Latest / Misfit Podcast / A CrossFitter's Guide to Accessory Work - E.396
Transcript
- Drew Crandall: Good morning, Misfits. You are tuning into another episode of the Misfit podcast on this week's episode, a Crossfitter's guide to accessory work. The most exciting episode that I could think of is to go deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole on accessory work. All jokes aside, we are very much in to basics, base season and off season block one. ⁓ ⁓ affiliate programming starts a new season here in a couple of weeks. we to deliver information in a similar fashion. So, we are starting with the most basic of the basics and we'll kind of work our way through weave in episodes for the next few months here that talk to you about, programming and executing ⁓ on accessory work, work, strength work, conditioning work. All that good stuff. So you guys can really understand, um, how to get after it before we do that. As always, we've got some housekeeping items, um, very soon within the next one to 72 hours, you guys are going to start seeing a lot of posts about semi-finals athlete jerseys. Um, the teaser there is, uh, Phoenix suns, old school basketball jerseys. @paige_semenza: Thank Drew Crandall: ⁓ kind of a play on the rain or shine, element there. a little bit of a nod to my late grandmother, who was a huge basketball fan and loved the like, I'll date myself here, Kevin Johnson, ⁓ Charles sons. And I always thought those jerseys were cool as hell. so that's where the concept comes from there. ⁓ two of the athletes that have jerseys are competing this weekend. so they won't get to wear them. @paige_semenza: fun. Drew Crandall: while they're competing. it's kind of cool timing because you guys will be, ⁓ know, supporting them ⁓ supporting their journey, ⁓ by doing that. So keep your eye on Instagram, ⁓ your email, all of that stuff. and means a lot to ⁓ us the athletes. when you support ⁓ kind of whole crazy travel schedule this time of year. Uh, new misfit affiliate phase gets started on May 4th next week's podcast. Hunter will join us and we will go over the compound. Um, this is the first programming phase of the 26, 27, um, programming year, which is exciting. And so it was exciting to kind of come back around to, um, a new year and, know, think of ways to improve what we're doing, all that good stuff. So affiliate programming podcast will be dropping next week. I will give probably the final shout out for the next few months for remote coaching, still an opening or two with a remote coaching there. but we will be full again, I predict kind of by the end of may. you can still get on a wait list at that point, but if you are interested in getting into remote coaching, make sure you fill out that application ⁓ on website. This episode of the podcast. Along with all of the episodes of the pod episodes of the podcast are brought to you by gorilla mind. You can head to gorilla mind.com forward slash misfit or use the code word misfit at checkout. if you missed last week's reboot episode or just didn't want to listen to it because you listened to it the first time, I gave my travel essentials. I will stand by those, ⁓ creatine I kinda I'm back home and I kind of miss my candy, because I just regular creatine. But you get, you get pulled over, for speeding through TSA with your bags and canisters of powder enough times, ⁓ that you try to find a way to travel with something else. ⁓ and then their electrolytes ⁓ back the Ivy rush. ⁓ and they have the single serve packets and for whatever reason, if you take all of that powder and put them in tiny things instead of a canister, they don't think that you are bringing drugs on the airplane. and you can just walk right through, which is nice. @paige_semenza: crazy. Drew Crandall: but product of the week. So. Gorilla is the name of their pre-workout. They have a gorilla mode nitric, which is their non-stimulant version. I've basically only used that for bodybuilding. definitely notice a difference. It's actually honestly a pretty good segue to ⁓ accessory style work, out a few extra reps, that sort of thing. but I had only it for that. And on the off occasion that I get like a free Saturday or Sunday morning to really get after a conditioning piece. ride the lightning and I use the bad boy. That's above my head right there. ⁓ that is the full caffeinated version that is rocket fuel. I don't recommend using that daily, but that's definitely something that you can pull out of your back pocket when you need it. But yesterday I was coming off vacay, you know, that first, that first workout after vacation, I was scared. I was scared. So I had fifth gear. ⁓ @paige_semenza: hurts. Drew Crandall: See to bike, by four minutes rest, two minutes and 45 seconds. And honestly just kind of was like, I'll take placebo effect. I'll take whatever I can get. So I did two scoops of the non-STEM and when got into, so I typically typically get into zone five, just a little bit longer in each round. Like I'll it maybe in round one. ⁓ @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: But then I'll, I'll be swimming in those waters by round four for most of it. honestly, was only heart rate with the pre-workout. I didn't have the leg burn that I normally do. ⁓ so definitely notice the difference there. gorilla mode is what it's called. Regular gorilla mode is the one with the caffeine gorilla mind.com for slash misfit or use the code word misfit at checkout. @paige_semenza: Interesting. I did always like that proper hat that we had in non-STEM. I use that one a lot. I'll have to give this one a try. Drew Crandall: All right, shout out. Yeah. Yep. Yep. It's yeah. I think a good non-STEM you flush waste a little bit better. And then there's a mental acuity. I think that comes along with it. That was one of the things that I tried to formulate proper for was staying in it mentally. Cause obviously in endurance work, it's like a lot of it's just those moments where you're like, I don't really want to do this anymore. Very monotonous. Yep. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Drew Crandall: Shout outs of the week. What you got, Paige? @paige_semenza: I'm going to shout out Joetta on Telegram, Joetta Halpin, I believe is her name. been dealing with a back issue. She has a competition coming up in a couple of weeks. And that one obviously hits close to home for me, but ⁓ it like she's doing all the right things. Yeah, true. ⁓ Sounds she's doing all the right things. She is seeing her PT. She works in a PT office, which is very helpful for her. But she's kind of staying on the recovery side of it and giving intensity to where can. Drew Crandall: for us. @paige_semenza: So yeah, that one just really hits close to home and I hope she's ready in three weeks. Drew Crandall: Yeah. I think there's a good segue there to one of mine. have three and one of them is maybe the first double shout out that I've given. I just think people have been very supportive of her and kind of jumped in because they know what that can do to you. it's you know, the, the, the core, the backbone, whatever, you know, analogy you want to use. It's, it's a big deal when you feel that way. And last week being on vacation and being on vacation, very, very early in a new programming block, is a little stressful for me, just, just ⁓ feeling like I can communicate with the community at large as often as I would like to. And with the level of activity and more and more people feeling comfortable. posting in there and having conversations in there, like huge shout out to all of you guys that are just helping each other and answering questions. I think that's incredibly helpful for a bunch of different reasons. And I think it helps really solidify the community. If it's not always just like pager, I jumping in and answering those questions. So huge shout out to all you guys for doing that in general. And especially while I was away, the shout out. So this weekend is the legends, ⁓ championship in Del Mar, basically San Diego, California, Adrian winches and Missy G are both throwing down, in the masters community. I have so more thoughts and so many more rants related to this season, but the masters having. ⁓ This kind of new level with these super bowls is so cool. And we'll have a whole nother conversation about something else that we're excited about next week page. it'll be good that Hunter's on too. ⁓ I'm just, I'm, I'm stoked for both of them. They've been working their tails off on this semi-finals prep. Probably the ⁓ real big gnarly, meaty. @paige_semenza: man. Yeah. That's true. That's good timing. Drew Crandall: prep that both of them have done. and I just, I'm really excited for both of them. And then the double shout out comes from, Adrian as a thank you for the semi-finals programming, sent a book to my son, ⁓ about excavators. if you Brownie points with me making my son smile ⁓ is probably the ⁓ you know, that's probably as good as it gets. ⁓ I'd much prefer that then then then. @paige_semenza: That's so cute. So cute. Drew Crandall: something for me so big shout out he loved the book as well and the stickers he took all the stickers ⁓ put them on his garage that is made out of a Pampers nighttime box ⁓ so ⁓ really cool ⁓ @paige_semenza: Ha Oh, that's so awesome. I mean, let's just talk about the fact that we have, let's see, in this master semi-finals prep on Telegram, there's 16 members in there. That is just so cool. There are, right? Drew Crandall: Yep. There's 16 member and there's lurkers too. There's other people, you know, yeah, yeah. Which is just awesome. You know, what's funny is we've like, because it's the athletes that are doing it, I'll really toot the horn here. We've had a shitload of games, podiums in the teens and masters community. and we have volume. We don't have a lot of them. So part of me always thinks of like, how do we get more masters athletes, more teen athletes in, because I would say that our programming in terms of the number of athletes to podiums, we would be the top. Like I guarantee that I know that for a fact, because you see like a comp trainer, a mayhem and there's, you know, shout out to them. have a ton of athletes. Um, but our athletes usually beat them. So I'll just, you know, @paige_semenza: Yeah, it's pretty wild. Drew Crandall: maybe put that out there a little bit as well. @paige_semenza: I met with ⁓ a woman here, I believe she's in the 45 to 49 division, but she had been following one of the other ⁓ tracks and she wanted to learn more about what sets us apart. So I got to meet with her for a solid hour. So we'll see if we got her in, because I'm like, listen, our masters community, in addition to our massive community already, is second to none. Drew Crandall: Hell yeah. Yep. Totally agree. Okay, accessory work. I am looking at three or four pages of notes that I typed out this morning. ⁓ I'm not gonna just gonna read. I'm not gonna read to you guys, but I'm gonna try to keep myself on track with it. And then Page's job. @paige_semenza: We'll see if it hooks. guys. Drew Crandall: is to essentially be the coach that's listening or the athlete that's listening. That stops me from rambling or making statements that in the magic world of Drew's gray zone, where you're like, I don't entirely know what that means. Because I have all these things in here that are in like parentheses that are like, ⁓ don't forget to say this. And ⁓ they probably like somebody else read this, they would be like, what the what is this guy talking? So that's gonna be Paige's job. The ⁓ of outline of the way that we're gonna do this, we're gonna talk about defining what it is. Again, this is a CrossFitters guide to accessory work. This is not sort of a generic strength podcast. We're gonna talk programming, the way that we program it, the way that we think about it, what we're trying to accomplish. we are gonna talk about execution. So ⁓ includes the decision making process on your end and then how to actually get the most out of it. And then we'll do a little bit of sort of big picture wrap up. So I will read the definition portion because it me like four minutes to write. In our context, accessory work refers to supplemental training. designed to support, reinforce, or build toward the main adaptation of the current training day or phase without interfering with it. We are trying to use this as supplemental work to make you better at the things that you're already working on without making it harder to do your conditioning or your skill work or your strength work. think that is an important context, something that gets repeated kind of over and over in my notes. Our goals, what we're trying to accomplish are to build and solidify positioning. build and solidify movement patterns and manipulate tissues that the sport relies heavily on. so we are basically you're doing a workout and your grip fails. you're not using your posterior chain enough, your quads burnout, your hips burnout. just generic muscle endurance within pulling, pressing lower body. We are trying to ⁓ solidify that system so that you can get more out of your training. our intention with it is to accumulate a very high quality volume that aids ⁓ the versus competing against it. So I think sometimes it can feel counterintuitive. Accessory work relies on volume. I often refer to it as the zone two strength work. We lower the intensity of what we're doing and we up the volume, but we are looking for like absurdly high quality. It's very anti cross-fitter, right? You see dumbbell bench. You want to grab the lay ⁓ and yourself into this crazy arched position. And, you know, we, as we saw at mayhem, the like tricep extension bench press thing where they do that, that sort of movement would be the bucket junk volume. Like there's, there's no point in doing that as accessory work. tricks of the trade are important when you're a high level competitor. but I don't know. the really well-rounded high-level athletes just did regular old bench press the position, you know, in terms of whether they were neutral or ⁓ like a traditional barbell bench, whatever's comfortable for them. So that's how I'm thinking defining accessory work. That's kind of where my head's at. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I essentially go to like there's different intents throughout the year too, like aside from it being high quality, like what time of like what part of the season are you in? Like is is kind of where you can either up the priority or lower the priority of it. Or is it more of ⁓ maintenance? ⁓ we talk about high volume, the quality in a comp prep is going to be probably slightly, perhaps lighter weights ⁓ that time so that you are just Drew Crandall: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: Again, helping kind of protect the tissue that you're constantly working within the conditioning pieces. then in the off season, it can really be used more for, ⁓ know, especially someone that's on a strength bias track of helping build and, you know, gain some muscle mass. Drew Crandall: Yep. for sure. So this next part is essentially how we are thinking about programming and the balance, the like line I'm trying to straddle is coaches and programmers advice on how to incorporate the work with also addressing how we actually program it and think about it. So ⁓ of the ⁓ conventions that we use just make it easier for Paige and I to communicate about what we're trying to accomplish. and can be specific to Misfit Athletics. So we just want to make sure that we are expanding on those and not just using, you know, basically our own secret language. in most off season programs, the main lift for the day is attached to what we refer to as a primary accessory. primary accessory is gonna be the one that is closest to true strength building accessory. We are looking to over a longer period of time, move the needle ⁓ the way that, know, how heavy of a bench press you can do, strict press, deadlift, back squat, all of that stuff. We often use the six rounds of even sets. So even would mean if I'm doing 10 bench press, I'm doing them all at the same weight. if I ⁓ ⁓ like a carry ⁓ I'm carrying, you know, a 200 pound sandbag, I'm going the same distance or I'm going the same duration, that sort of thing. And put two minutes of rest in there for two main reasons. Number one, it works. There's research that shows that kind of a traditional six by 10 with two minutes rest, um, is a, is a really solid accessory program. And then we get four. Well, we try to get forced compliance. I often find that when I'm beginning to work with a remote athlete, they still do like 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds, 50 pounds, 60 pounds. And it's like. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: We got like two sets that maybe ⁓ or two. the other ones are a great warmup, great place to start. But as we know the weights that we're going to use, we're just going to use them for, for all six sets there. and that forced compliance thing is really important here because if we did less sets with more rest, it would be easier to bastardize the movement and go too heavy and move in a way that. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. Drew Crandall: is gonna detract from how your joints and your tissues are feeling over a long period of time. You're basically going to do a similar level of damage as you intentionally do with like a main lift, but also with your accessory, which is something that we don't want. The secondary lift for the day, so Misfit Athletics does... ⁓ almost year round outside of comp prep, something that we refer to as the variable training system, where there's probably gonna be roughly five lifts that we're telling you one per day, this is what we think everyone should be doing. But then there's also probably gonna be five over the course of the week that are non-mandatory that you choose to personalize your programming. So that secondary lift. is going to be paired with what we refer to as a secondary accessory. This one is typically five rounds of work with more volume within the set. A lot of times if a lift or movement is going to be 10 reps, it's going to be closer to 12 or 15 in the secondary accessory. We do the full three minutes rest, if you have time, obviously, with the secondary accessory because focusing for that level of volume and truly recovering can be very challenging, right? Like if we did a shorter rest, if we did one minute or two minutes, your strict press would literally be done with like tens, like very lightweight, which can help with muscle endurance, which can get you into better positions over time. But we wanna be able to move the needle when we can. Secondary accessory work relies heavily on volume and time under tension. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Drew Crandall: So we do a lot of lifting and we do a lot of carries. The carries would be farmers carries, sled pulls and pushes, kettlebell front rack, kettlebell overhead, that sort of thing. So we are relying on either doing upwards of 75 to a hundred reps of something, or we are relying on, you know, four to seven minutes of time under tension. And again, those larger sets and the total volume is another forcing function for very low risk movement. Like if I got to do 75 strict press, I'm just not really going to be able to bury myself. Like those first couple of weeks, if I go a little too heavy, I might get a little sore in areas that are a little bit weaker. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: That's one thing that's fun about accessory work is you do the like five by 15 and you're like, I don't know what's over here, but it's not strong. the front of my Dell is where all of my strength is in whatever this is back here ⁓ a problem. again, we want low risk because with a secondary accessory, we're looking for durability, positioning and long-term capacity. There's a lot of pushback on accessory work programming. @paige_semenza: You Drew Crandall: it is referred to often ⁓ a handful of coaches, good coaches as junk volume. I'm going to explain to you guys why we would program something that feels like junk volume to then get you to a place where you're stronger than the person that's trying to go heavy every single time. but we'll get there. anything there page we, we still, we still in the land of the living. Okay. @paige_semenza: Yeah, we are. That was actually going to be my first question. So was how do I, how do I know like what separates accessory work from junk work or just doing more work? Drew Crandall: Yep. we will get there. If you are not progressing in thing you're trying to get better at or the actual accessory, it's probably junk volume. And there'd be a bunch of reasons why it would be junk volume. Some of you guys are already strong, which you move like shit. Some of you ⁓ are You move pretty well and we need to, you know, focus more on the primary, like that sort of thing. So there's a bunch of reasons why this could go wrong. And I'm hoping the execution portion of the podcast really lets you guys know what we're looking for from you. movement selection is based on three main factors. Number one, the lift that it's paired with. We don't want to be entirely redundant. We don't just want to repeat the movement, right? So if we're doing strict press, you'll often see us pair it with. a bench press just to to to make sure that the shoulder is staying healthy but it's really important that we are moving the needle on the lift with the accessory. The intent of the week and the phase is also there. Like we can't program in a vacuum. can't just be like, this would be the best accessory and then kibosh the rest of the day or the rest of the week. So the placement of it within the week and within the phase and even how accessory interacts with another is very important. ⁓ and then long-term progressions. And I'll get into a little bit more of that here in a second. So pairing a lift. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: Pairing and accessory movement with a lift can be as simple as common failure points. So grip is the thing that goes in my deadlift and we are doing heavy farmers carry lunges right now. And we are incorporating a grip element, paired posterior chain could be specific muscle groups, just kind of in general. I burn out in this area quicker than I do the other area. and again, that be. ⁓ more of a season wide thing, or it could be specific to the actual lift itself. can also be part of a larger grouping. the upper body ⁓ programming for it's very interesting and ⁓ fun. of pressing and pulling create ⁓ varying those create a more complete presser and puller. So when we're programming, when we're programming, a lot of people struggle with with their pulling gymnastics, their strict pulling. We're thinking about that strict pull up. You know, maybe we go high rep with the more banded stuff. we are thinking hand over hand sled pull. So really getting that lad involved. We're learning how to use our back within that horizontal plane. And then we're going to continue in that direction. And we do things like ring rows, inverted barbell rows. When we go over to the pressing side, that can look like bench press, incline bench press, shoulder press. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: We also want to think about in terms of planes of pulling and pressing, just the way that our hands are oriented basically. So we have neutral grip, you know, we can, we can pronate, we can do the different things within that that are also going to change the musculature that we're using. And the more that we can rotate that and hit the weak points of it, the better the overall system is going to be. So that would be one of the things where we're really thinking about that, like long-term. progression. when choosing the specific variant, we will consider an entire off season and then work backwards from the end goal. So like if an athlete struggles with you guys, a lot of our listeners know exactly where I'm going with this. When we get into phase three, I want you guys doing heavy overhead walking lunges. The phase before that you're doing the front rack, the phase before that you're doing the back rack. I want the back rack lunges to get so heavy that you are starting on the front rack lunges as a new athlete. And then those two things together, 16 to 18 weeks of lunging, we then go overhead. And we're going overhead after we've done a ton of overhead carries and a ton of pressing and a ton of handstand holds. And that's the kind of thing where we're working backwards to try to set up all of these. sort of breadcrumbs along the way to get you to that point. then there's just the like logical proven and updated over the years paths to target a specific, non accessory movement. ⁓ And lot of times that's upper body related. So like an athlete struggling with the pushing or pulling, and we tried to build a system based on their weak points that gets them all the way at the end of the year ready. to tackle volume on something like a legless rope climb or while facing handstand pushups or while walks, handstand walks, that sort of deal. @paige_semenza: I've watched McKenna do a lot of variations of pull-ups. Yeah, I think as far as starting with the end goal and working backwards, we do that within the phase as well, right? Like, okay, if you know you're gonna be consistently doing these farmers carry lunges the off season, what is an end goal weight ⁓ an idea of it? ⁓ how can you work backwards throughout those eight weeks ⁓ have a strong starting point? Drew Crandall: Yes, McKenna has done a lot of variations of pull-ups. That's very true. ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: to be able to get to that with still maintaining good quality in your movement. Drew Crandall: It has to work. This is a huge rule. Once you get your head out of your ass, as you start coaching and programming ⁓ someone in your early to mid twenties as a male, and you make your way to being old fuck like me, it's gotta work. want things to work because maybe they're pretty and they fit in line or @paige_semenza: you Yeah. Drew Crandall: Oh my goodness, this is this new thing that I want to try. This is a novelty effect. You get excited about it. When you get into the remote coaching realm, you have one person on the other side of that camera when you meet. And if you did not help them move the needle, if you gave them junk volume, it's going to be really obvious. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Drew Crandall: And for a lot of athletes with good athlete IQ, it's obvious for them as well. so I think for me, my progression as a coach and programmer comes largely from those moments. Cause it's like, you told me that if I did this, I could do that. So we have to have sort of that proving ground. So you can have a really good idea. You can have a really good concept and it might not hit home with the community at large. If you're programming for a large group of people like we are, or a single person, and that shit happens in programming and coaching. And you have to be able to identify, ⁓ identify it and kind of move on. but things that I wanted to work that haven't worked. There's a graveyard of them. They're there. I can shed my single tear for those movements. had it. It was perfect. It was beautiful. So it's got to work. Like maybe that should have been the first point or the last point. But you can have great ideas that ⁓ don't work a large group of people or a single athlete. I kind of already touched on this point, but I think I want to say it again. ⁓ @paige_semenza: Yeah Drew Crandall: So I refer to accessory work as the zone two of strength work. we've found out over the years. the, the old wives tale back in the day was you pull a one rep max deadlift and your central nervous system is tanked for six years and never going to be able to sleep again or eat again. That has been completely debunked, until they it back in the opposite direction. I love science. The single biggest lever that we can pull if we want to manipulate the central nervous system really high heart rate over a longer period of time. That's the way to bury yourself. that know. So what we do when we are reaching the of the volume that is appropriate with that intensity, we often go to low intensity zone one zone two, cardio. And that is the kind of thing where we can continue to make progress without overreaching too far and getting ourselves, you know, sort of to a point where, cause basically the edges of those volume are where super compensation, which is the thing where you're driven below what you're capable of. And then you shoot way back up something you really will feel on, a competition prep. beyond that is you basically just get worse. Like if you do too much, you're not going to get better. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: The strength world is typically dictated a little bit more by managing like tissue damage. and hopefully that is done properly. So it's, you know, the microscopic tears that rebuild musculature, but heavy is tough on your muscles, on your joints, not quite as much on your nervous system. I think as, as we originally thought the tricky part with CrossFit is there an absurd number of intense muscle contractions and basically every workout we do. ⁓ so that also has to be taken into account. And then we just talked about how we're trying not to crush you, but we're crushing your nervous system intentionally. So that also has to be taken into account within the strength world. Accessory work is that thing like the zone to where we get to tack on an extra 10%. That number is made up is full bro science. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. you Drew Crandall: But just a little, just that little bit extra, the kind of thing that can push you over the top in strength and muscle endurance, where we can control the damage, right? We can move the sliders around. We can do less sets. We can do less reps. We can do lighter weights. We have to do things that are actually appropriate for the rest of the program. in the off season, ⁓ So that would be for misfit athletics, that's off season block one, off season block two, phase zero, phase one, phase two, phase three. Accessory work is programmed for the masses the movements that are in the workouts. So ⁓ gonna have strength, accessory, stimulus of the workout, stimulus of the bitch work and work all there without the actual movements in the CrossFit workout. in your traditional Metcons and intervals. Over the course of the year, we have to trend towards sports specific choices within Metcons and intervals where we're not sacrificing anything inside of the accessory work. So we will go through and program of the movements that are in there and then tweak the accessory work to make sure that it actually fits. And like, I'm trying to think of how to make the connection, but basically it's, it's sports specific early on in the year, and then more sports specific as we make our way sort of to, to competition. @paige_semenza: Like what I hear is very intentional to keep quality the priority, right? as far as movement selection, being first with accessories before the conditioning pieces, like GPP is GPP. You're going to get fit with the movements that we choose and the that we put it in. So we get to be very intentional about the lifting and about the accessory. Not an easy way to put it. Drew Crandall: Correct. Yes. Yeah, I'm very much so. And I don't want to, if you are a programmer, don't ⁓ your accessory programming so robust that you can't program anything. ⁓ if we were to, use something called a movement tracker. When we're programming, we have a list of basically every movement that we would use in a conditioning piece. ⁓ ones that are used more often in the sport at different levels are italicized or, or, or bold. If we're looking at our program and we see a massive gap, we know that the skill works got to change or the accessory works got to change that sort of thing. So don't try to do the square peg round hole thing at the end of the day, getting people better CrossFit is going to happen in the Metcons and in the intervals. And we need variants and we need touch points under intensity on all the movements that we would typically do. One sort of anecdote about the way that we've programmed accessory work over the years a few years ⁓ the beginning of programming it more outside of the remote coaching realm. We had the rotation of lift, carry, hold. and also did a double rotation. So by the time you made it all the way through the phase, you only repeated a certain movement a few times and. I think for me, that was probably the cross fitter in me that wanted more variance related to these things. But then I would be in the remote coaching setting and I would have the same things week after week because it was personalized and they worked a lot better. ⁓ so that's why if you've been with us for a while, that has changed a little bit. so what we're looking for. ⁓ @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: that I'll bring up here in a minute and execution is for you guys to basically have repetition intentionally. When you go to make those choices of which ones you're going to do, we want you doing them for all eight weeks to see the benefits of. @paige_semenza: Yeah, there's a bit of that exposure component to it as well. there's, think Lindsay Hoffman just posted something in Telegram about having not a heavy sandbag for a little while and needing to get more exposure. So seeing that at least once a week ⁓ is going help benefit her, ⁓ especially when comes time to compete. Drew Crandall: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's one thing where I don't know, you feel like you're screaming to the community on mute, where it's like, if you are just, if you're really bad at something in relation to the rest of your skills. You live with that shit with the sandbag, right? It's remember the Titans. You drop the football, you run a mile. If you, the sandbag is not within view of you and you're awake, you run a mile. Like, ⁓ I and you guys saw it with, you guys saw it with froning. You saw it with Fraser. Like you saw those things where it was like, they felt embarrassed by being bad at one movement. And then they went home and ⁓ just that movement over and over and got better at it. So. @paige_semenza: then there. Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: That is, that is definitely something where you can identify the weakness within the athlete and then they don't work on it. And it's very confusing that it's like those specific weaknesses to you are the ones that do truly need that extra attention that doesn't really live within the traditional CrossFit programming lens. Remote coaching settings. it's a lot easier to move the needle when specifics are taken into consideration. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Go. Drew Crandall: I'm trying to get you better at X. I do my best to follow the trends of whether there are community wide weaknesses through of workouts, through competitions where I can, I can look at trends, but programming for hundreds of athletes versus one, just presents different challenges, which is where the idea of the variable training system came from. So. ⁓ Volume of accessory work is going to be dependent on the athlete where they're at in their journey strengths and weaknesses, how much time they have to train, what total volume is appropriate for them. But eventually down the road, you're working with an athlete for that second or third year. You want the amount of accessory work that they're doing within a year to go down over the course of the year. We really want to build those foundations through. And then not have as much of it, not have to rely on as much of it when we are trying to be more sport specific. now. ⁓ @paige_semenza: And you're talking in terms of like starting in the off season, right? Like if we were starting now. Drew Crandall: Yeah, yeah, like someone coming off of the easiest example would be Paige comes off of the CrossFit Games and she's got 10 accessory pieces a week and then she's got three to six when we're into competition prep unless we're working on something very specific. Because again, the more ⁓ closer to the season or in the season sports specific training ⁓ ⁓ important. All right, so that's how I think about programming accessory I think that went smoother than I thought it was going to, Paige. What do you think? @paige_semenza: No, it did. It definitely did. For the listener, I'm usually someone who needs the very much like dummy 101 version of how it's explained. And I thought that was pretty clear. Drew Crandall: Bye. So a peek behind the curtain, Paige has sat through. hours and hours and hours of meetings where I'm talking about this very thing here. she's probably the best pupil that I've had in terms of not like, finding her like asleep in the corner of the video while I'm talking. So I told her before the podcast started, if you're bored of all people, we are in deep trouble. All right. Execution. How do you execute? You're an athlete. How do you get this stuff done and actually move the needle? Misfit disclaimer, very specific to our programming. We're gonna use the accessory instructions from off season block one as an example. Accessory work is meant to be done, but not at the expense of conditioning. Add them as often as time permits. This podcast has a very specific title because the context matters. A Crossfitters guide to accessory work. Training day for a competitive Crossfitter void of intensity through conditioning is not going to be in the cards for 99.9999 % of you. And I mean every single conditioning day or every single day. Freudian slip conditioning is king. Loading up on what we talk about today and neglecting energy system development will make you worse at CrossFit period. If you don't use it, you lose it. I could probably give Kenzie Riley 48 accessory pieces. She wouldn't do them. so maybe a bad example, but I can't think of very many people who hold on to fitness at a cellular level within that way. So you just cannot get cute with the way that you program, with the way that you coach, with the way that you execute as an athlete. that being said, identifying your current priorities and sticking to them through a set period of time is really important. at the expense of conditioning means two different things at different points in the year and different for different athletes. like, two accessory pieces instead of a second conditioning piece makes a whole lot of sense for a lot of athletes at certain times of year, right? Like I don't want you guys to think that I'm saying you got to do a ton of conditioning. And then if you still have time after you have to do it, but a lot of people that follow our programming have, you know, 60 to 120 minutes to go get after it. And if they were to do @paige_semenza: Yeah. Drew Crandall: two lifts into accessories or one lift into accessories and maybe a skill every once in a while, they might not have time to do conditioning at all. And that's where we're like, that's way too far. And we've had that question from people, like, what if I just skipped the Metcon and then you go to their open page, they need some Metcons. They need a lot of Metcons, right? Four pounds, strict press, ain't moving the needle on not being able to do burpees, right? ⁓ @paige_semenza: Right. You You Drew Crandall: Don't get cute with that. But I do just the context of what type of ear it is, what your goals are, incredibly important here. Okay, actually executing the movements, range of motion, hugely important, full ⁓ range of motion here, okay? We don't want the like bodybuilder style kind of barely lockout thing. We don't want the dumbbell brought down next to your ear. ⁓ We want full range of motion. And that's another thing that's going to limit the amount of weight that you can use, but over time is going to make a huge difference in your pressing. Like a lot of the people that struggle with handstand pushups, you see them fall onto their head, reset, and then go again because they don't have that strength within that end range to have that contractile potential to be able to push themselves back up. matters in both directions. @paige_semenza: All right. Drew Crandall: We want eccentric loading as part of accessory work. We want to be able to control weights. That's going to help with, connective tissue, tendons, all that good stuff. It's going to keep us a lot healthier. and then depending on what you're trying to accomplish, there are a lot of instances where the concentric, you know, the press or the pole or the, you know, the standup out of the squat or the lunge. We do want some speed to that. We want to sort of manipulate tissues. related to the actual movement pattern that we have. Skill is so huge. Like there are so many movements within that have implications on skill transfer that people bastardize in the name of just doing more weight at a specific thing and then it doesn't allow them to get better at the other thing. Back squat would be a really good example. Like if you aren't trying to do an Olympic style back squat, and then you want it to transfer to your front squat, your overhead squat, your snatch, you're clean. There's going to be a problem there. If we are trying to use strict pulling as an upper back accessory and you're doing the lean back, use the biceps, your hands close together. That's not going to help you in that position. Strict press, leaning back and getting into a bad position there. There's so many instances of this. You want to an accessory work specifically move in a way that translates to all of the movement patterns that you can think of that are similar. Like if you do that in a push jerk or a split jerk, you're just going to drop the bar, not going to be able to get kind of your head back through. It's not going to transfer there and your body's going to notice those things. So it's the movement patterns themselves in the actual positions. And then something we talked about. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Drew Crandall: I think maybe one or two podcasts ago would be the mental skill transfer. love ⁓ what someone is capable of in low stakes setting so that they can feel how far they can really push themselves. So those farmers lunges, like if your heart rate was up and you felt the same way, would you drop them? If you weren't just a dead hang or a farmer's carry, And you were holding on for another total bar, chest, bar, whatever grippy thing that's in the thing that you're doing, would you drop sooner like that sort of thing? So I love the idea of showing people like you can be in pain. You can be uncomfortable. You can still move, right? It might not be the best thing to do in that moment in that workout, but there are moments where you are your connection to how you're feeling physically is going to make or break, you know, that. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: that especially an in-person competition, just those moments at the end. Like that's something, Paige, that you've always excelled at. Like there's 10 more feet, you're not putting the dumbbells down. And thank goodness. ⁓ @paige_semenza: If you're gonna know rep me and I have to walk backwards first, I'm gonna do it. Drew Crandall: Uh-huh. And thank goodness because that's probably my biggest pet peeve. ⁓ my. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I think the biggest one that sticks out for me with this is when I was getting into like some dumbbell bench press with you and he talked about like trying not to pause at the top and just making sure that you could hit a really tight lockout and press with speed ⁓ things like that I think have translated the most for me, someone who does struggle with pressing things like strict handstand pushups of like, you know. Drew Crandall: Yeah. @paige_semenza: you're not pausing at the top of your strict handstand push-up, so why are you pausing at the top of your dumbbell bench? Again, there's that transferability there that has actually paid off dividends as far as my pressing capacity. And that's one thing that I get to talk to my athletes about now, too, of the speed in your movements really do matter. So it should matter in your accessory work, too. Drew Crandall: another thing that you're good at that can help twofold is you recognize ⁓ thing is making this thing better. So you'll be like, this back squat is really making my first pull in the snatch and the clean stronger, ⁓ this variation of pressing is helping my handstand pushups. And that kind of feedback for a coach is huge or feedback for yourself and what you're choosing is huge because you're getting better at that other thing. The more strict handstand pushups you can do, @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: The more you're the faster you're going to progress within them. And then if you believe that this junk volume, quote unquote, is moving the needle and like a really important part of your training that does something for you mentally that buy in of like, this is working. I'm to get myself there. So being mindful of this movement feels better than it has. What is the other thing that's actually moving the needle? I think can be incredibly helpful. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Drew Crandall: The last thing that I put in there was just resist the urge to be a CrossFitter here. If we're going to do amazing range of motion, eccentric loading, positioning, all of that. consider that being a sophisticated meathead. I. When I got into the world of, of bodybuilding a little bit, just to understand it a little bit more, the people that are really good at it, that I watched on YouTube and Instagram have incredible range of motion, incredible levels of control throughout. Like you can definitely tell a CrossFitter when the dumbbells doing this kind of stuff. Cause those stabilizers aren't quite where they need to be yet. But then at a Globo gym. I still can't believe that community is the community making fun of us. They move like shit. They have no range of motion. Like it's crazy. Like they're basically like they like Kip. They keep half of the machines that they're on and they don't like her keeping. do that rant another day, but ⁓ @paige_semenza: Yeah. You Drew Crandall: always cracks me up. But the people that are incredibly good at it are good at it because they have a level of control to their movements. And that range of motion is huge. So a sophisticated meathead. If you go watch Chris Bumstead videos and check out if that dude at that size can do that range of motion, ⁓ can figure out how to do that range of motion. primary accessory execution, challenging, but never failing reps. If you are failing, there's only one reason why that should happen. And that's because you haven't done it yet and you're in week one or you're in preview week and you're just figuring it out. You don't know what way to use. That's totally fine. That's not a big deal. If your ego is becoming part of this and you are failing reps, that's a problem. Every once in a while, dumbbells are tough because of the increments. Every once in a while you think you're ready for the extra five pounds, but it's 10 pounds and your arms aren't fucking connected. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. you Drew Crandall: Which is just frustrating. that would be another thing that happens every once in a while. That's not a big deal, but we want, you can make a movement more challenging. If you're doing it and you think you went too light, slow down the eccentric, hold the contraction at the top. If you're, trying to get hypertrophy, that sort of thing, there are different ways to make it challenging. What we don't want is people failing reps. Runway the key here. This is huge. I have this rudimentary graphic that is almost always a part of first remote coaching meeting called the ramp. It me back to the X Games skateboarding big air days where they had that like mega ramp and they would be they had to have like different trucks on their skateboard because they would wobble and like die otherwise. But go down that huge ramp and it gives them a ton of speed to shoot off the jump. What too many coaches and programmers do is they place you at the bottom of a hill and tell you to pedal up that hill and then you fall off the jump. not a jump, it's a cliff. What good coaches do is they figure out how much runway you need, depending on your skill level, your muscle fiber type, all that good stuff, and they give you a ton of momentum so that when you do start going uphill, ⁓ You actually have speed to be able to take off and go further than you normally would go. So if the goal I want to move this weight for six sets of 10 in week eight, we need two to four weeks of flying down that ramp. Okay. Your muscles need to accumulate. They need to adapt to the volume. They need to get a feel for it. The little muscles that are weaker. need a chance to get on board. We want to make it so again, it's not affecting your other stuff. If you're so heavy at the beginning and you know, you can't press out of your dip in your muscle ups because of your, you know, your bench weight, it's probably a little bit of an issue there. we find this to be, ⁓ this is the junk volume claim, right? So weeks one through four, one through five, whatever it is, you're not probably ⁓ increasing absolute strength. But if pound dumbbells ⁓ significantly easier in week five, and then you do ⁓ for a couple of weeks, 65, 70s, and you end up five to 10 pounds heavier than you could have gone had you just started heavy, then having that angle in mind is something that moves the needle. And honestly, for a it is challenging. It's tough. Those first few weeks, you like lifting, you like lifting heavy. @paige_semenza: Right. Drew Crandall: You really want to move the needle, but you just get stuck staying in the same place. ⁓ and part of it is because accessory movements are oftentimes just different than the regular training that we do. It's a different stimulus. You've to get used to them. You have to educate yourself. So there's just this like intro period with these movements, that have a little humility ⁓ incredibly well, do lighter weights, then, ⁓ you @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: Go lighter than the weight that you could do basically is what I'm trying to say. And, and English. but consider week eight's not a test cause we're going to keep going, but like consider it proof of concept. What do I want to be able to do? Hopefully it's based on like actual facts and not like I'm going to do hundreds at the end and you can only do thirties. Yeah, exactly. @paige_semenza: Yeah. VADs. Drew Crandall: ⁓ Hopefully it's based on something real, contextual data from yourself. But that's one the better pieces of advice that I can give people with these types of progressions. A lot of people get this wrong. They start ⁓ right the fringes of what they're capable of and they just kind of stay there. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I think, ⁓ I don't know, like, like you said, it's, it's different from the stuff that we do every day, which for someone like me who's been doing it for 10, 11 years, it's like, it's nice to have that change up. So it's almost like it feels good. Like, you know, especially when you're starting off season or an accessory block, and having runway, like it feels good to be like, wow, I accomplished this and I don't feel wrecked from it. Drew Crandall: Yeah. @paige_semenza: You know, like that's where my mind goes. Drew Crandall: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And for me, find this to really challenging to implement for myself being a fast Twitch athlete, because I don't really find out what's appropriate for me until sets like five and six. ⁓ @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: because early on, fresh, everything feels pretty easy. ⁓ So I need that context. I need to know I'm capable of from a previous progression and back way off of that. And it's like, I fall into the same trap everybody else does. It's a lot easier to give advice than is to take advice. So like I do those phases where... ⁓ @paige_semenza: Right. Yeah. Drew Crandall: You know, I'm doing inclined bench and I'm starting with seventies or something like that. And I just never get better at it. And then I go to do it again. And I started all the way down at like forties, cause I have more runway than a typical CrossFitter does. And those are always the times that I get the strongest. @paige_semenza: Yeah, yep, can agree to that. Drew Crandall: All right, secondary accessory execution. So this is a full step back from the, I'll call it single rep intensity of primary accessory. So like those final reps where you really have to try in primary accessory, we don't want the secondary to feel that way. ⁓ We want to let the volume of the whole thing, the five rounds or your seven minutes sled pull to be the challenge without any single rep feeling like, my goodness, I can't do this. Like my mind immediately went to just because of my age, Ron Burgundy saying, ooh, that's a deep burn. That's immediately where my brain goes. That's what we want. Good secondary accessory is that burning sensation where like, I don't really want to do this anymore, but I could, I just don't want to. That's what secondary accessory is supposed to feel like. And it takes again, the accumulation of time and reps through sets. @paige_semenza: You Yeah. Drew Crandall: to actually feel that way. And we're gonna reiterate the first bullet point here because intensity in some of these movements is more about focusing than it is like, ⁓ intensity, like I gotta go as fast as I can. Five minutes double kettlebell overhead carry with good positioning. The are so light that I don't wanna say it's not hard, but it's not hard in the way that we're used to. It's hard because, know, I'm at Misfit gym, Portland back in the day and Hunter's in the corner. And he's like, yo, check out that rib cage from across the gym. I'm walking around, you know, in, you know, I'm walking around with banana back. That means I'm not focused or it's too heavy. Right. So like that level ⁓ fighting to stay in the positioning, to do the movement the way that we want to for 75 reps or for five minutes or for seven minutes is the challenge there. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Drew Crandall: ⁓ and that just goes back to the, like, if, what is it? The, everything, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That's what it is. you have to have different ⁓ ways expressing intensity and focus is a one for accessory work, for endurance work, things that are more drawn out with less intensity. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I think the, five by 15 is easily one of the most humbling, accessory rep schemes that we do. And all it is also the one that most people get wrong the very first time they do it because they go much heavier than they're actually capable of. And then they find out the hard way. Drew Crandall: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. And you find out the hard way sometimes in the moment or sometimes through almost rhabdo. Like if you do a real bicep session. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. What am I doing? What is this on RAM class? then, huh. Yep. Very true. All right. Last but not least, I just want to cover a random anecdote. @paige_semenza: that's true. ⁓ the barbell inverted rows. ⁓ upper back was so sore the first time I did those. ⁓ Drew Crandall: I added like 15 pounds to my strict press without training because I listened to a powerlifter talk about connective tissue. His thing was you have one muscle because of connective tissue. You can basically flex like your whole body. That's what you see when you watch a gymnast and they move and it's like their body's just moving through space and they're just locked into this beautiful position. have incredibly strong connective tissue with accessory work. You can, like, if we let you guys stand with the strict press, squeezing your glutes and like extending your quads and having your midline on completely changes how strong your shoulders are, which is, which is really cool, but it translates to so many other pieces here in CrossFit. There's this element of. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: remaining relaxed in movement because we don't want to, we don't want to, know, jack up our heart rate when we don't need to, you know, the first time you do a kettlebell swing and realize that you can kind of just breathe your way through them. if they're a little bit lighter ⁓ muscling your way through them and holding your breath and all that, like, that's a big moment for you. We want to have almost the opposite mindset and accessory work and quite a bit of strength work. ⁓ really want to bring the intensity. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: from a like total body perspective because it's going to let you move more weight the more often that you move more weight the stronger you get the fitter you get all that good stuff that is execution of accessory work do we think @paige_semenza: That was pretty good. What would you say is like the biggest mistake athletes make it comes to their execution? ⁓ Drew Crandall: not doing all of the stuff I just said. I'm just kidding. @paige_semenza: too. Drew Crandall: I think it's, I think it's ego. @paige_semenza: At least within like Telegram, like what's like a common thing that we see in Telegram that Drew Crandall: I, I do see a lot of the weight jumping 20s, 40s, 50s, 60s, like that kind of thing. Again, feeling out period, figuring out what weights to use. That's fantastic. starting too especially if it's your first round through it's your first time through you only back off like five pounds. ⁓ And then don't really have a lot of runway there, but we talked about this, another topic that that's come up a decent amount recently and. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Drew Crandall: The things that athletes are really bad at require the most patients and usually get the least amount of patients from people because it feels like a personal attack on themselves the whole time. So I would say for those people, it's not eight weeks. It's 24, 32, 40 weeks. It's one of those things I would love to be able to use fifties. @paige_semenza: That's a good point. Yeah? Yeah. Drew Crandall: Sounds good. Let's start with twenties, fifteens and move really well. And when you're just so sick of it, then you use twenties and then you use twenty fives and then you use thirties and you really ride that progression for a long period of time. And we've all been through that. It's weird when you have checked so many boxes and there's just this thing hanging out over on the side. Like I'm not good at this one thing. How's that possible? I'm good at all these other things. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Drew Crandall: GPP prevails. I've got the strength. I've got the conditioning. I know how to do the movement. Why can't I do that movement? Those are the ones where athletes struggle to execute on a progression the most. So probably the biggest mistake that the listener is making is not recognizing the single accessory or accessories that are going to move the needle the most for them and having a year long progression in mind for that move. @paige_semenza: having the patience for it. Cool. Yeah. Drew Crandall: Yep. It's frustrating, man. Those moments are so tough. Cause like, that's one of the reasons why the mental toughness thing is always fascinating because like there's categories of it. It's like this person, their mind is a, you know, they, they row up whatever 6 32 K and then try to get them to do this, like toast to bar progression or whatever. And they're like, I did, I know we were supposed to do sets of six today, but I opened with 42. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. You Drew Crandall: and now I've rabdo and my second set was two and it's like no please don't do that we can we can fix this you gotta wait @paige_semenza: Yeah, I was gonna say like it transfers over to skill work too, right? Like we have those skills that we are just so impatient about. Yeah. Drew Crandall: ⁓ yes. ⁓ huh. We get momentum in a lot of CrossFit skills and that's dangerous. ⁓ this feels great. Yeah. You did one in round one. We got a ways to go here. right. ⁓ so want to tackle a couple of big picture concepts to wrap up here. So accessory work isn't going to make you better at CrossFit in a vacuum. So if we just looked, if we just zeroed in on one accessory piece, @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah Drew Crandall: We're not, there's no fairy dust that we're sprinkling onto you with that accessory piece. it is a tiny piece of a huge puzzle, but it gives you the tools to lift heavier. That could be through strength, technique or muscle endurance. And increases your output in workouts. I cannot stress enough what happens to an athlete when challenging workouts ⁓ become in the adaptation that they make. think about the workout that everyone's talking about on telegram today. Echo bike overhead squat, echo bike. It's the talk of the town. If you can do that workout with intensity, you are making significantly higher adaptations than someone who cannot. ⁓ but you have to earn the right to be able to do that. There's so much that goes into it, right? We might have a strong person that's like, what are you guys talking about? And it's like, I want to see your. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Right. Drew Crandall: I want to see your fourth round echo bike split on the back half. I want to see what that looks like. Right. that sort of thing. So. ⁓ @paige_semenza: Right. Drew Crandall: It's part of a bigger system, but if it lets you increase adaptation in other areas, that's what's going to move the needle. That's where we found competitive CrossFit programming in the early days split off from CrossFit programming. You see someone doing a workout with 135 pound thrusters and you're just like, excuse me, thrusters are 95, 65. That's the weight that we use for thrusters. Sometimes we do a little, sometimes we do a lot. And it's like, ⁓ well, @paige_semenza: you Drew Crandall: Once 95 was smooth, I had 105 and then I did 115 and I'm doing 135 and it's like, holy shit. And those people got fitter significantly faster, especially when you put a 95 pound barbell back in their hands. Um, and that's what we're trying to do through blending all of this programming together over a period of time. Um, I think if you don't understand what accessory work is and how to execute it within your own personal context, it very well can be junk volume. There's a lot of stuff outside. Well, honestly, I'll even include bad athlete IQ, Metcons and intervals. There's a lot of stuff that could be junk volume. We used to have an athlete that I won't name that followed pro, you know, it's called MFT back then that did all of the volume was able to do. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. Drew Crandall: the amount of muscle-ups they needed to and lift the weights and whatever. Their times were incredibly slow and they weren't very good at CrossFit. That is the epitome of junk volume, like to a T. ⁓ So if you don't know why you're doing it, what the point of it is, how to execute it, that's when we can get into the coaches that are out there that are like, what are you guys doing? Like, why are you standing off in the corner doing this? It's not helping you at all. And it's not, you know, fixing what you need. Like I get the concept of it, but it can also be a very accessory where it can be a very powerful thing. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Drew Crandall: ⁓ I think you and I both have had instances where it's like, we're stuck on this thing. We introduced the right training to it, and then it finally takes off. ⁓ but this is one of those styles of training that really could be a waste of time done or just choosing movements that you shouldn't do. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Drew Crandall: Less is more. Last one. Volume is earned over much longer periods of time than you would expect. It is lower intensity, but if you don't have a very high level of GPP, two accessories per day is just going to be too much volume for your body to handle and still crush a lift and crush a conditioning piece. So... ⁓ I would rather see an athlete go from like accessory piece to two to three to four to five to six to seven to eight to nine, that kind of thing. Then start with an overload of it and just not really know ⁓ lever they're trying to pull, what they're trying to get better at. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. And if they are, let's say they're limiting their accessory work, would you recommend sticking to the same thing ⁓ ⁓ whole off season and then really just kind of like ⁓ out like, all right, I want to improve X, it's a gymnastics movement and try to like ⁓ focus accessory work that would transfer over to that said thing? ⁓ Drew Crandall: Yep. Yeah. So it's tough to give examples without specifics, but like any one thing that I can think of would be starting with an athlete that was young in the sport and being like, we're going to do accessory work Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or something like that. And we're really going to try to move the needle with it. And as they're progressing through it, we're identifying whether it is helping them. @paige_semenza: Sure. Drew Crandall: And then it's like, ⁓ wow, let's, go all five days, even in just in the next off season block. But I think people get excited about a new style of programming or see something and they want to do more. like, if you're focusing on everything, you're focusing on nothing sort of a deal. ⁓ @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. Right. Drew Crandall: All right. Accessory work. Woohoo. You guys survived one hour of accessory work. The robots will remove the ums and ahs. So maybe it was 58 minutes instead of one hour. Um, we have telegram question of the week and then coaches our people to. Canan Bennett for those of us that only have the potential to train four days a week. How should we navigate the program? Miss a day entirely? Question mark. No. Um, split up the work amongst the other days of the week. Paige, what are your thoughts? @paige_semenza: Whoa. do you mean miss a day entirely? If you only have four days to train. How you interpret that? ⁓ Drew Crandall: So he's saying, do I pick a day of the week and delete it? So like there's days one through, got five program days in there. Do I just say, well, I'm not doing day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, that kind of @paige_semenza: mean, but like, guys, this a question that I would ask Drew myself. ⁓ Drew Crandall: So this goes back to the template building. So that exercise that we did with all of you, if you're going to take ownership of the variable training system, a lot of athletes are already doing some swapping on their own. They know what fits on certain days for them, as long as it doesn't run interference. So I would have the entire week of programming up and I would know what was appropriate for my volume. And I would start highlighting pieces. Circling pieces that kind of thing the same thing page would do if she had all five days of programming and a remote client said Put it into four you would know which puzzle pieces you were moving around for that athlete so You might need to ask us you might need it like I had I had some people reach out that had really thoughtful templates that just had a couple of Really important tweaks that were in there So I would say you have to do the extra work @paige_semenza: Yeah. Drew Crandall: to move things around to make the most well-rounded program, right? Things that are ultra strengths, delete. They're gone, that kind of thing. @paige_semenza: Yeah, think too, obviously it matters on how much volume you can do within a day, within a week, but also what your time and energy is capable of. one thing that I've always had to go back and this is something when I'm doing a full phase of programming is going back and looking at the overview of the week and making sure that there's nothing conflicting day to day. If I'm squatting on Monday, Drew Crandall: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, that's huge. If you're going to move pieces around. @paige_semenza: Yeah, so if you are moving things around, like get your whole week template ready to go and then maybe go take a 10 minute break, come back and look at it and make sure that there's nothing that's conflicting with something else. There's no interference so that you are getting, you know, the most out of your training within this off season. Drew Crandall: For sure. So long story long, build your template. Ask us in telegram. We will approve or deny. There's also just all kinds of questions I would have for the person. Like, can you still, do you have time to, you know, get a zone one or a zone two and there's a bunch of different questions. Is it truly three full rest days? Which days are you training? You better not be training four in a row. And if I'm only doing four days, I'd actually prefer two and two like @paige_semenza: Right. Drew Crandall: There's a bunch of different stuff that could be built in there. ⁓ But you can, one thing that I also should say, you can definitely still really move the needle. You just gotta up the intensity, that kind of @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. For sure. Yeah, 100%. Drew Crandall: Alright coaches are people too. I got to I have Vacation talk and then a dumb quick story. So and I brought our son to see my parents If you're a misfit og, you know the misfit legends ⁓ Claire Karen Claire is my dad. A lot of people are like Claire and Karen. ⁓ interesting ⁓ @paige_semenza: love them. you Drew Crandall: They are down in third. They're doing the down in Florida thing, in the winter. So we went down there just south of Sarasota, I believe. And got lucky our son. Well, first of all, we got lucky because one part of their pool is that like, it's like eight inches deep or something. So there's basically like a pool on the side to like get into the pool. So there was a place for him to play with his toys and all that stuff. @paige_semenza: cute. Yeah. Drew Crandall: But he loved the pool, which meant we got to hang out by the pool basically for a week, which is what we were looking for. There was also ⁓ from far away, it literally looked like someone took the hull or the like body of an ice cream truck and put it on a pontoon boat. And it was an ice cream truck boat in the ocean. Turns out they just built a, basically a fiberglass replica. @paige_semenza: It's wild. That's awesome. Drew Crandall: Of it, but like literally, like if you're like 30 feet away, it literally, it looks like an ice cream truck is driving around in the ocean, which is amazing. we had to go stand in the ocean and stare at that for the, basically the entire time that it was around, ⁓ cause he was super into it. My quick dumb story. We get back and unpacking, there's just different things in different places in the house. And Carter to my blue blockers. @paige_semenza: That's cute. Drew Crandall: He puts them on and says, everything's orange. Your orange data is orange. Mama's orange. Yeah. he was wearing them and ended up in the kitchen. So it's getting us laid down in bed, getting ready to read. And I was like, do you know where my blue blockers are? And I was like, I think he left them. ⁓ I he left them on the floor out in the living room and I put them on the Island. So I went out there, but like, I can be a little anal about like not having the lights on. @paige_semenza: Like a deep red. Drew Crandall: at that point, like I'm not going to turn it on. It's going to fuck with my sleep. So I go out there. I'm feeling around the island, find my blue blockers, put them on, go back into my room, reading for like 30, 40 minutes, something like that. I realize my, have one of the Oolar things that like cools down your bed, that like mattress pad. And sometimes it doesn't work because you got to more water in it. So I walk over, I get the water and like, I look ridiculous before I go to bed. I have an eye mask on my forehead. I have blue blockers. I have a nasal strip thing. I have headphones on. I look insane. I go over, I pick up the water jug, walking back over and Maya's like, what are you doing? And I was like, what do mean? Like put water in the thing. She's like, what are you wearing? And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, Drew, you're wearing sunglasses. @paige_semenza: you Drew Crandall: I didn't grab my blue blockers and come to think of it, I was like, it is so hard to read. What is with my light tonight? It's not working. And then when I was looking at my phone, the polarizer made it so I couldn't see the screen. So I'm literally in my underwear, standing there, headphones, eye mask on the forehead, polarized black sunglasses, holding a giant jug of water, nasal strip, probably still a little like sunburn going from the trip. @paige_semenza: This so stupid. Nasal strip. It's amazing. Drew Crandall: So I've been getting shit for that for the last couple of days. It's so funny too. I'm like, God, it's so hard to read this. Am I tired? Like what's going on? I just need to go to bed. Yep. Yep. So I don't recommend the sunglasses for blue block or swap. @paige_semenza: Yeah. I just need to go to bed. It's amazing. ⁓ Yeah, I get that. I get that. get that. don't know. cannot. Nothing really tops that. I'm going to go home. ⁓ I'm basically all of May. ⁓ I get to coach Tony in my first kind of big event, his first semi. I get well, yeah, his first semifinal. Drew Crandall: Hmm. Hell yeah. @paige_semenza: He's done like water blues is so Cal before so he's done some pretty big events, but this one He's like, you know, he's really really immersed himself within the training the prep So I'm super excited ⁓ to that and then every weekend of May ⁓ I'm traveling it's going home or a wedding or So ⁓ should fun Drew Crandall: I got a wild one coming up too. And I'm going to be 40, which. @paige_semenza: crazy. Drew Crandall: So I get a lot of travel coming after I turn 40. Who knows if I'll make it. I'll keep you guys updated. right. ⁓ we do it? ⁓ @paige_semenza: Crazy. Yeah, okay. We did it. Drew Crandall: Thank you for tuning into another episode of the misfit podcast. Thank you to our show sponsor, gorilla mind. can go to gorilla mind.com forward slash misfit or use the code word misfit at checkout. You save on what I consider the best supplements in the game and we get a kickback. You support the podcast. So please go and do that if you need some supplements. next week's podcast is going to be the, the affiliate phase, which is called the compound. Little bit of a teaser there. I'll explain what that means. getting started on a new season, always exciting for us to talk through the programming ⁓ the affiliate level. So if you're interested in that, make sure you tune in. Shout out to ⁓ this weekend, make sure you're watching legends 35 to 39 women, 40 to 44 women for missy G and winches. we'll see you guys next week.