Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 633 - How Rich Froning & Matt Fraser Built Their Aerobic Capacity with Chris Hinshaw

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

Chris Hinshaw is the founder of aerobiccapacity.com, and is widely considered one of the top endurance coaches in the world. Chris is known internationally for his extensive knowledge and practical experience developing aerobic capacity in athletes of all experience levels using his comprehensive, cutting edge approach to training. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for free shipping and two free meals + a Kooler Sport when you order 16 meals or more! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.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

Power Project family, if you've ever wanted to improve your aerobic capacity, you do not want to miss this episode. Now, Chris Hinshaw is the founder of AerobicCapacity.com and is widely considered to be one of the top endurance coaches in the world. Hinshaw is a former All-American swimmer and world-class professional triathlete. His top international finishes include a second-place overall finish at the Hawaiian Ironman World Championships, second-place overall finish at the Ironman World Championships in Canada, and a first place overall finish at Ironman Brazil. Here's more sick stats. He's coached 30 CrossFit Games champions.

He's coached 43 CrossFit Games podium athletes. He's a 10-time Ironman competitor, and he has 10 plus years of CrossFit experience. Also, he can run a 457 mile. All right. So if you guys have ever wanted to increase your aerobic capacity, this is the episode to listen to. I really hope you guys enjoy this long, great episode with Chris Henshaw. You know, the funny thing is people think that they can't eat steak when they're dieting.

Andrew, what is the macros on the Piedmontese center cut ribeye? Yes, that's actually my favorite cut of steak right now from Piedmontese. For an entire 10 ounce cut, you're going to get five grams of fat, 65 grams of protein and zero carbs because we're just eating meat. And you would think that you could not have a ribeye steak and still be on a diet. But with Piedmontese, you can. Yeah. And the great thing is that, like we've talked about before, Piedmontese has a lot of different cuts. If you want fattier cuts of beef, Piedmontese have it. If you want leaner cuts because you're on lower fats, you can have steak. You don't have to eat chicken, a very weak bird when dieting. So Andrew, please tell the people how to get some Piedmontese. Yes. You guys got to head over to piedmontese.com. P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your entire order.

And if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Again, PeteMontes.com, promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off. Links to them down in the YouTube description as well as the podcast show notes. Head over there right now. Chris, you've been helping out so many people over the years with their running, and it was great to get an experience with you today. You were showing me a lot of different things, which was awesome. Do you tend to kind of examine the way that everybody runs? If you watch a football game, you watch a basketball game, you find yourself getting lost in that rhythm or or maybe not so much anymore

no it happens all the time it happens all the time like we'll be driving down you know the street and someone will be running down the road and i'm like and i feel compelled to tell a total stranger what's going wrong just yell it out of the car well and the problem is is like it burns into your brain and so even though you're like five miles down the road, it's still sitting in there and replaying. And no, that happens all the time. But you know what's interesting is like, I mean, I could ask you. I look at a weightlifter lift. And when they lift and they finish, it's just black.

There's nothing there. I don't see anything. And it's, I think, because of just repetition that I look at it over and over and over. And that's my specialty, right? Like, I'm sure you look at lifts and you're like, I see exactly where you went out. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, I actually, it happens so much that I sometimes will give unsolicited, you know, unwanted information. It actually happened to me yesterday.

I was just, somebody was doing a sumo deadlift. They kicked the weight out forward and lost a lot of their energy. They're back rounded over and it became a two-part lift. And I'm like, it's impossible. I can't walk past this without saying something. So I was like, hey, you mind if I kind of walk you through some of this? And I gave them some information. And I was like, I can coach you through the next set if you want. And they were like, no, I'm good. And I was like, hey, you mind if I kind of walk you through some of this? And I gave them some information. I was like, I can coach you through the next set if you want.

And they were like, no, I'm good. And I was like, okay. All right, all right, I get it. But, you know, I just can't help myself. I'm like, I don't want to see this go wrong. I want to see them do good. And it comes from a space of just wanting to help. It's not coming from a place where you're trying to humble them or embarrass them or embarrass them.

I'm just trying to help. And unfortunately, it doesn't get taken that way all the time. How did you end up getting into any of this in the first place? I was really late developing as a kid. I wasn't good in any sports, and I tried swimming. I come from a very athletic household, very athletic. And because I was late in developing, I was really small, really a small kid. I wasn't good at anything. And I didn't want to stick with swimming because I wasn't good at it. So I tried different things. Wasn't good at anything, anything. anything. And I stuck with the swimming. I got into college and then I started to mature and things improved. I actually got roped into doing a triathlon because I saw it on television,

the Ironman in Kona. And this is actually interesting. And so when I watched that Ironman, I was watching it with my father. My father was a – he was at times difficult. He was very – he was the alpha male for sure in the house, and we did it his way, and that was the only way. But he was also very fair. He was very reasonable, and he was also very supportive if you had a good idea. on TV one day, and it's a 2.4-mile ocean swim. It's a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run across the lava fields of Hawaii. If you're good, you start that marathon in the heat of the day, around 12 noon, 12.30 in the afternoon. And I'm watching this event, and here I am. I'm a 17-year-old kid. I probably weighed 115 pounds and never did anything. And I'm watching this and I felt something inside of me like, if I did that and I finished, no one could ever take it away. That I did something of such magnitude that even though I wasn't very athletic,

people would perceive me as being athletic for doing something seemingly impossible. And so I told my dad, sitting there and we're sitting side by side. And you got to remember, I was a 17 year old and I didn't always follow directions very well. And I was kind of flighty and stuff like a 17 year old. And I told my dad, I'm like, I'd like to do that event. And imagine the power that my dad has in the next words that he says. Like, we were talking about confidence, you know, earlier today. And that don't be sarcastic, right? Don't be condescending. Because you know what?

I would have cowered away if my dad's words were like, you do that? I would have just, oh, I was just joking. And I would have just cowered away. And my dad was cool. He's like, because just making sure that he knows that we're watching the same thing. He's all, Chris, do you realize what that is? And he repeats the distances. And I said, no, no, no, I know.

I think I'd really like to give that a try. And he turns and he looks over to me and he's all, all right, let's make that happen. That's a good dad. That's a good dad. And you know what? I had never done anything good. And athletically, and I happened to, when the gods came down and handed out athletic gifts, I happened to be really good at nine hour time domains. And I'm grateful for that. I wouldn't be here today if that didn't happen. Did he support you any further beyond that, or was it just like did he have a suggestion?

No, he ended up doing the sport. Oh, shit. Yeah, so my mom started doing it. My dad was doing it. My dad was an incredible household. My dad placed top five over in Kona four times. He had 20 world records in master swimming. He was a very gifted athlete, over in Kona four times. He had 20 world records in master's swimming.

He was a very gifted athlete. But what was nice was is that I didn't do it alone. Like when I would travel to events, my sister would go sometimes, my brother would go sometimes, my dad would always be there. And so it was more like a family vacation with a purpose. And we did it together. And so it was nice. It was pleasant.

And it was nice to be the one to pave that way for the house because I was always the one that was in the back of the bus. You know, I was the one that, that was the, the stepchild because I wasn't good at anything. How long between the inception of you saying that I'm going to do that and you actually did your first Ironman? How, what was the, what was the inception of you saying that I'm going to do that and you actually did your first Ironman? What was the length of time? So that was February of 1982 when I raced Ironman in October of 82. Oh, snap. So you did that. How did it go, that first one? It wasn't bad. I mean, my sister beat me. But no, it wasn't bad. I really struggle with the run. I don't come from a running background, and that's it wasn't bad. It was, you know, I really struggle with the run. Um, I don't come from a running background and that's just not enough time. A lot of people think that when you do an Ironman, it's just 26.2 miles, but it's not. You already have six hours of time on your body and now you're starting your run. So it doesn't feel like 26. It feels like 52. You know, I think it's amazing, you know,

what you're talking about here. As a kid, you know, you felt like you couldn't do all these things. And meanwhile, you have this kind of like power and resolve in you that is almost like magical because people that can endure, it's really a phenomenal thing to have, whether it's in business or relationships or just anything in life. It kind of comes down to almost every single time it seems to come back to consistency and then being able to have that consistency for like a prolonged period of time. When you were a kid and you weren't able to do a lot of things, you said you couldn't do anything. Was that just a feeling or do you really think that you couldn't actually do anything?

Are you referring to maybe like you weren't good at basketball, you weren't good at football, you weren't good at some of the sports that you were maybe exposed to that your friends were doing, that sort of deal? Right. I was worse than all of my friends. And also what was bad, and this shaped me as a coach, is my coaches were not, they were not coaches the way that I believe coaches should be, where you are creating and building confidence in a kid who is insecure, not confident. And my coaches weren't. Like, for example, imagine here in California where I learned how to swim and I did competitive age group swimming. Back in those days, they didn't really heat the pools. You swam and if that water was 70 degrees, you're swimming. And imagine being a tiny

little 12-year-old, you're freezing to death. And so what did I do? I would actually get out of the water and go to the bathroom three, four times in a practice, but go in and take a hot shower, get warm and go back in the water. Well, you do that enough, the coach catches you. And these coaches that I would have would make me sit on the pool deck in the middle of winter to embarrass me, which made me not want to be there even more. And so it was one of these things where I wasn't cooperating

because they weren't cooperating and it just augured into the earth and it turned into a bad experience all the way around where I hated sport. I didn't want to do it. What do you think was a key element in you not reaching for something else? Because I think a teenager that feels like they can't do anything oftentimes is going to reach towards alcohol or drugs or whatever. Yeah, I mean, that was the thing is that as a kid, there's not a lot of other choices that you have, especially in my house.

It was we were going to do health and fitness, and that was it. And there was also expectations on education. And what I noticed was my insecurities were spilling over into my grades and how I was doing. And then I would have unfortunate sit-downs with my dad. And my dad always would say, you know, you keep messing up like this in school, doors are closing, meaning opportunity. And you know what? In time, you're going to have no open doors, get your act together. Well, that wasn't inspiring either. You know, it was like the whole thing was crashing down. And that's why when that event and I did the Hawaiian Ironman, I was empowered. For the first time, I did something that was mine. And that laid out the journey for me of like,

oh, this is how life is. You have to create structure. You have to create short-term goals and mid-term goals and long-term goals. And you have to break things down of how you're going to establish that journey. And I did that all on my own and I figured it out, but it shaped me. Those experiences shaped me now as a coach. I will never, and you saw it today. I mean, you are, you are exuding, you have so much confidence in everything that you do, but I will never be disrespectful to you ever because I want you to come back. My coaches never wanted me to come back.

After you've managed to do that first Ironman, what type of mentality shift did you have? Like, when did you start actually studying aerobic capacity and working on that and starting to work with people on that? Was it you did that, then you started going to school for it? How did that lead everything else? So I was already in college. I went to Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo. Yeah. A business finance major.

And what the big catalyst for me that turned everything to where I'm going to make a run at this. In June of 1983, so I did Ironman Kona. I did it in October of 82 the first time. So here we are in June of 83, and there was a race in Livermore, Lake Del Val. It was a 1.5 kilometer swim, 40K bike ride, 25 miles. And I want to say it was a 15K run, 9.3 miles. I want to say it was a 15K run, 9.3 miles. And I'm on the starting line of this race. We're on the beach getting ready to go into Lake Del Val. And it was a cold morning and I was shivering. And I was fairly confident in my ability to swim because I think I came out of the water in Kona.

I think it was top three. And so I was on the front line and there was 500 people behind me. Yeah. And back then triathletes looked like you. It was believed that you had to be big, strong to be able to survive that amount of volume. And so early on they were big. So I'm sitting there and I'm weighing all of about 120 pounds at this point. And there was a guy behind me and he says, hey, little kid. Oh, God. Get out of my way i'm gonna run you down

and i was i i i froze i mean i was 18 years old and it was like there's this monster behind me and and now he's threatening me and it was like i was cowering the world champion his name was scott maline at the time was standing right next to me. And he had race Kona. And he looks behind and he tells this guy, he says, that's Chris Hinshaw. He could hold his own. A world champion defended me. And that changed my trajectory. That told me that, you know what? If a world champion knows my name, then I might be a threat. And that's what started it. name, then I might be a threat. And that's what started it. That this guy knows me and I need to pay attention and treat that with some respect and now go after it. And that's what lit the fuse. Wow. I like what you said earlier about how it taught you about structure and schedule. And if you were to talk to any of those other triathletes, I mean, it would probably be very uncommon amongst the top five. If you ask them about their training, it would probably be odd for somebody not to like whip out like a spreadsheet and say like, Hey, this is what I did. And they're going to be able to show

you or, or their own version of that. You know, if people have different styles, so maybe they write everything down, but I'm sure these guys, uh, and girls that do these sports, they probably have a lot of information on like how they trained. They either have a coach or, you know, whatever the case is. Did you recognize early on, like how kind of complex some of this can get to be? Oh my God. Because you're just riding a bike, you know, you're like riding a bike, you're running, you're swimming, like, all right, we're going far, we're going for time.

Doesn't seem that bad. Like how many variables can there be? Well, so I knew Ironman had a marathon run. I didn't know how to train for a run. And no one in my house knew how to train for a run. And resources weren't available back then. So if you know you have to run a marathon, how should you train if you're 17? You enter a marathon.

Run a marathon every day. There you go. That's what I would do. I'd be like, I got to run 26 miles every day. That's what I did. I entered the Oakland Marathon. So I what i did i entered the oakland marathon so i'm like i entered the oakland marathon and i'm thinking that's how you train for a marathon is do a marathon so i show up at the starting line there was a guy he was in his mid-30s but he had a body type like me i didn't know that runners were small right the reason why runners are small is because you have to support your body weight. And so if you're bigger, that unfortunately goes against you, right? And we know that if we take a

VO2 max, we got to divide your VO2 max score by your kilograms of body weight. So I go up to him and I'm like, hey, do you happen to have a target, like a goal time? Like, I don't know how fast to run. I don't even know. He's I'm running three hours, which resonated. It was a nice round number. I didn't know what it meant. He could have said 10 hours. I don't even know he's i'm running three hours which resonated it was a nice round number i didn't know what it meant he could have said 10 hours i don't know so i remember asking like so how how fast is that a mile he's all 650 and i remember thinking god i wish it was seven like and i didn't even know what seven meant right but it was like i could remember when i'm running sevens how do you track 650 so anyway we kept pass through and we're at 90 minutes halfway through. And then the wheels fell off, which is incredible to think that with very little training, I can run that fast, which I didn't know it was fast until years later.

Like that is incredible that you can run a half marathon with zero training. And but then at 15 miles home boy that was brutal i mean i think i went from 650 pace to 15 minute pace for the last it was an awful experience and i was sore for probably three months i mean it was just brutal the destruction it did yeah and that taught me it's like i have to figure out a better way and i need to be taking it in smaller pieces and so the reason why the run was the most difficult that for me that year was because I just didn't have enough time. How about running? So we'll get more into that, but I think a lot of people are probably running, wondering where to start with running mechanics because like you would think that you just go out and run, but people are like, oh gosh,

my knees hurt after a small half, half mile run or my feet hurt after a small half mile run or my feet hurt after a small half mile run. So where should people build their blocks if they're like, I want to get into running a few miles? That's a great question. The first thing, I mean, Mark and I were talking about it earlier is you need to take a video of yourself from the side and look at how your foot is making contact with the ground. The first thing you need to make sure is that you're running safely. And that's the number one. Are you at risk based upon the way your natural stride? Are you at risk of getting hurt? And you know, what's interesting is that kids, children, and I'm talking about six, seven, eight year olds,

they have beautiful running form. But when they get into middle school, they think that in order to run fast, they've got to lengthen their stride. And what happens is that they then create the biomechanics where they now are overstriding, where the ankle bone, when it makes contact, the foot makes contact with the ground, the ankle bone is in front of the knee bone.

And unfortunately, when that happens, you are actually slowing yourself down until the ankle is now perpendicular with the knee. And now after that occurs, you're creating forward momentum. The problem with the ankle in front of the knee is now you're jamming the ankle, the knee, and the hip at foot contact, and there's a risk of injury, a high risk of injury. And so a lot of times what people need to be aware of is that they're at risk. The question is, is what do they do about it? And luckily, with the Internet, there's plenty of options on that. But the quickest thing is you have to realize that speed is based upon two things, not just stride length, but it's also based upon your stride frequency,

the number of steps that you take per minute. I would encourage people to get an app, a metronome app, and listen to the sound and tune it up to 160 to 180 steps in a minute and make foot strike each of those times you hear that beat. And that speeding up the steps per minute will force you into a shorter stride, but maintain the same velocity. And so what you have to do is you have to, number one, make sure you're running safe. Now with Mark, he was running earlier,

he was heel striking, but he wasn't over striding. So if he was heel striking the entire time, which he didn't, eventually after he got warmed up, he was landing more on the ball of his foot. But if he ran that way and it was safe, because he's not trying to be a competitive runner, he's not trying to become a specialist. He just wants to use running to help his fitness. I wouldn't work on his technique. Not a whole lot because there's too many other higher value targets for me to chase.

Because there's too many other higher value targets for me to chase. And so for him, what I want him to focus on, not speed, not strength, not his power output. Let's build your foundation. And a lot of people skip their foundation. They want to get to the juice. It's the same thing. I want to lift heavy. And they don't want to spend time working on the PVC pipe.

Same thing in running. People want to run fast because there's immediate satisfaction. There's immediate results. Unfortunately, they peak out and they stall or they get hurt. You have to build a foundation. So when we talked, I said, what I want you to be able to do is 20 minutes of running at a very easy, controlled speed. And once you do that, we can now work on your gears. I tried to kill Jason Kalipa one time in a workout, I'll admit.

I had him doing some deadlifting and I had him deadlift against some bands and I had him do like a high rep set, like a set that lasted for a minute straight. And it's just really taxing. Like there's trying to lift against a band, you know, there's like kind of nowhere to hide. You have to kind of produce a certain amount of force on every rep. So after a minute's time, I mean, he got just completely annihilated. And I was like, this is awesome. Like I got him.

I actually ended up taking a picture because like he's like laying face down on the ground and I stood over him like flexed, just like messing around. Of course you did. But, you know,ason does like a couple he does a couple i put him through a couple sets and he just has his hands on his knees for a second and then his color starts to cut because he was kind of turning pretty pale his color starts to come back and he just stands up and he's like all right what's next i'm holy shit. You know, so what have you seen? Like, I thought I killed him for sure, but he was fine. He was just kind of gassed for a moment, but he came back super quick.

What have you seen that aerobic capacity really be able to assist people with that maybe people are missing, maybe people don't understand? missing. Maybe people don't understand because I believe that if you can recover from your workouts better and if you have better conditioning, to a certain extent, it can be really massively helpful for any sport that you do, not just with runners and triathletes and stuff. Yeah. So a lot of people misunderstand aerobic capacity and the value. People think aerobic capacity, they think, oh, endurance, they think like running, cycling, rowing. But what we're talking really about is movement. We're talking about movement. There's no difference if we're defining movement as running versus movement doing push-ups. There's no difference. So if we talk about you guys in the audience and we talk about the movement,

not running, but let's talk about push-ups. And let me ask you, what is preventing you? Let's just think about the number of pushups that you can do unbroken. How many can you do unbroken? And let's say you both have a goal of doing 10 more. What is preventing you from doing 10 more? You have to tell me, I'm your coach and here's the beauty of being a coach. Once you tell me, what is your weakness? I can put the stimulus attacking that weakness. And with good nutrition, good recovery, we're going to create an adaptation and fixing that weakness. That's how easy it is. But you have to tell me. And unfortunately, it's very difficult for people to identify the weakness. And the weakness usually falls in two main categories. They lack strength,

right? Or they just get fatigued. They get tired. They're weak in terms of the recovery. They're weak in terms of their aerobic system. Remember, one of the major measures of aerobic fitness is how fast can you recover? So is your limitation in the movement of doing more reps because of fatigue? And so if it is, then what should I do? Should I have you do more heavy bench press? Or should what I do is have you do a high intensity effort like a running sprint. We're going to do max reps of pushups for a short amount of time, maximize the creation of fatigue through high force pushups. We could even do high force bench press, lightweight, high velocity.

And then what we're going to do after a short amount of time, like we would do 100 meter sprint, maybe 12, 15 seconds worth, we're going to rack it. Or if we're doing regular pushups, we'll flip over on our back and we're going to do very slow, active recovery, floor presses or bench press with the PVC pipe. The purpose on the first part is high intensity to create fatigue. The second part is active recovery, clear fatigue. Now we would do the active recovery portion for the remainder of the minute. We would do a total of five rounds, a total of five minutes,

12 to 15 seconds high intensity. The remainder of the minute is recovery. And now what we're doing is instead of breaking up pushups to get better at pushups and resting, right? Remember if you put a stimulus of rest on the body, you get good at resting. What we're doing is actually making you move, but call it recovery. Not many people have done five minutes of unbroken pushups. So what we're doing though, is we're changing the focus,

not on the intensity side of the equation, but on the recovery. And what we're doing is focusing on the recovery. Why? Because that is what's preventing you from reaching your goal. That's aerobic capacity. So keep the active, keep doing something through the active recovery. Right. Don't just stand still and try to breathe. Right.

So Frazier had an issue with, he wanted to be able to do 25, 150 pound D balls over the shoulder unbroken. No rest. Okay. So he was able, I asked him how many he can do back then.

This was like five years ago and he's like, I could do 12. What's preventing you, Matt, from doing one more. And this is where a coach has to help an athlete. Is it that you're not strong enough? Do you feel that strength is a limitation?

And he's like, no, I can put a 300 pound stone up. It's like, no, I'm, I'm plenty strong. I'm older than what is it?

And he says, you know, I just get tired. There's an athlete that tells you that is my recovery. Remember that when you're doing those heavy D-balls, the brain is recruiting a certain amount of motor units. When those motor units get fatigued, the brain shuts them off and recruits another batch of them.

Eventually, you work your way around to the first recruited motor units. And if they haven't recovered, then what do you do? They have to recruit fast twitch fibers. Now death is on its way. So what we want to do is force them to recover. So what do we do with Matt? I want you, instead of doing six and then resting in a chair and then doing six and then resting in a chair, I want you to give me three with 150 pounds fast. And then after you finish those three, I want you to take a 20 pound med ball and I want you to go slow from ground to shoulder on the left side, ground to shoulder on the right side, meaning that is going to be your active recovery in the same movement pattern that you just did with the D-ball, but the intent is different.

D-ball is high-intensity, create fatigue. The med ball is slow, low aerobic clear fatigue and what we're going to do is you're going to give me a minute of those med balls slow we're going to do a total five rounds so here he is now doing a workout with zero rest but the way he's able to do it is the recovery is easy so the progression for him is what? We don't need to work on his strength because he says he's strong. So the next workout is exactly the same except what do we do?

We change the med ball weight. Instead of 20 pounds, it's now 25. We make each workout more difficult by moving in the direction of the weakness. And wouldn't it be something if we could keep moving the recovery until it matches up with the intensity so we get all the way up to 80 pounds and then you know what happens is that

the intensity side is too easy because of the repetition his efficiency goes up so the 150 doesn't offer the same stimulus so what do you do increase bump the 150 to 200 and when you bump it up to 200 what do you do with the? Knock it back down to 20 and start all over. That's what I'm talking about. Wow. That's fascinating, man. You've worked with some really high level people. Do you think that CrossFit was kind of the perfect thing for you to get involved with because of what you just mentioned? Like CrossFit, it always seems like they're not really resting. They're usually doing something in between. A lot of times these are the majority of their workouts. They're doing one thing followed by another.

But maybe in the case of CrossFit workouts, maybe those things aren't viewed as recovery and maybe they're trying to go like hell during it. A lot of things, when I look at them, the beauty of the human body is it's logical. And in many cases, some of the things that I observe from my own experiences as an athlete, they don't make any sense. And that's what gets me thinking about something. So here's an example.

In CrossFit, we do workouts and they're called Metcons, metabolic conditioning. And what we're doing is we're doing these workouts with different muscle groups. And the whole intent is to maximize the recruitment of a variety of muscle groups and maximize the creation of lactic acid in the bloodstream. And the time domains of a lot of the events in CrossFit, the workouts, the named workouts are short. They're not super long. And so to me, that made sense where you're working your way up and building up lactic acid in the muscles that are moving, that's transferring into the bloodstream and your bloodstream is now flooded with lactic acid. And then what happens? You finish the workout and you lay on the ground and you do nothing. Why wouldn't we, now that you have the body flooded with lactic acid, work the backside of the curve? Why not? It's now recovery. But what we're doing is a mirror image of just what

we just created, meaning we get twice the value in the same amount of time. That's what my point was. And so here's now, what can we do about that? Like if we know, for example, you, you do a Metcon and your weakness that you want to work on, where it's a moderate load, high volume running, then what we want to do is we want you to do a Metcon. And then after you have filled up your bloodstream with this lactic acid, what I want you to do after that Metcon, take 30 seconds to get some composure.

And now we're going to do a nice, easy recovery jog. And where are those slow twitch muscle fibers going to get some of their energy to contract from? They're going to get it from the lactate that's in the bloodstream. They're going to pull it into the muscle and consume it as a fuel. And when it does, it's going to take the acidity out of the body with it. Essentially, we're working your weakness because you just did a Metcon. That to me made more sense. The problem was, is that thought that I had in doing that back in 2013, the sport wasn't

ready. You have to sit and wait. thought that I had in doing that back in 2013, the sport wasn't ready. You have to sit and wait. And that's the problem with the new sport is that the trajectory is going in different directions. There's not a bunch of continuity and you mostly have to sit and wait until people are ready. Or you get athletes like a Rich Froning or a Katrin Davis-Dotter or a Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet that are willing to take a risk because they want to win. So when you were talking about the lactic acid there, it's not just that you get more efficient with using lactate, but do you also become more accustomed with the pain aspect of that? Or does that also just reside over time? Like you don't feel that as bad? So that's a great question. So

that would be the other side of the equation. And that would be more of a tolerance to lactate. Tolerance. turned on under higher and higher doses of acidity. So how do we do it? What we do is we do lactate tolerance training where by design, we are limiting the amount of rest that the athlete is getting so that the amount of lactic acid that is in rep number two is more than in rep number one. So a good example would be what I want you to do is you're going to do a 20 second hill sprint and you're going to walk down to the bottom after you're done. As soon as you you to do is you're going to do a 20-second hill sprint. And you're going to walk down to the bottom after you're done. As soon as you hit the bottom, you're going again.

And we're going to do that eight times. What's going to happen is your distance is going to get shorter and shorter each time because of that accumulation of lactic acid. And it's not that you're a quitter. It's just that the muscles are shutting down because of the acidity interfering with the muscles from firing. are shutting down because of the acidity interfering with the muscles from firing. So by design, what we're telling you is you're going to end up going shorter. Your job in this workout is don't quit. Fight to keep the muscles turned on under higher doses of acidity. That is a trainable adaptation.

In addition to that, the body, due to the increase of acidity, will release an enzyme that will neutralize or buffer out that lactic acid. You have to do the high-intensity training because in the sport of CrossFit, that acidity is going to occur at some point in time in an event. Got it. Yeah. Has your information been well-received when you first started to try to uh get into communicating with some of these high level crossfitters i'd imagine there was probably a break-in uh time at some point where yeah people maybe weren't trusting what you were saying then maybe they went out and tried and they're like dude that sucked like what are you talking about like i didn't even sweat

that hard or i wasn't breathing that heavy your workout was too easy i mean what was some of the resistance in the beginning oh boy it's brutal was brutal. It was brutal. The beating that I took from everywhere. And that's why it was, I have a, we met through Jason Kalipa and Jason Kalipa was the first top athlete that I was able to help in the sport of CrossFit. And one of the things that was beautiful about Jason was that that his honesty that he was falling away from the podium and he needed help and he didn't know what to do he was humble about it and that's part of the thing don't come in with a bunch of arrogance when you're bombing i know you're bombing so let's be honest about it about our where we are so we can establish

this journey you're like no coach here's what i normally do And you're like, no, coach, here's what I normally do. And you're like, I don't care what you normally do. We're here to make changes, aren't we? Well, so I sit down with Jay. I'll tell you, this is funny. So I tell Jay, first time I sit down with him, I have to assess him. So I sit down and I'm like, Jay, tell me about your last endurance workout. And this is what he tells me. He says, well, I went to the track and I ran a 400.

I'm like, what was the intent? He's like, I ran as fast as I could. I'm like, what was the intent? He's all ran as fast as I could. I'm all right. So maximal energy. How fast you go? He's all ran in 68 seconds. Jason Kalipa at that time was 220-ish pounds, five foot nine. And imagine that guy running around the track 68 seconds.

And I'm thinking, how do you make a guy like that better so i ask him what's the fastest you run a lap and he's all 63 and i'm like that's nuts for a guy that size but remember how did he train he trained speed strength and power and what you're good at just that and so i'm listening i'm like okay so what'd you do next and here i I'm panicking. And he says, oh, I rest 60 to 90 seconds. And then I felt good. I'm like, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. And the reason why I realized he didn't know what he was doing

is because his volume was precise. His intensity was precise, but his recovery was a range. And remember, there's qualities in every workout, right? In lifting, we have volume, our reps, our sets, right? So five by five back squat, it's five reps, but you got a total of 25 of them. And then you have the load you're lifting, which is the intensity. In this case, he was running, so it's speed. And then in a five by five back squat, let's say it's three minutes or five minutes,

whatever you're taking. Well, imagine if you're only taking a five by five back squat, one minute of rest, right? All of a sudden, now you can't either do the five reps or you got to reduce the load because you didn't get enough recovery time. So if Jason's taking 60 seconds, whatever he does next is going to be way more difficult. He didn't care. He treated it the same. And that told me that he's not respecting recovery. Same thing when we were talking about the push-ups or the D-ball.

Recovery matters. I can manipulate volume. Like if you guys want to run a half marathon, what do I do? I just put more running volume in every week and the body naturally adapts that volume until the last logical step is an unbroken half. with Jay. He tells me that. I was relieved. I'm like, okay, I got some maneuvering room here. Well, what's next? He's, I ran another 400 as fast as I possibly could. All right. What was your time? He's, oh, I was tired. I did in 73. And then he ends up doing another 200 meter interval and he does a thousand meters for his endurance workout. That was his endurance workout. And I'm like, what was next though, Jay? And he's like, what do you mean? I'm, well, this is part one, right? It's thousand meters. And he's looking at me like, what was next though, Jay? And he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, this is part one, right? It's 1,000 meters. And he's looking at me like, what are you talking about? Well, your endurance workout, you said it's 1,000 meters.

I don't understand. What did you do next? He's like, I just went in the car and I went into the gym and I lifted heavy. His endurance workout was 1,000 meters. It was so short. So then I asked him, I said, Jay, so what are you, what's the purpose of this? He's like, Chris, I've told you I get last in every endurance event at the CrossFit Games. I'm slow. He was equating endurance with speed and they're on opposite ends of the spectrum. And I'm all,

Jay, you're not slow. You do a lap around the track in 63 seconds. You're legit. Your problem is you can't sustain that. And that is endurance. If you can sustain that lap over lap over lap, you're going to be great. And I looked at his workout, and I said, you know what? I want you to look at this. You're saying that this workout focused on speed, but did it. Is that what it created for you? Because you ran a 400 as fast as you could, and you went 68 seconds fast, meaning the muscles went fast. The next one, your energy, 400 meters, you went fast.

Maximal effort. But what did the muscles learn when they ran 73? They went from 68 seconds to 73. You essentially train your muscles to hurt bad and you train yourself to run slow. That isn't a speed workout. If you were doing speed, your second 400 should have been 68. And what quality should you manipulate in order to get 68? More rest.

That's why lifters take more rest because the focus is the five repetitions and the load. Yeah, running and lifting are so related to each other. It's kind of interesting because I think people think that they're worlds apart. But if you, you know, anybody that's listening to this that hasn't really explored running much, if you were to think of your typical five by five powerlifting workout, where under normal conditions, you are allowed to rest whatever amount you need to be able to perform the reps properly. And if you are somebody that is kind of following the principles of lifting unbroken and not having any of your former technique messed up, your last rep of your last set should look the same as your first rep of your first set. And I would imagine that running can probably be summed

up to be just that. You want good quality want good quality running there. Okay. There's going to be occasions where we're going for it. There's certainly a time and place for that. But in my estimation of what I've seen in power lifting, I would say like people are probably a 90 to maybe even 95% of the time lifting with a lot of accuracy. Maybe a newer lifter is messing up here and there, going a little too heavy. Maybe every once in a while a seasoned lifter kind of underestimates or overestimates where they're at in a current time period. But when it comes to running, I think that people just – it reminds me of bench pressing actually for some reason, especially guys.

They always just think they know how to bench press. Like, I got it. My gym teacher showed me or whatever from forever ago. And you're like, no, that's not working. And same thing with running. I think people just think they know how to do the technique and they think it does appear to be super simple. I mean, it looks super simple. But, man, if you're running for even like 60 seconds and you haven't really run before, you're probably going to get fairly tired, especially if you're running kind of fast.

So I think the main thing, the take home on a lot of this is you got to find a spot where you're going to be able to do some of this unbroken for the majority of the time in order to improve upon it, right? Yeah, I think that's the problem where a lot of people, the internet is great, but there's also these huge problems. And I know you see it out there. It's like- I haven't seen any problems with the internet. It's perfect. It's been great. Everybody wants to put their own flavor on things.

And the problem is, is like, let's say you wanted to train for a half marathon. You're going to type in there, you know, half marathon training program. And you're going to get something, and it's garbage. But the problem is, you don't know it's garbage because you don't know anything about the sport. It's like going into the local bike shop and saying, I want to buy a bike. What do you even know what to get?

Do you want clinchers or do you want sew-ups? I don't even know what that means. Well, one, the tube is sewed up inside the tire. Do you want that? That means you got to use glue. I don't know. Right. I mean, it's ridiculous what they're putting out there.

And that's the problem that I see where people have had that one bite of the apple and it was a bad experience and they walk away. And that's the problem is that that first taste, it's got to be a good one. And that's why when I wanted to come out, I wanted, it was so great. You wanted to do a workout because I needed one to assess you, but I wanted to be a great experience to inspire you. And I didn't know you were already pre-motivated as much as you are. I just knew that you were coming from a powerlifting background. And I'm thinking, boy, we might get some resistance.

And so what I want to show you is you're actually better than you think you are. And if I could get you showing up at the next workout, I'll do the same thing until all of a sudden it's now three years later and you've blown away that six-minute mile target. Yeah, I'm excited for it. It feels good. My body feels good. My knees and shins and a lot of the sled dragging and that kind of stuff has really helped. But just taking the lessons from lifting and you reiterated the same things that go on in my head, but I'm almost too stubborn to control myself enough. I think just being an athlete, you know, if somebody asks an athlete, Hey man, how you doing? And we're always doing great. Like, Oh, I'm doing great. And then you're like, meanwhile, you broke your ankle or something.

You're not ever going to share anything with anybody. But that is the main thing for me at this time, I need to still back off and slow down. The problem I think is, and I've seen this happen with a lot of lifters, is when they start, they feel so weak in comparison to other folks that they're like, well, all I'm bench pressing is 100 pounds. Like I need to lift more. So I'm going to work with 115 and 125.

And it's like, no, man, you can't. You haven't earned the right to do that quite yet. And for me, I need to back off quite a bit. So I'm actually excited to have some of these rules and to put them into place because for right now, I've just been kind of running whatever way I want. So when we were out there running

and we did the lap around the block, it was a little over a mile and it was after the workout that we did. And when we were running, we talked about breathing and I would sync up my stride with your stride. I would sync up my breathing and I would listen to the cadence of the breath and the breath, the oxygen that you're breathing in is the source of energy aerobically. And as soon as I would

hear the increase in breathing cadence, I knew that he lost the targeted stimulus of this easy run. And so a couple of times I went and I said, hey, Mark, can you just, I want to hear you say the whole alphabet unbroken. And you made it to M and then you had to take a breath. He couldn't breathe through it and say the alphabet. And you knew right then that that was too high of an intensity and you stopped.

I think this is where a good coach comes in and is like, that was the perfect thing to do. And unfortunately, many coaches will be out there and going, why'd you stop? That's a sign of weakness. You got to push through it. Right. And that's not what we're teaching. What is the targeted stimulus of what we're trying to achieve?

It's like the Kalipa example that I gave you about, he did a workout that was focused on speed, but in reality he taught his muscles to hurt bad and go slow athletes need to know the purpose of that workout so that if I'm not there they know when to pull the plug why did he teach his muscles to hurt bad you mean because he was going so fast he probably made himself sore so what he was doing was is that he was maximal energy but as he got deeper into the workout, his muscles went slower and slower and slower. And if you're training speed, then we should at least have the same speed all the way through. Meaning if his speed was 68 seconds on the first one, then number two should have been 68. Number three should have been 68. Number four should have been 68. If he can't maintain 68 and he goes to 73, we lost the targeted stimulus and he should stop. That's why athletes need to understand what is the purpose of this workout because you're not here to coach me. That's the problem with remote

programming. That happens in lifting as well, where somebody misses a rep. A lot of times, if you miss a rep you're supposed to again do a five by five and you got to set number four and you only did three reps um in my opinion you should move on to something else like the workout that that part of the workout is probably over that's i don't think there's a i don't i can't think of any good reason to now maybe you can gut it out maybe you get a set of four but more than likely i can already predict and already tell you what that last set's going to look like and you're probably going to be rounded over for almost every single rep and the the last reps aren't going to look like the first reps of the first set which is what we need that is so you

know the thing about having experienced coaches is like you cannot pay for that experience when you show up. It's like what you see in the advice you give. The problem is that athletes don't listen. They don't listen. And it's interesting that you say because I see this in the endurance world. Like if I gave you a workout and it was 10 400s around the track with 90 seconds of rest and I gave you, let's say, a target time to hit now the 400. Let's say it was 90 seconds for each 400. Imagine you do all nine of them spot on, 90 seconds, 90 seconds, all of them.

And then the 10th one, you do it in 100 seconds, a minute and 40 seconds. You would look back on that workout because of the last rep you bombed it, that it was a lousy workout because people only remember the last rep. And that's the problem. We want to know where the edge of the experience is that I like to know, like the worst workouts I give elite athletes is where you didn't learn anything because we're trying to find opportunity. And so if you fail out on that, that just means that that speed, you only had capacity on that day to go to nine.

And if your goal is to get more of those, then we know that's an opportunity. It's the same thing like I would assume in lifting, you would see failure on the last rep way more than in my world. One of the most disciplined people i've ever seen in the gym is this guy right here uh and sema um lifts with great control um he tries not to uh you know get overly hyped up before a lift like you would oftentimes see most power lifters do um he's very reserved very calm his last reps look last reps look like the start of his workout. It doesn't matter how heavy the weight is. And I think you're, in some sense, trying to make it look easy, but also have it be somewhat comfortable.

But, yeah, you are doing something that's stressful. You are doing something that is hard. And I've watched him stay dedicated to that. And it's actually just been amazing to be kind of side by side with him but it's also no mistake that he's freaking jacked over there no mistake that he he has the body and the strength to back it up it's just really hard for folks to buckle down and say oh man you know i should i shouldn't be using the 50 pound dumbbells i should probably be using the 35s, and I should go smooth and under control. Like, you know better, but a lot of times it's hard to keep that discipline.

How do you keep that discipline? Because it keeps me safe. Like, I know that the times when, if anything, if I've gotten injured or something's ever happened that I didn't expect it to, it was times that I was a little bit out of control with the way I was doing a movement or I was going a little bit heavier than I knew I should have been going on a certain day. So, and I've also found that it helps my joints too, at least when moving loads slow and controlled, even if it's light or heavy,

it keeps my body safe. So I'm curious, where do the injuries occur in your world? Does it like in my world, Is it like in my world? Typically it happens in the last repetition that they do. So if I gave you a workout and I said, your workout's going to be, uh, eight, a hundred meter sprints, and I'm going to give you some targets on each one of those. The last rep is where they pop their hamstring. It's always the last. And so I've learned that the last one, we're going to do it at a controlled speed. Your fastest one is going to be numbers eight, nine, let's say out of

a 10 rep workout. When lifting, where do people get hurt? Does it happen at the start because of lack of warmup or does it happen at the end? It can happen in a lot of places. Like when I see a lot of athletes get injured when it comes to things like bodybuilding, it's typically, maybe they were doing shoulder presses, but they were doing the shoulder press with too much speed and too much intensity, meaning that they were pressing like this and it was also too heavy. And they were just, they weren't controlling every portion of the movement where usually maybe they could have told if they were going slow, they were a little bit wobbly here, but since their velocity was so fast, boom, something happens. And similar with powerlifting, if you're going a little bit wobbly here, but since their velocity was so fast, boom, something happens.

And similar with powerlifting, if you're going a little bit too much intensity and, I mean, a lot of people want to lift the weight as fast as possible so they can get a rep. Sometimes there's a lack of control within a certain part of the lift that they can't find because they're going too quickly, which is why I like to lift slower a lot of the time because I can see where my weakness is within the lift and maybe the part of the lift that I need to focus a little bit more on. Something else to think of too, if you get hurt going slow, I mean, you're more than likely not getting hurt nearly as bad. So if you go to press into a weight with everything that you got and you're trying to move it as fast as possible and you have a little flare up in your elbow, well, now you might have just blown your tricep out if you're moving slow you

might be able to rack the weight and say hey i don't man i don't know what's going on my elbow kind of hurts might be able to reduce the weight the advantages are are insane but i also think there's a misconception of people uh lifting slowly and then people think that you're not going to be able to move fast but in sema and a lot of other people I know are extremely explosive. I've built my own explosive strength over the years by moving slower. And it's actually kind of fascinating that heavier weights, they dictate how quickly you're going to move in a lot of cases. There are some athletes that can be explosive through the whole range of motion. But normally when you see an athlete go from 400 pounds on their back

to 500 pounds on their back, their descent is probably most likely going to look a little bit different. And so I think it's, I'm not sure why people get so carried away and so excited, but to answer your question about like where people get hurt, oftentimes it's simply just going too heavy that's a huge one um sometimes just taking it for granted like you're warming up and for whatever reason like you just i don't know you just were being kind of a dumbass and you went to pick up 225 or 315 or something like and you just didn't pay attention that much oh and just tweak something

yeah and you tweet and you're like oh you're like oh that just cost me like a whole month i'm so screwed i can't handle it so there's that one and that time to see before i was when dead lifting one day i was just like i didn't have a little time and i was going through my warm-up really fast so i should have played two plates three plates 315 i tweaked my back and 315 is a very light load for powerlifters, right? You shouldn't be hurting yourself. But because I was just like, fuck, I just need to get through this. I went too quick through my warmups. I was moving it too quickly.

And boom, something tweaked in my lower back. So it's stupid shit like that. The last place people will get hurt is just kind of going for it and doing like as many reps, which can be fun. I mean, it's challenging. It's a mental challenge, which is great. You know, hey, you just proved to yourself you could do 50 reps or you do this crazy like drop set or something. But you're not really paying attention that while you're doing your rows, you're moving

your neck around a ton. You're moving your back around a bunch. And it's just, it's not good form. It's not good technique. And so that's when you're at home and you go to pick up something off the ground and something slips in your back. And you're like, what the hell is that? And you're like, I got hurt picking up a piece of paper. But you didn't get hurt from picking up a piece of paper.

You got hurt doing something wacky in the gym that you're probably pulling on your body a little bit too much. So in our world, online programming is huge. It's a major business. And the amount of revenue that you can bring in if you're a decent coach with great sound programming. That's where I'm heading. I'm going to be a running coach. There you go. Boy, you'd be awesome.

Well, no one's in your space. Imagine you are the guy. Powerlifters, here's your running coach. But I would think in powerlifting, to do remote programming, it would be really difficult because you have to be able to see the lifts, don't you? Like when you were saying the wobbliness of when you're like, that takes an eye, right? And then if someone's doing it in their garage- He's been coaching a lot of people. Right. But if you're doing it in the garage, but I would think that, I mean,

remote program, they must send in videos. Like for me in remote programming, I don't see videos ever. But what I do do is I prescribe personalized paces. So based upon their prior results, I can program their interval speeds, right? Their target times for all those based upon their prior results. And so it's the prior results that are dictating what they're doing. So I already know that they're safe in terms of these velocities. But in lifting, you're pushing the unknown all the time. And that's how you can fix a lot of things. Like it was pretty interesting.

You showed me a book of like Poliquin's programming and Poliquin, like he controls the tempo of which people lift. So he'll have like a three, zero, three. So three descent, you don't hold. And then three ascents. So you can control that. So you can make sure that people are doing things in the right way. Because a lot of times if like if a lifter is getting after it and they're doing a set, a lot of people just want to go as fast as humanly possible and get through it. And because when you also speed up the speed of which you're lifting a weight, you can get in more reps. But just because you can get in more reps doesn't mean those reps are happening safely. And then that increases the likelihood of injury. So lifters have to control the tempo of which they're doing a lot of these lifts too, to make sure that they're

not going to fuck themselves up. You know, that's interesting what you said, because you're programming based upon reps and I, in CrossFit space, it's very dangerous to always program based upon reps because CrossFitters will move through those reps as fast as they possibly can. And so like you just said, like a 3-0-3, we actually, like when I program like easier intensities where like, let's say the Frazier thing where, you know, it's three heavy med balls and then one minute. The reason why it was three is because I do want you to go fast, go through them as fast as you can because that's the intent.

The reason why the recovery was one minute is because you're going to do one minute if you do 100 of them or 10 of them. Your job is just no stopping. And that's why we can program based upon time. But in lifting, do you write based upon time, like numbers of reps? Yeah, you do. Yeah. You absolutely can. Okay. That's beautiful. Shows you how much I know on your side of the world. Well, it depends on... There's some guys who just kind of casually will lift and they still reach really high levels. They'll still be a professional bodybuilder or top level power lifter. But in many cases, people that we've had on the show before, like Stan Efferding or Jay Cutler or some of these real high end professional guys that end up being pro bodybuilders.

It's completely shocking. I mean, it shouldn't be shocking because of the way they look, but it's completely shocking about how much work they can get in in a condensed period of time. It is remarkable. I mean, Stan Efferding has a soccer background, and so I think he's always stayed in good condition. Some of the guys maybe don't have that level of conditioning, but I've worked out with some of these guys, and you're breathing hard, and you're like, holy crap.

I'm shocked that they're able to go from one set to the next with that shortened rest interval. In powerlifting, it's very common to have a longer rest period because a lot of times the intensity, the weight that we're moving, takes less time for you to do a single rep max and the intensity is higher. So you want to take your time warming up to those weights and you also want to take your time with your rest interval. But there's been people more recently who have kind of discovered that you can increase the frequency of your workouts. You can spread fatigue out in a very systematic way, and you can bench squat and

deadlift way more often than we initially thought. I thought you could only do those things like one, maybe two times a week, but there's people that do them three, four times a week sometimes. It's remarkable. But what they'll do is they'll continually change the weights. They'll continually change the weights so that the intensity is not through the roof the entire time. But what happens is they're getting a crazy amount of volume in. And then they're also getting in really good condition a lot of times because their rest intervals aren't nearly as long as they used to be. They're probably cut in half almost, I would say. That's fascinating.

So the sport is still evolving. It's changed. Yeah, it's evolving like crazy. And we had a guy here named John Hack. John Hack, like we did a podcast with him, just kind of a normal casual day. And then he pops in the gym and I think he squatted around 700 pounds. He weighs 180 something or 190, right? 190 something.

Yeah, he weighs about 190. And then, and he just just he just went through that so quick it wasn't like he was in a rush this was his normal cadence that he was going to that probably took him maybe about 30 minutes to get to that top set and then to hit the top set then he just rolls right into bench press and bench press is 540 and again that probably took him 15 minutes to get to that i've never seen any i mean i've never seen anything like, but it makes sense because John Hack is, he's going to go down as one of the greatest power lifters of all time. Oh, that's fascinating. So we talked earlier, I mean, back in my triathlon days, one of the mistakes I made is I never went into the gym and lifted

ever. And so I remember thinking back on my race performances and i didn't have a finishing kick i didn't have a sprint i had to make my move at like 5k out and i had a tire out my competitor because i didn't have any closing speed and i never understood it was because i didn't actually develop those fast twitch explosive fibers i mean i did speed work and some hill work, but it was always either in the pool, on the bike, or running. And that was a huge mistake. And I look back on that, and that's one of the things that shapes me now. If I coach a top-level athlete, I don't want them to look back on their career and do what I did.

I could have been better. I could have been. And that know, I could have been. And that was one of the things that- I would love to see just for, I don't know, six or 12 weeks or so, you implement just a little bit of lifting just to see what it, like you would, you'd break out in hives. You'd be so itching to get back into running. You would feel, you would feel so good, especially with some of the stuff that we do, the knees over toes stuff, a lot of body weight movements. Like it's not necessarily that you're going to bench squat and deadlift all that often, but might utilize some movements like that or

movements that represent some of that just to, you know, add muscle mass to certain areas. But I think you would absolutely fall in love with it. It's just a matter of getting exposed to the right stuff. Like we talked about earlier, I think just about anybody that's able to, I think if anyone went for a run with you, they would dig it because you would be like, okay, we're going to run for 15 seconds and then we'll walk and then we'll just whatever capacity the person has. Yeah. Maybe we should do that. Maybe what we do is we actually see who does the best improvement. You send me some.

Yeah, that'd be awesome. Back squat, deadlift, and bench press. Yeah, work on that. Let's see what my gains are compared to your mile for time. I think if you have access to like a sled or something like that, that would be like my main. Yeah, I've got access to everything. Yeah, sleds are just, they're just so awesome. I'm sure Nsema's got some good suggestions too. Yeah. Power Project family, I want all of you guys to look good when you work out. You see, I have a problem.

I don't like things that aren't quality. And if they're not quality, I don't take care of them. And the awesome thing is that we partner with Viore clothing. Now, the cool thing about Viore is that it's apparel that I almost feel guilty wearing in the gym but the great thing and the reason why i love viore is that number one the clothes feel look and fit amazing but number two even though they're super high quality they don't break the freaking bank right so you can get super high quality clothing and not go into debt trying to get it andrew please tell the people how to get it on top of that, we're going to give you guys an awesome deal with 20% off your first order. Head over to viore.com. That's V-U-O-R-I.com slash power project. And you'll receive 20% off your first

order automatically. No code needed links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes head over there right now. I'm really curious about something because when I was in my early twenties, um, and it's before I started competing in bodybuilding, I was working at a gym and that's when I first learned about CrossFit. And I was like, fuck, I want to do that because the main thing that kind of got me really,

uh, was really exciting was like, okay, number one, everyone's fucking jacked, but they can, they can move like they're athletic. My, my athletic background is soccer. I played that for 15 years. Um, okay, number one, everyone's fucking jacked, but they can move like they're athletic.

My athletic background is soccer. I played that for 15 years. And when I was transitioning out of soccer, I was like, I need to find something I can allow my body to do all this stuff. And CrossFit just looked crazy. But I was curious, are there – I don't think triathlons can even kind of hold a candle to crossfit just because there's no volume of weight training so is there any sport that has ever been comparable to the type of body that crossfit's able to build because it's a jacked body they look like a lot of them look like bodybuilders

but then these bodybuilders can run crazy mile times and row and do all these swim it's like it's like i don't think there's really ever been anything like it, but the bodies are so impressive on the male and the female side. Well, I mean, that's what is, you have to hand it to Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit in,

in really pushing this methodology and making it available to the masses for free, like putting programming online to validate it, not by 10 people, but by hundreds of thousands of people. And it created a sport for the recreational athlete, the non-competitor. Crossfitters are just recreational in everything they do. They're just looking for fitness.

They want variety. They're not specialists. And so that's unique. And they're also not great at anything like matt frazier five times greatest crossfitter ever he is not great in anything he's not like he runs a 505 mile 198 pounds 505 mile rich froning has a vo2 max in the movement of running of 72 milliliters per kilogram per minute. That is a massive number.

I mean, there is Derek Clayton back in the 80s has a VO2 of 69, and he had the world record in the marathon at a 208. Rich Froning, if he got down to 115 pounds, he could run probably sub 210. But Rich Froning could also put 400 pounds over his head. My point is that these athletes. Comical how strong these guys are and fit. Well, but what I want to put it in perspective is, is that if you look at the spectrum, so the recreational person, the average person has a ratio of roughly 50-50 fast twitch and slow twitch fibers. That's why they're in the middle.

I have a dominant share of slow twitch fibers. That's why genetically i was born to do nine hour events you have a physiology where you had a genetic advantage i'm never going to be strong and you're never going to beat me even if i'm a hundred in an iron man i thought he was gonna say like running but he said he said Iron Man. That's a long way. Shit, man. My tire went flat on my bike. I don't know what happened.

I already got my excuses lined up. But what's really fascinating is that now there's a sport where you can do a variety. And what these athletes are proving is that it used to be where you were either on one side or the other, the elite, the Olympians. And now you have these athletes that are showing that you could push to the extremes. Rich Froning's VO2 and the movement of running rivals world record holders in the

marathon, rivals it. And he could put 400 pounds over his head and he weighs 195 pounds. That is remarkable. I mean, you're not going to survive the zombie apocalypse. I'm not going to survive it. But you know what? Who will? Rich. The people in the middle.

Because they have power and the ability to endure. Rich probably knows how to blow stuff up too. Oh, yeah. So you mentioned Frazier being the greatest of all time. What would happen if Froning and Frazier went against each other in their prime? I mean, we got to throw that out there, right? Here's the thing about that. I mean, I worked with them both for seven years, and they were different types of athletes. The sport was

different when Rich was doing it. It was different. And he was way ahead of his time. One of the things that Rich did in those years of 2011, 12, 13, 14, is that he never announced what he trained, what he did. It was always in silence, always in a barn, always by himself. Never told a single person because back then it was believed that you could follow CrossFit.com programming and go to the CrossFit Games and be a contender. Meanwhile, he's doing five a days. He's training endurance in everything that he's doing. And who won every event on the last day of the CrossFit Games? Rich Froning.

And people were trying to figure it out. How is it possible that this guy's not tired? What the fuck? People, I've heard people like vouch for this, and they're like, no, no, no, it's not even, we're not even messing around. All he does is lift. Like he's always working out.

It's incredible. People said they went on like, I don't't know vacations with him because there's like these uh reebok things and some other businesses uh where they send all the athletes out to do these jesse burdick jesse burdick's been there with me with them yeah and and there he is like they're like where's rich like he's in the gym like okay where is he now he's in the gym like where is he now he's in the gym he's always in the gym. Like, where is he now? He's in the gym. He's always in the gym. He goes to Florida for vacation and brings a whole rack with him and a full setup in the back of the truck. No, one day, I'll tell you, this was the telling sign. Rich, he has a barn at his house and his main house to the barn is probably 100 meters. I happen to be pulling up. Heidi and I were pulling up

into the driveway and we see Rich come out of his house and he's got his head down and he's just dragging, dragging. He was so beat up. He goes into the barn 30 minutes later because he has his whole warmup protocols and everything. and he's really spot on about that. And next thing you know, he's just pounding and going for it. Every day is that way. He is so inspiring. You watch it and it's like, how is he doing it? But every day, every day.

He does 1,000 GHG sit-ups every week. How do you do that for 13 years? He just loves it, right? Loves. Because I've had conversations with him about motivation and different things, and there's not a lot to it. He's not pumping up a bunch of music and then getting fired up and going in there or taking pre-workout. He's just like, I just love it. Yeah.

No, he'll send me a note and he'll say, hey, you got a ruck workout? And I'm like, well, what are you thinking about? What do you want to do? And he's all, I don't know, 90 minutes? But that's just one of the things in the day. Yeah, no, it's very inspiring. That's the thing is that I really admire the original people that came into the sport of CrossFit and how they helped establish it because they're great people. And you have to admire the effort that they put in for the people that are now taking over.

It's a different sport, and it's amazing. Rogue just had their invitation in Austin, Texas. Um, it's a different sport and it's amazing. Like rogue just had their invitation in Austin, Texas. And how incredible is it that you can still see a rich froning who is in his prime rich can run a five, 10 mile and he has no cartilage in his left knee. What? Yeah. He has no cartilage in his left knee. How long has that been?

A couple of years. Yeah. No, it's still been competing in the games. Cause he's like part of the team oh he would have been on the podium this year at the games he is that fit he is the most fit i've ever seen him and and that is incredible how do you grind and not at like a high level i'm talking the highest level for that long we're talking over 10 years to be at the top and everybody gunning for you. How old is he now?

What is he? 34? I love hearing this. I love hearing this. No, he is. But that's why what I admire and I said earlier about what Glassman created is he created a sport that is proving to people variety is better. If you are in the middle, you're not in the middle, I'm not in the middle. So we need

different things. But if you are in the middle, you have an ability to push the extremes like me, my max deadlift that I've ever had, 295. I'm never going 300. It's just that I don't have the genetics for it. But if you are in the middle where you were told you're not good enough to be in a sport, you're not good enough and it's time to go, there's where you were told you're not good enough to be in a sport. You're not good enough and it's time to go. There's your opportunity and what you're going to find is your level of fitness is going to rival the Olympians. And that is cool. One thing I want to share with people is that, you know, while you may have these glaring weaknesses in your game,

most of the time it feels the best to lean towards the thing that you're good at and normally you're interested in those things. So while I do think it's great, I think for longevity, I think it's great for a lot of people that are listening to the show to at least work your way towards being able to have a capacity to run, even if you don't run. Just knowing that you can run a half a mile, that might be good enough for you depending on your running background. But just having the ability to run kind of tells me that you got the dexterity and strength to bounce off of one leg, the other, and things like that. Chris has doubled down on his career with doing triathlons and marathons. I doubled down on my career by really leaning heavily into powerlifting. But I'll tell you that it's also been satisfying and gratifying in changing over

to bodybuilding, changing over to doing some running. So working on some of the weaknesses has also been great, but I don't think I would have ever really cared about the weaknesses. I don't think I would have ever even explored them had I not leaned into my strength in the first place to kind of give me the confidence. Because now I can just say, hey, you take over, man. I don't know how to run. But if I was newer to running and I didn't have previous experience, I'd be like, who's this guy trying to show me how to run? I'm going to do it my own way. Having the previous life experience of messing myself up a thousand times over in powerlifting has been really helpful.

The key is having a receptive athlete. They have to be ready for it. And you run into that all the time. Like, I'll talk to people and, oh, I want to win the CrossFit Games. And then they really actually don't from their actions. And that's when you need to walk away. They're just not ready yet. And why do I want to spend my time

if they're not going to actually do the things that are needed to get there? That's why I admire athletes that say, I just want to go. I love that. Like Cara Webb. Cara Webb is a world-class CrossFit athlete. Cara Webb?

Cara Webb. Oh, my God. She's got some jacked legs. Holy shit. She looks strong as hell. Right. Is she Australian? looks strong as hell. Right. Is she Australian? Yeah.

Okay. And an amazing woman. Yeah, I think that she's got like 30 inch, you know, quads. Yeah. And she's five foot two-ish. Unbelievable. So she calls me. She gets second place in the CrossFit game.

She loses by two points. Okay. She calls me up maybe two, three months afterwards. Loses by two points. Okay. She calls me up maybe two, three months afterwards. And she says to me, she says, I would really hope that you would like to be my coach. And I always talk with an athlete about like, what are their goals? And is it realistic?

And if it's realistic and they're honest with me, then you know what? We might go for it. Kara Webb, for me, was a huge risk because she was already a dominant female athlete by the time that she makes this phone call into me. And there's always a risk of some new athlete testing your methodology. And what if you ruin them? And I'm not talking about making them a better endurance athlete. What if you ruin them in the CrossFit side? Because they don't care about just being a good endurance athlete.

They want to win. And so I ask her, what go, what's your goal? And she says, I want to break six minutes in a mile. Carl Webb wanted to break six minutes in a mile. And so, like we talked about earlier, it is not my job if she wants to break six minutes in the mile to say, maybe we should tone that down a little bit. To me, until you prove to me that you can't do it, I'm all in. So I turn around, I'm all in so i turn around i'm also what's your current mile time your fastest time and she's all 6 37 so here she's already fit

second in the you know crossfit games and i'm like but what was surprising is that she said my number one goal is to break six minutes in a mile, just like you. And it wasn't to win the games. That resonated with me. Her number two goal was to win the games. And so I'm like, I'm going to go for it with her. I really admire her honesty. And she was sincere about it. And I asked her, I said, why do you want to do that? Why the mile? And she says, Chris, because the thing is, is that in the CrossFit Games, I'm not in control of the workouts. And if workouts go my way, I could win. And people could always say the programming was in your favor. But no one could ever take away a time, me against the clock, the race of truth. No one could ever do that. And what she did was,

we started in the month of November. At the middle of April, she did her mile for time, and she went 547. 547, and it taught me something. Never, ever tell an athlete if they want to do something, it is not your job until they prove otherwise that that dream's not going to happen. So when I hear people want to win, if they don't want to put in the work, that's when we have a problem. And she put in the work.

No, she was, she legit, legit. And that was one of the biggest things as a coach that I ever did is to take an athlete like that, that was seemingly impossible, but she wanted to do it. All right, I'm all in. And that's the same thing with you. When you told me you want to break six minutes and a mile, let's do it.

Until you prove to me that we can't, let's do it. Yeah, and I also don't have any, I'm not like, oh, I need to do it by December. You know, like I'm just, I don't know. It might take me three years. I have no idea. I'm fine with however long it takes. I just, I don't know. It might take me three years. I have no idea. I'm fine with whatever, however long it takes. I can't wait. Yeah. You have another peak in you for sure. Yeah. You maybe had one or two in the past, but we're going to get another peak. I love it. Yeah. Having worked with thousands of athletes at this point, I want to know your

insight into the way that athletes breathe when doing aerobic work. Um, we talked about this a lot. Whenever we have people that are focused on cardio or coaches that work with martial artists, come onto the podcast because like, you know, we had Patrick on Dave Nestor. Um, we started focusing on nasal breathing a few years ago. I started focusing within jujitsu and it's made a night and day difference in terms of just my ability to keep the battery running and not getting fatigued. Um, so what do you notice with people and breathing? And what is the difference when it comes to learning how to do nasal breathing? Do you think it has as much of an impact as I think it has?

I do. I think it has a huge impact. I think that it's a very advanced concept that people jump to first. It's almost like high intensity interval training. It has a lot of buzz. It's got, you know, everybody is talking about it. And so people want to jump to first. It's almost like high intensity interval training. It has a lot of buzz. It's got, you know, everybody is talking about it. And so people want to jump right in. The problem is, is that they're bypassing the basics first. For example, like one of the things that we were talking about is the rhythm of the breath. Do you have a reliable and predictable rhythm to your

breathing? And swimmers, if you think about it, have the best rhythm of the breath. Like your wife, you were talking about it. She comes from a swimming background. Guaranteed, she understands what I'm talking about. And if I took her out of the pool and she ranobic system, that oxidative pathway. It's the energy that ultimately fuels those slow twitch fibers and those intermediate fibers. And so part of it is, is imagine if the brain doesn't know when the next dose of energy is coming in. If it's random, it is always going to set aside motor units because it doesn't know you're going to go into a one minute breath hold. you're going to go into a one-minute breath hold. But if it's a reliable and predictable pattern, the rhythm establishes, the brain builds up confidence that, you know what, I'm going to free up more motor units because I know there's another dose of energy coming in the same cadence. So you want to establish that rhythm is number one. And then number two is that you want to establish when you're in control of your intensity and

when you're out of control of your intensity. And so in the movement of running, one of the things that you can do really easily is you want to count the number of footsteps you take per cycle of breath. So your exhale begins when your foot hits the ground. That's always what happens with all of us is the cycle will start your exhale on a foot strike, whether it's your left side or your right side. If you are in control of your breathing, meaning you are giving your muscles that are moving enough oxygen, you may be suffering, but they're getting enough oxygen. You're going to be breathing by taking four steps for every cycle of a breath.

So it's an exhale, one, two, three, exhale, one, two, three, exhale. Now that's what we call a four count cadence. Anything a four or higher, you're okay. If you cross over into a three, now what you're doing is you're going to dip into what we call a non-sustainable pace above lactate threshold. So think of it like climbing into the death zone on Everest. You could go above it and summit, but you will die. And in the movement of running, you're just going to stop and hunch over and put your hands on your knees. So knowing that, it's knowledge that by intention, you may be by going into a three count because you got to go up a hill or you're pushing to the finish line. After three count, you would go to a two count.

A two count, for most people, they could keep the muscles firing for about 20 seconds. Think about your closing sprint. And then the accumulation of lactic acid builds up where the muscles start shutting down. So you could stay on a two count for a long amount of time, but what's your velocity doing? So what we want to do is teach those basics first. Here's an example.

Anybody wants to just watch. Watch Conor McGregor. is teach those basics first. Here's an example. Anybody wants to just watch. Watch what, watch Conor McGregor. Here he arguably has the most expensive training staff in the world. And watch Conor McGregor do a five minute match. He's five minutes and now he gets a minute of rest. What does Conor McGregor do

during the one minute? Because remember, you want to maximize your ability to recover during that one minute so you're fresher going back in. Does he have a routine? Do you have a routine? And he doesn't. Sometimes he's seated. Sometimes he's kneeling on the rope. Sometimes he's jabber-jabbering with the opponent. Sometimes he's pacing. It's random. He hasn't developed a protocol. He isn't even aware that when he comes out of a five-minute round, if he got the crap kicked out of him, he's on a two-count breathing cadence, and he now is arguing with the ref. He is in deep, deep trouble. Now, you watch Khabib.

He's a whole different intelligence. This guy knows when he is on that two count and he knows he's in trouble, he's got to get back in control. He's got to get his breathing cadence a four or higher. Conor McGregor will take a five-minute round, come out with a two-count breathing cadence, and go back in with a two-count breathing cadence because he's too busy jibber jabbering. He shows me that he doesn't know what he's doing. And that's what we want to do is we want to give the athlete these tools to know whether or not they're in trouble. How do you know whether or not you're going from the pull up bar to a barbell and you're

okay? The breath is the tell. So one of the things that I commented was is that Matt Frazier is arguably the smartest in the sport. People look at him and they see him looking around during the competition and they just think, oh, he's just looking to see who's with him. He's not doing that. He's watching the cadence of the chest move. And if you are far from the finish line and you are on a two counts cadence and you have more than two minutes to go, you're not a contender.

You eventually will slow down because the accumulation of lactic acid is going to force those muscles to make you slow down if you don't slow down. So part of it is that it's about knowledge. It's about awareness of where you are. And if you go straight into nasal breathing, you haven't learned the basics yet. And that's where the problem is, is that everything is getting too advanced

and people don't know where the structure needs to start. And we see it. And that's why I bring up Conor McGregor. At the highest level, he doesn't know what he's doing. And if you don't believe me, watch him in one of his fights. Just watch. What are some maybe strategies that people aren't utilizing?

Like you mentioned active recovery. Like would you think that maybe some years from now in the UFC, we'll see the guy in the corner doing some squats in between his rounds or something? He should do it in training. So part of it is that you have a warm-up protocol. Why don't you have a recovery protocol for your recovery between sets? Why wouldn't you? Conor McGregor knows he's going five minutes, one minute of rest.

Why doesn't he have a one-minute recovery protocol and know exactly what that protocol is, that ritual, to maximize his recovery within that one minute? If he is doing it random, that tells me he has no concept of this. Every single time, it's different, meaning he doesn't know that the body responds to repetition. Like, I'll give you an example. So at the CrossFit games, I love, you know, this doesn't happen as much anymore. But one of the things that I do is I teach the athletes that I coach to ride an assault bike after a Metcon. And the reason is, is because the number of muscles that are being used on the assault bike is more than any other movement. And

it allows the heart rate also to stay up after a Metcon. And what's happening is, is that when you ride that assault bike, just like we talked about earlier, that lactate that's in the blood will get consumed by some of the muscles that are moving. Essentially, it accelerates the rate in which you're clearing that lactic acid, lactate clearance. So my athletes, they practice this. And the more you practice, the better those muscles get at pulling that lactate out of the blood and consuming as a fuel and removing the acidity, right? The high intensity creates this, but the low intensity can clear it.

So I would love to go to the after where the athletes, you know, they finish working out and they're back there, you know, recovering, you know, and they're doing some recovery protocols. And there's a lot of assault bikes there. And people just hop on them. And I like to go up to people and ask, I go, so what's the, you like riding an assault bike after workouts? Oh, no, I just saw, you know, I just saw Camille doing this. And so I jumped on and I started doing it. So you don't do this in training?

No, I just saw like, well, all that's doing is making them more tired because it's not a recovery protocol because they don't practice it. And so part, what we need to do is we need to be aware that the body responds. Like when you did that pacing workout, you didn't see him today, but he did legit. We know that if we put a stimulus on the body and you practice it over and over again, the body becomes more efficient at doing it through motor memory. So I did a workout just to build his confidence. We ran 40 seconds down the road, rested for 15, and ran back 40 seconds. He didn't have a watch. at the starting line, put a circle in the street around his feet. And I told him, you're going to have this circle as your starting point.

We're going to run 40 seconds down, rest 15, and you're going to run 40 seconds back on my go. If you match your same speed going out with your same speed coming back, when I yell stop after rep number two, you should be right in the middle of your circle. We're going to do a total of 10 reps, meaning you have five tries to land in your circle. And I expect you to get one.

And you have to do it by feel. And he had no idea he was going to do it. And it's shocking how far you were away. Yeah. I mean, we were 200 meters down the road almost. And imagine you're looking at a dinner plate 200 meters down the road. And imagine if Mark says, you know what? I'll bet you $1,000 that I get within two meters of that plate in 40 seconds. You'd take that bet all day long.

And there wasn't a single rep that you were beyond two meters on every single one. Every single one. And so part of it is that you want to create these rituals, these patterns, to not only prove to yourself and build confidence, but you also want to be able to get the body more comfortable with, like, for example, your intensity that you picked. And that's where I see a lot of the problems there is that people, they just don't know.

They're going and reading the internet and jumping to conclusions and they're making things difficult. Like for example, when that training mask came out, like the training mask, another problem, right? That people were running in that. To me, why are you doing intervals in that? It seems like you're making yourself suffer and go slow. Now, if I was a running back, if I played football, I can simulate fourth quarter fatigue by putting that on. That makes sense. But that's where I think a running back, if I played football, I can simulate fourth quarter fatigue by putting that on. That makes sense. But that's where I think a lot of people are jumping to nasal breathing and they're not aware that you can't do high intensity sprinting by breathing through your nose. It's the same thing like ketogenic.

Are you aware that ketogenic is going to be very difficult on your high intensity work? That's the problem. So why is it such an advanced thing then like let me ask you if somebody were to implement it i understand that doing high intensity work you're going to start to open your mouth like i noticed that with jujitsu once i start once i purposely want to speed something up in a match i'll start breathing through my nose then it'll be nose mouth and my opponent's already breathing all through their mouth so So I know once I turn it up on him, they're fucked. Right. So why is it incredible that you know that that was incredible? Yeah.

The awareness of your competitor. That's what Frazier is doing. Right. You're aware that they're in trouble. Yeah. And there's nothing they could do about it. They can't fake it. Yeah.

That to me is that's where the sophistication of the athlete is in tune. And you're going to beat them because you're smarter. Yeah. Right? Yeah, you can tell a lot of athletes, especially within the martial art, like they don't realize when they start going like that, they're close to being done. Right. Well, you know, if you're breathing that way, like a two count. So the two count is that person maybe can hold that for 20 seconds.

And now the muscles are shutting down. If you can get them to hold that for 20 to 30 seconds, they are going to be at less than 100% muscular capacity and you keep it longer. It's just going to shut them down. Eventually they're going to tap because you know what? There's no more muscle fiber. That, that to me is the knowledge. That's why watching Conor McGregor and he's sitting there on a two count.

He's in trouble. Who's he kidding? That's why you can't fake it. Yeah. So, so when can people start implementing it? That I'm curious. By the way,

like he did it today. And that was what I wanted is I wanted, I wanted Mark to know and be aware that if his stimulus is, I want to develop my slow twitch aerobic fibers. And in order to do that, I have to keep my speed slower. And the way for him to monitor real time is the cadence of his breath. We also want to give him other tools, right? So we want to give him like the talk test.

Easy paste is where we can continue to talk the entire time. So if you're in a jujitsu match and you're just sparring, if you can recite the alphabet and be able to breathe through it, A, B, C, D, E, and breathe, you're okay. That's easy. You're now completely good. But if you get down to the point where you can only say two sentences, now you're at what we call your maximum sustainable pace. And if you only say two words, like the video you posted four days ago, I know you're at a fast or a

high intensity, a speed that maybe you could hold on to for five minutes. So you're, you know, you're in it. It's the tell what we want to do is we want to develop these skills as a way of assessing ourself without looking at GPS or heart rate monitors. That's what you want. That's why I didn't allow him to wear a watch today. I want him to show that I want to show him that he can actually do these pacing based workouts. He picks the speed, but if you practice it and repeat it, you could replicate it. Have you personally noticed any, like, ultra benefit to utilizing nasal breathing? I do.

I think there's a tremendous benefit to it. I mean, one of the things, so I'm very skeptical because I've been around as an athlete, and I've seen a lot of hocus- pocus out there where people think it's, oh, this is the greatest thing ever and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I just, I'm so tired of hearing that. Like the changes, it's very rare you see something with like real value. It does something, yeah. Right. And that's the hardest part.

And so like my first introduction, I went to North Shore Wahoo and I coached some surfers. And one of the things that they were talking about was breath holds. You know, part of it is, is that if they have two sets that, you know, like a wave and then another wave and they have to do a two wave hold. It's like, that's an incredible thing that you're down under that water flipping and churning. And so I was talking to them about like breath holds and they talked to me about Wim Hof and all of that water flipping and churning. And so I was talking to them about like breath holds and they talked to me about Wim Hof and all of that. And so I looked it up afterwards after I left and I'm watching these videos and I'm like, this is BS.

Even though he's like, you know, huge, I'm thinking this doesn't make any sense. But like you, open-minded, I'm going to give it a try. And I have a decent, my lungs are, I have very big lung capacity. And so and so i mean i could hold my breath for two minutes and i go through a youtube video following like wim hof's like what he gave away it was a ted talk and uh i did three and a half minutes first try and i'm like there's something here that is real change and it's not me going from two minutes to 205. It was incredible. And so to me, those things are important. That's why what resonates for me with you guys is that you're athletes.

I don't understand how people can coach if they're not an athlete. How do you know? How do you know? I know because I've done these things. I've done them for 40 years and so i know from my own experience and i know from watching others do it how do you know if you haven't done it yourself that's why when the breathing thing and when hoff i'm looking at i'm like that actually is legit the question is is how do I now put that into what I do?

And you're, you're a big proponent of just people just having a good base before they go off and really worry about like the nasal breathing might be something where maybe you have a concern for that or not even concerned, but maybe somebody thinks about implementing that maybe like when they go on a walk or maybe when they're... Your easy pace should be able to breathe through your nose. Okay. There you go. So there's another tool. 180 minus your age is another easy pace. So we want to have these ways without having to look at gear. Right.

And nasal breathing is one where you should be able to do your easy pace through your nose. You should. As soon as you can't, now you're going into a lactate threshold type intensity maybe over time what you what feels easy to you and what you can do with nasal breathing increases yes absolutely there we go yeah your ability to use oxygen more efficiently and that's what we're really trying to do that's why you know i did a podcast once and it was about drug use and things and and they were asking me like what would be the drug of your choice if you were going to take a PED? And I'm like, EPO.

I would take EPO all day long. It's like, imagine you can increase the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream by taking a drug. It's like your VO2 can go up 20% overnight. That to me is appealing. And that's what we're talking about is we're trying to find a more efficient way to get oxygen to the muscles. And that's what aerobic capacity is. The more oxygen we can get consumed by those mitochondria, the better we can perform aerobically. And that's the holy grail. That's why EPO was such a big deal. Have you personally messed around with any altitude stuff?

Because altitude is supposed to maybe somehow mimic the impact of EPO a little bit or so. I forget what the. I have. I haven't done that. I mean, I do know the differences in drop offs in performance based upon altitude, you know, like what happens. So, like, for example, I do. We were talking about Matt Chan earlier and I would just did six seminars with North Metro fire in Denver and North Metro fire. They have to do the Cooper test on the treadmill. It's a 12 minute maximum effort test

and their numbers, they're really bummed by them. And then I told them, I said, do you realize that for every mile that you're running your your speed because of your altitude is going to be somewhere between 15 and 20 seconds slower. So if you're covering a mile and a half, right? It's crazy. Yeah, you're 30 to 40 seconds slower because of the altitude. And it's like, oh, so I am fast. I'm like, no, you're legit. That's the problem.

Yeah, the other thing is in fire is the weight. Weight matters. Like one of the things that's nice is that you don't weigh 330 anymore because you take the bunker gear. So I do work with the fire department in New York and I went and did their CPAT test and I'd never done it before. I'm 58. They put me on a cylinder. I'm on air. I have 60 pounds of bunker gear and I have to go through this whole exercise. 60 pounds of bunker gear and I have to go through this whole exercise. I went back afterwards and I'm like, what does 60 pounds of gear do to my VO2 max? So my VO2 right now is about 62 milliliters per kilogram and it will drop it into the 30s.

So I go from exceptional down to poor by putting 60 pounds of gear on. That's why it's tough to be a firefighter. If you're not fit and you throw on 60 pounds of gear, imagine adding 60 pounds of body weight and now you have to do a task. Yeah. So that's where it's like things like that. I get fascinated by different professions and the strengths and weaknesses, but also it's always coming from my athlete background. Does it make sense? And that's where I struggle. That's why it is super fascinating. I mean, there's so many different ways you can go about training. You're mentioning the backpack, you know, somebody puts on a weighted vest and just goes for a walk. I mean, that could be really

challenging, especially if there's some like hills or we've been messing around more recently with some sled dragging and things like that. I mean, there's just farmer's carries. Are there anything in particular that you utilize that maybe is a little different, maybe somebody hasn't really thought of? Like maybe even you use walking as a protocol or something along those lines. So I do a lot of stuff with the military, and I was at 29 Palms recently with the Marines. And one of the things that was

interesting is that the Marines, it's a very advanced outfit, very advanced, and they're with it. The leaders within the Marines are receptive to new ideas. And for many years, our military is back in Vietnam era. And there's many different divisions within the Marines, our military, that I've struggled with. That they do things because that's the way it's always been done. And the problem has been is that the decisions are made by somebody that I will never speak to. And so a lot of times you end up walking away, but the Marines are different. The Marines are advanced and they're looking to be even more advanced. And so I got together with some of their force fitness instructors at 29 Palms back in June or July of this year. And

we sat down, there was, I don't know, 30 of them. And we were on a football field, 29 Palms, it was like 120 degrees and we're just sitting in the sun. And one of the funny things there is that they put this black flag up if it temperature gets above like 108 or something. It's 123, but there was no black flag. It was just like this business as usual, which is so badass. It's like, man, and they're all ready to go. So we're sitting there and we were talking about on the field, how do you guys ruck? What's the deal on your rucking? How do you train for your rucking? Like I'm just having a conversation with them so I can understand it because I don't know how they do this. And they said that we're taught

to take a longer stride. That's the way that we have to go faster. I said, but isn't your number one injury your shin splints? And so part is, is this discovery that we have to go faster. I said, but isn't your number one injury your shin splints? And so part is, is this discovery that we're having these conversations and trying to dissect, like, what do we do? So to me, it didn't make any sense that you're creating speed by going length like we talked about earlier. We should be increasing turnover. And so I said, you're also your number one injury rate is this longer stride. And what happens is that when they have their boots on, they're actually dorsiflex. They're pulling their toes up towards their shin. But when the heel hits, there's no way they could hold on to that.

And the toes slap the ground and they get a tearing in the shin splints. And that's why they have this number one injury. So I told them, I said, to me, it seems to be that you should go the opposite approach. So the problem was, is that it was against everything that they've been taught, because these are the core instructors of the Marine Corps. in CrossFit, at heavy loads, if it's a light load, these CrossFitters with 20 pounds on it can run normal. It doesn't phase them. But when you put 50 pounds, 60 pounds, and Marines, they ruck with 100 pounds. You cannot maintain an upwards trajectory like you're sprinting with a 100-pound ruck or a 60-pound ruck.

So here is I have one moment to resonate something with them and how do I do it? So I bring up Tia and I said, do you realize that she takes 185 steps in a minute when she rucks with 50 pounds and she's the fastest in the sport? What I want to do right now is I want you guys, let's look at this football field, get 60 pound ruck on. And you know, the hash marks on a football field, they're a yard apart that paint. What I want you to do is start at the goal line, the end zone. And what you're going to do is run the hash marks. And I want the ball of your foot to land on every single hash mark, meaning you're going to make a hundred footsteps across the length of the football field,

a hundred yards, a hundred footsteps. And what I want you to do is I want you to do this in under 30 seconds. Well, they didn't know it, but 30 seconds multiplied by two is a minute. 100 hash marks multiplied by two is 200 steps in a minute. Where's Tia? 185. So they all finish and they do this thing and they were all under 25 seconds. 300 steps a minute is doing it in 20 seconds. And so they're sitting there.

I said, do you realize, do you guys, every one of you can manage 200 steps in a minute? You can be the fastest in the CrossFit community if you could just do that. And it was effortless for them. But this is where I think that coaches, we have to do, we have one bite of the apple and it has to resonate.

Otherwise they're not going to do it. It will get too confusing. What my challenge always is as a coach is, and we talk about it, dumbing it down. How do you dumb it down to allow someone to understand it and then you make it and build them up to more and more complexity? And I struggle with that a lot. That's my biggest weakness as a coach. And I think it's mostly because I just get bored. Like your workout today is going to be 10 by 200 meters at a moderate intensity, 60

seconds of rest. Well, I wouldn't want to do that workout if I was an athlete. It's not engaging enough for me. The problem is, is that if it was engaging for me, it would be too complicated maybe for you. And that's where I lose people. That's what's hard for me as a coach. You know, talking about real quick, cause I don't think we really, um, dealt too much in on the foot striking. You were talking about how a lot of them, they were heel striking toe now that, and then you were got them to being on the balls of their feet. So when an individual is picking up running or rucking, et cetera, what do they want to be paying attention to as far as their foot strike is concerned?

Wow, you're going to get me in trouble with this. Yeah. So we ran together, and my running form is I've really worked hard for the amount of years I've been running. I've really worked hard for the amount of years I've been running. I've really worked hard on it. And I have, you know, I land on the ball of my foot. And there's value for that for sure. So just for the people that are listening, the reason why they try and push this landing on the ball of your foot is the body, when you run, there's three sources of free kinetic energy to make running easier for you. So the first one is in your upper body, your arms, your shoulder, that we think when we move our

arms, you want to think elbow down and back. You don't think about bringing the arm forward because if I load my shoulder properly, I have a stretch reflex that brings the hand forward by itself. So why would I bring my hand forward when the body will do it naturally if I load it? So that's why when I was saying you have beautiful arm mechanics because you were loading your shoulder and it was coming forward by itself, not cross body. It was nice, clean. And that's why you think elbows, elbows. You don't think about beating a drum.

It's elbows down and back. So that's one. The other one is your hip flexor. so that's one the other one is your hip flexor so part of the problem if when we the people are learning different types of of foot strike you know from different people that are promoting those they're saying that what that what we want to do is we want to take the the uh when the your toe off you want to think pull the ankle bone under the hip. That's what they think. So ankle under the hip, ankle under the hip. So it's here. Let me show you. Okay. The problem with that is you're not loading the hip flexor. I need to leave my toe on the ground long enough. So I load my hip.

So my leg actually comes forward by itself from the stretch reflex of the hip flexor. So if I'm thinking ankle under my hip, I'm actually physically using energy to bring my ankle on the return phase of the stride, the swing phase. That to me doesn't make any sense. The only thing in running you should really be thinking about is when the knee is done going forward, it's time to get the foot on the ground. If I am running slowly, I'm going to allow the foot to get to the ground without pushing it down. I'm going to allow it to naturally occur. Sprinting, when the knee has reached its most forward position, I'm going to drive that foot to the ground as hard as I can, maximize my ground force, improve my reaction time like a plow metric, and the harder and faster I do that, the faster I will run. So loading the hip is number two.

The last one is landing on the ball of the foot. When we land on the ball of the foot, what we're going to do is we're going to load our Achilles tendon and our calf complex, and that's going to give us the free kinetic energy. So if you jump right now, you should do it. You guys both do it. So what I want you to do is jump like you're jumping rope yep keep jumping jump jump jump now keep jumping and jump from the balls i mean the heels from the heels there you go made myself two inches shorter that's weird yeah that's the difference so so the the ball of the foot gave you the kinetic energy that spring-like effect the heels they can't that's the difference. So the ball of the foot gave you the kinetic energy, that spring-like effect.

The heels, they can't. That's the difference. So imagine you actually are counterproductive if you don't allow the hip to load and you don't allow the shoulder to load. That's my problem. The other problem is this, is that I believe that your stride, your strike, is based upon speed. Like when you walk, you heel strike. When you sprint, you're on the balls of your foot. Why?

Because of the angle of your body. The faster you go, the more forward lean that you have, which forces you out on the toes. And so that means to me that at some point there's a transition from when you're walking to sprinting, you're going from the heels to the ball. For me, if I am fresh, right, and let's say I'm on a 10-mile run, I know that if I go slowly, it's more efficient for me to land very shallowly on my heels and shuffle. Same thing in Ironman Hawaii. Because my muscles are so tired,

I can't shoot like I'm firing a cannonball. I have to shuffle, and it's more efficient for me to land on the heels. But if my speed goes faster than a seven-minute mile, being fresh, I'm going to land on the ball of my foot. It is, to me, speed-dependent. But what we were talking about earlier is that you have to

have this arsenal, this capability of doing both. So for example, let's say your workout was front squats and running. All right. How should your foot strike be in that workout to maximize your performance? So keep in, when you're doing your front squat, what muscle fiber activation? Mostly quad. So how do I then preserve the quads for the lift during my run? I'm going to heel strike and activate my hamstrings, meaning I'm going to use my hamstrings for the run,

the quads, now deadlift and running, what do we do? That's why what we have to have is you have to have an arsenal of weapons. You have to be open-minded to that. It depends on what we have to have is you have to have an arsenal of weapons you have to be open minded to that it depends on what we're doing yeah the um what you're pointing out you know kind of leads me to believe or at least think halfway that maybe it doesn't matter too much about your foot striking if you're new to running like and safe not an over stripe right right and maybe

that's not like uh someone's main concern what do you think is maybe the main concern uh with somebody taking up running that hasn't really practiced it before i just the number one thing we've got to be careful of that high intensity work i mean we've talked about this that high intensity is really it's it's one of the things that entices people in because you see dramatic improvement right away. In every study that you see, and it doesn't matter if you're an entry-level runner, a recreational experience runner, or an advanced runner with a past, you're going to see immediate results right away.

If you get back in immediate, the problem is that it's a dead-end situation. You're going to eventually plateau, and now you're stuck. You've essentially spent 12 weeks doing high-intensity work yet you have no foundation. At what point in time are you going to roll back the clock and actually run slow? And the problem is that people don't want to do that because you've been running fast this whole time. is, is that people don't want to do that because you've been running fast this whole time. Now you're telling me that I want to go slow? I can't brag about my times.

Exactly. So that's why people don't ever go back. That's why when today I kept telling you, there's going to be plenty of time for you to suffer. Enjoy the initial phases of this. It's going to be easy. You're never going to suffer. You walk whenever you want to walk. It doesn't matter to suffer. Enjoy the initial phases of this. It's going to be easy. You're never going to suffer. You walk whenever you want to walk. It doesn't matter to me. Your focus is time. What we're trying to do is build stamina first. We build stamina first. We create the foundation.

Then what we want to do is we want to put the high intensity in to build our VO2 max. VO2 maxes are sealing. So think of it as this. Mount Everest is the peak. There's your VO2. We do high intensity work to develop our peak, but we also have to have a huge foundation. And that's what you're doing right now, Mark. You're building that. In between here is our maximum sustainable pace. We talked about the death zone in Everest, 26,000 feet. That's our lactate threshold, our maximum sustainable intensity. That intensity is a relationship between our VO2, our speed, and our base, our recovery. Our anaerobic, our aerobic, fast twitch, slow twitch. It's a relationship in between.

That's why when we were talking about earlier, which one's your weakness? Is it your speed? Is it your strength, your power, or is it your recovery? Your maximum sustainable pace is a relationship between the two of those. And which one's your weakness? So what we do is we develop the floor, we develop the ceiling, and now this middle piece that can improve your entire life. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, old or young, you could always improve it, but you got to maintain your ceiling and your base. And that's the problem. Most people just have a good ceiling. Outside of really good nutrition, because we're probably going to try to talk about the nutrition

piece at some point. You were mentioning how the assault bike is something that you'd have athletes use to clear lactate post-workout. What are some other recovery methods that you think would be pretty solid for athletes, like say jujitsu athletes or CrossFitters, et cetera? What are like even in and outside of the gym? So the problem that I run into all the time is we have a bunch of different recovery protocols that we can use, but are you going to do it? And I think about that for myself as an athlete. I think that if I walked into a gym and wanted to join a gym and they said, what's your goal? And I'm like, oh, I want to run a better marathon.

Well, they'd talk to me about nutrition. They've talked to me about different recovery protocols and range of motion. And I would just hear noise. I don't care about that. I just want to get faster. How are you going to make me faster? And so that's a real problem that I see all the time is that people do not respect the importance of different recovery protocols.

Like I'm going to give you an example. Frazier. Frazier was at the Olympic Training Center for Weightlifting and he broke his back and it was his big dream. And when he broke his back, he was told to leave. Pack your bags and go. It was overnight ended. And the thing was, is that he didn't respect the opportunity back then. Like he was not getting good warmups in, he was lifting hurt, and it ended the career. It is very rare for an athlete to get a second chance. And when he got into the sport of CrossFit, he didn't make that same mistake. One of the things that he did was he created a recovery protocol and he maintained it. And as he got more famous, more popular because of his success, he took advantage of that. Getting Normach boots, getting the Therabody massage pieces, and all the rolling. He created his own protocol based upon

the movements that he was doing, and he did it religiously. And that's why he was so successful, is that he was able to maintain that volume and that intensity for all of those years because he wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. And the problem that I see is that we now have with technology a lot of different options. And I do like the Normatec boots. I do like the Therabody products. I do. I also like the rolling out piece as post-recovery protocols.

But if you make it too complicated, too time-consuming, no one will do it. And so a lot of times, you know what I'll do? My number one thing is I'll put the Norma Tech boots on because I could sit and watch TV and it doesn't hurt. And I can do that. You want to ask me how often I roll in the last year? Probably twice, only because my IT band hurt so bad I couldn't run. probably twice, only because my IT band hurt so bad I couldn't run.

So it's the key is developing these rituals that are doable. Like when we talked about if you're doing an interval and you get 10 seconds of rest, what are you doing in 10 seconds? If you get a 30 second rest, what are you doing? A minute. You should develop all of these protocols so that their habits like your warmup protocols. The hardest thing I think for people is that post-workout recovery. That's really a difficult piece. Got it.

I find it a lot of times when people are leaning that hard into so many different recovery pieces, I'm always kind of questioning their training in the first place. Some of the people you're mentioning, you're mentioning some people that are at a really high level. So of course they have to take care of themselves with those things. But sometimes I hear people, you know,

talking about all these different recovery methods. I'm just like kind of wondering like, what's your training like? I think maybe you're overdoing something there and that's why this hurts and that hurts all the time. Yeah, I mean, I think back on my triathlon days, I swam 25,000 meters a week. I ran 40 to 50 a week and I rode three to 400 a week for eight years.

And you know, when you do all of that, the last thing that you do is actually want to do another workout, which is recovery. But that unfortunately was ended my career. I couldn't get my right side to work with my left side. It was so messed up that I would literally walk in a circle if I closed my eyes because my left side wouldn't work as well as my right. I was so damaged. And I just thought

that was the way it was. What caused it? Just overuse. Overuse. And part of it was like, you know, you think you do in the sport of triathlons and it's like, And part of it was like, you know, you think you do in the sport of triathlons and it's like, I must be working all of my muscles. But in fact, you're not. You're just actually doing the same thing over and over. And there are significant muscle groups that are being neglected and underdeveloped. And that's where your injury occurs. So now you're eight years in.

Imagine the development of the muscles that were doing all of that work. Well, imagine the opposite of that. Those have atrophied and gone away. And now what do you do? You're just stuck. And that's where I was. So when I left the sport at 28 years old, I was broken. I couldn't get down a flight of stairs, but I can make myself do an Ironman.

I can make myself do it. I made myself. We talked about this. I said to myself after my last Ironman, I could do seven of these these in a row but i couldn't get down a flight of stairs and so part of it was is like i just thought that the way it was and it wasn't that i felt bad about it it was just that's the price and so i went through my 30s and full time job and just more and more crippled you know the moving sidewalks and airports there's a reason why you stand on those things and ride it because you can't walk down them. That was me.

And so I ran into Annie Sakamoto, one of the original CrossFit girls in 2000, like 2007. And she invited me to the original CrossFit gym, Santa Cruz Central, Glassman was. And eventually I worked up the courage to go in there and she told me, she says, you've done a lot of volume in your days, a lot, but it's the same movements over and over again. Do CrossFit, focus on the neglected muscle groups and I guarantee you'll become functional,

functional movements. And that to me resonated. And that's when I decided to start it. So wait, I decided to take the hour drive because I thought it was only one gym. And I went in and boy, that was a bad day though. I don't, we shouldn't probably tell that story. That was a bad day. My first day in the gym was like brutal.

Like you talk about a midlife crisis that happened that day because I've never been afraid to work out. By head to head, I love competing. I still do. midlife crisis that happened that day because i've never been afraid to work out yeah by head to head i love competing i still do the problem was is i didn't know that that's what happens in a crossfit gym the difficulty like women were lifting they were lifting 135 pounds ground overhead but i didn't know what those weights weighed i didn't know they were made out of rubber it looked like 500 pounds. And so I parked the car.

I'm looking inside the gym, and I'm watching them lift. And I was just blown away. But I kept thinking, I know I got better when I trained. So maybe you can get that kind of strength to be able to lift repeatedly 500 pounds over your head as a woman. And they were all doing it, these women. It was the 9 o'clock class and they were doing um they were doing clean and jerks and uh pull-ups and they were doing kipping pull-ups and not just one i've never done a pull-up in my life and they were doing thousands of them and my shoulders were banged up from my swimming and i'm sitting there watching and the person who i thought i was, it just came crashing down.

And it was like, I'm too afraid. I can't do that. And I remember watching in my rear view mirror in the car, I'm slouching down, and the workout ended. And they got together as a group to kind of debrief. And I fired up the car and drove home and I was just too afraid. And that was a bummer. And that still resonates today that as a coach, people, when they come and do workouts with me, they're afraid because they think that I'm going to punish them. And I'll never do that because I never forget that day that I went into the gym the first time. And that person who was,

you know, one of the best in the world was gone. That is not who I was when I, and I didn't know who I was, but I made myself go back. And, you know and I'm grateful that I did. But it was a bad time, and I will never forget it, and it shaped who I was then and now as a coach, those moments. Probably made you a lot more compassionate towards what it is like for someone to go through running when they've never done it before. You might say, I think you were shocked at Jason, you know, how he didn't run very far, but for him, that may have been far. And I'm sure you've run into other athletes where they say, you know, running 200 meters is far from me because I don't normally run at all. So it's sometimes hard to get that perspective. And we see that with lifting and stuff too. And I think that people think when they're going to come in here that we're going to force them to lift some weight that they can't lift and it's actually quite the opposite yeah most of the time i'm encouraging

especially newer people and they say hey what what do i need to do usually i'm like well the first thing that we should do is take off about 50 pounds or or maybe take the 45s off the side and let's see uh what the form and technique looks like when we have a weight that you can manage a little bit easier. I love that. I love it because it's more manageable. You wrap your head around it. And that's the biggest problem is with things, they get too difficult.

And it's like, now I'm battling my own demons. And it's nice to have a coach. Like what I was saying when I ran with you, slow down. Slow down. Which is what I want you to remember. Go slow. Coach said go slow. And too many times coaches are doing the other side of it, and it just ultimately becomes too much.

It's like I can't maintain this pattern, this cadence. I can't do it. Yeah, it really resonated like some of the things when we were talking earlier about, especially like Jason and how I realized is that there comes to be a point even if you're doing easy effort but too much volume it will interfere with what you want to do for the rest of the week and that was one of the learning curves for me eventually if you do too much volume on the endurance world it does interfere with their lifts and we all talk about this interference effect this was a major problem in the sport of crossfit because of the belief coming out of the weightlifting community that

if you do cardio it's going to hurt your gains it's going to hurt your strength and so my whole mission in the beginning when i started was how much is too much? And there's no evidence out there that says for every population, this is going to interfere. In the beginning, some endurance, some cardio is complementary. How much is it until it actually becomes counterproductive? And that was my quest. How? And so one of the things that I did early on, I coached for three years for free, thousands of people, because I was trying to figure out, if we run, how much can every person do and still get stronger? And what I found was two days a week, and we can do interval workouts, but they have to be personalized. And what we want to do is we never, I've never pushed athletes over 6,500 meters on the track. So let's call it four miles ever. There is not a single elite athlete, Matt Frazier, Rich Froning, Katrin, Camille, Cara,

all of them that have won, 32 of them, all of them got stronger. Every single one of them, Rich Froning in the first 12 weeks, his mile time went from six minutes to 541 and every lift went up. His vertical leap went from 31 to 33 inches. That was one of the things that was very difficult for me early on was to change that. Allow me the opportunity and I'm going to show you. And so that's why early on, because I had a full-time job, I was willing to take risk in coaching anybody and everybody because I didn't have anything to lose. Matter of fact, when I coached Rich Froning the first time, I didn't know I'd make him a better CrossFitter. I knew I could make him a better runner, but I might ruin him as a CrossFit athlete. I didn't know. But as a fan of the sport,

I'm like, Heidi said, how long do you think it will take for you to ruin Rich? I'm like, I'll ruin him in 12 weeks. So she's all go to Cookville, hang out with Rich. oh you know heidi said how long do you think it will take for you to ruin rich i'm like i'll ruin him in 12 weeks so she's i'll go to cookville hang out with rich and you know what when you ruin him you just disappear and go back to your regular job and that's what i did luckily it didn't work that way and it was still following that same concept no more than 6500 uh meters on the track per week yep that's it's it. So he did this. So we just did, I took Rich's, so I write a lot of workouts for other people. Mayhem Athlete is an online program. And I just released his original 12 weeks of running workouts to the community.

We had 2,035 people sign up for it. And what I did was I had to personalize the paces for 2,035 people sign up for it. And what I did was, is I had to personalize the paces for 2,035 people. Every week I did two workouts personalized for everybody. They all did the same workouts that Rich did back in 2014. Every one of them. These are the ones that I think you should do when you get your 20 minutes in. And what we should, what I wanted people to do was experience what he did, but I also wanted to see the level of performance improvement that the community could bring on. And so I experimented on them.

I did a case study on them. And what Rich did was he started out with a mile, and he ran his mile in six minutes. So what I thought is I want to create a relative intensity, meaning if Rich ran a maximum effort for six minutes and got 1,609 meters, then I want everybody to run a maximum effort for six minutes. That means that it's the same relative intensity. But if you run a mile and I run a mile, we're different in different times. We're finishing in different times. So what I did is I had everybody start with six minutes. They ended with a mile for time. So what I did is I'd have everybody start with six minutes. They ended with a mile for time. And we had an opening starting average time of eight minutes and 10 seconds. So people always want to know, like, what is a CrossFitters mile time on average? 2,035 people average was 8.10 between men and women. Average finishing time after 12 weeks was 7.15. And that's a big sample size. Big. And so part of it is, is that I did a whole thing with Jesse Burdick. We did something where we thought, can we actually create a strength program and an

endurance program, three lifts a week, two runs a week, and can people get stronger and faster? And 100% of the people in our program did. And you know what we did? We charged $300 for 12 weeks of programming. And the reason why we charged so much was we wanted the expectation to be high. I'm paying you $300. I better get better. And so that's why we did it. And we had 180 people buy into this program and 100% of them got stronger and faster. This interference effect has been a real troubling thing, not only in my community, but when I branch out into other communities.

Firefighting, brutal. I can't work on my cardio because I won't be able to break down a door. It's like you won't be able to break down a door if you're tired. break down a door. It's like you won't be able to break down a door if you're tired. Well, my comment is, is that what good are you?

What good are you? If you can climb five flights of stairs in 30 seconds, when you can't perform your job at the top, you know, that's the problem. Parent project family. How's it going now? You guys know how we've had Stan, the rhino efforting on the podcast.

You don't know who Stan is. He's an expert in nutrition, exercise, et cetera. And he's the creator of vertical meals. He came on this podcast and he's talked about the vertical diet many times, the different types of foods that you can have on the vertical diet, but how cool would it be if Stan was cooking for you? That's why we've partnered with Stan Efferding and Vertical Meals. And if you go to their website, you can have an amazing selection all the way from Monster Mash to breakfast samplers.

There's an amazing selection of food there, and it all comes right from the mind of Stan the Rhino Efforting. Andrew, how can the people get it? That's right. All the way from Stan Efforting's head straight to your door. Head over to verticaldiet.com and at checkout enter promo code POWERPROJECT for free shipping. And if you order 16 meals or more, you get two additional meals absolutely free. Again, that that's at verticaldiet.com links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes you mentioned that you had uh jason kalipa run 20 miles uh like the a week or two before the crossfit games yeah three weeks boy that was i did i so i was when i i not only got criticized in the crossfit community back

in 2012 and 2013 but in the endurance world i was ripped up too but what a traitor and it was really a terrible like it was like and i'm doing it for free you know and just doing it for money i love that and so part of it was is like i was just trying to help and these things didn't make any sense and i i did these two workouts near the just as part of peeking into the 2013 crossfit games and and jason did it garrett fisher and neil maddox i had him do a 20 mile run in the santa cruz mountains that was unheard of and the beating that they took and defended me i that's why i'm so grateful for jason i'm so grateful that he stood up and he defended me and then he went to the games and delivered and that's why it's like yeah did he win that games

he got second and he got three firsts in the endurance events and one third yeah became known as mr endurance a 220 pound. No, it was incredible. And here's a guy that fell asleep in 2009 in a 7K. Like, how do you fall asleep in a 7K? Jay figured it out. But I love that he defended me. We also did what's called Yasso's 800. It is a marathon predictor workout. It is 10 800 meters with a a work to rest ratio of one to one. Jason's target was two minutes and 57 seconds for every 800, 257. And he did it. He did it. When he did that workout, it was filmed by CrossFit HQ and they created a whole documentary on it. the Ironman versus the California Bear. And what it showed was Jason Kalipa ran 10 by 800 in a 257. My argument to the endurance world back then was, don't tell me that I'm a trader and

focusing on high intensity short time domains in the CrossFit community. I am delivering what I learned in the endurance world and I'm giving it to CrossFit. And you know what was the most amazing part about that was is the heat I took. There you go. That is that day. God, he's fucking jacked. Bro, look at those tries. Seriously. Can you say the time that he did again?

Did you say 257? 257. On 800 meters. Yep. And he did it 10 times in a row 10 times in a row garrett fisher ran 255 yep just doesn't make any sense that's great that's crazy no it's incredible but here's the thing here's the here's i mean that's got to be kind of amongst some of the like world class right i mean that's got to got to be some pretty next level shit, right? So the rule is on Yasso's 800 is that what you do is you take the average finishing time of the

800, you add five more seconds and there's your marathon target time. That means that Jason was very close in that year to being able to run a three-hour marathon. Imagine, we programmed six years later a marathon row and people freaked out.

Jason in 2013 could have run close to a three-hour marathon. That's how fit he was. And he dominated that year. Dominated. And so part was is that what I really admire is CrossFit HQ, three years after that, after the heat that I took in the community, they asked me to partner. That it made real change in the sport. And that's what I admire about CrossFit HQ is that if you can create true change and make these athletes better by following the fundamentals of the sport, that we're going to bring you in and we we became partners with them i teach aerobic capacity courses around the world as a partner with them

it's my content my course but they oh geez look how skinny i was back then that's in 1985 i got second that's kona boy what a child man were you ever uh able to fix your injuries that that took you out of iron man running like were you able to kind of recover now like those things better great shape now yeah yeah no i'm fit i'm fit well what what changed that for you was it the implementation of weight training it was my i have the biggest regret is that i didn't have coaches that said, look how tiny I am. I never had coaches that said, and I didn't understand it, but there was no one to talk to. And so I just didn't do it. And I now like being able to lift and I'm not strong, but at least, you know what?

My structure is sound. I remember I did the beta breakers in san francisco with 60 000 people i was getting hit from the side and i i thought i was going to break in half i couldn't move laterally and so part was is i didn't know why when i started lifting i got faster i mean my recent i've run 457 mile in a 60.3 400 in the last five years my recent mile 540 i'm 58 yeah and the only thing i do is i run three times a week and i do some occasional you know accessory lifting crossfit that's all i do i'm not committed to running i do it for health and fitness now granted i've got a genetic advantage but still the lifting matters.

Like I tell people all the time, if you are 40 years old and you are not doing a strength-based protocol and working range of motion, that's a mistake. That is more important than working the cardio piece because you know what's going to happen is that muscle mass is going to go away. My VO2 used to be in the 80s and now it's 63. Why? Because I got old. We start losing a percent off of our VO2 at the age of 34. How do you maintain that? By creating and maintaining your lean muscle mass. That's how. And we all atrophy as we age. We all know that's going to occur. So how are you going to slow it down? Old age comes because we lose that lean muscle mass. Fight to keep that. The average stride length from 40 years old to 70 year old

gets cut in half. Why? From those two things. That's why you see old people shuffle because they have no range of motion and they have no power output. If you're over 40 and you're not lifting heavy, shame on you. And you think, not even think, but as far as lifting, you said lifting heavy. What do you mean by lifting heavy? I think that they should be doing not one rep lifts, but three rep, five rep lifts. Yeah. And working on power output, strength, explosivity. I think that doing Olympic lifts, I think doing back squats, deadlifts.

There's a very famous story. And not sure if it's true. Edwin Moses, back in the 80s, was the most dominant hurdler. I think he had 186 world-class wins in a row. The World Championships was in Berlin. And underneath the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, where they had the Olympics in 36, there is another track. And he brought 405 pounds of weight and a rack, and in that morning before running finals, he was back squatting 405. And people are like, what the heck is this? And part of it was, is that he used the back squat to do it six to eight hours before his competition to create an activation of all those fast switch fibers that are going to be needed to be used in the 400.

People thought it was just intimidation, but he was back squatting 405 back in the 80s. Yeah. And he would travel with this. That's legit for a runner. That's wild. I heard similar stories about Ben Johnson. He used to squat X amount of hours before his sprints. or dead lifting because you can actually feel the engagements of those muscles when you do actually lift. And even a day before, you can feel it. And so, yeah, I don't know if something's there. Part of it is that I do a lot of experimentation on people, like games athletes.

The reason why I don't charge them is because I experiment on them. And then the things that work, I release to the public. The things that don't, we just keep quiet. Like, you want to hear something that didn't work let's hear rich phoning when you meet up with him you think that he could do everything yeah so i'm like rich do you think that you can do a plyometric handstand jump he's like what do you mean i'm like well can you like put 245s outside you know a little bit outside your shoulders and jump up in the air and get up onto that 45 pound rubber plate he's like i don't know i'll try it dude almost broke his neck oh god yeah it was terrible but i thought

this would be a great idea. That's what I thought. I never pitched that again. That didn't work. I know that you handle the aerobic capacity of the athletes, right? But what type of nutrition do you think is something that they need to be able to handle this? I'm assuming a lot of those athletes have a lot of high-carbohydrate meals, et cetera. That's the problem. They don't.

They don't? So I'm curious about that. What's that look like for a lot of high carbohydrate meals, et cetera. That's the problem. They don't. They don't. So I'm curious about that. Like, what's that look like for a lot of those athletes? Is there a range? There's two types of athletes that you see in sport. Yeah. Ones that want to win and ones that want to look good. Okay. And so there's the problem.

The people that want to look good are dominating the sport. I mean, I mean, dominating in terms of the intention. They're getting all the fanfare. They're the ones that are getting all the likes, right? They're appealing to the entire audience because of the look. And that's the problem. They're the ones that are shaping the other people that are coming in. Oh, I don't need to have carbs. Oh, like early on in the CrossFit Games, when I was with Jason in 2013, Jason told me after the first event, he says, I need a protein shake and can you go get me some boneless, skinless chicken? I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? Eat a Snicker bar and a Coke.

Like, let's get some carbohydrate back in there so we can recover. You've got 30 minutes of time. There was no nutrition recovery protocols in the sport. It was believed protein, protein, protein, protein. Really? Really. Okay. It still is a very difficult sell now to be able to get people to recognize the importance

of carbohydrates in a 13-event, four-day competition. They don't realize that, and they don't realize how long it takes for that steak that they just ate after day one to digest. And what value is it creating? They're not aware of that yet. They're so aware of what it takes to eat in order to look good. So this revelation came through when I worked with Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet, and she won the games in 2014. I started working with her 13 months prior to that, and she was highly criticized. If you pull up Camille, she's not jacked in the stomach back in 2014. She looks like a woman. But she said early on, she's all,

She looks like a woman. But she said early on, she's all, I am eating to win. I want to win. And that's what she did. She focused on winning. As a matter of fact, she even said to me, she says, Chris, how can we manipulate my training so that I have more carbohydrate reserves on the final day than anybody else? I want to become more fat adapted so I can conserve my consumption of carbs throughout the four days of competition. That's what she was interested in.

Wait, so what do you mean? Like, for example, do you mean that she was eating higher fats the first few days and then like loaded carbs the night before her last day? No, what she was doing was in her training. So if you think about like, so part is, if you put a stimulus on the body, we can create an adaptation. So she wants to become more fat adapted. So we know from following ketogenic diets that you can become more fat adapted. The problem with ketogenic is that if you don't have the carbs, then essentially you are training like you are experiencing the wall in a marathon. Your intensity is going to go down because it's hard for us to convert fat into energy.

So she wanted to become more fat adapted. So how do you do that in training? So what she did was for a year, she's going to train in a fat adapted state prior to her long, continuous effort that she did every week. So the night before, very light meal. She's going to do a CrossFit workout that morning, and then she's going to take a two-hour break, just water, and then she's going to go out for her two-hour endurance workout. That endurance workout is not going to have as many carbohydrates as normal, meaning she's only going to be having fat. And so when we did the beginning VO2 max

tests and looking at how fat adapted she was versus the end, there is dramatic improvements. And there was a reason why she was so dominant on that last day. And there was the same thing we talked about earlier with Froning. There was a reason why he was so dominant. It doesn't come by accident. It's because they were doing something that others weren't doing. And then of course people start figuring this stuff out,

right? Yeah. by the way camille leblanc is smoking hot so i don't know i don't know whatever extra amount of weight she may have had on her i never noticed it i always thought she looked amazing she called her stomach what was it like what'd she call it yeah i know they were making a thing of it but she's a power pouch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, she is a stud. I mean, she was an, an,

an, an athlete that really set the tone for the rest of the women to come in. She was the first person on Instagram with a million followers. She was the first person to bring in outside sponsorship, true money into the sport. And it changed it. It changed it. Like she was the leading person,

which wasn't easy being the leading woman into the sport. I mean, it was a very difficult position for her, but she set it up for the rest to come. And yeah, you got to admire those first early adopters. Are some of the traits that you've noticed to be common amongst these savage athletes that you've worked with, these multiple, there's multiple multi-time champions. What does Froning have and Frazier have and Camille LeBlanc? What do these people have? So I'm going to tell you a story about Camille. I met her the first time. We were at Foothill College there in Los Altos. And she came to the track with Kalipa. And after the workout, she comes up to me and she says, so she's French-Canadian.

And I think she does it now. She speaks good English, but she keeps that as like her stick. And she's like, so like you, you be my coach. We go to the game. And if I win, you be my coach. If I don't win, I don't talk to you again I don't even I'm not even agreeing to coach you and yet we're already having this kind of dialogue and I'm driving back to my house and I'm shaking my head I'm like what is she about and then I thought about it I'm like why would she call me she wants to to win. That's my job. You shouldn't. And it made me realize

right away, if you're a good coach, you can retain an athlete. That's the sign. Like if I went into a new gym, the first thing I'd ask is tell me about your membership base. How long have people been coming back? If you can get retention, you're doing something right. So I learned from that conversation with Camille. I also learned as I progressed though, what it takes to make a champion like you were asking. And the thing that I realized right away was risk, that they're willing to do what others aren't. And too many times people want to just follow what others are doing. And then they show up to the world championships and they finish exactly where they did the year before because they didn't do anything different. And like, I'll tell you, so when I met Matt Frazier, he came to a seminar of mine at CrossFit

New England back in early 2015, January. And in the middle of like where we had lunch, he came up and talked to me and he says, hey, I want to talk to you about my endurance work and I want to just see whether or not you had some time to maybe help me. And here he already got second in the games. And at lunch, he comes up and he says, so I just wanted to fill you in on the type of running that I'm doing and give you a little background. And so he's telling me that he's doing these track workouts with specific distances, specific target times, and rest with specific target times.

And if it's an active recovery, like say, for example, a 100-meter walk, you need to do it in a minute. So a lot of coaches, what they do in the sport of running is they can program the interval and the speed for that. So the distance and the speed for that interval, let's say 400 meters in two minutes. And then they say, I want you to walk 100 meters. Well, I've seen people walk 100 meters in four minutes.

It's like a catch-all, a slush thing when you don't know what you're doing. You need to have precision in all of those workout qualities to control them. Which one are you driving? And so Matt tells me this is what he's doing in January 15. I'm like, I'm the only one doing this. You're a weightlifting guy. How would you even know how to do this? He's all, Rich

Froning's programming for me. Well, I had gone out to Cookville two months prior, and I'd been coaching Rich Froning for the last two months in his endurance stuff. So, I'm thinking, Rich Froning's ripping me off. This is like, and my heart's sinking because I really like Rich. So I'm thinking, Rich Froning's ripping me off. And my heart's sinking because I really liked Rich. And I'm like, Rich's programming. He's like, oh yeah, no, man. He's sending me emails every week and he's giving me two workouts every week. I'm like, God, he's

really stealing from me. So I'm like, do you have something that I could take a look at? He's like, oh yeah. He's got like 40 sheets of paper wadded up in the back of his jeans, you know? And, and, and he's like, oh yeah, here they are.

And I unfold these things. It's the size of a postage stamp. And I unfold these 40 sheets and I look at it. I'm all dude, that's my email address. All rich was doing was forwarding mine. And so he's all, oh,

oh, he's all, well, so since you're already doing it anyway, his paces are a little bit kind of like not right for me. Can you personalize them around me? And I told him, I said, you know, I'm a little concerned though, that you're going to follow this and this interference effect. And I'm worried that it's going to hurt your strength. And I was up front. And that's when he told me, he says, you know what?

I never, ever want to get second place ever again. And if I don't fix my endurance, I will never win. So if it knocks me out of the sport, this is on me, not you, which that to me is a champion. He is willing to do what others aren't because his goals are different. And that's the thing that is the difference between a person that finishes respectfully and the one that wants to win. You have to be extraordinary. You have to think, what are the things that I'm missing and how am I going to jump ahead? That's why when people get hurt in sport, they're losing a dramatic amount of time against the competition because they're all advancing. So then how are you going to catch them? If you don't do something extraordinary, and that's what Jason did, he learned how to pace.

You know, in CrossFit, when I started early on, I was accused of never doing high-intensity work because I know what lactate tastes like. You know, that blood in your mouth. I know. And one time I misjudged a workout and three coaches ran over there. That's high intensity. And I mean, like here I had my hands on my knees and I'm like, I know I'm blown up, but I could swear I'm not moving it. You're telling me I'm actually doing high intensity work right now.

Didn't make any sense. telling me I'm actually doing high intensity work right now. It didn't make any sense. So that's where like Jason working pacing, he realized a better way to consume energy to maximize performance. And that's what like changed the sport. So his advantage disappeared in two years because everybody adopted that. That's why I had 55 people at the games in 2015. Wow.

As far as the games is right now, I haven't been, I personally haven't been like paying as much attention across in the past few years as before. Um, but with where it's going and how it's heading, how do you, does the sport changing at all in a positive or how do you see the sport changing? I think it's definitely evolving. Okay. Um, I just, it reminds me a lot of the sport of triathlons when I was in it. There was a body type back then that was thought to be perfect. Yeah. And it evolved. If you look at triathletes, they look a lot like that person there, except they're stronger.

They're now going into the gym. They are lifting. They're aware that you have a body and you have some fast twitch and some slow twitch. And what are you leaving behind? Like, that's why I focus on the legs. fast twitch and some slow twitch and what are you leaving behind? Like that's why I focus on the legs because most CrossFitters, if you have a 50-50 blend of fast twitch and slow twitch, that means that half of your fibers are slow twitch in your legs. And are you overloading those slow twitch fibers with enough volume? Are they truly available to you? And so, yeah,

I see like the evolution of the sport changing. This change of ownership. So Greg Glassman sold the business and this guy, Eric Rosen, and a couple other people came in. This is going to change the trajectory of the sport because the motivation is different. It's not a personal hobby. It's now a business. Yeah.

And it's going to change the direction. One of the problems that is occurring in the sport is there's no evidence of the success rate. Like back in 2016 or so, I think it was 2016, they did a 7K run, hill run, and then the next event was a max deadlift ladder. of the athletes that did that max deadlift PR'd. How is it possible you do a 7K run and then 90 minutes later, you are doing a max deadlift and you're PRing and not just one person, there was 80 people there. It's also a deadlift ladder where you're doing weights up to your max, which is even harder. Right.

And I wish they documented that. And so part of it was, is I always went back to CrossFit. I'm all, hey, I'm doing these things and i'm an interference effect i think that would you like to be involved and we should publish something they didn't have any interest they're all chris you could do it but we don't want to be involved well it's like but this is the sport and so part doesn't make any sense like you take like there are a bunch of databases that every gym owns. And what these databases are for is for the members of the gym to log their workout results. Why isn't there a central database where CrossFit's collecting all of these results and they're interpreting these

results over time? Globally, imagine dovetailing 15,000 gyms and every result is located in a central database. And what they're doing is they're measuring these results and giving them to the affiliates to prove or validate the methodology. That's where I see the changes. Eric Rosa comes from Stanford's business school. He is aware of the technology and he is aware of the impact that it has, the proof. Part of the problem within CrossFit is how do you maintain the momentum?

How? You've got to get new members into the gym. And where are you going to do it? Well, what if you could prove it is the most efficient and effective use of your time? Through data. Like when I told you I had 2,035 people doing that mile for time program, it went from 810 to 715. That's a lot of people. That's not a sample size of 12.

That's legit. And so that's what I think that if we can do that and we see those changes because we've met with Eric Rose and the team and the things that they're driving for are very appealing to me, and it's a long time in the making. That's why this change has been very good. What are some things that you may be doing that aren't related to running that still massively improve someone's running? aren't related to running that still massively improve someone's running? And kind of along those same lines, you know, are there some strategies where people that maybe don't want to take the time to like run a lot that you've seen have a good marked improvement on their fitness, their VO2 max without, you know, spending hours hitting

the pavement? That's a great question. So it reminds me of something. So I was at Frazier's house in 2015 or 16, and we had just done a workout. We're sitting on the couch, and he sits up on the couch, and he says, how can you get me to win on that assault bike? So he had an assault bike in his living room, which was interesting to me. And so I had explained to him why the assault assault bike is a fatigue generating piece of equipment so that we were on common ground because he wanted to win, which was a cool thing that he said, right?

I want to win. He doesn't want to get more fit. He wants to win, which that's the mindset of a champion. Like I need to win. How do we do it? Mm-hmm. equipment. But what if, what if your arms aren't actually doing any work? Meaning this was before the biker, if your arms are just sitting on handlebars, meaning they're not contributing and making any more fatigue. Matter of fact, there's a potential source of clearing fatigue. Could your legs do more work? Of course. So then you should train your legs separately to maximize

the work capacity of the legs. Likewise, what if your legs are just up on the pegs and your arms are only doing the movement? Could your arms do more work? Well, of course they could. So then Matt, you should train arms separately, legs separately. And if you want to get good in a movement, that theory of specificity, you got to do the movement. So you train the assault bike. There's your approach. But then we went one step further.

And I said, if you're now riding, and let's just assume he was riding the bike erg, which wasn't around, he had to ride it like a turbo trailer. If we're going to actually ride the bike erg, how can we maximize the adaptation of the bike erg, not only to help your assault bike work, but is there any other movement that we can help? But is there any other movement that we can help? And the movement that's closest to riding the bike is running. Think about the movement pattern of moving on pedals versus running. They're very similar to one another. But here's the kicker. I told Matt, I said, you know, when you run, you take 180 steps in a minute. So what we need to do is make sure that when you're riding the bike, your cadence is matching up with your common stride frequency when you run.

So on a bike, we talk about RPMs, revolutions per minute. A revolution per minute is a complete turning of the pedal, meaning it's two steps. So if you take 180 steps when running, that's equivalent to 90 RPMs. So the most common cadence you should be riding to help impact your running is 90 RPMs into 180 steps. So an easy pace would be a damper one, moderate pace, damper two, hard pace, damper four, but always at the 90 RPMs. Now he still, he trained higher RPMs like you would on a heavy load, right? To work the neurological side, so he would do those maximum efforts as well. But we had to establish what was the most common revolutions per minute. So that had a huge carryover. But the problem with that strategy is doing it exclusively is what did he want to win on? He wanted to win on the assault bike and can't pedal the assault bike at 90 RPMs.

So Matt's like five to eight minute intensity as far as RPMs on the assault bike is around 60 RPMs. All right, 60 RPMs. So how can we use the biker to also do that? Well, one of the things we know if we're always seated, we get good at being seated. Why not open up the hips and stand? Get out of the saddle like you're climbing a mountain pass. And when we do that, we're going to increase the resistance by moving the damper up 10. And when we do that, the increased resistance is going to force our RPMs to drop down to 60,

which now matches up with the assault bike. So what we want to do then is we want to train 90 RPMs seated. We want to train 60 RPMs standing. And that's how we can maximize the transference by making it more specific to what we're targeting. So that's how I would do it. Wow. So basically just standing up on a bike can help mimic your running a little bit. Standing and seated. Right. But making sure. So the problem is, is that if you go into a CrossFit help mimic your running a little bit. Standing and seated.

Right. But making sure. So the problem is, is that if you go into a CrossFit gym and they have a biker, you know what you see? People grinding at 50 RPMs on a damper of 10 and they think that there's some value there. Okay, there's value. It's fitness. But is there transference into other things? And what we're trying to do is do things in parallel to make it more efficient. And that's the goal. Like for me, I'm always doing things in parallel, like even training you. If I train you, at some point in time, you're going to become tactical. So I'm going to teach you now, when we do a long effort, tell me when the clouds have covered the sun without looking up. Can you do it by feel? I want you to be working tangent to tangent. I want you to be aware of the strategies of being in front versus behind. Where do you sit when you're trailing me?

How far back do you trail me? Can you hear my breathing cadence when you're in front of me? These things are tactical things because at some point in time you're going to understand how to manage your pace you're going to understand your biomechanics i need to get you ready so that the next piece drops in and that's what i always try and do is if an athlete is actually trying to learn and be smart i'm going to be one step ahead of them what's one of the reasons for the leg fatigue i've heard you talk about that and mention it actually a handful of times in listening to other interviews that you talked about. What have you found specifically about the legs that maybe helps improve somebody faster?

So a lot of people always ask, why running? They're always telling me, like, why running? And the reason is, is because we support our structure all the time. And we have to support the structure when we run. We have to. If I put you on a rower or I put you on a bike or I throw you in the pool, your body weight is supported by the object. So you're not punished by your size. In running, you are. And so that's why when you do a VO2 max test in the movement of running, they'll take your VO2 and divide it by your kilograms of body weight because you got to move the weight. The only time they would ever do that in another movement is on a bike if you're a hill climber

because you got to get your weight up the hill. So a bigger person on a rower has an advantage because they have more lean muscle mass. They have more mitochondria. They have more area for the oxygen to go to convert to energy. That's why they have a weight class. At 165 for men, it's like there's a difference. And so what's fascinating to me though is that with working with a bunch of people, every now and then there's an athlete that comes along that can manage their weight. They're big, but they can run. Jason Kalipa. Jason Kalipa ran a 520 mile. He weighs 220 pounds and he could pull a 2000 meter row in 610.

That is legit. Matt Frazier, 505 for a mile and he could pull a 608 for a 2K row. These are anomalies. Matt Frazier weighs 198 pounds. That's a big kid to be able to run a 505. Now, if you're comparing it to a high school kid, 505 isn't that great, but look how strong Matt is as well. Matt runs two times a week. And so every now and then you see these anomalies that are coming along. The problem that most people, they avoid the running because it's so difficult, but they need to realize that most of what they're doing is

they're supporting their weight. Like one of the things that I think about in terms of powerlifting, weightlifting, is that most of the things that we're doing in the gym, you're supporting your body weight as well. And have you done enough training during lifting to overload your slow twitch fibers that you're using while standing? And one of the things that I believe is that if you have a small amount of running, like we talked about earlier, two days a week, never more than four miles ever, and that's a rare occurrence that we don't run into the interference effect is it enough volume

to overload those slow twitch fibers and now when you make a lift and you grab all of the available the slow and the fast those fibers are now more readily available and it could actually help you increase your strength we know it increases your your capacity but does it increase your one rep strength because of overloading those slow twitch that you need when you do a back squat or a deadlift? That's interesting to me. That's really cool because, I mean, as far as cardiovascular work, I don't really, whenever I do cardio, I usually use the rowing machine because it's easy on my joints.

And I do jujitsu, but I've never really thought of implementing running as being something, another mode that modality just because of doing jujitsu so much and lifting. So it could be something that I could maybe fit in one time a week along with everything else. Let me ask you something on your jujitsu. Yeah. How much time are you standing? How long is your match? Like where are you? Matches. If you're doing like a match it's usually seven minutes okay so seven minutes right so i've worked with buchet and people at checkman yeah so do you have him run or did you have him run tried tried yeah what was his uh running shoe attire oh my god we show up the track and and

he brings his flips i'm like dude he's all i'm from bra and he brings his flips. I'm like, dude, he's all, I'm from Brazil. That was his running gear. I'm like, boy. Oh, man. I know. We show up and we're down in this super sketchy area outside of Long Beach. It was so sketchy. I was with the Galipa.

Yeah. And there was like four world champions with us. It was like six of us. champions with us it was like six of us and um show up and we see a bunch of just very scary looking people in this parking lot by this track near long beach and i'm like dude i think we should go like you know me like i said i'm all about not being in trouble anymore like i don't know i don't want to go to jail ever again or you know go to court and so i'm like we gotta we should go and leo vieira was there and uh he's like ah we don't have any problem i thought it's fine i'm like no no no but there's like 12 of them and there's like

four of you because i'm not going to be any help i'm gonna run and they're like guaranteed the four of us can take them there's no problem and i'm like that's legit i mean there was no hesitation at all it was like man i felt like the king of the world i'm like that's legit i mean there was no hesitation at all it was like man i felt like the king of the world i'm like i'm not running either i'll just sit and orchestrate it yeah so we get trash we get out to the track and which is like i'm all right where's the gear no shoes you know he's got to run to kmart and get a pair of running shoes but yeah it was a trip but so seven minutes yeah how much of it's standing? And not much of it.

Like how much? Ah, let's say 30, 40 seconds. Okay. So here, let's say it's 40 seconds out of seven minutes. So 420 seconds. So we're talking 10% of the total time standing. That to me is a lot of time. Imagine if you're not capable of clearing any fatigue while standing that you got to be prone. Like that's a problem of time. Imagine if you're not capable of clearing any fatigue while standing,

that you've got to be prone. Like, that's a problem. And so what I would do is I would look at those matches and a lot of the Brazilian jiu-jitsu people that are out there, they have to recover while laying down.

Yeah. Would I not be able to stand and be able to recover? They can't because they never focus on standing and focusing on developing their ability to recover while upright. Yeah. And so I look at it and it's like, why? Why would you leave 10% of your capacity undeveloped?

That's a lot. I mean, remember, I was swinging a pendulum over my food to get an incremental advantage. 10%, that's a lot. Yeah. And so that's my point is that what we need to do is we need to break down incremental advantage. 10%, that's a lot. And so that's my point is that what we need to do is we need to break down the sports. We need to look at where the opportunity is. Surfing, I told you I went to North Shore. Working with surfers, you know,

the number one injury is a torn ACL in surfing. Because when they're catching the wave, the chop and fatigue. So think about when you're paddling out to the lineup and you're going under the waves, you're paddling out, paddle, paddle, paddle. You're going to develop in these small muscle groups of the upper body, that lactic acid.

You're going to overload those muscles. Eventually it's going to go into the bloodstream. People always ask me, how fast can that lactic acid go into the bloodstream? There are studies from gymnasts, men's gymnasts, pommel horse routine. It's a 35 second routine max, usually 30 seconds. They will get measurable blood lactate in the toe, meaning extracting out of the blood after a 30 second routine. So it happens fast.

So imagine you're a surfer paddling out in the lineup. Imagine the lactate that is actually developing in the bloodstream. Where does it want to go when it's in the upper body? To the lower body, the largest muscle group in the legs. Imagine you get out in the lineup, all of a sudden the set comes, you turn and you go. You think that your legs are not fatigued, but they're pre-fatigued and you don't even know it. So now you encounter CHOP coming down the wave, boom, there goes your ACL because you don't have any structural stability because you never train the aerobic capacity of the legs.

What if you do a kicking based workout in a prone position in a swimming pool, kick boards, short fins, long fins, no fins, and develop your aerobic capacity of your legs so that when your shoulders are creating lactic acid and it's going into the bloodstream down to the largest muscle group in the legs, that you could do a small little kick as you're paddling out in the lineup, activating those slow twitch fibers and have a source of clearance of those fatigue, the accumulation of fatigue. Now the upper body, it either can maintain the same speed, get less tired, legs are less

fatigued, or if they needed to, they could even go faster because they have less accumulating fatigue. It's the same thing if a marathon runner came into your gym. The value proposition is not nutrition, not range of motion. That's not going to get them to sign up. They just want to get faster. So how are you going to make them faster? You have to assume they've optimized their legs like a surfer's optimized their shoulders.

Where's the opportunity? Well, in a marathon runner, what about the chest, the shoulders, and the back? Can we improve their ability to clear lactate that is developed from the running when it hits the bloodstream and it hits those larger muscle groups? What if they could clear it faster in their arm swing? Their legs can then do more work. We need to be looking at the structure and where's that opportunity exist? Just like we were talking about weightlifters and are they overloading their slow twitch fibers when they're supporting their structure? Louie Simmons had a Butch Reynolds who is a Olympic athlete runner.

He had him doing timed dumbbell presses. So he would do like either lying or or even overhead and you would just select a weight and you would do it for like a minute straight. and you would just select a weight and you would do it for like a minute straight. And just like you said, I mean, when someone's running, I mean, they have to maintain their posture throughout the entire race. And if the upper back is weak or if the chest is weak, I'm sure you're going to get in compromised positions that don't look good, right? I love that you brought that up. We mentioned Froning, he has no cartilage in one knee.

You brought that up. We mentioned Froning. No, he has no cartilage in one knee. I do believe that it's because of the strength and stability that he's created around the knee. So like when I was watching your brother move and his right leg flares. I mean, it's I bet if you went up to you could shake it. Rich, there is none of that. It's so stable.

And how? But I also believe that it has to do with his core, his core and energy transfer from upper body and developing, you know, people say, go to the arms, go to the arms when you're running. Well, if you don't have an ability to transfer that power to the legs, meaning your core is weak, then all of that power output just dissipates. But if you have a strong, stable core, then the legs are strong and stable too. And I really think that that is why Rich doesn't experience pain

because he's got an incredible level of stability between the upper body and the lower body and they work as one. That's why. His core is so strong. And the problem with runners is they don't have strong cores. They don't. And that's why his core is so strong and the problem with runners is they don't have strong cores they don't and that's an opportunity like you need to realize that that core strength has

a transference i mean the reason why when i look at you run first thing i look at is upper body i look at your upper body because it tells me what the lower body is doing if your arms like we were saying kalipipa, they cross midline, then I know that the legs are going to go wide. I even talked to you about vertical oscillation. How much oscillation do you do? Part where we're looking at is the upper body because the upper body is helping the lower body be balanced. So if this left arm shoots forward like this, then my right leg is going to shoot forward. Rich Froning rolls his shoulder here.

What do you think this right leg is going to do to balance out the timing of this rolling shoulder? It's going to overstride. So part what we know is that we can look at the upper body and if we have instabilities here, they transfer. And most runners do not have enough core strength to maintain that stability for a long amount of time. And that's where we see breakdown. Yeah. I find that very interesting, like looking at these CrossFitters and like,

how are they doing it? And one of the things that CrossFitters have is incredible core strength. And it's not like you see that in other sports. So, I mean, I know there's a lot of movements that CrossFitters do, but what would you say would be some of the easiest movements that individuals could add in that you think would be beneficial for their running as far as the weight training room is concerned? So I think that we need to be looking more at the obliques. I think that doing things such as Russian twists are important. And we need to be looking at things that are more specific towards the sport. So swimming, you know, this rotational running, it's rotational. And we need to be building up these sides more. The problem is, is how are you going to be able to do that? And so one of the things that we could easily do is what we talked about earlier.

What I want you to do is take a 25-pound plate. I want you to sit down on the ground and you're going to bounce that plate from right side to left side with your feet off the ground and doing Russian twists as fast as you possibly can. I want you to maximize the fatigue for about 12 seconds, maybe up to 15. Maximize it. Then what I want you to do is drop the plate and finish out the remainder of that minute by taking 10 fingers on the right side and moving them across and go to the left side. Nice and slow for the remainder of the minute and do five rounds of that. What we're going to be doing is we're going to build your CNS side by working the high

intensity. We're going to maximize fast twitch recruitment, high force, creation of lactic acid. And now what we're going to do is we're going to focus on the recovery while building stamina and build it up the same way we talked about earlier. We need to be more creative in the way in which we're building this capacity. Because the problem is, is people are always doing high intensity, but it's a short time domain. And then when they get fatigued, they sit around and do nothing. And the problem that I have is if we're sitting and doing nothing, then we're always going

to be wanting to do nothing. Like wall balls. Wall balls is a challenge for everybody. What are you doing about it? What you're doing is you're going to do 15 and then you're going to rest 15 and then rest. And you know what? 10 rounds later, you'll have your 150. How's that going to get you better? You know, I, I had a guy once he was doing handstand pushups and he was doing a hundred of them for time. He was always doing three coming down, resting 10 seconds, three and 10, three and 10. It was incredible pacing. Afterwards, he finishes and I said, hey, this is Spencer Hendel at Reebok HQ, Boston. And Spencer's a multi-games athlete, dad, family, everything. I asked him, well, how'd you come up with that? Incredible pacing. He says, I found out if I do more than three or I don't take a full 10 seconds of rest, my overall finishing time is worse.

My question was, but if you're always doing three and 10, has your body learned anything other than three and 10? That's the problem. If you're always sitting around and doing nothing in your rest, then you're always going to get good at doing nothing. Where are you going to get out of that? And what we need to do is go from nothing to a walk, to a jog, to a run. You know, we've talked about Frazier Bunch, but he can do a 735 mile and recover. What's your recovery speed? What's your recovery speed in all these other movements? And so my point is, is that what we need to do is we need to take like the Spencer Hendel

and we need to show him a way to get out of that quagmire. How are we going to do it? You know what, Spencer? What I want you to do is do your three handstand pushups. And instead of sitting around and doing nothing for 10 seconds, I want you to pick up a PVC pipe

and I want you to give me 10 seconds of very slow active recovery, strict shoulder presses, and then rest for your 10 seconds and kick back up again. We're going to challenge you in the next workout, not by making you do more or faster. I'm going to make that next workout more difficult by not letting you sit and do nothing in recovery. I'm going to make you move.

And that's what we need to do. We need to show people a different option. And the mistake is, is that the recovery never gets looked at but that's where the limitation is most crossfitters their weakness is what's preventing them from doing more work is they're getting tired they don't have the capacity they don't have the stamina so how are they going to do it that's why when i tell people it's like what's your jog recovery speed like fronings early on was a 10-minute mile. Did he know it was good?

Well, when you find out 735 is good, yeah, you got some work to do. And Rich is fast. Rich can run a lap around the track in 58.5. That's fast. So then what's the problem? His weakness was his inability to recover. So where do we focus our time? We focus on the weakness, not the strength.

And you know what's interesting is that through repetition, working the weakness, meaning slower, more volume, we create better muscle memory. And as a byproduct, the speed goes up. I mean, I'm sure you guys have seen that, right? You get better movement patterns, right? Slow it down, lighten the load, and next thing you know. Yeah, you become more efficient. Just by going and seeing Kelly Sturette years ago, I was at a 943 squat, and he helped push me to a 1080 squat.

So I was already doing well. But just by him articulating how the body works and stuff, it was really helpful to me. One of the things that was interesting was I was pretty resistant, even though I got to know him and even though we became friends. I was like, this guy's not going to tell me how to squat. And then I heard one of the things he said in a seminar, and he said, I might not know everything there is to know about your particular sport, but I do know a lot about the human body. And I was like, all right, I'm sold.

I need to, I do need to pay more attention to what he's talking about. And just the adjustments, I already kind of had my feet pointed straight ahead and I had a wide stance and he was a huge proponent of that. He didn't say that for everybody, but for me in particular, he thought that was a good idea. But the main thing was just for me to keep my head down while I was squatting, kind of chin more tucked in than down. But what was interesting about that is that my whole career before that, I was always trying to keep my head up. I would try to keep my head up, keep my head up. I would look up at the ceiling or whatever I could.

Every single time I would do a heavy squat, I'd end up looking at the ground, and I'd end up rounded over. It almost looked like I was throwing up or something like that. My back would get rounded, and I would just be in this funky position. I had to good morning my way out of it all the way to the point where to fix it, I was just like, oh, fuck it. I'm just going to do good mornings. And I would do good mornings

with like crazy amounts of weight. That did help a lot. But Kelly just saying, hey, you know what? Don't even bother doing that with your head. He's like, I think you're kind of overextending and you're just putting yourself in a position that you can't maintain. He's like, just keep your head more neutral.

Maybe pack your chin in a little bit and try that. And as soon as I tried that, I mean, it took weeks for me to reinsure it and reinforce it and stuff like that. But yeah, the weight started flying and it just made a huge improvement. That's awesome. Kelly's incredible. Like he came out to Tennessee recently and I've had this shoulder issue where my shoulder, I can't run.

After four or five miles, I have to hook my thumb through my sleeve and run like this because this effect, and it just wouldn't go away. Months it was there. He comes out, and he's like, I know exactly what that is, and this is what you need to do. And he was having me work on rotation with bands. And I'm like, in four weeks, it was gone. And this is where I think that that's one of the things that's nice about the internet and coaches.

There's so many available. We're so accessible. And there are many that are out there. And if you ask him a question, it's a simple answer. You're going to get a response. And that response, like ask them a question, it's a simple answer. You're going to get a response. And that response, like when he told me it took a minute, if that, and it was a lifesaver. And those people are all out there. Like if you want samplings of workouts that are out there, you know what? Many coaches have PDFs and all, Oh, I'll send me your email. It's just a

PDF. I'll send it to you and he'll send you a sampling and maybe they sign up for the program maybe but it's easy that's why it's like when we met kelly like and hung out it's like i'm gonna always remember that and my mistake was i didn't call him and that's what he told me he's like you've been doing this for nine months and i'm like yeah he's like and you have my number yeah and i blew it like i didn't think about it and that's the mistake is that with instagram and all of that everybody's accessible and sometimes you'll get a response but you know what just keep asking because there's a lot of people out there a lot yeah that was a kelly's score yeah got anything over there andrew uh yeah Yeah, and I'm pretty interested to hear what all of you have to say because we have a pretty cool spectrum of different athletes. You and Encima have competed in bodybuilding, and I'm curious.

It seems like getting a bigger and better aerobic capacity for bodybuilders would make a lot of sense. But when we see them doing cardio, they're walking on a treadmill or at a slow pace on a step mill. So have you seen any benefits for bodybuilders in regards to just like some of the stuff that you've been teaching us today as far as building a better aerobic capacity? So in terms of bodybuilding, I mean, part of it is, is, is when you're cutting weight, but a lot of it is that you're trying to eliminate body fat, right, to get more defined. So the question is, is like, how can we start reducing body fat and what's the optimal way by using cardio? lot of information that is out there that tells us that what we need to do is being doing low intensity training because the low intensity training allows us an easier conversion of taking that fat and converting it into a fuel and maintaining all that muscle tissue that's right yeah right and so part of it is is that we need to be recognizing what is that intensity and the

why behind it so one of the things that we talk about, easy pace. What is easy pace? It's like CrossFit's constant, very functional movement, high intensity. What's the physiological reason behind high intensity? What is it and how are you defining it? It's the same thing with easy. Easy is what we call aerobic threshold training. And the reason why we do it is because aerobic threshold, if you pick the proper intensity,

it will grab all of your slow twitch fibers to create adaptation. So it's slow enough where you're not recruiting fast twitch fibers. So it's a targeted intensity behind a purpose. But why? What is the reason in there? What else can we talk about? And how does fat adapted come in? How does fat consumption into energy come into play? Well, one of the things we know on aerobic threshold, if we get a VO2 max test is we could use our respiratory exchange rate, the RER, and an RER of 0.85 is one of the things that is used to define aerobic threshold intensity if you get a VO2 test. So when I got my last VO2 test a couple of years ago, my RER at 0.85 was a heart rate of 131. It told me where my aerobic threshold was.

But the reason why it's in there is because half of your energy at that RER of 0.85 is coming from carbohydrates. Half of it is coming from fat. So if I continue going at a higher intensity, I'm going to now use a greater proportion of carbohydrate to fuel my energy demands until I get to where? Lactate threshold. On a VO2, it's your ventillary threshold, and I will be at my 100%, we're consuming 100% of carbohydrates, zero fat at that ventillary threshold. So what it means is the faster and harder I go, the more carbohydrates I use.

It's a disproportionate amount over fat. The reason why we want to do aerobic threshold training or my heart rate at a 131 is because I never want to lose the ability to utilize fat as a fuel. If I go to a heart rate of 132, now it's no longer a 50-50 blend of fats and carbs. I'm essentially training myself to be more carb dominant burning. And we never want to lose that ability to burn and utilize fat as a fuel. So one of the main things and the reason why we see low intensities is because of that. You don't want to lose that ability.

So the other argument, though, is that CrossFit and doing high-intensity training is the effect of consuming and burning fat as a fuel after a high-intensity workout. It raises your metabolic rate. After a high-intensity workout, it raises your metabolic rate. And so you're not doing anything after that workout, but your body is still burning a higher percentage of fats long intensity work to get that post-workout effect, but also do long, easy efforts to focus on that slow twitch recovery fiber while still utilizing fat as a fuel. Yeah, that's what bodybuilders have been utilizing that for a long time.

And just what you were saying about being able to talk, I think it's good for most people on a kind of long duration, low intensity workout for bodybuilding type stuff. I mean, it depends on their age and stuff like that, but their heart rate is, it's modest. It's not through the roof. It should be something that you can converse with somebody that's next to you. But it doesn't have to be anything way more intense than that. And it's interesting that that's what works well because you would kind of think like, oh, I'll do a bunch of sprints and I'll get shredded doing that. Because if you look at sprinters, they look amazing.

You would think that that would be the way to go. Not that that's not the way to go, but mixed in with lifting weights and mixed in with being in a caloric deficit, uh, people can make the mistake of dieting too much overdoing their cardio and losing a lot of muscle mass going into the show. Yeah. Building up too much fatigue.

That's, that's, that's the main thing that that does for those athletes. Well, like when I was doing the sport of triathlons, like that picture there, I was 3.6% body fat. Right. Sick all the time though. All the time. Wow. time wow yeah not very functional you got another one over there andrew no i'm all good yeah all right well yeah thank you so much for your time today really uh really appreciate it we uh got to cover a lot of ground literally and figuratively no i appreciate it it's always you know what when we met that first time and it was like this guy is you know what i gotta hang. The problem is, is that we're just on opposite ends of the country.

Yeah. Now you're in like Tennessee or something, right? It's turning into the CrossFit Mecca of the world right now. I mean, Matt Frazier was our neighbor, and Tia Claire Toomey, the current world champion. Haley Adams lived at our house, the best teen in the world, and Froning. Yeah, no, it's really a hotbed. That's why it's like an educational place for me. What in the world is going on with Matt Frazier's wife, Sammy, making those delicious dinners all day? You guys see these posts? Are you guys keen to this at all?

My goodness. Wow. Look at you. No. So they were our neighbors. Yeah. So I've known Sammy for, I don't know, 10 years or something like that. I don't know.

She routinely would bring us over meals that she would cook and she would always cook over like extra. And so all of a sudden we get knock, knock on the ridiculous is it amazing amazing no we really miss them like it's been really difficult with them being gone and um you know one of the things she would routinely just bring over things and and one time she comes over and she's like hey um i haven't i have a smoker and it's brand new and all the stuff. Do you want it? Put it on the back porch.

I'll take that thing. No, you never knew what you were going to get. And it was always top shelf, top of the line. And it's, yeah, they're really missed by us. Yeah, they were really a good neighbor to have. And it wasn't one like people always think like what was it like you know we never talked about crossfit one of the beautiful things they come over they want to borrow like a collar for the for the plate yeah for the bar can i get some clarification on this

kick workout yeah no so part of it was is that they would come over and we wouldn't talk about crossfit because there was always so much other talk about that, you know, all the time, the undertones. And I need a break. I need a break from that. And so Matt was – Matt's smart. Do you know he has two degrees? I've heard. Yeah, I know.

He's got an engineering and a business degree. No, that's the thing is he is a smart person. And so part of it is it's interesting. The people at the top, they're very educated. And I don't know if that's a coincidence, but they're all very educated. And that's why I get along with, because I could talk about very complicated things and they're tracking in their head what I'm saying. Like one of the things, Frazier almost drowned one year in the games.

Like literally? Yeah. So there was an event of run, swim-run, and it was in 20... You should pull up the run-swim-run event in 20... What year was that? 17? I just want to look at these cookies. Was it 18, Hyde?

Oh, my God. Yeah. So the CrossFit Games 2017 run-swim-run event. I'll check it out. So Frazier gets into the water. It was a 1.5-mile run into a 500-meter swim in a 1.5-mile run. And we already knew what kind of pacing he could hold for the 1.5. So, the practice, when it got announced, we were going to lock in muscle memory for the 1.5, which was a 520 to a 540-mile pace.

And then the swim, he was about a 136 per 100-meter pace. And then the closing 1.5 miles was between 540 and six minutes so there's your target and we locked in that muscle memory perfect enters the water first and one of the things that people don't understand when you are running and you get into the water you recover significantly faster by being prone and so i told him i said hit the water and be aghast. Make sure you're out in front, which he did it like he's a soldier. So he hits the water. And what you have to do is you had to swim, remember it was 500 meters. You have to swim basically diagonal to the shore, round a buoy, and then out, you'll pass the buoy, you'll be on your left. And

now what you're going to do is swim across the original starting spot, parallel to the shore, hit a second buoy, and then come back to the boat ramp and be done. He passes the first buoys and in first place, he starts getting passed as they're going down the long straightaway by the faster swimmers. So as a response, you know what he does? He drops in behind them and drafts because it's 20 plus percent easier being number two, which means that you can go 20% faster. Or if you're the same speed, just save 20% of your energy. That's what he's learned. And so one of the things that he had to do though, is he had to accelerate his kick because the person was more than 20% faster. And when he did that, next thing you know, Brent Fikowski, which was one of the podium finishers that year, grabs him and pulls him because he was bobbing in the water. Wow.

He was going to drown. Damn. Oh, there you go. You got it. Well done. Yeah, this one's not necessarily focusing on Matt Fraser, but this is looking for it. Well, if you found the event... I don't think they really focused.

No, they didn't. When he got into the water, they didn't focus. But what happened was, is he's going around, and he has to collect himself, does a little bit of breaststroke, rounds the second buoy, and then swims in. And I think he finished fifth that year. And here it was, he almost dies in an event, yet he finishes fifth. And so part is that you have to diagnose what happened.

What happened to him in that? Well, what happened was what I said, is he accelerated his kick, and because he didn't have the aerobic capacity in the kick, his legs consumed all of that oxygen, and I learned something that year. I learned that if you run and you get tired, you could stop. But if you swim and you get tired, you die.

I didn't know that coming from a swimming background. I thought that anybody could just float, but that's not the case. So we had to teach him how to swim slow. And that was number one. But number two was what happened. And that was his legs lacked the aerobic capacity. We had to develop, even though he's running, he could run a 505 mile. That doesn't mean that you could have a good kick. So what we did was, and Matt was really funny about it. We did workouts that were kicking with long fins, short fins, and no fins. We were doing 2,000 meters of that. And Matt would always say,

just so we are clear, that's just filler distance. That's not actual swimming. He didn't consider it swimming. But one of the things that it did was it highlighted what was his weakness within the kick. So as we're swimming in these workouts side by side, we were kicking and he says, your hip flexors hurt. And I'm all, no, because of course I have the capacity. I've been swimming for a long time. He's like, I can't swim anymore. My hip flexors, I can't make it the length of the pool. Like you cannot make it the length. And he's all, my hip flexors are done. I can't, I can't. Which told me that in the movement of the kick, which was the weakness, the weakness within the weakness was the hip flexor. So what did we do? We had to improve

the capacity of the hip flexor in order to fix the kick. It helped us identify the true weakness within his movement of swimming. And that's where a great athlete is, is that they're always assessing and trying to determine where is that opportunity. And so what do you do? You create workouts that help them build capacity. So what we would do is we would do like a tuck up and then what we would do high intensity. And then the remainder of the minute was knees to chest, active recovery, slow, five rounds, five minutes. Eventually that turned into 10 toes to bar and then 10 slow knees to chest or no static isometric hold with the knees parallel. And then he dropped down to the ground for the remainder of the minute was very slow,

very slow knees to chest, working hip flexor, five no rest and so part was is that athletes they don't know how to do what he just did and it should be done on every single movement and what makes crossfit challenging is how many movements are out there right that's why to be a champion now it is really hard. It's really hard. You have to have the genetics, but you also have to have intelligence. You have to be able to figure out the puzzle because it's a math equation. Hey, do you guys know what happens when you're out for a run and there's no bathroom anywhere? Oh, boy.

You guys have any idea what happens? You just pull down and go where you can. Yeah. Or maybe even something more exciting. Listen to this poop story. So I hear that your podcasts always have to include some poop, and I love a good poop story. I'm sure you have many. No, I love a good poop story.

I find poop jokes the funniest. I really do. Hopefully your mom's not still listening. My mom loves a good poop story. Oh, she does's not still listening. My mom loves a good poop story. Oh, she does. Oh, yeah. There we go. My mom loves a good poop story.

So, you want to tell me? Can I tell my poop story? Yeah, yeah. All right. So, in 1983, there was an Iron Man in- Back before they had toilets. Yeah. In Los Angeles.

So, the swim was around the Santa Monica Pier. uh in los angeles we the swim was around the santa monica pier yeah and um we swam around the santa monica pier and then we rode our bikes up pch and went through like topanga canyon and blah blah blah and circled back around and um i'm riding a pch and i'm like i gotta go poop and the problem was is that i'm on the clock. Like I am not going to stop. Even though I probably could set a world record in pooping, I'm not going to stop and lose 10 seconds of time. So I'm grinding and I'm just going for it, but it's not going away.

Like I'm not recycling. Like normally you recycle your own pee, right? But it's like, can't recycle poop, I realize. And so I'm like, ugh. So like 20 miles down the road, I'm like, I got to go. Well, I'm climbing this mountain pass and I'm like thinking like, backside. I'm going to coast. And so the whole time as I'm riding up and I'm racing, like I'm, I mean, I'm full throttle, you know, race of truth.

I'm against the clock. And I'm like, I'm like in my head, like, how am I going i gonna pull this off because i've never done it before i'm on my bike something because i peed off my bike and so it's gonna be something similar kind of so and i never had done it before and i'm like man i gotta figure this out because i'm gonna get one shot and if i ruin myself it's like this is gonna be a problem aid station comes up and there's a big sponge and so i'm like that may be needed so i stick that down the front of my shorts there's a true story i can't believe you made me tell this so sorry mom so i get to the top of this peak and i come down the back side and i'm like it's now or never because i didn't know how long the descent was i had no idea i pull my shorts all the way down to my knees while you're on a bike

okay i shift off to the side of the bike and making sure it's away from the wheel because i knew as i was going up that if it hits the wheel it's over are you still cruising down the hill at this point oh i'm ripping i'm ripping i mean wow this is great and i just let it go and because it had been in there for a while and and all that churn i had diarrhea for like eight years as a triathlete because i thought it was normal but it was because of all of the jostling all the time right and so diarrhea was normal and so i'm like i think i'm done didn't hit the back tire didn't hit the you know the free wheel take the sponge quick bub boom drop the sponge pull up the shorts and i was good to go i was race ready i was like that was incredible and no one saw it no one saw it so they're like yeah so

that's why i don't talk about it it's like because probably never happened but it did happen it did i. It did. I got so good at going to the bathroom, I could run while peeing. Without losing a step. I could picture you at the awards ceremony. They're about ready to give the trophy to the guy that won and be like, no, no, no. I object. This guy did not win.

The victory came from me. And you grab the microphone, give a speech. I'll tell you one more funny one. So I mentioned this recently. And I did an Ironman in Brazil. And it was a 1.2-mile swim straight out in the ocean around a boat. And if you've ever gone 1.2 miles offshore in the water, when you turn around, South America, you couldn't even see it. And you're in the black, dark water where you can't see the bottom.

I'm not afraid of the water. I've swam in the ocean a lot. But that was terrifying because it was like I am really far. So I get in and I'm in first place. I'm probably 200 meters ahead of second. And I get to the shore and I grab my bag that has my cycling stuff in there. And normally there's a changing tent. Well, this is Brazil.

There was no changing tent. And I'm trying to get the idea of where's the changing tent. Meanwhile, the person's coming. So I'm getting more anxious. And I'm like, you know, I could do a deck change better than anybody. I don't have a towel, but I could probably do it so fast no one even notices it. I don't have a towel, but I could probably do it so fast no one even notices it. So I go between my bike and the other person's bike next to me, and I just drop my Speedo off, and I pull my bike shirts on, and it was a fraction of a second, I thought to myself.

I go on, and I win that race. The next morning, I wake up, and in our hotel, there were newspapers that were always laid out in front of your door as you walked out. And as I walk out, I see the front page of the paper and it says, and it's all in Portuguese, but it says Hinshaw displays magnificence. And I was pumped. I was so happy. Like, I can't believe that this is happening to me, that I won. And I was all by myself. I went down there by myself and I was a kid. This is happening to me that I won and I was all by myself.

I went down there by myself and I was a kid. I unfolded and it's me in the middle of my deck change and I had just done 2.4 miles in the ocean. Oh, man. I panicked and I go ripping down the hallway and I grab papers, papers. And I have like 20. I'm like, I can't get them all. I was so bummed. And I'm like, I can't get them all. I was so bummed. And I'm like, I can't show up the award ceremony. There's no way.

But I have to because I won. The fact that they use that photo, though. Come on now. Like they didn't have to do that shit. So I end up showing up. No one said anything. No one cared because it was Brazil and it was my own hang up, but man, it was like a horrible moment, but it like, yeah, there was no good about that. Like I just wanted out.

I didn't go back to Brazil for another 20 years. Yeah. That's a true story. It's pretty incredible that all this knowledge and your passion, you know, if at such a young age turned into all this, you've traveled, I think, around the entire world a bunch of times, right? Yeah. So my better half, Heidi and I, we've been really lucky to share this information with the Aerobic Capacity Course. And one of the things that I do is I've taught every one of those seminars because it gives me a chance to understand what people are interested in, what they know, what they don't know. And it allows me to

advance my content. One of the things that, and we're a lot in the same way, is we'll share whatever we know. We will. And it forces us to go out and learn more. And that's important. A lot of people won't share what they believe is intellectual more. And that's important. A lot of people won't share what they believe is intellectual property. And that's never been my style. I've always been one. If I know it, I'm going to share it and I'm going to give it to you. And if you want the evidence of those things, I'm going to give you evidence because I'm sharing what's proven on my side. That to me is something important. One of the things that i also think though is that you have to have some kind of intellectual property in order to stay in business like what you've done

you you are you're the the top of the pile i mean if we could all do what a portion of what you have done and you have to have some intellectual property like you're getting a patent those things are important. Where I think my IP sits, though, is the way I write workouts and how I write them. That is a really difficult thing that it takes a lifetime to be able to write those things and to do them with precision to where every person can create improvements. And so the seminars are something that are really important to share information and keep me cutting edge. But it's the workouts that I'm able to create from those conversations is where the value is. So talking with the Marines, talking with the Army, firefighters,

I'm able to, through those conversations, restructure workouts and provide it so that it leverages functional movements for their job, but it also creates a safer environment for them. And so, yeah, I find that we're really lucky. I mean, we get along really well and we've been to some amazing places. Heidi actually had a full-time job when CrossFit came in back and wanted to partner. And I was coaching full-time, writing those workouts, and that was enough. I couldn't do anymore. And I was coaching full-time, writing those workouts, and that was enough. I couldn't do anymore. And I asked her, I said, would you be willing to quit your job and run this as a business? And so she took it over and it's been an amazing run, amazing run. And one of the things that it's been an amazing time. I'm just grateful for that,

that she stepped up. What's interesting, though, about Heidi is it seems like we do a lot of seminars in Italy. We do a lot of seminars in London. We seem to go to places that she wants to visit, which is fine. You know, her job is to try and fill them up. And, you know, my job, I just get to sit there and talk for seven hours. Is it a little bit weird, you know, having that responsibility on you, like when you go and teach the Marines? Like, are you, I mean, at this point you've been doing it for a long time, but are you sometimes like, wow, they're trusting in me. Like, I know that I'm pretty good at this

stuff, but they're trusting in me to assist these guys and these guys help defend the country. these guys and these guys helped defend the country kind of so when i went i was in camp pendleton and met in march and um i was training these force fitness instructors and i had put together content to teach them for two days and i donated time i went there and i paid for my travel i did everything it was all i paid for the whole thing. And I put together all this content because I'm meeting with force fitness instructors that went to Quantico for advanced training. And these are ones that get perfect scores on their PFT and their CFD. It's like, these are legit. I show up and I have conversation and it's like, I got to slow it way down.

And that was the hardest part for me is calibrating. Like you always have to do that too, right? When you run into people, it's your job to calibrate. And a lot of times you don't know where to calibrate to. And that was the biggest struggle for me. But I'll tell you what was the biggest moment when I was there. It was at their headquarters at Camp Pendleton, and all of the executive officers were there, commanding officers. General Turner, you know that he's the major general down there. He was there. He's been doing CrossFit since 2012, which is incredible that the head of Pendleton is doing this CrossFit. A guy can do handstand walking, and he's 53 years old.

Yeah, no, he's legit. Looks like G.I. Joe, just incredible. But after the ceremony, which was one of the most incredible things that I've ever been to, super formal, very structured. But on a level of respect, it was really one of the best events ever. Early in the morning, he comes around thanking people. General Turner does. And besides the wife, you know, there's no civilians there. It's just me and Heidi, really. And he comes around and he's thanking people, giving the normal thank you for coming. I appreciate the support. But he comes around to me and he says, thanks for coming. And he says to me, he says, I want you to know that fitness is my number three priority. which is incredible. Like he broke script first of all, and then he talks about this.

Number three is my number. I mean, fitness is my number three priority. So I asked him, why is that? I mean, here he is the top guy, but I got to ask.

And so one of the things that he's turns around, he says, he says, all of us have been in combat. All of us, XOCOs, we've all been in combat. And one of the things that we all have had to do is make very difficult decisions, life and death decisions. And we all know that if you make that life and death decision under less fatigue, you're going to save lives, which is obvious, right? But not to someone in the military. Like, you don't run across people that say that.

But not to someone in the military. Like, you don't run across people that say that. So I sit there and I'm like, your PFT, your physical fitness test, you have to do a three-mile run in the Marines. Marines are captive for four years. I ask them, I say, in the PFT three-mile, what would be your target time for every Marine? Because part of what I want to do is, is this guy reasonable? Because if you want to get 100 points, you've got to get below minutes. You got to go sub six minute mile. He tells me, he says, with no hesitation, 24 minutes. I don't care who you are. If I have you for four years, I can get you to run three miles in 24 minutes. That is the guy in charge. That to me is where you can make progress

because the reasonable and that's what appealed to me. And so part of it is, is that if there is an expression like an opportunity, then what I want to do is I want to actually leverage and share. Like, here's what we can do. But the problem is calibrating to it. If you don't give me any information, how do I calibrate? And the problem is that I'm going to miss where you are, and now we missed the opportunity. And that's the hardest part is that people won't talk. And that's what made that whole pitch.

So he comes over that afternoon. We're doing a track workout. Comes over, and he has two of his chiefs of staff, and he's walking from the headquarters because it happened to be like a quarter mile away. He's walking across this giant parade deck and field and comes to their track. Comes over and he says, so what are you doing? And I said, I'm going to take them through this workout. And he says, so you can personalize workouts? And he's all, can you do it for all of these people?

So he's like kind of changing the workout a little bit of what I wanted to do, but I'm listening to him because I want to give him some razzle dazzle to show him like I can pull it off. So he basically says, can you personalize for all the people here? There's 30 people or so. Can you personalize a workout for all of them? And I'm all, of course I can do it. He said, how long? I said, under a minute. He said, let me see you do it. I'm like, here we go. So I change up what we want to do. And so one of the things that Marines do is they do a combat fitness test. And during that, they have to do an 800 meter run in their boots and their pants. So it's a little slower than a normal 800. So I told these Marines, I said, all right, our workout is going to be this.

And this is exactly what I said. I said, we're going to do a total of five laps around the track. And what you're going to do is alternate between 100 meter sprint, crate fatigue, and a 300 meter jog. You could do that jog at whatever speed that you want. But your 100 meter sprint needs to match up with the same exact pace that you did in your 800 meter CFT. So take your 800 meter CFT time, divide it by 8, and there's your target 100 meter sprint. If you don't maintain that, you fail. What we're going to do is we're going to record the total time of your workout.

And at the end of the workout, what we're going to do is we're going to subtract out the total amount of sprinting that you did. So if your target was 15 seconds per 100 and you're doing five of them, I'm going to subtract out 75 seconds from your overall finishing time. The remaining balance of time is your jog recovery pace. What I'm going to do is take that remaining time, divide it by the distance that you jogged, and now what I have is a 100 meter pace jogging, and I can compare your hundred jog pace against your hundred sprint pace. Well, in that workout, the relationship between sprinting and jogging should be a two to one ratio. Meaning if you jog in 15 seconds, I mean, if you sprint in 15 seconds, your jog time should

be 30 seconds. What if it is only, what if your jog time is 29 seconds and your sprint was 15? What does it say about you? It tells me that you need more speed because your jog time is too fast. It tells me where your weakness is. It tells me where the opportunity is. What if your jog is 32 seconds, meaning you couldn't get down to 30? It tells me that your weakness is your jog recovery.

You need to focus on your recovery, your endurance, your aerobic, your easy, your slow twitch speed. He loved it. Loved it. And they were awesome in it. All of them. Independently going. Great.

You know, one of the things that also resonated with those Marines was the breathing techniques that we talked about. I learned when working with teams that the mistake that coaches make is they tell these athletes to communicate. If you're suffering, tell them so they could slow down. why on earth would you voice weakness and establish that you're the weakest person? Let's say you and I are climbing stairs and you and I are in firefighting, and we have our bunker gear on, we both have cylinders, and we have to climb 10 flights of stairs. What I should do is listen to the cadence of your breath, and based upon the cadence of the breath, I dictate my intensity, because last thing I want you to do is hyperventilate.

And when you get to the top of the 10th floor, you're in trouble. Why would I ask you when I could just listen? That's what teammates do is through listening, through observation. They make decisions without taking the person who's weak in that one moment and bring them down. Because that person may be the strong one when you have to do a body drag. And so what you do is it's through awareness. And that's what the Marines are about. They're sitting there and they're like, we have to find a better way.

And one of the things when they talked about breathing, it was like, wow, through observation, when we are rucking, we listen. And what we do is we voluntarily slow down before the weak person says, slow down, I'm dying. That's a problem. But if you don't have a person that's willing to communicate so you can calibrate, like when we were talking about the rucking on the field and steps per minute, you can't make any headway. And that's the problem with the military is that in many cases, these decisions are made by people that you never talk to. You never meet. You never have the chance to share with them. This is the reality. Like, why in the military do they treat everybody the same?

Meaning, if you're a sprinter and I'm an endurance athlete, they're going to put you on a 12-mile rock, do a mission 12 miles out. Really? They train you just like me. That's not the way that it should be done. We should focus on your weakness and maximize your adaptation if we're going to make you an all-around athlete. But why not make you into a specialist? Meaning, you know what you're going to do is you're going to rappel in and you're only going to have to jump across a couple of blocks and then you're back out. I'm doing those other things. Treat them the same.

And so part is convincing people of having that dialogue. And so with me, when I was with the Marines, I told them, I said, you know what, I'll give you anything you want for free because I'm grateful for what you're doing for the country, for me. Same thing with fire. Anything you want, I provide programming, anything, free, always free. Fire Department of New York, it's all free. And so part of it is, is that I need to have people that will have the dialogue so we can create some precision in what we're doing. And that's the hardest part. Most people won't do that.

They won't. Spectacular stuff. Andrew, want to take us on out of here, buddy? Sure thing. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate it. Please follow the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerPro Instagram, at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ at TheAndrewZ on TikTok.

And Seema, where are you at? And Seema Iny on Instagram and YouTube and Seema Iny on TikTok and Twitter. Chris? AerobicCapacity.com. AerobicCapacity is the Instagram and Facebook. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength.

Catch you all later.