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A CrossFitter's Guide to... CrossFit - E.416 · Misfit Podcast

• @misfitcoach: Good morning, Misfit. You are tuning in to another episode of the Misfit Podcast. On today's episode, our off season meandering has finally come full circle. We talked to you guys about accessory work, pressing gymnastics, pulling gymnastics, strength work, engine work, all of that good stuff. We have to funnel back to the actual sport. We have to funnel back to actual Metcons and CrossFit and all of that good stuff. and Well, I don't want to give too much away here, but there is a kind of a funny circular, you know, lifecycle of a CrossFitter. that was fun to examine as part of putting together the notes for today. we'll do a little bit of housekeeping here and then we will jump into the episode. Reminder that in the very near future we are gonna offer a new tier of programming called Comp Plus, where you guys get a weekly coaching call. so we're gonna go over the programming, we're gonna do Q<unk>A, we're gonna do video review, all of that good stuff. And we are essentially doing beta testing with it right now. So that call is free for everybody. I've been emailing you guys, it is in Telegram as well. It is 9 30 mountain time every single Friday. And I'm gonna start to give you guys a little bit of homework, a little bit of a primer here. I'm gonna start to give guys homework so that we can talk through specific things and make it a little bit more interactive. but yeah, keep an eye in Telegram. If you're on the email list, keep an eye on that as well. I have as part of essentially an ad read, kind of an ad read, a little bit of a personal story here. So we talk often about creating space in your training so that the thing that you are specifically trying to get better at over a shorter period of time really sort of gets the attention that it deserves. And recently, I essentially I train in the afternoon most days. And I if I go to the gym and do sort of more of the bodybuilding, weightlifting type stuff, I do the sauna afterwards. And at that point in the day, after that much training, I find it hard to stay. It's not like a super hot sauna, so I gotta go a little bit longer at the gym in there for 30 minutes, but I have a tough time doing that, staying in there. And then magically during a D load week, it was really easy to stay in there. And it's just this reminder of okay, like you're giving a certain amount of resources to certain things. And then yesterday, on the kind of rare occasion that I got to go in the morning, you start to think about the difference as well with the mental aspect. So I'm sitting here at my desk working all day, you know, building things, communicating. and then you go to the gym and there's a certain amount of resources that are just gone and not there. So not only was it easier to go in and focus and lift, it was a really good session, being able to do that in the morning. but I also don't get to do this when I train. so I drank a Gorilla Mind energy drink yesterday before I went in, and holy shit. My weights and rep ranges were very different. @paige_semenza: Hm. @misfitcoach: and it's one of those things where again w how you use these tools, how you think about your training, how you put stuff in certain places, you get served these really cool reminders for those things. so I don't know that I'm gonna be able to shift my schedule as much as I would like to, but if you train in the morning. and you want to be able to push a little bit harder and have a little bit more mental focus. this is again a company that supports the podcast, but a company that I asked to support the podcast because I really believe in what they do. And this bad boy has real doses of nootropics in it and a bunch of caffeine, and it works really well. And you can go to gorilla mind.com forward slash misfit or use the code word misfit at checkout. You save on your order and you support the podcast. I always show the can, but we get way more listens than we do watches. I've been just real deep on the citrus rain lately. I'm just kind of throwing it out there. You guys let me know what you think of the citrus rain. But yeah, it's nice to get those reminders, whether you're a coach or an athlete. It's like, okay, like @paige_semenza: Yeah, for sure. @misfitcoach: what you prioritize is probably going to, and maybe I am saying do Metcon first, everyone. Maybe that's the whole point of that ad. @paige_semenza: Yeah. I always like get asked like what should I should I live first? Should I do Metcon first? Like sometimes I'm like, get the hardest thing done first. Like what's hardest for you to do? @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. Yeah. @paige_semenza: And like then it's like all right, you're off to the races. Yeah. @misfitcoach: And if you put the thing that you're really good at first, you oftentimes are able to really trash yourself, right? Like, and @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: that's not just conditioning. That's also like if you're really strong and you've got a five by five back squat and you put that first and then you wonder why you can't hold your paces on the rower, like should be pretty obvious there. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. @misfitcoach: Really excited. The work is the only way collection is finally gonna drop. The presale will get started tomorrow, Friday, September 18th. We are doing things a little bit different this time. I've already mentioned this. We're doing a bunch of different garments and we're doing two different colorways. so you guys kind of get to decide which vibe you're going for. the prices are going to be discounted during the presale. There will be items left afterwards, but if you guys want To save and you want to sort of support the, you know, putting the the different garments out there, go ahead and do the pre sale first. and if you miss out, you're probably gonna to pay between three and eight dollars more. two notes on this collection. There are two very expensive items, and I'm making them because I want them. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: it's very selfish. So you're gonna be probably a little bit surprised. there is a a pigment dyed crew neck sweatshirt that is literally my favorite sweatshirt that I have. I'm obsessed with it. And when I got the quote back, I was like mother of God. So I'm actually not even gonna like try to get good margins on this. So when you see the pigment dyed long sleeve and the pigment dyed crew neck sweatshirt and you're like, why does it cost this much? It's because it actually does cost that much. And I just want it for myself because fall's coming. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: there are plenty of other choices. but if you want to spend the money, they are both really good products. all right, right before we jump in, shout out of the week. Paige, would you like to go first? @paige_semenza: Misses are crazy, they're gonna buy it. You know that. Yeah, they're gonna do it. @misfitcoach: Some some people are, but I just kinda wanna put it out there, like why is this T-shirt thirty dollars and this crew neck sweatshirt two thousand dollars? And it's like, I'm sorry, okay? It just costs what it costs. @paige_semenza: yeah, I mean he has been Chris Livingston second at the summit games in the fifty plus masters division. went last year, we worked together last year, but like we're no longer working together but he has stayed with misfit through and through and like he's a guy that will ask super thoughtful questions for his training. Like he he goes the whole nine for it. So huge shout out to Chris for for going in there and and getting on the podium. Really cool to see. @misfitcoach: You just love to see someone again that has the athlete IQ that asks the questions that is very clearly working their tail off, go show it and put it on display. So @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. @misfitcoach: yeah, double shout out for Chris. My shout-out is a little selfish. I'm okay with that. my shout-out is Missy G. She is a newer remote client. and she's a low rep learner. She's a like I'm doing this movement this way and I got like three or four things I want her to work on. And then the twenty-four hours later she sends me a video with those things in it. and aside from again like The just the selfish element of being able to make progress quickly. When an athlete she came came onto the program late in the year last year and made a lot of progress in a pretty short period of time. I think she kind of made that leap from affiliate athlete to competitor after a really long history, which actually probably is a pretty good segue into this episode. but then now I see potential in all of these different spots. It's like you're actually doing this well, but we have these things to clean up. so again, a little bit selfish, but really cool to see somebody you know, really think through the notes in a remote coaching setting and put them to work. because that's @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: definitely on our end like a labor of love going through and reviewing all of that stuff and putting the notes in there. So shout out Missy. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And just like the kind of general understanding of the programming and why you're doing what you're doing and being able to like I don't know, like embrace that. Like that helps @misfitcoach: Sure. @paige_semenza: a ton too. @misfitcoach: Yep, definitely. All right. I don't know that I'm gonna call this episode this, but we have arrived at a CrossFitter's guide to CrossFit. and what's fun about thinking through this in and outlining the episode was realizing that our beginning point and our end point are the exact same place. We have this kind of circular path that we go over. You begin CrossFit, you get after it, you you know, see how fast you can go basically every single day. That's kind of the goal. That's what we're doing. We've got the, you know, we've got the whiteboard. We've got now the virtual versions of that. You can wake up in the morning and look at your phone and see how so and so did at the 6 a.m. class, all that good stuff. and then maybe you stay there. Maybe you are a lifelong affiliate athlete and you're trying to be stronger and healthier and happier and fitter and all that good stuff. But then you know, you know, if if there's a thousand people a week. shout out by the way, our numbers are way up. Thank you, listeners. You you guys are doing @paige_semenza: Ha ha ha @misfitcoach: great. Shout out to you. but let's say there's a thousand of you a week and you know, seven or eight hundred of you were sickos or you coach sickos. We arrive at that place where we want more. and we want more via the pathway of being good at the sport specifically. And when you look at the components that go into being better at the sport, there's a lot of stuff in there. And what we do is we pull it apart and we look at the individual components. And we think about it from the perspective of how do I improve this element and that element? And then hopefully, if we are smart, we make it back to the Metcons as a different animal. so it was just cool to think about it from that perspective. And I think there's some fun visuals that I could try to do, you know, that I could try to design here because we have that life cycle. But then we also have this Venn diagram of like All of these circles that are trying to converge back into the middle. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: and the four pieces that we've had in the previous episodes. And if you're new to the podcast, I really would recommend listening to a crossfader's guide to accessory work, the pulling gymnastics, the pressing gymnastics, the strength in the engine podcast. and those are all within, I would say, the last like 20 episodes or so. and When we look at the segmentation here, we have we start with the idea of accessory work because it can be maybe the most esoteric, the most like, what am I supposed to do about a muscular imbalance as a CrossFitter? Because if you're working your way through Metcons and you're doing four or five of them a week. It can be hard to know what accessory work you should do when you're constantly at 160, @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: 170, 180 beats per minute. and not only are you not gonna know exactly what to do in that moment, but there's also some trial and error with accessory work. Like I've brought up the the football bar bench a bunch of times. When I do that movement, I feel fairly strong with it. And then there is a like tiny muscle group. The outside of my shoulder that is just torched from doing that, that I don't get from push-ups, that I don't get from bench press, any very any other variation of bench press, just the football bar, you know, the one where you have the neutral grip. for people that don't know what that is. And that's where the experimentation comes into place. But when you are doing accessory work and you can find a particular muscle group that is way underperforming compared to To the rest of your body, you can make serious changes in what you can then go do in other places in CrossFit. So we pull that out so that we can figure out what those things are. We got muscular imbalances, maybe it's mobility, maybe it's stability, but we can focus on some real specific stuff with the accessory work. the gymnastics is a very challenging place because. When you're in an affiliate setting, you are doing a particular gymnastics movement once or twice a month, maybe it comes up, unless you're following a program @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: that's biasing a certain thing. And not only are you doing it that infrequently, how much time do you have to practice that in class? Is it five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes? And maybe you have a fantastic coach and you get these great progressions. But then you made that progress in a day. Does it carry over to another place? So we have that element. And then to get really good at gymnastics and CrossFit, you need to know what you're not good at, practice that to the point where you can do it efficiently. And then you need to do it by itself, you know, in what we would refer to as gymnastic strength or skill work at Mesfit Athletics. so that you can actually build a capacity that it's appropriate for it to make its way into. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: intervals and and all of this different stuff. So you can start to see how important it is to pull these elements out. moving on to strength, I think strength is a little bit easier just because it's more present. there aren't as many variations of the movements, which is nice. a lot of accessories, I mean there's an infinite amount of those out there. And then the gymnastics have, I think, enough variations within their kind of subgroups. You know, we we do want to get better at getting inverted, but that's kipping, deficit, strict, wall facing, wall walks, @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: handstand walks, all of this different stuff. Whereas the strength, you're doing it more often, more repeated, and you're doing those standalone sessions. So like I think a good affiliate program has lift only days in it, and then I think a good affiliate program has one or two days a week. Where you're doing a lift and maybe like a short conditioning piece, that sort of thing. but at the end of the day, can you follow that dedicated program inside of the walls of your of your box? and for general population, like that's just really not who this episode is for. Like, I think it's fantastic @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: for the general population. We'll talk about variants and why it works and how it ties everything back together, but If we are trying to get competitors to a point where they can come back to doing the original thing better, that's basically what we're going for there. our last piece is bringing in another segment that I feel like is a bridge back to CrossFit. But when you think, Paige, of your journey through training and getting better relative to accessory work, gymnastics, and strength, like what do you think? made the most change for you in those areas to actually be able to go compete better. @paige_semenza: Like you want like a specific like per segment? Or are you just talking like like I I just think back to @misfitcoach: W like just when you think back of things that were like a catalyst that were segmented training that brought you back to a better place as a competitor. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Like the very first thing when I like was like, all right, I'm going all in, I'm I'm buying into this was like consistently hitting my zone two sessions and not skipping them. @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: so the aerobic stuff was really, really important. like when it came to accessories, like I I really thinking of like kind of using like my open like leaderboard scores, it's like I can see where my I mean I have my perception of weaknesses, but like obviously you @misfitcoach: Sure. @paige_semenza: have the data when you have the leaderboard. when it comes to gymnastics movements and it's like you can pinpoint, you know, for me for a while it was like I was like not great at toast to bar workouts. It was high volume toast @misfitcoach: Mm. @paige_semenza: to bar workouts. So it was like, all right, I could take that gymnastics movement and I can do complementary skill work to go along with it. The dead hangs, the the farmers carries, all that kind of stuff. and kind of the same with strength. Like, you know, I'm thinking like back now even to like our accessory work in phase one and I'm @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: pretty I don't add a ton of lower body accessory. I don't typically have issues or like @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: I'm sure I have some you know asymmetries but like nothing that like I I fixed a lot of that by fixing my squat. So at a at a point there was like a lot of @misfitcoach: Sure. @paige_semenza: knees over toes hold and and things like that to get me sitting more upright. but a lot of it again comes back to like the overhead stability, the getting like my muscle endurance and my overhead, like my handstand holds, like thinking of a lot of for me, mostly upper body work is kind of where a lot of the like commitment had to come into. but like again, I I just go back to like the engine work was kind of a big part of it. I think like for me, 'cause I didn't enjoy it at the time, but like it @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: also like you do that hard thing and it's like, I don't know, it kinda helped with the commitment to like the process with other things and kind of like building momentum of like seeing that like this thing is improving that thing. So wow, that feels good. that kind of helps it like It's kinda like you spark that fire and it can kinda keep lighting. @misfitcoach: And I think a common thread with what you're referencing is yes, it is segmented training. but it's pretty simple. you know what I mean? Like handstand holds, farmers carries, like like things of @paige_semenza: Yeah. I I think about that all the time. Yeah. @misfitcoach: that nature. And Yeah. I mean, when I'm trying to when I'm trying to get better at something like that, it's it's so funny. It's like like you can feel your pressing endurance going, so you just get back into doing your like weekly or bi weekly, you know, like volume push-ups and you just notice a difference @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Yeah. @misfitcoach: going into that stuff. So while it is important to do this to pull it apart, like we're still going to rely on the idea of we don't need to get very we don't need to get too cute here. the complexity of your goal should match the complexity of your plan, vice versa. So like, okay, yes, this is frustrating, but it actually just boils down to I need better grip strength. Like we don't need to reinvent the wheel with anything fancy. @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: We need to get time under tension. Some of it's gotta be light and long, some of it's gotta be short and heavy, and voila, better grip strength. @paige_semenza: Yeah. I mean and I come back to like, you know, s staying with Misfit was like, you know I'm not fixing some like it's not broken. Why would I try to fix it? Like I'm still improving. I'm still seeing like gains for myself. and I enjoy it. And like you and I had recently talked about a conversation that you've had with a coach and like a coach that coaches like other games athletes and it's like @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: the complexity of the way he's they're talking is like it's really not that hard. Like if you wanna get good at it, you need @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: to really like bear down on a few things and get the exposure to those things as well in the right way in the right volume. and that's where you see a lot of progress. @misfitcoach: Yeah, and the for coaches listening, the pitfalls here, there's kind of two of one of them is what sells versus what works. So you can bring a level of complexity to the conversation as a way to sell yourself and your program. Like, hey, there is actually a like hidden shortcut and there's a way to do X, Y, and Z. And of course we don't really subscribe to that. And then the other is something that I would refer to as a young man's game. and I mean I I would apologize for saying it this way, but I probably wouldn't mean it. Just mental masturbation of like you're you're you're you just wanna talk and think about very complex ideas. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: What is complex about it is delivering it and selling it while it remains simple and effective. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, obviously I've I've done the program so like I know it works. So when it comes like even working with my athletes, I wanna deliver things to them in the simplest way. 'Cause it's like @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: they don't really care about the complexities. They want to just get better. And like @misfitcoach: Sure. Yep. @paige_semenza: yeah. @misfitcoach: And I and what I really enjoy is like the nerdy athlete being like, well, why this? And I'm just like, let's have this conversation. I love this conversation. Yeah. @paige_semenza: Yeah, right. That there's that too, right. @misfitcoach: Yeah. I do like that part. Okay, let's talk about the segment that actually gets us back to the real conversation here. And that is engine work, monostructural work, affectionately referred to as bitch work at Misfit Athletics. and essentially If we forget that CrossFit is conditioning, then we are really gone down the wrong path, right? The work is the only way collection, those little red things that go to the X, that means you've gone on a shortcut that's taking you nowhere and you're gonna walk your ass back to the purple path. and engine work is so fantastic because Especially if I'm on a machine. I'm sitting there and I have data right in front of my face. Now step one is to not be a frickin' bozo with said data, right? You're in an affiliate class and like I used to get frustrated for reasons that you shouldn't be frustrated about in an affiliate setting. But like I'd get nitty gritty with like pacing instructions 'cause someone would ask. And then they'd be thirty seconds per split faster in round one. And it's like I What are you doing? We just said 149. You're at a 129. What is happening? I didn't even know 129. Like it's not even possible. Stop it. so that would be step one, but we have this data sitting in front of us, and it could be, depending on how much of a nerd you are, like it could go pretty deep. You know, we @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: can have our, you know, RPMs and strokes per minute. We can have our wattage and our split pacing. we can have our heart rate, we can have our heart rate recovery between rounds. you know, we can look at HRV, we can look at all of these different things, but what we're trying to accomplish aside from manipulating energy systems is to start to connect the data to actual subjective feel. I need to know as an athlete when I go to do actual CrossFit, what does it feel like to tow the line? What does it feel like to go over the line? What does it feel like to, you know, kind of stay away from it? What does it feel like those first few times that you ask a little bit more of yourself and you're just in like the worst hurt locker ever, but you're happy because you're like, I can do more, right? Like there are warning signs in the human body that you have to override as a CrossFitter @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: to just almost start over, like start fresh. And I think about that in accessory work too. I'm like, okay, the next time you can't unpeel your fingers after a farmer's carry, remember that feeling compared to I don't wanna hold on to the pull up bar anymore. It doesn't feel nice. Those are two different things, right? And I'm not telling @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: you to fall off the pull up bar, but I am saying when you got three left, my biggest pet vive, an athlete just dominates ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of a workout and all of a sudden that last rep. I can't. I can't do it. It's not possible. I think it's not possible @paige_semenza: Can't do it. @misfitcoach: that it's not possible. so we are developing athlete IQ in a very controlled environment, right? And like maybe a small segue, in and of itself would be running. Cause you get data, but how annoying is it to stare at your watch every 12 like you don't get you can't be a runner and do that at the same time. But we still get information. We still get to to look down every once in a while and make sure we're doing what we think we should be doing. But in a MetCon, are you really, let's say it's five rounds long, are you doing your split times like in @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: real time? Are you looking back up at the clock and being like, Wow, round one was one minute and round two is two minutes? Like what happens @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: now? Like how am I gonna be able to deal with that? So that is how we start to establish the basis for our athlete IQ. We have to take this controlled environment and take it somewhere else. We have to have that segue into essentially starting to add variables to this conversation. @paige_semenza: I I think it was maybe twenty twenty two. Was the first year Caroline and I were back at the games together. I think it was twenty twenty two. 'Cause you were in the back @misfitcoach: W okay, did she go in twenty one? In Okay, okay, yes, twenty two. Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: Yeah. She did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. but anyway, the final event was the one c it was Jackie. was a version of Jackie. It was the one K row, and they're like, You have to row in this requirement or you don't move on to the rest of the workout. And again, you're balls deep in the events. It's the very last one. I I'm beat up. I don't love rowing. But I I had to h you had to hold a one fifty. To get below a 340 time for the 1K. And I kept saying, I can't do this. I I don't guys, I don't think I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna try, but I I don't know if I'm gonna make it. but I had experience of doing eighth gear row holding a 148 for 90 seconds with a four minute rest, but I did that eight @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. Yeah. @paige_semenza: times over and over again. So I'm like, @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: I physically can do this. But I'm really fighting myself. And then you get there, and I held a I don't know, 149.7 or something and got done in 339. @misfitcoach: I do remember it was close. @paige_semenza: but again, you know, taking from a controlled environment, taking that eighth year data and being able to apply it in @misfitcoach: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. @paige_semenza: one of the most important situations. so yeah, just kind of a little anecdote there. @misfitcoach: And those are the connections that we are trying to make. And you would have known from all of your history with the machine work, because you've done the longer durations, you've done the three minutes, the four minutes, the five minutes, you wouldn't you would have known if you were in the danger zone. That @paige_semenza: Yeah, right. @misfitcoach: feeling. Like you do it enough, you know where you're at, and you know that it's probably not the best place to be. and that's kind of a fun situation because you're like, Well, I can, but like what happened? Is it's still a workout after this, like that kind of thing. Yeah. Yep. @paige_semenza: That was the worst part. Like you want me to go do fifty thrusters and thirty bar muslovs after this? I'm like standing at the barbell with my hands on my knees. There's like a picture of it somewhere. @misfitcoach: You recovered well once you started. @paige_semenza: I once I got the stress, the anxiety out of the way, I was like, alright, I'm good. I'm so glad @misfitcoach: Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. I feel like I do remember Gabe though being like, Pick the fucking bar I think I have a recollection of that situation. @paige_semenza: I can't hear him when I'm out there. Although I wish I could. @misfitcoach: boy. @paige_semenza: Put a mic on him next time. @misfitcoach: okay, intervals are our road from our road, our bridge, our segue from monostructural conditioning to metcons. And the easiest way to explain how we get all the way down that road is let's say we take AMRAP three minutes times three, rest three minutes. Between rounds, row for meters. Okay. We just got a a monostructural conditioning workout, one-to-one rest. And now we take a gymnastics movement or a weightlifting movement or even a cross-fitty monostructural movement, your burpees, your wall balls, your double unders, et cetera. We take that and we put it in a small dose into the workout. So you row for two and a half minutes and then you do 60 double unders. Something like that. 15 wall balls. This is how we start to make this connection. We have the information on what that three at this point we should have the information on what that three on, three off should be. Now we insert another variable and we have to ask, what does that do? What does that create? What stimulus does that create? Does it feel exactly the same? and I think all of those movements would be different, right? Like a wall ball is a wall ball, but a burpee could be at a, you know, at 10 per minute or 30 per minute. @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: You know, there's a lot of a lot of sort of range there. but we do these workouts and we start to in start to introduce variables and in an interval setting, we get the rest period to figure out whether that was what we should be doing or what we shouldn't be doing. Right. Should I have done those wall balls unbroken? what was the point of the piece, et cetera? And now we get into the world of changing and moving all of these pieces around. And it could be that we are changing the stimulus. We could be changing the movements. We could be adding movements. You know, you could do a you can do an interval with three, four, five movements in it. and you have all of these different ways to start figuring this out. And I told actually you normally do this at the beginning of the podcast. I'll get used to it. Colin is waiting in the wings. he is your athlete representative. He's gonna ask questions at the end of the episode here, but I mentioned to to Paige and Colin before that I wanted to go on the full rant of why interval work is great and why it works. I don't think that's necessary for this, for this context. So maybe there's another episode waiting in the wings talking about interval work. But basically, we are Providing an opportunity for an athlete to repeat something with space in between to learn how to pace, to learn what the proper thing is, to try stuff. Like, well, I think this is, you know, this is my hypothesis, but I'm gonna go in and actually put it to work @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: and figure out what to do there. and I think maybe the final point there is really just the data. Like, are you the type of athlete that when you get done, you're taking notes and you're actually going through? Like that's one of the main benefits of a remote coaching situation is I'm probably gonna ask you to be better about your data. And you might accidentally develop an athlete IQ just outside of the conversations we have because you're really starting to take down notes of what worked and what didn't work. relative to your interval training. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I I think like thinking of it in a broader perspective too. Like we talked to I talked to McKenna about this, like with her injury. It's like you've been in this situation before. You you aren't coming from the same place going into something new. You're coming in with new experiences. And it's like you can kind of think about intervals in the same way. about like I did this in in this interval and I blew up. Okay, I know what not to do. Like you're building experiences through this that you're able to that you will be able to apply in a Metcon situation when that time comes. I row for three and a half minutes at this pace, my burpee box jumpover pace becomes every ten seconds instead of every six seconds. @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: so like, you know, that that just that you're you're building experiences and being able to like if if you're really focused on building your athlete IQ, then you are paying attention to those experiences. @misfitcoach: The goal too is for it to end up being second nature. There are @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: athletes in the sport that their athlete IQ is so dialed that they just know without even thinking about it what the strategy in a particular workout is. It's kind of fascinating @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: to watch. and then there are others who their version of that is talking through it. They arrive at that point where they, you know, maybe they stress test their idea with their coach, that sort of thing. but you guys just get so much information all of the time and learning from that information. can literally be like the thing that takes you from being the athlete that's always on the outside looking into not. Maybe it's not @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: the way that you train, how dedicated you are, any of these other things. It's okay, well I've done this combination now seven times and I never learn that like doing slow touch and go power snatches paired with toas to bar is just not cutting it. My time under tension, like I'm not getting any fucking points for bringing it to my hip and waiting there and then going back down, right? so are you learning from those things, especially if you have a coach and you're kind of talking through all of that stuff. @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: so while we're not gonna do the full side quest on intervals, we're gonna do it on variants. I am a like we talk about the different propaganda that we spread as misfits, variance is is a guiding principle. and I I don't think it's always the easiest thing to sell. because of the knock on CrossFit with the whole very not random and you know the the internet trolls that are like well I tried CrossFit but it was just a bunch of random workouts and they pulled them from a hopper and it's like dude nobody does that that's not a thing. but you learn how valuable variance is as a beginner CrossFitter. You learn that so quickly, whether you know it or not, it's what's happening to you. It's what ha what's happening to your body. It is the short, medium, long, it's the couplets, it's the triplets, it's the ones that you can cruise through. It's the ones where you get stuck in place. And I remember the best athlete in Maine for the first few years that that we sort of started to do our thing, he would do a workout and if he lost in it, he would just keep doing it. So like he would have this rotation of like Fran, Fran, Fran, Fran, 2K row, 2K row, 2K row. Like he would do @paige_semenza: Wow. @misfitcoach: those things and forget what got him to the point of being that good. in the first place. and the sport kind of passed him by, I think, for being a little bit too because like those are principles that I think come from traditional strength and conditioning that like we've all @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: tried maybe once or twice or a million times to apply to the wrong thing. So it's like, okay, what actually makes you better at something like Fran or a two K row? And it's like, well, we know we have to be stronger. We know that we have to have better grip strength. We know that we have to have power output, but we gotta have That back end, like a bunch of anaerobic and even some aerobic, once we start to get into the hurt locker. And then you just have to ask yourself, are there better tools for doing those things than just doing the thing over and over? And the answer, of course, is yes. and that's why variants work. So that's maybe our beginning point of understanding how and why it works. But then as programmers and as athletes, we get the opportunity to manipulate volume, duration, rest, movement, loading, stimulus. And the athlete gets the experiences that you referenced. We have this massive like download of experiences. It's like the matrix, you know, you Do you either plug that thing into the back of your head and actually have @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: them coming in, or do you leave the cord off to the side by accident @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: and you have CrossFit amnesia? You know, you get the the like ninth year affiliate person that's like, is that the one where you take the thing and go like this? And you're like, Jeff, I swear to God, if you ask me what a snatch is again, you've done a million of them. This is madness. but again, you start to like make these connections and this is one of those things where I have practical application. For the longest time, athletes, let's say that were more on the semifinals games level, our first year of working together, they thought that I had like inside information to what workouts were gonna be in competition. @paige_semenza: So crazy. @misfitcoach: They're like, we've already done this. I'm like, Yeah, that's 'cause we write all the we we variance is a guiding principle of what we do, especially in competition prep. You are probably going to cross paths with something like this. and not only is the athlete prepared physically and maybe from the like like can I go hard aspect, but they have a level of confidence because they're like, okay, like I have a trust in my coach and I already know what this feels like. I already know what this is. I know like we call it know your enemy, like that's what you're doing when you're training. @paige_semenza: Every single games prep I've done, there's been something that like you wouldn't think is gonna pop up at the games and we've done it in training. And I'm like, holy fuck, like how did how? How did you know? But it's like it is it's so true. And @misfitcoach: I plug that shit into the back of my head, coaching edition. They give me the info and it's downloaded. @paige_semenza: it like just like you said, like the confidence level that comes with that is is through the roof. yeah. @misfitcoach: So the year that you the year that you referenced at the games was the year that Boz programmed. @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: And when we got done, two or three of the top coaches in the entire sport had a conversation with me where they're like, We're we're fucked. Back to the drawing board, like we had no clue what was coming, like just basically freaked out because we switched directions in a handstand push @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: up and did something weird with a jump rope. Like it And I went back and looked, and in mock games, we were 18 for 20 in predicting the movements. Because they do the same movements every @paige_semenza: Yeah, it was so cool. @misfitcoach: time, right? Like, anyways. So again, variance as a training philosophy is incredibly important because we start to pick up on these patterns. And the more information that you have. the the more dangerous you can be in creating a hypothesis when there is a new combination. You've done enough of them, you've seen enough of it. We start to really think about like, okay, what are the actual potential limiters here? So like we have the different stimuli that we use. So we have, okay, everyone's going unbroken here. What are the margins? They're the individual cadence movements and the transitions. I'm gonna know that right off the bat. A rep scheme that forces you to break in a workout, right? You look at it and you're like, if I do this I'm broken, like if I do this one @paige_semenza: Toast. @misfitcoach: movement I'm broken, I'm toast. Like I have no, like I'm not gonna be able to do it. And those are usually very clear, right? A chip or something to that effect. Then we @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: have the not so obvious ones that are the same thing where we are running interference with movements, right? The first time you do your bitch gnostics and you go hard on a rower and you try to do a muscle up, you're like, this isn't fair, right? @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: The first time that, you know, Boz gave us the G H D pistol and then you try to go do a rope climb and no one could lift their legs up. Like those things are again why variance matters. You don't want to be the athlete that doesn't know that. and then the one that isn't obvious but should be are workouts that are written that look easy on paper. that if you go and just try to crush them, your heart rate will be through the roof way too early. So you're breaking them up. And those are just things that have longer ranges of motion. That's what those are, right? Thrusters, power snatch from the floor, @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: burpee. Like when we isolate movements, they just don't do the same thing to our heart rate. We're going all the way back to our L1 here, you know, with the physics that they teach and the work capacity and all of that stuff. All of that is typically obvious until you see a light snatch paired with a burpee box jump over and you're like, I got this, and you don't got it. You definitely don't got it. @paige_semenza: Mm. What was the the final open workout? Right? The power cleans thrusters burpee over bar? Right? @misfitcoach: Which which one? Which year? @paige_semenza: Was it this year? Yeah. No. @misfitcoach: What was it? @paige_semenza: Last year. No. This year. Maybe it was the one that Olivia, Daniel Brandon, and Ariel Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just like that one. @misfitcoach: You did the cleans and the thrusters and then you the weight changed as it went up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. yeah. Yeah. You saw that at the beginning and you're like, is that a good idea? And you should know @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. @misfitcoach: because those are all that's what all of those things are, right? You get @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: a longer range of motion. It's just a bunch of work to be done. and again, we have that's why variance matters, because there's so many different combinations to figure out. and of course, underneath all of this is this underlying idea of we're not just doing this to figure it out, we're doing this to move the needle and get fitter at the same time, right? so your ability to put yourself through all of these different things is going to get you back to a place where you can then actually go execute like when it really matters. @paige_semenza: I I mean obvio it's obvious, but like, you know, who wants to go and do Fran every day anyway? Like variance is what like keeps us coming back for more, does it not? You know, like and it @misfitcoach: Sure, yeah. @paige_semenza: keeps us like enjoying to program. It's like you always got a new puzzle that you get to work on and like it just it the challenge is always there. Yeah, right. Man. @misfitcoach: I probably would have left without variance. We gotta be able to change it up, right? Like then I just you could just you just make a template and put it out and that's it. Yeah. @paige_semenza: This is a plateau. Right. Yeah. @misfitcoach: Yep. Wow, some some awesome variance G propaganda talk there. That just got me very @paige_semenza: Okay. @misfitcoach: happy. All right. so you'd think and I thought that we have arrived back at Metcons. We have not. we're doing them, but not in that same way. Not in the same like concept here. So we need to now entertain this concept of like we're figuring out how to do things, but also using Metcons as a tool. So give you guys an example of like we'll just take it straight into the the training versus testing. Most of the time in an off-season when you are doing Metcons. You're basically doing a couplet or a triplet or a chipper, or what we call a movement family chipper where you are, you know, beginning to end, not resting. that's that's how we're gonna kind of identify this here. You should probably be using that to improve most of the time. and there's a big difference, right? So we see the workout and we identify what the limiter is going to be, but then it's not always gamify the workout as much as possible because you might be in the kind of situation where the smartest thing to do is to back off on the machine and then go crush the crossfitting movements. Turns out you're great at those already. What are we going to go do on the machine? Right? Are we going to try to move the needle there? Are we going try to go hard @paige_semenza: We're gonna go hard. Yeah. @misfitcoach: there? And it should be subtle, right? We don't want to ruin our workout, but we are trying to train and it also gives you freedom to experiment. It also gives you freedom to figure out, okay, if I do focus on this thing, if I am locked in on the burpees, what happens elsewhere? Right? Like, do I think I know what I would have done if I'm trying to game the workout and get the best score? Or am I now giving myself better information? and that brings us to the test retest model. Reason why we use this so religiously at Misfit. when we are doing a training phase isn't just proof of concept. It's also okay, you get a free look at this workout. You get to go in and you get to try to game it, but you're gonna learn something. Right. @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: Like we try to make the stimulus ambiguous. We try to make it like I'm not gonna give you advice. I want you to to learn through a little bit of trial and error here. And then the retest is as probably as close as we're gonna get to actual competition workouts. We have the information, we've trained the stimulus, we already know what to do, but then can you really execute? Like, do you get @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: done that workout and just like I'm done with it? That's what I can do. I knew how to break it up, I knew where to push, I knew when I was, you know, getting a little bit too close to crossing the line there. I finished the way that I wanted to, all of these different pieces. If you can start to say that more and more and more in a retest, that's when you are ready to go compete. That's when you're ready to try and put it together and do that in person. So again, we've arrived back at the MetCon, but we are using MetCons to train most of the time. We're using them to gather information. We're using them to move the needle on specific things. we're using them to sort of bring the concept of variance back together. And, you know, see where we're at. And then finally we go to compete and we've come full circle on all of this stuff. We've tried to bring absolutely everything back together that we are referencing. @paige_semenza: I feel like with the way that you frame it too, it kind of takes like you get a free peek at this workout. So just go do it, get information. Cause like people freak out when it's like phase one test. They see tests and they're like, my goodness. But it's like phase one sneak peek. Just go give it a try, you know? So @misfitcoach: Yeah, it's true. It's true. @paige_semenza: and and then it's like you have six weeks to gather information, so you learn. How you feel short, medium, long on those movements, how you feel in a gas stimulus, in a muscle endurance piece, in a cardio piece, on those movements. So like you're gaining all this information and then it's like, all right, now really go give it a run. Like you got your sneak peek, you got your information, your experiences. Now what can you do? So I don't know, I just it reframes it. @misfitcoach: And this is it does and that's why I've always kind of laughed at that because I find test retest personally to be very fun because there's just Like the information is there, right? @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: Like the unknown of a Wednesday concoction that we've cooked up that looks just so much different than everything else, that is a little bit more stressful to me personally when I'm going in to do it because I'm like, okay, what is the right play here with this rep scheme? And of course I want to to do it to find the information, but when I know what something is, the only real thing that you're gonna run into is either the ego element. that the leaderboard brings, which like on test day isn't very relevant compared to retest day. Or you just know it hurts really bad and you don't want to hurt. And @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: it's really funny when an athlete is down to hurt five days a week in the middle of the phase and not on testing. It's like we there's something @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: there that we need to uncover that we need to figure @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: out. Cause like You're in pain every day and you're like laughing about it. So like if that's the case, that's probably a stronger narrative than, @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: that one hurts so bad. I don't wanna do that. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: So at this point, the life cycle just keeps repeating itself. And of course, the order of operations changes and the athlete adapts and the coach does. And we know the things that move the needle with an athlete, but we also get a new set of data from the actual competing to figure out what we need to get better at. and as we talked about all the way back at the beginning. At the beginning, we have a ton of tools to be able to change variables and manipulate things and get an athlete where they need to be. so things become more more precise and clear about what the solution is to the problem, but it just keeps it just keeps kind of repeating itself over and over. @paige_semenza: We pick new movements, we pick new formats, we go through new strength cycles. But again, the variance keeps us coming back. @misfitcoach: Truth. Hey Colin. @paige_semenza: Whoa. Colin Boesch: Hi guys. @misfitcoach: you are the athlete's representative in this conversation. What do you got for us? Colin Boesch: I was just writing down question number eight. I do feel like this podcast, more so than the last one, was a little more difficult to separate my coach brain from my athlete brain because @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. Colin Boesch: I'm so intertwined in in both right now. But I think that I've got some pretty good questions that have like some branch offs that we could discuss here. @misfitcoach: Yeah. Colin Boesch: so question number one, all the way back to like the beginning of like monostructural and bitch work. How do we like go about relating a lot of our bitchfork scores or intervals or pacing structure to like what we saw in the open? Where do I where do I start with that? Because if that's my goal to get from my open athlete to quarterfinals, like why am I doing @misfitcoach: Sure. Colin Boesch: seven minutes of rowing for max meters? @misfitcoach: Right. I think I think it probably depends a little bit on the athlete, but like when you go into let's say we choose different ends of the spectrum. So you get your 20 minute AMRAP, classic, triplet, Metcon, that sort of thing, and you get crossfitters that the trap there is more like how many rounds can I get in six minutes and then what can I do to like hold on in that situation. you need to know what it feels like to its spread intensity out. And then we're always going to we need to go shorter and faster and we need to go longer and slower. So we've got our zone two work, but then we got first gear. So we got 30 total minutes of execution there. and there's, you know, the energy systems element. There's the desensitizing yourself to it. And there's the pacing element. and if you're the kind of athlete that gets really good at pacing longer intervals on a machine and can't translate it to CrossFit, you really need to start thinking about like this, I can't be putting myself in this physiological state early on in the workout. Like it's just not paying off. And I think part of it is like the one that drove me absolutely nuts in the affiliate setting was the row deadlift double under. because like Basically the smartest athletes dominated the fittest athletes in that workout. They're over there at like a two five and they're just flying past people like nine minutes in. and I think one of the issues there is like, well, I like rowing. And it's like, okay, well use how good you are at rowing to feel better when you get off the rower, not to go row as fast as you can and then not do a good job with those other movements. so that would be one end of the spectrum. And then the other one would be when you get the kind of nastier, shorter workouts that are in there, the you know, the dumbbell snatch, burpee, like that sort of thing, it's the same kind of concept. You have to know it's so easy if you do eight repeats of two minutes on a rower. It's so easy to again understand that physiological feel of too fast in a short duration, Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: the point of no return. And you just can't Colin Boesch: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: take yourself to that place in an actual Metcon. You can't go to that point in the Metcon until lights at the end of the tunnel, like stomp the gas pedal. Your body is totally down to go faster. it is not down to go too fast and then take a little bit of a break and then try to go kind of fast again. Like you're kind of screwed at that point unless you're a unicorn. @paige_semenza: Yeah. I mean I was I was gonna use that workout exactly, the open workout, the deadlift row, double under one, 'cause I'm like Alright, that's twenty minutes, like that's a a long sustainable piece. and I remember like looking at that, I'm like, I don't even I'm not sure like what to hold on this, but like then I can reference back to like my aerobic gears, like gear one, two, three. Like I have information there. Like I know what I can do sustainably with those movements or with this movement, with rowing. so it's like I'm gonna use that range and then it's like I'm gonna assess round after round. and like at that point it was like, okay, can I push to go harder like towards the end? Like it I I set myself up to not be in that trap of like max reps in six minutes and then survive the rest of the piece, you know? So it's like you do have that information to be able to to put towards. That's why like I don't know if people really pay attention on the gears matrix, but it's like gears one, two and three are your aerobic ones, four through eight are your anaerobic ones, like your build. pieces. so like even I you know maybe knowing that also can help athletes start to translate more of bitch work to intervals to METCON. Colin Boesch: I think that leads me well into the into the next piece, actually, Paige. the next question that I had was if I'm programming these intervals on my own, if I'm gonna go about this like without looking at phase one or just because I'm trying to get better, right? How do I start adding movements? Like what what do I pick? Why do I pick them? What are the rep ranges that I pick? Like is it always a weakness that's in that should be involved for like my secondary movement. So I've I've increased my seven minute max meter row by two hundred meters in the last four weeks, right? But now I want to start increasing my ability to get off the rower and be able to do something else quickly, right? So what what do I add and why? @misfitcoach: I would say it should be weaknesses, but I don't think athletes have a really good concept of what their weaknesses are because a lot of them turn strengths into weaknesses with their athlete IQ. you see so many athletes see a wheelhouse workout and just get way too excited and just like that's a that's kind of a novice athlete issue that they have where it's like, well actually if I'm in competition and I'm dialing it back and you get anywhere near me, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go. Like I'm gonna be able to do that. So I would say The most frustrating instances that you have in your regular training should be the variable that then gets added. I cannot figure out how to do double unders when I'm breathing heavy. I can do them totally fine. Like in a, you know, if they're at the beginning of a workout and for some reason when I'm in that space, like pull pull is a huge issue for me. So like, you know, you know, you go from rowing to total bar or rowing to hand stamp or rowing to Chest of bar, any of these other things. So you start to bring the elements in not just of like I'm genetically predisposed to this weakness, but also Lack of athlete IQ is like a massive weakness if we're making it relative to the sport. So like these combinations that are a problem for me, bring them in in smaller doses and then start to build those doses over time and you'll realize that athlete IQ is about slowly adding those variables and understanding them versus like turning the fire hose on. Colin Boesch: And I think then that kind of jumps ahead to a question that I added on later, but do you have any type of suggestion for how do I keep track of that data? @misfitcoach: Woo. I mean Colin Boesch: Ha ha @misfitcoach: the the best thing that you can do is log your results and actually type in notes every day. That would be step one for sure. If you want to go beyond that, you gotta be a nerd or you gotta hire a coach, I would say. Those are kind of your options at that point. Because you have all of those written down as notes, but you also have them as a lived experience. And that's you would probably have a flawed memory of what was actually going on there. Whereas a coach can look pretty quickly and see the objective data that it's pulled out, put it into their notes, and then apply it to your actual training. training and programming moving forward. So that's probably the way that I would think about step one is just a lot of notes. Because @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: even just writing the notes is the like is the thing that's gonna help it sink in. So like whether you are the type of person @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Yep. Colin Boesch: A yeah, exactly. @misfitcoach: that has to go reference them or not might be a question based on the like what style of learning you know, you gravitate towards. So Colin Boesch: Is there any recommendation for then like how do I incorporate my notes or data into like my own experimentation? So I sucked at the, you know, the row deadlift. Let's keep talking about it. The row deadlift and double under. Like so I decided that I'm gonna row for one minute and then add in thirty-five double unders afterward. Like how do I then progress further into the experimentation without just redoing the twenty minute amrap over and over again? @misfitcoach: More balance and more variables. So you're adding more of the movements, you're making it actually balanced workout. So the examples that I give of introducing it that I do with a lot of athletes, like in a remote coaching setting, the last 30 seconds to 90 seconds of a bitch work piece have been changed to burpee box jump over, wall ball, double under, whatever, that sort of thing. we ha that has to make its way back to the like the the the 50 of each, you know, for three rounds sort of a situation. And the way that you do that is continuing to create balance. And you're like, you're kind of doing what we talked about over the course of the whole episode. You're transitioning from like, this is basically still just monostructural conditioning with a little, you know, a little razzle dazzle on it to this is a real interval to, okay, this is in a Metcon. And I don't get to like do the movement I like for 75% of the working window. Colin Boesch: Okay, so this one might get a little bit more personal because I think that we just kind of saw it in Telegram a little bit too, and I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on it a a little bit more deeply, maybe. Is there and and slash or I guess what is your intentionality for both negative and positive splits? Because something that I talk about or often experience is is a positive split. Where like things get worse as I go on. Is @misfitcoach: Sure. Colin Boesch: there any like type of intentionality behind like this needs to be a negative split or this should be a positive split because we need to go faster in the first interval to get faster at everything? @misfitcoach: Are you aerobic? Yeah. So Colin Boesch: That's @misfitcoach: so you are applying a tool that you are not allowed to have. I Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: will push for positive splits are only appropriate for absolute aerobic monsters to tow the line, go over the line, find where it is. Cause you have these athletes that are just so fucking good at hold one fifty six and they sh they send you the screen and like like it's down to the meter. Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: It's like 3,077 meters times two. And you're like, what? I don't how do you what? How's that and then you have people like me and you, Colin, where we're going for negative splits and they end up positive anyways. and that's @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: when the data comes back into play. You have to bring it with you. You have to bring it along for the ride. training your body to get slower as you work through something is a very bad idea. you are jumping around energy systems. you are, you know, your nervous system is is not happy with what is being done to it. and it might not agree to re-engage, you know, parasympathetic and try to get things back to to where it's at. So I would say power output work would be one of the only places where like like P1. Let it rip. Colin Boesch: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: That is the whole point of what we're trying to do there. and if someone isn't getting diminishing returns, force it. Okay. Shorter rest window, Colin Boesch: So but that @misfitcoach: longer work window, like that kind of thing. But that's such a tiny, tiny, tiny piece of the tools that we use to train. You should have even or negative splits in almost everything that you do. and I'm casting a wide net. And I'm gonna catch ninety percent of the people I'm trying to catch in it. The other ten percent, you know, come at me. We'll talk. @paige_semenza: Are we talking about the C two bike fifteen on, one minute off? I didn't look in telegram yet. But is that the one you're talking Colin Boesch: I @paige_semenza: about? Colin Boesch: I mean that's the one that I did today and I just think my splits are awful, but that's not that wasn't what I was getting at. what @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: Okay. Colin Boesch: I was getting at is there was somebody that mentioned like he felt like he was like absolutely wired for negative splits, whereas he was like he he did like a one of the bike aspects and like it got better each time because he was doing better each time, right? @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. Colin Boesch: So like is like granted like in theory that's a positive split because he was getting more calories, I guess, right? So increase, but but that's a negative split, right? So how did like @misfitcoach: No, that's a negative split. @paige_semenza: Yeah, but we know we Yeah, we know what you're yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get better means negative. @misfitcoach: Yes. Colin Boesch: exactly. So like how he feels like he's wired for that as opposed to like either being even or positive in the sense of like that was meant to be a power like output sort of thing. So shouldn't it have been @misfitcoach: Sure. Colin Boesch: more so the opposite? And slash or like why is that not or how do we like train to get better at that within CrossFit and not just on a bike? @misfitcoach: So you happen to be talking about one of my remote clients, Colin Boesch: really? @misfitcoach: and I have yet to been able to get him to essentially just torch himself in the beginning of the power output stuff. He gets better. Colin Boesch: It's actually so funny. I have a remote athlete that's just like this as well. She like she's @misfitcoach: Yeah. Yeah. Colin Boesch: always like super even and then her last set is like twenty seconds faster. And it's like Can we just get a little bit faster to all of them? @misfitcoach: Yeah. And I don't think that it's all intentional. There is something to when you're You have those moments in power output work when your nervous system is like really along for the ride. And then you look down at your calorie number and you go, oops. Like they're just you are primed for whatever reason. There's a ton of variables, warm-up, sleep, @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: you know, all of this stuff. And I just have found that there are some athletes that like you. warming up with power output seems like an insane concept to a power athlete, but like letting your body know what's about to happen, and maybe doing a few more of those really short, like max wattage sprints would probably help. So I I just think that some people aren't wired for power output. They're wired for just kind of more steady stuff, which is, you know, pays off in like real deal CrossFit. but it's always fascinating to see because like for me, I'm like, dude, I don't even know that I could do that. Like I don't even know I could do that on purpose. Let alone I mean, obviously Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: by accident is never gonna happen, but so yeah, that's a that's definitely an interesting one relative to the power output work. Colin Boesch: and then kind of skipping ahead here. the last like well, let's go into this one. Is there a list of movements that you would include in heart rate hell? We talked about like longer range of motion. Is there any way to get like more specific about that besides just the last workout in the open all the time? @misfitcoach: Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's there's two ways to think about it. One would be the the larger range of motion. So like if the barbell has to go from the floor to my hip, that's one level. And then we've got the shoulder, and then we've got the clean and jerk, or we've got the power snatch. So our longer ranges of motion and there's this Goldilocks zone of the right weight to look light, that's not. And I'm probably dating myself, but the 95 pound power snatch for an average male CrossFitter is hell. We don't know what it is. It doesn't make any sense. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: It's probably 75 for women. I don't think it's 65. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I agree. @misfitcoach: but it's this this the ambiguity of like it's easy to take this from the ground and to put it over my head. Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: Why am I gonna wait to do another rep? and then you have the movements that bring a level of like they're just naturally dynamic. that brings a lot of of an element to, you know, the work capacity. equation, the like number one that I can think of is the chestabar pull-up with I would say the beginner athlete up to like a really good quarterfinals athlete. A big set of them just feels nice. You get into a rhythm. they're so quick that it's not the same you know it's not the same as the toe to bar. We get that weightlessness moment that keeps happening. It's not a ton happening with your grip there. You come down. And it was a bad idea relative to the rest of the workout. so there's a bunch of movements that are like that as well. and the reason why you wouldn't want a list is because you would want the athlete to know through that trial and error that we've been referencing the whole time, right? Like Burpee box jump over has a massive range of motion. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: and if you make it dynamic and it has a large range of motion, so I don't know, like you could think of like when CrossFit Games athletes do Isabel for fun, like You're gonna be unwell after Isabel @paige_semenza: Yeah. Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: for fun. that sort of thing. So there's there's those elements of it and we need to know for the athletes specifically what are those things. because there's gonna be elements of like, well, I have really good grip strength, so like I'm not expending the amount of energy that this person is by holding onto the bar in a touch and go set. that sort of thing. So really identifying Those elements. The weight can do it, the range of motion can do it, and how dynamic the actual like performing the actual movement is. Colin Boesch: Gotcha. Paige, I tried to come up with some questions that I've specifically wanted you to answer just because from experience and @paige_semenza: Yeah. Colin Boesch: some other stuff as well. so this question can be at like attributed to like the phase one stuff too, because we we will eventually have a retest week here, but and you've also competed for so long and have gone through like so much like test prep for like what you're going to be competing in. What if my retest goes poorly? And slash or like what if I have like you just describe it in school as like test anxiety, right? How do I fix that? Like what mindset do you go about to like work on that? Or like what happens if you have a bad weekend at a at a comp? Like how do you what mindset do you have, even though you've been working on all these things that now you want to get better at it again? Like, what if my retest goes poorly? @paige_semenza: Yeah. I mean that's a pretty good question because it's like I for most of my career I've had very good experiences competing. I can maybe attribute that to the fact that I was a division one ice hockey player. I played a lot of compet like I've competed under pressure like for years and have gotten that experience. so it you know Part of that is maybe it felt natural coming into a competition, like within CrossFit. but I think part of it too was not allowing myself to force an expectation. And while some of it was there in my later years, because it's like, well, I've established myself as one of the best athletes, like I want to maintain that. There's still like a level of humility when you go into the gym and it's like a random Wednesday and I might not have a great day. So like that could happen on test week and it's like that could happen on a you know, it could happen at a competition. you could have, you know, maybe peaked too early or, you know, not ha like there are just so many different factors to it. How's my sleep? How's my nutrition? Which obviously training for the games is a lot it's very dialed in. Like you've you kinda like narrow things down more and more as the season continues. and then like maybe you're more flexible further out from season, you know? Like that could be part of it too. But you know, my last I'd say I I had a really stressful last two years competing. and didn't have the best mindset and It definitely does play a factor for sure, especially now as I'm trying to get back into it. But I think what couldn't have come at a better time is what our like our our battle phrases right now is the work is the only way and allowing myself to have grace in the process of like I did test week. I'm gonna go through the next six weeks of the progression and I'm gonna give my best in that day and then I'm gonna go test again and you know, if it's a bad Tuesday and a random October day, like okay, that happens, or is it my anxiety? I think identifying that is a big part of it. So yeah. I don't know if that answered the question. @misfitcoach: Two of the two of the pieces here I think that @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: can be really useful are number one, talking about building bridges, team sports are a great way to learn that you do just win and lose. It's a very binary CrossFit's weird. Did I win? Did I lose? Is fifth place qualification in the games? Is that winning? Or is you know what I mean? Like like that that whole situation. So I think you learn that like in those moments when not all of like the spotlight and the pressure is on you specifically. Okay, we lost. Now what are we gonna do about that? Like, and again, team sports are unique 'cause you can then get to go practice for maybe a week or a few days or whatever, depending on what your sport is. But I think that can be really helpful and like Paige was on Paige was on a like really big stage, but also part of a collective. I think you learn the truths of sports and all of that stuff in that moment. And then if we go back to what you've said, Pai, that got you from the games in 19 back in 22, was you had those experiences that didn't go well and you were like, okay, I'm gonna do the things that I'm not doing and learn from those things and move forward. @paige_semenza: Mm. @misfitcoach: So like Colin, the answer to that question is like, does that bury you when you're in that moment or are you still just learning? @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: Figuring it out. Like that's what we talked about the whole time is trying to figure out these crazy puzzles. If your retest doesn't go better, you have not figured that out. Cool thing is you're probably getting fitter. You don't use it yet, but you are probably getting fitter, stronger, more skilled, Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: all of that good stuff. but Paige has always been willing to continue to learn and adapt. and if you get that like paralysis by analysis or those bigger stages bother you, that's when you can run into those issues, I think. Colin Boesch: It's the the saying of like you either win or you learn, right? There's not really the failure behind it. And I think that @misfitcoach: Sure. @paige_semenza: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. @misfitcoach: Yeah. Colin Boesch: like that shift is important as well. @misfitcoach: Yeah, for sure. Colin Boesch: okay, last one. we talked like at length about variance and that type of stuff. And we like go through different cycles and movements, like for the the reference being like phase one, the pieces that we're focusing on are the grip wrecked and dip van winkle, right? And they have very certain movements over these eight weeks. and that'll change going into phase two. So how do we and slash why do we not lose what we have in phase one over the course of phase two? @misfitcoach: there's the like training reason and then there's the reason that's the whole basis of this podcast, this episode. The training reason is when we make our way down through, yeah, we are doing Totobar and muscle ups every week. The duration, the stimulus, the way that it's scored, the other movements change every single week. so we apply variance as a training methodology there. And then, like, kind of the point of this episode is trying to figure out how to use all of this stuff. We're giving you so many different instances to be able to figure out like, do you you should know how to execute Totabar in most settings after this phase with the skill, with the amount of different workouts that you've done. and If variance does truly work and all of the energy systems converge and all of our strengths and all of these different tools make us better athletes, if we apply the knowledge of what to do with the power of that variance, they should come back together and you know create a complete athlete. It's an athlete who is stronger, more skilled, fitter, and has the athlete IQ. That's the goal. Colin Boesch: Yeah. Yeah, I think I that that's all I've got. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: Cool. Last but not least, coaches are people too. I've got I've got two small things here. the Steelers are still fantastically mediocre. they won, but like it felt like they didn't. Like Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: it just felt wrong. they were playing a third string quarterback. and honestly, just because the the kicker on the other team's like 50, he just kept missing field goals. That was helpful. so I really just want them to be good or bad. I would just love if they were good or bad. And then maybe an anecdote that people would rather hear. I am on the solo parenting track this week. And the meltdown of the day yesterday was Carter really just wanted to throw his baseball at the TV. And he didn't know why he wasn't allowed to throw his baseball at the TV. And he just wanted to throw his baseball at the @paige_semenza: Ha ha ha. @misfitcoach: TV. And these meltdowns, honestly, when you do it like you you get enough practice, they're kind of funny. Like my wife and I will shoot like that smirk glance, which you don't want them to see because you don't want to laugh at your child while they're crying. that's you know, we're Colin Boesch: It's a it's a very difficult thing to accomplish, yes. I'm I'm with you. @misfitcoach: Yeah, but like that was that was the tipping point last night. He was behind the couch, throwing it over the couch, because he knows that he's not allowed to throw it over the wall in the kitchen. So the couch is like this like exploring a boundary and it magically hit me in the back of the head quite a few times. Luckily it's soft. @paige_semenza: Magically. @misfitcoach: So we were working on that. And then he was like, Can I throw it at the TV? And I was no, buddy, you're gonna break the TV. So he throws it at the TV. And then we do the it seems like you're having a hard time not throwing it at the TV. I'm gonna take it away until you think you can not throw it at the TV. I wanna throw it at the TV. So, for the parents out there, good times. Good times. @paige_semenza: It's so fun. Colin Boesch: Yeah, there's one right here that have had ex probably a very similar experience, I'm sure, at some point. @misfitcoach: Uh-huh. Yeah. @paige_semenza: I told you guys this. but I'm taking a bartending course, which is kinda cool. So for people that don't know, my dad bartended his whole life and I thought it'd be fun. So I'm I just think it'll match my personality a lot too. But yeah. @misfitcoach: I'm just wondering if the stars will ever align where a group of misfits can walk into a bar that Paige is working at. Because that would be awesome. Colin Boesch: Ha ha. @paige_semenza: Listen, if you come to the East Coast, there are a lot of misfits over this way. You got McKenna, you @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: got Tony, like Elena. It could happen. @misfitcoach: All right. So this is I think this is like an Avengers assemble situation. So we're not gonna tell Paige we're gonna work on this on the side and Paige is gonna be working one night. and we're gonna go Colin Boesch: I will very happily coordinate. @misfitcoach: excellent. @paige_semenza: Let me get good at it though. Like I the the guy teaching the class, he like you just know when someone's good at their craft and you know @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: that they put in their ten thousand hours like and beyond. Like he just there's literally a binder and it's not just like the drinks that you're making, but it's like all this information of how to open the bar, how to check for IDs and just a ton of information. And he doesn't look at the binder one time, but he does does not skip a beat. And then like every once in a while he'll get behind the bar to like show you something and everything that we like the bar is full but it's all water. and it's like food coloring and different things like that. but like he'll just you can just tell how good he is at it. And I'm like I wanna watch him like just make a ton of different drinks and just like be in awe at how athletic he is with it. So yeah it's just @misfitcoach: That's cool. @paige_semenza: fun, yeah. Different, you know. @misfitcoach: You got Colin. Colin Boesch: man. Well all right, I'll I'll I'll follow Drew here a little bit. the Bears are gonna win the Super Bowl. Fifty nine points on Carolina. @misfitcoach: That defense did not look like a Super Bowl defense. I'm just Colin Boesch: That's very true. I'm actually quite concerned for this week in Minnesota. But @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Colin Boesch: anyway, and then my second one, my little anecdote. so my son and I are very similar, obviously, in that when we focus on the TV, it is very hard to draw our attention away from it. So there have been times when I'm trying to like get him dressed or do something along those lines and he is like like zoned in, right? And my word to like try and get him out of that is hey, focus. I'll like tap him on the leg or focus just a little bit and just a little focus. So one night, and I've actually been waiting to tell you guys the story for a while, I think, or unless you've already heard it. one night I was putting him to bed and you guys know that my son doesn't sleep. So I'm a very tired human most of the time. And I was singing to him. We always sing songs, and I must have fallen asleep while I was singing. Because I was @paige_semenza: Mm. Colin Boesch: laying @misfitcoach: Yeah. Colin Boesch: in bed with him and so tired that I fell asleep. So I don't know how it went or if I was like, you are my and I just like stopped, right? And he rolls over, goes, focus to my face. It was like @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: Aha That is so cute. @misfitcoach: That's amazing. Colin Boesch: it was honestly, I like laughed for so long. He like taps @paige_semenza: Focus Colin Boesch: the side of my face and goes, Focus, duh da. @paige_semenza: At least you know he hears you. Might be selective hearing, but Colin Boesch: All right, man, I'll focus. Yeah. @misfitcoach: That's amazing. I was trying to I c Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: I can't help but like you try to like n guess where the story's going based on your own experiences. Carter's getting to the size now where he doesn't fit into clothes that are like his age, which means you can't @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: I can't really buy like onesies for him anymore. Colin Boesch: Mm. @misfitcoach: So I have to put on real pajamas, which is way harder by the way. They don't tell you that. last night Colin Boesch: In the instruction manual, they do not tell you that. @misfitcoach: They don't tell you that. It reminds me of trying to put a baby in a like a like an infant in a onesie, because that was a party in and of it. Just just jelly arms, like how do I stuff this? How do I stuff this thing into the sleeve? Especially Colin Boesch: Yeah, they just they don't they don't help you. @misfitcoach: coming out of a tub. Anyways, so last night I had a flashback to that because he was watching Trash Truck while I was putting his pajamas on and I could not get them on because he wouldn't face me. Normally in a onesie you Colin Boesch: Ex Yeah. Yeah. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: lay him down and they're already there and you put in it. He was standing and I was putting his shirt on him. I'm like trying to spin him around and he's just like whipping all over the place, like just eyes still locked. Yeah, exactly. Colin Boesch: Yeah, 'cause he's trying to watch the TV. Yep. @paige_semenza: Yeah, yeah, yeah. @misfitcoach: so yeah, it's same problems of a different kind, I suppose. I love that. That's so good. Focus, Colin Colin Boesch: Yep. No I focused on the @paige_semenza: Focus. I'm gonna say that at every meeting now. Yeah, we did. @misfitcoach: That's great. Colin Boesch: Ha. @misfitcoach: All right. Did we do it? Colin Boesch: I think we did it. @misfitcoach: Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. Thank you to our show sponsor, GorillaMind. You can head to GorillaMind.com forward slash Misfit or use the code word misfit at checkout to save on the best supplements in the game and support the show. You can head to sharpentheaxco.com tomorrow at an undisclosed time. it will be on social media, don't you worry. Friday, September 18th. We will do a full week of the pre-sale before the the items are stocked. and put back to their regular prices. Hmm, I don't think I have anything else to say. See you guys next week.