S03E106 Beyond RX and Scaled: A New Perspective on CrossFit Programming

What happens when CrossFit affiliate owners from all over the East Coast gather to discuss the ins and outs of coaching and programming? In this episode of the Herd Fit Podcast, Coach David Syvertsen @davesy85 discusses with Sam Rhee @bergencosmetic the insightful conversations and experiences from a recent affiliate owner meetup. We dive into topics like music selection in the gym and the importance of always improving as a coach.

One of the most thought-provoking ideas explored was the concept of eliminating the RX and scaled labels in CrossFit programming. Join us as we discuss the pros and cons of this approach and its impact on the overall atmosphere and performance in the gym.

Plus, we touch on the subject of Masters RX and debate whether it should exist within the CrossFit community, considering factors like the stigma getting older.

As always, our goal is to help you enhance your healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition, and mindset. Whether you're an athlete, coach, or gym owner, this episode is packed with valuable insights and perspectives to help you make the most of your CrossFit journey. So tune in, and let's get stronger together!

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

00:00 RX and Scaled

11:24 Rx in CrossFit Programming Dilemma

14:55 RX vs Scaled in CrossFit

26:55 Consistent Gym Programming With Stimulus

36:56 Should There Be Masters RX?

S03E106 GETTING RID OF RX

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the Her Fit podcast. I'm Coach David Sasson, who with my co-host, Dr. And coach Sam Re We are, man, we were off to a great start this morning. Um, we, I was about to say sorry about the week off that we had to take. I, I heard Karen ripping you a new one yesterday for not having a podcast to listen to during her run yesterday.

So, sorry to Karen, sorry to all of our loyal listeners. Um, just very busy time for us. And there are occasionally Sundays where we just can't get together. So that's that. We will do our best to keep you on this weekly flow that we've had for almost two years now. Um, so today's topic, okay, I wanna get into it eventually.

Um, I'm gonna kind of give a little intro to why and where this discussion came from, but it is going to center around RX and scaled should it even exist for CrossFit workouts. We'll get both sides of the argument and where this came from was last Friday. Um, Chris and I both went to an affiliate owner meetup, they call 'em at Gorilla Fitness and Paramus CrossFit Paramus.

Okay. I think it's the official LLC or the official, uh, CrossFit, um, label that they have. Mm-hmm. Um, awesome gym, nice people. And we had about 20, I wanna say 20, 25 affiliate owners. Um, some were from two hours away. Really? It wasn't just like a Bergen County thing. Okay. Some gyms from the city, some from Connecticut.

I think it was Long Island. So, It was really cool and I would love to go to more of those. Um, I was telling Danielle, she's the, the Northeast affiliate rep, um, I think her official title is, um, awesome girl. She was here at the announcement. Mm-hmm. Very, uh, takes the initiative on a lot of things, try to bring people together and get the message of the new leadership and cross CrossFit out to what we should be doing, what we should expect, and all the support they want to give us.

Um, so really good job by her, by organizing that. It was a great time and the topic of that day was led by David Osorio, who's the owner of, of CrossFit South Brooklyn, and it is I think a 13 or 14 year old affiliate and is probably the biggest. Jim on the East Coast. Yeah, I,

[00:02:03] Sam Rhee: someone had said that when I took my L two, that, that was

[00:02:06] David Syvertsen: probably one of the biggest ones.

I mean, he gave us affiliate owners, I won't say it on the podcast, some of his revenue numbers, membership numbers at his peak, which was a couple years ago, maybe pre covid. Um, and it's just like mind boggling some of the numbers. I'm like, holy cow, I thought we were doing well. Mm-hmm. I guess we still have a ways to go.

Mm-hmm. Uh, so it was. The he, he kind of led this talk. He talked for about 45 minutes and his topic was how to run a good class. Hmm. From a coaching perspective, now he's talking to a group of owners that. Some of them coach more than others. Some of them don't coach at all. They, but they are in charge of the coaches.

Okay? So it wasn't just, Hey owners, this is how you should run your class. It was more about, Hey owners, this is how you gotta get your coaches to run a good class. And if you remember, Sam, one of our last meetings as a staff here at Bison, I think it was in the winter, uh, we were talking about the athlete experience.

How do we run a good class? Right? We've talked about that multiple times. Yeah. Warmups, whiteboard talks, music, like all that stuff. And all these things came up and. You know, someone says to me, why would you go to that? You've been coaching for so long. You know how to do this, and it's the same answer I gave after the announcement.

It's like, where do you guys go from here? It's like you just make it better. So as a coach, I always feel like if you're not trying to make your classes better, like I, there are several things I could do better. There's several things you could do better. You should always be trying to make your classes better or make yourself better as a coach.

And if you ever get to the point where you're not, you're probably just not a good coach or you've almost kind of checked out a little bit. Yep. Right? I mean, don't you like. You can self-critique a class. I just took what? Your back SWAT class, you could probably self-critique a couple things. Absolutely.

That you did it in five and 6:00 AM Yeah, like if you ever get to the point where you don't think like that, it's a problem. So I go to a meeting like this, a to, you know, network with other affiliate owners, but also to learn and just listen. What does he do? Something's he's doing. Something's right, obviously.

So, You know, we got into music talk, which was fun. You know, I just was nodding my head the whole time. He gave a great line. Um, that I wanna say, you know, because, you know, we, we joke about music at the gym sometimes. Yeah. We get some feedback on that. Yeah. He goes, everyone thinks that their taste in music is good.

And I'm like, that it, that's like the simplest way to say it, but it's so true. But some people like my taste in music you might not like and vice versa. And he said like, how do you get a room of 20 people, which we both coach classes of more than 20, more often than not. Mm-hmm. How do you get everyone in that room that thinks their music taste in music is the best to listen to the same music in a workout?

And all be on the same page. So we really talked at length about what you should do with music in your gym. And you know, if you're listening to an hour of the same kind of music, that's a problem. Or if you're listening to your favorite music all the time, that's a problem. So, you know, those are some of the topics that we talked about, that we talked about.

More serious things, logistics, warmups, uh, but programming came up. Mm-hmm. And I was really surprised when he said this, and this is really what we're gonna talk about today. He said a few years ago he got rid of RX and scaled at his gym. There was no rx. That's pretty aggressive. It's, unless you were doing an open workout or Fran, like they're, those are not your workouts.

[00:05:12] Sam Rhee: So I assume that they were doing their own

[00:05:13] David Syvertsen: programming, obviously. Yeah. Yep. So he's been programming, I think it's him. I don't, don't quote me on that. I'm pretty sure he's the one that programs for the gym. And here's an example, 2159 deadlifts, Hank Cleans burpees. That's today's workout guys. That's it.

2159 Dallas hang, like there is no rx. You choose your weight. And in my, you know, control freak O C D, what I'm used to, what I feel like has worked at bison, my initial thought was, no way. Is that a good idea? No way is that, is that gonna be a productive thing? Right? But it works. And he said since then, and he's honest about it, he goes like, it actually has really improved.

The general demeanor of the gym since we made that change, because it got people, and we're gonna go few, uh, through a few pros and cons. I wanna get your thoughts on all of them. Yeah. He goes, it got people away from pursuing things they should not be pursuing. That was the biggest thing is like, you know, we, we talked about RX is it's a badge of honor for some, it's a goal for some.

Mm-hmm. And why is it, and RX can be so subjective. Mm-hmm. Right? If we go to mayhem programming, well we had that Waldwick that one week, it's really hard. Most of you guys can't do it. Mm-hmm. So, um, and does that mean you're bad? No. Just means the programming's hard, you know? Mm-hmm. So, I, I, it got my wheels spinning.

There were a lot of topics. I walked away from that meeting, like, you know, self-evaluate. Are we doing something wrong? Should we change something? This was one of 'em that, in, in some ways I'm gonna consider, not all the way, I'm not gonna go like no more RX for boma, no more for scale. But I was thinking, you know, we do have some days where we say, choose weight heavy, dead lifts heavy, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. What is, what's your initial thought if you went to a gym, Sam, you guys move to wherever. Yeah. And you're just joining as a member. Yeah. You go to the gym, there's never RX weights up there. What do you do? Well,

[00:07:05] Sam Rhee: at this point, I have enough experience that I feel like I could help myself, but it would throw me for a loop because I.

I would have to think a lot more. Yeah, I would, you know, cuz if they give, usually when they give a weight, then I can sort of scale off of that. Like, that's too much, that's not enough. And it, it also helps guide me in terms of the stimulus. Like I. 21, 15 9. I assume this is gonna be a fast workout, so I need to move quickly.

But how quickly, like, you know, like unbroken or too soon, right? So, so then I'm sitting, I would basically bug the coach a lot. Yeah. I'd be like, what is my time? Like time cap, what should I be finishing this in? What, you know, uh, am I going to do the deadlifts and hand cleans at the same weight? Am I, uh, you know, gonna have two barbells?

I don't know. Some places might, um, What should the feeling be? You know, how much should you know? Is this a two minute, a four minute, a six minute workout? Mm-hmm. And all of that is just going to slow me down. Right? It's gonna make it more inefficient. So my first reaction is I could do it, but it's gonna take me a lot longer before the workout to figure out what the hell I have I have to do.

So, and

[00:08:16] David Syvertsen: I don't know this for a fact, but maybe his response would be, okay, so we write these workouts out. And there's a description, and that would be the start of the solution. If there was problems like you were just talking about, would be, you know, we do like little blurbs for the programming here.

Sometimes, you know, some people do say they help, so, but I could be much more detailed with those. I could write four paragraphs for a workout every single time, and I would do it if there was that much demand for it. But there would be demand, it would almost be vital slash necessary to have long write-ups so that a, your coach isn't answering.

23 questions per class that are just the same question over and over, but it also part of, to me, of what a CrossFit membership includes, right? When you're a paying member. Is the programming. They take a lot of the thinking out for you, right? So they are telling you, you know, these are the ways that you should hit, and then we scale down from there.

That's part of what you're paying for, the programming, the coaching, the, you know, the attention that you get, that it's not just show up to the gym, do your thing when you do this. This is one of the cons to me that we'll eventually get to. But I, I wanna start off on the positive side, but to me, my initial thought was, you're gonna make it a lot harder for both the athlete and the coach.

Yeah. That was my initial response. Yeah. So, but I want to start off with the pros cause I don't want to be negative here. Okay. Um, the pros. Okay. Here, here's. It, and let's just go one by one and talk about it. A less competitive feel. So I don't know if it would work for everyone, but I do think there are athletes both here and, and out there in, in the, in the CrossFit world that do RX because they feel like they need to because they're an RX athlete.

What is, what is. A RX athlete, we can go down a different rabbit hole, a different time of what is a real RX athlete. But to me it centers around the open. I, that's another reason I always say the open is the barometer for what RX and scale should be. So if there's ring muscles in the open, you gotta put ring muscles into your programming at your local affiliate.

Uh, so you know, if you can't do ring muscle up, you're a partial RX athlete cause you can't do everything Rx right. So, You know, but does we see it in this gym all the time? People pursue RX just because literally they want RX written next to their name, a thousand percent. Okay. So I'm guilty of that many times.

Right? And I, you know, so, hey, I'm a six Amer today. I. I want people to see that IR access workout at seven, at 9 30, 11, 12, 1, 4, 15. Like I want everyone to see it. Right? And I want the people that I playfully or not playfully compete with, Hey, I did RX today. If you're gonna beat me, you better do rx. If you wanna compete with me, you better do rx.

Not a great mindset, by the way. Right? But no, there's egos involved and we all have them. And we're just speaking truth here from coaches that have experience. There are people that will RX because they want other people to see that they are x. Sometimes, and that's fine, but sometimes you're doing something you shouldn't be doing.

Yep. A snatch weight. I have a snatch workout, it's not soon, but it's coming up 1 35 RX six reps at a time. Ooh. There's gonna be a lot of people that do that because they can do it once. Yep. No, but in my blurb, it's gonna be like, this should be about 80% of your, your one rent max. Mm. So really, you should be able to snatch 1 65 plus if you're gonna RX this workout.

Mm. People are gonna ignore that. Mm-hmm. And they're gonna RX it because for that reason, they think they're RX athletes and they want other people to see it. Yeah. What do you think? Yeah, that, that

[00:11:42] Sam Rhee: could be me. Yeah. Yeah. That could actually be me. Yeah. I could be sitting there cuz I could do 1 35, but it's like, yeah, my, my one rep is probably like 1 55, 1 65 and I hate,

[00:11:52] David Syvertsen: and like, honestly, I probably would tell you to do it.

Yeah. Just so you know, uh, I'm not just saying that because you're here. But this is where it's hard to have an objective rule. Like we give a guide on should, you should be able to snatch 1 65. That's, I'm just trying to keep people safe. Right. But you, Aaron, Adam Ramsden, you guys can all do it. And I think you guys are smart enough to know that, hey, if I'm moving really poorly, I have to take a break.

Mm-hmm. Other people don't have that awareness. Mm. We have a few new people in the gym right now that are coming into bison, coming into CrossFit at a high fitness level. Mm-hmm. They can't CrossFit yet. Mm-hmm. But they're fit. Yes. And there's ego involved. Yep. And they're gonna be like, oh dude, I could snatch 1 35 once.

I'm like, all right, you're gonna do it 35 times in the work, or 36 times in the workout. Ooh. You know, with other movements. Mm-hmm. You know, and this is where they're gonna see that 1 35 up there and because they're competitive mm-hmm. They're gonna do it. Yep. And they probably shouldn't. Yep. So that's where a pro of not having that 1 35 written up there.

Hmm. You know, is it gonna solve every issue? No, because those same people might look at the person next to them doing 1 35 and just say, Hey, because he's doing it, I'm gonna do 1 35. If there was an rx, I feel

[00:13:00] Sam Rhee: like, uh, in the programming, if you can set the Rx. Well, like if you're a pro, if you have a really good programmer who can do that.

Right. It is super helpful. Yeah. I think if you have a programmer who can't do, who can't really figure out a good RX weight for that gym, not just for in general. Mm-hmm. Just for your gym, then I could see where. Getting rid of RX and scaled might be a benefit. Right. But, but someone who really know, and I feel like that's what you do with your rx.

Like, I'm always like,

[00:13:33] David Syvertsen: could go either way. And I'm

[00:13:35] Sam Rhee: always like, and uh, and that, that to me always shows me like, You know that you really have a good sense and, and feel, and I know a lot of people at the gym feel the same way. It's always just like right there and then. And that's why I think when you do do RX or you can do it, like you can take a certain, I'm sorry, you do take a certain pride because you know, most of the times you're smart enough.

You're like, I can't do that. But, but when you can, that it is, it does

[00:14:02] David Syvertsen: mean something. I wanna make sure, I wanna reiterate something I've said before. Pride's not bad. Ego's not bad. Okay. So I wanna make sure that they're, we're not putting a negative light on someone that's like, Hey, it's my pride that's making me go Rx.

It's not a bad thing. You just gotta be able to control it. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, like I have an ego, I have pride, I'll admit that, and, but I feel like I have control of it. I know there's certain things I should not be trying to do. Right. Like today's back spots, for example. Yeah. I really wanted to lift what other guys were lifting.

Yeah. But I didn't, you know, because I, I, you know, you have to have control of that pride because I'm just not ready to do that yet. I mean, about the

[00:14:34] Sam Rhee: less competitive feel. Yes. It's less competitive. Yeah. But sometimes you want that competitive

[00:14:40] David Syvertsen: feel. Absolutely. That's what CrossFit's founded

[00:14:42] Sam Rhee: on, really.

Right. And, and so I, there's no doubt when I do something Rx, it means what my ultimate. Number that I put up on the whiteboard means more like if I know I, I can't do RX and I scale it. I mean, once I put that SC on there, I don't really care as much exactly about my performance. I mean, I will still put a good performance in, but Absolutely.

But it's a little bit, it's not that extra gear that I might do if I have an RX there.

[00:15:06] David Syvertsen: So, you know, and, and Sam and I are both kind of performance centered. We do care about our performance, we care about our scores, we care about our weights. Right. We also have to keep in mind that, in my opinion, I dunno if you'll agree with this.

I think the majority are just here for general fitness. Yeah, I would say so. So if you're gonna be making a macro level decision for your gym, should we have RX are scaled up there? The vocal people are going to be the performance centered. Like, no, we need to have rx, we need to have scale, we need to record our scores, which also crosses South Broken does not do.

Right. Oh wow. Gonna talk about that a little bit too. Woo. Um.

[00:15:42] Sam Rhee: This is communist for God's sakes. What the

[00:15:44] David Syvertsen: hell? What the hell? And you know, um, yeah, that's, that's that. We could probably fit that in here too. But most people are here just for fitness and health. They don't care about the rx. I really do. And I'm envious of that sometimes.

Um, or at least they say they don't care. And what no RX could do. For those people and eventually the people that are so obsessed with RX is it makes them learn more about themselves. And to me, fitness and health is an everlasting. Learning, growing process. Like you are always learning new things about health in general about yourself, right?

It goes back to what we talked about at the start of the, uh, podcast, that if you're a coach that's not trying to get better at coaching, you should probably check out, you know, you should go somewhere like just stop coaching, right? Because it's such a service industry. And you always have to be thinking about others.

And when you're thinking about others, you wanna get better at what you're doing right as a person, as an individual, if you stop trying to learn about your health and how to improve your life. Like you're, you're gonna go down such a steep hill as you get older and start losing that fight with biology, it's just gonna snowball.

It's just gonna get worse and worse and worse. And this is why I love being around here sometimes. Like I just love being at the gym, whether I'm coaching or not, whether I'm working out or not. I like being around people that are so almost stressed about getting healthier and fitter and happier and all this stuff.

So, I think if you take rx, it does make someone break their workouts down more. You need some guidance from a coach like that. 2159 example. We said, Hey guys, 2159, deadlift, hand clean, burpee. Your hand clean is probably gonna dictate today's weight, right? Because we don't want you to get to a point where you're doing two cleans at a time.

So let's pursue a weight that the entire workout has said you should. Always be able to do seven to nine reps at a time. No question. It's like, all right, cool. Seven to nine reps at a time. That can now some someone new. We have a new guy in the gym right now is pretty fit. One of the guys I was just talking about.

He would, he still wouldn't know, right? That takes time. But you know what, A workout without Rx up there is gonna make him make a better decision. And that guide of seven to nine reps at a time is gonna make him learn about whether he's right or wrong today about that decision. It's gonna make him learn about workouts down

[00:18:01] Sam Rhee: the road.

I think you're right. Uh, I, I was thinking of it from two aspects. One is a longevity in CrossFit standpoint. Yeah. And longevity. I in CrossFit in some part is from avoiding injury and, you know, working every day, you know, with some less risk. And when you run, you know, when you re, you know, when you get close to that red line, you're always running a little bit more.

Risk. That's why the competitive athletes tend to have a fairly high risk cuz they're really training with such volume and intensity that Yeah. That, that you worry, they worry about that sort of thing. Right. And like you said, most people in our gym are here for everyday fitness to be over overall fit, but, and I have seen this in CrossFit.

The point of CrossFit honestly is to push yourself. Mm-hmm. To learn what it's like to train at a pretty high level without necessarily going over. And that takes. Time to learn. Like I've burnt myself multiple times going over, you know, redlining and, and running that risk of injury. But overall, my fitness level would be so much better, is so much better because I know if, if after a while if I didn't have more guidelines or or goal to push to or something and it was just me and I wasn't telling anyone and it wasn't being recorded, you know, I might do this at.

95 for the rest of my life. Right. And be like, I'm getting a, a workout in. Yeah. Right. But when I really need that push, I mean, that's why we're in class. Right, right. Because we're around people. Yep. That's the community. You're, you're getting feedback from them and you're getting push from them. You, you sort of take that aspect of it out when you drop.

That sort of, um, aspect of it. I really do enjoy looking out people's numbers, either being like, wow, like for example, Sabrina hit 2 75 on three rep today. Right. And

[00:19:51] David Syvertsen: just being

[00:19:52] Sam Rhee: like, whoa. Like, and admiring

[00:19:55] David Syvertsen: that. Right? Yeah. And, and did I, did I hear you say the line, it's like, almost like watching a pitcher throw fast.

Like that motion that

[00:20:00] Sam Rhee: she does is so, um, professional on so many levels, right? You know, like, and I told her like the, the. When she squats at one 15 or when she squats at 2 75. It looks like it's a little slower at 2 75 for sure, but the motion does not change. Yep. And DeCarlo has said that several times, like your air squat should look like your heaviest back squat.

And that is true. Mm-hmm. Some, some people execute it. She just executes, uh, so, so well. Um, and so, If I didn't see what Sabrina's number was and I didn't know what, what, you know, then I would, it would be less of a rich experience for me in class.

[00:20:35] David Syvertsen: Yep, yep. I understand that. Yeah. So like, again, the numbers are important, right?

And that's where RX scaled it is important to have a number up there. Um, so we can get into some of the cons now. Right. Okay. Because I, because my last one was going to be about reducing injury. Okay. And giving athletes ownership of themselves. Okay. We just talked about both those. So now the cons. Of no rx.

So if we took away RX scaled, again, you just have words written on the board, no numbers, right? New people, bad decision makers, those are the gonna people, those are the ones that get, they, they get put at risk the most and I'm, I sound like I'm contradicting myself and I'm making sure I'm not. Mm-hmm.

Where earlier I said people see RX and make their bad decision on that. Mm-hmm. Yes, that is the case. I think it would be much more frequent to see other people. Look at a whiteboard. Look at a workout, and pick their ways based on what others are doing in the room. Mm-hmm. Where if you have RX scaled written on the board.

Mm-hmm. Right. Some still do listen to the talk at the whiteboard about, Hey guys, make sure RX doesn't mean you're doing a good job. We're going after a certain stimulus of today's workout. So because our RX is this, and remember our RX workouts, our weights, our movements, our gymnastics, that is. For that person, for that kind of workout.

The best athletes in CrossFit bison can RX this and get through it in a certain amount of time. Stimulus training. Okay. If you know you're not one of those, you know, that caliber athlete with certain movements starts that hurt your feelings. I'm just being honest, right? That you gotta scale down from here.

Right. We've had this discussion before. Do you make RX easier and then make me, make people go RX plus n r n scaled. And trust me, we've had plenty of discussions with our staff. We've had more than enough reflections on it myself and I still come back to RX should be at the top and then you work your way down from there.

Um, I don't think you should be going in two different directions with Rx up and down RX Plus and Scaled, unless it's like a very specific reason or specific workout. Okay. So, Well, this gives a decision maker who's not good at making decisions with their weights. A guide of like, Hey, I'm not there yet with that movement.

I'm not someone that can crush wall balls and thrusters all day long, so I am one of the athletes that should be scaling from that number. Rather than just saying, Hey, go pick your weight, and then you go look at what someone else is doing, and you go from there. That's a bad decision.

[00:23:08] Sam Rhee: That was exactly what I was thinking is you are putting a way more decision making power into the athlete when you don't give any guidance with it.

Right. Which means either one, which we said this earlier, you're gonna have people bugging the coach up, you know? From here, like for hours

[00:23:24] David Syvertsen: asking for more guidance. Yeah. Or two. I know it'd be

[00:23:28] Sam Rhee: ridiculous. I mean, we already have a lot of questions for people with, and we're already giving a fair amount of guidance in terms of weights and numbers.

Right. Um, and then the second thing is, like you said, the people who don't have experience or are not good decision makers are just going to, um, go off of. Bad data or no data. Right. And then the, and I could tell you if we did this at, at bison, especially that first week or two, the number, like for example, 21 15 9, that range of times Yeah.

Would go from like two minutes to like 14, 15, 15, 18 minutes. Like we would have every range out there. Right. If you literally. Adhered to, like you have to choose your own weight. Right? And each class would run over by at least

[00:24:10] David Syvertsen: 15 minutes for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. So now that gets into my next point, stimulus training.

CrossFit is stimulus training. Nine times out of 10 there is a stimulus for the workout. That's why we put caps on workouts. Right? That's why some people do RX plus, right. Um, That. Hey, if I'm still hitting the stimulus with more weight, go for it. I'm not gonna stop you. All right. And let, let's say Fran didn't have a, um, didn't have an rx, you know, Fran is 2159.

95. 65 is the barbell weight. 95 guys. 65 girls. If that workout did not exist, but we just, we still programmed it. 2159 thrusters, pull-ups. We had no RX written up there, but I wrote, you know, eight minute cap, nine minute cap. You would have people doing nine to 5 65, and they're not really understanding the fact that when you get tired on thrusters like you are, you're screwed.

Almost like to a failure point. You're gonna have people do it in two, three minutes in this gym and you're gonna have people do it 13, 14 minutes or they're gonna get capped and you don't wanna get capped in workouts. It happens, it happens to all of us, but usually when that happens, unless the workout says it's okay to get capped, We're losing the point of the workout, and I think there's a disconnect between a lot of CrossFitters and a program.

There is a stimulus intent for every single workout that you need to try and hit, all right. That needs to be the goal for you to get the most outta the CrossFit program. All right. If one of your secondary goals is to be able to RX certain movements and weights more power to you, I love that. I actually think that's important to want to rx.

I think it's a great goal. I've said it before, if you wanna RX everything we ever do that's gonna make you. Really pay attention to a lot of the little things. It's gonna make you come on back swat day, maybe not the most exciting thing in the world, but you gotta get stronger if you wanna RX everything.

So you, you can't miss those days. It's not allowed. Right, right, right. Um, what are your thoughts on just the idea of losing stimulus training? If we take LA Rx skill?

[00:26:09] Sam Rhee: Uh, a thousand percent. I mean, when I do a workout and I know I have guidelines in terms of RX or scaled, and I may scale it, I'm doing it.

The problem is this, even as an athlete, even as a coach, I will do a workout and it will hit me in a way that was unexpected. How many times have we had athletes go, you know, I thought it was gonna be like this, but woo. After that first round, I felt my legs felt like lead coming off the box jumps into the thrusters or whatever it is, right?

You don't know what it's gonna feel like, and so, You know, even if with experience, athletes are gonna have issues in terms of determining stimulus and how it's gonna feel. Mm-hmm. And the more information we can give them, the better off they're gonna be. That's why I like doing these workouts if I can beforehand.

Mm. Because it gives me that. Feeling of what that stimulus is like, what do I need? You know, what is that feeling like?

[00:27:06] David Syvertsen: I have a good feeling you will not be wanting to do next Thursdays swab by yourself. Holy, uh, oh my God. I'm, I'm here. I'm gonna tell you what it is after and you'll, you'll all good thing you're golfing on Sunday.

I'm just gonna say that I just clenched a little bit right

[00:27:19] Sam Rhee: there. Um, but I will say this, so. Um, so anything that we can do to help people with that stimulus guide right, is better and less is not, I, in my mind personally, is not

[00:27:30] David Syvertsen: better. Right? Um, and the last thing I'll say about a con to taking away rx, I feel like the overall programming you can easily lose Continuity and consistency, you know, I mean, how many times have I.

I asked for some comments last night that I, you know, we can touch, touch on about RX Masters and scale, which is coming up in this episode. Okay. Uh, I saw about 15 minutes left here that, um, that the line of hey Bison program has gotten a lot harder over the past five years. Oh, it has. We talked about that.

Yeah. And why do we think that? Is it because, you know, Dave just hates people and wants to crush them. I'm sure I get some of that sometimes. The fitness level in our gym has gotten better. From a macro perspective. It just has, there are peop like, I'm not even gonna bring up top 10, top 20 athletes. I'm not even gonna go there.

I'm just saying this gym can do much more weight, capacity work, and volume than it could have done five to six years ago. Is the gym bigger? Yes. Are people that have come from other gyms now come here? Yes. That we've all kind of pointed that arrow up now in people's, some people's defense, they haven't gotten fitter, they're still just as fit as they were five years ago, but now they are scaling most things where they used to RX and that can cause some, you know, some negative thoughts.

And I get that and I am sensitive to it. I do try to program around that as well sometimes. Okay. But the. The consistency of this gym has been, as you guys get fitter, we're going to push the needle together as a group. Whether you feel like you're involved in that or not, we're doing it as a group. Okay.

If I, if we take out RX scaled, we no longer have that like togetherness, in my opinion. It's harder for me too, by the way. Right. My, my main program has always been bison and then I've had coaches and I've done some other stuff, right? I had like a year or two where I was. Chasing the competitions. Um, and I had a coach and I did everything he programmed for me, but bison's still kind of in my foundation.

It's harder for me too, by the way. Right. And I've gone through like the, used to be young, now I'm a masters athlete and things hurt more and it's harder for me, blah, blah, blah, right? But we're all doing that together and it's consistent that, and if we do flat line at some point where we're getting to a point where people, are most of the gym's getting cats out of a workout or no one can, the workouts.

We, we, we pump the brace a little bit, but it, it still offers a barometer for where we are as a gym, fitness-wise, and that, that's really my main kickback is you no longer have that barometer for your gym. What do you think I. Yeah. Uh, you,

[00:30:07] Sam Rhee: you and the guide general guidelines for RX programming is you're programming for the strongest or the most capable athlete in that workout for that particular workout, for that particular workout, for the gym.

And then you, and then everyone else should be scaling off of that. And there's no doubt that we have stronger people at the gym, more fit people, more capable people, every workout, every movement, everything that we're doing. Yep. And. And so I have said multiple times if you're a newbie and you come into the gym, it can be really

[00:30:36] David Syvertsen: Hell yeah.

Tough.

[00:30:37] Sam Rhee: Like being a newbie 5, 7, 8, 10 years ago, the weights were lighter. Like there were fewer movements. Like we have more different types of movements now too. We've incorporated so many different things. We never did dumbbell snatches 10 years ago. Mm-hmm. All right. Like never. Um, so, um, but you have to, and honestly, I think.

Um, you know, we all personally take steps forward, steps back. Um, some things get better, some things don't get as good.

[00:31:03] David Syvertsen: Uh, that's, that's

[00:31:05] Sam Rhee: part of the journey, I think, and to be able to see how the gyms RX is set. Again, that really depends on how good the programmer is, right? Like a program, like, that's why I sometimes have issues with subscribing to other.

Uh, companies programming like mayhem. Cuz I will look at it and I'll be like, holy shh. Yeah. Like who does, like for example, I, I was like thinking about this 21 15 9 deadlift hand clean burpees and I was like, I bet you ma'am would do like 2 0 5 or 2 25 or something. Yeah, right. Yeah. 2 25 hand cleans and I'd be like, That's stupid.

Yeah, right. But like, I mean, maybe one or two, like not even, I don't know who would be able to really do that well here. Yeah. And then I was like, that's so, so it it, it is a guide and it is a guide for your gym. And so if you're taking someone else's Rx off of a piece of paper, that's why the same thing with CrossFit, like cat programming, like.

The RX should be to your gym. Mm-hmm. And that is important. It is a guide for your gym. It's not a guide for the rest of the population or for the rest of the world. Um, you should really scale, scale it or your number to your particular group

[00:32:14] David Syvertsen: of people. Yeah, I agree. So I was hoping that we weren't going to touch on something, because there's another point I have that never gets brought up in this discussion.

We just talked about RX as skilled. For half hour. We didn't bring up gymnastics once. Oh, other movements. Every time someone brings up RX scaled that we shouldn't be doing it. They're usually not a lifter. Right? Why? So if we need to scale weights up or down, why don't this, why don't we scale gymnastics volume?

[00:32:46] Sam Rhee: Meaning. So for example, how would you do that? For toast to bar

[00:32:50] David Syvertsen: or pull-ups or something? Exactly. How do you do it? Because like right now, 2159 Deadli hand clean burpee. You guys picked the weights. What if we said the workout was pull-ups, box jumps. Toes, the bar handstand pushups. Pick your volume. No, Dave, you need to tell us how many were reps do.

Uh, well we just want you to hit a stimulus, you know, something that's hard, but you can do 'em broken, but, you know, three rounds through and be consistent. People's a people's brains would be spinning, be like, I have no, you can't. You have to tell us how many to do. Okay, cool. But how, because the illustration he gave, this guy, Dave, gave me that, I laughed, a lot of us laughed when he said this.

He goes, there's no way, just because I have a penis, I should be doing 135 pound thrusters in a workout. I weigh 145 pounds, but because I'm a guy, I have to do that weight. This is like, that's stupid. And I'm like, I get it. Do you say the same thing about pull-ups? Because I don't like, We have 225 pound guys here doing five muscle ups on a row in a workout with handstand pushups and burpees and jump rope like that.

They're doing more work than the person that weighs 150 pounds. So if we're gonna scale weights because you're small, we should be scaling volume for gymnastics because they're big.

[00:34:05] Sam Rhee: I see. So RX pullups would be 10,

[00:34:08] David Syvertsen: but, but if you way above this, you should be doing 5, 8, 5. But like, or it's like, how about this?

If you wanna keep it, the pullups. Um, Hey guys, pullups, but hey, if you're a little lighter, maybe you do chest a bar. Mm-hmm. You know, or you do strict, you know, this is why you open up a can of worms if you don't have rx. Mm-hmm. And in my opinion, not having RX simply just makes it easier for the programmer.

Makes it harder for the coach, by the way. Yeah. Because we just said you would get littered with questions. Yep. But it's just funny and I don't have an answer. It's just funny to me. And I'm not being negative either. It's just we never bring up the body weight stuff. And the most of CrossFit programming is body weight.

Mm-hmm. So why, how come that never comes up? Like if we, or if we did write 2159 handstand pushups, toast bar box jumps, um, you choose what kind of handstand pushups. So if I'm awesome at 'em, maybe I'll do deficit. If I'm awesome in pull-ups, maybe I'll do 'em all strict. So maybe that's your answer to it.

But you never see that. You almost never see that. Like I know a guy like Hovi, he does pretty much strict pull-ups every time we come here. Mm-hmm. You do that a lot too. You cut the rest in half, you go strict, right? Yep. Kyle Rader will do that sometimes. Yeah. Um, so. And, and that's fine. You guys will scale that and you kind of take that on yourself.

I think that's more for like safety issues and shoulder issues, right? Mm-hmm. But you don't ever hear that in, in a gym. It's always about the weights are too heavy, but you almost never say, Hey, I'm bigger. I should be only doing, you know, I should be able to do handstand pushups to an at mat rather than all the way to them.

[00:35:37] Sam Rhee: That's so interesting. I don't know why. And I, I mean, I think it's just from a simplicity standpoint, right? Because simplicity for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, body weight

[00:35:45] David Syvertsen: movements,

[00:35:46] Sam Rhee: everyone is at a different body weight, so it gets super complicated. Yep. I mean, we've talked about this before. Should we

[00:35:51] David Syvertsen: have weight classes for CrossFit?

Yep. That came up last night. Yeah. And all that sort of

[00:35:55] Sam Rhee: stuff. And, uh, You know, ev, this is always a compromise. All of these are compromises that are being made, and honestly, corporate CrossFit has worked out a lot of this stuff and you, you see how they sort of do their programming, especially for competitive athletes, what they do and.

Uh, we sort of go along with it because there's, there is an efficiency that's associated with RX scaled that you would not have. Would there be advantages not to do RX scaled? Absolutely. Mm-hmm. But the efficiency of getting people better, it, it

[00:36:29] David Syvertsen: so tremendously inefficient. Hmm. So we'll wrap this up.

We've got about 10 minutes left. We're gonna con circle this conversation to should there be RX and Scaled and we just give you our thoughts on it. Again, we lean towards, there should always be rx, but it's okay if you don't. We're gonna bring back up the topic that Sam and I have debated a few times and it's should there be RX and Scaled for Masters and instead of us just giving our opinions back and forth, which I'm sure we'll get to, I, I put it on my Instagram last night.

That if you have any thoughts on that, I'll keep you anonymous, right? But I do want to hear what do you guys think about RX and scale for mass, or sorry, RX for Masters? And what, what I'm essentially asking is, is there an age number in which we should just naturally start bumping down RX weights and volume?

All right. For a lot of the movements, for anyone above X amount of age, The most common number I got was once you hit 40, we should start scaling. I've said 45 in the past is when I would start scaling the CrossFit games. They start at 55, so if you're 54, you're doing the same workout as a 21 year old and.

Um, don't agree with that, but it's okay because again, if you're competing and you're only competing against people in any group, it really doesn't matter. So, but we're really talking about how can we blend this into our fitness programming at the gym. And I've tied this conversation with so many people, and it's one of the most polarizing topics that I talk to about people in the gym because people are passionately on both sides of the argument.

Sam leans more toward, there should not be masters for Rx short. In a short summary, why is that? Because you're

[00:38:06] Sam Rhee: stigmatizing the masters. Okay. If you, uh, write down an m or something next to my name, then it's just a reminder to me and everyone else, you're,

[00:38:17] David Syvertsen: you're effing old. Like it's like a scarlet

[00:38:20] Sam Rhee: m that you're writing on my

[00:38:22] David Syvertsen: score.

That's fair. And that's fair. And you know what, like. I don't

[00:38:27] Sam Rhee: like, I, I never think about, I, I try not to think about my age, not because I'm ashamed of it. Right. I'm 53

[00:38:33] David Syvertsen: years old. Yeah. And you're doing amazing. You're, I'm

[00:38:36] Sam Rhee: whatever. Like, I, I never want to use whatever my age is as an excuse for not performing.

Okay. Like whatever, whatever level to which I can perform, I can perform. Now, do is age a factor? Absolutely. But you know what? No one's writing. Five, four on my score. Either like, you know what I'm saying? Like that, that like, or my weight, like next to my score. So these are all just points of data about me.

They're, you know. Yeah. Yes. I'm five four. I don't know. I wanna say five. Five. I'm a hundred. I say five 10. So I'm 168 pounds. Yeah. And I'm 53 years old, so why the FD have to write one of those things down when all of those things do actually affect my. My performance. Yeah, my height does, my weight does and

[00:39:22] David Syvertsen: my age does.

Sam's body fat is probably under 10%, so, so yeah, you could write that one then. So like, yeah, like pick and choose what you wanna write on the board. Right? I don't want you to talk about my age, but you talk about my body fat. Other people are like, I don't want you to talk about my body fat. But you could say, I'm 28, you know, or I'm 21.

Right. And again, now you're just like, Hey coach, write down all these life details about me. Um. Definitely a fair point. Now, I don't want to be reminded that I'm ex age, I'm looking at someone's response or again, anonymous. Um, also, again, just personal, not sure my opinion even matters since I have no science backing it.

Very fair point. But I've heard this multiple times. This came up at the Hinshaw seminar, but generally speaking with friends and family, I feel like at age 40 is a noticeable change for many people. Physically, it could be very, very minor and people might not even notice. But whenever I hear someone that usually their, their ailments start acting up more and more, it's usually like right around 40.

So my point of putting a Master's RX up there would be to kind of coincide with the fact what's it is naturally happening to you. We do lose lean muscle mass starting at the age of 35 guys. It happens, you know, unless you're taking a p e D. Um, You know, I'm not a woman, I'm not gonna go down the path of, of knowing what they go through.

But I know at some point, you know, like menopause comes in and like they, you know, they're gonna come in and still CrossFit and they have to start changing things and we're actually helping that process out. Especially if you are mentally attached to an rx. We are literally telling you, you're still rx, you're still doing this prescribed.

And we understand you're old. You know, I see your age every time you start for the open. Like, I could go find your age if I want to, and maybe we should try to fight. This stigma of getting older is is bad. You know, I always give so much respect to people like you that you're still doing this at that age.

Like, look around you, dude, like. You're a superhero. Like no one's doing that your age. Nobody except the CrossFitter, you know? And it's like, I almost wanna say it's a badge of honor. That, that, that you're a masters athlete and you're still doing this stuff and it's almost in a way to protect you. I think there, that's where a disconnect is between you and I with this stuff.

It has not like I, and I understand why, and this is why all of my responses that I got from athletes, most of them were, nah, most of them from coaches. Every coach that messaged me said, yes, there should be a master. And it's really because you're trying to protect people from themselves. What do you think?

I know how to scale. Yeah. Does everyone know at your age you're very in tune with CrossFit?

[00:41:57] Sam Rhee: You should. Yeah. I mean, I think we should push people to learn how to scale. Mm-hmm. So, You know, it's an ego thing. I know. It is. The people that I know who are good athletes, who are masters, feel like they're not being recognized enough for their accomplishments at age 55 at age 60.

Like, you know, I'm killing it. I'm, you're right. I'm killing it for my age. I am a superhero in my group, like for my pop in the population. And yet I come to the gym and on the whiteboard it says, scaled in, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm. And so you know it, so, I love it when I can actually get recognition that I'm killing it and I'm 60.

Right. And I'm doing so well. Well, you know what, I understand that. Mm-hmm. But there are opportunities that we have where you can shine. Right. The open competitions. Yep. Other, you know, like they have categories for, for people who are Absolutely. Yeah. At your age. So why do you need that recognition every day at the gym that you're doing it so well?

Like, come on.

[00:42:57] David Syvertsen: Right. It could be that it's training you for those tests. Right. And like you have to ask yourself, is it the ego that's making that decision? Like I'm looking at another athlete that said, my ego would say no, but more and more my body and my wad scores say otherwise. Based off how I feel and what I noticed in my own performance over the years, I think 40 to 45 should be a slight step down from open rx.

Uh, basically up to age 35. That's what he means. Um, and then every five years you kind of just scale it down another two to 5%, whatever. He didn't say that, but So

[00:43:24] Sam Rhee: what at age should you start the Master's rx?

[00:43:26] David Syvertsen: If you're gonna do this, my anecdotal opinion would be 45. And then every 10 years, so like at 45 essentially things go down by 10%.

Mm-hmm. And then at age 55 it goes down another 10%. Mm-hmm. Um, and that's about where it would end up naturally. But what I don't always know is this is more of a logistic programming thing. 2159, pull up thrusters. Mm-hmm. Does that mean we're changing? The volume two. Yeah. 18. So it's gonna be 13, 18 and a half.

Yeah. Uh, 12. And like you lose kind of the flow, right? I mean, part of these rest schemes are math based. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I want people to do X amount of volume. Yeah. But it's also easier to keep track of. Yeah. Like your rest scheme's gonna be harder to keep track of. It's 18 14 9, right? Wait, what? 18 14, 8.

Right. Um, so again, you're just opening up a can of worms and you're making things complicated. Um, so I, I think something should be scaled for most athletes starting at 45. Yeah. And then down to 55 again. Yeah. But not everything. Yeah. And the way I've kind of settled on this at Bison was that we do it every now and then, but the issue, and it's not really an issue because again, you, Kat, Tracy, you're all, you're all the, you guys are adults and you guys know yourselves very well.

Yeah. And there's usually a reason why you wouldn't wanna do it. Yeah. That's very justifiable. Is. You know, the fact that you guys didn't do it, you know, so now it's, so this is what like, I remember talking to the coaches about this, right? Here's rx. Here's RX Masters 50 plus or 45 plus. You did regular rx.

I think Kat did too. So now I'm like, wait, is that RX Plus or mm-hmm. My thought was, no, I'm going to write Sam and Kat did rx. If you did the Master's rx, you're up there as rx. Mm-hmm. So someone who doesn't know you or comes at night, They're just looking at you as rx. Mm-hmm. If they don't know your your age mm-hmm.

They're gonna be looking at you and saying, all right, wait, did Sam do bi like Open RX or Master's rx? Mm-hmm. And it gets complicated and it's like all these topics, is it causing too much confusion? And does it circle back to what this podcast started off as? Mm-hmm. You need to be able to make your own decisions, you know, and here's our guide, but you should be able to make your own decision and we just screw this whole thing.

[00:45:43] Sam Rhee: It's an interesting discussion. Everyone that you know of, especially on the coaching side, is on the other side of this equation where they're not

[00:45:52] David Syvertsen: masters, right? It's just me. Right. Like I'm the only one who's over 50. You are. You're true.

[00:45:57] Sam Rhee: So all I say is okay, you, you can have your perspective, but wait till you get to the other side of things and then you tell me whether you want that MRX next to your name.

Absolutely. And

[00:46:06] David Syvertsen: tell me how you feel about it. So I wouldn't put mrx, that's the thing. I would just put rx, you know, that's bullshit. No, no,

[00:46:13] Sam Rhee: no. Absolutely not.

[00:46:15] David Syvertsen: Because, no, and here's the thing. That's why it causes confusion. I would just write, I would never write mrx. I would just write Rx. Because you're no fault.

Nope. But then we would have, because I know you, I wouldn't know what you did. If I looked at your score and I wasn't there and I just saw RX next to your name. My question would be like, was it Masters RX or regular? That's fake. That's fake. Is it total? But in the open, if you go into, it doesn't have MRX next to you at 55 plus

[00:46:40] Sam Rhee: No, but they know what division I'm in.

I'm in the 50 to 54 age group.

[00:46:43] David Syvertsen: Some people do. No, they know. I guess when you filter the leaderboard, you would say that you're in the

[00:46:48] Sam Rhee: five plus. Yeah, absolutely. And also when you get to quarter finals, everyone knows, it's like the ma Like, you know, we don't, we, we have only a very few number of people who are indivi, like 18 to 34 who get in.

Right, right. Most of us are masters at that point. Right, that's true.

[00:47:00] David Syvertsen: So they all know. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And again, is that we make the decision on like what other people know, what other people think. Yes. You know, we, we do to a point. Um, you know, so the, the. And, and again, I'm trying to wrap this up because I would love to keep this conversation going, but we do have a deadline that we have to adhere to in the next five minutes.

Mm-hmm. Um, but I, I still wanna keep this dialogue going and I didn't get to everyone's comment that that messaged back, but I do want people to think about this more and more. And I don't only wanna make it about Sam and I and our masters athletes endeavors, you know, This applies. The reason I brought this master stuff up, it is the same exact conversation as RX scaled in general.

Yes. It's based on ego. It's based on pushing your threshold. It's based on doing things together and not feeling ostracized because you're older or scaled. Mm-hmm. Or, or rx. Mm-hmm. Right. Does RX and scaled do more damage than good? Damage is ego giving fake goals, making things, uh, making people think things that are not really true.

Right. If you're an RX athlete at a gym that just started off and you think you're a monster because you can RX everything, then you come to a gym like this, you know, you get hit hard with truth that you're not right. Um, and then, but it's also there to help us out. You know, there's good and bad to this stuff, right?

It's, it's, and there's a huge. Mutual responsibility between athletes and coaches and programmers to try to get it perfect even though you're never gonna get it perfect. You're always striving for that. And that's why I brought up the master stuff. It's, it's the same exact discussion. Good point. So I do Thank you guys, everyone listening today.

Thanks for listening. I want you to just put some more thought into what really is RX to you, what is scaled? I'm sure we'll talk about this in another light. Maybe we can get up a third person up here. Mm-hmm. Um, this would be a fun topic to talk about with a third, uh, another guest. Um, I have a few people in my head right now.

I think it would be really good to talk to about this. Mm-hmm. Because they go back and forth themselves on it. Mm-hmm. And I think a good, healthy discussion on any debatable topic is you hear both sides and you respect both sides. So that, that was fun to do. Awesome. All right. Cool guys. Thank you. We'll see you next week.