S03E125 RX PLUS: A Candid Discussion About Their Place in CrossFit
Are RX plus workouts in CrossFit gyms really beneficial? Or is it more about athlete ego? Join coaches David Syvertsen @davesy85 and Sam Rhee @bergencosmetic as they peel back the layers on this intriguing and somewhat controversial issue in the CrossFit world. We dissect the various perspectives - from athletes to coaches and even programmers, bringing our own experiences to light and critically analyzing whether RX Plus workouts should be a regular part of the CrossFit routine.
Imagine hitting your gym and seeing a daunting workout. Why would you consider going RX Plus for yourself? We delve into the impact that RX plus workouts have on performance and community dynamics. We ponder the pros and cons of upscaling workouts, discuss the ripple effects of daybreak warriors posting their scores, and argue the significance of accurate data for stimulating motivation and inspiration.
Can RX Plus elevate the challenge for athletes who consistently perform on an elite level? Weighting the importance of meeting the workout's stimulus when considering RX plus, we take you on a journey to high level competition. So, whether you're a CrossFit enthusiast or a casual listener, there’s plenty to look forward to!
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0:00 Debating RX Plus Workouts
13:13 Rx Plus on CrossFit Performance Impact
23:58 Programming for Athletes
37:35 Supporting Health, Fitness, and Sports Training
S03E125 RX PLUS: A Candid Discussion About Their Place in CrossFit
[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the HerdFit podcast. I am coach David Syvertsen.
I'm here with my cohost, Dr. and coach Sam Rhee. Recording here on a Sunday before a big day. We can announce this now. We kind of put this out on social media already, but tomorrow actually in about 19 hours, we're going to have Joe Linton sitting in between us. to talk about the Legends 2023 competition, but probably more importantly, what most of you guys are wanting to hear about is the fact that Legends is now the new host to the CrossFit Games Masters Divisions and Teens and Adapted.
Oh no, just uh, sorry, just the Masters. And we're really excited to Kind of get some information out of him, at least what he's allowed to say, but ask him some questions, some easy ones, give him some layups. We're also going to ask him some tough questions, uh, because what he's taking on is an enormous responsibility.
He has a lot of pressure and he's a great guy. I'm really glad that him and Bob both got it. I don't think anyone else deserved it as much as they did, um, to get this first crack at it. And so if you guys really want to get into that, next week's episode will be airing. We'll have Joe Linton. We're going to be interviewing him tomorrow, but it'll air about five, six days later.
Um, so Sam can't wait
[00:01:06] Sam Rhee: for that, right? Yeah. I mean, I listened to him earlier on talking elite fitness and I feel like we could, uh, We could, uh, ask a little more probing questions than
[00:01:15] David Syvertsen: they did. Yeah, yeah, we're going to strap him down to the chair. You know, if we're going to do, if we're going to have the gym do his workout on Monday, we can, we can ask him some tough questions and then he could get his revenge on us as we, as we do the workout.
You're going to do the workout tomorrow? Yeah, I'm going to stay and do the 930. Oh, nice. Awesome. Sweet. Yeah, 930 would be fun tomorrow. All right, cool. So, um, today's topic is kind of in this sport idea, but it's really not because we see this in the local gyms all the time. And it really is a polarizing topic.
Should you RX plus workouts and what should everyone else's approach be to your RX plus workout? And this is a fascinating topic. We've actually debated this as a staff multiple times. And I guess when we have like a tie, right? You have five people think this five people that it does come down to. I usually have to make the decision on how we're going to handle something like that.
And it's really been one of the few situations in our gym over the years where I just. Don't have an answer of what we should do. And we're going to get into like any debatable topic, whether it's something not so serious like RX plus or something serious out there in the real world outside of our CrossFit bubble, I think it's really important to talk about every single perspective and give your potential why.
And to, to all of those different perspectives to help, at least we can all understand why someone does it, why we shouldn't do it. So no matter what side of the fence you're on is, you know, should RX plus even be a thing? Should that even be allowed? You know, Listen to the perspectives of different sides.
And we're going to give three sides here. The athlete perspective, the coach perspective, how you handle this as a coach, and then the programmer, you know, um, it's, there's our multiple answers to all those perspectives. So Sam, you've been at Bison for, you know, we're almost 10 years. And now we've got our 10 year anniversary coming up.
Can't wait. And you've been here for most of those years, all but just a couple of months. You've seen people Rx Plus before. Have you Rx Plus before?
[00:03:26] Sam Rhee: I have to admit I have on occasion, but not recently.
[00:03:29] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Hey, we don't want to start off this thing that it's a bad thing, right? But it's, um, I've done it before and I, I, I think I've done it responsibly.
And I've also think I've done it irresponsibly. So when you say
[00:03:40] Sam Rhee: Rx Plus, just to clarify, you mean like, let's suppose you, the workouts, Grace, 30 clean and jerks for time at. 135, 95, someone's like, I'm going to do it at 155 or 115 or something
[00:03:52] David Syvertsen: like that. Yeah. You're making the workout harder than the prescribed movements, weights, loads, volume.
Uh, it is almost always loads. We'll get into that in a little bit. Uh, but yeah, you're basically taking a workout that's written for a class. And again, this happens a lot in group fitness classes, right? When we program for the gym or programming for it's a, I don't want to call it template, but it kind of is because you have 180 people.
Come to the gym in a day and they're all doing the same workout. We scaled down a lot, right? We write RX and scale on the board. Um, and occasionally you'll have athletes that need to RX plus it or feel they need to, for whatever reason, we'll get into that. But basically what an RX plus in terms of what we're talking about is I'm going to make this workout more difficult.
That's it. You're going to make it more difficult. That's what RX plus is. And then you write your score on the board. You get the RX with a little plus sign next to you. So everyone in the world could see it. Right. Why do people do this? Let's start off on the athlete perspective. Why do you think if you come to the gym at a, um, let's say you come at night one night.
Okay. And you see there's 150 scores on the board. Let's make it something a little more complicated than grace because there's like, there's such a thing as heavy grace and obese grace. Yeah. Let's just talk about like, um, like a five round workout. You know what? The one that we've been doing lately, we still have another version of this with wall balls, thrusters, bar facing burpees and toes bar.
And the RX thruster is 85 60, a weird weight. You know, you don't see those weights with thrusters often. 20 pound wall ball, toes bar, bar facing burpees. Um, that's a pretty tough workout. It's a good workout. It's a CrossFit workout. But you see temptation in some, or there are athletes that feel temptation, they might not do it, to make this a little bit tougher.
Make it a little bit heavier. Why do you think that is?
[00:05:44] Sam Rhee: Uh, I would say that one of the perspectives would be, you know what, 55 reps of 85 pound thrusters or 60 pound thrusters is not too taxing and I'm not going to get the best workout if that's what I'm programming myself for. That's what I'm going to do.
So you know what, let me just bump it up to 95 or 105 and I feel like I'll get the stimulus that I think the programmer is
[00:06:10] David Syvertsen: trying to get for me. Yep. So sometimes when we train our coaches to give a good whiteboard talk, right? And they do a really good job of it. I'll go up in front of the class and say, Hey guys, this weight, just so you know, it should be a weight you can do 11 reps in a row of.
Like you should be able to do 11. That immediately, especially an inexperienced CrossFitter. He'll be like, Oh, so that's, that's the stimulus that Dave wants. He just said, I should be able to do all 11 thrusters unbroken. Some people see that and like, Yep. But I'm going to have to go lighter because I can't do that weight 11 times.
But then the other athlete, I'd be like, dude, I could do 30 pounds heavier unbroken every single time through five rounds of 11 reps. Let's go. I got that. That might be the number one reason why I think people do RX Plus. I'm trying to be glass half full here and we will go glass half empty in a little bit is that they hear a coach talk about stimulus and we preach stimulus here a lot.
And we also know that there's a huge gap, huge, huge gap between the strongest and the weakest in a gym like this, just based on volume of people that come here and experience levels too and backgrounds, right? That. If they hear stimulus needs to be X, Y, Z, and they could do that with heavier weights, why wouldn't they do it?
Same thing, a 30 pound wall ball for guys, 20 pound wall ball for ladies. You know, like, hey, stimulus says I gotta go unbroken, I can do unbroken. Why wouldn't I do it? Do you look down on that?
[00:07:35] Sam Rhee: No, absolutely not. I, I think people should try to challenge themselves if that's what they're really thinking about.
Mm
[00:07:43] David Syvertsen: hmm. Yeah. Now, let's go glass half empty. What would be a reason that you might not hear anyone actually admit, but what's a reason why someone might rx plus a workout? Because of this voice inside their head. I have a couple reasons, but I want to hear yours first. Okay?
[00:08:00] Sam Rhee: Well, I'm going against Jimmy today And I know Jimmy, he's going to get a really good time on this.
And my time is going to suck next to his time. So if I go heavier on the thrusters, then I could get a lower score, but it'll say RX plus, and they'll be like, Oh, well, I don't have to compare myself to Jimmy because I actually did a harder workout than he did. And I'm, I'm good. My
[00:08:25] David Syvertsen: ego is intact. Yeah. I don't take the L, right?
I'm not going to walk home with a scarlet letter. Tattooed onto my forehead saying I lost to Jimmy because he did Rx. I did Rx I was three minutes slower, but hey, I went Rx so that's why, that's why. So I do see this in competitive athletes a lot. And when I say competitive, I don't mean people that sign up for comps or go to the games or anything like just people that come to the gym and they're very competitive every day.
And I think that's a great trait that can help you out in the real world outside of this bubble that we're in. But You at some point, especially after a little bit of time of competing day to day, some people come here every single day. It's like, that's their thing. They're trying to compete, which is fine.
You are trying to find new angles at some point to tell yourself that you're doing a good job, that you won, you know, and that could be a reason. Almost always when we see someone RX plus, and I want to say almost always 99. 9 percent of RX plus athletes, it's the weight. It's a barbell. You never. Ever see a gymnast be like, you know what?
I'm going to do 15 bar muscle ups instead of 10. You never see a runner be like, I'm going to run 800 meters and said, wow, everyone else is running 400 because I'm such a good runner. It's always the lifters. And this does like it does. I think you need to be careful lifters of always wanted to push the weight on workouts because you can convince yourself that you're working harder.
I don't agree, but you could, maybe you have a specific goal of getting stronger, which is fine. We'll get into that as well. I think most of the time when a lifter adds weight to a workout, so they, for the, in an RX plus fashion, it's for the reason that it gives them an excuse to go slower.
[00:10:11] Sam Rhee: I would say. I have done that.
I have literally said, I'm not going to be as good as some of these movements. So I'm just going to go heavier on the weight and slow things down for me. What if I, and I was just thinking about this when we talked earlier, I said, well, what if I'm a lifter, a good lifter? And I say to my, and I say, Hey, what, Dave, what are you talking about?
I can still put up a. Decent number, like not a bad number on this workout. So why can't I just like show off my, like, I really enjoy lifting heavy. Why don't you let me just do one
[00:10:40] David Syvertsen: 35 thrusters, dude? Well, the first thing, if you actually talked in that tone to you talking like that? I don't even know. Like, I don't know anyone who talks like that.
I was, I was not, I was trying to get you like a bro. Yeah. Well, you would try to create a pretend person there. So that was a good job. Um, here's the thing. We, we might sound like we're anti RX I'm not. If someone came to me and said like, Hey, I'm trying to get stronger, um, and these weights, like, they're not really gonna help me get to my goal of lifting certain weights, um, like if we had an ascending snatch workout of 95, 135, 185, and someone can like really toss that weight around, like it's almost like too easy, and they want to go 135, 185, 205, something like that.
I, I wouldn't look against it, but I would not hesitate that if it became a trend with an athlete, I would simply tell them that if you're constantly going slower with heavier weights, it might, it might help you get stronger, but now you are no longer training the intensity slash speed component to CrossFit, right?
Adding intensity to workouts can be via weight, right? In most cases, intensity in workouts, better output in a workout is about doing more volume or going faster. All right. Look at the open every single year. We talk about this every time we talk about the open. Most of the movements in the open are without any exterior load.
And when there are exterior loads in the CrossFit open, they're usually manageable. Meaning like, Hey, the strong guys. Cycle, cycle, cycle, cycle. If you're not strong, probably still get away with doing a few reps at a time or quick singles, right? And if you're constantly training these slow singles and never really practicing 15 reps in a row, 20 reps in a row, 20 thrusters in under 40 seconds.
If you never trained something like that, it's not going to just happen because you got stronger. So the athlete. If you have this goal of going Rx and again, we're talking about weight because that's usually what people Rx plus in workouts, there better be a specific reason and that better not be a trend that you do often.
Now I'm going to go another glass half empty approach, alright, and this kind of ties into the Jimmy example. Hey, Jimmy's going to beat me, so I'm just going to go heavier. This was, I don't want to call it a problem, but it was a trend at Old Bison, so you're looking about four, five, six years ago, where we felt as a staff.
There were people going rx plus and workouts so that others could see they were going rx plus on the whiteboard It made them feel like they had a stood. It's almost like you underlined a name, right? Oh, yes, because like rx rx scale scale rx rx scale scale rx rx plus and there's only like three of you So like and these were athletes that were pretty good.
Nothing special, but they're pretty good, right? They always wanted that Rx and they would come up to the board and be like, Oh, no, I, uh, what was your time? Uh, 7. 51. Rx You know, it's like they had two different volumes when they gave the answers. 7. 51. Rx Really loud. I was like, okay, uh, we will write that RX plus on the board.
And we did. And here's a response that we actually did this for a while, not doing it right now. And again, I will openly admit, I don't know if this is the right decision yet that when you RX plus, you are scaling the workout. Yes. We
[00:14:00] Sam Rhee: argued about that as a staff and I was about to bring that up. That if you RX plus it, you got a scaled next to your name.
Yep.
[00:14:07] David Syvertsen: Not, not RX plus SC. And I'll tell you what they're. I really do think it's a good idea because of what we try to preach here. We've preached this on this podcast and we preach it at our gym all the time. Like, like it makes me nauseous how many times we had to explain this. Scale does not mean bad. It means you change the workout.
RX does not mean good. It just means you did the workout prescribed. So athletes, I'm going to ask you this question right now. That if we never wrote RX plus your name for the rest of your life, and every time you did RX plus, and we wrote scale next to your name, would it change your approach at all? And, and honestly, you're probably not going to be honest to everyone about it.
You just have to ask yourself, would you be even somewhat bothered if you RX plus to work out? Right? And we wrote scaled next to your name. Would you be bothered by it? Because if you are, that probably does mean you are now trending down a dangerous path of you want RX plus so that other people are impressed by you.
And that is wrong. Let me ask you
[00:15:14] Sam Rhee: this. I, um, playing devil's advocate a little bit, not really, but on your personal, on a personal level, I've seen your scores up on the whiteboard and I've seen it both ways. And I have a feeling it's just whatever the coach who's coaching that class decides to write down.
So on some days you've done the workout and you've done it... Rx plus. Yes. Like let's suppose you did strict handstand pushups, same number, but not kipping or a heavier weight for something. And I have seen coaches write Rx and then 185 instead of 135 or something or strict versus, you know, whatever. And then I've also seen you do Rx plus, but it was just Rx
[00:15:53] David Syvertsen: that was written down.
And I rarely will go to a coach and say Rx plus if they notice it, they can write it down. I personally do not care one percent. If a coach writes Rx scaled, or Rx next to me. Okay, but let
[00:16:07] Sam Rhee: me ask you this, now, if I am looking at the whiteboard, and I'm looking at how my fellow athletes are doing, I work off of them a lot, and when they, and I see it, and If they, if it's not accurate, basically, if it's not accurate data, then how do I know where I'm sitting?
Maybe I think I'm doing really well and actually I'm not doing well and I need to push myself a little bit more. So these are the kind of things when I'm like, Oh, Dave only got this.
[00:16:36] David Syvertsen: Oh, well, you know what? He did it. Like we call it Jimmy, please. Like he, he got, he
[00:16:41] Sam Rhee: was doing 55 pounds more and he did all the movement strict instead of kipping.
And then you're like, Oh, well shoot. Maybe I need to.
[00:16:48] David Syvertsen: Rethink what I'm doing. So that's why I do push back on writing scale next to someone's name. But I'm this like probably unrealistic utopian, like, like CrossFitter, where like, I really do feel like the whiteboard is a guide that we can help each other with.
It's not just a leaderboard. It's not just a scoreboard, right? Like, I love the idea and I watch people do this all the time. Like I'm very observant in the gym. There's very, very, very few things in this gym that I don't notice. Right. So if you ever think you're getting away with something, you're probably not.
Okay. But one of the things I see all the time, people will spend, yeah, watching you guys, people will spend five minutes looking on the whiteboard when they come in. And, and some, yeah, there's probably some bad thoughts or, but like, I really genuinely think it helps. That's why, like, I, I love the morning people.
I love the five and 6am because they set the tone for the rest of the gym. But I'm telling you, do you guys realize how many people come in the day and they're looking at your scores? You might get offended a little bit because they're trying to beat you and like, Hey. I've said this before too, if someone beat your score and they did it after you and they had your score in their head already, that's not a win for them.
It's just not. Like, so don't let that get discouraged. If anything, I want the Morning People to take some pride in that. That you guys, like, you give us all these scores, you give us all this data, right? That for the rest of the day, people come in, they're staring at that shit. I'm telling you dude, I've been watching, I've been doing this 10 years, people stare at the stuff you do.
And, you might not be competitive, it's not competitive. It's like, hey, so and so did this, like... I'm going to try to do that. It's inspiring. It's motivating. If you don't believe me, let's not write down workouts, the scores on the board for, for a month, it wouldn't be the same. I know some people would like that, but we're never going to do it.
It wouldn't be the same. And I want that. So. In that discussion, if someone does Rx and then someone else with a similar approach, ability level, they come in, and they see that Rx 185, next to Sam's name, Jimmy's name, Dave's name, whatever. Now, they want to do that because, A, they can do it within the stimulus, not get capped out, they can do it safely, it gives them something, a goal to shoot after.
And, why is that a bad thing? Now, if we just write scale next to the name... It's, it can be a little bit tougher for someone to really know. Devil's Advocate to that point would be, we don't write scaled and what the weights they do, or scaled, green band, red band, like we used to. We used to. We just don't, and honestly, we're not against it.
It's just, um, It's time consuming. It's too time consuming with classes of 30 people. Oh my god. It's just too much. So, that's where I do think, and again, like, Sam and I probably sound like we're talking out of both sides of our mouth right now, but we kind of want to, because I want you guys, because I think a lot of people have a strong stance on this topic.
And it's kind of just like, Hey man, this is what I think. You should look at it from another perspective. And in another perspective, I'm going to start going into the coaching side of this, where I will tell certain athletes to RX plus certain workouts. One that we just did. On Thursday, Sam coached a class that had dumbbell stepovers, uh, wall walks, and then it had lunges and, and, and strict press seated on the box, which was funny to watch people do, by the way.
It's a tough one, especially on your weak side. Yeah, it was so funny. Yeah. So here we go. We had the workout prescribed. It was dumbbell step overs with one dumbbell. We've done both. We've done two dumbbells before. That's actually probably more common. Um, like especially in sport and didn't want the gym to do that.
Okay. We had a tough squat day coming up the next day. I took out the weight on the lunges as well. Didn't want to crush them before the heavy, the squat cleans. Logistically too, it's easier for everyone to just get one dumbbell and do the thing. I told Amy, and I think I told, it might have been Mike McKinney too, to two dumbbells.
Is it because I think they're better athletes than everyone else and they need to do harder workouts? No, I don't think that. All right. It's because I, they had a competition coming up that if that movement is in there, they ain't using one dumbbell. It's going to be two and I want, and that workout is night and day different one dumbbell verse two.
So I want them to start practicing those skills. So if someone has a competition coming up or something they're really training for, let's say we have a, um, uh, that thruster workout again, that we do have coming up with a descending ref scheme and they have a comp coming up in a month with 115 thrusters guys and 75 pound thruster girls.
Hey, I want to do the thrusters at that weight because I kind of want to feel that weight more power to you. RX plus that shit. Do you have any opinions for, as a coach, for someone that came up to you and was like, Hey, this workout, I gotta get into dumbbells. I have something to prepare for. That's
[00:21:28] 2023_1022_1037: happened
[00:21:29] Sam Rhee: actually.
That happened this summer when people were training for Asbury. They would slightly modify it. But that's modifying the workout. That's not really RX plussing it. Like they, like, that's just changing it to help them with their competition. Um, I will say on a personal, you did take that class at 5 AM. I did use one of them.
The technique
[00:21:52] David Syvertsen: you used to hold that dumbbell blows my mind. It just looks so nuts. Like, everyone else is holding it up on your
[00:21:57] Sam Rhee: shoulder. Why are you
[00:21:59] David Syvertsen: holding it down here? Yeah, right over my crotch, really.
[00:22:04] Sam Rhee: What
[00:22:04] David Syvertsen: is that all about, actually? I don't know what that was all about. I honestly didn't have a plan for how to hold my dumbbell.
And I started picking it up and I started like... It started like colliding with my legs. So I'm like, I want to hold this in front of me a little bit, but I can't. I was too weak to do it with one. So I held it with both. So yeah, I had, uh, that'll be on my OnlyFans account. That'll come up
[00:22:24] Sam Rhee: if if, if people are training for something, like they have a specific reason. Yeah. I
[00:22:29] David Syvertsen: really encourage that. Same here. Um, crossovers. Yes. Sometimes
[00:22:33] Sam Rhee: they were like, you know what? I'm going to do chest to bars instead of pull ups because I have to practice my chest to bars. Ring
[00:22:37] David Syvertsen: muscle ups instead of bar muscle ups.
Exactly. So
[00:22:39] Sam Rhee: those are the kind of variations that I think you can adapt. A workout or a class, as long as it's not too
[00:22:45] David Syvertsen: disruptive.
[00:22:46] Sam Rhee: Yeah, right, right, absolutely. And, and, and I think that that worked out pretty well. But I think what it, what I was gonna say is, I think you're gonna get into is, as a programmer, How do you start handling it?
Like, I was gonna ask you, how many people now actually are explicit or gym
[00:23:00] David Syvertsen: on a regular basis? On a regular basis? Not many. I don't even know if anyone does, on a regular basis. I get asked a lot, Hey, should I go this heavier? And like, I've had Alex ask me that a few times, and because Alex is very strong, he's got very ambitious goals, and yeah, there's going to be certain times.
Where he is going to need to do some heavier loads. But I think a lot of that can be solved with just lifting, right? But yeah, there are, there are values to going heavier in certain workouts for a person like that. But I, sometimes he will ask me, hey, should I go 70 pound dumbbell today on a dumbbell snatch?
Because like a 50 pounder is like a twig, right? Um, yesterday, yesterday I used a 70 pound dumbbell for yesterday's bison wad. Nick Squire for a
[00:23:38] Sam Rhee: long time was using 30 pound wall balls. instead of a 20 because he wanted to get really good at the 20. And that was great, but you know why he did it? It was not for ego or white whiteboard.
It was, he wanted to get better at the twenties and he's already incredibly good at wall balls. So that was something that I've seen, um, athletes do. And I,
[00:23:57] David Syvertsen: I do encourage them. So if you have an athlete, so if you're a programmer or coach and you have 11 people wanting to go heavier on the dumbbells or heavier on the wall balls.
The conversation needs to be had and I've had this conversation with someone like Alex and someone like Like back in the day. I can remember Brendan Duffy used to want to do this, right? It's like it's fine If you do it occasionally for a very specific reason and that specific reason has nothing to do with the ego You're the only one that's gonna be able to honestly answer that but I will fire back usually and say hey No, don't go heavier on this go faster and go With bigger sets, go unbroken and go faster because that's, again, it's something that needs to be trained, the intensity.
So. The programmer, if you have a gym full of people, or not even gym, if you have a dozen people, Rx Plusing most of your workouts, right? Let's even say one, let's even say one or two workouts per week, not even most. I think it's time to make your programming tougher. Really? Yep. Problem. What if it's one person?
And what if that one person is a Games Calibre Athlete or Semi Final Calibre Athlete? That's where, again, it's like the discussion, should you write RxPlus or Scale on the whiteboard? I don't have the answer, we've never been through it. Never had a Games Athlete actively training for the Games at, during our actual programming that was on our program, right?
Um, we've had a bunch of Quarter Finalists, they don't need to change anything. Here's one thing, here's a rule I'll give you. You need to earn that right first. Alright, let's say Joe Piero started coming to Bison. Yeah, semi final athlete. Semi final athlete. Individual. Young man. Young guy, really strong. If he came to Bison, I would say he has now earned the right to RX plus most workouts.
Not gonna RX, not on, like I wouldn't change, like if he was just a member, and like again, he has his own program, his own coach, but if he's like, hey Dave, I wanna come to Bison, I wanna be a part of the community, but I still wanna try to compete and get some, get to the games, get to the semi finals. He probably would have to Rx Plus most workouts, but he's earned that, right?
If you have not made semifinals, have not made quarterfinals, and again, I don't like bringing that up because it's very, it can get sensitive with some people, but it is, it's a nice marker. Yeah, it's an easy, quick judge. Yeah, like what else do I use, right? It's like, you know, um, can't, can't use Bison scores because they're not real.
They don't have a judge, you know, like I see people. Not do reps all the time or forget movements or something like that happen. I do it too. I've miscounted miswritten movements before. So you can't really use a Bison score as a gauge when you have judges and everything, the open, the quarterfinals. So if you have not made quarterfinals, I would even say if you have not made semifinals yet, you don't really deserve the right to.
Rx Plus workouts. Unless what we've talked about, there's a very specific reason why you have something coming up. You need to train something. You're really working on this movement instead of that movement. You're working on this load instead of that load. And if you're not hitting the stimulus of the workout, those reasons are out.
Sure. So if Nick Squire wants to come and use a 30 pound wall ball and he got capped out on of a wall ball workout. Yeah, then
[00:27:04] Sam Rhee: that doesn't really,
[00:27:05] David Syvertsen: Hey, you're not good enough to RX plus that workout. And I think that's what some people need to hear too. Um, without us being condescending is that a lot of people that RX plus workouts, they're not good enough to RX plus the workout because they haven't proven that they can do.
There's a ladder to competing at a high level. You can't skip steps three through six and go right to seven because you can do a few things well. Like you got to hit step three, hit step four, hit step five, hit step six. Okay. Now we can start talking about RxPlus, and it usually takes longer than you think.
Everyone I know that has had a competitive CrossFit goal, they either wash out at some point, or they start to realize, like, dude, this is too, it's too, it takes too long. Like, the week to week grind, the day to day grind, you have responsibilities, you just can't get the training in, and that's okay. Or, you know, hey, I want to make the games, cool, it's going to take about seven years before you're in the discussion.
[00:28:04] Sam Rhee: I would say, I mean, like with Nick Squire, he can beat most people with a 30 pound. Then like, that's true. Like me with a 20 pound. Yeah. So I don't have a problem with that. Let me ask you this in general, how many people at the gym would you say Rx any get like on average, a given workout, how many scale
[00:28:20] David Syvertsen: it on any given day?
So I think it's usually about 40 to 50 percent Rx. Okay. And about 50 60 percent scale on an average day. And this is different
[00:28:32] Sam Rhee: from most, like, subscribed programming. Like, for example, if you subscribe to Mayim's programming, Maybe, like... 10
[00:28:39] David Syvertsen: percent might Rx it on like a day to day basis. On a day to day basis.
Yep, I agree. So
[00:28:44] Sam Rhee: out of that 40%, how many, if you had
[00:28:46] David Syvertsen: upped the numbers, Rx plus it? Still thinking about doing it. I have, I don't know if everyone's know, I have inched a couple things up. Yeah, so why
[00:28:55] Sam Rhee: do you still make it accessible, the Rx as accessible, when most other programmers out there are making it really hard to Rx stuff,
[00:29:03] David Syvertsen: like 10%?
I'll tell you why. A lot of those subscription programmers, they... They're not programming for a specific group of people, they're programming for anyone and everyone around the world that wants it. So you really don't know who's gonna sign up for it. Where like, I know who's coming to the Bison Wads. I see.
You know, um... If we all of a sudden had like 10 games athletes on the Bison program, then honestly, you probably would have to, to inch it up. You know, we have inched up our programming over the, we've talked about all the time, right? We did an episode on this. Programming is harder than it was, but it has to be done along with.
the people that are doing it. Now, if we were like a big famous workout program and we had, you know, 10, 000 people around the world doing it, you probably do need to make everything tougher because you work down from there. What's the, what's my philosophy on programming is you program for the best athletes that are doing your program.
All right, best athletes, meaning the best athletes for that workout. And then you program down from there. If you have 10, 000 people doing your programming and some of them are like, you know, across the country and they're just crushing every single person from this gym, doing the workouts, workouts got to get tougher for them.
[00:30:18] Sam Rhee: Don't you think you have this gym at least 10 or. Maybe 12 athletes a day that could, or maybe 5, could RX plus a workout any given
[00:30:27] David Syvertsen: day? Yeah, I do. I do. Um, every day could, could I pick, hand pick, um, and still crush it? And still crush it slash get, get the stimulus slash maybe even in most cases, even get still one of the top 10 scores in the gym?
Yeah. Yeah, I do. So,
[00:30:44] Sam Rhee: why not?
[00:30:46] David Syvertsen: Good question.
[00:30:47] Sam Rhee: Um... I'm just saying, like, there might be a role at some gyms where... And depending on how you work it, maybe they need a little bit of a,
[00:30:54] David Syvertsen: like a RxPlus design. So this is where I love the levels idea, you know, and like level one, level two, like we're actually going to do something along those lines with Joe Linton's workout tomorrow that Bison's doing.
Because tomorrow's workout is a little out of reach. For a lot of people, um, it's going to be fun, but it's, so we're going to, I think instead of saying RxRx plus and scale, blah, blah, blah, right. We're just going to come up with like level one, level two, level three, and then you can modify from there. You know, we're not going to make it.
I would love to do something like that every day because this, that for every workout, because that would wipe out what you're asking. It's gone. Like level one is just always going to be like, yep. Most of you guys can't do that. And level two is like, and like level two, just so you know, like. That would be like a normal bison rx.
Level one is kind of like the rx plus. Level three is kind of like, hey, like just a notch below, you know, but what I feared doing it. That level one would now be the threshold that everyone feels like they need to do right would it separate the gym a little bit? I don't think so. I think we're stronger than that.
I think our coaches are really good at making that not happen You know, there's good pulse in the gym good culture builders, right? But that that kind of like we are changing a few things up in the new year And that's still like that was gonna be around the time where I was gonna start to make Push the workout programming a little bit and one of the options would be now that we're really talking about it right now It's just helping my head spin a little bit Is that that might be something that we can experiment with at maybe at least until the open And get feedback from members and coaches not just the coaches Level one level two level three every single day And then when you write someone's score you write, you know, Sam 854 1 One masters?
No. One, one, one masters plus. You're 55 ages coming up, right? But no, just one, two, three. Right. And hey guy, and like you explained this in a very responsible way, that level two is what Bison RX would be. Like if I didn't... Do levels level two is on our weights would be, but like that thruster workout that we just talked about, that weight would be, you know, nothing crazy.
Let's say 115, 75 level one, level two, 85, 60 level three, 75, 55. And instead of, and then, you know, if you're scaling one of those versions, right? Hey, I did the thrusters, but I couldn't do the toes to bar, right? Then we just try scaled. So you're either doing 1, or you're scaling.
[00:33:27] Sam Rhee: I love this because we are talking about both sides of our
[00:33:30] David Syvertsen: mouths about RX Like, we're poo pooing it in a lot of ways, but we're also,
[00:33:34] Sam Rhee: like, considering instituting
[00:33:36] David Syvertsen: it to a certain degree.
And it's, but it... The RxPlus misnomer would be gone. Like, we wouldn't be writing RxPlus anymore. It's just like, hey, I did this at level one. That means like... Yeah, I did this at what a harder than bison rx workout would be. That's like
[00:33:51] Sam Rhee: when they grade you and it's like outstanding, excellent, very good, and you're like, dude, that's an A, B, and C.
We know
[00:33:57] David Syvertsen: what it is. You're just changing the terminology here a little bit. And, you know, the last thing I want to touch on is I want to make sure The reason why we're talking like this, two different perspectives, like we sound like we're leaning this way and then we lean that way, right? I don't like the, uh, the tone that some people have with it and it's known here.
Like I, like the best conversations I've had with, I'll say it right now, the best conversations other than this one, Sam. Um, has been with Adam Ramson, um, you know, we, we go to, we mentioned him as much as anyone on this podcast, just because his opinions are so like pure and CrossFit and like, he doesn't care if anyone, like, if anyone's a really good athlete or not a good, he doesn't care.
It's just like, what, what is your real reason behind it? And if we start writing RX plus, does it create, like, he's good at forecasting problems. Could that forecast, could that create a problem a year from now? Could it create injuries for people that are just pursuing things they shouldn't be pursuing.
So he, his tone is great with it, but there are some famous CrossFit coaches out there that have a pretty big following that it really, it sounds bitter, like they're almost like not jealous, just bitter, like this old CrossFit coach that's been through the ringer for 12 years. And so much has changed around us.
And, you know, it used to be like A6 and basketball shorts. Now it's like no bowl and, and TIR shorts, right? So much has changed. And Rx Plus, eh. One thing that has changed about CrossFit so much, even since I've been doing it, I'm like 11 or 12 years in now, like the gap, the margin between athletes is just enormous now.
It's not, it was not that way in 2011. Very true. And top wasn't
[00:35:43] Sam Rhee: as top as it was. Right. The bottom still is the bottom. You start, when you start, I mean not bottom, but like the level when you first start is always the same. Yeah. But the top has
[00:35:53] David Syvertsen: It's so high at this point. Yeah, and you have people just like dedicating so much time and effort and energy into it that you, you have to, and part of the CrossFit principles is that we have to keep pushing in, like pushing the line, pushing thresholds and trying, trying to achieve things that we can't do or couldn't do anymore.
And I know not everyone's a go getter and some of the Dude, like, uh, screw this RX plus stuff. That's you. That's what you think. You know, there's, there's people other than you out there that have some genuine, real credible reasons behind wanting to push harder and workouts and creating heavier loads and more volume and all this stuff.
So I think CrossFit
[00:36:29] Sam Rhee: is just getting better too. I mean, when you look at the average level of the athlete now as like six, seven years ago, it's not necessarily that we have more talent at our gym. We're, they're just the training, what we're doing, our knowledge about how to make people better is
[00:36:45] David Syvertsen: just better.
It is, it's a good point, you know, so if things are going to get better, so is the performance. Yes. And so I just think there's a, there's a right and wrong way to talk about this stuff. And if you ever feel like you're going down this path where you're a little bitter about it. Or you're not really taking time and taking a step back from your perspective and trying to look at it from why someone else is doing it.
I think you got to check yourself on that because I've seen some stuff on this topic out there that just makes me shake my head. And it's always, it's always from the same kind of person. It's someone that was a really good crosser in 2012 because there weren't that many people doing it. And now you're not that good comparatively.
And now it's like you're getting pissed that other people are good. That, that's the tone I get from. Other people. And that's just not what the CrossFit community is about. You know, it's about lifting everyone up. One of the basic principles of Bison is that we will support anyone that wants to train for health and fitness.
We will support anyone that wants to train for sport. It's, it's all the same, but they need a couple of different approaches here and there. And you have to be able to support both sides, listen to both sides and try to put them yourselves in their minds as much as possible. I
[00:37:54] Sam Rhee: may have to level three Joe's workout tomorrow.
That's a
[00:37:57] David Syvertsen: tough one. Tomorrow's workout. Yeah, can't wait for that. And guys, make sure you come back next week. I think the interview with Joe is going to be, uh, it's going to be awesome. Can't wait. All right. Thanks guys.
