Barbell Shrugged - CJ Martin on The Mindset of a Competitive Athlete

Episode Date: May 31, 2017

The California Regionals are all wrapped up and the coach we are presenting in today's show is responsible for getting 30 athletes there. If there is a powerhouse coach in CrossFit®, CJ Martin of CrossFit Invictus is it.  In this episode, we dive into the mind of one of the best coaches in the sport of CrossFit and discuss the process CJ goes through to groom his athletes, the importance of sticking to a training program and the role of strength in the sport of CrossFit.  With the road to the CrossFit Games becoming increasingly more demanding, athletes are pushing their physical and mental boundaries further than ever before. As a result of this increasing demand, successful athletes must possess a strong mindset and it's just as important as being “fit enough”. Along with how he's training athletes to get to the Games physically, in this episode, CJ shares with us how he builds mental fortitude within his athletes and what it is like to deal with the pressure of being a competitive athlete in the sport of CrossFit.  Whether you aspire to compete at Regionals or the Games one day or you're just looking for some valuable insight to improve your competitive, athletic mindset, this episode is a must listen.   Enjoy the show, Mike

I want to see that we have the same athletes five years from now that are five years better in the training process, not athletes that are great for two years, out with an injury, plateauing and stuff like that. I want to make sure. And so we just keep our full focus on that kind of health and recovery because we know that they'll do the work in the gym. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Mike Bleser here with Doug Larson, Kenny Kane. We're down here at Invictus. Is this CrossFit Invictus? Invictus Fitness. Invictus Fitness.

CrossFit Invictus. CJ Martin, you're an awesome coach. You've got 30 athletes going to regionals. Yeah, 30 athletes preparing for regionals. Three teams. Three teams. First time in history. Yep, yep.

Three teams, three males and three females. And if you ever watch the CrossFit Games, you see the entire crowd of green, which has got to be amazing. Yeah, the sea of green. That's what we're most proud of, I think. We get the community to rally behind all these guys. So you guys create a lot of amazing athletes. You have an amazing facility here.

You have more than one facility. The culture here is strong. It was really cool to be in here this morning and see all the athletes training together. It's rare to find that many amazing athletes being in one spot. Yeah, that's, I mean, honestly, that's the secret to our success is to get them in one spot and to have them train together, to have them push each other, you know, tweak their programs for individualized needs.

But ultimately, these guys have to be able to train and push hard, and it's tough to do that when you're alone somewhere. But when you're around a bunch of other athletes and you know what's going to have to be expected to get to the top, it makes it a lot easier to get there. Yeah, you may feel like you're training hard. I've been in that place where I'm training by myself. I'm like, oh, I'm training really hard. And then I show up with a crew of people who have been training together,

maybe five guys. I'm like, oh, fuck, I have not been training hard. Right, right. And the intensity level, whether you want it to or not, is going to go up when you're side by side next to somebody. And we've seen that transition so many times when people have moved into San Diego and they're like, oh, yeah, doing good. Their first three weeks tends to be, like, really rough. And they're like, man, my body feels beat up. I'm

like, no, no. Like you have to understand the intensity just shifted because you're chasing somebody in every workout. Even if you're, you know, Garrett Fisher comes down here, most workouts, he's really good, but there's workouts that some of these other guys are kicking his butt and he's like, damn, I've got to go a lot harder than I would have. Yeah, there's 20 other people that you're going against. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing. I was just talking with a couple of the female athletes that just transferred over to this gym,

and they were like, I was just sick of training by myself. I just needed some more people around where I would show up and actually be excited to be there, and it's not just like going through another workout. Right, yeah, and that's kind of the basis, right? Whether we're talking about our athletes or regular gym community, when we started in CrossFit, what was it? It was community, right? It was like surrounding yourself with a group of like-minded individuals

and you were all pursuing the same goal. And back in 2007, that goal was just getting healthier or doing some cool stuff in the gym and having fun. And their goal is different, but they still need to be surrounded by that community. They still need to have that support and encouragement of their peers. And they still need to have a coach that understands their goal and that's trying to work them there. And so, you know, I know we may touch on this later, but you know, there's such a, people draw this distinction between like competitive CrossFit and recreational CrossFit. And I'd argue at the core, the principles stay

the same. Coaching is helping somebody get closer to their goal, right? The mechanisms by which we do that are normally most successful if you can put them in a community where they are supported and encouraged and educated. And so it's just what you're encouraging them to do and who they're surrounded by changes based on their goal. But I think the principles are so similar, whether they're just trying to get in shape or trying to be the best in the world at fitness. It's funny, CJ, just thinking about seeing you with your games and regional teams back in 2011, 2012.

I took a team to the games in 2011, and we did that largely through being really well prepared for the regional workouts. And I remember seeing your athletes equally prepared with higher horsepower and then the next year by 2012 I was I was so impressed and simultaneously simultaneously pissed and frustrated at myself when all your athletes had laminated sheets with their cycle teams or cycle speeds and times and amount of reps now we had the same thing but it wasn't laminated sheets with their cycle teams or cycle speeds and times and amount of reps. Now, we had the same thing, but it wasn't laminated. It was written down on my chicken scratch paper, and it's all kind of crumpled up. And I was like, wow, CJ's really doing something extraordinary.

Now, just as we walked in here, Doug mentioning, that culture of connection is deep here. Just that group watching you walk around with your athletes. You break off. You talk to us. Then the other coach comes in, gets everybody going on to the next thing. I mean, these athletes have been in here for, like, three hours. Some have been here a while. Some have traded out.

Yeah, these are the new – this is a new crop. You weren't paying attention, Kenny. Well, no, there's some overlap. But just that culture of, like, it's Wednesday morning. For sure. And these people have made a huge commitment to be together during work hours, you know, to make this happen. Yeah, we got here at 9 a.m., and it was full. Yeah, so 9 a.m. is our, you know, first training session for those top-tier guys,

and then they'll be back at 1 and hammering it out until about 3, and then they're done for the day. How many of those people are training full-time, and that's their occupation, so to speak? How many of those people have a real 9-to-5 and have to come in before and after work and miss the actual team training? Right. It's actually a shocking amount that have. Now, they don't have a typical 9 to 5, but we have a couple nurses, right?

So some of them are coming off of night shifts, like Cynthia is in here. She's coming off of a night shift and comes in. Sometimes she's bleary-eyed and she's been up for 24 hours, but she gets it in, she'll go home and take a nap and may come back even for the later session. We have other people that are, you know, in master's programs, and so they're kind of shuffling between this and internships and stuff like that. And so people's desire to make it work because it's important to them,

it's amazing that they'll shuffle their schedule to get there. And, you know, we still run gyms. It's not like we can just be an exclusive athlete facility. And so we can't do this all day long, right? We have to have those times, pockets of times where, sorry, dedicated athletes and they come in and it's not convenient for everybody and a lot of people make a lot of sacrifices, but they make it work. So your elite higher level athletes were here training this morning and certainly you were over here talking to us quite a bit just because we happen to be here, but your style of coaching, is that pretty similar to how you coach for the most part?

You sit back, you observe, you weren't really in there imposing your ideas on every single athlete, on every single rep. You seem to be a little more reserved than I've seen some other coaches be, where they're really putting themselves in the middle of the mix and communicating constantly with every athlete, watching every rep, tweaking every rep, et cetera. And you are a little more reserved than that, where you are observing, occasionally going and giving someone a little piece you know of of advice or whatever but

you weren't in there just like in everyone's face all the time so how does your style like how do you think about your style of coaching and why do you do that yeah i think um well it's very different depending on on who you're coaching right if? If I've got a beginner, I'm going to be with them every step of the way. With this group, these are essentially professional athletes in this sport, right? When I've got Lauren and Garrett and, you know, Maddie Myers and all these guys, Kristen Holta is here from Norway, they know what they're doing, and they're top-tier athletes. And I think there's more danger in overcoaching potentially than undercoaching,

right? And so I want to sit back. I want to let them be athletes. I want to let them figure out how they're moving, right? Because one rep early on at warmup weights, you know, I see coaches coach the warmup weight for something like a snatch, right. And I think that's, you know, that's going to change after 70%. So why are we wasting our time, you know, jumping in on this athlete, let them find a flow and rhythm to their training. And then when you see mechanical things, then let's step in and make sure that we address it. Um, but yeah, stylistically, I definitely don't want to be, uh, barking so much that they just stop listening. Right don't want to be barking so much that they just stop listening.

I want to pick the time that I think that I can make something improve with one statement and then step back and let them address it. For athletes that might not potentially know that about you when they first show up, have you gotten any feedback where they're like, you know, I didn't even get any coaching today or i like can you talk to me more help me more coach me more does that style conflict with some other people's personality types no not really and it changes if they've if they're new right so like we had some gals that came over right and in the first couple months i'm going to spend more time

so that i can make sure that they're doing things the way that we want them done the but but all all these kids in here have been with us since you know at the very latest december so now we're several months in these guys know what they're doing they know the flow they know what time they should be on barbells. They know what time, you know, how long their warm-ups should take and stuff like that. And so I'm not going to, you know, be kind of in their face the whole time. At this point, everybody's got a pretty good routine.

Everybody knows who they're kind of lifting with, generally speaking. And so we're able to sit back, and Tino and I, who's my assistant coach, will kind of just observe the whole group, figure out where we can interject that will be helpful. And if everybody's doing well, my best days are sitting back, just high-fiving people like, dude, that looks awesome. Like Kristen Holt today, she was lifting brilliantly. And I walked over, I'm like, I feel bad.

I don't have anything to coach you on. Like, you're kicking ass. Just keep it up, you know. And that's ultimately what we want. This isn't about me. It's not about the coach. It's about the athlete. And so if I can remove myself from the equation and just let the athlete do their work, I'm happy to do that.

On that, you're a big character person as far as the athletes and what you're trying to get out of them. How do you find them? How do they find you? We still don't market our online coaching, personal program design stuff. And so it's kind of word of mouth. still don't market or like online coaching and personal program design stuff. Um, and so we just, uh, it's kind of word of mouth. Well, I know specifically you have a sort of an approach in a series of questions that you like to ask your athletes to make sure that you're on the same page as the people who you're letting come in and be part of this thing. Right. Um, can you break that down a little bit? Yeah. I mean, it comes down

to one, understanding their goal, understanding their expectations. And then, you know, depending on the client and, you know, where they're located and what their needs are, we do like a pretty full assessment. You know, I coached Val Vobrell for four years. She's always a good kind of example of this is that we have to understand what they're looking for in the nature of a relationship. Right. And and how I can coach them to help them. And like I said, a big part of that is taking the ego. This is athlete driven sport, not a coach driven sport right i'm not giving them a program that they should do without asking the questions about you know who are you how much time do you have right and so you know when it came to val it was like hey before we get started let's talk about what

is your you know what's your schedule look like what are your priorities what are your core values let's start with core values okay you got a you got a husband, you got a full-time career, right? So where does your athletic career fall in that? Okay. So it's somewhere four or five, six on the list. Okay. So now let's structure your day and figure out where are we going to get to in your day and then prioritize your fitness in that because the worst case scenario for me is i give her oh you want to be a crossfit games competitor awesome here's three hours of work to do right she wakes up gets her daughter she wakes up at 5 a.m so she can get a workout in tries to get her daughter ready because it's cool right rushes home she's stressed

tries to get another workout in right all of a sudden we've just set her up for failure right and so instead we say look based on your priorities you've got six hours a week to train you're going to make the most of those six hours so we're going to program 45 minutes a day or you know an hour here and there and make the most of it and that way you know that if you achieve your goal you'll be fulfilled with it and if you don't you will enjoy the process but if i just give a blanket prescription on something like that the process is going to be miserable right and you may achieve your goal and realize that you just reached the wrong goal and messed up everything that was did you have that out the

gate or is that something that you learned by making some mistakes along the way? No, we, yeah. I mean, since 2011, that was part of our initial intake. That and laminations. Fucking laminations. You know what you forgot? It honestly pissed me off. I'm like, it's laminated.

These guys are fucks. The next year we graduated to quarterback wristbands. So we had the wristbands that they would have their laminated sheet in the wristband that they could glance, keep going. What was actually written on that? So it was in team competitions where you have shared reps and we had kind of broken out ideal rep splits and stuff like that and then ordering to make sure we had one athlete you know uh finishing so that that an athlete was fresh to start the next movement and

prioritizing strengths and weaknesses and stuff like that and so we would set it up and that way they would know like hey i'm on for 15 reps, and then I'm going to clear the station so that I can get to this. So we would kind of just walk through everything and then get all of that prescribed so that all they had to do was their job and not think about all this other stuff going on. Well, probably a lot of other teams were just waiting until one person got tired before they just sent the next person in, and that was about as far as they took it.

Yeah, I mean, over the years, probably our proudest accomplishment is us and CrossFit Fort Vancouver, who are really good friends. Adam Neffers, he is one of the greatest dudes in the industry. And, you know, we've both been to the CrossFit Games eight consecutive years. So since there's been teams at games, we've both had teams there. And we're both going for nine this year.

And it's really fun to, like, be in that together. But I would say over the course of those years, I'm not sure that we were the most talented team more than two or three years, right? But we were prepared and we were a team. We trained together all year round. These guys, I mean, you guys got a snippet of it, but they're in here all year round. We're not pulling athletes in for three months out of the year to form a team

and then they all split back up. So they know each other. They communicate well. They interact well. They know what they're supposed to do and when they're supposed to do it. And that's what makes team really fun to me. I mean, training individual athletes is great. It's good to see them reach their goals.

But when you have six people click in and creating that bond, it's really special. It's really special. You've got everyone training together and competing and raising that intensity, and then I've also noticed that you also have them competing on recovery, which is really cool because that's the problem with most athletes is most people who want to be competitive crossfitters are addicted to the work yeah and not necessarily the recovery yeah exactly and that's uh that's something that over the last couple years especially the volume in this sport has skyrocketed and the intensity

skyrocketed right so now it used to be you know and when i competed at the 2008 games, the 275-pound deadlift, we were like, dude, that's heavy. Now I've got, you know, Maddie Myers was in here this morning, a 63-kilo, 135-pound female that cleans 265, right? And, you know, cleans 265. Camille, who's a 58-kilo today hit 250 on on a on a paused hang clean and uh and so it's like you look at that intensity the loads that they're lifting is way higher the volume is way higher and now it's like the the best thing i can do for most of these guys is make sure that they're recovered pull in the reins a little bit and make sure that they're prioritizing that health and recovery.

And so we've worked with some really cool partners and that's been like my focus in, in partnerships with any brands has always been around. How do we keep our athletes healthy, recovered and able to perform? And so we've been really lucky. So we started with these guys, Whoop, that allows us to kind of see their sleep recovery score, like how much they've slept that night, to look at their HRV and their resting heart rate stuff.

And so it's been really fun because we can look at the list of athletes on this. So Sam Dancer, who we get to work with uh you know but sam's out in illinois but i can pull up my app and be and like shoot him a text like dude you only got six hours of sleep like you better step up your game i'm crushing you right like we can we can actually like you know kind of make that fun and competitive um and that's you know that that keeps people accountable because the, the one thing that just drives me absolutely bonkers is you've got a guy, and unfortunately this is common now, is you've got young kids that think nothing of training for six hours a

day. Like they're like, oh yeah, let's hit it hard. I want to crush it. Right. But then you ask them to sleep for eight hours and like, they're like, well, that's crazy, man. I can't do that. Well, it's time for that. Right?

And so it's trying to get people centered around the important things. And the important thing is if you don't have a foundation of sleep, lifestyle, nutrition, you train all you want, but it's going to fall apart. Do you ever shoot them with tranquilizer darts like old school? I'm close. I'm close, Kenny. I'm close. Well, it's interesting.

The evolution I've seen is that the work went way up, and then people started focusing on program design. There's so much volume we have to get really smart about program design. We have to get the skill development. And then Kelly Stark comes along and goes, hey, you might get hurt less if you have more flexibility and more mobility and all that mess. And now people are having to focus on recovery because the volume has gotten so high. And we do know that people are training two or three sessions a day,

so multiple hours in that day. And so the recovery thing is becoming more focused on it, I think. Things like group is interesting, and then being careful about supplementation and nutrition. Yeah, yeah. So we and our supplement partner is awesome, and they're so much more than a supplement partner, but we work with Thorne Research, which is an awesome nutraceuticals brand, but we work with thorn research um and which is an awesome

nutraceuticals brand but we do full blood labs on these guys so these guys do um a wellness effects blood lab then they meet with an advisor who's actually here meeting with athletes right now and she goes through and like reads them through um and kind of gives them like breakdowns of hey look you know your lipids aren't looking great. And like she'll go through the whole process of their blood labs. And then we'll create a custom supplementation based on those blood labs. They'll basically say, look, you're really low in D3. Right. So we're going to make sure you get D3 and you've had some liver stuff.

So we're going to put you on a detox protocol. And then the athlete gets every 30 days or whatever a package that has not only their protein and their carb fuel and stuff like that that they're going to take after their workouts, but it also has their vitamin D and their fish oils and their whatever liver detox, if that was on their protocol. So basically a full customized panel that they get that they can take and keep some healthy and so that stuff I mean that's where like I want to put my real attention because I want these guys I want to see that we have the same athletes five years from now that are five years better in the training process, not athletes that are great for two years out with an injury, you know, plateauing and stuff like that.

I want to make sure. And so we just keep our full focus on that kind of health and recovery because we know that they'll do the work in the gym. Yeah. Just as an aside, because I'm interested in this, I'm very familiar with wellness effects. That's what I use. Is there anything that you're seeing on key biomarkers, whether it be kidney or liver function or anything like that? Is there anything that you're kind of seeing with this higher level pool of fitnessers?

And I don't want to get too stuck in the weeds, but I'm very interested in this just for my own curiosity. So I think the HPA axis is really where we're. So I can't say that I've seen a ton of kidney, liver, necessarily that. You know, these guys are all going to have some high scores on some of their kidney stuff from muscle tissue breakdown. But the big concern for me is always around HPA axis and whether or not they're overtraining. And right when you start seeing male testosterone scores way down, right? Like you got a 25 year old kid that's, you know, training hard, but testosterone scores and 300s or something. And you're like, bro, that's a problem.

You're not Kenny Kane. You're not 46. Yeah, I mean, I turned 40, and I shouldn't be. Higher than that. I've got double some of these guys' scores. More babies. More babies. But, you know, that's a concern, and some of it's cyclical,

and that's what's really cool in working with these guys is that we are tracking four times a year, right? And so I'm not that worried about it in the short span right up to regionals, right? It's okay. We're going to overreach. That's part of the plan in our program design is I want you to overreach, and we're going to back off a little, and hopefully you feel like Superman when you start regionals and we make it through that weekend really strong but then there has to be a back off period and the big concern is the season is so long right

and how do we get these athletes back to full health and recovery and how do you do it in the Instagram age where we've always been a big proponent like oh you can be the other crossfit games that's awesome we'll see you after labor day right like don't come into the gym yeah for a full month yeah and that used to be fine like nobody ever they were like cool let me go surf let me go run on the beach right well now i got athletes a week later like what what should I be doing? I saw that so-and-so did 30 muscle-ups for time and like this. And I'm like, dude, chill the F out, first of all.

But because they're seeing it all the time, they feel like they're losing ground. That's what I like to do, actually. I wait until right after the CrossFit Games and I just start posting tons of shit. It's like, he wasn't even at the Games. It doesn't matter. Just fucking with people. Yeah, but it does. It really does.

Is Indian clubs a thing? Yeah, that's going to be in the games 2017. Steal Indian clubs. Yeah. I mean, if you're an athlete and you're just like, okay, I'm just supposed to take whey protein. I'm going to take this pre-workout that's loaded with caffeine and maybe some fish oil before bed. Is that enough these days?

No, it's just so non- That was such a lob, Mike. You're like, here's a softball, CJ. Well, I can put myself in a 25- 25 year old mike mind right yeah because i mean there was it's like oh yeah you just this is the stuff that they're offering so i'm just gonna buy whatever the major company is selling yeah and then it's and then you later find out like there's a lot of other shit you could have been doing right right yeah and yes thank you we do have we actually just launched a workout

supplementation manual that goes through like some of the things but that that we would recommend and what i didn't even know i didn't even know oh well that was that was that was beautiful but um so you're welcome so yeah so we we do have our general guideline for that reason though and the reason that we wrote in and uh calvin sun who's one of our original coaches super smart guy calvin wrote it because this is what we're dealing with not just our athletes but our general gym members they're they're coming in and they're like hey uh yeah what pre-workout should i take and uh what kind of whey protein and we're like hey do you know what a carbohydrate and protein is first? Like basics aren't there, but they're like, oh, well,

if I take a bunch of C4, I feel great. That's my biggest concern is like all the hype around pre-workout. People are like, I feel amazing when I'm on it. I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, pop 200 milligrams of caffeine any day. You're going to feel amazing. I've never heard a coach recommend it. It's like one of the most popular supplements. Pre-workouts in general are so popular,

but I've never heard a coach ever recommend it, almost ever. C4? Or anything similar, yeah. Yeah, the longer I've been training, the less stimulants I do before training. Yeah, exactly. So we actually did a supplement guide that was kind of very basic, right? But when you look at what we've set up with Thorne, we want to have a real wellness advisor that gives you an individualized prescription because we're all different, right?

And so we get people taking whey protein, and they're like, oh, yeah, I feel super gassy. And then they've been taking it for six months, and you're like, do you know if you're lactose intolerant? They're like, oh, yeah, I don't do well with lactose like cut the whey protein you know like but but people aren't having those conversations that's a good that's what teammates are for though yeah right dude bro your ass that's one thing i noticed is i got away from whey and it's like oh I actually don't feel full for three hours after I drink right like I process the other thing yeah and half an hour and then I'm

normal yeah and so that's I mean you know I know we're not going to do that with every member that walks in our door but man to the extent that we can get people smart about their own health and fitness and taking care of themselves and learning about, hey, my body might be a little bit different, that there isn't, you know, one size fits all. Just because so-and-so athlete takes this supplement, it might not be the best one for me. Yeah, that's where we'd love to get going with all this. Yeah, let's take a break real quick.

I'm going to come back and I'm going to talk about how you got to be such a good coach. Oh, yeah. All right. We're back with CJ Martin. CJ, when you started learning about training, how did you approach it in the beginning, and how is it different now? Oh, man. When I first started learning, I think I was your very typical CrossFitter

and was blessed to have some really fun training partners and phenomenal athletes. And so, you know, I always say I've learned way more from athletes I've coached than I could ever teach anybody. But early on, you know, Josh Bridges came in 2008, early 2008. And, you know, he'd come into the free Saturdays, and we'd do some workouts. He's a moocher. Largely, yeah. Just free Saturdays.

He was in the Navy, and so he couldn't really make it to any of the classes. Good excuse. He was still in buds and stuff. Teams and shit. Yeah. And so he, so anyway, how we learned was like basically we would come up with workouts to try to kill somebody. That's a good idea. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I remember workouts that were like, you know, it was like 20 rounds of five clean and jerks, one rope climb. Yeah. And you're like, like oh yeah totally reasonable workout and like you know if it would take josh 45 minutes it would take me three and a half hours or whatever and then it was like yeah that was awesome man that was awesome like i couldn't straighten my arms for four days. And I was like, yeah, I had a great workout the other day. But I think it was just that very familiar, you know, a lot of us started that way early on. It was like, well, harder is always going to be better.

And then over time, I was like, wow, I realize I'm not really getting any stronger doing this all the time and and uh and so i would say that i was just very typical experimental looking at the athletes in the gym seeing what they were good at what they weren't good at trying to address the things that they weren't good at and then a major shift after the 2008 crossfit games so i i had the fun of going up and competing in 2007 and 2008 and In 2007 I met guys like Chris Spieler who's you know like he and I were the smallest athletes probably out there in 2007 So I was like honestly, it's so awesome And and then I think I saw like we were talking before the event even started in 2007 I'm like this is gonna be so much fun. But like the weights really heavy.

And he's like, I know, I know that's crazy. We have to do 135, 135 ground overhead. And like, he, he's such a nice guy that I felt like he was like,

we were like this, you know, kindred. And then like, he goes out there and he, I think he was the heat before me and like absolutely demolishes the workout. And I'm like, you traitor,

you're really good at. And I'm like, you traitor. You're really good at this. I'm like, you were empathizing, but you didn't mean it. You're good at this. But anyway, in 2008, they had the deadlift burpees. And I mean, it sounds just silly to say that 275, but that looked like my one rep max every time i was like yeah all right like just rounded back horrific right and so and several we i brought up like seven athletes with me in 2008 to compete and you know and a lot

of them were struggling with the weight and stuff like that. And then if you guys remember that year, Chris Spieler had actually dominated, right? And then the way they did it was so cool. And you could never do this now, but they did it by, you know, the times on every event. And then going into the final event, he got a head start of the accumulated times, right? That was fun to watch. So cool, right? And he had like a minute 40 on the next guy and we're like oh yeah like he's gonna dominate but it was 155 pound squat clean to overhead right

and uh or what we would say squat clean and jerk which at the time was a true squat clean and jerk for a lot of guys right right and so i'm up uh just as a fan i was not in the final no in that no yeah i'm up i'm up like on the fence line and i've got video camera and i'm just kind of fixed on chris and josh everett at the time he is there and i'm like well josh everett could be really good at this one i'm like keep an eye on him and james fitzgerald right he's in the mix and so we're kind of i'm like kind of scanning and at one point i remember hearing like so i've got my camera fully over here on like chris and those guys and i hear like 24 25 and i'm like chris is only like 16 or something right and i look down and there's this like large behemoth of a man and he's just doing a thruster with the weight every time i'm like well that's that's not

physically possible right and and and jason kalipa right and they're like wait we have a winner like not nobody in the entire crowd was looking at because he started like four minutes after these guys or something. Right. And then he just did 30 thrusters with this weight. And, and, and I was like, holy crap, what just happened? Right. And, but I walked away from that and I was like, wow, massive learning. Right.

We talk a lot about desire and mental toughness. And I think as an athlete, when i was growing up whether playing baseball or martial arts like that was what i could rely on is like well i'll outlast somebody and i know that like i fought taekwondo for years and it was like you may be way up on me but eventually you're going to make a mistake and if i land something right it's fight over and i would rely on that that just tenacity and i was like you know what i realized at the 2008 crossfit games that you could be as tenacious as you want if you cannot lift the weight it's not gonna do you much good right and so learning to coach and program design like i came back and I would say probably for the next week

just sat and scribbled notes on like none of this programming is going to get athletes good at this sport because we were still focused on making them really well conditioned but if you're too weak to move the load I don't care how conditioned you are you can't fake strength, right? You're either strong or, and can move it. And then it becomes about tenacity, whether or not you're willing to keep moving it when you're uncomfortable, or you're not strong enough to move it. And you can't even get in to start. Right. And so I would say that, you know, that week after the 2008 crossfit games began my real journey into coaching the sport not just coaching like hey let's throw some cool workouts together and do stuff like that

and then it became trying to look at the sport and work backwards and reverse engineer and figure out how do i break this down to make somebody as capable as possible in any of the tasks that might come up for this sport and it and that began with addressing strength because um it was the one thing that I saw like Jason Kalipa just dominated this thing because he was stronger and he was doing it from a bodybuilding background and you know oh yeah i mean you look at the build on that guy you're like you didn't you didn't get like that oh no no yeah yeah you had that and that's what i think is really interesting is i think we're starting to see some really smart athletes understand that now is like um the impact of functional bodybuilding right to use To use, I know Marcus Philly, who's a friend and somebody I really respect,

he just launched a program called Functional Bodybuilding, right? And it's like, I think athletes are starting to realize, like, man, if I'm not functionally strong, if I don't have a foundation, it's going to be really tough to layer on all this volume and intensity and dynamic movement and stuff like that. And so it's cool. You know, I think that the sport's always been kind of this winding path

and we keep taking different directions, but I think it's a cool direction to see people kind of coming back to that. Like, Hey, maybe we need to put a little more emphasis on this. I see a lot of people attracted to individual methods, maybe like, Oh, I got to get my squat up. I'm just going to do this small off squat routine. Like, what do you think about that? Yeah, I think, um, I think that's the, you know, that's the big, uh, uh, kind of the big misunderstanding in the community. And it's where I really love to have conversations. It's why I create such good friendship with Julian Pino is like, we always talk about, don't worry about the method or the fact, right.

Or are they the facts or, or the workouts themselves, but people will look at programs for workouts instead of the principle of what they're trying to accomplish. Right. And so if you look at Smolov, people are thinking, well, I have to follow these reps and sets. And fewer people are saying, what was the progression? How did they layer total volume? How did total volume change week over week?

How did percentages change? What is the principle at play here? So that I might build a more functional program for me or I may use some of those principles you know for other movements and allow me to become a better coach athlete whatever that's going to be and so it drives me nuts when people jump on a small love cycle they're like I'm going to do small love because my legs are weak and then i'm gonna do four conditioning workouts after and i like i just want to slam my head into the table because it's like you don't understand why small love works to make people strong and it didn't include eight conditioning workouts after squats right like i can't get stronger i did small love

so that said do you have any kind of fundamental principles that you use to help guide your programming and your coaching? Yeah, I mean, most importantly for us is, like, we have to maintain a structural balance to the program. And so we have to be really careful about, you know, repetitive movements, repetitive patterning, making sure that there's adequate recovery in, you know, between different movement sets. And that's become more and more challenging, right? As the volume's gone up and as you've got people that want to train all day long. And I would say if we have an overarching principle that's made us successful is that we've maybe de-emphasized the conditioning work you know per se like of course we have conditioning work and it's aggressive and it's hard and and it's going to be there but I feel like we've always balanced

a bunch of accessory work also that we've always had in our program things like single arm dumbbell rows and, you know, reverse hypers and, and all the stuff that isn't sexy that you're not ever going to put on Instagram, right? But that might keep you healthy and functionally strong so that you can do all the cool things that you will want to post on Instagram. And, um, and I feel like when people started marketing and selling program design, it became about doing the cool stuff, not the helpful stuff. Um, and so I think from a principal standpoint, when we look at, we say longevity of our athletes is the most important thing, because if I can keep my athlete training and they're not on the shelf and broken then i know they're going to get better right and so we do that by looking at volume a little different and we have to trick athletes sometimes into yeah you got three sessions a day

right but two of the sessions are like accessory work and tricep accessory work and posterior chain work. And you've got one conditioning session. But at least they feel like they're doing three sessions a day. It's funny. We talk about this often with Dr. Andy Galpin. The conversation is always what's the fundamental point of programming? And it gets very lost in this space right now because you're right, so many different influences

are coming into the everyday practices of elite-level cross-fenders and even everyday people. But, you know, Dr. Galpin always points out, like, the point of programming is to create positive adaptation without breaking somebody. Period. That's the sentence. That's the point. To create positive adaptation without breaking somebody. Right. Period. That's the sentence.

Right. That's the point. And somehow we lose sight of that. Everybody loses. I mean, you and I, 10 years ago, were programming those workouts like, this sounds great. Three and a half hours of depth. Right. It's like, okay, well, where's the shelf?

Let's go sit on it. Yeah. For a while. Yeah, exactly. on it yeah a while yeah exactly and that's you know that that kind of rush to be great by doing all this volume right and then hitting that plateau or hitting injury and then having to back off right that that has to be the most frustrating thing an athlete will go into right because excuse me um you know they're they're training their butt off right they want to do the right thing they want to get better and they're willing to put in the work and so as a coach i would be massively neglectful if we let them do that and they had one good year and

that was it but right and that's what's hard me is that we have to somehow balance their need to do more and keep up with the Joneses with a more paternalistic perspective of saying, I want to hold you back so you can do this for the next six to eight years. Diving a little deeper, this whole thing is a really interesting space because one of the things that makes it so unique is one's ability to suffer and endure sure now as a high level coach how do you handle though because mike and i have talked about this like we we've talked about if some of the elite level athletes in this sport were to really consider why they're doing it, they might not actually do it. Right.

So with that frame, how do you handle an athlete that's running from something versus an athlete that's running towards something? I mean, that's a phenomenal question and that is the crux of it and i will forever claim that you will not achieve your potential in this sport if you're running from something because i i honestly feel like a lot of people will duck under six hours of training a day to not handle some other stuff or whatever that may be. But it's a great place to hide it. Right. And deal with it and put it to someone.

And people go, well, it's better than smoking or robbing. I'm like, okay. Right. Robbing's the best. Right. I went with robbing. Like a verb. Robbing. What are you doing? Robbing? Or working out. I'm doing my free time. But. I went with robbing. Like a verb. Robbing.

What are you doing? Robbing? Or working out. What am I doing with my free time? Yeah. I think that, you know, to that point that there's, you know, yeah, there's running away from whatever personal responsibilities or insecurities. Right. There's also that, you know, that need to put on a front, right, to show that, like, oh, I'm doing all of this toward my goal,

but if it's not truly their goal, if it's not innate in them that that's what they're really striving for. If instead they're looking for the fame, the attention, or they feel the expectation, hey, you're good at this. You should go to the CrossFit Games. Right. Right? And then they're like, oh, I'm just doing it because I think I'm good at it

and somebody told me I should do it instead of, like, I want to do this. I played college football because I felt like I had to. I felt like I was supposed to. I didn't even want to. I did it for three years anyway before I realized, like, I didn't want to do this. What am I doing here? I went and started mma and i was like oh this is like totally what i think yeah interesting yeah right and that's that's where i see like that's where i

think you see athletes separate like and i don't coach her but sam briggs i think is a great example right is that sam you can tell when you watch sam compete you're like she loves this oh man right she loves it kristen hota when i watch her she loves being in it yeah competing right and um and i've had some experiences with athletes that I would say in, I feel bad if I'm, I'm sharing something about some of my athletes, but I hope they'll forgive me. But like Camille, I've coached, I coached for four years. We took a year off and now I'm coaching her again. This year has been so much fun because you can see she wants it and going into the 2014 games she was running to something she wanted this and she wanted to be the best version of herself and she wanted to compete she goes in there and she wins the crossfit games

and the next year right this is what i saw from my perspective, so she may have a different view, is I felt that she, the goal then became to repeat. And there was an expectation. And if you don't repeat, you're not worthy, right? And what that does to training and mindset around the competition, right, it it changes things fundamentally now you're you're working out of fear and expectation that something's going to be taken from you instead of like i've got nothing to lose and i'm gonna i'm going all in to achieve this right and we went through that with lauren fisher after the 2014 games right the 2014 was the she went team 2013 as a development year and then we

said okay you like I think you're ready I want to take you individual she goes individual she qualifies she takes ninth at the CrossFit Games 2015 comes she's like well I took ninth last year I have to get like on the podium this year like no no like that is the wrong mindset right and and she had a setback now she had an injury right before regional so it's hard but but i can tell you from the the whole year of training felt different and she would tell you she didn't feel as confident right and so um if you look at both of those athletes they had massive success followed by a year that was not a failure by any means, right? But a setback for them in terms of what their goal was. And then the next year, Lauren comes back in 2016.

We didn't even know, but has a, I mean, we knew her ankle was really messed up. We didn't know the severity of it, but for a year puts in work on an ankle that has to be surgically repaired, bone shaved, all that, right? And takes, not just qualifies, takes first out of the California region, like, you know, just absolutely crushes regionals, then goes in, and because she couldn't run for a full year and couldn't run at games, right? It's not the games she wanted to have. But you saw the hunger return in 2016, right? So I didn't work with Camille last year.

And then after games last year, Camille called and said, you know, hey, let's start working together again. And I was really excited because what I've seen in her is like now we're back to 2014. She's hungry. She wants to do this. She's excited about this. She likes training. She's enjoying the process she's not doubting you know where she was or she's not you know training in fear of losing something and uh

and it's shown and i mean she's just killing it she we took her we went out to water palooza she wins water palooza she finished third in the open and just on every level she's just centered balanced like happier and you can see it. And you're like, man, this is so powerful. When you can center an athlete around why they're doing this and you can center them around purpose, everything changes. Yeah, I mean, you showed me that video of her cleaning 250 just earlier today. And I remember just a couple years ago watching Elizabeth Akinwala out on the big field doing that.

And I was like, wow, that hunger and that. I mean, that's hungry with an O. Right. Hungry. Yeah. But it's really cool to see. But I think that that, whether we're talking about training, business, whatever, is understanding purpose. Like, man, once you have purpose, once you're running to something instead of from something, everything gets clear.

And that path and what decisions you should make and what decisions you shouldn't make just becomes crystal clear. And when you're doing things out of fear or expectation, man, I just think everything's cloudy because you're second-guessing every decision you make about your day, about your training, about your choices of who you're surrounding yourself with. You were saying earlier one of your coaches has a very strong following because he has a very strong why himself. His purpose for why he coaches is is very very well structured he knows exactly what that reason is and a lot of people don't know that reason and because of that he the way

he treats the athletes is is just different like yeah the athletes can tell that he cares about them and so the amount of people that show up for his classes is a lot higher than your other coaches because he has that that why right very buttoned down yeah yeah it was that was one of the coolest kind of you know uh gym owner coach interactions i've ever asked and uh bryce smith he's just he he's a phenomenal coach but he's a phenomenal coach because he's a phenomenal human being and he cares so deeply about the people that he's working with that they feel that. They know that. They trust him.

They're going to go all in and do what he's recommending. And he's going to maintain that because he follows up with him. But he's just been an absolute all-star. And so when we look and we say, wow, look at all these metrics. Look at your clientele. People love you. We see it. We can observe it. look and we say, wow, look at all these metrics, look at your, your clientele, like people love you, right? We see it, we can observe it, that not only do you have quantity, but the quality of the coaching and the interaction and what people are sharing is so outstanding. And so

I'm meeting with him and I just said, and I just said like, hey, I think I asked, I said, what makes you different? And he says, well, what makes me different is that like after a training session, right, that I'm not done training them, right? That I at the end of my day, I'll shoot a text and I'll see how somebody's doing and see if they're sore. And, you know, if I haven't seen somebody or they missed the session, I'll check in and just say, hey, is everything going OK? Or if I know about their personal life, we'll do that. And like, OK, so that's your what? And I said, but why do you do that? And I was kind of asking, I was asking because we have 40 employees.

How do I motivate the rest of these guys? So I'm like, well, why do you do that? We all know that that's important, but why do you do it? And he shared with me his story. You know, he had tragic loss of his fiance's father in an auto accident. And he said, you know, I went to the service and there were hundreds of people that were affected by this man in a positive way that he had selflessly given something or, you know, connected them and created friendships with other people and he's like i realized at that service that i had the potential or the opportunity to create lasting relationships right and uh and he literally i mean in the course of last year after that service like

he's doubled his clientele but more importantly importantly than the dollar figures that he's been able to earn and all of that, is that he's created relationships that will carry on for years and years. These people have changed their life, they've lost weight, they feel totally different about themselves, they're way more confident. They're never going to forget the experience that they've had because he created a relationship and that they trusted it. So, I mean, that to me is why we all kind of got into the fitness industry in the first place. from being a good coach that shows up and has clients right to becoming a great world-class coach that like has a waiting list of clients it was defining purpose right and whether you're an athlete business owner you define your purpose and all of a sudden like really good things yeah that word carry it's care carries over so strongly if that's like tied to that passion you know I resonate

when you told me that story before we recorded it hit me powerfully my mom passed away a couple years ago and she's a world-class coach and her funeral was the same thing like hundreds of people that just turned up who generations like 80 year differential and people showing up that were all massively impacted. And then they hit their communities and like, oh, that's the power of, that's the power of coaching and that connection. If you dial it right, that's life altering in the positive way. This is one of the few fields where that ripple can be gigantic.

And I, you know, I'm not, I always say that fitness is the medium by which we teach lessons and create relationships. Right. Right. It's like, it's not like I grew up, you know, meathead. Right. I wasn't, you know, a bodybuilder in any past life or anything like that.

I like sport. I played team sports. I played individual sport. But I wasn't really a gym guy. Yeah. But what I saw when I started CrossFit and I got really involved and I started coaching people was like,

wait a minute, people are coming to the gym to improve their lives. They want to be healthier and happier. So how can we make them healthier? We can talk to them about nutrition. We can talk to them about workouts. We can do all that. But we can also make them happier by having deeper discussions like hey why do you

come here right like right what what is it that's important to you oh you've got kids you need to be healthier or have more energy for your kids and then we start to create relationships and that's what i think the power of the crossfit community in general has been is creating that community, creating groups of the like-minded people that are supporting each other in that effort. Right. But that's what's fun about this to me. If this was solely about reps and sets, dude, I would have kept my job as a lawyer. I just, I don't, that's fun for me. But like, and the sport is fun for me

right but you know the winning and losing don't get me wrong I'm a very competitive guy and I want to win but I want to win because I know we put our best foot forward right and because we had this process that I think made us better people in the process of going through um and that really showed itself in 2014 right so I was coaching Camille she won I was coach our team won the CrossFit Games it was the first time we won we we you know we had been I guess at that point that was our sixth year or something we We had been four years before that. And so it's like we had always been close. And I always said, ah, that doesn't really matter.

But then I thought, well, what if we win? Maybe it really matters. Maybe I'm just saying that because it's an excuse. We don't need it. Yeah, because we haven't won, right? And then we won. And the first 15 minutes, it was emotional. It was like, wow, we've worked so hard for this.

And then like 15 minutes passed by and I'm like, well, good job, guys. Like the individuals are going, so I'm going to run back and coach them. You know? And I was like, wow, that's really fleeting. Right? The winning and the losing is really fleeting and you know when we go through our most trying times in life the loss of a parent or you know cancer or or anything like that the trophy isn't going to help you at all right but the process of what it took the consistency the hard work the waking up

and doing something when you didn't want to do it, all of those life lessons that go into that entire process to be the very best you can be, the best coach, the best athlete, the best team you can be, that all changes your life for the better. And that's the stuff that I wake up for and say, like, I'm going to get to the gym. I know I've got 30 athletes in here, and I want to be around them because I want to see them go through that process, and I want to be giving them the best that I can

because I know that one day something bigger than sport will happen, and I would love to think that they are all going to be champions in dealing with that in the same way they approach their sport. Right. CJ, excellent advice. Love your perspective on pretty much everything. We just haven't covered enough then. We'll have to get lunch, and then that way I'll have to dislike something about you.

I'll have to find something. If someone's an athlete and they want to follow your programming, where do they go? Invictusfitness.com or CrossFitInvictus.com and then click the competitors or backslash competitors. That has all our competitive athlete training programs, all our other programs. If you just want to be a recreational athlete, you just go hit the main site. Dope. Instagram?

I'm throwing a curveball at you. I know. Yeah, this is awesome because I never get this right, but I think we're at CrossFit Invictus on Instagram. Yeah. We'll be posting in the show notes. We'll post some links for you. You'll help me out. We'll take care of you show notes. We'll post some links for you. You'll help me out.

We'll take care of you. Cool. Excellent. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, CJ.