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Retesting Workouts: Where Are You Leaving Time? - E.420 · Misfit Podcast

• @misfitcoach: Good morning, Misfit. You are tuning into another episode of the Misfit podcast. On today's episode, we have a very timely topic. We're gonna be talking about the world of retesting workouts. we're gonna look at it from all the perspectives year over year, phase over phase, and then you know, sort of your classic open online qualifier retest, all that good stuff. a lot of people doing fittest of the coast right now. And almost everyone listening to this podcast is going to be doing phase one retest next week. So we're going to talk about how to get better at the art of retesting. Before we get into that, a little bit of housekeeping. Misfit affiliate, the unicorn phase has started. you can get a two-week free trial at SugarWad, Push Press, or StreamFit, or you can email me directly, coach at misfitathletics.com. I will send you a sample. We can also get on a call and figure out whether Your affiliate and Misfit affiliate are a good match. the Work is the Only Way collection. while the presale is over, we still have a bunch of stuff in stock based on what you guys ordered, what was popular. so you can head to sharpentheaxco.com and check out the work is the only way collection. I didn't put this in my notes, it's just popping into my head right now. Misfit quarterfinals prep camp. CrossFit Roots, Boulder, Colorado, February 5th @paige_semenza: year. @misfitcoach: through the 7th. If you are a Misfit athlete or you are a coach or you are a lover of the sport, this is a very special weekend. Roots is a special place, really big gym, tons of equipment, really awesome, really awesome community and coaching staff. So camp is elevated even more there. but it's just The kind of thing where I think as CrossFitters, especially ones who are obsessed with the competitive space, we float through this world @paige_semenza: it @misfitcoach: when we're not around other CrossFitters and we feel like weirdos in a sense. You know, you @paige_semenza: you @misfitcoach: you're just, you know, maybe cooking up a quick twenty one fifteen nine in your head and the person that's with you doesn't even know what that means. when you get in a room with thirty, forty, fifty other people who are as passionate about the thing as you are, It really gets you to a point where you can learn more, where you can feel more at home, where you can make new friends, and leave there with a higher level of motivation to coach, compete, even observe the sport. if you are a remote client, make sure you reach out for your discount. If you are a Misfit affiliate gym, make sure you re reach out for your discount. The more coaches that you sign up, the bigger the discount is. for everybody. So keep that in mind. also last year 17 continuing education units for anybody trying to get the extra credits for their L two, L three, et cetera, were awarded from CrossFit. Basically you get done and I write a letter for you and CrossFit approves those. so link in bio on the Instagram, February fifth through the seventh quarterfinals prep camp, Boulder, Colorado. CrossFit roots. reminder of our weekly coaching call. There are only two left that are completely free. make sure you're in the in the telegram group. You can get that link through social media as well in our link in bio on Instagram. and we just go over the programming. This coming week we will be digging into the exact same topic that we are on this podcast. We'll be digging into retest and and helping people. sort of you know go back and forth and do a little bit of QA of of how they can personalize their retest. and then we will be heading into phase two. I'm going to tease a special announcement from our show sponsor, Gorilla Mind, right now. and then I'm gonna do something that we normally don't do. There is going to be an advertisement @paige_semenza: Eh-heh. @misfitcoach: in the middle of the podcast, but make sure you listen because it will be worth your while. Next week's podcast is going to be the phase two podcast. We're gonna do a deep dive into what phase two is, what you can expect from that. and we will have the free trials turned back on on our programs so that you can see that first week for free. Reminder: the Misfit Apprentice Colin is backstage right now. and he is going to be writing down questions that he thinks. That you guys will want to hear from the coaching perspective, from the athlete perspective. shout-outs of the week. I'm gonna flip the order of mine because I believe we have a special honorary double shout out. My first shout out, Andrew Nadu, my remote client. we've been avoiding a D load for a little while because he had a little one on the way and we weren't sure when it was going to happen. and he finally him and his wife had their had their little girl this weekend. @paige_semenza: So cute. @misfitcoach: So yeah. So big big shout out there. also just shout out to Andrew for for working his butt off all the way through phase one. @paige_semenza: That's awesome. @misfitcoach: all right, here comes the double shout out. Does anybody else wanna be Kenzie Riley when they grow up? Raise your hand. @paige_semenza: Always. @misfitcoach: Raise your hand. Collins raising his hand in the tiny little black and white square in the corner there. Kenzie competed at Crash Crucible this weekend, has a had a designation next to her name on the leaderboard. That was her with a walker. @paige_semenza: No. @misfitcoach: I did hope that they were going to have a walker there to put her next to the podium. They should have. @paige_semenza: Amazing. @misfitcoach: Kenzie ended up coming in fourth. you know, individual games athletes, individual semifinals athletes, and Kenzie just went and did what Kenzie does. She threw down. she messaged both Paige and I with the ups and downs of the weekend. but sometimes that @paige_semenza: you @misfitcoach: can make it a little sweeter when you get really frustrated about something and you see it through anyways. her and I have talked quite a bit about like what this means when you get to the point of, you know being, you know, in your master's career and being a parent and setting an example. and she @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: had to fight through a bunch of adversity after day one and then ended up being the top master's athlete and coming in fourth place by less than one point decimals @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: for that extra for that extra G. so just a huge shout out to Kenzie. She's just, as we know, very impressive as an athlete. but then I think she got an extra sort of moment incentive to maybe prove something to herself. she doesn't need to prove anything to anybody else. I think we all know that. @paige_semenza: No. @misfitcoach: but prove something to herself by being in a less than ideal situation and making the most of it. @paige_semenza: Yeah, she, we talked quite a bit on Friday, like after her first day of events and like, like you were saying earlier, like she just didn't really sound herself. Like she was really frustrated, like upset. And what's funny about Kenzie is like, for anybody that knows her, like she lives in the nineties. Like she is just like a big kid living in the nineties, like TV shows, music. So then the next morning she texts me and she's like, I'm in it, I'm doing it. She sends me a picture of her like driving a crash and she sends me another picture of like circa 2013 games uniform on. like some people might look at that as like, you know, is she bragging about what she's done? It's like, Kenzie is just like living in her, like she just loves like the retro era. And like she just kind of vibes off that. And it's like, it's not a brag or anything. It's a I'm proud of what I've done. And I'm to go show people that like show myself that like I love to compete and I'm doing this for myself. And, you know, like you said, not to prove anything to anybody, but for somebody who has been doing this a really long time to be able to still go out and show that like she's out there with the new age athletes, I think is really, really impressive. And just the resilience to bounce back is really hard to do. On day two when she came in third, she came in first or third on one of the events. She bumped up to third place basically and she sent me a bro, that was crazy kind of text. And I sent @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: her the SpongeBob looking at Squidward figuring out that he loves Krabby @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: Patties. I send that and I'm like, listen, your experience is showing. go @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: out and compete. You might not love it in the moment, but you'd love to do it. So yeah, I'm doubling down on that one. @misfitcoach: All right, so final thoughts here. The most Kenzie thing is getting the messages, can I hang? Do I belong here? And getting DMs from people there that are like, dude, Kenzie is still such a beast. So those are happening simultaneously, and it's just like the perfect explanation @paige_semenza: Ugh. @misfitcoach: of Kenzie, Kenzie's headspace about herself and the reality of her as an athlete. @paige_semenza: Listen, shout out to her for also doing, I don't know, farmland or farmhouse games next weekend. Like basically like she got to move. @misfitcoach: Well, she's doing another comp. @paige_semenza: I @misfitcoach: Is that three in a row? @paige_semenza: think it's four. @misfitcoach: my goodness. At some point you gotta stop complaining if you're signing up for the, you know. @paige_semenza: but she gets to go move like hay bales and stuff. @misfitcoach: That's perfect. All right. All right. @paige_semenza: I can't wait to hear about it. I hope she wears her cowboy boots. @misfitcoach: so like I said in the intro, retesting workouts is our topic today. I think we've danced around it quite a bit in previous episodes. but again, with the different context that we have currently in the season, I think it can be really helpful. So, the number one thing here is data. That's going to be kind of our guiding light from this because I think people have very subjective information about themselves, about the way the way that they feel about certain movements, certain workouts, et cetera. and one of the things we bring to the equation as coaches is just, you know, you watch the video, you look at the splits, you look at like, unbroken early made sense, and then breaking a ton late. That was the right strategy. You know what I mean? So you get to just go through it and you get to remove like the element of anxiety from our side of the fence that the athlete has. So with @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: data, you're able to put yourself a little bit closer to in that place. But if you do have an opportunity to have somebody else watch your video, I think that that can be super helpful as well. how do you I mean, I don't know how often you're doing these and having to redo, But how do you audit a performance when you know you're gonna try to get better at it immediately? Like is athlete IQ high enough that you're not doing a full video review? How do you think about that? @paige_semenza: it depends, I think more on the context and like how important is the qualifier or the workout? so @misfitcoach: Sure. Yeah. @paige_semenza: usually in the open, like I'm watching every single video. I'm doing fitness of the coast right now as well. I haven't put a ton of marbles into like the individual side of it. So I haven't like, I actually did go back and rewatch last week's because I was like, where the heck did I fall off? with my pacing. so. Yeah, I mean, part of it depends on the context and like how. I definitely have done this long enough, but like I also feel like I'm at a place right now where. I have an athlete IQ that maybe doesn't match with my level of fitness, so it's it's actually probably more beneficial for me right now to be paying attention to these things, because like @misfitcoach: Sure. Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: I I feel rusty in a lot of things and I just don't feel like I quite match with. what I think I'm capable of at the moment. But like, you like you said, it's, you get to watch so many different components of the workout, your splits, you know, what did you feel like? What does it look like? Like, are those comparable? Your body language, like there's just a ton of different things that you get out of watching your videos. That can make a huge difference. But I think a lot of it too, I definitely have mental notes of like, I remember how grip rec feel. seven weeks ago. and I know, like I remember how I felt breaking the workout down and how I would change it. So, some of it is mental notes, but obviously having it written down black and white makes it a lot easier to like recall past performances. @misfitcoach: Yeah, for sure. and like again, context definitely matters. So when we're looking at data, we want to know splits that's round to round, that's movement to movement. we wanna know sets that we did. So like there are instances where it's very obvious that the set choices weren't great. And then there are ones where we try different things and we might have athlete anxiety about breaking things up and then we @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: watch and we do the math and it's like, well that actually was only two seconds or three seconds slower. I felt way better after and I probably was able to gain that back. RPE is huge. So for me, I'm watching more like body language. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: but the athletes gotta try to remember in the moment while they're watching it how they felt. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: That can be really important because like you might not know in the moment where things broke down, but once you have the micro information, the macro to me makes way more sense. So like a lot of times when I'm doing a review, I will do just the math of it and not pay attention to a whole lot. And then I'll watch the workout. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: And it's like, okay, now we're looking at movement efficiency. We're looking at again at RPE, we're looking at body language. When things didn't go exactly to plan, is that when the body language changed? Is there like a kind of a panic element to it? So all of that stuff matters. the one thing that we have here that's a little odd, that's not really part of the episode, but could be, is when a workout is announced and you do it in your gym. And then like we've talked about this a bunch recently, competition prep. you do the workout when it's announced to get a feel for it. And then you do the workout obviously at the actual competition. I really try to let athletes know that that is information gathering. Like, go @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: do what you think is right and no offense, but it's probably not. but we're you're gonna get very in-depth. Like I wanna see because you making mistakes. Going too slow or going too fast is really good information. Right. So it's like @paige_semenza: Yeah, for sure. @misfitcoach: you might give that as like, all right, round three, I want you to really push it. Round one, I want you to back off. Let's let's see what happens sort of in those moments. @paige_semenza: Yeah, there's almost, don't, in my career, I don't know if there's many times where I've tested a competition workout and haven't gotten better at it for, simply because of information gathering and finding my weak points. So, yeah. @misfitcoach: Right. Yeah. For sure. The only thing there that happens is you might be this would be a really good example of why we do sprintervals. You might test the sprinterval fresh coming off a rest day in a taper, and then you do the sprinter roll after just thrashing @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: your body for three days. so there are moments where that does happen, but again, you do still have the data. You do still have the actual information on it. and hopefully if you're competing at that level, you have a coach who's going to be able to help you like figure out where you can push where it makes sense not to. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: So We're gonna work through this based on the timeline of it. We're gonna work from long to short. So your long-term like type retests are open retests. And I don't mean that week to week. I mean, you know, 27.2 is 24.1. Like you're going back in and doing a workout that you've already done or that the community has already done. We've got benchmarks. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: So like at the affiliate level. most affiliate programs are sprinkling in Helen and Fran and you know, whether it's a 5K or a 10K or any of these monostructural things. and then Misfit Athletics has phase zero. So we retest a chunk of workouts and Misfit benchmarks and check in on one rep maxes for a four week period leading into phase one every year in August. So those are examples of you're retesting, but like it could be a year, it could be two years, it could be five years, et cetera. @paige_semenza: you @misfitcoach: and the main difference here obviously is that you can arrive at this retest as just a completely different athlete, right? You can be @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: fitter, you can be less fit, you can be a similar amount of fit and way smarter. Like you're just gonna, you're you're not gonna go into that workout. Feeling exactly the same. That'd be the weirdest confluence of events ever for you three years later to be exactly the same. and if your athlete IQ doesn't improve over that period of time, we probably have to have a talk about athlete @paige_semenza: Yikes. @misfitcoach: IQ. so that's the main difference there. Data is huge, but it's it's almost too easy. Like when you have just mountains of information afterwards, like an open retest. Okay, why don't you just go watch the videos? Watch your video, @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: watch the best videos in the world. What's the difference? What's the gap between the two? but when things are quote unquote easier, we have a bridge to like, I never watch videos, I don't know what the fuck that's about. To like, this would be a really good first step. They do a an announcement, find yours, find and and the cool thing too is you can go on YouTube and you can type in. open workout 23.3 and Susie Joe did the workout and you can go check her score. You know what I mean? You can go @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: see like you can probably find somebody and then any of the years where they have videos attached to somebody's name right on the CrossFit site, that's super helpful there. so the data is still our main point of emphasis here, but it's A lower stakes version of like having to do something, especially the like short term, like having to figure @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: out, watch the video and figure out what exactly am I supposed to be doing here. so I find that to be a a really great way to just start wrapping your mind around this topic and why we're starting with the longer term. I think strategy changes are a little bit more obvious because you go back and watch your video and you're like, I ain't doing three sets of toes to bar. I don't need to. You know what I mean? Like there are things like @paige_semenza: Alright. Yeah. @misfitcoach: that. I say that and then I can immediately go devil's advocate and be like, I'm way fitter. So I should probably do the monostructural movement way faster. And then you just bomb it and get the same score. so @paige_semenza: Yeah, actually, Peyton and I were just talking about this earlier today, like about arriving as a markedly different athlete. she's doing the she's doing bar muscle ups as her skill instead of ring muscle ups. And we're on the every three and a half or three sets or two sets to get 20 muscle ups. And like @misfitcoach: Yep. @paige_semenza: she's looking at it she's like, I think I can shoot for unbroken. to be honest, like one big set. And I'm like, remember when you could barely do sets of two, which was @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: maybe a year two ago? And it's just like, what a complete 180. So even in a skill session, it's possible to see these longer term improvements. @misfitcoach: And that's a really good point too because acknowledgement of that is important. We don't get it in the short term. We don't get to see @paige_semenza: Yeah. Right. @misfitcoach: those things. Like if it's the ultra short term, it's just like, can I be smarter about this? If it's over the course of a year and you are say running a 10K or something like that and you can take a full minute per mile off your pace, like at that point if you don't feel really good about yourself and your effort and what you've done there. again probably a conversation needs to be had. So that's e acknowledging @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: how far you've come is really important. I have a note in here and honestly it it goes everywhere over the course of this whole episode. People get excited about workouts in the context of competition And honestly, even, you know, the the leaderboard during test week with Misfit Athletics. and they put their effort into the wrong part of the workout. Like there is almost an effort to the restraint you need to show at the beginning of a good test, right? @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: I'm not going to go give this away. And then the effort in the middle is towing the line. And then the effort at the end is you know, jumping over that fucking line, right? And going to one of those places. And the examples that I can think of personally are when I judge someone's open workout. And I always do people's splits on the on the sheet. we'll get back into that in in phase three with our open simulation. I don't judge them in their redo. I make them go way harder. And the places that I've sent people to. And I don't ask for things that aren't possible, but I ask for things that are barely, barely, barely possible. Like, no, no, no, no, no, back down, drop down, keep doing your burpees. No, no, no, pick up that barbell. Cause those are the moments where you jump X amount of number, you know, places on the leaderboard depending on how many other people are in the in the competition. Like those are the differences often. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: When you go look and you're like, wow, that person beat me by three seconds, really? Like, I didn't think they could beat me in this workout. And it's like, well, they shouldn't have, but they did because they went to that kind of different place there. So I just, @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: I just find where people decide to put the bulk of their effort to be either misguided or just in the wrong spot of the workout. @paige_semenza: Yeah. I mean, it also like being at a competition, I'll use my 2018, 2018. Like the reason I qualified that year was because I made sure to run across every finish line because like every second mattered at that point for the points. @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: it's the same thing in the open, you know, maybe you're going to hit a time cap, but like every rep at that point matters, you know, in a rep, think of the 2019. was it 2019, the 1919, the Amrap of 19 Wall Ball, 19 Cal Row, like you got one wall ball and all of a sudden you're up 300 placements on the leaderboard. like @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: that, yeah, that I agree. It's definitely like you have on here is like saving the heroic shit for the end. And it's like, you kind of have to like squeak out every single rep. at the end of the workout that you can get. Like that's where the competitive like spirit should lie. @misfitcoach: And that's the hardest time to to like have some empathy or at least like talk people that's the hardest time to do it and it's the most important time to do it. So like @paige_semenza: Yeah, right. @misfitcoach: and the amount of times where it's been so obvious to me that an athlete doesn't realize that there are other heats. You know what I mean? Like @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: Like they're in the one they don't belong in, whether it the online qualifier put them there, or day one put them there because of the order of events, whatever it is, they're not in the heat that they're gonna be in for the rest of the weekend, and they're still just racing the other nine or ten athletes that @paige_semenza: people. @misfitcoach: are out there on the floor. they get ahead, they get into cruise control, you know, they jog across the finish line and they got the big smile on their face. I won my heat, and it's like There's eight seconds in there that were yours pretty easily. if @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: you had kind of remembered this. But it's that's the moment those are the moments where it's so challenging to do that. And you need the experience, you almost need the experience of letting @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: someone pass you and having it be kind of a big deal to remember like, I'm not doing that shit again. All @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: right, let's talk about the medium term. So the medium term easiest correlation we can make is to phase test and retest. at Misfit Athletics, you're probably going to test workouts and lifts and monostructural benchmarks and all that good stuff. And then six to eight weeks later, you are going to retest those things. you are a different athlete, not to the extent of the long term, but I think what is so powerful here about learning how to compete Is the Venn diagram of I had incremental improvement in my capacity in you know power snatch, total bar, rowing over a long period of time, aerobic C2 bike, all of this stuff. So I did get better and I have proof that I got better. your efficiency, because you have been biasing something, should improve. You should understand what movement patterns or you know, just the the exposure therapy that you get sometimes. You just feel a little bit more comfortable on a machine for a longer period of time. Therefore, your heart rate's lower. Therefore, you are more efficient. and then that abundance of data. If if your programmer coach is writing good progressions, you can see how you're getting better and you can understand what your capacity is. We need @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: to improve. And we need to improve our athlete IQ. Those things need to happen simultaneously. So while you're not a vastly different athlete, you are a little bit fitter, a little bit more efficient, and you have way more context than you would ever have, right? You have been hit in the head with the hammer that is power snatch tota bar for the last six weeks. And if you have zero athlete IQ after that, my goodness. I don't even think it's possible. I don't think it's possible @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: for that to happen. so Again, different athlete, but I think the context is a little bit different than that long-term conversation we just had. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I think too with this median term, when you think of a phase retest, it's like the things that you're focusing on as far as improving are right in front of your face every week. So it's like you kind of keep the goal in mind with what you're working on. There's that side to it. And then the other side of it to me or for me is you also beat yourself up a lot in a phase with certain things. So like, while you may not be able to kind of see the forest or the trees, like this is also the time where holding a specific gear, it's like, maybe you're still at the same gear, but like, how are you feeling during it? Cause like you are probably feeling better. Like we talked about like, you know, desensitizing on the rower. It's like, I'm holding the same wattage for 45 minutes on the rower. Yeah, but how did you feel in week one doing it? And how do you feel in week eight doing it? Like there's definitely going to be a difference in that. @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. yeah. @paige_semenza: So it's like, there is improvement. And sometimes it's just not always as black and white. @misfitcoach: And the intention of the meat of a phase, your four to five to six weeks of like really getting after it. That is overreaching. So @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: what you're describing might be, I haven't really recovered yet to push, which is why we do primer @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: week this week and then retest week next week. Give you an opportunity to arrive back with all of that stuff you've worked on, but maybe that super compensation we've dove under the line and now we're coming back up and you're really gonna be able to see what you're capable of there. the other part here of a of a really good program is If we vary the stimulus, we put you through you know, short and intense, longer and slower, longer and intense and shorter and more car like we put you through different time domains, different stimulus, different sets, different rep ranges, different weights. Sometimes it's touch and go, sometimes it's singles, sometimes it's a mix of all of these things. And We know from CrossFit methodology and the way that all of us started that variance is very helpful for us from a adaptation standpoint, but then there's the mental adaptation of going to all these different places on the map. because hopefully you are testing different strategies. You're not stuck on I'm the unbroken big rest athlete, or I am the like small set short rest athlete. We're trying to do different things. And your idea of yourself might be correct, but it needs to be updated as your capacity changes. So a plug for the remote coaching aspect of it. I am watching athletes Do these workouts over the weeks, and I'm seeing what they've done for strategies and I'm seeing how they're adapting. And then I am starting, you know, in those last two or three weeks leading into the test to give them very specific instructions of you are going to like this week's workout is a really good example of the double under power snatch total bar. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: I'm either telling people unbroken all the way through and Like, I hope your transitions survive, but we'll see. And then some people I'm saying you're not gonna wanna drop the power snatch bar every time. Do it and then go as hard as you possibly can in your transitions and you know, increase double under speed, toast to bar unbroken, that sort of thing. But you get into a mode where you're testing these different things and you can start to really understand. And then as the coach, I can ask, What do you think is the right retest for Grip Rect. Like what do you think is the right call here to make the changes? And it needs to again take into account all three of those things. You are @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: fitter, you're probably moving better, and the data. All three of those things need to be taken into account when you go to retest there. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I like what you said about like you like you might be the big sets person or you might be the small sets lot like, you know, small rest because we all create that narrative about ourselves. And Tony and I had been talking about that one of my athletes because he could like big gymnastics guy can go big on his sets. And it's @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: like what we can get better at is, you know, learning to break things down smaller. And it's like. Not that he, like, you don't want to go and do that in a workout, but it's like, you do have to, you want as many tools in your kit as possible. like, you @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: need to understand what it does to you, how it impacts you. and just know that like, maybe there's a workout that pops up and it's wheelhouse, but you do actually have to break it up a ton. So you won't know that until you experience it within, you know, the six weeks of progressions that we do. @misfitcoach: Yeah, what happens in the other movements because you went and like went scorched earth on your strength? What happens to the rest of it? Right? You @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: bought yourself six seconds and you gave back twelve. Like that just doesn't make any sense to go in and do that. We talk about it. The easiest one that I talk about a lot is like Let's say McKenna gets one with rowing in it, and there isn't really enough rowing for it to be a rowing dominant workout. I'm gonna think to myself, what's the top score and what's probably the rowing pace? And I'm gonna know that she could probably row faster, and I'm gonna tell her not to. And basically say, think about the state that you're in if you go hold a 204 when you could hold a 154, and then you go crush those other movements and come back. @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: Like, especially in person competition, you get off the rower at the same time as the athlete, and then they sit back down and realize that you've been there for 10 seconds. Like they're gonna row slower now. That's gonna @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: bother them as they do it. So a lot of times your strength is about, okay, you and I are gonna do the exact same thing in the exact same amount of time. Now you're fucked and I'm fine. So @paige_semenza: Yeah @misfitcoach: like it's not always I'm gonna go get a lead because of this. I'm going to allow myself to go get a lead. In the other movements because this was easier for me. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: All right, let's talk about short term now. So this is your online competition almost always. and like it's changed to the point now where it's like, here are the workouts, you have your period of time. If you're a psychopath, you know, think Lydia Fish going into the CrossFit games, the the training think tank did the video of her just. Like, @paige_semenza: crazy. @misfitcoach: I love that stuff first and foremost because I've been around her enough in the athlete area to realize how much of a psycho she is, which I just love. like makes me happy. and then so that other athletes who think I gave that everything I had get context for what everything I had actually means in those moments. a little bit of a tight side tangent. So online competition, data is now the whole freaking picture. It's everything. It's absolutely everything. and video review is more thorough. as I wrote as the adaptation fairy. that's not the right version of that word, but we know what it means. the @paige_semenza: Hahaha! @misfitcoach: adaptation fairy doesn't visit on this short of a notice. You you're just not gonna get better from Thursday to Tuesday. It's just not gonna happen. @paige_semenza: Yeah, it's cramming for the test. @misfitcoach: yeah, not gonna happen. So I want to talk a little bit about the traps that we can fall into here. Number one, I'm just gonna see how this goes and then I'm gonna retest it. You're not gonna get the data that you need if you do that, first and foremost. Also, sometimes. They do a muscle endurance workout where they drop you on an island and you have a way better strategy, but your lats are like if I do 40 more muscle ups, I'm gonna detach, you know, from your body and just leave and never come back. Or, you know, 500 double unders and you know, you just can't bound anymore. you know, the wall ball one is always hilarious. What happens when they ask for 200 wall balls? And then you feel fine the next day and you go to retest it forty-eight hours later and you can't @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: walk into the gym, right? @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: So there are a lot of reasons why you wouldn't want to do that. moral of the story is don't fucking do that. Like you need to try @paige_semenza: Yeah, it's like. @misfitcoach: as hard as you can the first time that you do it. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Also, like when you say it, when you say it like this, are you talking like, nevermind, you're saying retest. @misfitcoach: I know I'm gonna retest, so I'm going through the motions in @paige_semenza: Okay. @misfitcoach: the in route in the first time that I do it. The first time that I do @paige_semenza: Okay, got it. @misfitcoach: this, I know that I'm gonna do this again on Monday. So I'm just gonna get a feel for it. Like @paige_semenza: Got it. @misfitcoach: and typically that's an ego thing that's happening. The athlete doesn't dare to go into it and give it everything they got because then they gotta go look at the scoreboard and then they're at odds with that, right? So if they half ass it and then they see the leaderboard, they can be like, well, I didn't try very hard the first time. Like @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: there is no reason to do that in this short of a period of time. Don't do not do that. Number two @paige_semenza: Yeah. It's almost like you, have to, sorry, you have to get like, @misfitcoach: No, you're good. @paige_semenza: I mean, we talk about it all the time in, in telegram. It's like, you guys are sharing scores and you're getting vulnerable with each other. It's like, yeah, it's going to expose some insecurities, but it's like, you get better at doing it and you get better at being an athlete by doing it. So like, why would you go in with keeping, I guess, your insecurity at the forefront of your test workout? Right? Like, @misfitcoach: Yeah. Yeah. No bueno. All right. number two, blowing up a good strategy. Picture this. It is Friday morning and you are doing the open workout at your gym. You do the open workout and you get done and you want to retest it. and you heard about this super secret strategy online where if you stand 12 feet from the wall and your wall balls. that the angle of trajectory is going to make you a games athlete somehow. do one rep every one second and then do it as an interval. Imam, one minute hard, one minute don't do @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: anything. Any of that bullshit. I hope you guys can tell that I'm joking. and you go to do the workout again and you just do something completely different and you you know, whatever you get three reps less, you get, you know, you finish one second slower, you finish one or two seconds faster. People will completely blow up a good strategy. Like if you go in and do your video review and you actually execute it very well and like your splits are awesome and your transitions are there, by all means go and test it again. But you have to think @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: about it from a different perspective. You gotta be like, I'm gonna do that exact same thing. And I'm gonna try to go hard enough that there's you know, we use use fittest of the coast, we've got 16 kind of blocks that we're looking at. Can I get a second or two in each one? Can I go @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: in and like find where there was a little bit of an issue there? But we just see people you know, retest for the sake of retesting, which I think is totally fine. But when you strategize well the first time, you need to go back to the well. And ask more of yourself from a different perspective than just this is the perfect strategy. I saw this on YouTube, Instagram, wherever, and now I'm gonna change what I'm doing here when you just execute it really well. @paige_semenza: Yeah, think, yeah, I think a lot of that comes down there. feel like there aren't too many workouts where I'm like, I think I executed perfectly, but like the ones that I do, it's like, at that point, it's looking at like, can I squeak out half a second transition on like a very merry-go-round workout? And like, that is where @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. Yeah. @paige_semenza: you kind of get to add those reps and accumulate more. @misfitcoach: You're looking for needles in the haystack at that point. You're literally @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yup. @misfitcoach: watching the entire video and watching every rep and being like, damn, I rest for four seconds there. I really didn't think that I did. I thought I did my step @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: back, deep breath, pick it up. Well, sometimes that can be seven seconds long. so yeah, that I I see that fairly often, or at least I hear about it fairly often, probably more at the affiliate level. like @paige_semenza: Thank @misfitcoach: someone's an open gym on Monday and they're like, hey coach, what do you think about this video? And then I see the person who's in the video and I want to throw the phone in the trash before I even watch the video. because again, there's there's content in this space that is aiming to help people and there is content @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: in this space that is content, you know? Like you're you're @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: selling something, whether it's just as get as many views, et cetera, all that good stuff. last but not least here, you need to finish your retests, regardless of what's happening. You know, we had the conversation about Kenzie at the beginning of this episode. Sometimes you are testing more than the number on the, you know, on the little paper that your judge has or the number that's on the leaderboard. Sometimes you're testing your own personal resolve. And if you get into that's one of those really slippery slopes where if you allow @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: yourself to do that, you're going to start allowing yourself to do that. So @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: That would be honestly would be one way to audit whether you should retest a workout or not. Right. Like, I've had so many athletes turn and look at me with this like, please let me stop, look on their face. It's like, Am I holding my splits? It's like, we're not talking right now. @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: This is not this isn't we're not having a conversation. You're at a hundred and ninety beats per minute. We're not talking right now. Get back to work. Yeah. @paige_semenza: So sad. Yeah, but it's true. It allows you to create a narrative that you don't want. @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. If that possi I th I think that if you're gonna quit a workout, that possibility was in your head before you started and you shouldn't have done the workout in the first place. There @paige_semenza: Yeah, I think it. @misfitcoach: might be an instance where as the coach, you can tell that they're giving it everything they got and it's a 20-minute workout and they're 12 minutes in and they're way behind schedule. Depending on @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: who the athlete is, you might say, We're calling it here. But even then, that is also a slippery slope. Right? Like @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: you you should probably only do that to someone who you know is like really mentally locked in. That's gonna be able to shrug it off. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I mean, it's you have to finish the story like you ever read a book or, you know, same thing in training. It's like when you quit, how do you feel after you quit? Like you have I'm @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: almost positive all of us have an experience like that and it never sits well. So. @misfitcoach: No, because you're either you the narrative is I am a quitter, so you're either out to prove that that's not the case or it's like in there, you know, that mind virus is in there. And the next time @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. @misfitcoach: you're in a similar workout and you're in a similar position where maybe you've just like the that judgment is tough because you've overreached in your training to the point where you don't have the mental faculties to hold yourself to a specific standard. And you have to realize in the moment that that's more physiological, biological than it is a reflection on your character as a human being, right? Like nobody's gonna @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: walk in, you're doing your C two bike piece and they look down at the monitor and they look at you and they're like, hey, you're a bad person, aren't you? Like I I don't think that's how @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: we measure ourselves. so I think yeah, that's that's probably honestly a completely separate conversation and topic and will probably be part of the scary season episode that drops during phase two. but yeah, the the mind virus that is I quit workouts is a very slippery slope. we're gonna give some examples now. go ahead, Paige. @paige_semenza: Yeah. was like, now I was going to say like, usually, if there are at least with like people I've trained with or like, know, McKenna, for example, like, if that kind of thing happens, there's usually a long conversation that follows because it's like, @misfitcoach: yeah. @paige_semenza: you kind of put yourself over the edge and you kind of have to @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: like reel yourself back in and then to do it in a setting of a qualifier. only makes it that much harder because you're already putting enough pressure on yourself to do well on the leaderboard. So it's like that gets even more. You already have me excited about scary season episode. Talk about that stuff. @misfitcoach: Yes. all right, we're gonna do examples now and we're gonna work backwards. So we're gonna start with the short term and go to the long term. I'm gonna give you guys fit us to the coast example. We are in qualifier two week right now. We have four rounds, fifteen cal row, fifteen hang snatch on one arm, fifteen hang snatch on the other arm, fifteen to bar. Is that correct? @paige_semenza: Yeah, Savvy Dumbo. @misfitcoach: So I am looking right now at my notes for one of my athletes. And again, the way that I'm setting this up is literally just a grid. Rounds one, two, three, four on the y-axis and row, snatch, snatch, total bar on the x-axis. So just a just a grid, simple kind of spreadsheet sort of thing. and I am scanning through the video. to find out when they finished each movement. You know what's really cool now is I had a fancy spreadsheet for this, but now I do it with pen and paper and then I give it to Chat GPT and I say, give me the splits. Because obviously you have to go in and say, okay, if they finish the total bar at two twenty four and then they finish the row at three twenty six, that is a minute and two seconds sometimes, sometimes minute math and seconds math can be really annoying. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: So I'll take this, take a picture of it or screenshot it, put it into Chat GPT, and then I get, okay, what is my total rowing time, total snatching time, what is my total total bar time? How did my rounds change round to round? Like you get all of that information right there. And to me, that is step one, because that can tell a lot of stories, right? @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: Like I'm looking at this one right now, and there was only a three second change between round one and round two, and then a 50 second change between round two and round three. @paige_semenza: Oof. @misfitcoach: only five seconds added to that for the finish. But what that tells me is there was at least one movement that we overreached on too much early on in the workout. We have to flip that. We @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: gotta go in and do that. So then at that point, I am going back in and I am watching from the perspective of what was that movement and how was it broken up? So it went 15 unbroken toe bar, 15 unbroken totobar, 6432, 53331. Tail as old as time, right? Especially with the toe bar. that sort of thing. @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: so I'm looking at it from that perspective. I am looking at it now to see if was there a transition? Were we Overreaching by doing certain movements unbroken or in not enough sets, that then when you got done the movement and went to go to the next one, you had to rest. Right? And all of this is under the like overarching theme of break the workout before the workout breaks you. And that doesn't just @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: mean like globally. That means if you do the snatch unbroken and then it takes you eight seconds to get on the pull up bar, should you Take a three second break in the middle of it and then a one or two second transition. You know what I mean? Like, like where are we finding this time? and last but not least, movement efficiency and just the whole RPE and body language of it. @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: as the workout went on, and the midline became more and more of an issue with the total bar, there was a lot of knee break in the backswing. Cause you feel like you really gotta kind of yank those legs up. And that is the moment where if we stay long and point our toes, we can get that kind of, you know, rebound bounce effect that you would get in other movements from staying long and lengthening that hip flexor before we shorten it. so that would be an example as a coach of how I'm looking at that. And that is absolutely something that you can do as an athlete. Your athlete IQ has to be pretty high. you can also throw that bad boy in video review requests on Telegram, and there are enough passionate misfits that someone's gonna help you with that video, even if it's not the coaching @paige_semenza: for sure. @misfitcoach: staff. So again, I'm looking at body language, movement efficiency, transitions, general strategy, movement splits, and round splits. With that information, you can then Spot the outliers, spot the things where again, if we were just like if this was a power athlete and they were just losing a couple seconds each round, it's probably the correct strategy. It's not a big deal. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: But when we go plus three seconds, plus fifty seconds, now I'm interested. And that's anything that's an outlier, whether it's a set outlier. So like you went from fifteen to six, that's a that's a pretty big change there, or the actual duration of it. That's where you can start to dig in and be like, this is the beginning of when this strategy probably wasn't working very well. @paige_semenza: Yeah, think especially in the short term, it becomes really important to just choose something specific that you can change, right? Saying, I'm just @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: going to go faster. I'm going to go harder doesn't help you in this context. So what is like, let's say you have one that that one sounds really specific. It sounds like movement efficiency on toast of our really @misfitcoach: Yeah. Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: broke down. But what happens like how many changes can you make in a workout without it becoming too much for the athlete to think about? Is that gonna just be very individualized to the athlete or like? @misfitcoach: It's individualized to the athlete and to the context of the moment. If I'm there and I can speak to you, it's very different because I don't @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: I can put other pieces of the strategy in my back pocket and not talk to you about them directly. It's like okay, round one, we've got three movements here. Like I need you to keep your arms lower on the on the double unders. I need your transition off of the shuttle runs to be a little bit faster and I need you to stay lower. in your burpees, right? And if I'm there, it's like hands down, stay lower. Okay, this is the last shuttle run, straight into it, that sort of thing. So you can give them maybe @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: like one piece per. but if you're there as the coach, you can start to, you know, like, hey, you're not you're not breathing, right? Is asphyxiation is not @paige_semenza: layer things in. @misfitcoach: mandatory during double unders, right? You can breathe, you know, you can help change maybe the body language a little bit. you can honestly do what I talked about where the athlete's not quite sure, like they think they're at RP eleven and they're actually at nine and we're gonna get them to ten. You know what I mean? @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: that sort of thing. So I do think it's very dependent, but it's a really important thing for the coach to figure out. Like, I think the analogy would be when you can give someone one cue in their snatch that fixes four things. Like Are those cues, do th do those exist in this workout? Like @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: if we again try to zoom out and be like, what is like the global theme here of what's not working that could help fix it? Like it literally could just be in a workout like the the fittest of the coast one, you're you're just rowing too hard, right? You take @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: forever to go get that dumbbell. Like, or it's pretty obvious that you don't want to go back to the rower after the total bar. So you wait forever and then you just start yanking on the thing. you know, once you get on there, that sort of thing. So, @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: it's definitely a good point. Overloading information going into something where you have to really kind of be in your body is not a good idea. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: All right, Miss Fitz, we're gonna pause the episode real quick here for just a couple of minutes because we have a cool promotion for you guys and probably the best way to support the show if you are not one of the hundreds of athletes that purchases our programming, participates there, and or buys our apparel. and you are one of the thousands of other people that listen to this podcast every single week. I won't bury the lead here. Gorilla Mind, our code is worth 20% off from October twelfth through the sixteenth. So if you're in, go do it. Skip this part. That's totally fine. 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I want to go through some of the phase one retests and just give some general examples of how an athlete could improve. first and foremost, we have here the Misfit Athletics Aerobic Threshold rowing test. AMRAP 40 minutes row for average pace, score is your average watts. for this one, I think. All of your zone two sessions and all of your aerobic sessions give you a bunch of data. But the way that you paste it the first time, like just that screen of those four 10 minute splits or five eight minute splits, however you chose to set up your monitor, like @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: that's gonna give you so much information, right? Because @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: if you did well on it, just choose a new goal and go for it. But I found so many athletes their last ten minutes was so much faster than the rest of their test. And it's like, @paige_semenza: Thank @misfitcoach: Come on, CrossFitters. It's not, you know, zone three and then zone five. It's zone four for forty, you know, for thirty or forty minutes, something like that. Yeah. @paige_semenza: Yeah, yeah. I think there's both sides of that too, because I feel like you can have someone like McKenna, who's probably gonna find her threshold pretty early, that like she can @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: maintain throughout. And then you have other people that go out too easy, right? So yeah, I mean, I was thinking as soon as you said the monitor, I'm like, did I take a screenshot before I came back here? Because I do have my splits on that one. @misfitcoach: Isn't that the best when you have to go through your gym and find the machine that had your you go into the memory and you're like, hey, dee-dee dee dee de especially if like they get warmed up. Yeah. If if the if people warm @paige_semenza: Looking through all the rowers. @misfitcoach: up on them a lot and like there's like 400 entries of like two minutes and nineteen seconds. It's just like, no. That's always a good time. @paige_semenza: Yup. @misfitcoach: That's one perk of having a home gym. You're the only one that that uses your machine for the @paige_semenza: Yeah @misfitcoach: most part. all right, grip wrecked. hatchet version, four rounds, twelve power snatch, one fifteen slash seventy-five, fifteen toes to bar. I think you can take this one page because you did this and you're gonna retest it, I assume. So like @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: what do you think? How are you thinking? @paige_semenza: as far as like my own strategy. @misfitcoach: Yeah, but like maybe just a little background on how you arrive at that. Like what can we do with this @paige_semenza: well... @misfitcoach: workout to figure out what to do? @paige_semenza: Yeah, well, so I like to think about like, obviously the toast to bar volume catches up. So it's like, it's one of those where I have to think about the narrative I have of myself. Like, do I like bigger sets? Do I like smaller sets? And I have to approach it with what makes the most sense for that volume of toast to bar. I like the barbell more, but the barbell will gas me out if I hang on to it. And then I will die on toast to bar. So for me, the approach has to be pretty conservative on the power snatch so that I can stay consistent on the toast bar. Yeah, but you know, I... Go ahead. @misfitcoach: Yeah. Yep. And we write we write our tests to be ambiguous enough that we don't not want you we don't really want you to know exactly what strategy to do. We will @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: change elements of it to not make it a perfect it's a this or a that, so that you can figure these things out. 'Cause people look at this and they're like, is it touch and go or is it singles? And it's like, it might be both, right? @paige_semenza: Yeah, right. @misfitcoach: Like are you gonna go grab are you gonna grab a few sets? Is like I like to think of singles more as like, okay, if it's light enough and the barbell's gonna bounce around and that part of it's kind of annoying, have singles now become doubles or triples? You know what I mean? Like that @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yep. @misfitcoach: sort of thing. So, yeah, this is it's it's a this one is a fun workout to figure out whether that athlete IQ element is part of the equation for you specifically. Cause you should be able to @paige_semenza: Yeah, this is @misfitcoach: knock Man, twenty to thirty seconds off of this workout just after doing it and then redoing it. @paige_semenza: Yeah, with the right strategy for sure. This is one of those where I'm like, you talk about like, you know, we mentioned like somebody being really good on a rower and actually slowing down on that movement to go faster on the other ones. Like that is a workout for me like this. @misfitcoach: Yes. For sure. another trap here. My power snatch feel way better. My toes to bar feel way better. Why don't I triple down on my bad strategy from week one? Don't do that. Don't do that. Faster transitions, hold on for longer towards the end of @paige_semenza: Right. Right. @misfitcoach: the workout if it feels good. Like put yourself in a put yourself in a position to succeed. And then if you surprise yourself, you can let it rip and get a bunch of time back. @paige_semenza: Yep. @misfitcoach: this next one's weird. the workouts weird and re the like retesting philosophy on it is probably a little odd. So torta misfit, riverside time trial. it's a 14k on a C2 bike where at different distances on the way down you change the damper. So we have one ten. Ten damper changes during this. what I love about this test is that people People get probably the best stimulus like of like their like quarter by doing this because it just allows you mentally to be on a bike for that long for a 14k. Obviously 14K at a two minute pace is is 28 minutes. so you're going faster or slower than that, it just can give you context for the workout. If you can stay in that mentally versus just okay, 28 minute time trial, let's see how far you can get. @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: then it's gonna be easier for you. So I think this one is much more about how much fitter do I feel? Like how well rested am I, how like well fueled am I, and do I know my body well enough to know what it's like to tow the line for 25 to 35 minutes? I think that's really @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: more of the question. And I like having tests like that where you're trying to figure out in the moment, is this the correct pace or not? Because that's what CrossFit is. CrossFit in the @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: moment is like I don't get all of this like beautiful information. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I think we also have a ton of information as far as like everybody has like, for the most part, like specific dampers that you do, like metcons and intervals on. And then you also have your zone two, like, what do you, are you on a damper two damper three damper one? Like, what are your RPMs like? Like, you know how all those things feel. So when you get into a test piece like this, it's like, you can specifically like pay attention to like, are you overreaching on those damper settings or are you like. towing the line before doing too much that @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: you can't maintain pace. So I do like this one a lot, because I just like how tricky it gets when you're on a damper one or a damper two and you are just blazing fast on your legs. But you got to keep doing that, because otherwise your pace is going to fall dramatically. @misfitcoach: The aerob this is one place where fast twitch people have a slight advantage over the aerobic people. The aerobic people hate those lower dampers because they're like, I still feel good and I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing right now. And then @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: the fast twitch people are like, Hell yeah, dude, I can actually flush waist right now. I'm not at a fucking seven damper. So I was found that to be really funny @paige_semenza: Hehehehehe @misfitcoach: and almost like a roll reversal in that workout. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: all right, everyone's favorite test. @paige_semenza: day. @misfitcoach: from phase one. Dip Van Winkle, three rounds, 12 burpee box jump over six deadlifts, twelve burpee box jump over six deadlifts, twelve burpee box jump over six deadlifts, ten slash eight muscle ups, rest two minutes. Again, the thought behind this, because they are trying to let as many people play as possible in the opening quarterfinals, they force you to do giant sets at the end. So we are going to make you do a bunch of work. And then a big set or multiple sets of muscle ups here. this one leaves a ton of room for improvement, both because @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: of its duration and because you don't you don't really know what that is until you do it, right? A lot of these other things, @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: like I kind of know what I'm getting myself into. This one, I don't think people really knew, like, okay, is it just like really smooth burpee box jumpovers and fast unbroken deadlifts, but then you're right back to the like, what am I supposed to do here? And then how fast can I even really go to then make sure that the muscle ups are only a couple sets? @paige_semenza: Right. Yeah. This is, I think you also have to play out the math a little bit. Like I had an athlete say, I didn't realize I was doing 36 burpee box jump overs for time in each round. And I mean, @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: when you are efficient at muscle ups, like, like this person is it's like, yeah, you, you, so @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: you're pacing on, on the burpees really does matter. but also the stimulus of folding in half for burpees and folding in half for deadlifts like accumulates by round two. So it is a fun one to play with the strategy for sure. @misfitcoach: Yeah. This is one where if you wanna audit your athlete IQ, if you go back into this and you don't do significantly better, it probably isn't like like you get the athletes, you get the athletes that are whether it's just in telegram but oftentimes in a one on one setting that are like, man, I really thought that I got got a lot better at muscle ups and got a lot fitter during this phase and I didn't do better here. And they don't realize how much strategy goes into figuring these things out and executing on them. So one @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: way to really audit your athlete IQ is a long interval triplet because you should be able to get a lot better at this. @paige_semenza: Yeah. And there were some, you know, other burpee box jump over workouts throughout the weeks that hopefully that was something you were being mindful of for @misfitcoach: Yep. @paige_semenza: next week. @misfitcoach: Yep, for sure. All right. run cube test. This is just one of those ones. So the cube test is four minutes on, four minutes off for four rounds. You can either do it on the assault runner or you can do it as four by one K run with four minutes rest. Some people get a little wrapped up in like I either can or can't run the one K in four minutes. that's okay. It doesn't matter. It's still intended to be that much work for everybody. So whether @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: you're three and a half minutes or four and a half minutes, that doesn't matter. We still want four by one K rest four minutes. the big thing here is you've done now over the course of the phase, at the very least, three workouts that are sort of in the vicinity of this one specifically. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: or like six or seven, depending on what you chose for non-mandatory work and if you did the aerobic versions of this. So this would be another one where I think because it's running, if you actually have been running, your ability to improve is probably it's probably going to be easier for a lot of people to have a markedly different score if they don't run a bunch. it's easier to make progress here, I find, than it is on some of the machines that we're on, just like nonstop. all of the time year round. but yeah, it's just another one where you've got a bunch of data and hopefully you can translate from like four minutes on, two minutes off, to, you know, we've got a few that are even rest. and then you can tell yourself, hey, we did some even rest work during the phase, but this is a test and it's lower volume surrounding it the rest of the week. Like gonna circle it on the calendar. I'm gonna fuel up and I'm gonna ask myself to go, you know, maybe one gear faster, and and kind of see what happens. @paige_semenza: Yeah, this is, don't know if other people are like this. I guess I'll just say how I approach cube tests. If I can do it for two and a half minutes, I can do it for another 90 seconds. I don't know why mentally it works in my head, but it does. @misfitcoach: I think if it's a test I understand where you're coming from. @paige_semenza: Like I gotta break it down, yeah. Like I don't do that for all my training pieces, but like something @misfitcoach: Yeah. Right. @paige_semenza: about the test itself, like just mentally keeps me in it to be able to push, @misfitcoach: And @paige_semenza: especially like four minutes is a long time. @misfitcoach: You're giving us insight into you being a gamer, and part of it is just a new narrative. Part @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: of being the kind of person who wants to show up and compete and get after it in a setting with higher stakes is the kind of person who just says, Two and a half minutes, what's the difference between two and a half and four minutes? Whereas other people will be @paige_semenza: it @misfitcoach: like, it's almost double. You know what I mean? and you can get in your head too much about stuff like that, or you can go into it and you can say to yourself, Dude, I can I can hold a, you know, whatever, a six thirty pace in this. I know that I can. It's gonna be terrible. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: And I'm gonna question my life choices afterwards. But like taking yourself to that place, like in a lot of these instances, if someone is apprehensive in a competition setting, I would rather see them go for it than kind of back off and negative split everything. @paige_semenza: Okay. Yeah. Good. Because why not? @misfitcoach: For sure. last but not least, exactly. Yes. Yeah. You're practicing in a lower stakes environment for sure. Last but not least, we have our power output, power output echo bike test. this is another one that's a little funky, so it's 50 slash 40 calorie echo bike for time. if you've been working on your power output, you're definitely going to be able to push harder in this, but you have to know, like There are people out there who weigh 230 pounds who that that's a sprint. It's actually a sprint. It's done in a minute or less. And you know, congratulations. I'll see you tomorrow for the run cube test, big boy. You know? @paige_semenza: On with your day. @misfitcoach: I can't say that, but someone could say that. so you have to know what this is such a personalized strategy on a workout like that. Like and some of the dumb strategies actually work sometimes where you are like fast, moderate fast. You know what I mean? Like @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: you use your fast twitch a little bit to get yourself twelve, fifteen, eighteen calories, and then you know that you have to settle in at, you know, four hundred watts or whatever it is, five hundred, six hundred watts until there's twelve left. And then you have to have practiced starting the final sprint too soon. We've all done that. That's a hoot, right? Someone's like, ten cows, go. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: And you sprint as hard as you can, and then you're cooked and you look up and you got six cows left. And you're like, no, what do I do? @paige_semenza: you @misfitcoach: and then the other would be someone tells you to do that and you do it and you're like, shit, I could have done that like five cows ago. That sort of thing. @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: So you definitely need notes on that. And they're kinda hard to remember. so make sure they're fresh. @paige_semenza: Yeah, they feel like they're a few and far between because we like mix the modalities in there. So. @misfitcoach: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. the we kind of already covered the examples of the longer term and what to do there. I want to double down on the idea of being a student of the game. The nerdier you get with this stuff, the more you realize that there's essentially like an encyclopedia for all of these workouts out there on YouTube and on the game's website. And if you wanted to be like ultra nerdy, you can take this into your own hands and do it after you listen to this podcast. You can @paige_semenza: Hmm. @misfitcoach: remember that quarterfinals workout that like kicked your ass three years ago. You can go find it. You can remember who you are as an athlete. You can go watch people that you wanted to be able to catch and be like, do any them have a strategy that I didn't really think about? and then you can go do the workout and you can start to kind of work that muscle a little bit. and again, any coaches that are out there, you're I feel like you're a student of the game by default, but this is what other coaches are doing. The other coaches know, like, hey, I don't need to bring my ego into this and be like, I know the best strategy. I'm gonna go watch the best strategy, mul like different versions of it. It's gonna be very easy for me to go find this kind of information. so being a student of the game, buying into that, giving into that in a way, I think is like incredibly important. if we are going to do any of the like longer term versions of this. It's also fun because you get to see the progression of the sport. Like when I go back and watch certain things Like you can't even fathom. There's it's just like there's a person in an affiliate @paige_semenza: Appalling. @misfitcoach: somewhere that could have won the games like if we were wind back far enough. so that that part of it is also really, really cool to see when you go back and watch people do certain things and realize like sometimes you throw the information away because you're like, This ain't it. Like, this is not how people are gonna attack this. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yep. @misfitcoach: Hey Colin. Colin Boesch: Hi guys. @misfitcoach: What questions do you have for us for the people? Colin Boesch: I have ten today. Trying only ten. @misfitcoach: Only ten? You slackin'. Colin Boesch: I was trying to keep @paige_semenza: Damn. Colin Boesch: it like under @misfitcoach: We didn't talk for two hours b we didn't talk for two hours before you joined us this time. Colin Boesch: That's true. I was I was but I feel like this one is very much like about like the phase one stuff. So I I feel like a lot of the misfits probably have an idea or want the idea of like what you guys thought to how like to change the retest going into the phase one or going into the retest of phase one. @misfitcoach: Sure. Yep. Colin Boesch: so the the first questions that I have kind of relate more to like competitive retests. So like retesting a workout or testing a workout in your affiliate for a competition. @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. Colin Boesch: do you account for adrenaline when info gathering in a test for a competition workout? @misfitcoach: give me more context. Colin Boesch: So let's see, one of the things that I say to a lot of athletes are in a specifically in a strength workout or a workout where we're gonna test a one rep max, we @misfitcoach: Yeah. Colin Boesch: build to like ninety, ninety five percent, and then we're like, well, we'll probably get the extra five percent in competition just because you're gonna be hyped. You know what mean? @misfitcoach: Yeah. Colin Boesch: But how do we also like either plan for that or like mitigate that in theory in a workout setting? @misfitcoach: Sure. Colin Boesch: 'Cause we don't wanna come out too hot. @misfitcoach: right. I mean that it depends on the workout, but that goes back to just the strategy element. And if you are actually coaching the athlete, being like, I know you And I know you want to see 1500 on that rower. It's like I'll unplug the fucking thing if I see 1500. We'll start over. Like, do not do that. Colin Boesch: Okay. @paige_semenza: you @misfitcoach: I know you're gonna want to do that. Don't do that. I will check in with you five minutes into this eight-minute workout and be like, you still want to see 1500? And if the answer is yes, you win. Congratulations. You're gonna get a better score because you paced well. Now you can go in and kind of let it rip and do that. the lifting ones specifically. You're probably once again knowing the athlete and knowing whether like if you give them the rah-rah moment before they do it, if that makes them crumble due to expectations they think you have, or that makes that like gets them hyped and that gets them excited to go. So I think you gotta know your athletes really well. I also do think people over warm up for a lot of those things. Warm up is almost always baked into them, right? Like you have to do your attempts to get there. you also aren't going to feel the same, especially if it's one of the ones where the workout's first and then the lift is second, or it's part of the workout and you're doing an ascending ladder. So I find that people typically warm up too much relative to that. They kind of give some of the reps away before. Colin Boesch: I think you actually brought up another question there that I have that maybe doesn't like directly relate to this, but is a good question, I think, from a coaching standpoint in relation to this. How do you mitigate around like an athlete thinking that you have expectations for them in a competition workout or a qualifier workout or something that's important to them that they then put extra pressure because they think you're expecting something from them? @misfitcoach: I you earn that over time with your relationship with them. but I do have expectations. Attitude and effort are big expectations. So if things don't Colin Boesch: I yeah. @misfitcoach: go exactly according to plan and you let the mind virus in, we're gonna talk about it afterwards, because there are controllables, and there are a ton of things that are outside of the control of an athlete, especially if it's say like an in person competition. You went out and executed to the best of your ability. Like had the like performance of a lifetime and you came in 23rd. Great. Good for you. We're making progress. You're getting after it. You're learning how to compete. You're doing your thing. but when attitude and effort aren't where they need to be based on the conversations that I've had before, those are things that you have to address. Sometimes you don't address them in the moment. you just address them when it's a little bit more appropriate. But like that Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: is That's a longer term discussion about developing that sort of thing with an athlete over time. @paige_semenza: I think I'll add to that too, because Drew, you have expectations for your athletes, also you can't have, I feel like sometimes people put a negative feel to the word expectations, where it's like, I think the thing that every athlete needs to remember is that the coach is on your team and that the coach is here to support you. @misfitcoach: Yeah. @paige_semenza: it needs to be a safe relationship for that to be able to exist. because again, there is a lot of pressure within CrossFit, but like, and your coach is gonna want what's best for you and is gonna push you to find your ceiling. just having that in the back of your mind that your coach is on your team to make you better and to support you, I think is really important for the athlete. @misfitcoach: Yeah, for sure. Colin Boesch: And then speaking of coach being on your team, you guys mentioned or Drew gave an example of like in a workout of there was an athlete that like would get off the rower at the same time, but then do everything else a little bit faster and then all of a sudden they're on the rower like ten seconds faster than the athlete that they were like next to or directly competing with. Do you ever go into like a workout with that like break the chord strategy? Like And the reason I bring it up is because I specifically remember like Frazier had a like a interview or something at some point where he was like, Well, yeah, I would like pace when they could see me and then I would go around a corner and I'd sprint for like ten seconds because then like I'd be further ahead of them once they came around that corner and it would kind of like break the other's spirit in theory. Like, is there ever a time when you're purposely thinking about that, I guess? @misfitcoach: There are so many boxes to check before that conversation, but it is Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: one that you know about for sure. It's one of those things where you're going into a final workout and you know that your athlete's a hoss and the person that needs to catch them can't keep up, say it's a sprinterval and you open with X amount of calories on the Echo Bike. I want you to pretend. that your body language is significantly better than it is when you get off that bike and you go jump up to the rings and you break their spirit. But you gotta think about that's a ninety-nine in the one situation where it's like Colin Boesch: Yeah, a hundred percent. @misfitcoach: we're working on the 99 and if you end up being one of those athletes that transcends the 99 and we're looking for the tiniest little things to change, of course. Yes. I do wanna know I think it was the opposite. I think he sprinted when they could see him and then rested when they couldn't. So every time they saw him running, they were like, my god, he can run that fast. And he's like, No, Colin Boesch: sorry. @misfitcoach: I can't. When I get around the bleachers, I'm fucking dying. He was so funny to watch at the beginning of his @paige_semenza: you Colin Boesch: I couldn't remember which way it was, like @misfitcoach: career because he would rest in workouts in front of everybody. He would get way ahead and then he would just like take a knee on the competition floor and wait for people to catch up. That was when he was still smoking cigarettes. So @paige_semenza: while. Couldn't walk up steps without getting out of breath. @misfitcoach: Yeah. Colin Boesch: Yeah, yeah. Could go @misfitcoach: Right. Colin Boesch: up the stairs. @paige_semenza: You Colin Boesch: all right. how if I'm retesting something long term, what exact context clues would be essential to knowing if I'm just fitter or if I'm or excuse me, or if I'm fitter or if I'm just smarter? Is there anything that like is specific in that case? @misfitcoach: You should have data. Like you're not following a very good program if you don't have the context of being fitter, right? Like if it's just if you're competing, this is one of those things where it depends on the level of athlete. Like the level of athlete that is trying to go from like scaled open to RX open. And then mm depending on genetic potential, Rx open to quarterfinals, Rx needs a pretty generic GPP type program where they're doing everything. and Like you check back in on your back squat and it like went up 40 pounds. so that's always fun. So even a GPP program should do that. But once you're a competitor, if you don't have progressions built in and test retests and all these things to know you're getting fitter, you're probably following the wrong program. So that would be where that's at. I don't know. Knowing if your athlete IQ is better. Maybe maybe you can speak to it, Paige, because I'm sure there was moments in your career where you realized how much more important that was. But like there are the the is it Dun and Krueger? Like I people that know nothing think they know everything, and then people that know stuff think they know nothing. Like Colin Boesch: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: you have a lot of people, like I've dealt with a lot of really fit athletes that thought that they knew everything about pacing, and the only thing that they knew about pacing was get a lead and try to hold on to it. And that's not Really athlete IQ. @paige_semenza: I don't know, I feel like I've... @misfitcoach: Like how do you know if you're smart, Paige? Colin Boesch: Yeah, l ex eva exactly though, but like that's the that's the question. @paige_semenza: Like I, but I've @misfitcoach: You have to be smart to know you're smart. So then Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: you probably know. @paige_semenza: I feel like I've gotten fitter every year though. I feel like I have physically gotten fitter. So it's hard @misfitcoach: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. @paige_semenza: for me to say, it was definitely my athlete IQ and that execution of that workout. I don't feel like I think about it that way at all. I don't know. @misfitcoach: In here in lies that she has a ton of information and she's like, Well, you know, it's nuanced. Whereas again, the people with no information @paige_semenza: Yeah @misfitcoach: are like, nah, dude, go hard. That ain't it. Yeah, right? Yep. That's a tough that's a tough one to answer. If you think you know everything, you probably @paige_semenza: Yeah Colin Boesch: Just do it faster. So then speaking of Yeah, I that's why I asked it. @misfitcoach: know nothing. That would be my advice for coaches and athletes. Colin Boesch: Exactly. Yes. If I if I think that I'm the smartest athlete in the room, I'm I probably know absolutely nothing. so then speaking of that, if I don't feel like I currently have the gear, I'm not saying this personally, cause I but if I don't feel like I personally have the gear to like pick it up at the end, like you guys were talking about, like that gamer mentality @misfitcoach: Mm-hmm. Colin Boesch: of like the last ten reps are the fastest ten reps. How do I work on that other than just increasing my anxiety? @paige_semenza: Hahaha! @misfitcoach: that will probably do the opposite, to be honest. Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: you have to practice it in workouts, right? You have to hold yourself back. Intervals is the first place to test @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: it. now the slippery slope here is we talked about the athlete who doesn't push until the end. We don't want that either. Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: so we're not telling people to to think about it from that perspective. And the other thing to understand is Pushing harder at the end of the workout doesn't necessarily mean faster reps. it means not breaking or slowing down. So, like to the naked eye, burying yourself in the last one minute of a workout could just be making the first the last minute look like the first minute. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Colin Boesch: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: but as the coach, you can tell, again, just through body language and and where they're at and the way that they're carrying themselves, that they are in the hurt locker and you're trying to keep them full. Focused in the moment. So it's not @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: always like, can you go faster at the end? This is like, can you ask yourself to try harder to hold your pace? @paige_semenza: Yeah. Colin Boesch: Yeah, so that that I feel like begs the question of like where's the line of I'm holding back too much at the beginning, just specifically so that I can work on pacing it at the end. You know what I mean? Like, how do I find that difference of I'm going too slow now at the beginning just so that I know that I can hold it on for the last minute to keep the last minute looking the same, as opposed to I'm gonna go at this pace for the majority of the workout and just see what I can do in the last minute and try to get better that. @misfitcoach: We got a similar question on the coaching call that was like, I feel I go too slow early and then I feel really good in round two or three, and then I go too hard in round two or three, and round four is really hard. you have Colin Boesch: I feel like this can be directly applied to the FOTC workout. @misfitcoach: you have to know what towing the line feels like. You have to do workouts where you go over the line and you have to do workouts where you're too far @paige_semenza: what I was going to say. @misfitcoach: behind the line. You have to do you have to follow a program that honors variance because you need to be put in enough scenarios and try enough different things. to develop that, but it's a feeling, right? Like you do this Colin Boesch: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: long enough and you know what it feels like to be towing the line in a five-minute workout, a 10-minute workout, a 20-minute workout, a 40-minute workout. You understand what that feels like because you do it so often. So the real thing is you're doing these things all the time and you don't notice it. You need to start noticing it and taking notes. Then you will know @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: exactly what to do. @paige_semenza: Yeah, I was going to say you have to try like both sides of the spectrum there and kind of everything in between to find your sweet spot of like, it's, you know, not that it's different per movement, but it's like, like he was saying earlier, it's like, you know, put myself in the hurt locker for the last minute of a workout with pacing burpees or, know, it could, you're going to feel different per movement and like what the hurt locker @misfitcoach: yeah. @paige_semenza: is per movement is definitely different as well. So again, there is a lot of. @misfitcoach: I can't hold on to a pull up bar or a barbell @paige_semenza: Okay. @misfitcoach: or dumbbells, but I my breathing is fine. It's not the same as like my muscles are fine. I can't breathe. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Colin Boesch: Yeah. I think that was good that you guys brought up the like the per movement thing because the next question that I have is if I tested a theory specifically on let's use grip wrecked of I'm gonna only go fives on Toastabar in 90% of these workouts because it's gonna save my grip. If I tested a theory for the majority of the phase and then it worked on retest day, so I got faster on retest day, how do I know that it's not? Just workout specific that my capacity overall in Tozebar got better. Like how do I know that I didn't just get better at grip rec? @misfitcoach: I think that question is assuming that like you're having maybe an out-of-body experience in the workout, which you're probably not. When you get done test workouts, there's almost always that feeling of like I left something on the table or I went too hard or man, I nailed nailed that. So there's that element of it that you just mentioned, but then there's the intuition of like we all have a pretty good idea when we get done a workout. Like, like, how did I do? relative to myself. @paige_semenza: Mm-hmm. @misfitcoach: So if you do the fives and you get a better time and then you're like, damn, I could have done sets of four on the power snatch. That's your next kind of frontier of figuring that out. So I would say intuition in the moment of like we I I I don't know. I I could be wrong, but like most of the athletes that compete that I talk to have a general feeling of how their execution was after the workout. That's pretty correct. @paige_semenza: I don't know if I have an answer Colin Boesch: Yeah. @paige_semenza: for that one. Really? I feel like I do, but like, it's, I don't know how to say it out loud. Cause Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: Well if you did fives and you knew that @paige_semenza: like, you just, you've. @misfitcoach: you could go faster after, you would just go faster the next time, right? So it's like yeah. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. But also like, you know, even if you're testing a theory throughout the phase, like you also have all the skill sessions. Like if you're following both like doing it in the interval or the Metcon and the skill, it's like you've done a ton of volume building in the skill as well. You know, so like it's not, I don't, I feel like it would never really come down to I'm just getting better at this one workout specifically. I don't know. Colin Boesch: Yeah. It makes it was a question that I thought of because like if we're gonna like do a competition prep phase or something like that, we're there would be points when we're trying to get better at like a very specific workout. You know what I mean? Right? Like if we know that if it if a event announced a workout eight weeks in @paige_semenza: Yeah. Colin Boesch: advance and we weren't, you know, prepared for that, right? We'd be trying to get better for that specific workout if it meant going to semifinals or the games or whatever it happened to be. So like there can't there be like a a both type of scenario there where like I'm getting better at this specific workout and also getting better at the capacity of that skill or the skill that I'm bad at? @misfitcoach: Yeah, that's the goal. @paige_semenza: Yeah. Colin Boesch: Yeah. okay, so I really wanted to work something with the adaptation boat in there. So I was trying to find some question about the adaptation boat instead of the adaptation fairy. @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: Hey. Colin Boesch: there you go, there you go, paige. @misfitcoach: S so I wrote fairy F-E-R-R-Y @paige_semenza: I was giggling. @misfitcoach: in the notes instead of F-A-I-R-Y. that tells you that I'm grew up in a coastal town with lots of fairies. Colin Boesch: Yeah. so I don't know if this if I was @misfitcoach: I laughed so like internally was like dying when I read that I wrote that. Colin Boesch: I was laughing over here. Because you guys can't hear me, I was laughing. but I was gonna ask like if we if we know that the adaptation boat isn't arriving because we have to retest from Tuesday to Thursday, like what's the first thing that you would pay attention to? In video review, and I think that you kind of answered this already, is that like round splits in body language is probably like what it is. so like now say that if body language, transition, and movement efficiency all looked better in my retest, but I the score was the same or worse, how do I fix that going forward? @misfitcoach: I mean you could be in one of those instances where the retest is not appropriate in the window of time that you're doing it from like a physical standpoint. @paige_semenza: Yeah, that's I was thinking. @misfitcoach: so one of the reasons why we have to eventually overreach volume even for athletes that are just trying to go out there and crush the open, is like we might retest. We might have to kind of train in between, that sort of thing. So yeah, that's sometimes just just not appropriate for that to be the case. And that could be volume, sleep, warm-up, fueling, hydration, cooldown, you know, call back to last week's episode, that sort of thing. but yeah, that's one of the reasons why you gotta try really hard on your first one. Cause you might have a better Colin Boesch: Yeah. @paige_semenza: it. @misfitcoach: strategy and not be in and like as ready for all of those different reasons. @paige_semenza: Yeah, Colin, you're before you before you even Colin Boesch: Your watch might say you're at zero percent. @misfitcoach: Yeah, your Garmin might call you a piece of shit right before you start. Fucking loser. @paige_semenza: before you even finish your question, like my first thought went to like, what was your recovery like after the workout? Like thinking of like a Tuesday @misfitcoach: yep. @paige_semenza: to Thursday turnaround. So but yeah, I think it's the the setting that it's in. Maybe the workout just isn't appropriate. That was my thought. @misfitcoach: And if the if the whole qualifier or competition or whatever is written properly, there should be a workout that's like that. I think. Colin Boesch: Yeah, that you can't retest because it's too @paige_semenza: Yeah. Yeah. Colin Boesch: it it's gonna create too much of a stimulus to retest in that short of a period of time. @paige_semenza: Dude, the rope climb, what was it, rowing rope climb toast bar, semi-final two years ago? That long Amrap? Do remember? It was online semi-final. Man, that was so bad. Mm-hmm. Okay. @misfitcoach: yes. Yeah, I sure do remember that. Yep. Yep. And the funny thing too, what's really annoying about it is the people who are good at that are the ones who can crush the retest. The the like long, slow people that are like totally fine with @paige_semenza: Yeah. Stupid. @misfitcoach: it. Like I remember I think it was Caroline Privot was like just like, Yeah, why not do this like three times in like three days and get better every single @paige_semenza: That's insane. @misfitcoach: time I do it? Colin Boesch: the next question, and maybe Paige can answer this a little bit more if she's in it with FOTC a little bit right now, is retests are extremely mental. How do I know or do I even know if I need to tell myself to shut up and not redo because it's a blind leaderboard and we don't know what actually is gonna be super great or super not great besides having data right now. Like @paige_semenza: think there's still content out there that you can look for. I think every training camp puts out a little bit of information. Not every, but there are some that have a good group of, I don't know, whether it's affiliate athletes or everyday competitors that are trying to do it. And I guess you can use the context of your first one, like where you are on the leaderboard, as to whether or not you should redo. Like if you know you're. Colin Boesch: I was gonna say expand on that. Talk about that. @paige_semenza: There's a lot of things that I think, like how important is it to you? Do you really want to qualify? Because why wouldn't you give yourself every shot, every chance to do it, or every opportunity to make the leaderboard and qualify? So what do you have to lose by redoing it, versus what do you have to lose by not redoing it? I think that's always in how important is it to you? I think those things are kind of where that would sit with me. But also have somebody in your corner that's helping keep you even keel mentally with the re-dos, whether that's just someone to kind of blow off some steam with or a coach that you need to walk through strategy with or a new strategy, what the approach should be. So I think that's helpful. Colin Boesch: And then Drew, with the amount of like online qualifiers that there are before we get to the open these days between FOTC, Wadapalooza, TFX, all these acronyms, how much stock do you put into programming weaknesses found in these online qualifiers like for your remote clients before the open rolls around? Like is it just immediately like I I did couldn't move a heavy dumbbell? @misfitcoach: pl plenty. Plenty, but like should I already know that? Is probably where my head goes. So like maybe you're working with an athlete early on, like I'm working with a bunch of new athletes and two or three of them are doing this. Like it just gives you so much more context to get a video of a full workout and then give them pointers on how to improve it. They send the video back. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: So I just think it gives you better context. And if it's the kind of I'll @paige_semenza: you @misfitcoach: I'll expand on it to try to give an actual answer. if it's the kind of movement that doesn't show up a ton, but you want to help them build confidence, that would go into the reps column like immediately. I would give them Colin Boesch: Gotcha. @misfitcoach: the opportunity to practice the movement in lower volume, low stakes like 10 to 20 times over the course of a phase. Like, do you really, are you really not good at this movement or have you just not done it a bunch and we need some exposure therapy there? If it's a glaring weakness that's on that list that we're always talking about, you know, your row, chest of our thruster, whatever, then there's the consideration of we do have to bias it closer to the season, but we have to do enough skill prep in phase one and phase two on the way there that it's actually appropriate to bias it. Colin Boesch: And then my last question, which I think flows perfectly, is these six tests that you just went over, why? Why why did we arrive here in phase one? Why did we like why did we write these rep schemes? Wha how and how did we write them so that the average CrossFitter doesn't know how to attack them, like the ambiguousness of it? @misfitcoach: Sure. Rowing one super easy. We're gonna go 40 minute row and then we're gonna do, you know, closer to 20 minutes of rowing, and then we're gonna do closer to like sixteen minutes of rowing over the course of the phases, and you are going to build your aerobic machinery to bring you back down to CrossFit context rowing. with grip wrecked. We wanted a short muscle endurance workout. so you know, eight minutes or less essentially. And we wanted rep a rep scheme and a weight on the power snatch where you didn't know what you were supposed to do with the barbell, right? Are these singles? Do I touch and go the whole set? Do I touch and go some and then switch to singles? Do I do sets of two or three all the way through? and then we wanted, I think the total volume probably matters more on the total bar than the power snatch is more like the set matters. The total bar, you know, we got 60 reps there. And in that window of time with also having to move a barbell, we know that that's appropriate to ask for based on the open, but also ambiguous enough to be like one set, two three. I'll keep going. Colin Boesch: I think I think that question was specifically for me because I didn't get to write phase one @paige_semenza: You Colin Boesch: with you. @misfitcoach: Okay. aerobic C2 bike. this is the time of year where I just think that we can really manipulate energy systems and muscle fibers relative to CrossFit being an extremely lower body dominant, like your ability to flush waist and to breathe is really important. Dip Van Winkle, long muscle endurance. So again, I think we kinda already touched on it, but just the idea of they Colin Boesch: Yeah, that one. @misfitcoach: don't really let you like until you get to semifinals, they don't really let you do normal workouts with muscle ups in them. So while not all of the things that we did over the course of the phase were directly real related to the test, the test needs to be we need athlete IQ relative to a lot of work, then a bunch of muscle ups versus like, are you actually good at muscle ups? Can you go do three, four, five like repeatedly, you know, in rounds, that sort of thing. You you have to earn the right to go do those workouts, which is kind of funny. running one is easy. Stimulus bomb. Most people can @paige_semenza: you @misfitcoach: still run this time of year. and then the the old power output test is just people, it's a stimulus bomb being able to get people onto the Echo bike and having them push. like full transparency, peek behind the curtain, some of these decisions are made as process of elimination, right? What's left to bias that fits into the rest of the season, that kind of thing. Colin Boesch: Mm-hmm. I think there'll be some coaches out there that that get a lot of good insight from that little answer to the question right there. @misfitcoach: Cool. All right. we have some requests for insight into people's personal lives. we haven't done coaches or Colin Boesch: Yeah. @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: people two for the last few weeks. people have been asking me about my bike, people have been asking Paige about her bartending test. so we'll do we'll do a a quick little coaches or people two before we sign off today. Who wants to go first? @paige_semenza: I'll go first. Guys, don't be disappointed, but I'm disappointed because I didn't have to do a test. So I did like a pre-test of like three minutes max drinks and I made I think 12 and a half of the 13 I was supposed to make. So I was just a little shy, but that was enough apparently to pass. So I didn't have to do a full seven minutes. Yeah, I was a little disappointed too, but. It is what it is. I can go back there to that place though and practice whenever I want, which is kind of cool. So that is kind of a cool thing about it. Like you guys know, like if you go to a restaurant, they might have their own signature drinks or seasonal drinks. And it's like, you have to learn these things and learn to make them. So if you get hired somewhere, if I get hired somewhere and I have a menu of drinks that I need to learn, I can just go. to the place that I took the course and I can practice as much as I need to, which is kind cool. So, @misfitcoach: Nice. @paige_semenza: but yeah, so kind of disappointing, but it is what it is. @misfitcoach: The hardest class that I took in college was the second level of structural engineering and he let us go when we arrived for our final. He was like, All right, who studied their ass off? And everyone raised their hand and he's like, You're good, you can leave. Like we lit like people literally like, yeah, it's crazy. I was kind of pissed. @paige_semenza: Wow. That's crazy. That must have been... @misfitcoach: Personally, because he basically told all of us that we couldn't do like we couldn't get an A on his test. and anytime that he did that, I took it as like a personal challenge. He probably did it on purpose. It's not not that @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: challenging to manipulate manipulate the brain of a of a twenty one year old boy. but it pissed me off because I was like, if I had known this, @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: I wouldn't have studied for one minute. Like I was the kind of @paige_semenza: Right. @misfitcoach: person, talk about gaming workouts. I gamed college. I did very well in college. I knew exactly what to do. Okay. @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: All of the kids in my program that sold drugs also knew where they they had tests that they bought from each other from previous years. So I was the tutor and I got to see the test. So they would invite me to their house, they would give me the test, and I would teach them all how to do it. So I got to see the test because I was the t the the free tutor and they got to have somebody teach them how to actually do it. Colin Boesch: Ha ha ha. @misfitcoach: Cause they were like literally like, dude, I don't I don't know what this means, even though I have it. And I'm like, well, you give it to me and I will know exactly what it means and I'll tell you what it means. I don't I honestly don't think any of them ever told me what they got for grades. Colin Boesch: Ha ha ha ha. @misfitcoach: on those tests. but it was very helpful for me. So anyways, I was pissed that I didn't get to show the guy up on that. Yeah. A little annoying. Yeah. @paige_semenza: Yeah, it's kind of bummed, but it is what it is. I'll practice more anyway. Colin Boesch: Yeah, wow. @misfitcoach: What you got for us, Colin? Green Bay Packer talk? Sorry. Sorry. I had to. @paige_semenza: Yikes. Colin Boesch: I was in a good mood. @misfitcoach: Yeah. Colin Boesch: I was gonna say that my wife and I actually had a kid free weekend. yeah, like some stuff @misfitcoach: Whoa What's that? @paige_semenza: Whoa. Colin Boesch: some yeah. Some stuff like worked out with like some babysitters being sick and my kids were already gonna go and do a sleepover with their aunt on with my aunt, so their great aunt, on Saturday night. And it ended up being like she actually picked them up on Friday morning and took them until bedtime on Sunday. So like my wife and I slept. We cleaned the whole house. We were like we were gonna watch the good football game and it ended up not being a very good football game and like all that type of stuff. Right. And then immediately upon my children returning, we were reminded that we have two kids and I slept for three hours last night. Ha ha. @paige_semenza: Love it. @misfitcoach: goodness. Colin Boesch: So it's j it was it was one of those weekends. It was really, really, really, really good and then didn't sleep at all last night and I'm right back in the place that I feel like I've been forever. @misfitcoach: The like tiny amount of free time that you have makes it weird sometimes to have free time. You feel Colin Boesch: Yes. @misfitcoach: like the Pablo Escobar meme where he's just sitting around his property in different areas by himself is you're just like, Yes, I finally @paige_semenza: in the sewing. Colin Boesch: Yes, yes. @misfitcoach: have all this time. And you're just like, What am I gonna do? Am I gonna exercise, @paige_semenza: What do I do? @misfitcoach: do laundry? Like, what kind of lame ass ideas are those? But that's just how, yeah. That's just how those go. Colin Boesch: Yeah, it we just stayed home. We just like stayed home, did nothing, like ate what we wanted to eat and talked when we wanted to talk. And like both of us were like Drew knows what I Drew knows what I'm talking @misfitcoach: That's a thing too. No dude, the amount of times Colin Boesch: about. @misfitcoach: Carter screams no talking when we're talking Colin Boesch: my god. @paige_semenza: Hahaha! Colin Boesch: Yes. All the all the time. @misfitcoach: Literally this morning. I walked inside to talk to Maya and No talking, buddy, Mom and Dad have to talk right now for a little bit. I don't want you to Colin Boesch: Yes. All the time. Archer's like, Mama, stop talking to Dada. @paige_semenza: An introvert in the making. Colin Boesch: And he'll be like, and @misfitcoach: Yeah. Colin Boesch: we'll try and be Archer, Dada's telling Mama a story. Do you want to listen to the story too? Like try all of these. Yeah, Archer has learned to say no. @misfitcoach: Carter would say no. Not really. We get into arguments that are like fun. I'll say how about no? And he says how about yes, or the vi or vice versa. I'll say, How about yes? And he goes, How about no? We Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: just go back and forth. It's fantastic. Colin Boesch: That's awesome. @misfitcoach: all right, I'll give one fitness related and one non-fitness related. So I went out Sunday morning to do my loop. I try to get just a little bit faster every time I do my loop. It was so windy that I was like, there's no chance. Like it is not humanly possible. I probably won't even be within like a full mile per hour of my actual pace that I normally do. So I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna go for a longer ride. Like I'm gonna go twenty miles instead of fifteen, something like that. Normally what I do is I take off in one direction for 12 minutes, get off my bike, have some water, and then actually start the clock. I was like, you know what? I won't warm up. I'll just kind of get into it. Go for it. It's whatever. Nine minutes in, I was only at like 140 beats per minute and my legs were burning so bad. And I'm I'm just like I know that we talk about the science of this, but like Colin Boesch: Mm-hmm. @paige_semenza: wind. @misfitcoach: The the just the like the black and white of it is so crazy. I was like, how do my legs feel like this at a hundred and forty-five beats per minute? Like they're on fire. And I never, @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: ever, ever feel that way. I don't even feel that way when I go do my hill repeats. And I was like, okay, well, turns out, cause like I was still not I wasn't really like pushing. I thought I could warm up as part of my workout. and I was wrong. And my legs @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: burned for an hour and a half. So Colin Boesch: My hand hit my mouth like Drew didn't warm up @misfitcoach: Warm up, people. Right? y you'd be s you'd be @paige_semenza: I know, right? @misfitcoach: surprised at how much of of my own advice that I don't take. that's a Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: that's a coach's rite of passage. and then the other one is just the yeah, the f three year old soccer is the craziest thing that's ever existed. The fact that they even do it is kinda wild. but like the first few weeks He he just leave the field completely. He'd take off running. I'd have to go catch him. and then now other parents love watching him because he's smiling and running around the whole time. But there's there's no ball in his mind. He runs around the field completely. He tries to knock people over, but make it seem like they're knocking him over. So, like, if they're running, he'll go like lean his back up against them and Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: be like, he bonked me. And I'm like, dude, stop it. Colin Boesch: Yeah. @misfitcoach: And then there's one little boy with a man bun, and Carter is obsessed with trying to touch his hair. He wants to @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: grab it. And the kid just sticks his arms out and is like, no, no. And like all the other coaches are like, buddy, we're not touching people right now. You need to stop this. And @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: Carter's smile is so big the whole time. He's just like, I I'm not I'm not worried about whether you want me to be doing this right now. It's just what is in my heart and I'm gonna do it. Colin Boesch: Okay. @misfitcoach: And then by far his favorite part is the goodie bags. Like each parent has to give out like on a different week. and unfortunately one week an older brother gave them out early and coverage. It's just like, I'm not kidding me? I got fruit snacks and orange, juice box. I'm not going back out there. So yeah. Yep. @paige_semenza: Settled. Colin Boesch: Not going @misfitcoach: It's Colin Boesch: back out there. @misfitcoach: It's it's a wild thing. And you can definitely tell the difference between the kids who just turned three and the kids who are almost four. There's a very @paige_semenza: Yeah. @misfitcoach: big difference there. So maybe next year he'll kick the ball. We'll we'll find out. Guys got anything else? Colin Boesch: That's amazing. @paige_semenza: Nope. @misfitcoach: No. Colin Boesch: Think about the ball in soccer. @misfitcoach: Maybe. Well, we were there the first week and we were having a conversation and I was like, a lot of the other kids, you can tell, have older brothers based on a lot of behaviors, honestly. But like I was saying to them, Carter has no clue what soccer is. Carter is here @paige_semenza: You @misfitcoach: to play soccer. He's never heard of it. He doesn't care. He's probably gonna ask me why the people are playing baseball on the field even though they're playing soccer. Like he's never gotten the sport right. Like when he's watching football, he's Are they gonna hit the ball? I'm like, dude. @paige_semenza: Sometimes. @misfitcoach: No, they're not gonna hit the ball, buddy. Are they gonna throw it? Nah, but they're only supposed to use their feet. Are they gonna kick it? No, there's no kicking in this game. So it's never it's never right. We'll work on it. He's in the Colin Boesch: Okay. @misfitcoach: room for plenty of sports. He's just could care less. He's just just gonna play with his cars. Yep, trucks. Truth. Did we do it? @paige_semenza: trucks. Yep. Colin Boesch: Trucks. @paige_semenza: We did it. Colin Boesch: I think we did it. @misfitcoach: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Misfit Podcast. And thank you to our show sponsor this week only. The code word misfit gets you twenty percent off everything site wide at gorilla mind.com. So if you're already a fan of the products and want to go stockpile, it's a really big opportunity for you to save money and support the show. or if you've been on the fence about trying any of this stuff and would like to get addicted to their energy drinks. make sure you go and use the code word misfit or use No, I said that backwards. Go to gorilla mind dot com forward slash misfit or use the code word misfit at checkout. You will save twenty percent this week only. I think that's enough. See you guys next week.