S03E83 TRAINING MEN VS WOMEN VS MASTERS ATHLETES

CrossFit workouts are often adjusted for different athletes; the men's WODs are frequently different from women's. Older (masters) athletes' workouts are also often scaled.

Are the adjusted standards fair? Does a 20 year old male athlete's performance equate to a 20 year old female athlete's? How about a 60 year old athlete's? Dave and Sam delve into the complexity of programming WODs for men, women and masters and some considerations for each group.

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S03E01 TRAINING MEN VS WOMEN VS MASTERS ATHLETES

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the Her Fit podcast. I'm coach David Syvertsen here with my co-host, doctor and coach Sam Rhee, and we are back to just the two of us. We have a topic today that was brought up, something I've thought about countless times over the years, and I thought it'd be a fun thing to talk about, but it also just got brought up on the Savon podcast when they kind of broke down the programming from the Legends Championship and part of their breakdown was talking about how to scale.

For older age groups and, and then genders even. And then it got, they kind of went down this, this rabbit hole a little bit of how to do this with open division, you know, like all males and females and then age groups a little bit. But then it training, think Tank did an episode on this as well. And it, it's hard to get a firm answer on it because there is no firm answer.

Right. When I started CrossFit they basically just, your weight's of 1 35 95 for guys, 1 35 girls with 95, 75, 55, and you would always kind of pay attention to it a little bit, but it, there was a general, there was never a template percentage of what males are lifting. That's what the females are lifting.

And then now you get to the. age groups. There's no set template for open division verse the young masters versus the middle-aged masters versus the older masters. It's kind of just like, hey, it's is probably approximate. It's probably right. Let's just go from here and I wanna get into, well, my opinion, Sam's opinion, what's being done in the CrossFit space right now, both in your gym and Competit?

in terms of how to come up with the s, the correct weights so that all girls and all guys have the same stimulus as, again, that is the purpose of scaling. It's getting as many people in the room as possible to feel the same way. You're never gonna have a perfect answer for that, especially in a class of 20 people, right?

But that's, there is a stimulus behind every test of fitness, behind every CrossFit workout, and you need to have an answer to the question. How do you scale Guide a girl, but then also age group to age group? Sam, opening thoughts on this because I feel like you have probably some good input on this one.

Yeah, this

[00:02:12] Sam Rhee: is complicated for a number of reasons. There are so many factors and I think when we listen to this I listen Toson podcast, they didn't have any general good thoughts about principles, about scaling. They, they argued, should you program for women and then men scale up for men versus men scaling to women.

How do you scale age groups? And I think that the factors that are involved are so numerous. I, I'm living it because I'm a master's, right. the 50 to 54 category and it, it depends on a lot of different things. What was my training volume that week? What are the stimulus or stimuli that you're looking for?

There are certain things I feel that I can hang with younger athletes on, but then there's other things that I know will have an increased risk of injury. If you look at the 50, 54 year olds in the games last year, three of. Got knocked out of, out of 10, got knocked out because of injury. Mm-hmm. . So maybe they could have done the workouts, but maybe the risk of injury at that age is just higher.

Yeah. So should you be programming for injury risk versus what they can actually do? Mm-hmm. ? Are you thinking about. The volume that they're actually doing. This is really complicated and I don't think there's necessarily a good answer for, for most of it. It also depends on your gym. I, I don't think you can just say, For a lot of these things, train for the best scale for the rest like we normally do.

I think you really do have to take other factors into consideration. And when you program for women, I see it every day on the wad. Depending on the wad, I will look at the women's scores or I will say there's no way that's even close either to like significantly better, right? Or significantly. Not as fast as as the men.

Yep. And. You know, the more I try to wrestle with it as a guy, especially when I decide, well, what am I going to do as a masters? It

[00:04:08] David Syvertsen: it, it's, it's tough, right? Yeah. It, it, so I think the most important thing to do before we get into it is say there is no template right now. There is no answer. I think there's trending in the right direction.

I, there's stuff trending in the right direction with what to do with the weight. What to do with the movements. What to core align with each other and what to kind of just keep away from each other. Example, the Masters games events are not the same as events as the individual open. Like they just kind of say, Hey, this is your programming.

We don't need to take the Open Divisions programming and then scale it to the masters. They're just gonna be completely different programming. I think that's progress right there. That's, we really should, especially when age groups are involved. It should just be different programming. And then as you get into older groups or you start getting more data on injuries that maybe you do start taking out certain movements or certain loads with certain movements.

So I think that's the biggest thing is there is no template, but I do think there needs to be a separation of programming altogether. Right? Like, I don't think we need to look at every single open. Of the games or a high level competition and come up with a masters version of it. I just don't think it's necessary.

And you start to really dumb it down. What is the point of that? Right? It. Oh, stimulus. Stimulus. But to me, stimulus is when you're comparing the two competitively, you're never comparing masters to the open division, right? So there, there is no point in. Putting them on the same test or trying to find the same stimulus.

You could do that in the open. All right. I think that's a cool thing that they do at the open. So if you do want data for that hey, are we, are we scaling at the right age groups? Do we need to bump it up? Do we need to bump it down? You can use the open for that, but I don't think you need to go so deep into high level in open division competing and try to find skilled versions for it.

I just don't think it's

[00:05:51] Sam Rhee: necessary. Let me ask you this, you, you are now a master's. Technically you've been for a couple years. Yeah. personally, how do you feel your body has changed going from a younger CrossFit athlete to

[00:06:07] David Syvertsen: a master's athlete? I would say a little bit of loss range of motion. Okay. Like I, I've never been a guy that's like, oh, squats questionable and I feel like I'm there now.

That might be a knee issue that might be, You know, again, I always circle back to what am I doing wrong, right? It's not always like my age, like am I doing less mobility, all that stuff. But that's, you know, to answer your question, range of motion and recovery, you know, it just takes longer to recover.

When I say recover, I'm not only talking about, wow, that wad was really hard. I'm still tired two days later, or still sore. It's more when I do tweak. What used to take a week or two to fix, I feel like takes like three to five to fix now or just to naturally get better. Right? So I think those are the two things I feel the biggest difference.

Now, in the same sentence though, as a 36, soon to be 37 year old, there are a lot of things I can do now much better than I could have seven years ago. Capacity wise, quality of gymnastics movement. You know, pacing. I don't, I don't know if that really goes into this camp of thought, but there, I don't think I've gotten worse shape over the past five, six years.

There are certain things I just don't have capacity for. Speed, maybe a little bit of strength, but, you know, in the, in the latest qualifier, the quarter finals, I set. Lifetime PRS in the deadlift and, and back squat, you know, and I don't even train them that much, you know, those lifts. So I, I think that I haven't lost much, but if there's one answer to your question, I think range of motion is a little less than what it used to be, and that's very common once you hit the age of 35, we normally lose a little bit of VO two max and we normally lose a little bit of range of motion.

And it's never a big Jurassic change in a year or two. But over the course of 10 15, You know, those inches become feet. So

[00:07:48] Sam Rhee: how do you use that knowledge to apply to programming

[00:07:52] David Syvertsen: for masters? So I still, to me, I don't feel, I program for Masters right now. You know, I feel that I program for the gym and we scale down from there.

We have had discussions internally about, we have rx, we have scaled, and then we have Master's rx. . You know, I, I think there's some ego involved in saying, no, I don't want that. And it wouldn't be for every workout, it would just be for occasional. But you can look at, for example, the Legends Championship, which we just broke down.

Mm-hmm. , they start scaling a lot of the weeds at age 50 or 45 based on the workout. When I took the online CrossFit Masters course, they said they don't start changing weights until the age of 55. and you see that in the quarter finals age group qualifiers. Oh yeah. And I've always thought that's too late.

And I, I looked, I did some investigating, talked to a few people. That's one of those things. There really was no answer why that was the case. So I think now, and there are people smarter than me that have more access to information that now that you have a lot of data of what age groups do the workouts really start to slow.

Right. Let's say like, Fran 21 15 9. Hey, at the age of 45, pretty basically everyone, no one can do it under four minutes. We want this to be a three minute workout. What do you do? Change the weight. Right? And so I, I think that's like a very. easy, simple example that having some data of where things really slow down and you start to lose the stimulus of the workout, that's when you need to start changing the weights.

We have not done that at bison, so thus I do not program for, for masters. I have master's athletes on next level, so when I'm working on their weight, there is no gym that I'm scaling off of. It's, but that's more about an individual thing. It's not, oh, you're 47, your weights are. It's no, your strength level is this, and I want this stimulus.

You need to go after that. So the personal training part of it I don't think applies to this. The only thing I think could apply to it is if we ever. . What we're doing on Friday's workout here is when you get to 45, we start scaling the weights, and then when you get to 55, we scale the weights and movements even further and the volume.

That's something that I've thought about doing a lot of time, but I just haven't had the, the strong conviction yet. What are your thoughts on that? Because we a, we actually have talked about this and you were anti Yeah.

[00:10:23] Sam Rhee: Some of it is, Yes. I mean, why, if everyone else is doing 135 pound shoulder to overheads, I have to do 115 pounds.

Right? Right. I can't compare myself well to some of my other friends who are younger than me because of that. Right. And if I get a crappier score because of it, so be it. I'll take my crappy score. I just don't want that accommodation for me because of my age. Right. In a. . I think it's because I feel like if we're all competing on that level, then I feel like it's, it's fine.

Right. And you're also looking to keep athletes safe. That's why they took out like some of the workouts for the older age groups at Legends, you know that because they just felt like that was a lot of volume for them. And if you just keep adding more and more volume for these guys, something's gonna, yeah.

Gonna happen. But on an everyday level. . If most of these guys I can hang with are doing that weight and rep scheme, why shouldn't I be able to actually

[00:11:22] David Syvertsen: do it? It's tough. I, I always feel like when the comparison game comes in, I mean, it does work at a gym like this cuz the gym is so big, a lot of people, a lot of good athletes too.

So you really can find tears of athletes in this gym. A lot of gyms have 75. You know, they have three people that could do a mu up. So it's hard. It's like, I wanna take your answer in as well. I compare to this person and that person, but what if you're at a gym in Colorado or Wyoming and there's 75 members and there's only one person in the gym that could do mu ups.

And then you come in, you move out there, you do your thing. You now have to start taking that comparison out. You need to find a new way to find it. And this is what I mean. I think we almost had to look deeper than the gym. Broader than the gym. And this is where I think CrossFit has some opportunity. You know, we talked about new ceo, what can you do?

They have a lot of data. There's no question, right? Could they come up with template scaling for gender, but also age? Because when you have that much tho that many people, you can really find the average time of this workout, of this movement when these movements are involved. But this one's not this movement.

Anything overhead, anything squatting. We see that anyone above the age of 45 is not even within 20% of people that are 35. So this is where we need to start to dial it back. I think there, there's an opportunity. I don't have the answer right now. I have a couple guesses based on my experience here, but I do think there's an opportunity out there for someone to take all this data and basically say, Hey, we need to start scaling by 10% at the age of 40.

And every gym should do this. We're not gonna make you, but we should. And then you come on, Sam to the gym on a Monday morning. Bison's got the rx, the scale, the RX and the Master's rx. You can still scale no matter what, right? But you go from there and say, Hey, no matter what, on overhead movements, we scale by 10%.

Here's your weight. 1 35. No, now it's one 20. That would work

[00:13:25] Sam Rhee: if it allowed me to work out with the same kind of training volume as a 25 year old. Yeah. But I don't know if that would actually help me not take more days off than a 25 year old. Yeah. If it, if I'm still saying, well, it's still beating me up.

I still have to take like an extra day off, then what's the point? Mm-hmm. like, I might as well, you know, not scale. Right. The other thing is, is that, Targets are moving. So when you become a 50 year old to 54 year, , you don't, you think that the weights and the scales and the capabilities of those 50 and 54 year olds are gonna go up?

It's they're, they're going up every year, no question.

[00:14:03] David Syvertsen: So, you know, it's tough. It's a moving target it,

[00:14:05] Sam Rhee: and so for us to be able to say it's, it's 10% now, it may not be 10% in five years, it might be 5%. Who knows? Yep. It's amazing how much fitness is being maintained when you. 35 to 39 year old division now.

Right? Like I watched you guys, you guys look like individual games,

[00:14:21] David Syvertsen: athletes. Yeah. Pretty much on, on a few of the workouts. Yeah. Yeah. I would say if you put open division athletes in a few of the workouts, they're not winning all of them. You know, like, let's take Froning out of it. Like let's take someone that finished 20th place at the games.

He will win the. The, the competition, but he's not gonna win every event. Absolutely. And that's, that, that's an angle of, of competing with, with the masters as

[00:14:43] Sam Rhee: well. How about the women? Let's, let's talk about the women because it's, as an athlete and as a guy, obviously I, I, I like looking at the whiteboard, but there are so many different workouts where I'm like, That weight was either way too heavy for them.

Yeah. It's tough Or way too light. Yep. They talked about legless rope climbs and, and certain things where women just have traditionally more difficulty on Yep. Versus men. Yep. Like how do you deal with that as a

[00:15:08] David Syvertsen: program? So, yeah, that, that's a tough one. And I will admit this when I think about weights for workouts, I think about guys.

And it's only because I can relate. It's not because I favor guys, right? It's because you're a guy. I'm a guy and like my experience, that's what speaks to me. When I write down a workout that I want to have X amount of weight in or a, a feel. I'm like, all right, it's a medium feel. Let's go 180 5, right?

What do I normally do for 180 5 for the girls? It's 1 25. That's what I've done for a long, a long time. And that might not be a good enough answer for something, you know, to say like, oh, that's the way you've always done it. That's not a good enough answer. And I do agree in some cases, and that's why it's a it's a polarizing question to me because sometimes I have it figured out.

Sometimes I feel like I don't. And there's one thing I will say about this that I, a trend that I have seen over the years on day-to-day workouts. You know, you're your typical CrossFit workouts. The girls in our gym, let's just use our gym as an example. Yeah. For the most part. Outscore, the guys, yes. In the open every single year.

When I write, when I look at the combined leaderboard of men to women, if you want to put the top 20 names on there, 16 or 17 of 'em are guys like, it's, it's a domination, right? It it, and it's in my head. I'm trying to think of one, am I not making it hard enough for the girls at the gym on day-to-day workouts?

Because why does this happen every year? It's not one or two times. and does that, so that is telling you that in the cross it open that programming is challenging to the point where the g where the girls cannot hang with the scores that they are putting in comparison to guys throughout the year. So is it a shortcoming on the programmer's fault that I should be making stuff heavier for them, right.

Or is it just, you know, maybe there's another factor that I'm just not seeing. Why is it that way? ,

[00:17:00] Sam Rhee: do you think about the best women athletes at the gym when you scale to that, that athlete? I mean, when you scale the workout, so if you say 180 5, 1 25, you're thinking about a particular women athlete and you're like, okay, where, where would they be on

[00:17:13] David Syvertsen: this particular workout?

Yeah. Yeah. Like when I say I, I, when I program, right? You program that workout for the best athletes in the gym at that workout, and then we scale down from there. Right? And it's a mix. You know, I, I never have like a bias towards guys or girls on that. Like there's certain workouts. Tobar. Oh, gymnastics.

Yeah, gymnastics. You're like, ah, Elena. Right away, right? . And then, but if you're thinking about a, a late, a weightlifting workout talking about Bo a running workout, Owen and Hawkinson, right? Like the, those are the guys that, all right, if they can finish this workout and this time, we're good to go.

Everyone else gotta scale down from there. Or you chase it, right? And so, yeah, I wouldn't say I have, but one thing I do have to answer your question. The upper body, strict gymnastics workouts, we don't do a lot of them, but we do. Handstand pushups, strict pullups you know, even more upper body dominant movements like pushups, strict press.

Right. I do look at guys more than girls because, and maybe I shouldn't, and this is where I think your question is getting to. There are games, events now where it's. Example, three, legless rope climbs for men, two for women, you know, 15 ring muscles for men, 12 for women, there's like a 10% capacity difference.

And I do think that inf that scale comes from information that, hey, we had guys and girls both do this same exact workout, 60 athletes, 30 and 30. The top 24 scores are men. Like, that means it's too lopsided in not men's, because men's are not, men are not competing against. So it's just for information purposes.

Does that mean you need to start scaling some upper body movements for females in comparison to men? Now, I'm gonna give you another example in a sec, but what are your thoughts on that? .

[00:19:00] Sam Rhee: I guess it just depends. I mean, I was gonna throw out a bunch of workouts to you where, and, and see where you thought the traditional scales worked or didn't work.

Right. For women versus men. Because I mean, okay, so Fran, yeah. Right. So what's the men's weight? 95. 95. 65. Right. And so women 65. Like if you look at a games athlete, I would say the women games athletes are probably faster. They are than the men on it. They are. So 95, 65 seems like a obsolete

[00:19:27] David Syvertsen: scale. Now tell me this though.

Now we're, now we're going to the weeds. . Why are women faster with 65 than men with 95? Because

[00:19:35] Sam Rhee: women are proportionally stronger at 65 than men can handle 95. I don't know. That would be

[00:19:40] David Syvertsen: my first thought. I think part of it is the range of motion is less. You. They, they generally are shorter. Yeah. Right. So, and sh you know, shorter in height, shorter overhead.

It just, the, the amount that the bar travels is less it, I don't know if it's a strength thing. I don't know if women are better at squatting or doing thrusters than men, but it's just like watching Colton Merton's do thrusters verse Cole Sager. They could be moving at the same rate of speed miles per hour, but because the range of motion is a foot, The guy as shorter is going to go faster.

They could be moving the same exact speed, but the guy on his left will be moving one 10th of a second faster per rep. That adds up to, you know, 10 seconds in a big set. Right? That's where, I don't know, I don't, I don't know the answer. Right. I do think that with weightlifting, anything moving exterior loads, the general percentage that is approximate is like 65 to 70%.

So whatever a man is lifting. Whatever a male's lifting go to, 65 to 70% of your weight. That's about where the women are. I think the women have gotten so much stronger over the years. That now it's like advantage to them. The number might need to be closer to 80%. That's where

[00:20:54] Sam Rhee: my feeling is going with it.

Okay. Every time I see a 1 35, 95. Yep. I'm like, Hmm, that's tough. That's

[00:21:02] David Syvertsen: tough to keep up with women on that one. I've been thinking the same as you. And it's not just range of motion. Part of it is, but you know, you know, like I, Amy and I we're the same height, you know, and so I, I think that 65 for her and 95 for.

is, it's like a twig for her, you know, depending on the movement. Right. How much do you weigh? 2 0 5. How much does she weigh? I don't even know. And I'm not gonna say that on the podcast either, ,

[00:21:28] Sam Rhee: but I would just say from a proportion, I would say from a strength to weight ratio, she's stronger than you are.

I agree with

[00:21:33] David Syvertsen: that. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. So I mean, and this is funny, like this is why I like talking about this stuff. Like you really can go in a lot of different directions and I do, I don't want to. , you know, disorganized and talking about this. But I want you guys to understand when you start talking about this, you can talk about so many different things and honestly, bison, even Amy and I, you and Susan, it's not enough information.

Like you need mass numbers. And I remember when we talked about this when the CEO was changing. Yeah. I think it was more when the first one got hired. Yeah. The information, it's there and if you are, and there's people that are better with information and statistics and algorithms and all that than others, but I hope CrossFit can do something with this and I can see it in the games already because the weights are being pushed up a little bit with.

comparison to the men, but also another thing is machines machine work, right? Normally when I program machines at the gym, it's 80% right? And I think that's where weightlifting's gonna head towards. So like, let's and you know, someone that doesn't do the, the math in their head really well. A 2 25 deadlift or 2 25 barbell for guys is usually 1 55 for women.

This would now go to. 2 25 would go up to 180 almost. And like you start thinking about that, I don't think a lot of women

[00:22:47] Sam Rhee: would be able to deadlift that for

[00:22:49] David Syvertsen: reps here, but I think, I think at the top it would. Mm-hmm. , you know? And, and why, why do you think that's the case? Because we don't train that weight.

You know, a lot of women here are really comfortable with 1 55 because that's been the way we've rd it. So

[00:23:01] Sam Rhee: if we force them to lift heavier, they would

[00:23:03] David Syvertsen: adapt to it, I think so. You know, I trust the girls that more than the guys, no offense guys, , the guys would be like, oh, it's too heavy. But I think the, the girls here would figure that out.

But the machine work, if I, if I program a 1000 meter row for guys, I will program 800 meter for women. You know, you don't do that for running obviously, but why the body weight? This is where body weight matters, right? How much you weigh impacts how well you do in the machines. Fact, alright. And, but now we're stereotyping, right?

I have some guys here that weigh less than some of the girls here. So now I'm going down this path. Like, all right, so maybe we need to do weight classes. ,

[00:23:44] Sam Rhee: that's, that's what I was kind of thinking because I think if you took on average strength to weight ratio, the women would generally outpoint the men.

[00:23:51] David Syvertsen: Yep. There, we just did a power lifting meet here. Right? Yeah. And that was part that, that, that whole field, that's what that is. We don't really care who's moving the most weight. I mean, it's cool to. But how much you weigh, right? You know, like someone that weighs a hundred pounds, that lifts 200 pounds, it's much more impressive than someone that's 200 pounds that lifts 200 pounds.

Right? Right. So, or even 300 pounds. So now I'm asking myself, do you do, if you're gonna start scaling for age and gender, right? Chris Spieler was big on this. He thinks there should be weight classes in competitive CrossFit, and because he was 150, 60 pound guy, Trying to lift with guys that are two 10 doing the same weights, in my opinion, I don't want to go down that path because I think your body weight can.

and hurt you in a responsible program, right? Like there are workouts where like if you weigh a lot, it's gonna help you in today's workout, it's gonna crush you tomorrow. So it's on the athlete to kind of find, to try to be the medium. Like there are athletes in our gym that probably competitively if they wanna compete, they need to lose weight.

But there's also some athletes in our gym that need to gain weight, and it's a, it's a, it's a happy medium that you need to find. The one

[00:24:58] Sam Rhee: thing I don't like about CrossFit is that it does generally favor. Athletes in terms of accessibility to the general public. Yep. So if I'm a five 10, you know, 5 11, 6 foot guy, and you go into a CrossFit gym and you see all the really good athletes and they're all five seven.

Five six. Matt Frazier. Yep. Rich Froning. Yep. It, it really makes it difficult to say, Hey, listen, you're six two, you should really be doing CrossFit. It's tough. I, I, I don't feel like, I feel like CrossFit should be made more accessible to, to taller individuals and it's, it makes like, for example, Amy Edelman look even a more amazing when she's standing, there's five, 10 versus all these five, two or five foot athletes at the, at the

[00:25:41] David Syvertsen: competition.

Yeah. So what do you do? Change movements. I

[00:25:44] Sam Rhee: don't know. That's, that's a thing. Maybe you need to include more, or maybe you do need some,

[00:25:48] David Syvertsen: Like this, the extreme is like, hey, if, if you're above five, 10 and a woman, you only have to do six handstand pushups. Everyone else has to do nine. Like, you're really gonna go down that path.

Probably not. Like that kind of goes against the mold of, of CrossFit is like the, the methodology behind it. Yeah. You know. This is where I think competing there is, there's some fruition to it with competing and that's where I think there's a lot of responsibility on the person that's programming a competition that, I mean, it's unfair for Amy to do, you know, next to a short person rowing wall balls and box jumps, right?

Or step ups, right? Like she's so much bigger, so much easier. The box up to her knees. But then what the next workout you have handstand push. and front squats where a distance you're traveling is a good foot less, you know, like it balances itself out. So that's where, like my answer on that is, it, it, it should balance itself out.

I do think competitive CrossFit does, will always favor short people because of just the range of motion in, in the amount of movements. , but there's enough in there that you can make up for some of it.

[00:26:52] Sam Rhee: How do you program your mix of cardio, gymnastics, weights, strength training every day. Right? For the gym.

For the gym, yeah. Because some of that also influences how you program for women versus men.

[00:27:08] David Syvertsen: Right. I mean, I have found over the years that women recover lower bodies a lot more than. , and I don't know if that's an anatomy thing, like with their hips, the way they're put together there. What do you mean by recover?

Like not as sore, not as tight. Mm-hmm. when they're, when after a big, like a Karen mm-hmm. , you know, like, I can guarantee you the guys are gonna have a harder time squatted the next two, three days later if we did something else where everyone's sore. Mm-hmm. like, but more like the range of motion comes back, you know, their, their, their production in their legs is just better.

But it's the opposite with men. If we do like an extreme. Push up workout, pull up workout, upper body dominant. I feel like their women predominantly get much more sore and they're beat up from, they have a harder time kind of recovering from that and just producing enough strength. So do I program that ran on that at the gym?

No, to be honest with you, like I'm not gonna say like, oh, I'm gonna help the girls out this week or help the guys out this week. Because again, it's all just like opinion too. Like I don't have like a scientific experiment in front of me saying X, Y, and Z. But I have yet. Ever change anything in a workout other than weights and distances on a, on a machine when it comes to guys, girls, and there are workouts where i's like, yo, everyone's doing the same thing.

We're all doing a two K road today, guys. Like, you know? Sure. Yes. The guys will be seven minutes, ladies will be eight. Right. But I have thought about, and I don't know if it would even be received that well here to changing some upper body dominant movements. Like tomorrow's Let's say we have a strict handstand pushup workout next week, and there's five at a time.

I might make it four for the ladies. And I do think there's gonna be someone like Elena who's a ninja, who's gonna be like, dude, I could do strict handstand. Pushup is better than every guy here. And she would never say that, but like, it's the truth, right? But again, it, it's still. I, I would like, I am thinking about going down that path with just a few movements.

Not, not a lot.

[00:28:56] Sam Rhee: Have you, I would like to try to challenge you and, and say, would you be willing to try for a week or a month to do what they'd said on the Sivan podcast? Which is just program for the women and then scale for the

[00:29:08] David Syvertsen: guys. Yeah. I mean, I think it would be pretty easy because like I've done it for so long.

Like saying like, Hey girls, it's the 75 pound barbell guys. It's one 15. Or do we start going that? All right, the 75 pound bar, 75 pound barbell, usually crush the guys with the one 15. Mm-hmm. . Let's make this 1 0 5 for the guys. Like do you, is that what you mean by that? Yeah. Okay.

[00:29:32] Sam Rhee: Like, so you did the bison benchmark, which included thrusters and what was it?

It was one

[00:29:36] David Syvertsen: 15. That was 1 0 5. 1 0 5 1 0 5 70.

[00:29:40] Sam Rhee: Okay. And how did you choose the 70 for the

[00:29:43] David Syvertsen: women? Because when I go 90, it's 60. Like it's funny, it's like, I don't even know, think one gender first. I just go 95, 65. That's the way it's always been. Yeah. And now I'm gonna go up 10 pounds for the guys, but I'm only gonna go up five pounds for the ladies.

Which, you know, if you talk about percentage of jump in weight, the guys did a little bit more and it probably should have went the other way. Like I probably should have. 1 0 5 75

[00:30:10] Sam Rhee: and who, right. That's what I was kind of

[00:30:12] David Syvertsen: thinking, but So that's what you mean by challenging me to say like, Hey, yeah, do the girls first and scale the guys.

[00:30:17] Sam Rhee: Right. Because then you maybe would've thought, all right, I'm gonna do 75 pound for the ladies.

[00:30:20] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I'm still working on the results of that

[00:30:22] Sam Rhee: workout. I was about to say, who do you think did better gender wise on that overall

[00:30:26] David Syvertsen: girls?

[00:30:28] Sam Rhee: I do and And was it the, was it the gymnastics movements

[00:30:31] David Syvertsen: or the, I think it was the, or the thrusters.

I think it was, I actually do think it was the thrusters from the classes I watched. They were just better at getting them done and getting to the ette portion because it was

[00:30:40] Sam Rhee: lighter than what the guys had to deal with Probably.

[00:30:43] David Syvertsen: Honestly, it might've been. Yeah. So you know what I would just do guys and girls, same ways from that one give the guys some a self-esteem boost.

You girl, girls here are getting too fit, . But yeah, the, the, it's a fun thing to talk about guys. And, and I, I would say one of the last things I wanna wrap up with is just going back to the age groups is as we get older, right, and I'm not just saying this because I'm a little banged up right now. I do, I feel responsibility.

Now more than I used to of making sure that the master's athletes stay injury free. And I do think there are probably some injuries, whether there are something serious or like just a simple wear or tear, wear and tear that I wonder if we did start changing some of the RX at age 45. , does that keep people in the game longer or does it promote too much intensity?

You know, because, you know, you're, we're always gonna do our strength days. Like we have a strength day tomorrow. We have a strength day Friday, like we're, we're moving, and Thursday we have a lot of strength work. This week at Bison, you could still go lift your, there is no RX for that, that's just like percentage lifting, but in a high intensity classic CrossFit workout.

I think there is some more thought needed and potentially a move needed for that. Once we hit to that 45 age. Maybe even 40 that we start taking the loads down by X percent.

[00:32:02] Sam Rhee: I think you should try it for a month. Mm-hmm. and sort of get the feedback on that. Yeah. I wouldn't like it at first. Yeah. But I'd be willing to try that as an experiment.

Example

[00:32:13] David Syvertsen: Friday is what? . Yeah, I hope you do it. All right. Your age group is instead of 1 35, it's one 15 and it's 44 dubs instead of 54. So it's doing less volume and, and less Toast Bar. You're doing everything less. So

[00:32:24] Sam Rhee: instead of five rounds of 18 toast to bar, it's 15 toast to bar. Yep. It, instead of a 9 1 35 shoulder to overhead, it's one 15.

Yep. And instead of 54 double unders, it's 44. It's four. Right.

Okay. I

[00:32:36] David Syvertsen: mean, I'm, are you gonna feel like you're leaving someone on the table? Like there are some people here that like, they get bothered if they get capped out of a

[00:32:42] Sam Rhee: workout or, well, the, I'm gonna get capped regardless of whether.

[00:32:45] David Syvertsen: What you don't No, I'm well, I'm gonna increase the cap from the comp. Okay.

I'm gonna make it 15 minutes. You better not get cut. ,

[00:32:52] Sam Rhee: the toaster bar is what limits you. It is. So going from 15 to 18, maybe going from one 15 on the will save my shoulders a

[00:33:01] David Syvertsen: little bit more. I think it's more likely you'll go unbroken. Yeah, look, I bet if that was 1 35 and Sam's a a very high, he won't say it.

He's a very high. Master's athlete. He's been in the quarter, final, multiple years in a row. So 1 35 does not scare him. Right. But I do think I would break it up if I was gonna watch Yes. If I was gonna watch you do that workout 1 35, you would be breaking up 1 35 or, I'm thinking one 15 might be, I would

[00:33:24] Sam Rhee: say, let, let me see if I can go on, broken on it.

Go for it. Yeah. One

[00:33:26] David Syvertsen: 15. Yeah. And 44 dubs, like it doesn't sound. It is, it's only 50 less reps over the course of the workout. But in that state, that's a. right there. That will be a minute of, of trip ups. Mm-hmm. picking up your rope, all that stuff. Mm-hmm. and it's 15 less toes of bar, right? Mm-hmm. , that, that's probably a minute.

Like we're shaving two minutes off the workout. Yeah. Just by doing that. Yeah. And it puts you back in the stimulus game, you know, even though I think you would be fine with 1 35, but would your body thank you, would you feel better? You're moving less weight, you're doing less volume. I, I do think there's some truth

[00:34:00] Sam Rhee: to it, but then there's more pressure on me to get farther in the workout.

Right.

[00:34:04] David Syvertsen: Because of it. Would you be pushing too hard? Right.

[00:34:06] Sam Rhee: It's interesting. I think I'm gonna try it at the. Legends Rx for 50 54, and I think it's smart, and we'll give it a sh and we'll give it a go and, and I'll, I'll

[00:34:15] David Syvertsen: give you some feedback. Cool. All right, well, thank you guys for listening. If you have any feedback on this workout on this podcast episode, we would love to hear it because as you could see, you probably heard there are, we don't have an answer.

There's things that we might experiment with as, as a coach in programming as a gym itself. And, and I, I love feedback on stuff like this, especially where there is no clear cut answer. So if you have an opinion on it, it will, it will help. And one last thing before we end it. We have an episode coming up.

That it's going to be a q and a and we are going to make a post on our Instagram and have you guys send questions to the Instagram. So you will be anonymous on the podcast, but we will know who asked the question. We won't, we will not put your name out there and unless you want to Yeah, unless you want to.

Totally fine with that. And that will be an episode where we will just, we might even have a third person come on and either read the question to us, we won't know what they are ahead of. And it would be a fun little q and a. So we want to kind of get, do more stuff like that in the near future. So just be on the lookout for that over the next week or two.

And have a great day. Thanks for listening.