Barbell Shrugged - What It Takes to Be a Great Athlete and Coach w/Jason Leydon, Anders Varner, Doug Larson — Barbell Shrugged #409

Episode Date: July 17, 2019

Founder and head trainer at CrossFit Milford in Milford CT, which has been to the games 4 times and has had athletes at the games 10 years in a row. Team CrossFit Milford finished 2nd in the world in 2015 and Jason has produced 9 podium finishers. His professional focus is on personalized strength, conditioning and movement quality which ensures the foundation is properly built on an individual level so each athlete can reach genetic and athletic potential. He is an established, knowledgeable and respected teacher, coach and resource in the global fitness community. Jason earned his degree in Physical Education and Health from Eastern CT State University where he also played basketball. In this episode of Barbell Shrugged the crew digs into coaching CrossFit games athletes, the journey of a professional CrossFit Coach, and managing business, life, fatherhood, and fitness.   Minute Breakdown: 0-10 – Why to be a great athlete you have to be selfish  11-20 – Progressing as a CrossFit Coach and always learning 21-30 – Why CrossFit the best athletes in CrossFit have mastered play 41-50 - Building programming buy in with athletes 51 -60 - Staying up to the times in CrossFit and learning the skills needed to coach the best athletes  61 -70 - Soft skills and language to make athletes better   Follow Jason on Instagram Conquer Athlete Podcast CrossFit Millford   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Mike Mcelroy on Instagram ___________________________________ Please Support Our Sponsors Savage Barbell Apparel - Save 25% on your first order using the code “Shrugged” Organifi - Save 20% on green, red, and gold juices at www.organifi.com/shrugged WHOOP - Save $30 on a 12 or 18 month membership using code “SHRUGGED” at www.whoop.com ___________________________________ One Ton Challenge Weekend   August 1st - 4th   Find your 1rm in the snatch, clean, jerk, squat, dead, bench.    Add them up to find your One Ton Total.    The goal is 2,000 pounds for men and 1,200 for women.    4 days. 6 lifts. 1 goal. 1 Ton.    http://live.onetonchallenge.com   “What is the One Ton Challenge”   “How Strong is Strong Enough”   “How do I Start the One Ton Challenge” ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-leydon -----------------------------------------------------------------------   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

August 1st to August 4th, the One Ton Challenge. In your backyard, four days to find a one rep max of the snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press. You're gonna add them all up, find your one ton total with the goal for men being 2,000 pounds and ladies 1,200. The leaderboard goes live on Thursday, August 1st, and shuts down on Sunday, August 4th. If you're going to be at the CrossFit Games, make sure you come and hang out with us. The One Ton Challenge, live at the CrossFit Games, Friday, August 2nd, from 5 to 8 p.m. in the FitAid Lounge.

It's going to be so much fun. Wes Kitz is in the house. Morgan King. Katie Cork, Savage Barbell, Whoop, FitAid. So many cool companies. Romwod is going to be in the mix. We've got a stacked lineup of incredibly strong people that we're bringing straight to you. Make sure you get over to live.onetonchallenge.com. Register for the leaderboard. Get your name in the mix. Free downloads making strong people stronger.

That's a killer e-book with a starter kit on how to get strong and how to dominate the one-time challenge. It's been awesome. Week one is in the books with all the new shows. Jason Kalipa on Mondays. Ryan Fisher Tuesdays, Shrug Wednesdays. Thursday, the Muscle Maven. Friday.

Friday. That's our boy Dr. Sean Pastuch. Laid it down last week. And then Sunday, the Barbell of Life with Travis Mast. Strongest man in the world. Best coach of weightlifting right now. Friends, I appreciate you being here. Thank you.

We'll see you after the show. August 1st through August 4th. The One Ton Challenge. Shrug family, if you can't make it to the CrossFit Games, that's okay. We got you covered. Come hang out with us, live.onetonchallenge.com. Registration is open for the One Ton Challenge right now. Get your friends, get your training partners, get your gym owners,

get everybody riled up. You got four days to lift all the big weights. Find your one RM in the snatch, clean jerk, squat, get everybody riled up. You got four days to lift all the big weights. Find your one RM in the snatch, clean jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench. The goal is 2,000 pounds for men, 1,200 for you ladies. And make sure you get over to live.onetonguechallenge.com. Free eBooks, making strong people stronger. A little bit of a starter kit in there. There's going to be some nutrition info plus a live leaderboard so you can track all your results and you can see how this thing gets bigger better stronger faster all the things over time the one-ton challenge august 1st through august 4th live at your own gym do it it's going to be super fun uh and if you're going to be at

the crossfit games friday august 2nd, the One Ton Challenge Live presented by Fit8. So exciting. We have the biggest, strongest people in the country showing up and international people showing up. Wes Kitts, Morgan King, Marcus Philly. Whoop's going to be there. Caffeine and Kilos. Savage Barbell. Romwod.

So many cool companies. I'm so excited about watching all these monsters get really, really strong in person. Live.OneToneChallenge.com. Stay in the know. Get your free downloads. Get on the leaderboard. Tell all your friends. It's going to be super radical.

Who doesn't want to max out six lifts over four days and get on a leaderboard and find out how strong they are? I do. That's why I started the competition. Of course. Live.OneToneChallenge.com. Jason Leiden is on the show today. Super excited because I wanted to talk to him for a long time. We've had some athletes together in the past and it's very cool that we got to have such a high level conversation on Shrugged today. I want to

thank our sponsors over at Organifi, Organifi.com, forward slash Shrugged, save 20% on the greens, the reds, the golds, all the micronutrients you could ever want to put in your mouth to make sure you're as healthy as you can possibly be. Organifi.com, forward slash shrug, saving 20% on all your purchases. Also, whoop.com, use the coupon code shrug, you're going to save $30 on an 18 or 24 month subscription. The Whoop 3.0 just came out.

It's got all kinds of live features so you can see your heart rate in the middle of the workout. But most importantly, it's the coolest band and the greatest band for finding out how recovered you are. It tracks your sleep. It tracks your HRV, your heart rate, all kinds of your daily strain to find out how intense you should be working out. I adjust my programming all the time based on the results of my sleep, how good I should be feeling, how recovered I am, all kinds of fun little gadgets in there to make sure that you're training optimally. Whoop.com, use the coupon code shrugged. You're going to save 30 bucks on an 18 or 24 month membership. Also, welcome to the crew. Savage Barbell. Savage Barbell is the official apparel sponsor of the One Ton Challenge. They're sponsors of the show. I've got a big ass package waiting for me to open right now. I have not worn any of their

t-shirts yet because I want to do just a big unveiling. I want to unveil the amount of gear that they just sent me to try out and talk to you guys about. But I have been wearing their shorts for a while. I wear them every single week. They have the little slit up the side, which is awesome. For all things that we do in the gym, we squat so much. And when you have that little slit there, there's just extra room because you're strong. You need the slit to squat properly um savagebarbell.com use the coupon code shrug gonna save 25 on your first order savagebarbell.com use the coupon code shrug save you 25

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So excited to have them on board. Let's get into the show. I'll keep that part out of the show. And everyone listening right now can wonder what I just am keeping out of the show. I'm going to leave this part in. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrew's partner, Doug Larson. Mike McElroy.

Jason Lydon. That's right. From CrossFit Milford. You said it right. Wait, what was it? No one says my last name right. What did they say? Lydon?

Lydon. Lydon. Since I was four years old. Really? And finally, by the time I was like six, I was like, fuck it, it's Lydon. Just? Layden. Layden. Since I was four years old. Really? And finally, by the time I was like six, I was like, fuck it, it's Layden. Just roll with it. Yeah, I was rolling with Layden. Cross at Milford.

Dude, I had a call with Aliko on Tuesday. That's a joke. And the guy goes, how do I say? Nobody said it. I was like, do they think I'm fucking serious? I didn't even hear what you said. I was like, Jason. Jason.

Andrew said Milford. Milford. Milford. I said Milford. That's what they're going with. That's the new one. It's like when you go to the Cayman Islands. It's the Cayman Islands. Cayman. When you're there. Yeah. The Cayman Islands.. That's what they're going with. It's like when you go to the Cayman Islands. It's the Cayman Islands.

Cayman. When you're there. Yeah. The Cayman Islands. But that's what they say? Yeah. When you're in the Cayman Islands, they say, oh, welcome. Like, you listen to the radio, it's like, welcome to CrossFit Cayman.

Wow. Have you been to the Cayman CrossFit? Yeah. Nice. I know the guy that runs that. It's awesome. Yo, when I was on the phone with Aliko this week, the guy goes, is your name Anders? And I was like, it totally is now.

It is now. Anders. I was like, if you think I this week, the guy goes, is your name Anders? And I was like, it totally is now. It is now. Anders. I was like, if you think I'm stronger than I really am, call me Anders. If you think I'm regular American strong, just Anders. That's fine. Anders is great. You should change that. You might be disappointed in how many people call you Anders then.

Yeah, it's a lot. All the Americans. Every once in a while at regionals, they would drop an Anders in there. And I'm like, I'm going to win this heat for sure. And the strongest man on the floor right now. The problem is it the floor right now. The problem is it was the last heat. Dude, tell all the people kind of a little bit of background.

I know there's tons of CrossFit games. There's tons of athletes. You've got gyms. You've got a podcast. Where did this journey start for you? Man, how far back are we going to go? Not that far. When you were born, tell us about that moment.

I came out. So I guess where I started. So I majored in phys ed and health and exercise science. And then from there I was playing basketball in college. And at that point I wanted to – I came to a crossroads because I was either going to go to Ohio State to intern as a strength and conditioning coach because my teacher went there. He was pushing me to go there to get my master's in exercise science. And then intern there in the strength field. But I still wanted to pursue basketball.

So there were a couple agency tryouts. There was one in Utah and one in Boston. And I went out to Utah after college. And I got my ass kicked. Bad. It was like my first time at Elevation. Like these dudes were on like a whole other level. And I was like, wow, this sucks.

But I didn't want to throw it in just yet. So I got hold of another agent who was running a camp out of Boston. So I shot up to Boston. I did fairly well from there and I got picked up by an agency. And then from there, I got brought out to Holland and I played basketball overseas in Holland. Came back, was supposed to get a contract in Norway. And then at that point, I was mowing my parents lawn and I slipped tripped put the lawnmower over my foot and that so that's kind of how my basketball career ended and I was in the hospital for like four weeks and in there like I didn't know like what I was gonna do with my my life at that point so I was searching for something because at that point my entire identity

was basketball and training for basketball that's like all I did right like my parents are very supportive so I didn't – I never – I grew up extremely selfish in the point of if you're going to be a professional in any sport, anything in life, you have to be selfish. You have to, right? And I kind of grew up that way where I was always allowed to not go to parties or family parties, family functions. I was just shooting free throws and drilling and riding my bike

and trying to play wherever I could. So my entire identity of who I was and everything that existed within me was around basketball so when that ended um out of my control i was kind of like what the fuck like who am i now right yeah um and i was in the hospital for for a couple weeks with my foot and then i came out and i was like at a loss so you know racing motorcycles i was doing mma i was like everything and anything under the sun to kind of gravitate to something because at that point I was like well I don't want to I knew the the path of being a strength coach

strength coach in college and I want to take that path like I didn't want to like Intern and grind out and then be bounced around like Ohio who fucking knows where right and like and I was like Because at that point I was like 26 27 I was like I just can't I can't do that right now And I wasn't going to go back into a big personal training, global gym type area. That just wasn't exciting to me. So I took a step away from my field, and I was working in the financial industry. I did that for five months.

And every day, I was like, man, should I kill myself today? Should I try to gut this out? That being said, did you learn a lot over those five years that now as a business owner is really valuable? Oh, my God. So much, dude. Like I was – my girlfriend who's now my wife was working there. She got me the job. And the guy who was running it was this awesome just business guy.

And like the place was huge. Like always winning awards from like development and growth and business-wise. And I just kind of watched him. And he was always reading books on how to manage people and run groups and kind of like taking steps and he's always bringing people in to teach you how to run essentially your own business so that because i had no idea about business but that actually as i look back on it was huge for me just to kind of see how to run a business and what steps i got to take and how to manage people and how to work with people and just kind of how to grind right cold calling people and just working all hours of the day for myself i was never the most talented

person in anything right so for me i always had to kind of work hard and kind of bust my ass more than anybody else and that's kind of the habits i formed every single day when i got up and then i learned those habits from a business standpoint so i came to a point and my wife and i we weren't married yet but i was sitting there in this little like personal training studio was going on business in my town and i was like i gotta i gotta give it a shot like we don't have kids yet we don't have a mortgage like i gotta go back into what i'm passionate about what my entire life has been around and see what i can do with it and where i can go so i borrowed some money from my family

and i bought the studio and it was just like training, just personal training, like boot camp style stuff, stuff I've always done to get better for basketball. Yeah, I was going to say, did you have like a lifting specific background where you had like good technique and like an actual real coach before this? Or just like you played basketball, you lifted some weights, and now go train people? Yeah, well, for me, I was like always a gym rat, and I was always trying to do – I was always – I don't want to – I feel like everyone says the statement, so I don't want to say it, but fuck it, I'm going to say it. Like I was always doing to do I was always I don't want to I feel like everyone says the statement so I don't want to say it but fucking I'm gonna say it like I was always doing

like crossfit child training you know like I was always boxing and wrestling and sprinting and riding bikes and rowing I would and I would never stick to a bodybuilding program I never had a coach who gave me exposure to the olympic lifts um but as far as kind of like the mixed modal training the crossfit training um that stuff I was really good at. So we did that. And then someone showed me like a CrossFit website and I looked at it and it was like strict press, you know, five, five, five, push press, push her. And I was like, what the fuck is this? Like, I'm not gonna do this. And then we've all been there. Yeah. And then I got wrapped into the first workout, which for me, which was GI Jane. And that kind of just like floored me hard. Right. And I was like, oh shit,

like I'm not some, I'm not in shape. Like shape like you know so there was a seminar in virginia and i went down there and it was a pretty cool crew so it's like tony wagner the bergerons myself um gilson uh rudy was there it's like this kind of like the main northeast crew was there and we went down there and glassman was still coaching his shirt was there like all these people there so so after that, I came back, drove back up, and kind of switched the gym over to CrossFit Milford. That was about 10 years ago. And from there, we moved to two, three locations. I had a chance where I ran a couple other gyms as well,

but I got rid of that and just had the one CrossFit Milford gym. Yeah. A lot of people go through that phase where they're like, this gym is awesome. This is so cool. I'll do another gym. Yeah. I did it.

You had a second gym, right? I can tell you that. Macro had a second gym. We've all done it. And then we've all eventually regressed back to like just one gym is cool. And then for all of us, actually, we were like, maybe no gym. But, like, you're a guy that's had your gym for a decade or more, and you're still going strong.

Like, a lot of people, they just can't do it that long for whatever reason. Like, why do you think that you're able to still be here 10 years later, still just having fun and doing your thing, when a lot of other people kind of wash out? I don't know. I think I have a great support staff. We've had some turnover, as all businesses do, when people come in and people leave.

But everyone that's come in, no matter what stage in their career it's been at CrossFit NoFleur, everyone played a vital role, whether in teaching me something about how to be a better business owner, better manager, or teaching me something about how to run a gym better. There have been some good fits, and they've stuck around, some bad fits, and they left. But everyone's kind of had a role. And I think that's kind of really helped me of being able to delegate. And that was the hardest thing for me because I was never a delegator.

So essentially being able to do that and really take a step back and focus on a few of things has kind of kept me driving I guess what's what made you a lot of like the the high level CrossFit Games athletes you've had a couple teams into the games are you still coaching the gen pop people that come in and running classes I do yeah like I'll still coach a kid's class I still coach general population classes I still do personal training in there I don't do a lot of of it because we're trying to really progress kind of like that online business part that we're doing now. So I need to kind of take a step back to focus on that. But I still love doing that. I still love connecting with everybody in there from all the different ages and levels that there are.

Yeah. What made you recognize that you needed to be able to delegate more? What was that kind of turning point like? My wife. So my wife's awesome. She's an Italian and she wears her heart on her sleeve and she's not afraid to tell me exactly how she's feeling when she's feeling it.

I'm someone that... I don't believe in balance. I heard you say that and I also know you're a partner with Angelo and I'm like, do you just like rough Italians and tell you what to do all the time? Is that your thing? What are you good at? Just being told what to do. me what to do i'll fucking do it by italian people um i don't believe in balance i believe in counterbalance right and but i'm very bad at that so like i'll go down the deep end of work and being with athletes and kind of like all that

stuff as we all do and i'll completely neglect like my other priorities very quickly and she's someone who from the beginning has always been like, all right, you need to kind of come back over here. You're spending way too much time there. You're pushing me away with this. And she just kind of lets me know from the beginning. And I think being able to step back and have a good understanding of my own values and priorities. I don't want to be divorced. I love my wife, so I've got to figure this shit out and figure out how to make it work.

And then with my kids, they help too. Because as my kids are getting older. They're like eight and seven. Like, I just love being around them. Like, I love being a father to them as they're kind of playing more sports. So I've kind of been forced to take a step back and be like, all right, I love coaching and running the gym and coaching the athletes and all this stuff, but I also love my wife and I love my family and I love doing this. Well, the gym life is really hard because the gym life is the exact same

on the opposite schedule of family life. They're on the same schedule. They conflict with each other perfectly. Your kid time and family time is when everybody shows up to work out. Exactly. It's not an easy thing for balancing that. I think about where I would be all the time

if I had the gym still. It's like, well, just be a kid hanging out in here because there's no other way to do it. Yeah, so I think I was pretty fortunate when the gym started. Well, I think I was fortunate when the gym opened. It opened up and kind of like when CrossFit was really kind of picking up. So it was easy to kind of get members back then, right? And we didn't have kids.

So it was easier for me to do the 530 classes and be there at night. And as I kept progressing and building, I was able to kind of put people in those spots because I knew I couldn't be there. So, yeah, I'm not there at night um and as i kept progressing and building i was able to kind of put people in those spots because i knew i couldn't be there you know so yeah i'm not there at those times anymore i'm pretty much there from like eight to like some days six it's a long day but mostly eight to five or something like that and then i'm home yeah we make the joke i was joking with you before about how i just couldn't teach wall balls anymore just like what are you progressing or learning about in the coaching thing like that to me is the thing that always makes me want to be where I'm at

or the passion that drives it is what am I learning? How do I feel like I'm getting better? Do you still feel like you're getting better as a coach? And what direction is that now? Man, that's a great question. Hear that? Hear that? High five, Doug Larson.

Killing the game, right? I think, yeah. So I pride myself as a lifetime learner. And I try to read like two to three books every single month. And I go through different phases of whether it's on technique or whether energy system work or different philosophies from different coaches or just something just on language and communication. And I always try to focus on that. And I kind of go through stages of which one I want to learn and when.

And I feel like recently I've been kind of going down the path of just communicating better. You know, whether it's through body language, whether it's through what I'm saying, whether it's just kind of like through listening to people, right? And what I try to do is kind of pick different stages inside that year and hone in on something that really is kind of interesting to me and then applying that to everybody around me as best as I can and trying to learn more from it. So for me, from a learning department, yeah, I'm constantly trying to do that and become better at it.

That kind of keeps me excited. Does that pass through to your staff? Is there coaches' meetings about language communication? I guess, in a way, how do you balance that with the technical side, which is still kind of at the core of coaching? Absolutely. Yeah, we do a ton of meetings. So I'll usually meet with my staff.

We do a whole staff meeting one day a week, and i do individual meetings on things i think they need to get specifically better about like once a week so some my wife thinks i meet with people too much like my entire life is a fucking meeting right but i'm like all right well if i want to keep building the gym and progressing it then they get they need to know what's going on and um i think sometimes it's tough to demand that they do what i do from a reading and learning and education standpoint, but I think it's my job to kind of pass that all down to them. So I try to get it over as best I can to them and the pieces I think that they can kind of absorb and take in and progress from. From a lot of the people that we've talked to, there always seems to be, for the gyms that stick around a long time,

like a really good intern program or some sort of onboarding phase for the coaches. Do you guys have one of those in place? Yeah, so we we recently like revamped everything we have a whole standard operating procedure for how to intern how to coach when you are a coach what to do from there and then also like a front desk management and all that stuff and our internship process takes people fuck anywhere from like a year sometimes two years sometimes six months because i whenever people sit down like listen like i went to school specifically for this, right?

So you think that's four years. Like, you didn't. You know, right now you're coming to me from having a background of not a whole lot from just a background of strength and conditioning. I was like, so you have to be patient and I have to teach you. I have to make sure you know what you're doing before I throw you in there. Yeah. So our interns will start by just kind of watching, observing for a couple months. And I have them take notes and then they ask questions and develop.

And then from there there's different stages for how to start with warm-ups and cool-downs and i make sure they have a good understanding of the body and how to warm people up and cool people down right yeah and then once i think they have a good understanding of that we then progress to some of the movements like the basic stuff and this is i'm like listen like i don't i don't need you to recite like everything you're reading from how to coach a snatch right but get people moving better and be able to see faults and correct the faults if need be, right? And then we progress that way. And then once I see they have competency in that, we then kind of progress to classroom management.

And I think that's one thing. The first school I went to was Springfield College. And they did an amazing job in the exercise department with just running a class, right, and educating people on how to manage groups. And I try to get that across to people too. Because you can be the greatest coach in the world, but if you're running a gym and you're a dick or you don't know how to excite people, you don't know how to keep people engaged, no one's going to want to come to your class and do anything you're doing, right? So we try to make sure they understand how to do that and have a good personality.

And then when kind of I feel like all the pieces are connected, then we kind of like let them lead. What goes on at Springfield College, they have a lot of people that come out of there with like a really good background and just understanding movement, athletics, training. Yeah, they're predominant in phys ed, health, like, athletic training. Yeah. So most people that go there are in that area.

Yeah. That kind of leads into one of my questions I was going to ask was, what are the big things you took away from when you were going in pursuing strength and conditioning from a basketball standpoint and, like, leading those kind those kind of not classes but the team and that and then transferring it to coaching a CrossFit class um as far as like running the classes and running the groups yeah just communicating and like you said organizing a class and the things you took away from yeah the biggest thing I saw was being able to truly understand how to coach people different who learn differently because I remember going to springfield college and like the basketball team would go in there

before the football team and then like the lacrosse team would come in and i first started in that area and i would see how the strength coaches they would operate it was different it's kind of like all right well here's your here's like your google sheet go ahead and do it they're sitting around and i see like people you know halfway not doing shit right or like doing the wrong stuff and there's like one or two people run i'm like, this really isn't that effective right now at all, right? No matter how smart you are. So that was kind of like my first takeaway of being able to touch and connect and get people to do the right shit when there's a lot of people in there.

And how do you do that? And then from there, it keeps people excited. Because, I mean, we love fitness and fitness drives us. We could do it all day long no matter what. But some people come there and they don't, right? And there's going to be times that they're not excited. How do you keep people engaged and keep them wanting to kind of be there and coming back and finding like their passion their in their road of where they want to be with it and

developing that and kind of like cultivating that even more right and that's kind of like the main things i took from that yeah has your programming changed over the years like from 10 years ago when like it was kind of more just like hardcore people early adopters that really wanted the fucking dirty gym and they wanted to just do kipping pull-ups until their fucking arms fell off and whatever it was. Like now it's a way more mainstream audience. People aren't there with the expectation of going to regionals and the games in the same way that people thought they were going to be able to do those things 8, 10 years ago. Just the whole thing is different 10 years down the line.

Like how has that evolved over time? Man, I think so much and um from our gpp perspective with inside the gym itself it's changed dramatically as you said because 10 years ago it's like all right we're gonna come and do fran and then we do fran and like all right see you guys later you know it's like i'm there right um i paid for an hour yeah man but they say uh you know this works works. So, see you later, right? And then from there, we kind of progressed into, I guess you could call it like the black box theory, where it's kind of like a strength layer for any conditioning, right?

And then from there, we kept diving deeper, and now we've progressed. And people used to ask about, like, periodization with inside, like, a GPP or a classroom setting of a normal, like, a normal population. And, like, I think that's almost impossible because so many people come and go so many people here two days three days four days five days right so the way it's kind of involved now for us is I'll take a block whether it's six or eight weeks right I'll never really go beyond that with inside a normal gym and then I'll progress and based off deficiencies that I see from the previous weeks of where I want to

build that what I want to strengthen them up in and then from a good we do so we'll do lots of kind of like unilateral work some phases or bilateral work lots of tempos lots of pauses we'll put in lots of kind of structure work because people's structures suck right from the shoulders the upper backs and mobility so we try to sprinkle that in without having to be kind of too like for us we love that shit but for them it's kind of boring to them right well how can we kind of keep that in and sprinkle it and make it be effective we're doing scapular stability drills like what is that gonna lose this yeah exactly yeah okay i don't have a six-pack yeah yeah neither do i going to club right i'm not that smart i've been running the gym people walk in like they'd like you know hold the arm up and

like kind of like do like the tricep yeah like saggy skin flap thing like the wings and they'd be like how do i get rid of this i'm God, I don't want to be in this conversation. Oh, God. You go talk to that person. I've got a thing in a month. Can you get rid of this in a month? Oh, yeah. You better get a chainsaw and chop that thing off.

It's like cutting it. And then the workouts themselves, I mean, we really kind of backed us off. I very rarely snatch with inside of our normal gym population at all. Like our overhead work is minimal at best because I just want them to keep on back, you know. So it was lots of aerobic work, lots of kind of steady state work from, you know, different dynamic contractions and movements that I don't think are going to overload the joint and stress it out too much based off everything else they have going on in their lives, which I don't even really know about, right?

Yeah. We were talking with James Fitzgerald at Wattapalooza this year, and I had never sat down and had a long-form conversation with him until we did the show together. And he basically has gone from the regular population all the way back to basically bodybuilding. It's like you bodybuild, and then you do long, steady-state cardio. And he's like, for regular people, that's funny.

That's healthy enough. They don't have to Metcon do all these other things. maybe most people in the cross space won't go that extreme but uh but he he seems very conservative with the general population yeah yeah i've had that talk with him a lot i think that is a very conservative approach and it definitely works problem is people inside gyms they don't want to do that you know so i got to kind of get them to sweat and get them to feel kind of like that that hard work um but still make it aerobic and still make it non-too like jointbearing on them, right? So they can come back the next day and feel good.

Yeah, I think that's a little bit of the fun and, I guess, entertainment, for lack of better words, of the programmer is being able to know that, know what you said, but keep it basic but also entertain them. And so you've got to get creative within the program to keep it – training those things but keep it entertaining. Yeah, 100% agree. and so you got to get creative within the program to keep it training those things but keep it entertaining yeah 100 agree and yeah i think from our competitors um that's actually evolving now for us too i think recently because we go through different stages right i think like the first stage when you're trying to compete is making sure people are strong enough right whether it's from stabilization structural integrity and then essentially just on a barbell right you snatch

cleans your squats dead presses like all that pull-ups, gymnastics. Like, are you strong enough? And if you're not, well, the first thing I do is build strength, right? So from there, you have, you know, hypertrophy and a strength and a power, whatever you got to do to get them there. And then we got to take that to the gymnastics world as well because are you strong enough for gymnastics? Because any sort of hole will just be exposed, you know? So that's – and you guys all know, like, that journey in and of itself is fucking a long time, right? Yeah, too long. All right, yeah. And then it's like – and for some in and of itself is fucking a long time, right? Yeah. Too long.

All right. Yeah. And then it's like – and for some, it's like they'll never get there, right? It's like, all right, well, if you can't snatch 275 fatigue, then, all right, you don't stand a chance in elite men. Don't even try. Don't even try. Let's go back to this bipolar training for them, right? 255, really?

Yeah. What's wrong with you? Get your shit together. It's not 2011. So we for them, right? 255, really? Yeah. What's wrong with you? You should go. It's not 2011. So we build that, right? And then we get the dynamic contractions going for people of like, all right, well, now let's just build that. And then it's like, well, now they're all strong enough and now we can sustain volume. Now we're bringing intensity.

And I think this is where James talked about with the mixed motor work. Well, now some people are like, well, if they are strong enough, then what is that strong enough number? Well, now we just got to get them comfortable doing more volume because i feel like this sport is so new and it's so young if you take any of the sport right whether it's like mma boxing wrestling basketball baseball hockey doesn't matter what it is you're playing the sport your skills get to a certain level you maintain the skills and then you're playing and you're playing it's repetition that way your brain knows like where you want what you're doing and we look at this sport it's like all right well how can we keep doing repetitions of snatches and muscle-ups all right because you're not gonna be fucking shoulders in two years or your knees

Will be gone you can't squat so how do we hot and I think that right now is where the sport is is well How do we get these athletes strong enough build their bodies correctly make sure we put them in a proper position Well now we can sustain controlled volume, and we keep building and raising that up, and I think I found Ranting right now i'm sorry but i think from there you look like aerobic that's why we brought you on wait you're opinionated we have a microphone talking to this because i feel you look at that right and you have the concept of anaerobic threshold aerobic threshold in the endurance community it's like all right well i think most people jump too quick into an intensity i think crossfit's kind of ruined that

for these athletes because they're thinking intense intense intense intense, all right, well, I think most people jump too quick into an intensity. I think CrossFit's kind of ruined that for these athletes because they're thinking intense, intense, intense, intense. Like, all right, but if your aerobic threshold's so low and you don't have, like, that big baseline, right, so your pyramid's super low or your building's super low because you don't have a huge baseline in the aerobic threshold, then you're only going to be progressed so much, right? And from an energy system perspective and ability to exert output at intense, it's going to be diminished, right? We had one athlete who had, like, a 57 VO2, a 51 anaerobic threshold. The aerobic threshold was 23. So you're looking like, oh, he's got to do more intense work.

Well, no, it's fucking like 8% of his VO2 max, right? He just can't sustain shit. So we have to build that. And it's like taking those concepts that have tried and true and been on forever in conditioning and strength and now converting those into the sport of crossfit and mixed motive maintaining that and building that with dynamic contractions for volume and control volume we're not hurting them and then at different uh areas progressing that with intensity right and then the sport itself right and so that's kind of like where it's progressed

for us it's tough with the intensity piece we were talking about making it fun that way people want to keep showing up like a lot of people show up across it because they got that rush of intensity the first time, and they were like, fuck, if I did this every day, how could I not get in shape? That was awesome. It would suck during it, but then afterward I was like, fuck it. I want to do it again. I don't know why. It was just so cool. But then they realize they can't do that every day, they're going to kill themselves, and then they kind of go back to the middle. And to that, I think there's a lot of pieces.

We went into Orange Theory yesterday. Like CrossFit has spawned a whole bunch of, in a way, significantly safer ways to get exactly what you're talking about. We walked into Orange Theory yesterday, and they just literally walked through like a very dumbed-down version of kind of like, yeah, we'll just get your, you know, you'll be on the treadmill for half an hour, and then we're going to lift a little bit of weights. And that machine uses 80% of the muscles in your body, and you're just like nodding your head, and then we're going to lift a little bit of weights and that machine uses 80 of the muscles in your body and you're just like nodding your head and you're like okay

yeah they're probably not hurting people it's just kettlebell swings and dumbbell press getting people a little stronger a little fitter yeah they took a lot of the very positive concepts from the crossfit space with community and having a small gym and like instruction etc etc but then they got rid of of all like the dangerous lifts so to speak the things are going to be to people's joints yeah like a lot of people that are intimidated from crossfit they want that just like one level down yeah now there's a market that's being fulfilled by orange lyric did you have a an aerobic background running i kind of remember like a bunch of videos coming up from maybe eight years ago or so so when i first got into crossfit

um i just wanted to kind of learn everything I could, like as we all did. So I had everybody come to my gym for a seminar because that's when the SMEs were just starting up. So it was so easy to get them from like John Wilborn to Bergener to McKenzie to, I don't know, like everybody kind of came through. And I hooked up with Brian. I was doing some of the CrossFit during seminars with him. And then after that, I went and did some of the CrossFit Level 1 seminars, and then I hooked up with James over to OPEX, and then so that's kind of been my trajectory with that.

He started to really make a, I mean, he's always made a name for himself. He won the first CrossFit Games, but his model seems to be catching on with a lot of people, and those OPEX gyms are spreading very quickly. Are you still working with him and, like, putting that stuff into? I'll call James, like, one of my mentors. He's someone I talk to a lot, but I are you still working with him and like putting that stuff so i'll call james like one of my mentors he's something i talk to a lot but i don't directly work with him like i still i still the crossfit gym i would never switch to no picture not because it's right or wrong it's just my i love crossfit you know i love having a crossfit facility my people love it uh my members love it and it goes really well and then but we do do lots of personal

training and program design and yeah i've had a i have a program design business that's been going for a while for like the past eight years um which all spawned from james you know and in his teachings in early days so that was cool too like at the first couple of opex um when james first came out with the ccp stuff it was like myself and cj and max at think tank and like this kind of like whole whole other crew right so it's cool to kind of go through that. Do you find there's maybe a battle in the gym with kind of your name attached to a lot of the games athletes and the elite stuff that you're working on and then dealing with, or not dealing with, but having a bunch of Gen Pop people in the gym as well?

And they probably see that and want to be those people even though that's not really their path yeah no not at all no so so but my normal my individuals that come for a fitness want nothing to do with the competitive side oh nice not like one fucking thing that's a massive change from like five years ago yeah everybody wanted it yeah so the people with inside our facility like some of them have tried it and they're like you know what it's just too much work it's too much time it's too much effort and they go of them have tried it, and they're like, you know what? It's just too much work. It's too much time. It's too much effort. And they go back, and they just hang out, and they do fine. And then the people that want to do the competitive side, they do it, you know?

And they do the coaching and the programming, and they run through that. But there's really no kind of, like, dissension. They actually love regionals when they used to be there because they would all go up there and cheer on our teams and our athletes that were there and then come back home and get right back into the normal gym programming. We're out of sanctionals right now. How many have you been to this year? Not a whole lot. So this is probably my third one that I've been to.

Cool. Yeah. So I don't think, I mean, I guess that's a lot, but I know some people have been to like a ton of them, right? CJ said he's like 50,000 miles in the air this year already. That's crazy. I've seen every single one. I'm like, bro, you've got like 17 teams there.

Why the fuck do you keep going? You don't need it anymore. You're all right. He's ready to be done. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, so. Has this new setup and the chaos that is CrossFit now,

as a gym owner on the health and fitness side of things, do you feel like it's been beneficial? For me, no. Just because of the weird stuff that's going on with them? I think all the, like, changing it to sanctionals, I think it hurt my business more than it helped for this year, you know, because I think the people who were kind of like the fringe athletes, the people that could possibly get the regionals maybe, like,

they're like, oh, well, what am I shooting for now? You know, what am I going to do now? And they kind of just, like, stopped, right, and kind of went back to other stuff. So I think everyone kind of took a little hit there from the online, you know, CrossFit programming side. It didn't really affect my gym either. And it's weird because you look at the videos that they're posting, and that's targeting like 60-year-olds, like 65-year-olds. Like how many 60-year-olds do people have inside their CrossFit gyms? You know, it's like, so it's kind of like neither here nor there really.

Yeah. It's something that I guess we all kind of sort of battle on at the same time. It was never like really the driver of our own marketing. But there's definitely – when they were going with Froning and Frazier and Tia and like the badasses, it was really easy to be like, you could be like that, even though I know you can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's really now you see them, like, deadlifting the milk jug, and it's like, you could totally be like that.

Yeah. Like, do I have to be? I don't want to be like that. Is that really where I'm going? It's like, how many, like, so their target, their, I guess, avatar of their client is, like, who, how many of those guys are coming into the gym? It's like, no one in my spot.

None. You know? And we don't even target competitors in the Sadar area, you know? Yeah. Going back to the programming side, if we can, we were talking about making some of those dynamic contractions sustainable just to maybe hopefully give some creativity to some of the coaches that are listening.

What are some creative ways that you've found to help make those contractions sustainable and also keeping the health of the client in mind yeah so i'm not really creative so so i look at it from just a normal old school approach of just kind of steady progressive work you know just like anything else whether you're doing like block periodization or our athletes that are kind of like more um apt for we might switch to more undulating from like a dynamic contraction standpoint of high lows medium, mediums, days, right? And it's just a steady progression from one week to the next based on what they're doing, what they can sustain if they are doing it. So I think sometimes coaches get too wrapped up in being like too creative. And it's not about like being creative and sexy.

It's about, unfortunately, it's about like just doing the proper basic shit that works and repeating that like every single day. And I heard a quote that you can have the best program in the world, but if the person doing it doesn't trust in it, then it sucks, right? So it's just doing the right thing for the athlete based on who they are and where they are inside their progression of training age and lifestyle and male, female in essence. Progressing them accordingly based on what their bodies and their structures can sustain and maintain. Slowly adding a little bit more volume and once they get them to where they need to be bringing it back and now adding in a little bit of intensity for that you know and that's really the basic model that that i utilize and yeah so yeah how do you build that buy-in to get people to think like yes this is

this is the program that i need and they're really they're bought into it they trust it they believe it and they fucking put 100% effort behind it. Man, I think that's just – I think it's easier now for me to do it just from the track record, you know, of saying, well, I've already done this and I have this. He said podiums. That's the buy-in. See those people standing on blocks? Winning.

See the number under the block? That means something. But I think for lots of coaches,'s about communication you know and understanding that everybody is gonna reciprocate language differently you know and that's one thing i also learned from my wife was with the love language book right the five different love languages and understanding how i can communicate my other wife correctly but then you take that to the athletes and every athlete is gonna understand your language differently from the way you're standing to how your hands are positioning to you touch your shoulder or an eye roll or like how you say something right like and i think just

learning how to communicate and and uh put the language across to them in a proper way of what you're doing and why you're doing it why it's really there for them and they're kind of buying to kind of your belief in that right so that's a lot of what i do is like proper language and communication what i'm doing sounds like go do this because that's what i say but it's like why am i doing this like this is the goal for you and this is why we're doing it are most of your competitors individually working with you or are they is it do you have a group uh competitor program yeah so so we recently got into a template most of it's individualized individualized with inside of our program.

So you're having those one-on-one conversations. Yeah. So most of it, the people that really want to try to progress and get to the next level, like 90% of them do the individualized stuff. Some people, because there's so much discrepancy on where the field of cross is going to be, they've kind of switched to a template because they want to pay less money, right? Yeah. So we did try to offer a program with that where they'll get this get this uh we'll call it conquer plus where each person will have a specialized

coach so they do the template but they still have a coach assigned to them for feedback video review for adjustments and changes based off the lifestyle stuff are many of your coaches uh like at the gym helping with the competitive athletes or do you kind of just leave them with regular uh yeah classes and so i've gone through a couple different stages with that and i went through one stage where some of our coaches who were running classes were also doing their competitor stuff and i don't really know right now if that's the best fit because you know they're going to get more money for doing something versus the other thing so they might put less attention to that and focus on that but then

that means that that one person is going to get less of an experience, right? Or they're going to make money coaching and they have to coach more classes. They don't have enough program clients yet. And then it's like they're running themselves fucking thin and someone's getting delayed. So we recently kind of like altered it where our main coaches who do the individualized stuff and work with Conquer from the online programming, like that's all they do, right? And then we have our other coaches who all they want to do is just run classes and help manage the gym and develop programs that way as well.

How – oh, go. Are we hamming that? Where am I at? The school. Yeah, thank you. Oh, this is really good radio. Thanks for sticking around, guys. The – going back to kind of that internship program being a year to two years

or however long it takes them to get through, the idea of having a career as a coach is really hard. Yeah. Especially for a lot of, I think, maybe six, seven, maybe even a decade ago, when the people that got into it were athletes that coached because they wanted to train. Who's coming in and kind of applying for jobs now? Is it people looking for career coaching jobs or is it still a lot of like athletes that just need a way to supplement their life so that they can be athletes

full yeah we've kind of set the culture where i don't really hire people trying to supplement their lifestyle yeah because i think that pulls drastically from my community right so i they don't even come in and ask um the coaches that we have i i came to the point a couple years ago where i was like if i want my gym to continually grow and evolve i need to have people in place that want to be professional coaches and can work and put in the hours but also want to do the extra work because like as you guys all know like our if you're trying to be a professional coach whether it's coaching classes or running programs on like it doesn't end when like you finish right your

program and finish your classes like there's so much of the stuff we have to constantly do that's sort of like kind of like living in the dirt you know and putting in the calls and emails and communication and trying to get more clients so i try to find like go-getters like that um for each area so the people that we have coaching our classes i try to give them enough classes where it's not going to burn them out but they can make money you know and then i try to cultivate what their passion is and what their genius is with inside going to burn them out, but they can make money. And then I try to cultivate what their passion is and what their genius is with inside coaching to get them to do programs and training and kind of like find their niche to develop other avenues and other streams

so they can make a living and have a life off that. So that's kind of like how we run it. I really don't have people doing the part-time stuff. Even pulling back a little bit more, what is kind of like the general state of affiliates or CrossFit gyms these days? Like I hear they're closing down or people selling them off just at a really high rate is that is that happening in in your town with the competitors like i think it's crazy that you've been around for 10 years and still thriving yeah um i've been pretty fortunate in that so with inside milford

connecticut it's not it's a city but it's like a suburb of with Inside Milford, Connecticut it's not it's a city but it's like a suburb of New York City you know it's like an hour from New York so and there's not a lot of development there so

it's very hard to to get a permit to open a gym right there for like what we do so I've been pretty fortunate in that sense where there's not a whole lot in there yeah

from direct competition as far as like gyms down, I don't know. I kind of just keep my fucking head down a lot of times. I don't pay attention to what other people are doing. I think that's a fault sometimes where putting into new tricks or new tips or what other people are doing can work. So that's sometimes a fault of mine, but I think sometimes it's not where I just don't worry about what other people are doing.

I just keep driving with what I think is working. Seems to be working. If you're on a decade straight of it, keep going. I think some of it may be the people that got into it early on when it was booming. Like you said, you could just put CrossFit on the side of the building and you'd have members in there. But they did it kind of as almost a part-time deal, and now they're realizing it actually takes work to continue it. And they're either giving it all to somebody that's willing to do the work or not. Yeah, I agree 100%.

And now I think it's harder. Like someone came in and said, hey, I got this opportunity to buy a crosser gym. Like, should I do it? And I was like, no, you shouldn't. It's hard. Like where the gym was positioned was like in the middle of nowhere. They had a kid. I'm like, you're going to have to work 70 hours a week.

You're never going to see your daughter. And you're probably going to make $0 if you're able to pay, you know, balance it out for the next two years. Yeah. Like, don't do that, you know? Yeah, and I know that was, for me, I sold mine a year ago. I was open for about 10 years. And one of the things was I was like, and people said I had a successful gym. Why would I sell it off?

And I recognized that I wasn't great at running a business, and I admitted that, like, I rode the wave of CrossFit. And once that passed, I wasn't great at running a business, and I admitted that, like, I rode the wave of CrossFit, and once that passed, I wasn't great at it. So somebody else needed to do it that was willing to put that work in and do it. Where's your training at these days? How do you keep all this going and then still have time, 45 minutes in a day? Like, what are you focused on in your own training and staying after it? Yeah, I focus right now on being healthy.

Trying to sleep. Yeah, trying to sleep. Yeah. I saw the picture. I was like, pose. Pose? It's supposed to be candid. Looks like we're talking.

Act normal. Act normal. What do I do with my hands? It's a video, so now you just look really weird. So I kind of, if I have ideas of new things I want to try from a training perspective I kind of experiment myself a lot I mean for a while is it's kind of like just flowing shit out there like I'm just gonna try this and go through this cycle And I think I like came back to like German volume training for like two fucking cycles

And I did I did a full 10 by 10s and then I increased into the full like 10 by 6s A lot of other stuff out there you could choose from german volume so i did that for a while then but then i recently got back into jiu-jitsu so i'm um nice i think one thing that's helped me out a lot with with everything is i've always been very uh structured from a timeline perspective right so i know like for my day i'm up at 5 15 and then i'll do my meditation i'll journal um and then i'll kind of read or study until like 6 30 then i get the kids up take the kids to school drop them off i go and i'll work out for like an hour 90 minutes and i get right into the rest of my day whether it's like emails programming working with clients working athletes pts etc um so that's kind of

allowed me to be able to still keep my training kind of consistent where I want to be, still get my jiu-jitsu in when I want to get that in because I've kind of been going back down that path of hitting that like three or four days a week. Plus, I hired someone who was like a brown belt, right, in jiu-jitsu. I'm like, oh, great, let's roll every day. Let's jump in for 30 minutes and get something in. Yeah, yeah. You got mats at the gym? Yeah, yeah.

So we just bring out some mats. It's great because we just roll out a mat. So we've got a half hour. We're like, all right, we'll just do a couple of two, three-minute rounds, a little minute break, and just keep going, you know? Yeah, perfect. So, yeah, I think what's helped me with my training is just kind of being super structured with my day and kind of sticking to that timeline super diligently all the time.

And, yeah, I'm just kind of lifting. I want to get stronger. Now I want to get stronger for jiu-jitsu, right, just to start crushing people. Yeah. Are you pretty healthy these days, like joint-wise that my shoulders a little jacked my left shoulder got jacked because i started doing whatever too much crossfit when i should have been doing it right muscle ups and barn ball subs and snatches and that's the thing about coaches in this space like you might know what you should and shouldn't be doing but you love all this stuff i love it i do a lot of time where

i'm like i'll do like healthy things for a while and i'll feel great and then i'm like great i'm gonna go back i can go back to all that stuff that hurt me. Time to compete again. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's why I don't do that thing. Yeah. And then the cycle just goes on and on. Yeah, it's crazy, right? So my left shoulder got jacked up.

So I stayed with that. I've just been doing a ton of eccentrics, trying to build that up because I don't even want to get it looked at. And I feel like that's getting better. It might be placebo, but whatever, it still works. Well, that's how you know what's actually healthy. You're like, it's this boring training program. And then all of a sudden you're like, I'm going to be awesome today. Yeah.

And then it's jacked. Yeah, yeah. And you've got to take a month off. Yeah. It's like one of my coaches, he's this big dude. He's like 270. But he's got like huge endurance. He does like two, three-hour rides all the time.

So Saturday I was like, hey, let's jump in and do this CrossFit workout. Right? It's like we made up some like stupid workout. We made up some stupid workout. And literally I think his back's fucked now. He can't fucking walk, right? Sorry. My bad. With the progressions that have happened in CrossFit, I mean the athletes,

we were talking about how 255, if you're cool in 2011 as a snatch, but with the complexity that has added to this and the number of things that these people... How do you stay up on what's the thing you don't know that's coming at the games and just progressing

as a coach to stay up with the gymnastic skills that people are doing these days? It's a level that I don't think I ever assumed that we would get to having people snatching 300 pounds, clean and jerking the numbers that they are. That's to having people snatching 300 pounds, clean and jerking the numbers that they are. And, like, that's a very different conversation than it was five years ago.

It was like, oh, 225, great job. Yeah, right. I consult a lot. So I'll search people out in different fields and just talk to them. Like, I try to do two, three a month. I'll talk to gymnastics specialists all the time. I talk to, like, Dave Durante a lot. I'll talk to specialists in powerlifting and weightlifting.

And I try to just seek people out and just try to learn from them as much as I can, like, every single month. And I think through there, it's kind of like saying, all right, well, I'm going to say with CrossFit, like, where can it go? You know, it's almost like a guessing game. Because if you think, like, even, like, four years ago, it was like, all right, well, three years ago, it was like 30 muscle-ups at a time. It's like, all right, let's break it up now. It's like, oh, you can't go unbroken for 30, right? It's like at some point it might get in like 100 ring muscle-ups, right? 50 unbroken.

Who knows, right? It was like where might it go? Where might it go in a year? I think that's what coaches really have to look at. And it still goes back to me in the basics of making sure your athletes are strong enough, right? Well, make sure they all have the structural stability, they have the stabilization to sustain work, and they move well. And if that happens, then make sure they're strong enough. And what is strong enough right well make sure they all have the structural stability they have the stabilization to sustain work and they move well and if that happens then make sure they're strong enough and what is strong enough well it's almost like take what it was last year and add another like 10 to 15 percent like every year right at some point it's going to top out

but do you have written standards for your athletes like this is the price of admission you got to hit these numbers yeah i could probably pull up my phone but we have a whole entire list of every single lift from the squat to beds like curls to snatch grip deadlifts to everything. What those ratios should be from a balance strength perspective into all the Olympic lifts. All stuff taken from Paula Quinn and all those other guys that have been around. And then from there, from a gymnastics standpoint of what we think the strict gymnastics work should be on all things. From single arm hangs to double arm hangs to L-holes, to L-ups, to muscle-ups, like everything, right?

And those are like high numbers, right? It's like, all right, well, where do you fall on the spectrum if you want to compete? And then from there, it's like, well, if you want to compete at the games, like here's what people are hitting now. Who's the best? Frazier. What are his numbers?

Here are his numbers. All right, so that gives you a rough also guideline of what is strong enough, you know, and then progressing and building from there. That's an interesting perspective. I've been thinking about that actually in the last month or so of not getting caught up in my old numbers from when I competed in 10, 11, and 12 and figuring out, you know, comparing what the numbers are now. But you're taking it kind of to another level of talking to people more advanced

in the specific fields and figuring out, like you said, what is capable. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Yeah, absolutely. But even with the gymnasts, I don't think no one knows. So I'll talk to Dave, like, all right, like, you know, freestanding handstand holds are probably going to come up, right, and all things like that. To them, that's like basic entry-level stuff, right?

But then it's like even taking a step back from a coaching experience, like, well, what might be expected next year? What are some reps? Because I think the hardest thing for me was always taking a step back, getting athletes ready for competition, and just being like, all right, what's a crazy fucking workout that they might see that you probably never programmed, but you're going to have to do it, right? And how that's going to keep progressing every single year.

Well, the category of gymnastics, there's so much more room to grow in that category. As you just said, even though doing muscle-ups and whatever else is very difficult, well, as far as a real gymnast is concerned, that's like what you do when you're a little kid. Yeah, that's like nothing. That's what we do to get into a movement. Didn't Dave do a 10-minute handstand hold or something? That's his goal is 10 minutes. That's a long time.

In a way, what is the role of a CrossFit coach? Because you've got your gymnastics coach. You've got your weightlifting coach. You've got some sort of powerlifting type coach. you've got your gymnastics coach, you've got your weightlifting coach, you've got some sort of powerlifting type coach, you've got your nutrition coach, and they all come and tell you, like, your athlete needs to be doing this to get to the games, to be their best self.

Like, are you really just a filter that kind of puts the best pieces together to get to the athlete? That's a great question. I think that depends on the camp that you're in. So I know some camps, their view,, let's call it, quote, unquote, CrossFit coach as like the head coach of a football team. You have all the coaches, and they kind of give you their tidbits on what they think they should do, and then they're kind of factored it in.

I think that gets tough, though, because you have to take into account lifestyle and training age and the essence and what's going on. And you might have a weightlifting coach put together, like, a weightlifting program, right, which, as you guys know, could be a shit ton of volume, right? Well, okay, well, everything else to do from a CrossFit is still going to work the back and the knees and the hips, and that could just overdo it. And then you have a gymnastics coach, and it's, like, filtering the volume and that work. So my camp is, I believe, in kind of learning as everything you possibly can from every individual component inside the sport

and continue to learn and progress. But more importantly, like taking that and developing the proper program for the athletes from you, from the coach, right? And you can use your specialist to aid and assistance and progressions and different movement protocols and what can help. But you still have to be able to kind of put that together correctly for your athlete based off what's the max amount of volume they can do, what's the minimum amount, how can I continually maintain a proper stimulus, how can I continually maintain time to recover, and then provide that adaption, right? So essentially it's going through a super compensation model with them appropriately without overdoing it from everything just kind of being collided into one. Nutrition, though, I don't fuck with. Nutrition, though, like I've done all that, but I i can't like that's just not a scary one that that's something that's like way beyond me so i always just factor that out i'm like go talk to xyz yeah you're talking about super compensation

this is something i started with you you have a hard time uh giving the appropriate volume that is pushing them a little bit too far and knowing that some of these athletes that are on the highest level they can recover from a massive amount of volume and you're like like you said sometimes you have to give them stuff that you think is just a terrible idea and they still do it and recover from it do you have trouble like figuring out how much is too much and how much is still not enough so that yeah to me like that's where coaching comes into play right that's blending the art of the science with the application of human involvement and it's sort of we'll steadily progress it and i'll try to maintain the telltale signs right whether it's like their eye contact

their handship their grip strength we used to like grip dynameters to see like what the grip strength was and was it off based off different overreaching progressions we were going through you know we do the whoop and all the other things but the thing for me like that's dad and that's great data but i think that that can get tough because they rely too much on it and it's's like, oh, well, my HRV is orange, so I can't do anything. Well, now we're supposed to be overreaching right now, so it's okay, right? So things I try to really look at is how they talk to me, what the eyesight is, like, how quickly they get changed, how the energy levels are, how quickly, like, chalk their hands. Like, all these telltale signs that could be off, what their mood is, do they seem kind of more agitated and angry? Is their nutrition off?

Is it, like, is their nutrition off is it like is asleep getting off all those little things that can lead to the state of kind of being over fatigued which overreach and overtrained sure i kind of like it try to hone in more and if they're not there then they can do this volume right like i know one of my athletes the other day like sometimes i ask like what kind of workouts to put together for themselves and that sometimes gives me an indication of what they're doing this kid put together this workout was like 150 strict handstand push-ups and 150 strict chest pull-ups it was like it was 50 40 30 20 times strict chest pull-ups strict hands strict handstand push-ups right and i was like uh all right how do you feel for that he's like i feel fucking great you know i'm

doing the skier after i'm like yeah that's that's exactly what i'm saying like you do stuff and they're like still recovering and i like i have a girl the girl who's here like that's i mean i give her stuff and i'm, this makes no sense, and it's way too much. And she comes back the next day, and she's like, yeah, I feel good. Yeah. And that's huge, like, understanding the athlete's essence, you know? It's like you can, you know, get into whole talks about muscle fiber type

and kind of where they lie. Right. And obviously the ones who are more type 1 and type 2A, they can sustain more volume, more intensity, because they can recover a little better, right? Yeah. Yeah. We were down, one of the shows we did down in Jamaica.

They were talking about, like, the athlete signature, like just how that athlete presents themselves, how they show up every day. We'll tell you significantly more, but it takes a long conversation. It takes a long time. Like how developing that relationship with them so you can start to see those little pieces and in a way almost see, like, that athlete moving in slow motion of how they chalk their hands up how long does it take you to really develop that relationship with them so you can see those finer points yeah it takes a while it

takes a while to understand like is it is tired or is this kind of like factored in from volume right um it takes a lot of time a lot of this kind of awareness and kind of watching observing them you know what I think? Sometimes coaches can go down a rabbit hole thinking, like, coaching is about just writing a great program, but it's not. Like, it could be a great program, but if you can't coach it and communicate it, then it sucks, you know? And it is no magic kind of program.

It's just consistent hard work with the right work that's for the athlete. And the more time you spend with them, then the better you can kind of pick up on those signs. You do that remotely with a lot of clients you find it more challenging so remotely and then how many athletes you have working i guess in person with you that are at the higher levels the elite level and then how many are remote for you yeah so the higher percentage is remote yeah and in-house and it's hard it's extremely hard because yeah as you guys all know half the time to athletes like they want to tell they're going to tell you what they think you want to hear how do you feel i felt great

meaning what they're really like beat down right yeah um so that's the hardest thing is trying to like read between the lines with with some of their feedback yeah and sometimes you can't do it until they're like beat up and you're like fuck this person's crushed right now you know do you you're doing a bunch of language work and understanding how language communication works with people at your gym. Are you doing that working with athletes on how they talk to themselves, their own self perception and the confidence side of things? Yeah.

We try and do a lot of that. You know, it's like, it's a little things where they're coming in and be like, oh man, this run's going to suck. It's like, why even say that?

You know, there's so many tidbits of things that they say to themselves that already like kind of put them behind the eight ball. And like Jordan or Kobe's not going to walk in and be like, oh, this is going to be a tough game. No, they're going to walk in and be like, why even say that? You know, there's so many tidbits of things that they say to themselves that already, like, kind of put them behind the eight ball. And, like, Jordan or Kobe is not going to walk in and be like, oh, this is going to be a tough game. No, they're going to walk in and be like, I'm going to crush this motherfucker. Like, the whole fucking team, right? And it's these little things that people say to themselves

when stuff isn't going right that we try to fix. Because everyone's a king when stuff's going well, right? But it's like when you're going to go up against someone who you think might be better than you in a workout that's not your jam, like how are you going to talk to yourself? What are you going to say? Because out there on the floor, I can't help you out. You know, you've got to be your own coach.

You've got to be able to talk to yourself. So trying to work with athletes to do that, and that's a very hard thing. You mentioned those people. Those people in my eyes, I just look at them and I'm like, they're just killers. Like they were born to slit your throat on a basketball court. I love that. It didn't matter where it was. killers like they they were born to slit your throat on a basketball court love that they just it didn't matter where it was like it could have been in the backyard or in front of tens of

thousands of people they're just going to kill you yeah and you've worked with the highest level athletes like do you see that in them too in the gym where they just come in and it's just some of them we're getting after it frazier yeah right i've never worked with him at all right but you see it in everything he does you you know? And I fucking admire that. I love that. Because for me, it's like, and I try to tell these guys all the time, like, if I were to go against you guys in a workout, like, I'm going to try to fucking crush you. Like, I want to try to put you in the hole from the beginning. And, like, I want to try to gain your head.

I want to try to stay ahead. Even no matter how much I'm hurting, you're not going to think I'm hurting, right? I'm going to let you win, too. Yeah. And then I'm going to totally let you win too yeah and then i'm gonna totally let you win right but it's like but it's like right off the bat you got it yeah but having that having that mindset of no but knowing how to control it right yeah so you're not like all right then i got fucking crushed but can you control that but still you might know no matter what it is like i'm gonna fucking do good or i'm gonna crush this person you know yeah and to keep i mean then there's like that, parasympathetic side of things

of having that super high intensity but still remaining calm. And I think you can see that, especially Rich back in the day. He was so good at knowing exactly what he needed to do. But you just look at him and it's like, I'll just do these clean jerks, no big deal. And next thing you know, he's got a little gas in the tank because he's just doing exactly what he needed to do along the way. Yeah. So Rich, I was saying I was with Rich, and he was at my gym doing a workout.

This was like five years ago. And it was like a 20-minute AMRAP. It was 20 squat cleans at 135, 20 pull-ups, 20 cals on the Airdyne before the assault bike. And it was a 20-minute AMRAP. And I was like in my head, like, all right, I'm going to do like three and five touchy-goes. I'm going to stay with it, right? And I go, Rich, what are you going to do? He's like, I'm going to do singles. I'm like, fuck it. I'm doing singles do like three and five touchy-goes. I'm going to stay with it, right? And they'll go, Rich, what are you going to do? He's like, I'm going to do singles.

I'm like, fuck it. I'm doing singles too then, right? He still lapped me like three times. But knowing like exactly like what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, controlling it, right, and just sticking to that plan and just believing in yourself, right? Yeah. What is the general education of the athlete that comes to you now? I feel like the energy system thing is really like pacing.

People understand that concept. Like What are they really looking for? I think even athletes have a really good idea of what a good program looks like. Their own volume. By the time they get to what a good, sanctioned, regional level athlete has, a really good education in strength and conditioning and how to get to the next level. So when they come to you, what are their biggest concerns? I think the main thing is getting proper coaching. I think feeling connected to the coach.

I think knowing someone's going to be there for you and have you back, having someone to talk to. Yeah, I agree with that. Do you think on that note, I think a lot of people do have the intellectual understanding of pacing and understanding. Do you think a lot of people come to you and maybe they say they know it but that you see them train you're like you're not training at the intensity that i really wanted that to be at yeah i think sometimes people um don't truly understand it that well you know what it feels like not going intense enough or they're going too intense too

often or they don't know how or you're stuck in that middle zone yeah or it's like stuck in like well i just need the environment. I got a chasing environment. It's like, well, no, like once in a while. OK, well, you do it too often. Then you're not progressing at all. There's no progression there. Right. Or for the most part.

Also, I think what they don't quite understand is understand the ability of recovery for adaption, you know, and what the next day should be like based on what you did that day, you know, and to kind of like the meshing of everything. Yeah. I think we just said a second ago was something that's often not mentioned where you mentioned that people just want someone to believe in them. They just don't want to do it alone. Like they could do it by themselves, but like why?

Why would you want to do it all by yourself? That just doesn't sound very fulfilling, very fun. Like some people just want someone to like bounce ideas off of if they have a lot of experience and they want someone that just will believe in them and be with them for the ride. Yeah, absolutely. Like in addition to the programming and technique and everything else that still is kind of there but like from a from a social standpoint people just want to have good time and they want to go through have these amazing experiences and if you win you want someone to celebrate with right yeah yeah exactly 100 agree with you the uh a lot of

things that you're going on we talked about uh the gym the remote clients you. A lot of the things that you're going on, we talked about the gym, the remote clients. You're a part of the coolest Instagram phenomenon in the entire world, which is the Power Monkey camps. There's nothing cooler than when the big camp is going on, and I go on the Instagrams and look at the stories, and it's like every freak in the world showed up to this one place, and they're all doing handstands. They're all lifting all the big weights. Everyone has perfect mobility. Everyone can walk on their hands around the block. It's no big deal. How'd you get started with all this? Because it is the coolest camp that exists. Yeah, Power Monkey is awesome.

For my own kind of selfish reason, I love Power Monkey because I get there for a week with these amazing other coaches. There's like 12 Olympians and so many facets of weightlifting and gymnastics and rowing and robot capacity. And it's so much stuff, right? So just having these conversations and forming these friendships is awesome. But Chad used to come to the gym, CrossFit Milford.

Chad wanted to do some weightlifting stuff for myself and our coaches. And then my best friend, who was one of my head coaches, Colin, his brother Shane Garr garrity he's co-owner of power monkey and he was a gymnast at syracuse university so i'd have him come up to work with us as well and this was shoot maybe like eight or ten years eight years ago so then one day shane was like hey i'm gonna bring up my buddy dave uh he's pretty good at gymnastics you know he's on the usa pretty good so i'm like all right cool bring him up uh so he brings dave up and dave does a seminar for our coaches, and the dude is awesome.

And Colin, Colin Garrity, who works with Power Monkey, you guys might know Colin. His gym is awesome. It's crazy, right? He is, to me, like one of the brightest coaches in the world. He's one of the most creative coaches in the world. He's absolutely, like, amazing. And, like, way back then, he's like, you know what, we need to bring Chad and Dave together because it's weightlifting and gymnastics, and they've got to start creating, he's like, you know what? We need to bring Chad and Dave together because it's weightlifting and gymnastics,

and they've got to start creating something for CrossFit, you know? So Colin, in my eyes, Colin kind of, like, initiated the entire Power Monkey realm, right? And then Dave and Sadie, his wife, and Shane just kind of, like, developed Power Monkey Camp because with gymnastics, you do lots of, like, week-long overnight camps in the summertime. So that's where Dave got the premise from. So the first camp, we went out there, dave brought me in to do the programming lecture for the first camp and it was you know there's like the entire coaching staff was like 20 coaches there's like 10 athletes right for the first for the first one we're like oh man where's this gonna

go um but it kept progressing and it was awesome but they bring me back every time to do the program lecture and it just continually develops and evolves every single year it's almost like got an outside of just the educational standpoint and it's almost like this culture the kid this community that's kind of evolved from it which has really been awesome yeah and you just started a new podcast yeah yeah we love to talk about that absolutely yeah I was like I Ah. Motherfucker. Well, we had Doug Larson on it. Doug Larson wasn't on the podcast. Delete that episode. We had our first episode, but. But we then got told we can't do it anymore.

So with my programming business, it was pretty much like only myself for a long time. It's running across at Milford. And I realized at some point, like, I just can't do that. Like, I just can't have all these clients because then the programming goes down the communication goes down the coaching goes down right if you have too many so i needed to sort of rebrand it and develop this new thing like an opex or what have you right where i can have other coaches underneath me i can kind of take a step back do more education more development um other avenues and not spend like you know four hours a day writing programs because it got to the point where we'd be on a field of vacation.

I'd be like, all right, well, give me an hour and a half because I've got to do these 12 fucking programs. I know about that hour and a half. You get a good eye roll. Just give me like an hour, which is three, really. Oh, yeah. My wife knows. My wife just loves it. Hates it, right?

The kids are like pulling at you. I'm like, what the fuck? If you could just give me an hour, just quiet. I might be able to get it all done but probably not probably not yeah so we rebranded it into conquer athlete angela came on board as my partner um and we've kind of started developing and then one of those stages of conquer athlete was setting up a podcast and so we just kind of recently set that up as well yeah one of my favorite pieces of when we interviewed mike boyle he was getting texted by his wife to be home from dinner.

And I was like, you feel guilty about it too? Yeah. Oh, everybody. The vacation hour is a big one. It's huge, right? Are you at the gym with all your friends right now? Yeah. I'm also working.

Yeah. It's work. I have to. I was like, oh, it doesn't stop. You're 60 years old and your wife's like, where are you? It's dinner time. That's awesome to hear that. Once you became Mike Boyle, I would go away at some point.

If you're Mike Boyle, you don't have to do with that, right? Like, no, no, no. I'm always feeling guilty about how awesome life is. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Dude, where can people find you? We're at an hour.

You have coaching to do, athletes. That was an hour? Yeah. Crush that. Yeah, it went quick. Good job, homie. You bet. This is awesome.

Glad we got to do this. I actually have never met you in person before, so this has been really cool. You did awesome. I feel like I'm on the big show right now. We had a shared athlete for like four years, Jen Ryan. Yeah, she's a stud. She's awesome. Can you believe what she's doing now?

You still follow her? Yeah. I can't. She's in top 10. She's 39, so she's the old person in the youngest group. And she killed it. And she finished like eighth in the world. Oh, wow.

Smash. I don't know how she gets better. I don't know. She must be from us. Yeah. She must be from us. world. Oh, wow. Smash. I don't know how she gets better. I don't know. She must be from us. Yeah. She must. Got to be. A good face.

So, yeah. So, I'm on Instagram, Jason Lydon. Lots of our stuff is run through Conquer Athlete. So, we have a webpage, conquerathlete.com. That's where kind of like all our remote coaching and templates are from. And then, obviously, shoot me an email, jason.conquerathlete.com. When does the podcast go live? I think next month. Killer? I think next month.

Killer. I think next month. Guest number one? Doug Larson. Doug Larson. Doug Larson, guest number one. Oh, my gosh. Big commercial going out right now.

Mike, where can they find you? Coach Mike McElroy on Instagram. I'm Big Dogs Athletes. Doug Larson. Right on. Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. Get over to theonetonchallenge.com. Snatch, clean jerk, squat dead bench.

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