we do strict press here, there are some people who wiggle or Yes. Like bend their knees. Yep. And, and so, you know, you have to really have good technique informed with that.

Mm-hmm. And we did test this, wait, this, did this come up on one of the ACOG's? Or each

[00:32:01] David Syvertsen: group qu online qualifier quarter finals 2022. Yeah, we had 30 minutes to find it. Yeah.

[00:32:06] Sam Rhee: And, and I remember doing this and it was. It's, it was a great challenge. I loved it actually. Mm-hmm. I was scared of it. Um, because you know, heavy deadlift then heavy back

[00:32:16] David Syvertsen: squat.

Yeah. Uh, I

[00:32:17] 2023_0514_0826: was

[00:32:17] Sam Rhee: scared too. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, since you said you don't have to test all three at once Right. I think everyone should keep track of these numbers, cuz you probably already do. Right.

[00:32:26] David Syvertsen: And you should know what they are. Yep. And again, Remember the 10% rule, right? Like I, I prd my deadlift and back squat during the quarter finals because of the situation.

If you told me to go do it even two weeks after, I, I wouldn't have been able to do it. So, but if you said hit 10% of these numbers, I definitely would've been able to do it. And like that put, makes me feel like I'm in a good spot with my raw strength. I'm gonna skip number six and come back to it a sec cause I wanna stick with the one at max.

Um, I do think what you should know it, you can clean a jerk or maybe just clean if you wanna skip the jerk, I actually am fine with that. And what you sh what you snatch, does that mean you need to go full bore into a only lifting program? Because there's a lot of mobility and safety concerns, especially with the snatch.

No, I just think that you should be able to hit. 90% of those lists at any certain point throughout the year. And to do that, you do have to test them. And we test heavy cleans and heavy snatches throughout the year. Both clean more than snatch. Absolutely. Uh, but those are numbers that I also think there's value in knowing what they are because of how many times we throw percentage work out at you.

If, if we're always, and I feel bad for the people that have just started like two, three months ago and we're like, all right guys, do this set at 70, 75% this at 75 to 80, 80 to 85. And they're just like, Wait, what? So I, I understand that in time, this, these, these numbers might take a while for you to actually get a basic foundation to work off of, but Olympic lifting is one of the things that makes CrossFit incredibly unique.

Right there. There aren't many programs that are even in the same genre as CrossFit. You know, your F 45, your Orange Theory, your boot camps that throw in one of the most complex, you know, movements into their fitness program, whether it's for load, whether it's for speed, whether it's for reps. So I do think you need to know your clean and your snatched, and they should be tested throughout the year, every single year.

[00:34:16] Sam Rhee: Yeah. This is one where I think most people do know. Where their clean and snatch numbers are. What I would also encourage is, is that some people are really set in terms of what they think their one rep Max is always like, I know I can clean one 15 like, and they never change it and. They work off of that percentage.

But I'm often sometimes thinking as a coach, well, okay, so if you're working off at 70, 75% of that or whatever, and you're gonna only do 85, why not just put a two and a half on each side? Right. Just push a little bit. Mm-hmm. Because there's so many people stuck in there. I'm only going my, I can only do 115 pounds, so I'm only going to do 85 pounds today.

Right. Like, Okay. Some days, yes. Mm-hmm. But some days, so that's two and a half on Yeah. Throw a two and a half on and, and I don't like it when people never change what it is that they do. Like you do have to push a little bit. Mm-hmm. Um, I did a one rep Max clean. When did we do that? Oh, that was the, um, also for the qualifier.

And uh, that was after, that was the second part

[00:35:16] David Syvertsen: of Oh, the semi five. That was, uh, quarter final quarters. Yeah. This year.

[00:35:19] Sam Rhee: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, I hadn't gone heavy for. But, but the situation, I hit at 90% of where I was. That's awesome. And I was really happy with that. You should be. Yeah. And you should be.

Yeah. And so, especially since that one rep was probably like four or five years ago. Yeah. So I, I will totally take it. And so, and there are situations where, you know, you should pick a day, like, cuz you will program a heavy clean after a workout, right? Sometimes Yeah. Or a heavy snatch or something. And, and you should take that opportunity if.

If everything is like good Yes. Yeah. To give it a push. And I have seen some people actually tell me afterwards, uh, when I've coached those workouts, like ipr rd. Mm-hmm. You know, you never know. Sometimes they've actually gained strength. Just, you know how it is. Like a lot of times with strength, you don't touch something for a while.

You build up all this other conditioning and strength in other movements, and then you come back and you're like, Yeah. Pr.

[00:36:12] David Syvertsen: Yeah, especially the days where we do a workout, like not the one that doesn't crush you and then you lift after just because like everything's firing at that point. There's a lot that goes into, uh, programming, heavy lifting after workouts.

And we've done that since day one. Cause I believe in that's like, you know, it's cool to be strong, but. It's cooler to be strong when you're tired. And I think that's really functional. Like, I always think about that now, like, you know, if I ever get into a fight with a grizzly bear when I'm hiking with Brock, I gotta be strong when I'm tired.

You know? So, you know, you don't wanna be the person that's just kind of gave up like, oh, sorry, grizzly bear. I, I can't fight with you because I, uh, I'm a little too tired right now. So, uh, I

[00:36:47] Sam Rhee: love that logic.

[00:36:49] David Syvertsen: Uh, but, you know, I do think that to, to last thing we'll say about the oli lifts with the one right max, you could apply this to the power lifts as well, is.

It, it's gotta be safe. And if you are fighting an injury, right, that's not the time to do it. All right? So I wanna put that out there first with an asterisk underneath it that you gotta, at some point, not always be afraid of, of really committing to the lift. And you know, if something doesn't feel right or you're not bending correctly, you're not moving correctly, the nervous system's a little beat up, you're tired, stressed, all that, then yeah, you pick another day, you fight, you know, lift a fight another day, but.

At some point, I do wanna see some people, you know, kind of take that chance and, and just really see what you're capable of. Uh, because sometimes you don't know until you take that chance. And, uh, and more often than not, it does work out and I'm not going to guarantee anything in, in that. But I do think more often than not, it can work out for you.

So let's go back to number six. Okay. So, You know, there you go. I have a lot of heavy lifting for my big lifters. Those past two topics, this one is a kind of a blend and we're doing a workout. If you guys remember back this, um, this was actually, I think right back. AF right after Ash and I got back from vacation last year, so it sucked because it was a body weight barbell.

So you put your body weight on a barbell and the workout was 10, 9, 8, 7, all the way down to one of cleaning jerks at that weight and bures to a target. So definitely a lifting centered workout. And this is why, and you can play around this, I can help program for those that want different movements or even a percentage of your body weight.

Like I know body weight cleaning jerks is not an option for some people with that movement. And that's okay. What if I said 75%? What if I said 50%? Again, these are things that you could check in on year after year. And I, I'm a big believer in workouts like this. We have a few of them coming up where you put your body weight or a percentage of it on the barbell and you have to lift it a decent amount of time.

It's nothing crazy. And it's mixed in with something else that's relatively simple. A run, a burpee jump rope, a row, a bike, whatever. Okay. And what it does, it's two things. It's cool to be strong. And how do we measure strength? It? It can't just be the weight on the barbell and it shouldn't be. This is why there's weight classes in Olympic lifting and power lifting.

All right. How strong are you? And how well conditioned are you in relation to your body weight? Right. If I have, um, if Hawk and I, if Adam, you know, I just talked to Colorado, we're talking about his body weight. He weighs around one 60, I think 1 65. So let's say, let's call it one sixty five. And I'm 2 0 7 right now.

2 0 8. If we did a body weight cleaning, if we did a a, a clean and jerk workout at 180 5 with burpees, 10 down to one, all right, I'd probably beat 'em. Okay. But if we said body weight, He went down to 1 65 and I went up to 2 0 8, 2 0 5 2 10, he would beat me. Now, you have to look at this as in, in, in my opinion, right, it's more impressive that he can move his body weight than I can.

If I lift more weight, it's not as impressive for me to lift more weight faster or more weight than someone that's 50 pounds lighter than me. It's just not, or 40 pounds lighter than me. Um, but so I, I think it hel it can help. Athletes, track your weight. You know, body weight is a very sensitive topic for a lot of people.

It's a metric. It's not the metric, but it's a metric I think we should all be aware of. And sometimes a workout like this, a body weight barbell workout with a body weight movement, right, can be like, you know what? Yeah, I, I am a pretty strong guy or a pretty strong girl, but the second you made me put that weight on that barbell, I was pretty slow.

So maybe, maybe I should put some thought into, you know, dropping some weight if you feel like there's some weight to lose thoughts on this, because this can be a little sensitive.

[00:40:35] Sam Rhee: Uh, this one really. Gave me pause. I hadn't, like, I hadn't really thought of this and listening to you talk about it. I see both sides of it.

Um, I see, yes, Kyle Wright wrote that would be on some level more impressive. But on the other hand, CrossFit never really does measure according to body weight, like you said, like power lifting categories. Yep. Um, that being said, I do know that probably the top 10 or 15 people that I think of men and women on each side.

Uh, probably would fly through a body weight slash burpee, clean and jerk workout. Mm-hmm. Like, and that's one really good measure of their

[00:41:13] David Syvertsen: fitness. And don't forget, the burpee is a part of this body weight thing too. Yeah. Like if you're 208 pounds, it's harder to do burpees than you're 165. Absolutely.

Pull-ups, toes, a bar, even muscle ups. Uh, and

[00:41:24] Sam Rhee: it's a good. Test of your conditioning overall, uh, in relation to that body weight? Yeah. I was just thinking if that, how many reps is that? Like it's 5, 5 10 down to one is 55. Yeah. 55. Like what, what would the time cap be on

[00:41:37] David Syvertsen: that? Uh, it's a, I think we made it a 20 minute cap when we did it.

I actually remember it was a day that you were at the gym. I forget who was coaching. Mm-hmm. I remember you were there. I just forget why you were there. I think you were just there hopping in one time. There was like four or five of us working out and it was a longer than you'd think workout. Yeah, I was about to

[00:41:54] Sam Rhee: say.

Yeah. Uh, I. I'm a lighter guy, so I would sort of like to do this one. Yeah. Um, I think it's unfair for some, like, you're right, it's not, it's just not fair for some people. Yeah. Like, it certainly skews the performance a certain way. Mm-hmm. Uh, that being said, listen, life isn't fair. So yeah. Throw it in there and see what other people think.

I don't think you see this. Do you program something like this every year? Oh, other than like Thanksgiving, uh, hundred. Oh yeah, that's,

[00:42:22] David Syvertsen: that's not even a workout to me. I, I do throw a body weight barbell in at least once a year. Okay. And this there, we've also seen cross one of the CrossFit new girl workouts.

I remember we did this one as well. This is 10 down to one. Body weight, clean and jerk, and uh, bar muscles and that, that's, you know, that's a different level that's not as inclusive. Like everyone could do burpees. So I, I like that because it's a little bit more inclusive. The muscle ups, you just have more scaling, so you don't get a great gauge.

But if you do have both movements, that's a good test too. You know, I think that really favors, you know, the smaller athletes, um, you know, if you, if you have muscles, but again, if, if a bigger athlete is really struggling with some components, CrossFit and what is this topic? Am I really keeping track of?

All these metrics to help me, you know, maintain my performance within CrossFit. Your body weight matters. You know, like I'm trying to get, lose a little bit of weight right now so that I could feel better when I run and do gymnastics. Like it matters. It absolutely does. But you don't wanna lose so much weight that you lose your strength or your ability to sustain, you know, a quality strong front rack with a heavy barbell.

I'm thinking

[00:43:24] Sam Rhee: of some competitive athletes and most of them on the high end. Tend to gain muscle more than try to strip

[00:43:32] David Syvertsen: weight, right? Yeah. And why is that? Once I think, well, I think once you get closer to a comp, a lot of them will, will lose a little bit, uh, weight as the test is coming up. Okay. Um, but.

You know, gaining weight, gaining muscle, you, the number on, on the scale is going to go up. But that does not necessarily always equate to slower movement with body weight, gymnastics and you know, the sport, especially high level competitors, you have to be very strong. I see you ha gone are the days of like a medium barbell being a good gauge within CrossFit sport.

Like they're, you, you gotta be strong. Like, just look at some of these semi-final workouts, like max snatches at 2 25 for guys, 1 55 for girls. It's like, People have to do that every five to 10 seconds at a snatch, you know? And if you can't, you can't compete. You're just not there. You know, because I think if they made that barbell a 1 35 or even a 1 65, you have too many people that are not that strong that can move that weight with the best.

So you have to find something that separates you a little bit. Hmm. Um, all right, so we have three left here. Um, one of the one is coming up and it's not like Cindy, it's Murf. I, I think Murf is a really good test because for two reasons. One, it's probably the longest workout that we do all year, especially as a gym, right?

I think our fastest times are like around 40 minutes, and then the slowest has, it's gonna be an hour and a half. Right. We don't have workouts that long in CrossFit classes. We just don't. And it's also, it throws in the body weight component. It also for, if you're gonna do this as prescribed, you're wearing a vest, right?

So that really kind of adds an element to it. You know, it's cool to be good at body weight, but can you be good with a 20 pound pack on? But then the running component, right? Um, you know, humans we're meant to run and we should all have running in our regiment at some point if we can physically handle it with joints and, and all that.

And, There's a huge difference between running a mile premy and, and running a mile after murf. And a huge sign of fitness to me is someone that has a split, that second mile is within 10% of the first mile. Hmm. So I think that's something that you guys have murf coming up. This is coming out tomorrow.

We're, we're gonna be doing it in a couple weeks. It's something, if you wanna really get detailed with some of this, you don't have to, but if you want to, what are your mile times and are they within 10% of each other? What do you think about Mirf as a metric?

[00:45:41] Sam Rhee: Murf is a good metric because everyone.

Remembers it well, and you can progress. I remember when I first started, I was like, okay, I'm, I was scaling my pull-ups. Now this year I'm going to do like real pull-ups and you know, this time I'm, you know, and I got, you know, 60 minutes last year and now let me see if I can get 50 minutes or, or lower.

You know, and I see a lot of people, I did it without the vest, now I'm gonna do it with the vest. Or I did it un you know, partitioned and now I'm gonna do it un partition this year. Yeah. So, so a lot of people do use murf as a, um, a way to sort of see how they're progressing, get, see how they're getting stronger, make it more challenging for themselves every year.

Mm-hmm. And or if you are injured, then say, you know what? I have to scale back on Merf and, and I know what I did last year. Maybe I won't be able to do it this year. So, so it's a, it's such an easy. Again, uh, obvious way of sort of checking in on, on your fitness. Um, again, if you really prd Murf a couple years ago with the vest un partitioned, which is the way the real athletes do it, right?

Um, and you can get to within 90% of that. I think you're

[00:46:51] David Syvertsen: doing awesome. Yeah, that's a huge one, especially if you're not training specifically for it. This is a workout that if you are trying to pr I think you have to train for it. Like, you know, I, I know some of these workouts that we're doing at BS right now are getting old with the amount of pullups, pushups, air squats, all in one class.

We have Chelsea coming up on Thursday. I think it's one of the hardest body weight workouts that Sam just did, by the way. Um, and he's coaching, so he is got to say, 3, 2, 1, go about 300 times on Thursday morning. Maybe just go, yes guys, clocks on your own. Uh, but. You know, it, it's a workout that if you really are going to try and, and pr, I think you need to train for it.

But if you don't want to train for it, that 10% rule comes back in. You know, and you just have to kind of figure out what is your best time. The one thing that's a little tough with Merf, and I'll say this with Cindy too, if you're gonna use them as metrics, You have to be honest and disciplined with your quality movement, right?

Like, these are the workouts, like you see, you know, murf pushups and like, I don't get, we don't even write people's scores down for Murf anymore, uh, because it's more of like a celebration thing that we do together. But if you are one of those people that really wants to get after it, I think you should video some of your squats and pushups and just watch it after and be like, all right, am I really hitting the range of motion standards?

Because, I'd say seven out of 10 people that I watched during Merf, they're not doing real reps. And I'm not gonna say a word to 'em. It's, it's their thing, it's their body. And we're not keeping track of it. But if we were recording times or it was a competition setting, you'd be no repping people left and right.

Um, you're gonna see some ugly shit on Thursday during Chelsea. It, it is

[00:48:15] Sam Rhee: super challenging, I would say. Uh, you're right. Uh, here at Bison it's more of a celebration. Yep. It's such. A crap show because there's

[00:48:23] David Syvertsen: so many people, there's 80 people in the gym doing pull up.

[00:48:25] Sam Rhee: So I think if you really are using it competitively, you're gonna come very early, like be one of the very first people to do it.

Yeah. It's a little cooler then. It's not quite as, as hot either. Most days it's pretty warm. Correct. And, and it's not as crowded. Yeah. And it's not as crowded. So, uh, if that, if you're gonna shoot for a number and do it that way, I would advise that. Otherwise just. Go with the flow, find a little bit of space.

Yep. And, um,

[00:48:49] David Syvertsen: and have fun. Yeah. All right. So we have two left. One of 'em is performance center. One of 'em, not so much, but the, the gymnastics, right. The gymnast in there. Right. I can hear you guys here too. You know, we talked about the liters. We gave 'em two topics here. All right. The gymnasts, I think this is, this is something I.

For myself, keep track of throughout the year. Um, I usually test one of the test all these movements, um, over the course of the year and it's one minute of max reps and you do not need to do 'em in a row. If anything, I would suggest not doing them in the same day. You could maybe pick two of them with like a five to 10 minute break in between.

But, um, you know, I like to know how many muscle ups in a minute I can do. Pullups toast the bar, chest bar, wall walks, handstand pushups, pistols when my knees good. Um, and even burpees. And the reason why, and I'm talking like good, honest effort, as many as you can do, maybe even some of you guys could probably do these for a minute straight.

Um, so in that case, some of you might even need two minutes to find like a real test here. Like you're almost getting to failure or you are getting to failure. And it really, you know how many times I taught that reps per minute. Right. My reps per minute on these movements have stemmed from how many I know I can do in a minute when it's just that.

So if it's a 15 minute workout, And there's 20 pullups at a time, and my number's 45. Then it's like, all right, I know that I shouldn't be doing more than half that in a minute. Like, I gotta make sure I can paste this out a little bit. And, you know, the, these are movements, and again, this applies to all scaling as well.

Banded pullups, ring rows, uh, box tips, scaled range of motion, handstand pushups, your half wall walk, your knee raises. Um, Because it's not, you know, with the lifting, it's about what can you do once gymnastics? It's almost always going to be how many you can do in a row, right? Like I, we just did that Friday workout with the wall balls.

And it was Pullups chest bar, then muscle up, right? That Friday workout that we just did, nasty. And it was nasty. And I came in, I was a little beat up. I didn't want to go after it and I didn't, you know, I didn't go as fast as I could, but I do when I, when I have something to train for, when I have something to keep track of, I always wanna be able to do that.

Many refs. I'm broken. On the rig, and that was something that comes from how many, I know it's less than 50% capacity of all those movements, the 2159. So I know like, Hey, no matter what, when it's under 50% of my capacity, I should be able to do these unbroken.

[00:51:11] Sam Rhee: Right. It's such an advantage as a competitive athlete to know these numbers.

Yeah. Going into a workout. When I coach, um, I know not a, not that many people necessarily who's a more casual athlete, will know any of these numbers. Mm-hmm. In the warmup, I try to do some mini version of the workout to give people a sense of how many reps they expect that they would be able to do during the workout.

What they're pacing should be ideally. Right. If I can do that as a coach. Yeah. Um, but that's just because. If I was coaching all competitive athletes, they would automatically know, Hey, listen, I have 10 pushups or 15, you know, uh, muscle ups and this and that in the workout. I should finish each round by this time.

And that, just knowing that when you go into a workout will, even if you're only like semi competitive or you're just working on your fitness, it makes such a big difference. It does. Um, and. There's so many people who will go out, like go into a workout so hot, right? And they just blow up after that first or second

[00:52:15] David Syvertsen: round example.

Like if your max unbroken pulse was 22 and you did 21 pulps on a row on that first workout, cool. But you're kind of screwed to the rest of the workout.

[00:52:23] Sam Rhee: So screwed. And so knowing how to pace will, like you said, makes such a difference in terms of your overall performance, injury risk, how you're gonna feel afterwards.

So if you ever wanted to. Feel if, if you feel frustrated with your workout saying, I'm sick and tired of blowing up, I feel like crap after workout. I feel like the last two rounds were the worst. Always. Mm-hmm.

[00:52:45] David Syvertsen: This would be the way to do it. Yeah. And it's, it's, um, it's a fun thing to track over the years too.

Like, I, I've done this a long time. It's, it's actually one of the very few things and I feel like. Does get better every year or two. It's how many of those move, how many of those, uh, how many reps can you do of those movements, of those gymnastics movements? Nothing combined with anything else. You're not going out and doing a bike right after.

It's just, how many can I do in a minute? And you can see, I'm telling you, capacity is such a big part of CrossFit, right? It's one thing to get these reps, and then it's another thing to be able to just always do them in a workout. No matter how tired you are, no matter how high your heart rate is. Uh, And this is the really the way to kind of see if you're moving the needle in the right direction, staying within 10%.

[00:53:28] Sam Rhee: I would even suggest like, pick all these movements, get a couple friends open gym, one movement a week. Yeah. One minute say, all right, we're all gonna do as many pull-ups as we can in one. One minute. Yeah. And then do

[00:53:39] David Syvertsen: something else with like, work. You probably even could do two of these. Just spread it out by five

[00:53:43] Sam Rhee: to 10 minutes.

Right. And then, then you'll have your number, you keep it, keep track of it. And that's it. Yeah. That's

[00:53:48] David Syvertsen: awesome. So the last one I was actually struggling to find up, find a last one. Cause I was trying, I really am trying to keep my own bias out of it. And this list has some of my bias and some of them I obviously, I'm not biased and I, I came up with something that's not.

Fun and it's not cool, right? I think all these, like these nine things are pretty cool to test and kind of see where you're at. But I do think the 10th one is important and I'm thinking about Scott, right? Scott's the one that brought this up, and Scott is, you know, I think he's a little older than me, so we're kind of saying, and I can tell Kyle said this the other day too, we're losing some range of motion that we used to have and.

You know, those guys do a pretty good job. I think I do a pretty good job of trying to stay on top of stretching when I have time, but probably could do more. But mobility testing, I think every year you should test your mobility. And I'm gonna bring up the Goad app, not a sponsor yet. Okay. The Goad app.

You can test your, you can test your mobility on there. Um, and it gives you a, a tangible score and it's, it's pretty detailed. And it's pretty objective with like, Hey, you are 80% here and 13% there, right? I have one side of my body, my shoulders, that are so much more mobile than the other, and I'm working on that.

And I could actually start to feel it's affecting some how I feel in overhead squats. Um, but I think mobility testing should be something that you kind of play around with every single year. And this could be your hamstrings, this could be your low back, it could be your thoracic, it could be everything.

I know this isn't cool Santa, but what do you think about this?

[00:55:14] Sam Rhee: I never even thought about this until I saw this on the list. Mm-hmm. And. I was wondering how are you going to test this objectively? And I guess you would need something like a goad app to, to really measure that. Yeah. Um, I know that there is, uh, another, is that franchise, is it pliability or some stretching?

Dave Lanceolate was telling me about it. It's somewhere, it's a place called Stretch, maybe it's called Stretch. Yeah. And they do that kind of objective mobility testing and they tell you exactly like what sucks about your mobility.

[00:55:44] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Which is awesome. Um, I don't, it's not as objective like, Hey, last year you were 74%.

Now that you're 78%, like, I would love to get something like that. Right. But I remember having a conversation with Dallas about this, where, when Brita was having a really hard time with her shoulder. Yeah. And he asked, he's like, if I have you do this mobility for the next nine months, three days a week, And I can get this, you know, this PVC two inches back further next year, would you do it?

You know, and like in my head I'm like, no, I like, but that might be the difference between you hitting these snatches safely and not so, but you need something like the two inches. Like what are you actually using to gauge the progress? Like that's something we could put maybe our heads together on. But I know with the Goad app example, Dorsey flexion, right?

They tell you to. Get up to get up against the wall. Mm-hmm. And get your knee to touch the wall. Mm-hmm. But your heels gotta be down. Mm-hmm. How far back can you get your foot away from the wall with your knees still touching and your heels still down? And that's a huge part of mobility for like Olympic lifting and pistols.

Right. The Dorsey flush on the ankle. Right. And I remember, like when I did it, they, they have a ruler and it used to be three inches. It's now four and a half. Like that's a huge deal. It matters. So that tho there's a few different ways to really objectively give yourself a number. Um, I don't have them all right now.

I know Goad does, but maybe it's something we can think about. It's a great

[00:57:09] Sam Rhee: idea. I'm gonna put it on my list of things I need to do, but I. We'll probably not do right away and, and might get buried and so until I really need it. And so, you know what, actually, maybe I should move it up on my

[00:57:21] David Syvertsen: priority list.

Little bit out of the 10 things on this list, this will be the 10th thing I do. But hey, I mean that, that's it guys. Those are 10 things. All right? Um, no. So just really quickly, you're your two K row, one mile run or 10 minute bike. You have Cindy Fran, your open rank slash percentile. The cross to total, the body weight barbell wad, one Red Max Olympic lifts, murf.

Max rep gymnastics in a minute and mobility testing, you know, so I would maybe write those down. And do you have to do all 10? No. Do you wanna maybe throw a couple curve balls and kind of come up with your own custom list? I'm all about that. Like this is definitely not a template Bible answer, but I like the idea.

I. Of having things like, it doesn't have to be 10 either. It could be five. You know, five things that you really want to maybe check in on throughout the year, every single year. And can you be within 10% of that all time best? And if you are, you're doing a really good job. If you're not close to any of 'em, I think you need to make a few changes and that's something where you know, the dialogue with like a coach can come in.

Any closing thoughts, Sam? Now

[00:58:21] Sam Rhee: I wasn't prepared for this episode, but I have to say it was probably one of the best ones that I've enjoyed. Awesome. Uh, some lightning. Yeah. Loved it. Yeah. Loved every one of them and it,

[00:58:31] 2023_0514_0826: it's

[00:58:31] David Syvertsen: inspired me. Yeah. So thanks Scott for bringing that up and uh, we'll see you guys next time.