Barbell Shrugged - How To Make Good Movers Move Better W/ CrossFit Weightlifting Staff Member, Ray Regno

Episode Date: February 22, 2017

I want you to meet Ray Regno. We met Ray on a Wednesday at Mike Burgener's gym as he was off to the side coaching an athlete, teaching how to activate the lats in the overhead squat. As you'll soon learn, Ray is a really smart coach. He is one of those coaches who has a drill or movement for everything. We got to talking to Ray and were impressed with just how knowledgable he was about movement. The coolest part is that Ray is mostly self-taught. Through an obsession with the CrossFit® Journal, observing and learning from good coaches, Ray has been able to rapidly up-level his coaching game in a very short time. In this episode we talk about the value of progressions in teaching movement, how to speed up your growth as a coach, and why you should hold your athletes more accountable for how they move. PS: To all the coaches (and aspiring coaches) out there, this one is a must listen. Drop us a line in the comments below and let us know what you found to be most valuable in this episode.    PPS: Give Ray a follow on the Insta- @rayregno ...he shares some great coaching content ...and if you ever make it out to San Diego, his gym, CrossFit Stronghold is a good place to add to your bucket list. 

Try to figure out as many ways to explain the same thing over and over again, rather than just saying, hey, knees out, hey, knees out, hey, knees out, hey, knees out, hey, knees out. You see coaches do that all the time. It's like, did it change anything? I don't know. You know, an effective cue is a cue that works. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson. And we're down here at CrossFit Stronghold with Ray Regno. How's it going? And we're going to be talking about coaching today. Coaching, probably a good bit of weightlifting as well since Ray is a weightlifting coach.

And we've had the joy of spending some time with him at Bergener's gym that's where we met up in Bonzel and one of the things that Ray's been really good at is it's like you have these little tricks what caught my eyes you have all these little tricks and Mike's like go talk to Ray he can fix your hips or knees or or whatever and then you're doing some novel thing in the corner with somebody, and I'm always just kind of watching and learning. If Coach Berger is dissing athletes off, he's like, I don't know what to do, go talk to Ray.

That's a good sign that we probably should have a conversation with you. That is a good sign, yeah. So do you actually work with CrossFit weightlifting? Yeah, I work maybe once a year. The CrossFit weightlifting staff is really deep. I mean, we've got a lot of really, really experienced coaches, but whenever something's here in San Diego, Coach B likes me to be there. I'm his

mobility guy. So I'll be working with him this March at the one in Invictus. What got you to be the mobility guy? I don't know. I just when I first started coaching, I knew absolutely nothing. And then I was telling you guys earlier. You too?

Yeah. It's like the definition of first starting. I actually only attended maybe five CrossFit classes before I started coaching, which is kind of scary. Looking high inside, I knew absolutely nothing. Did you have any background in fitness or movement prior to that? I did high school wrestling. Yeah.

And I played sports. I ran track and cross country, played roller hockey. So what made you think, like, oh, I should teach this to people? I just learned it yesterday. Well, it was more of a thing out of necessity. You know, I helped start this gym back in 2007. And my only contribution really was my name on the lease because I had good credit. And then I hung out for about a week, and then I peaced out and did other stuff. And then about five years into the

business, the business was failing and my name was on the lease and everything. So I was on the hook. And just out of necessity, I came back. I actually intended that day to shut down the business. I said, you know, we're three months behind on rent. We owe about $15,000. Let's just cut it and kill it. Yeah. And then when I got here, I walked in the door. My brother-in-law looks at me. He's like, months behind on rent we owe about fifteen thousand dollars let's just cut it and kill it yeah and then when i got here i walked in the door my brother-in-law looks at me he's like what are you doing here i'm like i'm not really sure and then ace the guy who was running our crossfit program at the time he's like what are you doing here i'm like i'm not really sure my sister walks in about two hours later she's like what are you doing here i'm like i think i'm supposed to take

over operations and so that's what i did i was was here for, I got, this was back in November of 2011. We opened the gym in October of 2007. I was hands off that entire time, that middle section. I came back. I didn't know anything. I was just helping out Ace. He was running our program at the time. I got my level one in December of 2011. Driving out to Arizona for my level one, I felt like we're gonna get evicted. Like, I just afraid we're gonna get evicted. He didn't really know what to do. Um, so I ended up helping ACE run our program. I was here, he was here till April before I finally had to kind of pull the plug. Like we were paying him to be here, but we still weren't paying the rent. Right. And it was rough because we are, we've grown the business. We actually got another 20, 30 extra members and things were

looking better, but we were still not paying the rent. Yeah, that happens in business sometimes. Yeah. We've noticed. It's definitely happened to us before too is where, you know, you may hit a hiccup and then it takes a lot longer to come out of a hole. And so a lot of times when gym owners kind of hit that dip in the road, it's like, oh, things are improving. It's like, well, you got a little bit of catch-up to do.

Yeah. So it like triples the duration of a lot of things. Yeah. It was really hard because I had to make the hard decision to let him go. I remember sitting down with him in this area here when it used to be an office. You see that platform that used to be an office in there. We sat down and go, hey, Ace, I'm sorry. We can't do this anymore.

And, you know, he took it personally, obviously. I mean, we became pretty good friends during that time. And he took it hard, and he went and left, and then half the gym left with him. And then he actually owns Mighty CrossFit, which is just down the street from us. You know, there was a little bit of a rift for a little while. But we're friends again.

Everything is cool. You know, I refer people over there. Some people have left me and gone to him, and it's cool. I'm really big on referring people to other gyms. If we're not a good fit, go somewhere else. It doesn't threaten me yeah you know but um literally when i let him go that same night i said okay well where's my first day coaching a class i don't know what i'm doing and i attended maybe five crossfit classes before that and so literally someone who knew nothing i took my level one and i attended a few classes with my brother-in-law when he ran the program here before.

And so the fact that I'm coaching other trainers is weird. So how did you get from there not knowing anything to where you are now? Because you're on L1 staff, is that correct? And you help out with CrossFit weightlifting. And, you know, you got CrossFit Stronghold. You have a very strong weightlifting presence here. You got jiu-jitsu here. And, you know, you're a killer gym now years later. So how did you get from there to where you are now? I became obsessed with the CrossFit Journal. presence here you got jiu-jitsu here and you know you're you're a killer gym now years later so how

did you get from there to where you are now i became obsessed with the crossfit journal and basically anything i could look at that taught me how to move and so every single day when i wasn't coaching i was in the crossfit journal i was watching videos i was reading articles i was learning as much as i could i started following um kelly surrett on MWOD on YouTube. And anything I could find, I would suck it up and just digest it and just try to teach it to someone. And that's kind of my philosophy. I learn it. I want to give it away. And that's kind of how I got into that.

Yeah, you were talking about how a lot of times people, you know, maybe they get their level one and then they start coaching. And then it kind of stops there for a lot of people yeah it's not uh it becomes very passive or uh there's no reason i was talking to one of my coaches um just the other day and he was saying he's also a judo coach he was talking about the the judo coaches in his country which is scotland he was talking about the judo coaches in his country, which is Scotland. He was talking about how a lot of them, they don't go and get certified or get any further education unless their certification is about to be up and they've got to get that piece of paper so they can keep coaching and so they'll be allowed to keep doing it. And you've noticed that that happens with coaches sometimes or yeah coaches that own gyms come in here and then they're surprised that you're

still actively coaching them yeah I think the big thing is where it really stems from the desire to coach are you here to make money and just see everyone as a dollar sign or for me I look at people I go I want to help you be better and coaching for me or any sort of form of leadership there's a ton of responsibility there. Like, I could potentially break this person, and I don't want to do that. And I've come to realize that everyone moves differently.

Everyone is built differently. So the more ways that you can explain the same thing, the more effective you'll be as a coach. And so what I do is I follow other coaches. That was one of the things that really helped me was I would shadow other coaches coaches and I would steal cues. Try to figure out as many ways to explain the same thing over and over again

rather than just saying, hey, knees out. Hey, knees out. Hey, knees out. Hey, knees out. Hey, knees out. You see coaches do that all the time. It's like, did it change anything? I don't know. An effective cue is a cue that works. I've used some very inappropriate cues before and those work and it was weird and I wouldn't use it at level one course if I'm not allowed to do that.

So there's a set of verbal cues that are allowed? Yeah. A set of verbal cues that are not allowed? We don't want them to be inappropriate or offensive. Those are the ones I keep out of the seminar, but sometimes here it depends on who's in front of me. If I know that they'll respond to a particular cue, I might use that. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. A good cue is one that works.

We're not at the level one cert right now, so you're allowed to share any cue you want. Do you have any examples of what you're talking about? So I was in Mexico teaching a level one, sorry, a weightlifting course in Monterey with JP. And I had this translator, and she was following me around. And I got kind of impatient with her because she talked really quietly, and she was really slow to translate.

And so this guy kept banging the bar off his hips. And I go, mira, mira, mira. Este es para la cama, y este es para la barra. And the girl looks at me, she's like, what did you just say? And I'm like, he gets it. He's like, oh, I get it. So I'm not trying to hump the bar out this way. Or like, Clocko says, this is for sex, this is for bar.

Same exact thing, right? It's like, yeah, I mean, Vective Q is one that works, and that kid remembered it. The next day he's like, oh, I'm doing that again. And he even sent me a message like a few months later. He sent me a video. And I was like, look, I'm not doing it anymore. Like, well, I'm doing that again. And he even sent me a message like a few months later. He sent me a video. And I was like, look, I'm not doing it anymore.

Like, well, cool, there you go. And so sometimes the most memorable cue is going to be the one that helps somebody. So if somebody just got their level one and they're excited to be coaching, and this happens a lot, and we know it's happening a lot because there's four seminars going on every weekend, and they're sold out. a lot and we know it's happening a lot because there's four seminars going on every weekend and they're sold out and there's six so there's about 200 over 200 people a week yeah getting certified there's not that many gyms there's a lot of people just going out there and starting to coach that are new what what is your recommendation you got you've got the cross at journal which is a really

good place for people to go yep um and And you've gone and shadowed other coaches. Is there like a first place you would go after a level one now, now that you've kind of seen the whole field? Biggest thing is, just like we said, go shadow somebody. So shameless self-promotion, I always tell level one participants, if you want to come shadow me, come shadow me. Come to my classes, watch me coach, come with questions, ask questions afterwards.

That's totally free. I do that for free. So if you're a level one coach in San Diego and want to come out or you're in Southern California, it's always an opportunity that's there for you. But big thing is, yeah, just go shadow someone. Shadow as many people as you can. One of the things I do at Coach B's is I'll just sit there

and watch him coach someone else, and then I'll see if I see what he sees, and if I don't see what he saw, then I'll make a note of that. Or if he uses a cue, I've collected so many cues from him every Wednesday. Every Wednesday I will go home with a new cue. And I think that's the most important thing. I try to tell trainers all the time, figure out as many ways you can to explain the same thing.

It will be a whole lot more effective than just saying the same cue over and over and the person just keeps making the same thing. It'll be a whole lot more effective than just saying the same cue over and over and the person just keeps making the same mistake. Yeah. And then you also have clients that have been with you for years and years and years. Yeah. Or you get somebody who is a gym owner that comes in from out of town and you're continuing to coach these people. I know one of the things that, I mean, I've experienced this myself

when I was running a facility and I've watched a lot of other coaches do this is you have a client that's been with you for 18 months and you have all these fresh people who need a lot of attention and then you have someone that's been there for a while that might not feel they need this attention. And there's almost this breakdown in the relationship between the coach and the athlete as the athlete starts feeling like they don't need to be coached as much, and so the coach doesn't feel as welcome, and there becomes this break in the relationship

so that the athlete's like, oh, I know what I'm doing. What's your experience like coaching people who are more advanced and people who are good movers and making them better? That one's a hard one. Sometimes you do have those athletes who are just very resistant to change, and I think it works itself out here where people who don't like feedback, they don't stay because I'm going to give everyone feedback. I'm going to yell feedback across the room.

The guy in that corner over there thinks he's hiding, but I still see that he's collapsing his knees, and I'm going to yell it from across the room. room i think that's one thing that coaches need to do is they need to be present i'm not a very tall guy but i make sure that everyone knows i'm in the room like hey i'm watching you you know i'm gonna make you move better um i think i've developed a culture here where everyone understands that like it's never gonna be good enough for ray sometimes people come in it's like their first two months. Want to feel like you're not enough? Yeah. Come hang out over here. Ray will never love you.

One of my interns was like, man, I used to train at Invictus. I came over here. I thought it was all amazing. And then Ray humbled me my first day. Yeah. I mean, he always likes to tell people he made me squat with the girls. I go, well, dude, you were butt-winking in the bottom. You were collapsing all over the place.

Your knees were, like, together. Yeah. You know, those are very fundamental things that we need to fix yeah and now he's one of my interns he helps coach um the big thing is that everyone needs to understand that we're always a work in progress and i think that once we feel like we've arrived then you know you're gone yeah there's no such thing as finished like you're never strong enough your technique's never good enough you're never you're never mobile enough like there's there's somewhere to go even if it's just like a like a fraction of a percent in each one of these categories like the pursuit of mastery is this

never-ending thing mastery is an asymptote we talked about that a year ago yeah you're never done you've never truly mastered anything it's the pursuit of mastery that that you should be pursuing yeah there's this phrase that we use in the CrossFit course where it says infinitely refinable. And that's everything is infinitely refinable. You might think you know something about something and you'll meet someone and be like, oh, whoa, I never thought of it from that perspective. And also because everyone is built differently,

everyone has different limb lengths and everyone has different structures of the hip. It works for one person. It isn't going to work for the same person, for another person. And so we got to be constantly learning, constantly learning, because you might get that one person who's going to break all the rules. Yeah. You know, and so that's my main motivation is to keep learning and learning and learning

because I want to keep making people better and better. One of the things I've learned lately is I was trying to, I found myself getting, I guess, anytime I was pushing the limits of my strength, I would get hurt. And I was really training in a couple different modalities. It would be CrossFit or weightlifting or gymnastics, which can live underneath CrossFit. And then I started looking around. And it wasn't until I started talking to other people. I wasn't picking up books. I was watching some videos online, and I started talking to people

who were training in other modalities. Like the latest one that the first time someone mentioned it to me, I was like, meh. And they're like, no, not for me. And then now I was doing it this past weekend, and I found a lot of value in it, which was acro yoga oh yeah and so someone first mentioned that I was like I'm not really sure that's going to be beneficial you know I think guys are just doing that to pick up chicks which does work but uh and I found a lot of benefit of that and for me if you feel like you're stagnant

I think just going into a completely different movement practice can be highly enlightening. You can start over really quick and just learn from a completely different perspective. And the puzzle that you've been building gets a lot bigger really fast. That's been my experience. Yeah, case in point for me, I sprained my ankle in late December playing roller hockey. And squatting for me is life, and I couldn't squat. And this year so far, I've benched more than I've squatted. Yeah.

I never really knew how to bench. Like, you know, you don't have to bench in high school, but we were never doing it right. And, like, I started consulting all my powerlifter friends. Like, how do I do this? I don't know how to do this. Like, learning how to brace. Like, people will think, oh, you're arching your back. That's wrong.

Well, not if you keep your brace tight and it doesn't move. And then just the idea of you've seen people benching and their feet go flying off the floor. Well, no, that's wrong. You should be pushing through the ground like you're trying to kick someone in the shins. They're usually giggling when they do that. Or they're really – yeah. But there's so many little nuances there.

You're like, I never knew that that was part of the bench press. You know, like, squeezing your shoulder blades together, being on your traps. It's pressing with the lats. Someone actually used that cue to me on me five years ago. Press with your lats. I have no clue what that means. And now that I've actually learned how to bench, I'm like, dude, my lats are smoked all the time. Yeah.

And so, like, that was kind of a new adventure for me, like, going into a realm that I didn't really – wasn't familiar with. I feel like it takes a while for people to learn how to use their lats when they're pressing. Like you just mentioned with bench press, but I feel like it's just as relevant with overhead press or overhead squatting. Like knowing how to activate your lats when you're catching a snatch or something like that

is a skill that people don't get on their first day. It takes a lot of experience for you to be able to feel that. Yeah, and that actually leads into one of my favorite cues I've been using over the last two months. Let's take a quick break. Cliffhanger.

Alright, so today we're talking about the number one exercise that you probably are not doing that will help you pull under the bar faster when you're snatching. Alright, and that movement is... The muscle snatch. Woo! Alright, if you've never seen a muscle snatch, Mike's going gonna give you a quick demo so you know what we're talking about. It looks kind of like a power snatch, but it's not quite the same thing. You'll see that once the bar gets to Mike's hips, he does extend his hip aggressively, but

after that he kind of is just standing up. Once the bar gets to his hip, he kind of just stands up aggressively and then uses his arms to pull it overhead. He's not extending and then coming down and catching like you would on a power snatch. He's obviously not getting all the way into a full squat. So really, one of the benefits here is that Mike's aggressively pulling with his arms to get the bar from his hips to all the way overhead. So if you're a person that has a lot of trouble continuing to pull on the bar to pull you

under the weight, then muscle snatches are probably a very good option. So one more time, Mike's going to do one more quick demo. Now that you can see, or now that you're aware of that and you'll be better able to see the pull from the hip to overhead, you can see that Mike's not doing a power snatch, he's doing a muscle snatch which is distinctly different. Beautiful. Alright, you can think of this very similar to how you think about pull-ups. We kind of have two distinct variations of pull-ups. We have strict pull-ups and we have kipping pull-ups and they're used for different things.

So you can think about a power snatch or a regular snatch as being a kipping pull-up. You're trying to get as much momentum as possible on a kipping pull-up where you get that momentum and then you kind of float up to the bar. A power snatch is very similar to that where once you get to here and you get that extension, the bar is kind of weightless as you pull yourself under and you kind of pull your body underneath the bar. A power snatch is more similar, excuse me, a muscle snatch, which is what we're talking about specifically on this video,

is more similar to a strict pull-up. On a strict pull-up, you're hanging under the bar. You don't produce any momentum by getting a kip or any amount of swinging. You just use your muscles strictly to pull yourself all the way up to the bar, or rather vertical, obviously. And then for a muscle snatch, it's similar. You get a little bit of momentum, but once you get to here, it's all arms pulling on the bar to pull the bar overhead.

You're not pulling your body underneath the bar, you're pulling the bar over your body with your arms. So again, if you're a person that has a lot of trouble with pulling on the bar, then this is a good movement for you. We don't often teach it to beginners so much, mostly because beginners, they often pull too much on the bar with their arms, and they're not using their legs enough. Whereas once you get some experience under your belt and you become more intermediate, we find that some people, they worry about their leg drive too much, and then once they get to here, and they're kind of fully extended with their

legs, they kind of just fall under the weight, and they're not pulling on the bar enough, and for those athletes, muscle snatches tend to work very well, because they have the leg drive, but they're not using their arms enough, and so we give them a drill with muscle snatches to make them use their arms a little bit more, and then hopefully, ideally, in the end, you're using your legs and then hopefully ideally in the end you're using your legs to their full extent and then you're using your arms to their full extent where the legs drive the weight up and your arms drive you under the weight as fast as possible and if you can do that then obviously you can snatch as much weight as you possibly could so that's one specific way that we like to use muscle snatches for our lifters. All right. So you saw Mike before doing basically a full muscle snatch.

That's probably the most common version you can do, but there's many other variations within that. If you look at Mike right now, he can basically pull just from a standing position. This might be something you would do more like in your warm up. Okay. Just with an empty bar like that where he's he's doing just kind of like a modified overhead press. Press? Press?

A modified overhead. We like to press around here. You press a lot of weight. A modified overhead press which has a lot of external rotation, has kind of a side benefit doing it super strict like that. You could also pull from, oh actually you could even do it from there. You could do it from squatting quad if you wanted to. We do this in our warm ups a lot.

Or you could do it from the hang if you want to do it from the hang. So you just bent over in the hang, get to that power position and pull. He could do it as a stop snatch where he starts with the bar on the ground where he's at mid shin and he pauses above the knee or below the knee and then finishes the movement. So you can still do a muscle snatch from any other position you want to. You can do it sitting if you wanted to since you would just be sitting and pulling like that, very similar to the standing version we showed at the very beginning. So lots of different variations.

In the next section we're going to come back and talk about how to do each technique specifically. All right, so how do you do a muscle snatch? So if Mike pulls the bar up and just stands there normal with a snatch grip, we'll talk about the arm mechanics first. So again, part of the reason we like to do muscle snatches in addition to simply working the muscles that you're going to be using to pull the bar overhead is that it gives you a really good bar path. So if you look at Mike from the side, as he a muscle snatch he does it just like it would snatch.

Elbows up and back and then he rotates over top and the bar stays very close to his body. You can't really do especially a heavy muscle snatch with the bar getting out in front of you. For all the people that loop the bar in front of them where they have kind of straight arms and they do that big loop, once the bar gets heavy you know if Mike puts the 15s back on, then the bar is not going to be able to get away from him because the further away from him the bar gets, the heavier it seems to be and it gets a lot harder. So it'll correct itself simply by adding a little bit of weight. You'll automatically want to keep the bar as close as possible simply because it's way

harder not to do it like that. But if you're doing a regular snatch and the bar is essentially weightless as it's passing this area and you don't really have to pull on it very much, then you don't really get that instant feedback like you do on a muscle snatch specifically where you're having to pull very hard with your arms. Alright, so that's how your arm mechanics will look. As far as your lower body mechanics, again if Mike does a demo from mid-shin where the bar would be if you had plates on it, all the mechanics of the snatch remain the same as far as first pull transition and second pull. But if he does it in slow motion, he gets to the power position here, then especially

again if he's doing this heavy, he's going to get the full hip extension, but his heels are going to stay on the ground. And then from here, once he's basically all the way standing up straight, his arms take over, his hips stay locked out straight. He's squeezing his butt together nice and hard. That way he doesn't re-bend because there's no pulling yourself under the weight during a muscle snatch. There's only pulling the weight over you. That's one of the key distinctions.

So if he does that a little bit faster, kind of like half speed, you can see he gets, he stands up and then gets to a full locked out, hip, knees, ankles not really locked out, but hip, knees, then heels on the ground and the arms take over and he drives it overhead. The common mistake is that people will get here and they have a hard time not getting back under like a power snatch. So really keeping in mind that you need to keep those glutes squeezed at the top is going to keep you from re-bending. So squeeze all the way up. Once your knee and your hip gets straight, it stays straight.

So you get to here and then you just stay there and pull arms only. Alright, so when should you do muscle snatches? You have a couple of options. Warm ups, as we said, you know, doing it with an empty bar. It's a good way to just get ready to go do heavier snatches when you're doing the full movements. You also can do them as a main lift or you can do them as assistance work. Depends on what you're trying to do.

If you if you want to include them as a main lift, a good day to do that is a day where you still want to get a good workout, but you're trying to probably have a little bit of a lighter day. You don't want to go for a one rep max snatch. You might go for a 3RM muscle snatch, where kind of by default, even with 100% effort, you automatically are going a little bit lighter. Your 3RM muscle snatch might be 150 pounds versus your full snatch which might be 225

or whatever. So it's a good way to automatically go a little bit lighter but still get some really solid work in. Or you could do it as assistance work after you do the main lifts, your snatches and your cleans, your jerks, your front squats, back squats, maybe in some of your other assistance work like your snatch pulls, your snatch high pulls, or whatever else you're doing that day and now you're on to doing the other things in your workout that are kind of less important for a weightlifter but are still important like pull-ups and

weighted push-ups, maybe your bench pressing, whatever you could include you know three sets of five of muscle snatches as assistance work. Mike also has another unique example that for some of the advanced lifters could use. Yeah. I like to do like a five rep max on muscle snatch, then do some drop sets, so drop down to five or ten percent of that five rep max. And I'm going to then basically pre-fatigue the shoulders a little bit, like Doug was talking about.

Minimize the weight, but maximize the effort. It will be really difficult, but you're not going to put yourself under a huge load. Then do some work off the blocks. If you have trouble really getting underneath the bar, you're going to pre-fatigue the shoulders a little bit so that way you really have a max effort pulling underneath the bar, but you're not going to go real heavy doing it. You're able to train getting under what feels like a heavy load. So it's a really great way to kind of train getting underneath the bar without going heavy

and it's a great way to build up shoulders specifically for snatch. Alright, if you like this video you can also go to barbershark.com, click on the Technique WOD tab at the top of the page. We have more videos just like this in the library. Also, we have a free 50 some odd page e-book that you can you can download at Flightweightlifting.com has examples of programming for weightlifters, has examples of frequently asked questions that we get from our weightlifters. It also has links to a six part video series

that we have for snatches and for clean jerks. So it's an awesome resource. Doesn't cost you anything. And you can get that at Flightweightlifting.com. We'll see you another day. Join the conversation every week after the episode over at barbellshrugged.com. This is also where you'll find new episodes of Barbell Shrugged, Technique WOD, Nuggets and Pearls, Barbell Business, Get Change, plus new articles every day on our daily blog, written by us, guests of the show, and some of the biggest names in strength and conditioning.

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And we're back. Ray, your competition directly across the street must be... They sound intense. It's super intense. I don't know if... Diehard Pilates. Everyone always mentions that. So the story behind that is that she's a former Marine, and she used to teach at this place down the street

called Hardcore Pilates or something. My girlfriend actually teaches over there, so if you like Pilates, she's over there. So we can't make fun of it too much. Not too much. The name's interesting, but yeah. I have a friend that does Pilates and it's a back and forth thing.

It's hard. It's actually different. I've yet to do it. You know what? That's the thing is because I've been making fun of it, I'm now going to end up

in a Pilates class. You should try it. Now I'm going to go. It's actually pretty interesting, especially with what we know about movement. I remember going over there and I understood everything

that they wanted to do and it's kind of neat because you'd use a lot of, with the reformer machine thing, we do a lot of funky stuff. Is that the Chuck Norris thing? Yeah, it's kind of like the Total Gym or what is it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that thing.

It kind of looks like a Total Gym, but you have these little springs to add the resistance. It's a lot harder than it looks. But, you know, a lot of basic concepts like posterior pelvic tilt, keeping everything nice and engaged. And you do these weird squats where sometimes your feet are like this and you're pushing off your heels and then you're pushing off your toes and you're turning your feet in like this. And actually my first date with my girlfriend was she did a private session

with me there. That was your first date? That was our first date. Okay. So she'd go, a couple more reps. And I go, okay, so that means two reps, right? And she's like, okay, six, seven, eight, nine. I'm like, dude, couple, this is hard.

You said a couple. Yeah, you said a couple. But, I mean, that was hard. I was sweating. She's not very good with maintaining expectations. The numbers thing. But, yeah, she's a really great instructor. So if you want to do some Pilates, she's over there.

I've done it. I put my foot in my mouth. I'll be doing Pilates in no time. You do some barre classes too. She teaches barre if you want to try that. That sounds more up my alley. That's actually super hard too. There's all kinds of interesting like workout methodologies that we never –

that's so very different from CrossFit and weightlifting. I've got a couple friends that, it's like, well, CrossFit and weightlifting is such a, I mean, they're the epitome of strength sports, really. Between that and powerlifting. What would be the opposite of that? Ballet. I have a couple friends

that have been doing ballet just to balance out all the strength training. You know, something that enhances more finesse and grace and that type of movement. And they've talked about there's muscles and their glutes and stuff that they just, there's no way I would have trained this in the gym. It was only going to happen in ballet class. Yeah. And that was my experience with Pilates, too.

It was like, you know, I can squat close to 400. Why can't I push this stupid little thing across? And some blonde girl over there just got it moving. Yeah, and she's like, okay, hold this position here and then put your arms up like this. I'm like, what am I supposed to be doing? Like, sometimes she'll post videos on Instagram, like, doing these things.

Like, I'd probably kill myself trying to do that. You know? But then coming back over here it's like it's different you know at first when I first saw her squat I was like oh oh she squats way better now but a lot of it is because with a reformer you're on a on a stable platform like you don't need to engage your midline it's fixed yeah so it's a little bit different so at first it's kind of like that's not so pretty but now she squats like a boss so it's just kind of like teaching people how to change their mindset and figure out how to fire the right tissues that you need um it's kind of it's just different yeah yeah now we've teased the shit out of people how do we get them to turn on their lats while overhead this was actually something this is the first cue I think you gave me that turned on some light bulbs. Okay.

So most people are upper trap dominant. You know, your shoulder looks for stability. It goes in almost 360 degrees, right? Most people, their natural reaction is to shrug the shoulders. And this is what I see a lot of times with people with overhead squattings. They're shrugging their shoulders here. And then they can't get external rotation of the shoulders. But then when you relax the traps, and all of a sudden you have more room to rotate,

and then now you're feeling it in the lats. And so that's, like, been my favorite cue for the last two months is, hey, less traps, more lats. And one of the things I like to do is actually give someone a PVC pipe and have them hold the PVC pipe like this. And now you really can't shrug because you're anatomically stuck in this position. And I use that as an assessment piece. It's not just as a drill to help them understand where they're supposed to feel, but it also helps me assess, is the shoulder really the problem?

Yeah, I've noticed getting an empty barbell, going more weight, and doing that supinated overhead squat, getting to the bottom and feeling my T-spine just going, oh, it's stuck. Yeah. The T-spine is not moving. Yeah, you can't pull the bar behind your head. It's not a shoulder problem. It's a, you know, I need to work on my posture. Yeah, it's a great tool.

And I learned that from Todd Widman at a level one course, my first time as an intern for HQ, which case I also bombed that weekend but bombing was the best thing that ever happened to me because it forced me I hear a lot of people bomb it their first time yeah it's not a common thing it's not like people show up and just nail it the first time when you were presenting you bombed what do you mean well so the way it works the internship works is back then it was your first weekend you just shadow the trainer and you just watch right and the second weekend you come back for a seminar um back then they let you teach the whole breakout session so for the squats you go over the air squat the front squat the overhead squat well the timeline calls

for 55 minutes of instruction i finished in 20 minutes yep and i looked at todd i go hey is there anything you want to add and he he goes, yes, I love this. Because, you know, I was here. I was helping ace coach and I thought maybe I knew how to teach people how to squat. And, you know, I had a lot of people here that didn't know how to move. And then I got 10 good movers. I was like, well, what do I do with you? It all looks pretty good to me.

And he jumps in and he goes, this is what I love. I love really making good movers move better. And that was a light bulb moment to me. And he jumps in and he goes, this is what I love. I love really making good movers move better. And that was a light bulb moment for me. And face melted. He's doing all these drills, including this supernated grip overhead squat. And what that does is it locks the shoulders into that good position and helps the athlete feel like this is where it's supposed to be. You know, elbow pits are facing in.

Armpits are facing forward. And you can't move because you're locked in. You're holding it that way. And then what he did was, okay, now leave your shoulders where they are. Now turn your hands this way. That's a regular grip. And see if it falls apart. And one of the things that I learned later on as I've been coaching,

like maybe three years into coaching, was that for most people it's not a mobility issue. People are always like, oh, it's my mobility. My mobility sucks. Most of the time, it's actually just motor control. You know, everyone wants to use the mobility thing as a crutch. I had one lady in particular came in here. She couldn't squat to save her life for the first two months, but she could hold on to a pole and get to the very bottom of the squat. Now, in hindsight, I look at that and go and go well she had all the adequate ankle mobility all the adequate hip mobility and she could have an upright torso but as soon as she let go of the pole she fell over. So was mobility really ever

her problem? No it was motor control. Like she her tissues didn't know how to fire and hold that position. The same thing is true in the overhead squat. A lot of times people will get to about here and they get lazy and then they roll their shoulders that way. And they're trying to shrug, and now that puts them even more into this position. So going back to that cue, it's like, hey, relax the shoulders, now rotate your shoulders. Relax your traps, rotate the shoulders this way. And most of the time that fixes a ton of people,

and they just don't realize that they're trying to find stability in the wrong place. Really what we want to do is we want to use that lower trap and then the lats to support the load. Yeah. What do you think causes the upper trap development? I mean, I think it's common in most CrossFitters and weightlifters. We're doing a lot of overhand movement, whether it's pull-ups or presses. Is that what's causing it?

I think for a lot of people, they're just used to being in this slump position. Yeah. You know, like they're at a desk. They're on a desk all day long. We're on our phone texting. We're shrugging, and we find our stability that way. And that's what our body gets used to. And then it's like a rubber band, right?

If the rubber band's on stretch all the time, what does that do? It makes the tissues weak or the rubber band weak. Same thing is true about these tissues here. If they're constantly on length, now they're weak. So your body's going to default to finding where it actually finds the most help, which is that shrugged up position. So teaching people, like, be down here, so keeping the scapula retracted and depressed,

and actually teaching people how to retract their scapula is going to be a whole lot more beneficial for that position. Yeah, the motor control conversation is interesting to me. I was hanging out with a friend, Aaron Alexander, this past weekend. He has the Align podcast. You should check that out. But one of the things he was talking about was, I'm going to butcher this, but it was neuromotor amnesia that people suffer from.

At some point, maybe because you're sitting and you're in that shrug position or when you're sitting, your ass muscles are being pushed off to the side. And when you go to use them, your body basically forgets. It loses the memory of being able to fire those muscles. And so now you start having these compensation. Well, I'm still going to get to the bottom of the squat. I'm still going to get in the overhead position. But because my body doesn't even know how to fire these muscles, there's an amnesia to it.

And now these things aren't even turning on. And so now you have to repattern. It's not about mobility. It's about repatterning the motor units. And so it's okay. Now, when we go overhead, how do we keep the upper traps from firing so hard and the lower traps, how do we get them to actually turn on in the lats? Yeah.

I mean, it definitely is a case of use it or lose it. And one thing that I tell people, and they don't like this answer when they ask me, hey, how do I get better at the overhead squat? The answer is overhead squat. Like Teresa Larson, you guys had her on a little while ago. She used to make me take an empty barbell and just hold the bottom of a squat for 10 seconds and then stand up and then repeat for 10 reps. And that's how I got good at the overhead squat was getting used to that position, learning how to get my torso upright, keeping my shoulders in a good position. And that's what I'll have people do. At the level

one course, we use this thing called squat therapy, you know, and people leave the course and never use it again. But it's an amazing tool to help someone learn how to squat. For most people, what they need to do is just get to the spot where they lose position and then just stay there for a little while. Spend some time there. Spend some time there. Let your neuromuscular connections rewire so it realizes how to stabilize there. And then once that's good, then go a little bit lower. And then stop. We start to shake and then figure it out and then go a little bit lower

and a little bit lower and a little bit lower. Eric Preston is a flow master for CrossFit headquarters, and he said that muscles that fire together are wired together. Sorry, the other way around. Muscles that are wired together are fired together. And a lot of times we just need to teach them how to get wired again. I was on the news a while ago where they're talking about the squat. People are, any human under the age of two years old,

what do they do when they see something on the ground? Perfect squat. Oh, yeah. Right? We're genetically wired to do that. But, you know, when we're three years old, we go to school, preschool, what do we do? We sit in these amazing things called chairs, which limits our range

of motion to about 90 degrees. So what happens? We get that neuromuscular amnesia where our body doesn't know what to do past 90 degrees. And that's why people struggle to get in the bottom of the squat. So the example you used a second ago where you were squatting down to the lowest point where you were in a perfect position, you were kind of hanging out in that position and you tried to like slowly move

lower and lower and lower again achieving a perfect position every time to to rebuild that pattern yeah how would you do that with the overhead position that we just talked about where we're you know if we're doing overhead squat or something similar where people are upper trap dominant and maybe they're they're they're in anterior tilt with their scapula and they're all out of position do you have any similar drills for the overhead position? Oh yeah, we do a 10 second tempo down or even longer sometimes. I'll just have people put the PVC pipe overhead and they start to go down. Okay, stop. And if they, and I'll say freeze and they'll go down a little lower and they start to go here. I go stop, fix it. And then a little bit lower and they lose it again. Stop, fix it.

And just it's a stop, fix, stop, fix, stop, fix. And slowing people down is, how do I say this? Why do people kip a muscle-up? Because they don't have the control, right? Everyone wants to skip that position where they lack control. But you've seen those videos where people do a one-minute muscle-up. They're going up for 30 seconds, they pause at the transition, then do a 10-second transition, and they get to the top.

That's a very, very pure expression of control. People speed through things because they have no control. So slowing them down and forcing them to actually control every millimeter is huge for them. Yeah, and CrossFit, you know, CrossFit and weightlifting, both, there's kipping and CrossFit with the pull-up and with the jerk and weightlifting, and everything is very dynamic and explosive movement and uh i think that i think that a lot of time like crossfit came along and and presented the explosive movement to the market you know the before that people weren't doing any of that yeah and it was missing and do you feel that there's been maybe a little

bit too far of a swing into that dynamic movement, not enough time spent in tempo and static work? Yeah, I definitely do agree that sometimes people jump too fast and too intensity. And that's where sometimes CrossFit gets a bad name. Oh, people are getting hurt. They're doing things wrong. But one of the primary tenets of CrossFit is mechanics, then consistency, and then intensity. And I think what's falling apart is that coaches are forgetting to do progressions. You know, we teach progressions at the level one course. It's like, hey, the progressions are great.

Use them. And you ask the average level one trainer, hey, what's the push press progression? They can't tell you what it is. And I think that's the disconnect is that coaches are not being diligent about teaching progressions. You know, here in my gym, if you can't do a strict muscle-up, you have no business doing a kipping. Yeah, the videos of people doing muscle-ups where they're swinging

and it's almost like they're aiming for that spot. It's like, oh, if I can just land right here, then I can do my ring dip. Right. could just land right here then i can do my ring dip right but if but if i am like one degree off yeah you know my fucking arm just flies straight out and i'm like hoping i don't do a face plant dude those are nasty videos whenever a ring gets behind somebody's back and they're still hanging onto it yeah it's like waiting for the shoulder to pop out of socket just hoping just hoping it will not strong enough to be in position, but flowing right through it. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

And that's a tricky thing is that CrossFit emphasizes mechanics, consistency and intensity. And then people leave and it's not a sexy term for them. They want people to go jump straight to intensity, and that's when things go wrong. So do you guys have set progressions for most of the main movements here at Stronghold? Yeah.

I use the level one progressions. Yeah? Yeah. And then sometimes I'll add, for like the muscle up, sometimes I'll add in little drills and stuff that kind of supplement the progressions. But I find a lot of value in the progressions that are already written. For someone that's never seen any of those progressions, they don't have a level one cert,

they maybe never even heard the term progression. What does that look like? What does a progression for a front squat look like or a clean or any example you'd like? Well, for the clean, we just teach the Bergener warmup, right? We teach the down, the down position. We teach the finish position. We teach the elbow sign outside.

We teach the muscle clean. And so all those pieces, they meld into what looks like a clean, right? So my members, they know what a progression is. They might not know all the steps from the top of their head, but they're reminded all the time and that's why my my athletes move well yeah you know my athletes might not be the fastest or the strongest in san diego but they move freaking well yeah because we drill into them all the time all the time like relentlessly drilling positions

well you know i've been coaching crosses since 07 and And one of the things that I notice is a lot of times there is a little bit of pressure. Not a little bit. There's a lot of pressure from the clients a lot of times because they're online. They're watching people. They're watching other people in the gym, and they want to do what the other person is doing. They want to belong. Yeah. You know, it's like, oh, if I can't do this movement or I can't do this amount of weight, then I'm not going to belong.

Yeah. And so I think that a lot of times coaches wind up caving under the pressure of a client going. It's like a coach may go, look, I know you shouldn't be doing kipping pull-ups. You know, maybe you should do some ring rows instead. Yeah. This can be better for your shoulders. But the client, I've had them where they just fight you tooth and nail. Like, I'm fucking grabbing that band.

I'm going to wrap around the bar and I'm going to swing all over the fucking place. And you try to stop me type of thing. I mean, do you have clients like that? Or do you think that you've, like, you've kept it under control from the very beginning and so you don't end up with spoiled clients? Most people like that don't end up with with uh spoiled clients most people most people like that don't end up staying with me gotcha i crushed their soul i think um because i'm really i'm relentless about that stuff and i tell them it's not safe i don't want you doing

that i mean there's a couple times where in the open there'll be muscle ups and if someone doesn't have strict muscle ups i'm like okay fine you know go ahead and do it but and just kind of pray they don't hurt themselves but for the most part my athletes understand the culture here it's like we we value good movement over anything else it's not worth doing that movement now and then being broken for the next six months and not be able to do anything yeah and that's something i preach to people when they come in the door i think that's i think as far as my community goes it's it's been self-regulated that way everyone understands that I'm here to keep you safe. I'm here to help you move better.

I'm here to help you. And they understand that heart. And so they don't push back on me too much. Yeah, so sign of a good leader. Sounds like you're setting the culture. I think a lot of times if coaches feel like things are out of control, they could look at maybe how they could show up better. Yeah.

I think the big thing is also making sure the athlete understands your perspective. And I was telling my coaches yesterday in our staff meeting was, hey, yeah, we coach people physically, but we're also kind of like therapists. People come here for a reason, and the way that people react in the gym is a reflection of how they react to things in real life so we're throwing the throwing adversity at them how they respond to it here shows how they respond to things in real life and sometimes it's more than just teaching them the movement it's really just building the relationship with them yeah and once you've got that rapport with someone they're more likely to listen and understand hey the reason why i'm

not letting you do this because i don't want you to wreck your shoulder. Yeah. You know, and sometimes you get some hard-headed people that really want to push, push, push, and then they end up getting hurt. And then you can be like, I told you so. Ha! Try not to be like that, because then that just damages them even more. But then I've been fortunate that the people

that do end up kind of messing themselves up, they don't mess themselves up too bad, and then they realize, yeah, Ray, you were right, I'm sorry. Yeah. You know, it's like, I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm not trying to hold you back. I'm trying to help. Sometimes you have to take a step back to take a step forward,

and that's one of the funny things is people come from bigger gyms, they come over here. Sounds like something out of a Disney movie. I'm not buying it. But, you know, like Nico, for instance, that one guy I was telling you about who came here and I made him lift with the girls, like it kind of bruises ego at first.

But he's also, like, a great example of what can happen when you take a step back and focus on the fundamentals and then move forward that way. It sounds like when clients come in, if they can't deal with having a certain level of humility, they're not going to stick around. No, definitely not. So now you have a whole culture of humility, and that is a really great place to coach from yeah yeah it's huge and that's definitely they get that right away i tell them up front like if you are looking for a cheerleader i'm not that guy but if you're looking for someone who's gonna be relentless and help you be better then it will be

a good fit and people kind of weed themselves out that way so so how do you use the progressions in a group setting? Like if there's cleans on the board, it's five sets of doubles or whatever it is, and you have 15 people, are you having each person do a slightly different variation of a clean or maybe one person not doing cleans at all and they're just doing front squats? Or how do you mix it up?

That's a good question. So we actually allow people to, like, for instance, I have this one lady, Mary, and she comes in and she can't squat because her knees are messed up. There's always some way that you can scale the movement so that it looks like the regular movement. But for the most part, what we'll do is we'll just do the progression where she can go. And then wherever she starts to lose it, she just stays in that step in the progression. And for most of my athletes, too, like, with the clean, most people, for at least the first six months, they're not allowed to pull from the floor or even from the hang. You know, we teach the down and finish and the burn and warm up because we want people to learn how to drive with the legs and create that upper momentum from the legs and not swinging this way.

Right. Everyone wants to lean forward in that dip because the back gets to play and their hamstrings get to play. Learning how to maximize the leg drive and then pulling under the bar, that's key. So I actually force people to stay there. Like, okay, you're still not driving the legs. That's where you stay for the first three, six months. And then once they get a little better, then they can progress and go from the hang.

And then after that, they can go from the four. That's how I progress people on the clean and the snatch. What does your programming look like here? Right now, I program a lot. Like right now we're in a CrossFit open prep thing. So a lot of stuff we're doing is we have a lot of skill work. Like yesterday we did single arm overhead squats with a dumbbell, and that crushed a lot of people's souls.

He likes to crush souls. He's said that multiple times. I'm a soul crusher. We need to get some tattoos on you. Something along those lines. Crushing souls. There's going to be dumbbells? Yeah, there's going to be dumbbells in the open.

Word on the street has it. Yeah, I figure I need to set them up for success, right? So that's part of the program. We did that yesterday and tomorrow we're doing dumbbell snatches. We're not going to see this yet. So we know there's dumbbells, but we have no idea. We don't know what it's going to be. It could be dumbbell Fran, which will be nasty.

I saw Turkish get-ups on the CrossFit main site the other day in a Metcon. I think that would be hard to judge, though. Yeah, it could be. I'm wondering what is unique that they're going to put in the Open this year that they haven't done before in a Metcon. I happened to see dumbbells were on main site the other day, and so I thought that was very suspicious. We'll see what happens.

We'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, you never know what Dave's going to throw at people. So I'm just trying to throw in all the movements that we know that we're going to show up, like toes-to-bar. People are terrible at toes-to-bar, muscle-ups. Dumbbell toes-to-bar. Dumbbell toes-to-bar. Single-, toes-to-bar. People are terrible at toes-to-bar. Muscle-ups. Dumbbell toes-to-bar. Dumbbell toes-to-bar. Yep, yep, yep.

Single-arm toes-to-bar with a dumbbell. We're not doing the open, so we're totally just... You're going to hold the dumbbell between your feet. We're just going to give Dave a bunch of ideas. I'm not doing it. I signed up yesterday. Tie some dumbbells to your feet. Baby Masters for me.

I'm old enough for Baby Masters. Actually, I just hit Masters. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. Baby Masters. Maybe. I'm old enough for Baby Masters. Actually, I just hit Masters. Did you? Yeah. Baby Masters. Maybe I should do it. See, you still got to compete with guys like Nunu Costa. Yeah, that's a problem.

Yeah. That dropped me off. We derailed your programming talk, so walk us through your programming. My programming looks a lot like dot-com programming. I'm a little bit more um strength biased because most of my athletes are the 98th percentile crossfitters i don't have a lot of athlete athletes here i've got accountants i've got realtors i've got nurses i've got teachers i've got just your average joes and many of them lack strength about 98 of them can't do fran rx and so a lot of times we put a

lot of strength emphasis. Like, for instance, today was a bear complex. We did three rounds of the bear. We had a 20-minute time cap. And then after that, we threw in an eight-minute Metcon at 70% of your heaviest. And you had to hold on to the bar for the whole seven rounds in order for that round to count. And then yesterday was this long 20-minute EMOM soul crusher.

That was fun yeah i mean lately we've been kind of like in an open prep thing we're just throwing things at them but for the majority of the year i do a lot like crossfit football or i think we call it crossfit power athlete where we do a strength piece in the front but then the conditioning part is always related to that skill so you're not going to see like a bench press and then all of a sudden we're going to do like random push, like snatches and whatever afterwards. Because then there is – That's a lot for somebody who's not highly experienced or skilled. Yeah.

I've noticed that I've walked into gyms before where, yeah, you have this really complicated strength piece and then a really complicated Metcon. I'm like, man. That's not going to work. I don't even – like for me to warm up for this workout is going to take an hour. Exactly. I mean, you're like five by five front squat at the front,

and all of a sudden you're going to do this 20-minute Metcon afterwards. Like where's the time to warm up? Yeah. I don't believe in that. We do everything – like I write these really detailed programming workout plans where it's got like a neurological challenge, it's got a general warm-up, and then we've got the skill stuff for the strength piece. And the strength piece almost always goes into the Metcon

if there is one that day. And that's how we run the majority of the year, just to kind of develop strength. And then two months before the Open, then it's like just lots of conditioning. Yeah, I think that's a really good point to make. I don't know if I would call it a mistake, but I see a lot of people who are writing programs for gyms probably make coaching more technically difficult than necessary

because of how many different skills are put in one workout. I'm like, man, let's do one difficult thing and make everything else simple. Yeah, exactly. So it's not the games. This is, you know, these are people who, yeah, they're, they're sitting at a desk eight hours a day. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, you shouldn't be putting pistols, bar muscle ups and double unders and, and max effort snatches in the same workout. Yeah. That's way too much to cover for the average person. They're like, what's a snatch again? Like we always, I always try to keep it simple and everything relates to something else going down the pipe. Because sometimes there have been days

when I throw away the entire workout and just spend 20 minutes on a skill. If the class needs it, like, oh gosh, no one can clean in this room. Let's just do cleans. Let's just do the burn and warm up for 30 minutes. I've done that before. And if you've ever done the course with Coach B,

a PVC pipe is more than enough. Or if you're taking a level one course, 15-minute session with a PVC pipe, you're sweating. So, yeah, there's a lot of value with a PVC pipe. Earlier you talked about staff training. We talked about continuing education and kind of how you got into coaching and went from knowing nothing to where you are

now. And that was a lot of just of your own hard work with just finding resources and just digging into them. What do you do for your coaches as far as staff training? Like how do you help your coaches get better? I just watch Barbell Shrugged, right? Yes, that's exactly what we do. We do talk about Barbell Shrugged every once in a while. We've been kind of on this new thing where we've been learning how to figure out leads and sales stuff. So we've been doing a lot of sales training lately. That's also important. Yeah, it's an important skill so that I can go take a vacation, right? Well, yeah.

I mean, in my opinion, sales is where coaching begins. Yeah. opinion like sales is where coaching begins yeah and if if you're not doing a good job if you're not treating in a sales process as part of your job as a coach it's just you're I think people think that coaching begins when someone walks in the gym is like okay I'm here for my class yeah no it's like this is where you get to find out what their goals are exactly where there's your opportunity to motivate this person or help them see where they could really go. Because most people, when they walk in the gym, they have no idea what's possible. Like how many of our clients have walked in a door at a CrossFit gym, they get in,

and six months later, they're doing things they didn't even know existed. Yeah. Let alone had they seen a video of someone else doing it, they're like, fuck that, can't do that shit. Yeah. And now they're jumping on top of 30-inch boxes, and they're 66 years old. And it's like, wow, this is amazing. And so I think that the coaching piece in sales is this is your first coaching job. Yeah.

It's free. They're getting a free coaching session with you. Yeah. And your job is to convince them that you can help them, you know, achieve more than they ever thought they could. Yeah. So we've been doing a lot of that lately, teaching them how to listen to what the client's not saying.

Right. Asking lots of questions, coming from a perspective of curiosity, coming from a perspective of being like an assistant buyer. Like, this is what we want to help you achieve. You know, what can we do for you that's going to be the most benefit for you, even if it means not training with us. Right.

You know, we want to benefit them in that way. And a lot of it, again, it comes back to why are you doing this? Do you do this just for the dollars or are you here because you want to help people? And so kind of really... Most people aren't coaching for the dollars. You think, right?

There's more dollars other places. There's definitely more dollars other places. People are here because they want to be here but it is sad there are some gyms where the coaches like the owners are all about the cash flow yeah and then you've got their coaching staff they're struggling and they're like no one's teaching them how to do anything you know i've seen that around san diego and that sucks and i don't want to be that like for me my whole thing here is i haven't taken a paycheck from the gym in years. I'm trying to create opportunity for my coaches and teach them how to coach and teach them how to do sales. And so right now we're in that.

We're teaching them how to, like, just sell. Or, like, not really sell, but help people see what they need and help them get what they need. Yeah, if the average CrossFit coach was way better at sales, there'd be more people doing CrossFit. Yeah. I think that'd be a good thing. When we're not doing that, what we like to do is get in groups. At my peak, I've had six or seven interns. Right now, I have four.

But we'll get together and we'll just practice coaching each other. Like, hey, you go outside. Hey, everyone else, you're doing this. You're doing this fault. You're doing this fault. You're doing this fault. You're doing this fault. You come back. Okay, now you're teaching the push press. Go.

And we play like that. And so it's kind of like the level two course. And if you haven't gone to the level two course, go to the level two course. It was a life changer for me, for sure. You know, learning how to see and correct movement. And so we practice those drills with my staff here. It's like, you know, it's also valuable to learn how to demo faults. Like coaches don't realize that.

You should be able to demo what someone's doing wrong so you can show them, hey, this is what you're doing. This is what I need you to do instead. So we do a lot of that. We'll just practice, hey, okay, teach me the snatch or teach me how to do this, teach me how to do that. And I'll sit in the corner and just take notes, okay? Here's what you need to do. Here's what you need to do with this what you should do with this this that and the other um one of my goals for this year is to take myself completely off the coaching schedule as the primary coach and just be an assistant and the

floater and um what i want to do and i've been starting to do this is i take notes with my coaches coach and i say hey this was good this was good this we could do better this we have opportunity to grow and really pouring into them and developing them so that they can keep that quality of coaching. It sounds like your gym is seeking mastery as a group. Yes. You know, and the only way that, I mean, you taking yourself off of the schedule is probably the best way to do that. Yeah.

I think a lot of times people that own gyms or have been coaching for a long time, the idea of not coaching class seems foreign. But if you can do a really good job of developing other coaches, you can impact way more lives. Yeah. Case in point, we had Austin Maliolo and James Hobart walking to the gym at 6 a.m. today. And I wasn't supposed to coach, and my coach was here,

and I was so tempted to take over the class it's like no I need to let Nick step step up and let him do it and he did a great job you know and that's one of the things I think as owners we need to be okay with stepping away and letting our other coaches do their job and then be there to help them if they need to and kind of give them feedback definitely um I think there's that need that's that's really how we build the next generation if you think about it if i'm just trying to coach all my classes that limits the amount of people i can impact but if i can impact a bunch of other coaches they can go and pack their gyms and you know it carries on you know a much bigger impact that way than me just being

really myopic and looking at my members totally my members yeah i like the idea of having some type of a scorecard for for your coaches where if they're coaching class you can you can watch class and kind of just make notes and there's a systematic way to do it and then say you have five coaches and and you as the owner so you have for each person like if you coach the class and all five of them separately shadowed you and watched and scored you and you did the same for them then you could have a meeting where each person stands up front and then they say okay like everyone say what they saw ray doing you know what did he do well what didn't he do well what can he improve on etc and then you get objective feedback from from five different people that way it's not just one person saying well you could have spoke louder or you could have you know said people's names more often

you could have uh paid more attention to this person because they were kind of left off to the side and they didn't get any attention or whatever. They could say, well, that was kind of a one-time thing, and this guy, he's picking on me for one reason or another. But if you have five people and they're all saying the same thing, then it's like, okay, well, I can't not pay attention to it now. It's obviously a thing that I need to correct because you have five perspectives in this example. I like that. I'm going to use that.

I'm totally going to steal that and do that. You totally should. I like that. I'm going to use that. I'm totally going to steal that and do that. You totally should. I totally will. Awesome. Where can people find you? Crossfitstronghold.com or rx2movement.com. I've been using that also. Just kind of CrossFit's my thing.

But sometimes when you say CrossFit, sometimes people are like, they won't talk to you. And it sucks. You know, like you don't get to see the goodness that CrossFit is if you come straight with CrossFitfit so i'll say i just have rx2 movement because i do teach weightlifting i teach gymnastics i teach all kinds of stuff i might even teach zumba if people wanted it but it's kind of like first for some communities where they're so closed off to crossfit it's like i'm rx2 movement and it doesn't look as scary and i go in and i give

them crossfit and they don't know it's crossfit so that's rx the number two movement.com or crossfit stronghold.com awesome where can we find you on uh instagram ray regno r-a-y-r-e-g-n-o or rx2 movement yeah give him a follow on uh social media he's always putting up great videos true story yeah thanks for coming on the show dude thanks for having me