Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Build A Strong Aerobic Base For Better Endurance - Chris Hinshaw || MBPP Ep. 1015

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

In episode 1015, Chris Hinshaw, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how to run longer and faster, what it took for Crossfit Games athlete Jeffery Adler to win the 2023 Games and how to get athletes to have a championship mindset. Follow Chris on IG: https://www.instagram.com/aerobiccapacity/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! The Athletic/Casual Clothes we're wearing! 🕺 ➢ https://vuori.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   💤 The Best Cooling Mattress in the GAME! 🛌 ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Best STYLISH Barefoot Casual/Training Shoes! 👟 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   Best 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      You Need Greens in your Life 🥦 ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

So we hear this a lot that people are running too fast. You've trained so many people to win the CrossFit Games. They got to be punching it every once in a while, right? I was programming and advising athletes to conserve the energy based upon the time domain. You can't just go out hot and hope to hold on. I look back on my career and I realize I could have been better. I think about that when I coach athletes. I never want them to have that feeling.

Do you think it's important to get a lot out of different types of trainings? The physical side, I think, is the easy part. Where does weakness hide? It hides in the space that you don't want to do. Let's say I have you run four laps around the track as fast as possible. You know where the wheels are going to come off? Right when you enter that last lap. I have to be there and encourage you to take that risk because that last lap is where the growth of that workout occurs. Jeffrey Adler was 100 points down going into that 5K. I thought about it.

I'm like, you know what he has to do is he has to lose tomorrow. Four events later, he was in first place. Power Project family, we've had some amazing guests on this podcast like Kurt Engel, Tom Segura, Andrew Hooperman. And we want to be able to have more amazing guests on this podcast. And you can help it grow by leaving us a quick rating and review on Spotify and iTunes. If you're listening to the podcast, just go ahead and give us a review. Let us know how you dig it and help the podcast grow so we can keep growing with y'all and bring you amazing information. Enjoy the show.

This is a tech guy. He's going to take it serious. The left and the right ear. I mean, imagine if everything we said sounded backwards because you had it on the wrong way. I didn't even realize how much of a tech guy he was until you told me. I'm really a salesperson. That's the background? That is what I do.

Yeah, I think that's why I think presentations, I think lectures, in a roundabout way, what you're doing is pitching your coaching. You're pitching your methodology, your ideas. Have you always been analytical? Always. I love numbers, math. I mean, Heidi, my better half knows that nothing turns me on more than a spreadsheet, and I'm sorry, baby. She's like, yo, check this out. She's like, this increased by 2% over here.

You're like, wow. Gotta go take a lap. Sit by the pool. Yeah. The analytical mind and brain, I think, works great for you because when you were here last time, the way that you were communicating with me, you weren't really analytical.

You were like, can you breathe? Can't you breathe? We took a lap around the block and you're like, oh, this is something I can work with. You're managing your breathing well. And you were kind of going over stuff that I felt was very, was very basic. It didn't seem so at first, my first read of you was that, oh, he's not analytical. Maybe he doesn't care about the watch. Maybe he doesn't care about the data points because you were just kind of observing me running. But I like a lot of the stuff that you're saying and communicating with people about while they're running, trying to develop some sort of natural or rhythmic breathing

while they're running. And you were saying how swimmers have that naturally because they have to choose when they breathe. That's right. You really want athletes to become accountable. And this current generation, I mean, these kids that are in their 20s and now early 30s, I love the fact that they're asking why. Why is this what I should be doing? Well, it's the same thing that holds true with you. If you're in the middle of a run by yourself, how do you know how you're actually doing? Do you rely on that watch to fully tell you everything? Or is there other tools that the body tells you?

Okay, so let's just say that you run a lap around the track as fast as you can, and that's your workout. All right, you guys, let's just do this together. Everybody listen. Let's do it. You're going to do, and that's the purpose of this, one lap, 400 meters around that track. And what I want you to think about is as you're starting that lap, you're going to accelerate those first five steps and you're going to continue accelerating until you get about 50 meters. And then what I want you to do is kind of settle. I want you not to actually slow down

dramatically. What I want you to do is settle the anxiety. So what we call this is floating. And what I want you to do is just start floating. Take it about 100, maybe 125 meters in. And then what I want you to do is start being more present. I want you to be more aware of the difficulty in what you're doing. Now, you're at about, let's say, 150 meters in. You have another 250 meters to go.

What I want you to think about as you continue progressing, right, and you're coming up to 200 meters and eventually hit 300, and then you've got that final 100 meters till you finish. At what point in time in that remaining distance does doubt creep in, where anxiety creeps in, where it may be a negative thought. It may be where you feel like your legs are on fire, where you've got to start breathing through your ears. It's the point where the brain says to you, it's like, you know, man, if you don't slow down, we're not finishing. It's where this angst, the sticking point of the workout comes in. But if you could get past that point, you start feeling more confident because you're getting closer to the finish, meaning that

anxiety, that mental, that emotional distress goes away. So what I want you to think about is what specific meter did you have that doubt creep into your head where it says, you know what? We're going too fast. If you don't slow down, we're not going to be able to finish. So do you have a specific point? My guess is 200 to 250 meters in for me. Right. Everybody's different, but you have that. Do you have something that pops into yours?

Oh yeah. It would probably be a similar distance if I was trying to run fast. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And once you get past that, like, let's say you're getting in rounding that back stretch and you're coming down the final straight, you start feeling better again, right? Because you're getting closer and that anxiety goes away. Now that is a universal,

everybody that's listening is sitting there going, they know their distance. Like for me, it's 240 to 250. I feel that this isn't an anomaly. And this is what we were talking about, is that I want athletes who are interested in becoming accountable for their own journey, right, to learn why they feel this feeling. If it doesn't happen to just one of you and it happens to the global population, then it means something. And this is what I want people to realize is that these tools are available to you. Meaning when you feel this, let's say you feel this and you think that you're supposed to feel it at 220 meters and you feel it at 100. What's it say about your strategy or execution in that 400? You went

out a little hot. It's about timing your perceived amount of pain at that peak point versus actual. And it allows you to assess yourself afterwards. Did I execute the plan the way I intended to? But what does it actually mean when you feel this? Like, do you ever think about that? If it happens to everyone, what is the brain telling you at that moment? You're fatigued. Right.

You're at a point where you're pushing yourself maybe a little harder than you even anticipated. So we all know about lactate threshold, your maximum sustainable pace. If you go above it, think about the death zone on Mount Everest, right? Yeah. That death zone, if you go above it, there's insufficient oxygen to keep the brain alive, and that's why camp four is just below it. So that is your maximum sustainable pace. What's happening at that point is your brain saying, if you don't slow down, meaning get below your maximum sustainable pace, you will die.

And so that's what the body is telling you. Body is giving you signals, but are you in tune with them? And this is where, as a coach, what I want. I want athletes who are interested in picking up these tools and understanding what the body is telling versus relying on technology. So we talked about pacing last time. Can you pace without looking at your watch? Talked about pacing last time. Can you pace without looking at your watch, right?

So like Army Rangers, they end up doing a test and they'll do four miles per hour for 12 miles. There's no mile markers and you have to beat that time with no watch, no GPS. And the problem is, is most people fail not because of fatigue. They just go too slow. They underestimate what it took to make that finishing time. Now, this is also with a pack and fully loaded. But if you train that speed and you saw what we did last time, you don't need to know. You can develop these internal skills of knowing what your pace is

based upon your cadence and your rate of breath. Right? Yeah. No, it felt smooth. I remember, I mean, last time, like where we left off the last time you were here, which wasn't even that long ago, was you told me, hey, get yourself to a point where you can run for 20 minutes straight. And I was like, oh, shit, I ain't going to be able to do that.

And now I've been able to. I ran a marathon, run a couple half marathons. I can run for two hours, two and a half hours with almost no cost at this point. Which is incredible, right, considering what your training, your approach was more, it was more sophisticated. It was more, and plus you have access to some good resources, right? You have good people. I feel for a lot of people nowadays when they're out there looking and you wanted to do what you did, you know, like you'll text me if you have a question, and I just give it to you.

Here's the answer. Imagine you go online and you're trying to figure out, like, because everybody says everything different, right? Everybody's trying to carve out their own space. Some of the workouts that you sent me were, they wouldn't make sense to somebody that was new to running. That's right. So you sent some stuff over. I had to look a bunch of stuff up to kind of like interpret it a little bit better.

Even though it's just plain jargon to you. To me, I had to like – I was like I'm not sure what these splits mean and I'm not sure what these times mean. I don't know what half of this is. And yeah, you're right. How would somebody know? How do I approach this? How do I plan to run X amount of 400s or X amount of 800s? Right.

And it's very intimidating. It's like the first time if you have never bought a road bike or a mountain bike, a nice bike before, and you go in a bike shop and it's like – it's overwhelming. What am I looking at? Right. And they speak to you in a language that you don't – wait. What is a derailleur? Right. And that – it's a very challenging thing. And I struggle with that a lot. I struggle with taking science and toning it down to where it's usable, people pick it apart. It's not the lactic acid.

It's the acidity. It's not the lactate. The lactate, I know that. The problem is, is that you're trying to equate it to somebody who only knows the word fatigue. And that I think was, is the biggest challenge because people don't want to start at the beginning. They don't want to start out and just learn the basics. They don't want to do a zone two run when they start. When can I run fast? When can I lift heavy? Right. Build up some volume.

Right? But people don't want that. Learn how to do it the right way. They want to go right to, you know, the top level. And they want to know where the juice is. Unfortunately, that just takes a long time to get there. So we hear this a lot that people are running too fast. They're doing their workouts too hard.

They're running too fast. They're lifting too heavy. But the guys that you train and women that you train, you've trained so many people to win the CrossFit Games. They got to be punching it every once in a while, right? They got to be going full got to be punching it every once in a while, right? They got to be going full throttle here and there, right? Yes. So I spend, so the CrossFit Games just happened first week of August and I'm down to two athletes, one male, one female. The sport has evolved to the point where the amount of work that I put in to these athletes, I can't take on more than that.

I'm genuinely committed to their success. I have a question for you. So as an athlete, I look back on my career now that I know what I know, and I realize I could have been better. I mean, and probably a lot better. And I there's not a week that goes by that I don't think about that. Do you ever think about that? A little bit, but I needed I needed this. The ingredients that I had long ago, they were necessary. I needed some ignorance and I needed to be a little bit hard-headed here and there. I think it was important.

Even though I got hurt and even though a bunch of other things happened, I think it was part of it. But you don't think if you knew more, if you knew what you know now, could you have been more successful? I think it would be harder to be more successful because I think I would overanalyze it. Really? I think so. So I live with that where I realized that I could have been, I never picked up a barbell. I never went in and lifted heavy. Like I've never worked on my neurological side. I'd had no finishing kick. I had no sprint. I had my ability to go uphill was mediocre if it was in the movement of running. I had no power up front. This was as a triathlete? Yes. Okay. And so I think about that when I coach athletes. I realize that what I carry for myself,

I never want them to have that feeling of I could have been better. And so I spend a lot of time in what I do and assessing and analyzing. Like, for example, if we were working together, and let's say that all of a sudden you have a situation where you have to take, let's say you roll your ankle, and now you start getting healthy, but we only have six weeks until the CrossFit Games. Well, what do we do when we just lost four weeks? How do I get you back? And what is that most optimal way? Because the problem is, is that the CrossFit Games has workouts that are based upon time domains. There are various time domains. So if a workout is a two-minute time domain,

and it has some piece of cardio in it, then I have to make sure that you have that two-minute output. Well, what about if it's five minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes? Imagine your maximum speed if you ran for 10 minutes versus 30 minutes. I have to train all of these gears because we don't know what the event is. And that's what makes knowing the events so easy to train, right? You train this theory of specificity. You train for the movement and the speed within that movement. And that's how easy it is. But what if you don't know? And so imagine you're sitting there and we've got six weeks to go and I am in control when we know that the CrossFit Games has a lot of running in it, but we don't know what the running is, what do we do? And that's where I sit and spend a lot of time.

What I have to do is figure out a way. So like in this situation, what I would do is I would say, you know what? I'm concerned if I give you full dose of a workout, we don't have the structural integrity because you took that time off. So how do I do it? Well, what I'm going to do is instead of giving you a full workout, I'm going to take a third of that workout away. And that workout has this very specific stimulus. So I'm going to take a third of it away. But then what I'm going to do is I'm going to, later in the day, give you a second workout where I chop another third off of that one. Essentially what I'm doing is giving you two-thirds of one stimulus and two-thirds of another stimulus within the same day. And you, by having that time off, it's less risky, but it's a way for me to try to compress the schedule.

That concept is a real concept that I did with an elite athlete, and those things are not easy to figure out and to come up with because you're not just doing the sport of running or rowing or cycling. You're actually working and integrating a whole broad range of movements that athletes prepare for at the CrossFit Games. Let me ask you this, because in the past, you've worked with up to 55 athletes at the same time, and now you're working with two. I wonder, has it gotten more difficult to navigate working with a lot of athletes because of something when it comes with the CrossFit Games? Or is that just a choice of yours to work with less athletes?

It's a choice for sure, but it's the complexity. The easy days of just saying, look, we're going to work on pacing. And this concept of pacing was unheard of in CrossFit in 2013. Matter of fact, I was highly criticized. Jason Kalipa, great example, right? I was highly criticized of the way in which I was programming and to efficiently consume your available energy based upon the available time domain. And CrossFit back then was, I'm going to go out fast and then I just try my best to bring it home. Work hard.

Right. And that methodology changed the sport. I mean, I must applaud CrossFit that they were highly critical i mean jason khalifa run 20 miles three weeks before the games imagine i think you uh you told us that uh you asked jason like what's his strategy for like 400 meters like i don't know just run as fast as i can right you're like well what's your time he's like i think i don't know like 57 seconds or something like that you're like holy shit yeah it Yeah, it was fast. It was fast, but you take him three laps and then he was slow. But what I applaud CrossFit for was three years later, they brought me in as a strategic

partner to teach aerobic capacity that they realized that there are people out there that are one, committed to the sport, but they're also moving the needle and they're moving in a direction that is following the methodology of the sport, right? How do we maximize work capacity in the least amount of time? Yeah. Sleep is something we talk about all the time on the podcast because it's your biggest driver in terms of your health and you sleep for a third of your life. So you want to make sure that your sleep is optimized and that you're taking every advantage to make that recovery period as strong and as effective as possible. That's why we've partnered with Eight Sleep Mattresses. It's the Tesla of beds. You can control the

temperature of your side of the bed and your partner's side of the bed. And the cool thing is over here at the podcast, we're all sweaty sleepers. I used to wake up in a puddle of my own sweat and I can probably say the same for Andrew and Mark. So that's a thing of the past because now my bed is cool. I wake up every morning feeling refreshed and there's so many things that this mattress does and tracks that it is just ridiculous. So check them out. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. And when you you do, you automatically receive $150 off of your order. Again, that's at EightSleep.com slash PowerProject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes.

Do you think it's important to get a lot out of different types of training? Since CrossFit is, they'll throw all kinds of stuff at an athlete. They might do a snatch. They might do a kettlebell movement. They might do a 400 meter. So do you have to get different, do you have to get people on a row or on a bike to do all kinds of different things within the confines of workouts? Wow, that's a good question. So I'm going to answer it the more complex way. The physical side, I think, is the easy part. It's the mental and emotional side that we must unravel within

athletes to get them to truly believe that they can win. Because that's the athletes that I coach now. They want and they are willing to do anything that I ask of them in order to win. And so most of the problems that they have is that life gets in the way. Matter of fact, we see it all the time in the gym where you're a middle-aged adult and, you know, as an adult, you take on these responsibilities, you, with these increased responsibilities, you know, such as debt and obligations, you get judgment from outsiders. And what I'm speaking of is, like, for example, you may be crushing it at your job. You may be killing it. But I'm talking about the whispers, the things that people are saying about you, the gossip, the criticisms, the critiques that you're getting when you're going in for reviews. when you're going in for reviews. These things, they all weigh heavy on everyone. And where we see it surface is in the very essence of who we are. We see it in our health and fitness. And when I say about health and fitness, it's not the physical side. That's not what I'm talking

about. What I'm really looking at is the physical, but also that emotional and mental resiliency. physical, but also that emotional and mental resiliency. And that is what gets in the way. Because when I now ask you to do something that's impossible, that you've never done before, the natural tendency for anybody is fear. And it's not because of weakness, right? It's just because it's an unknown. But the problem is, is imagine you have this doubt created because of life. And now what I want you to do is something that everything about you says, don't do it. But here's the key. And elite athletes are no different. Where does weakness hide? Where does it hide? It hides in risk.

It hides in the space that you don't want to do. So imagine my job is to get you to experience and showcase a little courage to take that risk, to do something that you don't want to do. Meaning, let's say I have you run four laps around the track as fast as possible. You know where the wheels are going to come off? That sticking point, that uh-oh moment where you cross into that non-sustainable right when you enter that last lap. Everything about you is saying, slow down. I have to be there and encourage you to take that risk because that last lap is where the growth of that workout occurs. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about taking individuals, whether it's

just an everyday recreational fitness enthusiast, and reshaping who they are by getting them to actually take risk because that's where confidence hides. And there's no difference with an elite. The problem with an elite is it's just harder to find. I mean, harder to find where they're not as good. Where the confidence is hiding. Where the confidence is hiding. And so it could be like, let's say I watch you do a workout and let's say there's five rounds in a workout. Well, if anybody thinks about a five-round workout, what round are you naturally going to want to slow?

Well, all of us will slow in the fourth. But it's the relationship between that fourth round and the other rounds on how much you do slow down. If that slowing, based upon my experience, is too excessive, then what do I do? I can't go to you and say, you're slowing artificially too much in that fourth round. Or if it's four laps around the track, what do people slow? They slow on that third lap. If I can't go to you and say, you're slowing down too much, I need you to determine that that is your limitation and you voluntarily fixed it without me telling you. You're the athlete that's empowered. If I tell you, it undermines your confidence.

So what do I do? I write workouts where I make you go fast in that fourth round. Without saying anything, it's just the structure of the workout. Essentially, what I am doing is writing it based upon observation that's limiting your ability to find the greatness. Where do you pick up that energy from? Do you have him intentionally run a little slower somewhere else just for almost like a confidence boost? So let's say the workout would be five 500s on the rower and we take a small amount of rest. Well, I would see that you're naturally slow on that fifth or that fourth 500. So what I would do is I would write a workout that is the next one.

It's five 500s. But the fourth round is four 100- meter sprints with short amount of rest. You naturally will look at that fourth round and you'll say to yourself, Hey, that's, that's actually the one that I'm going to suffer in. But is it, why is it that you slow down on the third lap when you're running four laps around the track as fast as you can?

Because you doubt your ability to bring it home. You're afraid of the fourth lap. But here's the trick. If I get you to do those five 100-meter sprints, now you have one more 500 to go. You just did three 500s. How's your confidence going into it? You're not even aware as an athlete that that's where confidence sits. It was a number five. You with me on that? That's how you do it.

You write it in the way that the athlete comes to the solution on their own. Not by me saying it, but because I want you to discover it. Those broken up a hundred, would they still match the similar time and pace of the 500? No, they'd be way faster. Okay. But the first 500, so the first, second, third, and fifth 500s would be the exact same time. And the reason why you're doing it is because you want the athlete to, where they're really fatigued, they look at it and go, I already did it three times. That's confidence.

And that's all we're trying to do with athletes is we're trying to get them to put courage forward, to take risk. If you always play it safe as an athlete, if you always stay below that maximum sustainable intensity, you're always going to be mediocre. below that maximum sustainable intensity, you're always going to be mediocre. What we need you to do is we need you to know where the risk is because that's where the growth hides. Do you have some examples of where you found weakness in somebody that kind of maybe surprised you? Well, I mean a lot of people, they go too slow. So middle-aged adults, they will start a workout and they're just too slow in the attack because they doubt their ability to bring it home. And what happens is that they have too much energy in that last

lap because they've dogged three laps. And that's the problem with most middle-aged is that I would write it in a way where you would do your five 100 meter sprints on round one. And then you know what you're going to do is you need to figure out how to bring it home. But what I want is I want those last four to be the same time. You have to add precision in workouts so that the athlete has something to chase. That's why when you write workouts and it's like, oh, I want you to do 5x100 meters fast and then I want 4x500s moderate. What's moderate even mean? Right? Like we were talking about this. You know, like the difference of going out for a run and being at a 135 heart rate versus a 145 heart rate.

It's still in your zone too. But the speed that you're running at is completely different, right? This is where precision comes in that you have to provide not just a heart rate variable, but you have to provide a speed variable. And what if I make you do that zone two running uphill, right? Now that changes. And so that's what makes coaching really tough. Imagine prescribing the incline, the heart rate, and the speed. I'm curious as to what's the recovery like on a workout where you're boosting the person's confidence. So if you take Nsema through this four laps around the track and he ends up finishing better than he thought,

but it was exactly what you were kind of aiming for. Does the athlete tend to recover better from that? Almost like in boxing when the guy misses a punch, it seems like a missed punch for some reason is way more taxing than a punch that lands. Have you noticed that? I do. It's interesting, isn't it, that the champions are never tired. Why? But the person finishing in second place is destroyed.

Right? That is a real thing. And you know what's interesting about it is that, and you'll know this, every athlete only remembers their last rep. So you could have a remarkable workout, remarkable, and then you bomb that last one. And that's what athletes remember. And so, like, I write workouts where you have to be convinced that it's challenging. You have to be. As an athlete, it can't be something where I tell you it's like, Mark, you know what?

This last 403 minutes is going to really rock you. You're going to be devastated if you do this 403 minutes. And you're like, I don't get it. Like, this is a joke. You know, I could speed walk that thing. It has to be something where you look at it and you're like, I don't know. Now imagine if you do do it and you finish that where you and I both are, I don't know if you're going to be able to get it done. And imagine when you do get it done, the level of confidence that it creates in you. And this is how you create progressions in workouts. Because you want to run a marathon.

I can't just start you out with true marathon training because you're just not there yet. What I have to do is I have to take you to that first step. And now you finish that and you're confident. You're willing to take the next step. And each time what you do is you progress. This is how you end up doing Iron Man. You want to know? Because you're on track of going to Iron Man. You're bored right now with half marathons because you do them so effortlessly. So what do you earmark? A marathon. After a while, a marathon is going to be just, you know what? It doesn't do it for me. I don't get to charge. So you know what you'll do? A triathlon. And then you'll

eventually work your way up to where you're sitting there at the starting line in Kona. And that's how it happens. You're just stair-stepping your way. That's why when we step back as athletes, like I remember my last time doing Kona, I said to myself, I could do this seven days in a row and I could do it in that under 12 hours easily. Seven days in a row. I mean, I'm so brain damaged at that point. I look back now, I don't know how people can do an Ironman. I'm so beyond impressed with their ability, especially as adults with a job. I don't know.

But it's a stair-stepped approach that you're doing something that is seemingly impossible day after day after day. And the next thing you know, you're sitting there waiting for a cannon to go off. So there's a lot here, but some of this reminds me when we were talking to Mark Allen, um, he was talking about how, when a lot of people were training for Ironmans, they would be training too hard. A lot of their workouts were too intense. They'd be, their heart rates were too high. Whereas people were like, when he'd run with groups, he'd kind of be behind and people would be like, why are you running at this much slower pace? And now I'm thinking about some of the things you're talking about right here where some people are dogging workouts too much

and they're not going hard enough and they need to challenge themselves more. So what are the variables that athletes need to utilize to make sure that they're challenging themselves enough but they're not biting off too much too often because then you're not going to recover and get better at the pace you could be getting better. Because sometimes you've got to slow down so that you can improve. That's right.

It depends on what your goals are. So Mark Allen was – he's the man. And he – so I spent some time with him in San Diego. And he had a very low heart rate actually. His maximal heart rate – I don't know if he talked about it with you, but was low. It was substantially lower. Like you take this 220 minus your age. His was lower than that.

I remember him saying I think he could do like a mile in like five minutes and be just at zone two heart rate very easily. He was one of the original people with Maffetone and yeah, he was one of the people that spent a lot of time running and training slower. And I, I think that that is what, what kept him durable, that kept him his longevity. Okay. But it really depends on what your goals are. him his longevity. But it really depends on what your goals are. So like if I take Mark and let's say he wants to run a marathon, well, the first thing I would do is like, how much time do you have available? Because you have to conform around their lifestyle. Otherwise it's not going to be

sustainable. So if he says, I got to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We realize, you know what? Mark's only going to give me four workouts a week. So then the change is a lot because I have to develop his entire body, meaning from a muscle fiber standpoint and a metabolic pathway standpoint, because when you run a marathon, you essentially will fatigue all energy systems and all muscle fiber groups. So you can never leave anything behind in the training. So if I just run him long and slow, he's just going to be able to run long and slow. But what if those slow twitch fibers fatigue and fail near the end of the event, which they will, and he hasn't done any fast twitch. And that was my mistake in triathlons, right? I didn't do enough of that type of work,

that explosive high power output work. And so I would look at Mark and I would say, you know what, what we have to do is we have to be very, we have to be very, very careful on how we're approaching this. Because once we start out developing, and the way that I recommended was, let's start out by doing some zone two. And what I need you to do on zone two is be aware of your heart rate, but also aware of your speed. And this is the mistake that a lot of people do in zone two is they don't monitor their speed. We are not training a physiological adaptation based upon heart rate. We're actually training for speed. That's what's going to get you to do your marathon. And so what I would want you to do is pay attention to what is your speed

in that 20 minutes. The key is, is that most people, what they don't realize is, is, is when they do a 20 minute zone two, they start out at a heart rate of, let's say, Mark, you're at what, 130, one, what are you, one, how old are you,y. Yeah. I'm usually between 135 and 140 or something. OK, so. Right. So let's say your Maffetone is 135. So he's going to run at 135 and he's going to start out, let's say, a 10 minute mile. He's just doing 20 minutes.

And what's going to happen is, is you got these two variables. Well, when you get tired, which variables do you maintain? Do you maintain your heart rate and stay at 135 or do you maintain your speed? And so let's just say that what you do is you maintain speed. Well, what will happen is your heart rate as you get tired, it's going to drift upwards. Well, now you may have gone out of zone two and gone into zone three. This happens to me all the time. And most people believe- I'm like, which way do I go? Do I slow down or do I speed up? Because after I've been doing it for 10, 20, 30 minutes –

That's what happens. It drifts. And so most people think, oh, higher heart rate, better. It's a progressive run. They are runs that are done that way where you intentionally build your speed. But that's not the purpose of a zone two. You have to know what the purpose is in this workout. So if you just follow that 10 minute mile from start to finish

and your heart rate starts to climb, you've just ruined the purpose of the workout. What was the point? You didn't do it correctly. You took a easy pace zone two slow twitch aerobic workout and turned it into a fast twitch workout. And that is the mistake. Well, so a lot of athletes – What's the negative of that? What's that? So the opposite would be is I'm just going to follow heart rate. All right?

I'm going to keep my heart rate at 135. And what happens to your speed when you get tired? It'll slow down. It'll slow down. So think about this i just trained at a 135 level of pain but what did my muscles learn to do they started fast and i taught them to run slow so you just made yourself worse there you see the problem but don't don't you have to do that like like there is a solution okay let's get to the solution. What's the negative of maybe tapping into the type 2 muscle fibers on a run that's supposed to be zone 2?

You mean going too slow? You're trying to do a zone 2 run and it gets – you get fatigued. You get tired and you start to try to maintain your speed and you're having a hard time doing that. What's the negative of that? So what's – OK. So that is the question then. Then why is it happening? And so what we have to think about is the way that the brain recruits muscle fibers.

So what the brain does is it matches up with your amount of force. So when you're going slow walking, it just gives you enough slow twitch fibers to match that intensity. If you go into a light jog, it's going to give you a greater percentage of those slow twitch fibers out of your entire pool. So when you start your zone two, and let's say your heart rate's 135 and your speed's a 10 minute mile, it's going to give you a small percentage of slow twitch fibers. All your other fibers are resting. These are the ones that are allowing you to do the work. Now, what's going to happen is those fibers will eventually fatigue and fail, and the brain shuts them off. Simultaneously, it brings in a new grouping of motor units to continue the speed. They fatigue and fail, shuts them off. And essentially, what happens is you work your way

around to the original recruited fibers. And this is where the stamina piece comes in. This is why elite marathon runners do 150 miles in a week because they don't want to have a stamina-related failure. What most people do is they come back to these original recruited fibers. Those fibers haven't ever been forced to go back in the game. So they don't want to go back in the game. They need more time to rest and recover in order to go back in the game. And so what you do when your heart rate starts spiking is you start grabbing a percentage of fast twitch fibers. Now you've ruined the purpose because the purpose of a zone two is aerobic oxygen with slow twitch. And now what you're doing is it's starting to incorporate a muscle fiber group that cannot remotely endure as long as a slow twitch. And what you've done

is reinforce those fibers and said, you know what? I got you, bro. You don't ever have to go back in the game because 50% of my arsenal of fibers is fast twitch, and I have enough to now bring it home. And that's the problem is that you now will never build up capacity because you always sub in the fast fiber. And so what you have to realize is why does it happen? Those fibers haven't had enough time to recover. happen. Those fibers haven't had enough time to recover. So then what I would want you to do is, if you have one data point, like following Maffetone, and you see it hit 140, you're getting to the point where you're losing the purpose. And that's why a heart watch is valuable in zone two. You hit 140, and now you're suspect of these fibers need more rest time. So what do you do?

You walk. And walking is permitted. Why? Because it's not running and it's slow twitch and you walk until you drop five below, meaning 130, and then you go back to your 10-minute mile pace. So by walking, what you're doing is you're giving those original recruited fibers more time.

And that's the whole point the purpose is i need to recycle and recycle and recycle so that i can do a marathon and the reason why most fail in a marathon is because they never develop the ability to just recycle those slow twitch enduring fibers it It's an amazing explanation. And it sounds to me like we just did a set, right? Like when you think about lifting, we need to rest a little bit in between the lift. And the longer that you rest, the more that you can put back into the weights

that you're lifting. That's right. And so what you're trying to do is on a zone two is to be able to do the entire 20 minutes without walking. So here's the trick. And here's another mistake that people make. How do you know how fast to run? Like I said, 10 minute mile, but maybe it's a 12 minute mile. Maybe it's a 15 minute mile. Here's the thing is that you're trying to find a speed that gets you into the minimum, meaning in your situation, I have to be at 131. The problem is that a lot of people don't realize that there is a minimal level of

cardiorespiratory adaptation. If you're going too slow, there's no value. It's what's called zone one. It's called a recovery workout. And a recovery workout, zone one, the purpose is to elevate your heart rate, to take contaminants out of the muscle fiber, and to take nutrients into the muscle fiber. It's not a cardiorespiratory type of a workout. It's a recovery workout. So what you have to do is pick a speed at the start that at least gets you after three, four minutes above the minimum floor. And that's how I would start. So the key is after three to four minutes, you're above that minimum, you're in that plus or minus five range. And then what you're going to do is you're going to walk every time it goes above by five, you're going to run again when it goes down by five. Your task is

to do it unbroken. And what's beautiful is this is measurable. In time, you'll get it. And you know what? When you get 20 minutes, it's satisfying for everybody because they did something they couldn't do. And that is important. Athletes need to show progress. And I can't just say a coach is like, you're getting better. Trust me. This me this is measurable the question is is what do you do after that so after you get to 20 minutes what do you do because if you keep doing 20 minutes at that same speed you're going to get worse right try to go further right there you go a little fat right go a little faster you can keep that same duration or you can switch it up a little bit you know i love how smart you are you know what's funny is about fantastic explanation, really. But you what's interesting about

weightlifting and endurance, we speak the same language, but I have no idea to do what you do. Right. I have no idea how to do it. Like I just I see empty space and I don't know. But it's the same concepts. So you're right. What you do is you would expand by going from 20 minutes to 25. Same rules. After you make it 25 unbroken, what do you do? You go to 30 and you go all the way to an hour. So the games athlete, one hour is like the holy grail if they could get there and they all get there. But the other side is what you said, speed. So what you do is you maintain the 20 minutes. You maintain the same heart rate because that's your constant, but the speed improves by 15 seconds per mile.

And when you make 20 minutes, you move it another 15 seconds per mile. Jeffrey Adler, who is arguably one of the best runners in CrossFit right now on an elite level, his zone two is under seven minute per mile pace. Wow. Yeah. And he's not a runner. He's a lifter. And I want to get to Jeffrey, but I do want to know everybody, everybody else but me probably picked up on it. Why?

You mentioned walk, right? When you get out of that zone to walk. Why not just slow down? Because we talked about the slowing down, but why not just slow down, go a little bit slower? Why walk instead of slowing down? Oh, that's a good question. So the reason why is because you don't accumulate time during the slowdown. So meaning your job is to do, let's say, 20 minutes in the beginning.

So you stop your watch and you just walk because it's easily to measure so when someone slows down yeah i i it needs to be a clear it's a break it's an active recovery so rather than like let's say their goal is to keep their heart rate at like 140 or 145 rather than like slowing down so that they can maintain that heart rate right they should maintain the speed and if their heart rate goes above walk stop the time get back down five beat five beats below and then resume no there's no you could certainly do that you certainly could but the problem that i don't like about is i'm trying to train a speed okay i'm being aware of what is my speed that I can maintain.

What we're trying to do is build a library of knowledge. Yeah, you don't like teaching that slower speed. Right. That's the problem. I want to teach a speed that you now know is my sustainable speed, that I've got this speed. So if I was training you for a marathon, I'm going to be using that zone two speed. That is one of my primary go-to speeds. As I get more information about you, eventually I'm going to roll that into, here's your projected marathon speed. Here's your other gears. Can I ask you another question about this? Because this, this makes me wonder like,

okay, so I get why now we're trying to focus on a speed, but if somebody were to just instead, when they see that heart rate going up they slow down their speed goes down they keep their heart rate the same if they did that over time wouldn't they still naturally get faster over the next few so there's many ways to skin a cat so your way works fine and it's not even my way i'm just wondering because i'm not doing it so i'm just wondering you know especially if someone's new that will help work really well right so that's where you can absolutely just slow down and but here's what i i don't like the idea okay i want something that's measurable i want to see performance improvements i want something that week after week after week

oh my speed is dropping like like jeffrey started, for example, at an 845 mile. And then all of a sudden it was like he was 830. It was shocking. Well, Matt Frazier, his best was a 735 mile. When he hit 730, it was like I didn't think it was ever humanly possible. It was very measurable. And that is something that is motivating for an athlete, the fact that they can actually measure their progress. Remember, athletes – it's this theory of recency.

They only remember what they did last. Well, what if nothing is measurable? You're just going out and running again, and that's the problem is, is that it's not sustainable. pounds normally. And for whatever reason, you go to deadlift that day and just things are off and 405 is heavy. You're in your car thinking about your training. You're like, all my training's off, my diet's off, my sleep's off. You're just so in your head about that last workout, even though you know you have proficiency and capacity to lift a lot more weight. It's just for a number of reasons, maybe it was a bad workout. Right. Yeah. So that's where, yeah, I, I, your way, let's be clear works. Matter of fact, that's how I train for triathlons.

You speed up and slow down based upon your terrain too. And so, but what I'm talking about is developing in the beginning, how do you establish your base? How do you establish your foundation? How do you develop that? Because at some point in time, you have to start adding in intensity. Most people, they don't even know what is considered an adequate base before they build the intensity phase. That's why I said 20 minutes. minutes. If you could do 20 minutes unbroken, in my opinion, your structure, your bones, your ligaments and tendons are sound enough to be able to start adding in some intensity.

But that doesn't mean that we ignore that foundation. That foundation must continuously evolve. So it's not that we're so like all of like the athletes that I coach in the CrossFit space are migrating away from zone two. And what they're doing now is adding in surges within the middle. So what they'll do is let's say a zone two run, two minutes. They'll go in and push a sled for 10 seconds maximum sprint, spike the heart rate, and then back to zone two to teach the body on how to recover into that zone two. Well, what does that evolve into? into that zone two. Well, what does that evolve into? Eventually, it works into a zone two followed by 10 100-meter sprints

with three minutes of rest. And then what does it evolve to? It evolves into a speed workout and a zone two workout. So there's a natural progression that they must evolve to. It's time to step up your wardrobe. Now, we've partnered with Viora Clothing

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Let me show you something real quick. This is their Echo Insulated Jacket, and it is so warm. And since the winter months are coming, I'm going to be rocking this so much more. Guys, there's endless stuff for you on their website that just looks so good and performs so well. How can they get it? You guys can get it over at viore.com slash power project. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash power project. And you guys receive 20% automatically when you go to that, uh, links down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. What you got going on over there, Andrew? I'm really digging this. Like, um, I guess we'll call it a program of running. Um, just because like the last time I tried to do a zone to run,

I think I could probably walk faster just because I'm so new to it. But my, I guess my question is like in that, that time where you're like, okay, I'm going to stop running to try to get my heart rate back down. Do you – should I be concerned with how much time it's taking for me to get down the – I think you said like five – Five beats below. Yeah, below. Like should I allot a certain time there or should I not even worry about it? Let's just get five below and then get back to it. Yeah, so that's where I'm not – when we were talking earlier about things can get very complicated.

And the problem is, is that what's the purpose of this workout? And the purpose is I need you just focused on what? 20 minutes, same heart rate, same speed. And so it's – I'm trying as a coach to make it very clear on what our mission is. My mission is to get you to the 20 minutes. Don't worry about your recovery time. Now, the truth is that recovery time will drop because a major measure of aerobic fitness is how fast can you recover? How fast can you clear fatigue? As a matter of fact, when you get a VO2 test done and you're wearing a mask and they're measuring your oxygen going in and the carbon dioxide going out,

they're also measuring your heart rate. And you wear this mask for two minutes after your VO2 test. Why? Because they want to actually see how you've recovered from test to test to test to test. So that's why I would just focus on the core variables, which is the 20 minutes, the heart rates, your constant, and then your speed. And then we progress from there. And that's the core purpose of that workout zone too. It's important to note too that you can't really get the data

just off the watch, right? You kind of need a strap. Yeah, the strap is significant. The watch just isn't going to give you – it can be way off sometimes, right? Yeah, it can be way off. And that's why I always – it's interesting in the sport of CrossFit. So they had a 5K run at this year's games. Take that back for the people that are listening.

You know what's so funny is, is that I got, I did some commentating at the games and it was 5k CrossFit HQ said they measured it as 5,000 meters. And they announced a fun run. CrossFit did where every attendee could do the actual 5k run the day before. So I did it, wore my garment, wore chest strap,

right? I got the measurement of the actual course, but CrossFit said that they measured this course three times. So when I went on the broadcast, I said that they measured it three times. Well, the finishing times for the top athletes was like sub 17 minutes, right? Well, I get Jeffrey Adler's Garmin with this chest strap and I realized it's, it's 4,617 meters. So it's short. Better times. Right.

But okay. So, so the amount of, this is the sad thing about within the CrossFit space that's disappointing is the uproar that it created of CrossFit, what, intentionally trying to show that these athletes are better than they actually are by running sub-17 for a 5K when it's really only 4.6? Do you realize that 16 minutes is not even a high school cross-country team, you know, JV starting spot. It's such mediocrity. It's like, like, like Matt Frazier was an amazing runner, but he ran five Oh five. You wouldn't make a track team in high school at a five Oh five.

Like it's, it's such an interesting thing. And so I sat there and I'm like, how did CrossFit measure this? And what they did was, is that they wanted the rules to be clear. So no one went off course because they were sending waves of these athletes and they were doing, you know, three laps essentially. So I said, how'd you measure it? You measured three times. I'm like, yeah, no, did it with a wheel. And what they did was, is they created an inner perimeter. And the perimeter, you just had to keep the cones on your left as you navigated.

But if you went apex to apex to apex, you were able to chop off a substantial distance, which is how cross-country is done. There is no distance standard in cross-country. There isn't any. There is no distance standard in cross country. There isn't any. And that's the shame is that the uproar is like it showed how naive that we are as a sport that we don't understand what other sports actually do. Cross country is never measured because it's always different terrain. Sometimes it's in mud.

Sometimes it's in sand. And the purpose of measurement is what? To compare results from one race to the next and the next. And that's why road races are certified, so that you can actually do a comparison. But you never compare one course anyway. So on that course, what Adler did is he wore a chest strap. He was one of two men that wore a chest strap. And right away when he finished, I like looking at his results because, for example, Jeff Adler got second place, but did he work hard? How do you know unless you actually have something to look at? And that chest strap, what it does is it shows a couple of things that are highly important. Cadence.

It shows you your stride length. It shows you vertical oscillation. It shows you imbalance between the left foot and the right foot in terms of ground contact time. Which one is this? Any Garmin chest strap will do it. Yeah. Yeah. $110. It would be the best, Garmin chest strap. Yeah, $110.

It would be the best investment that you could make. Yeah. How did you actually take Jeffrey Adler first? Because he placed 13th in 2021, 5th next year, placed first this past year. What did you have to improve on him specifically to get into that first place spot? He's got an incredible coach. So his primary, all of these CrossFit athletes, they have a primary coach that navigates a team.

And that team of people that they have is really an important piece. It's a very, very important piece. But that coach, the main coach, their responsibility is to dovetail all of these specialists within the training program. She's exceptional. Now, what she did that was smart is that you can only take an athlete to a certain level of your knowledge base. And then eventually in these specialized areas, the athlete is outgrowing what your capabilities are, that you cannot go out and get enough education to keep up. And that's

when she reached out. So she reached out two years ago and said to me, she says, you know, I really, I need some assistance. What I do though, I mean, it's like your your time as a coach it's valuable how do you know whether or not an athlete is going to be coachable like how do you know and the worst thing would be is that you commit all this upfront time and then six months later they all of a sudden just decide that they found another shiny object and and're not patient. Like kids nowadays, they're expecting like improvement right away. They want to see it now. Everything has to be now. And so what I did is I wrote and I spent some time getting his results and I wrote on a

Google sheet a bunch of different types of workouts. And I told her, I said, I'll go in there and I'll take a look at them, but I need you to populate results. I need you to put in results so that I know what he has done. And what I can do is take those results and modify the progression that we're going, but also modify the next workout. So a lot of people, what they'll do is they'll create progressions because they see the end result. Like, let's say you want to run a marathon. I'm just going to prepare you for the marathon. Well, what if we see a red flag occur here where we have to reroute? What we should be doing is not so focused on a progression, but focus more on the results. And what are they telling us? Because it's those results that drive the direction of the next workout.

I've made a lot of progress by doing the same thing for a few weeks even. That's the key. You must look at your results. So it's nice to have a game plan. Like it doesn't always have to be harder. Right. Sometimes, you know what? I'm going to go slow again.

Right. Right. Or maybe, you know what it is? Like a lot of athletes, what they'll struggle with is, is I'll throw a workout in, it will be 1200 meter intervals and they'll struggle even though the pace is easily doable because they're not comfortable in running three laps around the track. It's a mental problem. And so, you know, what you do is you go, okay, next workout's three by 3000. We'll cure that three lap problem by making you run significantly further. But so what I did is I wrote this Google

sheet and you know what she did in response is populated on a level of detail that I've never seen before. It was something that attracted me of like, this is somebody that will make me better as a coach. And that is a hard thing to find where a coach that is doing something different will end up making you better, that will task you. So she is very confrontational with me. Like she comes in hot but gives it straight. And I'll give you an example. So he's preparing for rogue and rogue uh invitational so it was october they did strongman there was amazing event and jeff wanted to win rogue he ended up getting second place there um and could have won that

there was a mishap in an event where he fell and and lost points but he did great. But going into Rogue, one of the things that I had to do was, we don't taper in CrossFit. You never do a taper because you're always on. So what we do is we sharpen. And in sharpening, what we're doing is we're dialing in the way the body feels. So I can take you and you go for a run and I will ask you, like, how does your stride feel? Like when you land, do you sink into the step? Or do you feel lively? Do you feel like you have jumped? Or does it feel like maybe you feel sluggish, heavy, running in sand? You don't have that spring-like effect. Well, I can modulate that through different types of techniques. If I make you run long and slow, it's going to make you feel sluggish and heavy.

If I give you some 60-meter sprints, it will tighten up your posterior chain, and you're going to get that jump, that spring-like back. So what we're doing is with the body is modulating to optimize you on that sharpening just before race day. So I have to write some workouts that optimize based upon the feedback that I'm getting for him. I write three workouts. One of them was really freaking hard. He was supposed to do a running workout that day, but it was on the same list of these other three. There was a run bike combo that he shouldn't have done. And then there was an run bike combo that was, he shouldn't have done.

And then there was an easier like bike run combo. And then there was just a run and that was the one he should have done, but he just opens it up. And his coach Caroline says, you know, pick one of the rogue pre-workouts. And well, he just picked the first one. He texts me and he's like,

that just turned my whole body inside out. He says, I can't even walk home. And I'm like, oh, well, I'll tell you what happened though. So here's an example of how you learn from an athlete. Jeff has a very slow 20 minute average wattage on a biker. So it's an FTP test. What you're doing is you're doing a 20-minute maximum effort on a stationary bike. In this case, it would be a Concept2 biker is what he used. And his 20-minute result is low relative to his peers. Well, it's strange to me because on an eco bike, he's incredible.

And I can't figure out why it is until he did this workout. And the reason why the workout was so challenging for him is because it had 10-second sprints that were standing up out of the saddle on a damper of between 8 and 10, meaning like you're sprinting uphill climbing a mountain pass. When you sprint and stand, it's not seated. You have to control your balance, your agility, your stability. It is much more difficult for the brain to recruit and sequence muscle fibers when standing versus seated. Seated, you can control your instability. Well, it was eye-opening for me. It was so devastating for him. I'm like, oh my God, there's his problem. What he needs to be doing is more standing up out of the saddle to train the brain in the recruitment. It's the same thing we were saying about doing heavy lifting. Heavy lifting challenges that neurological system. And what I realized was his inadequacy was

being masked by the seated position. I wrote that back. I go, this is freaking awesome. I was pumped. Like it was groundbreaking for me as a coach to realize what I need to do. Carolina's coach texts me like three minutes later and, God, it gives me a – I would love to read it. A beating. It was so bad.

I wrote back and I'm like, I'm sorry. There's nothing to say. Because she's like, she rips into me and she's like, he hasn't been eating. He hasn't been sleeping. His back is sore. And he's not holding his food. And I'm like, I mean, what do I say? It's good data.

I was like, I'm all, I started it and I'm like, but, and I'm like, no, just strike that out. Just say, I'm sorry. But she was like, what I love is like four hours later, she wrote back and she's all, look, I'm really sorry about that. I'm just really stressed because he's not. And what I love the most is, is the honesty. How rare is it to get a coach that comes in hot like that? But that's the passion where she is. She's got vested time.

And it was eye-opening where we need to communicate. But we found out the reason why is because Jeff really messed up. He picked the wrong workout. But anyway. He recovered okay, though, and still did well. He was amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, athletes always like it's funny that athletes before a big competition, they always feel sluggish and heavy. But that's the body's – what it does before it goes into war. You're heavy and sluggish because the body knows it's about to go into combat. And don't confuse the two. So what you do is you send them for a run. And what I do is I have him run and shoot content from behind. And what I do is I look at hip drop, like, is he sinking into steps or is he springing and bouncing? And what we do is we do three different speeds and then I show them the evidence. This goes back to the original topic that we were.

Athletes, the ones that are great are accountable and they need proof. How is it that I feel sluggish and heavy? And I'm telling you this, but you say it's not. You have to prove to them. And that's where I try and come in and give them the tools so that next time when he goes into a competition, he's better because of that last conversation. He knows the difference. Have you ever worked with MMA athletes or jujitsu guys and stuff like that?

So Leo Vieira. You know Leo Vieira? Check Matt. Check Matt. Oh, okay. Marcus Wushecha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the people down in – so yeah yeah, so he contacted me and been down there, and we've done some things together. His coach in Brazil was down at the time when I did Ironman Brazil and did triathlons. was very interested in the cardio side and recognized that, like I said earlier, a major

measure of aerobic fitness is how fast can you recover. And he realized the importance of the aerobic system when you go pound for pound at the end of a tournament. And younger like the 185s the 205s were starting to dominate because of that ability to endure yeah and that's when it i got involved um i haven't done a lot of work in it uh i was invited to the ufc training center in las vegas um yeah, I mean, I know enough about the sport that I'm... So one of the pieces that I did early on, here's an example. I always want to know whether or not coaches know. Like, how good are they? Like, and through observations of the athletes that they coach, and how do they train? And when Conor McGregor was getting ready to fight Mayweather, I was a fan of Mayweather and the way in which he trains his cardio.

I know his—I've broken down his running stride before. I've broken down his breathing and all of his protocol. He is so incredibly on his game, and so when Conor was, like, going to fight him, I'm like, I'm curious on whether or not Conor even knows what he's up against in terms of Mayweather's competency on the aerobic side of the equation, the ability to endure, to go long. And it was interesting to me in the way in which Conor trained. Conor has a dramatic heel strike, and he runs with a dramatic heel strike. Or Mayweather runs on the ball of his foot. What's interesting about that, just that one point, when you are sparring, when you're

standing and you're fighting, where does your foot land? And are you training the run based upon what is actually specific within the movement? And the other piece was is that Connor did a lot of high-intensity sprinting, which is great if you're going to go for one round. So I built up a whole thing where I was like, it doesn't make sense. The key piece, though, was Connor and what he does during his recovery. Key piece, though, was Connor and what he does during his recovery. What I realized was that just like in CrossFit, they don't understand that, yeah, constantly varied is important in training. But what about your recovery? the brain to know that this is recovery so that every time you do it, the body knows

it's recovery and it does what it's supposed to do, which is what? Put you in a better position going into the next round. And what you must do is develop a recovery protocol. And I watched Khabib, for example. Khabib was very methodical. It was very structured and orderly, but it was right. And that to me, it was eye-opening where you look at what Conor has done, but could he be better by actually looking at just his one-minute recovery protocol? Does he get control of his breathing before he starts talking?

Yeah. Does he sit down? Yeah, I don't understand. Like it's not the sport. That would be like you. You want to run a half marathon. Why are we doing excessive amounts of sled sprints and it's not the event? What we want to do is we want to take the event and build the support around the event.

So let's just say that your run pace is 13 minutes per mile. I'm going to develop some 15 minute per mile and I'm going to develop some 11 minute per mile. So when the 13 fails, I got the support. When are you ever going to use that? That was the concern. But does Connor know enough to ask to bring about the questions? And that's what like Caroline Jeff Adler's coach does. She asks,

this doesn't make any sense to me. And you want that as a coach. Like it's not something where they're critical of you. You want an athlete who is interested enough to ask the questions to keep you learning, to keep you on your edge, because that's what's going to make you and keep you great. You know, I'm curious about this because I know that you've worked with some grapplers, but you mainly work with CrossFit athletes and running type athletes. But I wonder what your thoughts are on this because one thing that I've noticed, there are certain grapplers, nearer grapplers, and even people who have been doing it for a long time and people who've been fighting for a long time that they can't get control of their breathing. When you talked about running, when you've talked about swimming, and even within CrossFit, it's easy to have a cadence with a lot of the things you do, because when you're running, there's a cadence with the inhale exhales. When you're lifting, there's a cadence, there's a rhythm. With all of these movements, there's a reliable rhythm where you can have a reliable

cadence of breathing. But when it comes to something like grappling and fighting, it's dynamic. Like there are times when you're passing, you're going on the ground, you're laying pressure, you're now on the bottom playing guard, you're punching. It's so dynamic that some athletes find it really difficult to get into a reliable cadence. And then when they're taken out of their, let's say that they start to fall behind in a match, maybe they're down on points or things, their breathing gets out of control, then they get out of control, then they get fatigued, right?

So what would your advice be to athletes who still haven't figured out how to have controlled breathing through every aspects of a match? Yeah, so you know you, okay, I'll definitely answer that. Mark did a run workout and I think that you're running a half marathon maybe. And near the end of it,

you finished by, you finished at, by, at a drinking fountain, but you were talking the last 10 minutes. Do you remember that one? You put a whole like video on it. Okay. So this is an example because he's talking the whole time. So it's not where you sit there and you hear where it's easy. And that's what you're talking about. Like the cadence is different because you're in different positions and sometimes they have to hold their breath and their bracing sometimes, but it's not rhythmic. And the thing is, is like, they don't, they should never be holding their breath. But some people have that bad habit of when they are getting into a position where they're pressurized or something like pressure, they start to hold their breath.

And that's, that's not good. Or they slow down the breath, right? They go, right there. And so there's not the reliable, predictable pattern, right? It's random. So it's the same thing with when you were running, but it was clear enough, the cadence of the breath and the urgency of that breath that I could pick that up. And this is where I think that as a coach,

I would want to be observing while the person is in there fighting, whether it's you or the competitor. And are you aware of that urgency of the breath? And what I'm talking about is that controlled rhythmic breath, right? Which is slower or in this workout, you were in trouble for the last 15 minutes. You were hyperventilating and it was, you were pushing your pace because you wanted to run like 10, 20 pace, right? And you had a goal that you were trying to hit. But it was hurting him. But he was trying to finish under this time. And there was this level of urgency that if you hear it,

you're going to get more and more comfortable with it. And so that's what I listened for. So much so that I don't even need to look anymore. You could hear the urgency of the like that. And that is a person that's scrambling, that they need and it's quick versus this is patient. This is controlled. And so what I would – I looked at when I was studying McGregor and – because remember, when someone's in a ring, you're just watching the chest move.

You can't even hear anything. And are you watching the chest move and seeing urgency of the chest? Are there urgency? Is he grasping? Is he trying to reach out and grab air? And that's what you see. And that's a sign that he's in trouble, significant trouble,

especially if Khabib is not in trouble, where he is more settled. So, no, it's a very challenging piece. And that's why, as a coach, what I do is I listen for the urgency of that breath. Keep in mind, a two-count in running is where you take a complete cycle of breath in two steps. So if your lungs are six and a half liters, there's some urgency. And you see two counts in MMA all the time. Imagine how fast you have to breathe in order to move six and a half liters. It's fast, it's urgent, and it's loud.

And that's all you need to hear is that. It seems like an exhale is hard when you're up against it. That's what you do when you run. It's hard to get like a good, yeah. Yeah, you push past. I definitely feel that for sure. Right. So imagine if you hear this from me.

I'm exhaling all on one footstep because the inhale is on the other footstep. That's how fast it sounds. So a two count is something where there is no question you are in serious trouble. You're way beyond your maximum sustainable pace. You're dying. And you need to get back in control. And that was the part with McGregor that baffled me was you get one minute of rest. Why don't you have a recovery protocol where you know how to lower that demand for oxygen, that rate of breath, right? Because remember,

your breathing is following the demand that the muscles have for that oxygen yeah so that's why your heart rate's high if you slow your heart rate down and you get back in control now the muscles can recover but imagine hyperventilating right which is a sign you're in a non-sustainable pace and you're still hyperventilating going into the next round. You're fucked. And how do they not know? So what I would – I always tell people is that recovery, what you must realize is that there's three pieces to it. And depending upon how much time you have, this is what you must practice. It must become a ritual of yours. It must be consistent every single time so the body knows precisely this is rest.

Because without practice, it's never going to know. So if you're leaning against the cage or seated or walking or standing, right, hands above the head, hands on the waist, hinged, if it's different every time, then how does your body know? So the three pieces, the very first thing that you must be aware of, and the athlete knows, I'm in deep trouble because my breathing rhythm, I'm hyperventilating. My demand for oxygen succeeding what I can supply. Your number one task is to get control of that breath because until you get control of the breath, no amount of shaking is doing anything because the muscles are starved and they need you to get back in control. So once you get back into control, and what I mean by controlled is like if you were taking one cycle of breath per four steps. So one, two, three, breath, one, two, three, breath, one, two, three, breath. You're now okay.

Now what I need you to do is I need you to keep the muscles moving. I want those slow twitch moving. That way we can help flush the body out a little bit more, keep it fluid, keep it flexible. And then with the last maybe three, five seconds, I'm getting my head back in the game. And then with the last maybe three, five seconds, I'm getting my head back in the game. I'm no longer resting anymore. The key piece is the starting piece. You as an athlete need to be assessed right away. Do the coaches know that they're in deep trouble based upon that cadence of breath?

And are they trying to get them to control the breath? Like, are they? Like, if I'm hyperventilating, I don't want someone to grab my lungs and squeeze my chest and pull me up. Let me just have a little bit of time. Let me lower my heart rate. And that's why I would always play a game with athletes is, like, you have one minute in this recovery, and during your recovery, it's passive. I want you to lower that heart rate to the lowest possible. And what data point do I collect? The lowest heart rate within that period of time. And I track that. That is something that's valuable. Does that occur in MMA where

they're aware of their heart rate within the one minute? If you're not, why? If we want to get better, you have to have measurable ways of knowing you're better. So if you drop your heart rate and let's say you come out and it's 180 and now all of a sudden you get a minute of rest and it's at 130, right? Yeah. Yeah. But what if it's at 175? And we all know he is.

Yeah. But how doesn't he know? Is there a breathing pattern? Because you've heard of the double inhale and exhale some people utilize that in rest periods but is there an ideal breathing pattern that if you have a rest period breathe like this and chill to have a better heart rate reduction deep and slow so yes so i work a lot with firefighters and they have a lot for conservation of oxygen, right? When their tank is running low and they're in trouble and trapped, that there is about conservation. But no, so for me, all the practices that we work with within my space and what I did as an athlete is I'm slowing the rate in which I am breathing to get back in control so that I can actually accelerate my recovery.

I train athletes of that transition of that hyperventilation to when precisely are you actually now able to recover. And so, no, but I don't know enough to correctly answer that question. Okay. Because I don't play in that space. Gotcha. So you don't necessarily work on, in particular, as a breathing. You work on conditioning so the person can breathe better, basically. Yeah, and it's about the awareness of the breath when they get a limited amount of rest.

So CrossFitters, they don't get, it's very rare that they're going to get a massive amount of rest. Typically it's about a minute. And in CrossFit, what we'll see is, is that, you know, I said, get control of the breathing and then keep yourself moving slightly, right? Keep those slow twitch. But you know, you'll see all the time with a CrossFitter, they'll be in an isometric squat. Like, I don't understand that either. Right? Why not recover while hanging on the rope then? Did you end up seeing the documentary? It was like a last man standing run.

It's kind of long haired guy with a big old, big old giant beard was doing it. But like in between they, I think they were running, I think it was just a mile loop, but they just did it. Oh yeah. Over and over and over again.

And the one guy um that won he ended up like really uh cherishing his rest period i forget how much time they had but it had something to do with uh how quickly they were able to do the mile and he would lay down every time and put his feet up and just really relax the other guys were like eating and talking and and and have they had their friends around and he's like, you know, he said to the camera very quickly, he's like, I'm not talking, I'm resting and just laid down. Yeah. So that's really interesting to bring that up. So the work that we do with the military, they do a lot of rucking, a lot of rucking. And one of the problems when they ruck is that they're wearing boots, combat boots, and that combat boot is very restrictive, right, because it's laced up the shin and it reduces the amount of dorsiflexion.

So it's hard for them to get full extension of the hip because of that. of that so what will happen is they end up having to flare their toe out in order to get more extension which ultimately it ends up creating shin splint related issues and hip flexor related issues and so when they typically rock in training it's it's three miles every 50 minutes and then they get 10 minutes of rest loaded packs it's interesting what they do in the 10 minutes of rest loaded packs. It's interesting what they do in the 10 minutes. Like you get 10 minutes and what is, and I would think that our military would have a prescription on what to do to relax the areas that are most susceptible for injury. And it's just not there yet. I think that recovery is underappreciated. Most people, when they write and they think about programming, they're always thinking about volume, they're always thinking about intensity,

and also the frequency that you're doing these workouts. But for most people, they just get tired. It's their recovery that limits their ability. What if you weren't so tired? And they don't realize that the recovery is a quality that's equally as important as adding and creating more distance, more volume, as creating more speed or strength in a workout. The recovery does matter. It's like we talked about in the last podcast that we did. If you get one minute of rest in a five-by-five back squat versus three minutes of rest,

well, you're not going to be able to lift the same load then if you're keeping it at the five reps. And so how do you improve upon that matters? Like, for example, in MMA, if you're fighting five minutes and one minute, and you know your variables, well, maybe part of it should be is that you're going to try and simulate something similar, but do something where you're more challenged in the recovery. I mean, imagine if you're able to recover, take Jeff Adler. Think about this.

Jeff Adler, he started out at an 845 for a zone two. So he's running an 845 pace zone two heart rate is 150 to 156. All right. So he's running at that 845. He's now at under seven. Okay. Same heart rate, 150 to 156. What if he went out and did zone two and he went back to 845? What do you think his heart rate would be? It's not going to be at 150, 156 anymore, is it? It's probably going to be like in the 130s. That's progress. That's improvement, right? That's what I'm talking about. How did he do it? By challenging himself in a recovery stimulus workout. If you're a gymnast, you do something very high demand, very high skilled, very high force, fast twitch. And then what do you do in your recovery? They don't do anything.

Most gymnasts, male gymnasts, are above their lactate threshold going into the fourth element. Most. When you say fourth element, what do you mean? So their fourth rotation, their fourth movement. Okay, okay. So imagine, so I had a, we had the most decorated German gymnast come to a course of ours and came up after.

He's like, that's some of the most profound information I've ever heard. And I was curious. I'm like, what resonated? And he said that gymnasts, you know, we do things that are extremely high force. And he said, but the level of fatigue that we build through a competition is, it's incredible. So what I did is I had my father pull blood in world championship events, Olympic events, where he was measuring blood lactate before I went in and afterwards. And I'm like, really?

And he's like, oh, no, I still have that data. So he sends that to me. I'm like, fascinating of what his level of blood lactate was after the third rotation. He was in a non-sustainable pace going into high bar at world championships. Wow. Imagine that you're in a non-sustainable pace and now you have to do high bar for a minute. The complexities, the difficulty, the risk that those athletes take. Now imagine having all that data.

The problem was they didn't know what to do with it. That's what he told me. Yeah, how do you get in shape for it? Do you do it on a bike or something? On a bike or something? I mean – Well, so that was what the thing that was interesting was if – the limitation was clearly that they were not recovering in the amount of rest that they had between the rotations. So think about what I just said with Adler. If you're always standing in line, if you're a weightlifter and you always sit in a chair, then you're always going to have to sit in a chair. But what if you don't sit in a chair and you're actually able to recover

while moving? Imagine that. You do some like air squats or you do something. Something. Keeps the heart rate going. Something where you're actually forcing the body to recover at a higher level of intensity so that when you don't have to do something – think about if Adler didn't actually – let's say he went back, not just ran 845, but imagine if he didn't actually – he stopped. How low his heart rate would get. This is the point is that sometimes it is the recovery that may limit you. So in one minute, that's what I'd be thinking about. We talked to countless professionals on the podcast about the importance of having strong feet, and chances are that wearing narrow toe box shoes has weakened your feet

and your toes don't function the way they should. Sucks, bro. Yeah. That's why we've partnered with Paloova. And they're the first casual, wide-toe box, five-finger shoe that you can wear running, in the gym, literally anywhere. But the benefit of these shoes is that as you stick your feet in and your little toesy-woesy start to get a little bit of spacey-waseys, your feet will start to function the way they should because your toes will slowly start to widen out and your feet will no longer be this blubby little cast that they probably are right now.

Andrew, how can we get them? Yeah, time to spread them cheeks. I mean toes. Head over to paluva.com slash powerproject. That's P-E-L-U-V-A dot com slash powerproject. Now check out enter promo code powerproject15 to save 15% off. Again, that's at paluva.com slash powerproject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes.

They got tons of them. Check them out. How long are the rounds in jiu-jitsu typically? Depends on the belts. Black belts will be 10-minute rounds. Brown belts will be 7-minute rounds, et cetera. The other thing I would ask you is how much time is standing versus prone? Depends on the type of player you are.

In a grappling match, if somebody takes somebody down, then one person will be trying to pass the guard. And there are different passing styles where some people will pass on their knees, some people will pass dynamically on their feet. So let's say maybe in a 10-minute match, it could be that somebody's on their feet for an average of three to five minutes. And how much time do they have training on their feet? So one of the things that's interesting is that you're heavier. VO2 max is milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. Your weight matters. And it's the reason why they divide your body weight by your score is because you have to carry your weight. If you're not capable of carrying your weight while standing because you don't train it, then it's a fatigue generating position.

That's a problem. Yeah. That's a problem for a lot of people in grappling. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of, like a lot of times, like they will – we've noticed this where when they get tired on their feet by trying to pass, they'll actually just go down to their knees instead. And that – because they're tired, they go down to their knees, but that puts them in a worse position. They're easier to sweep. They're easier to deal with. And you must pick that up. Absolutely. Right.

And you're aware of it. 100%. Right. That's what I see too. So when I assess like athletes, what I'll do is I'll take the same, I'll look at what they do. And then the first thing I look at is what is the position of the body? And like you said, it could be 40% of the time is standing. All right.

That's important. Now when you're prone, how much time is on the back? How much is on the stomach? And then what are the muscle groups being used? Like I see in jiu-jitsu, the hip flexor is heavily, heavily used. But then – okay. So then the question would be is – and I'm not an expert, but I would ask you, how do you train that stamina? Because I know in the CrossFit space that the hip flexor is one of the most underdeveloped areas within the body. And it's used in almost everything.

It's used in weightlifting and in gymnastics, cycling and in running. It's used and there's no capacity. Yeah. It's the same thing that I see there. And so how are they – I mean I see hip thrust things, but it's always about lifting. Where is the long duration where you're going 10 minutes continuously using a hip flexor? You mean like in terms of strength training in the gym? I wouldn't say 10 minutes, but I think adding hip flexor work into your workouts is essential.

Like in every workout that a thru-gag grappper does, like you could have a kettlebell on your foot and you could be doing hip flexor work for 10, 20 repetitions for multiple sets and you can also, because like if you can increase the strength of a hip flexor with higher repetition work, then the demands when you're doing it in jiu-jitsu, because it's not loaded when you're on your back, you know

what I mean? But if you have stronger hip flexors when you're on your back, it's, you're going to be able to just be much more lethal. Think about zone two training and running. Think about zone two training and hip flexors. We're isolating a movement pattern, a muscle group, but we're developing the slow twitch recovery, aerobic fibers. That needs volume. So I would sit and I would think I'd get a pair of fins and I'd go to a pool and what I would do is I would work on my kicking and I would be spending more and more time working that lower intensity, high volume, slow twitch aerobic output.

That's what would pop into my head right away. Even getting in a pool and just doing some high knees or something like that, right? Right. And working that under a very low load but doing it with volume like a zone two because at some point in time, you're going to not use the flexors within a match. And there's the time to accelerate the recovery. But if it's built around speed and strength and force, it's on the opposite side of the equation. So let me ask you this then instead, because a pool would make sense. But the thing is, is when we think of the ways that grapplers would be training, they're so sparse in terms of you have to train on the mats, that you're probably going to do some stuff in the gym and now you have to find time for a pool. And for most people, they're not going to be able to find time for the

pool. So something in the gym, let me ask you, would like doing a lighter hip flexor work for the span of... Or supermans or yeah, scissor kicks. Yeah. But doing a hip flexor raise or any of those movements for like a span of two minutes with light load, right? Would that be something that could be similar to something instead of having to go to a pool? Yep. So you can do something where you're doing like something high output too. Like you can even do it where, like I mentioned earlier, a sled sprint into a recovery jog. You could do a toes to bar and then go on the ground and go very slow knees to chest. You can do something where it's toes to bar and then do an isometric hold. And then you can go a recovery knees to chest.

Yeah. But you have to spend more time under tension. You have to work that recovery side of the equation, not the intensity side. And that's – because the sport is so freaking hard. Like when you roll, it's so exhausting that the last thing that you're going to want to do, like I got an air runner for Leo Vera and Marcus Buciccia would not run on that thing. He just wouldn't do it. Yeah.

Why? Because of all the other things that he was doing. Just like you've said, yeah, the list is long. Plus he does MMA now. So he's not just a grappler anymore, you know?

Yeah. So one, one question I have to like, again, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So one question I have, too. Like, again, I know you don't work with grapplers, but the reason why I think the strength of the hip flexor is important because, yeah, you're doing all these things where you're playing guard, but when somebody is passing somebody's guard, they're now pulling their legs. And ideally, the grappler wants to be in a position

where they can be closed off. But if someone's now pulling your legs back continuously, you need to have the ability to get your leg back into position very quickly and with a level of strength. So what are your thoughts on that? I mean, in terms of like it's really high speed. Yeah. Right. And that's what you're talking about. Yeah, no, I see that.

And that's where like when people talk about the speed in which we said earlier, that is a neurological piece that must be incorporated in there. I mean, that's where like runners, it's interesting, like, you know, when I was collegiate years, they would take bungee cords with the sprinters and they would put them on the football field and they would artificially increase their speed and force them to go at an unnatural cadence. They were forcing them to do things that pushed the outside that would never be used. They would make them run downhill because they're forcing the brain to work that much faster to recruit and sequence. And that coordination is what you're talking about. I just sent Andrew this clip. This is an old school Westside barbell sled movement. You just hook the sled to your ankles. The most sleds that you pull, they come with a strap that you can just put your feet in

and you can simply just walk like this guy's walking in this video. Just kind of like a little Frankenstein. Yeah, but straight for hip flexors. Yeah. That's where I – I think that the key here is though coaches can come up with infinite variables. But if an athlete does not provide the feedback and most don't, athletes that sit there, like if you pose that question, you know what I would do as your coach? I would sit there and I would think about it. I write ideas. And then what we're going to do is we're going to play around with those ideas and we're going to build

programs around that because you are the one that's going to make me great by posing these questions because you're in the game. Did it work or did it suck? Right. And that's how like most of what I've done is, is doing deep dives like Jeffrey Adler. I did seven VO two max tests with him in one day. I'll tell you, okay. I'll tell you something really interesting. That's gotta be exhausting. Oh no, it destroyed him. But he told me after the seventh, he's like, man,

I think I'm melting on this now. No more. Like he was done. But the truth is about VO2 is that every movement you do is unique, right? And what you're doing, you're testing the oxygen's ability in those moving muscles, their ability to utilize that oxygen, that muscle's ability to utilize it. All right. So when you test rowing, it tests rowing muscle groups. When you test running, it tests running. It doesn't tell you anything about how you're riding a bike. It doesn't tell you anything about swimming, nothing. The reason why you get a VO2 max test as an athlete

is because you're testing your ability and your specialty. So runners do it in running. Triathletes will do it on a bike and a run. specialty. So runners do it in running. Triathletes will do it on a bike and a run. There has never been an athlete that has done that many tests that he did. Why? Because they're not developed in those areas. You will always underperform in the area that you don't spend an equal amount of time. What appeals to me about the athletes I'm coaching is mapping their body in terms of VO2, that for once, we have athletes that have spent an equal amount of time developing all movements. Imagine knowing the aerobic threshold, lactate threshold, and VO2 of 100 movements.

And you couldn't do it until these athletes came along. That's where I find that appealing. And, yeah, I'm fascinated by that approach that you have athletes now that don't dominate time in one specific area. You were mentioning earlier how you kind of almost wish you could go back with some of the knowledge that you have now and do some things differently. What would those things be? You did mention like lifting. Like do you think that lifting would be a big part of your routine? Would you have maybe a lifting or powerlifting coach or something like that?

You know, I never went into a weight room and lifted ever. What about the people around you, your peers? Were those guys lifting like Mark Allen and those guys? Not – it wasn't like a focal, but it was back in the day where volume was king. And I mean we did some sprints and some strides, but it was like never pushed a sled. I never picked up a barbell until I started CrossFit, ever. Wow. And I never understood why it was that I would lose a sprint.

If it came down to me and somebody else 200 meters out, I'd lose every time. So I had to become smart. If you and I were running together, I knew that if you got me close enough to the finish line, I'm going to lose. So what do I have to do? I have to soften you and surge 5k out, surge so you have no kick. I have to beat you before you get there. Well, why didn't I just do some stuff to better my chances? Because it wasn't like anybody else was doing it. Did you chalk it up to like genetics or were you stubborn? And some people did say stuff like that.

Some people did mention. No, I was swinging a pendulum over my food and it went in a clockwise direction. It was healthy and I ate it if it didn't and i was doing the swinging somehow it always you know swung in the correct direction over a snicker bar and a glass of coke well actually that that's an interesting thing because like you look at someone like mark he's obviously what type two dominant he has and me too i'm i've mainly done a lot of uh sprints through time, soccer, a lot of lifting. But someone like you, you would destroy us in any type of long distance type of event. I've had biopsies, yeah. It was about 85% slow.

Right? So that makes you wonder, with a lot of people coming from lifting and they're wanting to get a little bit better at running, maybe they're not trying to become the best runners, but they're trying to become a bit better. There has to be a little bit better at running. Maybe they're not trying to become the best runners, but they're trying to become a bit better. There has to be a transition with muscle fibers. They need to be able to develop more type 1 muscle fibers over time, correct? Or not develop, but transition certain muscle fibers. Transition, right, but not from slow to fast. So I would say, though, with Mark, that on the running, it was about understanding the type of body he has. And are you a fast twitch dominant athlete or are you a slow twitch dominant athlete?

And I'm not going to do it based upon getting a biopsy. I'm going to do it based upon performances. And so I would want you to do a fast twitch anaerobic effort. And I would look at that distance and that time, the meters per second that you ran, and I would compare it against an aerobic time domain in that movement and do a comparison. If he fatigues at a high rate, meaning he slows down significantly from that short anaerobic effort into that aerobic effort, if that rate of slowing is significant, then that tells me there's just weakness.

So I'm not a fan of testing at all unless it gives us a better indication of where to go. The key for testing is it's the athlete being convinced that this is the right direction. So I would say that, you know what, we need to do much more slower, longer, easier efforts. Well, what if he disagrees with that? I have to have my proof. And that's where these pieces come in is like this is what I am gauging it on. So I'm not looking at, let's say, trying to do conversions of slow twitch and fast twitch. I'm not – it's an area that's irrelevant to me because

I have what I have and I need to get him in the best position to perform in his marathon. But I have to have him on board with it because Mark's got people talking in his ear all the time and can do it better, right? Than anybody. They're just, I could do it better than that and this and that. I want him to see what I see. And so he sticks with the plan. The truth is, is that if you stick with the plan, you're going to become better. The reason why people don't get better is they keep ping-ponging around. And that's what we're trying to prevent. So I would sit with Mark right away. And the first thing that I would do is I would convince him of the roadmap he needs to develop. And this

is where I left off two years ago. I just told him about doing long and slow, but what's his progression from there? And that matters. And he has to do some things where we collect some evidence to create accuracy, precision, because he doesn't have the flexibility of time. So if I program for Mark, it has to be spot on. I can't just cover it up with more work. And so there are things that we would need, but they would come as the natural progression of him as an athlete. So for example, people talk about VO2 max training, right? Building your aerobic capacity, your ability to bring in oxygen and utilize that oxygen in the muscles. So he's a runner. He wants to get good at running. So we

have to know and build his VO2max's aerobic capacity in running. How do we do it? Well, there are ways. And what I would do is I would say, you know, Mark, here's the deal. We've built up your structure, your bones, your ligaments, your tendons. I need to go to the other side of the equation. What I want to do. I need to go to the other side of the equation. What I want to do is I want to go to what we call high-intensity training, VO2 max training. Not low-intensity aerobic training. High-intensity. This is a key stimulus because we need to maximize your aerobic capacity in order to raise all your other metrics, your lactate threshold and your aerobic threshold.

So what we're going to do, and it's a proven known test, and if you want the test results, the research studies, you're going to do a six-minute maximum effort test running. And what we're going to do is we're going to record the total distance that you went in that six minutes. That is your VO2 max intensity. That's what we're going to use. Now, if you were a skilled athlete, what I would do is get your meters per second in something that's six minutes. That is your VO2 max intensity. That's what we're going to use. Now, if you were a skilled athlete, what I would do is get your meters per second in something longer, maybe upwards of nine minutes, but you're not. And I need to make sure that the distance is one where you're motivated to stay on the gas. So now what I have is I've had him do a test, but that test is usable to build his aerobic capacity. So then what do we do?

We leverage that number. How? You said VO2 max intensity. What does that number mean or what would that mean? So like 90 percent of your – like close to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate. I see. So you would take whatever distance I got in that six-minute period. Yeah.

So let's just say that you went 1,600 meters. So 1,600 meters in six minutes, so that would be 22.5 seconds per hundred. That would be your pace, all right? So what we're doing is we did a test to establish a training intensity that will create the stimulus to improve your VO2 max, your ability to move and utilize oxygen in running, all right, which is critical for you to do. We want to maximize that so the other areas can grow and improve. So we now know what that is. And let's just say it's 22 and a half seconds per hundred. How do we train it? Well, the methodology is very straightforward. What we're going to do is we're going to do a high-intensity element followed by a recovery.

Most people will think, wait a minute, it's high-intensity, so what kind of recovery are we talking about? It's got to be sitting around and doing nothing. But I would come to you, Mark, and I would say, no, no, no. Here's the problem is that if you do 200 meters at this intensity, so that would take you 45 seconds. What's going to happen is your heart rate is going to climb. And at the end of the 200, it's going to be right in that sweet spot where we're creating adaptation, right? The more time we spend in that sweet spot of that heart rate, that speed at that heart rate, the greater adaptation. If we rest and do nothing, the heart rate's going to drop away from our sweet spot. The problem with doing nothing

is it drops too far. So what we have to do to spend more time is to allow ourselves some recovery, but not too much so that when we do the next interval, we're back in the sweet spot. So what we don't want to do in this environment is to do passive recovery. We want to do an active recovery. The question is, is how fast? Now, it has to be simple for you to understand. So what we're going to do is we're going to do 200 meters at your fast pace, 45 seconds. The rule of thumb is this.

Your recovery will be half the distance but the same total time. So you're going to run 100 in 45 seconds, and we're going to do 10 rounds of that. What we will do in our progression is keep track of the total amount of minutes of on time. How much time are we spending? So in this case, it would be 45 seconds times 10. The next workout, what can we do? We could do 300 meters into 150 meters. We could do 400 meters into a recovery of 200 meters. Now, how would you do it on a rower? You would do it based upon wattage. All the other pieces

of equipment, this is why cyclists and everybody uses wattage, power output. I would make you do a six-minute test. So you do a six-minute test and let's just say that you get, you know, let's say whatever number of meters. I'm not interested in the meters. I'm interested in your wattage, your average wattage that you got in that six minutes. And that is your VO2 max intensity, your velocity at VO2 max. So now I have that number, that wattage. Your workout is going to be one minute at that wattage. Your recovery will be one minute, right?

It's one for one in time. But what will be your wattage? It's going to be half. Okay. So if it's 400 watts that you averaged in six minutes, your recovery will be 200 watts. And you'll just keep repeating that. The holy grail in that type of programming is five rounds, three minutes of work, three minutes of rest,

active recovery. So think about that though. Imagine that in a six minute test, you went six minutes at that adaptation, that stimulus that creates VO2 adaptation. Imagine going five rounds at three minutes. That's 15 minutes. And you do have some recovery, but the bulk of it is within that range. And that's why they have that format. So what I would do then is,

now I've built your bookends, haven't I? I built your zone two, and I have built your VO2. And you know what sits in the middle? Your maximum sustainable pace. And that is a combination between your speed and your recovery. You need more of this. This isn't your weakness. You generate tremendous amount of power and I will see improvement right away. So what I'm going to need to do is dose you more on the recovery side

because of your athletic background. But I cannot let go of this. So the way I would program for you is I would have done, if you said four workouts a week, I would have said, you know what, this zone two is every week. Every week. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to build that and it's going to get longer and longer and longer and longer. And I'm going to follow it with a recovery run the day after zone one, maybe four or five, six miles chilling. You walk whenever you want in there. I just need some time to flush the muscles out. Now we have two other workouts that I'm going to be doing in that week. But what I'm going to do is, is I'm going to rotate these two workouts along with a longer, slower workout that may be at your half marathon pace. So at the end, what I'm going to be doing

is developing all of his muscle fiber groups by hitting patterns like this. But what we're going to do is self-correct his physiology and his past athletic background to create a better balance. And that's where I would – because it will be very hard for you to stay in this easy pace, in my opinion, if you go long. It's very difficult for you. You, you, because of your background will have a natural tendency to, to, to go faster. Pat project family. We love beef on this podcast.

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Links are in the description box below as well as the podcast show notes. Yeah, going slow is at this point, it's way more challenging. Not just from a mental side. I mean there's always the mental side of like, oh, I just want to speed up. Like this is too slow. It almost physically feels harder. My body like just doesn't want to do it anymore. There's a saying, isn't it?

It's like you could jog slower than you could walk, right? Because it's true. You could jog by not even moving. Right. But you can't walk that slow. And so that's where it's like you have to realize that it is hard to just jog. Walking is easier. It is easier.

What are your thoughts on injury when it comes to stuff like that? Because if you're changing the pace, changing terrain, like changing a lot of things, a lot of factors, and I don't know, maybe if you're going too slow, maybe it's easier to get hurt. I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? Well, this goes back to what we were saying about if you know the event, then you have to train for that event. And that's why if you are training for a marathon, then you must spend time. The bulk of your time is at where you believe you're going to be competing. A lot of athletes, the mistake is that they'll sit and do way too much time though at that volume.

Like a lot of people listen to what I just said and they're going, that's not correct. You're not going to be prepared for a marathon. He should be doing more longer runs. But it's like you're only giving me four in a week. What people must realize is that the reason why you're going to be able to be successful is because I'm developing all your fibers. You are a fast twitch dominant athlete, meaning you have a higher percentage of fast twitch fibers. I can't neglect those. I have to spend time on those. The key is though, how do we manage the volume? Like a lot of people will say, wait a minute, we got to be running 50 plus a week.

You're never going to rack up 50 doing this. It's the cumulative effect though. What you must realize is the fatigue that you're generating week over week over week. And if I give you a proper taper, your body, your structure will be able to take on that marathon because of the cumulative effect. So it's where people get caught up in chasing miles. It's not about that. That's why when you look at people that run ultras, you would think that you have to run a 200 mile event. What's your long run for the week? If you're running 20 for a marathon, are you running like, is your long run a hundred? Right? And it's not. They're basically doing similar to what a marathon runner would do, but just greater frequency. That's why it's like, to me, I would never have you run 20 miles.

Because the elite ran 20 miles. And they're done with their 20-mile run in two hours. You run 20, you're out there for four and a half, right? That's how you get hurt. And so you've got to make sure that you understand. It's like the cadence thing. We're talking about chest strap. Everybody says in cadence the Holy Grail is 180 steps in a minute.

But why? Well, it happened from a guy by the name of Jack Daniels back in the 84 Olympics, and he noticed that every distance runner happened to be running at 180 steps in a minute. So if these distance runners are running 180 steps, it's like that's got to be the Holy Grail. Everybody needs to do that, don't they? You shouldn't be listening to a guy named Jack Daniels about running. No, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't say that. got to be the Holy grail. Everybody needs to do that. And that shouldn't be listening to a guy named Jack Daniels. No, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't say that. No, he's very, no, he's revolutionary. The thing is you want to understand when these things happen, like why, when I say it's the six minute test, well, why, where's your evidence?

Where's your proof of that happening? And that's because you don't have the luxury of time. How many marathons are you going to do? And you want it to be great. You don't want it to be. And so I would always sit and I would say, but why? Why am I doing this? Why a work to rest of one to one?

Why a work to rest of, you know, one to 0.5? Like, why? How is this a value to me? And that's what I love about the kids nowadays. They ask why. And if you can't convince them, they're out. I think that's what we should be held to, right? Like, think about which effort you have put in as a coach, as an athlete, to build your knowledge. Why is it that somebody that has a platform and a different voice with no experience can sway others i struggle with that all the time i've worked my whole life to try

and get to where i am and someone can come along and and i'm a fancy program. And right. And I like when people are challenged. And I don't see that that often by a lot. They just people just say, hey, man, can you help me do such and such? And then it's their London perform. I don't think that they're held to the same standards that they should be. I know you don't always have the luxury of doing this, but what about just placating to things that people like? In other words, like let's say some people are listening to this.

They're like, man, I don't like all this cardio stuff. Is there some low-hanging fruit that we can kind of throw people's way that maybe like maybe the Power Project fans, maybe they're more lifters? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe there are other options like rucking, dragging a sled, things like that. That's a great question. So the reason why like strength people, that they're concerned about going into doing cardio is this whole interference effect. If you do too much cardio, it's going to interfere with strength.

And the real question is how much cardio will actually create this interference effect. And so what my recommendation would be is to scale back to what I've done with the elite on the CrossFit space. And we do two cardio sessions per week. And they'll do different movements, but they'll do two running workouts. What I would say with your team is two of them a week. And they'll do different movements, but they'll do two running workouts. What I would say with your team is two of them a week. And what I would spend my time on within those is the varieties of intensity that I said. So sometimes you're going to have to go at that six-minute pace. Sometimes you're going to have to go at your zone two. And sometimes you're going to have to go to the 20 to 30-minute time domain pace. Like if you, Mark, were, you ran that half that day and you were at a 10, 20 pace,

then I would train you at, I would train you for that moderate intensity lactate threshold, somewhere around like 8, 15 pace based upon your 10, 20 and running that day. And then I'd also train you at somewhere around 13 and a half minutes as a slow pace. Like I would pick 13 and a half, 10.15, 8.15. And then I think that you'd probably run a mile in somewhere around 7.15-ish in there, 7-ish. And that's where I would create, there's your gears. I would do the same thing with someone that's in your group. You have to know what your gears are. And now what you would do is design workouts around those intensities. Those intensities are targeting a specific metabolic pathway and a muscle fiber group. That's why you're doing it, to try and create some balance.

So that's how I would spend my time. I would not get on and do 30 minutes on a treadmill in Zone 2. I wouldn't. I think it lacks balance and it is leaving at least on a power lifter 50 plus percent of their capacity behind. But maybe pushing or pulling a sled for three minutes a clip or something might be a good idea. So what I like a lot for a lifter is to do something that is their sweet spot, something that's very taxing for them. So even like walking lunges, but something

that's challenging. They can even do squats into a row. But what they're going to do is they're going to do something that is not heavy, but it's going to be somewhere around there, let's say, 85%, 80, 85%, like something where it's power-based to create some fatigue. And then you're going to go into a recovery piece. And what you're going to spend your time on is the recovery and the settling into whatever cardio movement you pick. Because the weakness that your group will have because they're fast twitch dominant is not the acceleration of fatigue because you guys can explode and go. I struggle with my ramp and speed. time in the ramping of intensity. Where you need to mark is if I wrote you a workout, I would say do a sled, 10 seconds. And I want it sprint, moderate, low, not heavy where you're walking. I want you moving, generate a huge amount of force, create a lot of fatigue. And now you're

going to do a recovery jog. And what I want to know is how long does it take for you to get your rhythm? How long does it take you to find your breath to settle? Because that is the area of adaptation that we're trying to create. Now, as a byproduct of that workout, we're doing a truckload of zone two, right? So 10 second sprint and two minute easy jog. The beauty of the easy jog is for your people, they'll love it because it's freaking easy, right? And it will pass by in no time. You know, you do eight rounds of that, that's a good workout. I would write for you and if we have time, I would have you do a standing biker workout or even a standing echo bike workout, sprint, maximum RPMs into a jog. jog same concept and what i would do as your coach is i would listen for your breathing in that transition zone i think andrew's going to do

the workout with me oh sweet do you like that idea uh sure yeah just volunteered yeah thanks most of it's easy well well I guess we'll see how easy. Easier said than done, right? Yeah. I've heard that before. So I know, I guess this is a two-part question for you, and I know grappling hasn't been a focus of yours, but I've got another grappling question for you.

Yeah. I guess as far as, like, the demand, like, have you ever coached a CrossFit athlete on, like, an intense, like cardio specific, uh, I guess event or something that might even be similar to the demand of grappling? You know, so the conversations I've had about the space, most of the fatigue occurs in that isometric hold where you're, you're,

you're under tension. It's not associated with like doing 40 pushups at maximal effort. It's, it's the, the tension based. And that is what makes it unique. That that's, what's the challenge for me. Like when you brought up about the breathing,

that breathing is not rhythmic. It's not, There is a cadence and a flow because you have to breathe and there's an urgency, but it's not at all rhythmic. It can't be because of the tension that you guys are in. Yeah. Like you're running, but you're just running by yourself. No one's got their knee in your stomach. Right. And so that's where it presents a unique challenge is it's easy to come up with dry land, but it's not the same because you're not in an isometric hold. So I do a lot of playing around with isometric holds and putting people in difficult positions such as I'll gas them in something that's high intensity where they're hyperventilating. And now what I want you to do is take a 200-pound D-ball, and what we're going to do is we're going to do a one-minute hold,

and that's your recovery. So they do have this pressure here. We'll also do things where they'll do something, and they'll take plates, and they'll be on their chest, and then we'll move, but they'll feel the tension. But that's where you have to have an athlete's input of that stimulus isn't quite right. But there's a million options. It's the same thing like when we went to North Shore, I think we talked about this, with surfers.

Okay, surfers have their number one injury is torn ACL, and it makes sense, right, because of the way that the back foot is and chop and all of that. But how much lower body training do they do? Well, I don't know what a pro surfer did until I went there. And what I found was they don't do much lower body because it's all upper body paddling into the lineup. But that's not what the body works. When your lactic acid, the lactate and the acidity accumulates because of the paddling out in the lineup and you're racing in a competition, that lactic acid builds up into these small muscle groups. It tries to find slow twitch fibers in order to burn it and clear it. But you're producing more than you can remove. So where does it go? It spills into the neighboring muscles. Why? Because

it's just trying to find slow twitch fibers to take that lactate, consume it as a fuel, and when the slow consume that lactate, it takes the acidity and removes it. Unfortunately, the fatigue's coming in faster. It can't keep up. So what's it do? It goes into the bloodstream. It's called lactate shuttle. Well, where do you think it goes when it goes into the bloodstream?

It goes to the legs. So imagine you're a surfer and you go to stand and you think your legs are fresh, but they're pretty fatigued. That's the problem. And so you need an athlete. And I didn't know that until we spent a week at North Shore and observed and listened. And it's obvious now, but it wasn't for them. And that's where it's important that athletes communicate. And if you have a good coach, that coach will spend the time finding the evidence and the proof to give it to you and say, here's where I think we should go.

And we're a team. And I wish I saw more of that. I do. Yeah. Because like I said, I get you for a window of time, and I never want you to regret your choice of being with me. And I think that stems from me being an athlete where I have a lot of regret of knowing I could have been better,

and I don't ever want, yeah. How did you help coach Jeffrey Adler to win this year's CrossFit Games? It was a team. Yeah, I never say, I mean, I was involved for sure. Jeff is an interesting guy. You know, we talk about this word coachable. We said it a lot here, and I think people throw it around, but what does it really mean? Like, what is that?

Like, you think about that. What does that mean, being coachable? Like, Jason Kalipa, good friend of ours, right? Incredibly coachable. Incredibly coachable, incredibly. And one of the first things that Kalipa said to me when we spoke, when he asked me to help him was, I want you to know that I have tried everything to fix my endurance, but I still get dead last in every endurance event, every single one. And the thing about that is, is that

it's obvious. I know he's getting dead last in every endurance event. I know he's not doing well, but at least he's being honest with me and we're on the same page of the starting point. That was important for me. Yeah, that run that he did. So, okay, so let's – I'll tell you something interesting. You want to have a good sound bite.

Jeffrey Adler, what he is, is this level of coachability. So when he started at the end of the second day, he had won the last event, and it happened to be a workout that had a little bit of running in it. We had secretly trained his running for the last 18 months, and I knew how fast he was because of just the working with other people. And we never talked about it. We just kept it quiet. He never published anything. It was just quiet. He ends up dominating that last event on the second day.

And starting the third day, there was this 5K run that we were talking about earlier. Jeffrey Adler was 100 points down going into that 5K, roughly. And there was another six events to go. And on that third day, it starts with a 5K. There's a middle event, and then there's a lift where it's a max one rep snatch, max one rep clean and jerk, all right? At the end of the day. So that's how it was going to finish. And Heidi and I went over to – I'm watching Heidi to make sure I'm in the okay.

We went over to Jeff and Caroline's hotel room afterwards, and Jeff was fired up about his performance and he was just, he was excited about this 5K coming up because he now realizes where his running is relative to the other in the field. And there's something powerful about when you are a CrossFit athlete and you know what the event is and you know it's your sweet spot. Like imagine knowing that I'm pretty confident I could win. Not just like getting the top three or five, but to win. That's an empowering situation. So much so like I wanted to go over and talk to him because he's going to dwell on that

all night and not be able to sleep because he's so excited. He just wants to go out and win. to dwell on that all night and not be able to sleep because he's so excited he just wants to go out and win. I was thinking about with him as I'm walking over to his hotel room, I'm thinking as his coach, what would I want to be told in this situation as an athlete? Because I, as an athlete, wanted to win. Yes, it was nice to get on a podium. That was great. But I wanted to win, I, yes, it was nice to get on a podium. It was, that was great, but I wanted to win and I didn't care if I fell off of a podium in a risk I took to try and win. Like it was important to me to win. And I thought about it. I'm like, you know, what he has to do is he has to lose tomorrow as I'm walking.

And what I was thinking was is the lift. You know, this is something to talk about. So this lift, you run it, let's say, I'm just guessing, 8 o'clock in the morning. And then that lift was, let's just say, six hours, eight hours later. Let's say it's eight hours later. So you finish this 4.6K cross-country run, maximal effort, and then you've got those lifts, let's say, I don't know, six hours, seven hours later. are neurologically important, meaning that if you don't have a crisp and tight neurological system, a neuromuscular system, a recovered CNS,

that those lifts and your precision in doing those lifts, because the skill level, it's not like doing a deadlift, is going to have an impact, right? Absolutely. And so that's what I was thinking. I was thinking that what we can do is back off a little, because Jeff is incredibly strong, back off on that run and preserve him for the next two events that day. Because here's what people don't realize is that a 5k run, yes, the speed is slow. All right. Relative speaking, I mean, if you take your 5k speed,

like I would estimate you at a 5k around 815 per mile pace. All right. If I made you run 100 meters, that's at 31 seconds per hundred. That's slow as can be, but you put enough of them back to back to back to back, it becomes tough. And that's the problem with the 5k. Now imagine if I push you in this 5k, eventually you're going to run out of those slow twitch fibers at that slow speed. Remember the recruitment like we talked about? Well, soon you will recruit fast twitch. And what will happen is, is that as you progress through that 5K, you'll start recruiting more and more fast twitch fibers until you recruit those fast twitch to be fibers in that finishing kick. And what you've done is depleted the entire muscle fiber spectrum, right?

Neurological side is smoked because of the effort that you put in. So we go over to his room and I said, I go, he was all fired up and he was just jazzed and jumping all over, right? I'm all, I think you need to lose tomorrow. But everything shut down then. And Caroline, you know, that look that came across, right? Like it was a buzzkill, like I ruined the party. And I go, just to hear me out for a second, I go, I know you want to win. And you can win tomorrow. I'm absolutely convinced you can win tomorrow. You can. But you want to win the CrossFit Games. And what you must realize is that you're 100 points off. And what you must realize is that you're 100 points off, and you're going to need to do something extraordinary. If you play it safe, you're not going to win.

And so what I'm presenting and what I want to share is if you want to win, then let's gamble. Let's put it all on the line. And you may fall off the podium. You may. But what do you want to do? And he's all, I win he's all i i just want to i want to win what are you talking and so i laid out what i said i go this is what i think and if it comes down to a spin finishing sprint do not sprint i in my heart believe this would be the thing for him to do. What was it, by the way?

The run? Yeah. So what do you mean? So what was the strategy specific? So the strategy was is what I want you to do is I want you to push the pace, but don't break away. If he broke away, imagine there's a pack of, let's say, three to four people that are chasing him. They're just going to let him go. And then they'll fight it out amongst themselves. The thing about CrossFit that's interesting is that the points matter,

meaning the person behind you becomes more important than the person in front of you. It's about preservation of your points. And so if he gets too far ahead, this pack that's behind him are thinking nothing but preservation of who's going to get second. And so I said to him, I said, you got to stay in the group, no matter who is in the group. And so that was the whole game plan is like, don't break away, but encourage your group. We got to go. We got to go because there's 40 people there. And what they have is they've got cuts at the CrossFit Games.

If you don't make it to a certain tier level, they just, oh, sorry. It's just like in golf. You're out. You're not coming back tomorrow. And so there is a sense of urgency the deeper you go in the CrossFit Games. And so I told Jeff, I go, you got to encourage people. Like, we got to go, guys. We got to go.

No different than in the bike event. The first event was a cycling event. It was, you know, I don't know. It was a long event, 40 minutes. And what the top, like, four guys did is they got together in group and they just did baseline and work together as a group. And they pulled away from the rest until it got close enough to the finish line. And then the four shot it out.

That's exactly what I told them to do. And I said, though, if you are in that group and it's a finishing sprint, I go, you can't sprint. You can't. And I said, hopefully what you've done is you've broken away and it's a finishing sprint, I go, you can't sprint. You can't. And I said, hopefully what you've done is you've broken away, and it's just you and somebody else, and you guys have now separated. But don't separate until people crack. Remember how I said I'd beat you in a race?

I'd soften you. You'd kill me in the beginning, yeah. Right, and I'd surge and then let you catch up, and then surge and let you – I'd toy with you. I'd play with you because I've got to break you. You will beat me in a sprint. So what did Jeff do? He surged and softened and surged and softened them.

And what it does is it creates damage. It forces them to cover that surge with fast twitch recruitment. And so that's what happened. Jeff came down and he got second place in that event. Now, how do you know whether or not Jeff ran hard? Well, he was one of two people, like we said, that wore a garment. He wore a chest strap. And so right away, I looked at, he sent it over to me and I looked and his maximum heart rate, I mean, I hope he doesn't care.

Doesn't matter. matter checking the boss okay okay his heart rate didn't even come close to lactate threshold got it ever which means that he chilled that entire run which now the reason why i tell you this is that we were talking about coachability. I've never had an athlete that would execute a plan because of his trust in me. Like that to me is, is a relationship that I really cherish that he, he did that and he didn't, I don't believe that he, he believed in it, but he did it, and he executed it beautifully. And four events later, he was in first place. We're athletes to have that kind of coach-athlete relationship, and that's an athlete that really wants to create a dynasty. He wants to create something, and he's willing to listen. Why do you think that's happened a bunch of times in the CrossFit Games where there's been a dominant athlete for several years?

Because the stuff is constantly varied. So how do we end up with one athlete that keeps winning? I think that it happens to be with athletes, when they win, they get access to privilege. It's interesting to me that I did a program with Adidas last December. This is an interesting story. So they contacted me and they wanted to talk to me, Adidas HQ in Germany. And I've been working with Adidas for a long time, but this was a global project that they were interested in. And I get on a call and I see this Project PB in the background. And I assume Project PB is personal best.

And they asked me, they said, you know, what we're interested in is your thoughts on what it feels like to win. What is that winning experience like? what is that winning experience like? Because we're going to launch a program, Project PB, and what we want to talk to and understand your thought process on winning. And I said to him, I said, I think that you believe that setting a personal best is what it feels like to win. I go, if you finish dead last and it's a personal best,

you know you finished dead last. That's not what it feels like to win. Winning is really a unique situation in that the opportunity that it brings. So I told Adidas, and one of the things that they did remarkable is that this dovetailed with their strategy. I said, when I did well in triathlons, it gave me opportunity to get product for free and the product that was so pricey that no one else would buy it. Like I had a disc wheel made out of Kevlar from Campagnolo that was good for a minute of free time in a 40 kilometer time trial. Imagine getting one minute of free time because you were fast and raced well, where no one else could buy it.

$2,500 for a wheel was ridiculous. That's what I'm talking about. You guys, I told them, should make a shoe that's high tech that people can buy. Give them the chance to run in what the runners run in, right? They happened to make that product. that's what they had, which was awesome that Adidas did this. I mean, that's what's so rad about that brand. So I said the other thing that it does, though, is it gives you access to coaching, a level of coaching that if you're not in that winning club, you don't even know it exists. We've said this before. You don't know what you don't know.

this. We've said this before. You don't know what you don't know. And so imagine you're competing against somebody who is monitoring your chest moving in and out, and you're all the way on the other side of the floor, and you think you're intimidating that person, but he's aware of your breathing cadence, and he knows you're just a joke. Right? You don't know what you don't know. And so I told him, I said, if you did something, in my opinion, you need to give them access to what great coaching is all about. And that is personalized programming, an athlete-centered model, a model that's built around the athlete, not the event. I want it to be where the athlete is the most important piece and what are they training for. And that's what should be done.

And that's how we got the deal. We went and worked with 70 countries and 470. And that's what I think that it should be is the reason why winners win is because they get access to these resources. Like imagine if you are a CrossFitter and you get shoes made and you have to climb a pegboard. Imagine you have a more tacky sole for that pegboard. What if you had a dedicated rope climbing shoe?

What if you had a shoe with a slightly elevated platform so that when you get on that echo bike with the adjustments being an inch that you actually can optimize your seat height because you have a sponsor that will do it are those things that people like have you right you don't know unless you know oh shit but are those are those things that people have? I don't know. Okay. Wow. That's cool. Right? Yeah. Well, even just access to the equipment that you're going to train on. Somebody sends you a free bike or – A home gym.

Right. Sends you the exact kettlebells that are used in the CrossFit games or whatever it might be. I mean that's one of the great things about Rich. When the people that go with train, he realizes that's the advantage. His competitive advantage is I'm going to have every possible piece of equipment. And what we're going to do is we're going to train on that. So there is no unknowns. Yeah.

That is an advantage. Yeah. So that's where it's like, I think that the reason why people can create, I mean, Tia's an anomaly though. The woman that wins the CrossFit game, she is, I made a comment once on a broadcast. I said, when Tia walks in the room,

people perceive that as God. And she is, she is, until she learns how to lose, she's going to dominate. I mean, she is just a, how many years now in a row?

I don't even know. It's so many, five or six. It could be 10. Yeah. She is something else. And I think that's where athletes like her, and you know how it is, once you forget what it's like to lose, you just can't do anything other than win. And she just knows.

She just knows. And it's in everyone's head. What is a championship mindset? She just knows. She just knows. And it's in everyone's head. Wow. What is a championship mindset? Because you've worked with a lot of these people that have gotten first place at the CrossFit Games. But maybe in years previous, they didn't have the confidence. They just didn't have that extra little edge. You talked about kind of how they can get it during some of the workouts. But what is the difference?

What's the main separator that you've seen? So like I got a call from Catherine Davis' daughter. She won the CrossFit Games in 2015 and 16. I've worked with her for forever, nine years. So she went off to Europe but came back and she calls me like, I don't know, three months before the CrossFit Games and she asked for some help. But it was more of I know her as an athlete and it's not just the physical, it's the mental, emotional side. And if you're a coach and you're not developing someone's mental and emotional well-being, that confidence piece,

then you're not providing a complete package. So we get together with her and we met with her. She's coached by Matt Frazier and Matt's a longtime friend and athlete I worked with. And we were up there in Vermont at Matt's place and sit down and we structure this deal of just I'll help her with her running piece and coordinate it with Matt and integrate it in his plan. Super seamless, easy. And the first work that I do is an assessment where I am interested in Katrin's capability. Where are you? And what I found out was her ability to hit a variety of easy paces was spot on. Like her skill set was

as great as it's ever been. But where she struggled with was controlling speed at high velocities. That what she was doing, it was very random and she couldn't knock it down like with the perfection she was with the slower speed. Well, Katrin's always suffered with short time domains, like 400-meter intervals, 200-meter intervals, sprints. And so I realized that with Katrin, what she really needs is not her endurance. What she really needs is a fast 400-meter time. Not because the 400 is going to be an event at the CrossFit Games. More than likely, it's meaningless. But this is something about confidence because the year before, she didn't make it to the games.

She didn't even qualify. So imagine what's swirling around in her head. And what I need to do is do something on my piece that when she lines up on that day, that she doesn't think about not making it the year before, right? Because if that enters her head, it's over. And that's the difference between the people that are in the top 10. So what I had to do is create a program that got her to do something that in her entire life, she's never been able to do. And that is to get right next to 60 seconds for a 400, but not as a standalone event, to do it in a workout. And so what I did is exactly what I talked to you about.

I built a program where if she saw the end point, she never would have done it. It was so extreme, and I didn't even know. Matter of fact, Heidi remembers that morning when she sent me the result for that final workout where it was so impressive, I thought it was a typo. But it was a stair-stepped approach. And what it did for Katrin, she's won the games two times, so she knows how to win. But what it did was eliminate that loss from the year before of not even qualifying.

it did was eliminate that loss from the year before of not even qualifying. And so that's what I try and do with these athletes. This champion mindset is to put them like Jason Kalipa. Why run 20 miles? Why do 10 by 800 is that 257 in two minutes and 57 seconds with two minutes and 57 seconds of rest, a marathon training workout. Because Jason believed in his heart he was a loser. He lost every endurance event at the CrossFit Games. So when he got there in 2013, I knew if I didn't change that, his mindset, I mean, for real, when he got up to do the first endurance workout, what would happen? He's a loser. And he knows he's a loser. I have to get him to believe that he did things that were extraordinary, that no one else is as prepared as him, but it has to be real. He has to believe it in his heart so that he never once ever thinks about those bad events.

And that's a hard thing to do as a coach, right? To get someone to do things that are impossible. Because I'm trying to get you to forget. That's not who you are anymore. And that's the hardest thing when athletes have setbacks or they have something like what Katrin experienced. It's like that's what you remember. And you can't. Like if you have a bad experience, like, and I don't know how your marathon went. And I don't know how your marathon went, but if you have a bad experience in a workout, a bad experience in a race, a competition where you don't know what happened, you just got beat, that still sits in there.

And that's why when people lose, they learn how to lose. And that's the sign, right? You look for, oh, there's the second loss. And in MMA, it's like you get three. I don't even think you could fight again. Yeah, and so that's where I think that you have to get them to, like, we talked about it, like, you know, with Frazier and swimming. Like, he really struggled under fatigue. And how does, he has to be convinced that bad situations when he swims isn't ever going to happen. Yeah. He has to be convinced it has to be real. And that's, that's a hard thing to do,

but that's the part that I think that's the greatest in coaching that if you can do that with an athlete where they're convinced that they're different than now you've evolved. I always think that a little bit of losing is good, that it keeps motivation high, that the laziness goes out the window. You're willing to do things. get are the ones that are falling off of podium that have lost their prime because they know what it it likes to be there and they want to get back they just don't know how and they're more open minded about it instead of cocky and you know arrogant do you have to trick the athletes sometimes like uh you're saying that uh she had a little trouble with like say like 400 meter if they make it like 420 meters?

Or do you have to like try to, I don't know, change things to feet instead of meters or something so it's not paying attention? That's a good question. I hear people do that. I'd never do that because I want – You want it to be – you want them to know about it. And I want – I believe that coaches have a responsibility

that is not – it's way beyond just the present. It's the future of them. And I want them to recognize that they're creating their own greatness. So what I'm doing is giving you variables and I'm sharing all of the details. I'm not hiding anything. This is, and I will say, this is really freaking, this is hard. And I don't know if you can do it. But I know enough that I could feed them and say, here's your split points.

And if you're here at this split, you're all right. Like you're on track. Like I know that much. But what I'm trying to do is to develop them as people, as humans, so that when this is all done, they have something to sink their teeth into. Like they're strategic in their approach, not just in a workout, but it's about maybe a presentation that they're giving or a talk that they're giving with a sponsor, that they have a game plan and they have milestones and checkpoints that you're teaching them more than just this.

And that's like Matt Fraser used to come over to our house. We were neighbors and for a couple of years, he'd walk over and we'd just rap about his future. Like, Matt, you need to write down your workouts. What for? Well, you may want them someday. You know, a book. You may want them for programming.

I don't know what you want, but you should write them like. Yeah. What if you win the CrossFit Games a bunch of times? And write down notes and what you learned in this workout and how would you change it and what would you do next from this? And he was one that was like in it as his career. But as his coach, I was like, you got to think of what's down the road because this will end. But the problem is, is that they only see what's there. So what do you do? You give them tools that when they leave, they see the tools as, oh,

this is a spreadsheet. Oh, I see Chris's math. Oh, I see how he's doing his assessment. Oh, I see his equations. Like they know how to read a Google sheet. They know when I say, oh, I'm scraping the data off of the site to do – they know what these things – and that's what you're doing. That's why when I write you workouts, it is sophisticated. But what you're going to do is rise to that instead of dumb down to this. I'm going to make you smarter because I'm throwing in things that are challenging. I'm going to make you learn because now you'll be able to teach it. And so I feel as a coach like we should be trying. It's not just about the president.

It's about down the road. And that's the fun part for me too, to sit down and try. I have this project with Adidas that we're talking about doing, and it's a mentorship program, and they're really serious about helping younger women in mental health and, you know, this 20 to 25-year-old, you know, woman, and they said to me that, you know, what we're interested in is creating programs that showcase them and the things of what they're interested in, not necessarily what they should do, but we want it in their voice. We want them to present to the community why this is of value. What do they think about? Like their own voice within this

journey and empower them, not just bleed them for this skill set. And I got to say, that's just a brilliant thing to do because mental health for the younger women has gotten really dark. And I see them and what they're trying to do is give them a voice, but they're thinking long-term, right? Like I say, I'm a salesperson. I use that all the time in a presentation, in a lecture. And it's no different than what I used to do. And so if we can give people those skills, I think that that's a huge positive that we can create as coaches.

Yeah. Anyway. Thank you so much for your time i appreciate it it's uh convenient that you're in the area every every thanksgiving family yeah it works out works out pretty good yeah no i enjoy it yeah i always like seeing you by the way your uh old man test yeah that thing richter'd on tiktok yeah i mean i had like executive chefs out of new york sending me notes and it's like that's funny yeah yeah that was really good yeah some of that stuff went viral huh yeah it was crazy yeah yeah i was surprised at our podcast last time how well it

did because i was so resistant to coming on and because who's gonna your audience isn't my audience but i think yeah that thing went over a couple hundred thousand views yeah people people uh they want to know information you know and there's definitely crossover you know there's crossover between strength and and conditioning and so on and i think that uh you're seeing a lot more hybrid athletes now you're seeing a lot more people that lift and look like they lift and they also run or they bike or they do jiu-jitsu or something like that. Yep, yep, for sure. Yeah, that's that whole thing on High Rocks that we were talking about.

That hybrid racing is now really coming on because people want some balance, right, that they realize that that's fitness. Yeah. Where can people find you and find out more about you? Robicapacity would be the place to go. RobitCapacity.com. That would be by far the best. You can go to the Instagram. Matter of fact, I think we drop educational pieces every day on our Instagram page.

Are you going to write a book or what's going on here? I think we need one. It seems like a lot. Doesn't it work? I don't know. But you got all the spreadsheets and everything. Just print those. Man, they're so good.

I'll show you later. You're going to get so, yeah, that will arouse you. I'm going to show you how to look at a spreadsheet properly. You got to slow play it. I'm getting a little moist just thinking about it. Right. You can't just dive right in. Strength is never weak.

This weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.