The Sevan Podcast - Chris Hinshaw | Legendary Endurance Coach

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

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Available right away. If you can. Bam, we're live. Just like that i gotta say i'm a little nervous talking to you always savann uh you should be because the flattery could uh that i'm about to shower on you it could make your head explode um i know i know 99 of you know but there is no uh running coach that I know anywhere in the world I've ever even heard of who's close to training more of the fittest people in the world ever. So you might be like, well, there's Olympic running coaches and there's these coaches and there's those coaches and there's football teams that have coaches and there's track and field coaches.

But these coaches don't work with the fittest people in the world. They work like with the top like 1%. They don't work with the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the absolutely fittest human beings on the world. And Chris, um, somehow, uh, even though he's very open and very generous has, uh, monopolize that and, uh, not by his choice, but by, um, his, his, the repute, his, uh, the reputation, um, he's garnered, um, not only in personality, but knowledge. And, um, I, he's been on other podcasts. We've done over 1600 podcasts on the station. And I bet as far as interviews go, the shows I've done with Chris are all probably top 50 of all time. So thanks Chris, for coming on. You're, you're a needle mover like your buddy, Rich Froning.

You're a needle mover like your buddy Rich Froning. Wow. Wow. You know what? Thank you. I you have incredible perspective and those words really resonate. They mean a lot. Wow.

Thank you, Siobhan. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want people to I started off with that for two reasons. One, to let you know how much I appreciate you. But I there's I don't want to get into who you are today because I got some questions and it's not going to be a long show but let's like fucking let's just dig in but if you if you don't know homeboys uh credentials they're fully legit and all you have to do is google his name and hit images and you'll see everyone and their mother who have been the baddest uh mofos on the planet have worked with him chris i had this dude on his name is charlie lawrence

okay he is what he calls himself is just an average um uh marathoner uh uh for for for a professional marathoner his best time is 216 and he's done it twice um his fastest mile uh ever is 411 and uh a few months ago he there was a race he few months ago, he, there was a race. He had never run 50 miles. And there was a race that was a 50 miler and he's 28 years old. And he called the race director. And he's like, Hey, I'm coming there. Have someone ready to drug test me at the end of the race. Cause I'm about to break the world record for the 50 mile. He'd never run it before. This kid goes there. I call him a kid. He's 28. This dude goes there, This kid goes there. I call him a kid. He's 28. This dude goes there, runs the 50 miles and breaks the world record by almost two minutes. Yeah. Right. He does it in something crazy. What, what it ended up being four hours in like 48 minutes. you know what i mean i'm like hey did you walk at all and stop he's all hey i stopped for like 10 seconds once to like stretch out my legs and i'm like oh shit what am i doing am i gonna be

able to start up again right a 510 uh range about 137 pounds there you go now i'm gonna ask you a question you might be like yeah it does seven but i hadn't heard this before it sounds like um around the 20 around the 40 mile mark maybe was earlier, but somewhere he starts taking ketones. And I had never heard that before because I always think of these runners. He mixes them with goo packs too. And as we know, at some point the system, right, when you're fasting, that's the whole point of going into ketosis, right? You use all your glucose storage, and then your mitochondria wants to still do the ATPp thing so it switches over to fat which it has to um which is ketones had you heard that before and are there any crossfitters doing that and are you prescribing that what do you know about ketones

this this this yeah candidly i know very little about it i mean i'm definitely know about it yeah it's not in our sport um mainly because of the time domains of our sport. When you start going really long, like there's lots of studies of fat adapted athletes being highly successful in Western states, you know, 100 mile events, Ironman distance events. But because our sport is so dependent on shorter time domains, much higher intensities, the use of carbohydrates becomes critical. What, what is the long, when you think of CrossFit, what's the longest time domain you think? So that's, what's really interesting is that, you know, I just had a conversation with somebody about what is considered long. In track and field, distance doesn't start until 3,000 meters, so roughly 1.8 miles. Okay. So like a mile is considered, you know, middle distance.

Which is still less than 10 minutes. Yeah, right. So for good people, right. Yeah. Good time in CrossFit for 3k is around 12 minutes. That would be a good time. Okay. Roughly equivalent, like I would say 20 minutes for a 5k would be good. But yeah, I would consider distance anything over 20 miles. If you're, for example, training for a marathon, most people can relatively easy get through the first 20 miles, but then you start having metabolic challenges. You start having muscular stamina

problems and you have to be committed in that sport. It's not like something where you could part-time it and do it, you know, three days a week and have some success. Yeah. The, the, he mentioned that to me, I hadn't heard that before, but it sounds like you it's, it's obviously normal for your crowd that there is some, the 20 mile wall that just like everyone knows there's a, what is that? You know, what's funny is, is that I, I, Austin Maliola, hopefully doesn't mind me telling this story, but I was at his gym before he was training for the Boston Marathon. And I said, so, you know, how's the training going? Like, what's the training plan look like? What are you looking for? And he says, well, I'm going to get myself up to maybe

11, maybe 12 miles for my long run. And I said, boy, you know, that's going to present some challenges for you. I said, what's your frequency? And, you know, in terms of the workouts that you're doing in the week, because you can get away with a little shorter long run in the week if you have enough volume. See, the thing about training is, is that it's a cumulative effect. So when you back off on that volume in your final let's say two three weeks before an ultra distance race that cumulative effect is what's going to get you through it and so you don't necessarily have to do an 18 mile run or a 20 mile run if you've got a lot of volume but he

didn't he was running three days a week and I said you're going to run into some serious problems around you know 18 18, 20 miles. I'm CrossFitter. I could just push myself through it. Well, the dude did 12, 13, 14 minute miles for his last five. Okay. You can't just push through those things. Which is shuffling, right? I mean, that's like walking fast. Right. And all due respect, that's the thing is that he's not trying to be a marathoner he just wanted to check the box and you know i have people that that end up doing a full distance ironman and they average a 15 minute mile run pace they still got the finishing medal right yeah that's that i respect this guy yeah me of course yeah me too we're definitely not poo-pooing anyone this guy

said that um when he did the 50 miler he had never run over 35 miles straight in his life so after that it was going into um uncharted um territory one of the things he said about the so i said you only take ketones and he said no i mix the two and By the way, he said he drank 10 bottles of carbs. I don't even know what bottles of carbs are. But he said he drank 10 bottles of carbs on that race, that 50-mile race, which is just an insane amount of liquid and just shit to drink. But towards the end, he says he's squishing goo packs and these ketone um bottles in his at the same time and he also said that um the ketones would give him uh better mental clarity so interesting you say that so yeah that's one of the biggest i think limitations in crossfit for the people that want to become elite

yes oh let me say one thing. And I specifically said to him, Chris, I said, are you just telling me that anecdotally, or you actually like, or you just hear that, or that's the conventionalism. Are you telling me you drank it?

And it's like, bing. He's like, yeah, it's like that. He said, you're mile 42. You drink the ketones.

And it's like, fuck, like a, like a light goes on. Well, it's the same thing. Why in the tour de France with the last, you know,

45 minutes to go, they drink a 12 ounce Coke. Wow. I get that. That acuity, that sharpness, that awareness, because that's the problem with what we see in military all the time. When military, when they're under fatigue, that's when bad mistakes occur. I program workouts for a couple of elite poker players. And one of the biggest problems with poker is, and you're just sitting in a chair, is your ability to make good decisions, you know, eight days into a tournament.

And the problem within like CrossFit is that if you don't go long enough, negative thought doesn't have a chance to propagate. And you have to know what that experience feels like because the first time it happens, you don't even wear that you've gone down that negative road. And once you're down that path, it is very difficult to back out and stay positive. You essentially have put yourself into a negative position in terms of overall performance. And so that's why for me as a coach, you know what, in 2013, I made Jason Kalipa run 20 miles three weeks before the CrossFit Games in 2013. Straight. Yes. Yeah. That's, that's, Straight. Yes.

Yeah. That's, that's, that's why Maddox do it and Garrett Fisher do it in 2013. And I was highly criticized by it, but what you're trying to do one is to show an athlete that they're ready, that they've done something that no one else has done. But number two is bad things occur in the CrossFit games. It's,

it is an endurance competition. If we call it 13 events over three, four days, you've got to be able to deal with that negativity. And so what you're talking about with this athlete is he is trying to keep his head clear so that that mistake doesn't occur. Because once that occurs, now your performance is on the negative side and the guy's trying to go for a world record yeah i think the announcement of the world record so i was that's bold right that's bold i go did you have any doubts he goes no he goes dude i saw it i saw it like every second i was awake i I saw myself setting the world record. That's a rare athlete. So I saw that at the Prefontaine Classic here a couple months ago.

Is that a running event? What is that? It's an amazing event. What they do, Savant, is that they just give you the juice in a competition, meaning it's just one heat of the best of the best of the best. meaning it's just one heat of the best of the best of the best. And it's not like they're doing 5,000-meter men, 5,000-meter women, 100-meter men, 100-meter.

They'll do 800-meter men and then the 5K women. They'll do the 100 men, the 200. So it's just one event, male, female, and it's just one heat. That sounds fun. That sounds like an excuse to get drunk. Short event, big party. This competition in the field that they run on, it's the fastest track in the world. And there were multiple world records that were set. But what they do, which is really cool, is they have in the inside lane of lane one, the inner lane, which

is really the 400 meter distance, they have light bulbs. And these light bulbs can be programmed to hit a certain pace. So what they do is they ask the top athlete that is in that heat, how do you want us to set the lights? And so you see where they are in terms of their goal and they announce it. Well, 5,000 meter women come out and the announcer says, they have set the lights for world record pace. Now, most of the time they would set it for meat record pace or American record pace. They would never set it for meat record pace or American record pace. They would never set it for world record pace for a 5,000. And it's cool as a fan, you can see as they're running this 12 and a half laps where they precisely are.

It's been proven because it's a consistent pace that this is a huge advantage because the athlete doesn't need to think. What's the name of the track again? I think Sousa is looking for it. What's the name of the track? It's in Oregon state. So, okay. Okay. Um, sorry, go ahead. I could just see Sousa pecking away on his keyboard and I'm like, Oh, he needs another clue. Prefontaine classic at Oregonregon state okay light bulb okay go on prefontaine and the world world record speed okay so they start out and i said to myself i mean you know i've done my share of competitions and it is very very difficult to put words like that out there. So there's one thing of, of, of look at how beautiful that is. That is beautiful. Isn't that?

Yeah. Yeah. So to, to be able to put yourself out there and say like one of the things that, that when I was working with Tia way back before she started winning was she got beat a couple of times by very small margins. And that sits in your head. And so when she was, she stayed with us for a while. And I said, have you ever said out loud that you want to win or you are going to win the CrossFit Games? And she says, I've never said it. So we were at HQ a couple of days later.

And Tommy Marquez was interviewing her. I told Tommy before the interview, I go, I need you to ask what is her number one goal. And for the first time she put it out there because once it's out there, that's a whole different athlete. Well, imagine you're going out onto a track and you say to everybody that's watching and it's on national television, you're going to go for a world record. And the lights are set for that. And she did. She beat it by three, four seconds. Crazy.

Crazy. Hey, what a genius. Like you saying that made me want to go to that event. Just those light bulbs. What an interesting thing to elevate a sport if because you know everyone's like how can we get more fans how can we get more fans what a fucking genius way to do it they made it so so on that track where you saw those pictures what is really amazing is they realize the attention span of the audience and so what they'll do is they will

have a a track event and then what they'll have is they will have a track event. And then what they'll have is on the far side of this field, this is basically where I was sitting. On the far side of the field is like the pole vault pit. And the world record was set by a kid that day in the pole vault. It's funny. They asked this kid in the interview. They're like, so you're because he was young. I think he's a 19, 20-year-old kid. And like, Hey, so he's, you know, amazing performance today.

And you know, what's the plans, you know, what's your thought process moving forward? And the guy's like, yeah, I'd like to keep having more days like this one. Cause this one was pretty good. You know, as a 19 year old set in world records. But what they do is they have pole vault immediately after the finish of another event. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's always staging. And like I said, it's just the juice of – it's the final heat.

And so you're seeing the best in the world throw a javelin, for example. Hey, I know someone's going to think I'm joking, but I'm not joking. The CrossFit Games should, in between the big heats, they should bring out the two strongest guys in the world who only have one arm and just have them do a – what's that called when boxers don't really – they supposedly don't really fight? Like sparring? Expedition match. Oh, yeah, expedition match.

They should have the two guys from Wheelw from the games who only have one arm do a clean and jerk event. And so we get to – for five minutes while they're reorganizing, we have two guys with one arm clean and jerking 225. They should bring out Mikey Swoosh and Tim Murray, the two fittest dwarfs who tied last year in the world for the fittest dwarfs, and have them go against each other. two fittest dwarfs who tied last year in the world for the fittest dwarfs and have them go against each other we should be exploiting and glorifying people will lose their shit if you have two in between watching the the two top women's heats go or the men's heat and women's go you have like the two strongest guys with one arm go out there and clean jerk people five minute event super quick nothing's on the line. The crowd will lose their shit.

It would be so cool. And those people want to do it. Yeah, make it a freak show. Bring out the – and that's what javelin and pole vaulting is. It's a fucking freak show. No one should be putting a stick in the ground and launching over a – you know what I mean? You're mesmerized by the athleticism of it. Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn't matter. If you're the best in by the athleticism of it. Yeah, absolutely.

And it doesn't matter if you're the best in the world at something. Yeah. When you are viewing it, you're watching something that's truly spectacular. No one in the audience can clean and jerk what this guy is doing with one arm. That's why everyone in the audience with both their arms. That's why everyone's like, what the hell? You know what I mean? As a coach, I have this thing called a gold star and a gold star is something that it should never happen. Meaning I've seen everything

as a coach and it is very rare that something occurs that surprises me because- That's a good name for a book, Chris Hinshaw, Gold Star, and it's 20 short chapters, 20 stories, and each of them is something that you can't believe you saw. Okay ahead yeah because that is a rare thing and and it but it does happen and that's where i find the best in the world they're doing things that have never been done before you know that's why i miss like for example matt frazier i missed matt frazier in the sport of crossfit because he redefined human potential and once like bob beeman jumps 29 feet now it's like yeah i could do it it's possible it's like iron man as soon as you know kona someone eight hours it's like oh eight hours is possible yeah that's where and so to me those are the moments that are worthy of a big prize and so that was the invention of the gold star um the um and by the way just to

build on the story it wouldn't even have to be um uh crossfit athletes either you could pick the guy who's the fastest guy in the paralympics and be hey, will you run a 400 for us in front of an audience with your two fake legs? And the CrossFit audience, because we love watching people move and do athletic shit, we would all just be like – we would be on our feet watching them run a 400. Yeah, I think that's what Rogue does so well is that they have strongmen built in between, and it's keeping the fan engaged because you want to be entertained um to piggyback on even how amazing matt is the thing is is we have people who like will all stand up for and be like holy cow danny spiegel gui malheros you know like these people like you're like wow but matt you never knew where when matt was gonna do it and so like you know, where Danny and gear are going to do it. But Matt could just set the bar high and like like running right. All of a sudden, he's the fastest dude out there. You're like, whoa. I you know, I'll give you an example. Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet, in my opinion, one of the smartest in the sport, and I was able to start working with her in 2013.

So one of the things that she did is she recognized that Rich Froning wins the CrossFit Games because of his performance on the last day. He somehow won every single event and Rich back in those early days never published what he did in terms of his training. He was kind of this person who was a mystery but somehow some way Rich would dominate on that final day. And so in sitting down with Camille and she recognized that, we had a conversation about, and this is what Matt would do. When he would look at something and he didn't know the answer, you would have dialogue. And so Camille comes and we start talking. And I said, what he has done is, I think there's two different things. One is that he's training way more than

anybody else, that he is training himself as an endurance athlete in the sport of CrossFit. He's not doing one workout a day. I'll bet he's doing two, three workouts a day, which in fact, that's what it turned out to be. He was developing himself for that specific competition. He was developing himself for that specific competition. As a byproduct of that type of training, he was becoming more fat adapted so that he was able to conserve the consumption of his carbohydrates in those earlier days and have more carbohydrate stores available for that final day. And why is that important? Because once you deplete your carbohydrates at the CrossFit Games, it takes about 48 hours to put it back to fully filled. So you're at a deficit at each day.

That's why at the CrossFit Games, day one, you see them all warm up properly. You see them all cool down properly. The final day, there's very few people that are doing that. So Camille and I sit down and we discuss this. And she says to me, I want to be the most fat adapted athlete so that I am in that same position. So that's a trainable adaptation. What you do is you will do your long effort of the week in a fasted state essentially a ketogenic state and so what she would do is the day before she would finish up her day of workout have a very light meal fast that morning workout you know do a regular workout basically depleting all of her available carbs and then do her two hour you know, do a regular workout, basically depleting all of her available carbs,

and then do her two hour, you know, three hour endurance type of a long, slow, easy workout in a fasted state. We had her data before. And you can get it from doing a VO two max test, a metabolic test and after. And, you know, 14 months later later she went on to win the crossfit games and dominated on that final day um uh chris hinshaw looks like a pastor this morning i i agree um uh hold on hold on no come on it's so father please i've sinned please come back father i'm sorry father oh oh shit now he looks like a olympic track coach oh yeah wow uh as we enter the second half of the podcast we'll change his costume from pastor to uh track and field expert you know last time i was on and and that was a long distance

running outfit before this is short distance running anyway I have my shoes too. I'm getting ready to go. No, last time I was on and it's like nice background. Looks like he's in prison. Yeah, it still looks like you're in prison. Your audience is just brutal. It wasn't what I said in the beginning. I'm not

nervous of you. It's just that your audience is just like, they speak their mind. Oh, look at Jeff B. Bursch will pile on high priest of interns training oh man was that cashmere that other one no it's just a down pupper i want to know how swanky you are no no no i'm not i wear the same thing every single day you know sometimes i don't leave the house am i stupid for never hurting that hurting hurting hurting never hurting that am i stupid for never have had heard that am i am i an imbecile for not ever having heard anyone say that the reason why rich did so well on the last day of the games was because he was fat adapted what i always heard is because that's when Dave and crew rolled out the

CrossFit workouts and, and, and that's, you know, kind of tongue in cheek, but that's what Rich was best at is CrossFit. And the rest of the shit was just kind of a buildup to CrossFit. I never heard, I've never heard this fat adapted. Is that, have you heard? Look at Rich and look what he just did. With all the gummy bears. No, but the race across the sky. Oh, I thought you were talking about the 24-hour rowing he did where he ate 300 pounds of gummy bears.

No, I'm talking about what he really did with the Leadville 100 mountain bike race over the summer. That is one of the most difficult events in the world. And to break 12 hours is a remarkable achievement for any athlete. Rich Froning, in some way, somehow, did a gold star worthy performance. It was shocking in that he went under nine hours. Nine hours is beyond elite for a cyclist, and yet he somehow did it. Now, I'm saying he went like eight and a half hours. That is an endurance time domain. That is a long distance time domain.

In order for Rich Froning to be successful, he had to become more fat adapted. Had to. he had to become more fat adapted had to you know rich froning is also again it's a student of the game like we were talking about with matt when when you know at like like so i've been you know lucky enough to work with jeff adler for for two years and jeff adler i mean what a stud what a stud crazy what he did focused machine, mental giant, I think. Look at that. Okay, so when you break nine hours, you get a big belt buckle. That's your prize.

That's why he did it, right? He wanted the belt buckle? But it's the big belt buckle. And he went and said, I'm going sub nine. Like, I've trained. Oh, he said it. I've trained Matt and Sheree Chan to do that. And their goal straight out out it was to break

12 hours and they did they both broke 12 hours for rich to get that buckle it's every single what i love the most is there's there's nobody within crossfit at the elite level that compares themselves to a specialist, like a cyclist. It's just not done. Like for example, this year in the cross country run, there is nobody that I've ever worked with that would take their time and go, oh, I wonder how it compares to a collegiate runner because it's not even remotely in the same range. It's like, you know, Matt Frazier was a great runner. Jeff Adler is the best runner I've ever worked with. Wow.

He wouldn't make a good high school cross country team. And so they just don't do it. But you know what does happen is that when Rich does something like that, the cyclists look and go, oh my, look what happens to a guy that dedicates six months to our sport and what he was capable of doing. It shows the versatility of these athletes. If Rich Froning decides to lose, let's say 85 pounds, I think i could get him to run sub 210 for a marathon wow wow you know he's just too big he's too big to move that weight right that power to weight ratio yeah weight in the

sport of running it matters you know there's i wonder if rich could get down to 160 150 no i'm talking about one one under 120 yeah yeah because this other guy was 510 137 i wonder how skinny rich could get so my iron man weight was you know i'm 511 and i was 145 i mean that's to to do so weight matters like you know i'll give you got down to that with something if he did something crazy like that he'd probably never recover right he'd never bounce back from that because it's not i mean even like when he was saying about the training, it was because of calorie consumption on bike rides, you know, he'd be out there for five hours. It's, it's hard to maintain weight. Like when I did triathlons and, and I was training six hours a day for a minimum of five, six days a week.

And I would drink, it was called exceed. It was, um, it was a complex carbohydrate powder that you would mix with a liter of water. And it was a thousand calories. And I would have three of those a day because I couldn't eat enough food. It's just too hard to chew and eat. And so, but I'll tell you, I'll kill you. And that's what Charlie Lawrence must've been drinking when he ran the 50 miles, right? That's when he says he drank carb drinks. He was drinking something like that. Yeah, but it's way more advanced now. I mean, there's products out there. Not powder you stir in these days.

But it's the absorption rate. And what they found is, is a unique concoction between the percentage of glucose, sucrose, and fructose increases the absorption rate more than just having one. And that's the thing is that sport has become very sophisticated to squeeze out more performance. Marathon runners, it is well known in the marathon elite community that they intentionally dehydrate themselves during the marathon to lose weight. Um, and it's not uncommon to lose, you know, eight, nine pounds of water weight during that, that marathon. And the risk of, of underperforming due to dehydration doesn't outweigh the benefit of losing that sprung weight. And like, for example, when you do a VO2 max test, they divide that performance by your kilograms of body weight. It's called your aerobic power. It is your power output to weight ratio that really does

matter. So Rich Froning, when you have to ride a bike uphill, you have to take that weight uphill. It's not like he's just on flat ground. And on flat ground, he would have done really well at 198 pounds, not going uphill. And so when you start to go uphill, that power to weight ratio begins to matter. Oh, boy. Oh, you're thicker than I thought. Wow. Look at your look. Yeah, you're thicker than I thought.

Oh, what year is this? That's 1985. Bro, that's some footage. Yeah, good. Fine. Look at Suze's like leaning back in his chair and shit. That's a good find. I didn't even know that was out there uh uh chris one of the things i was surprised um when i did ask charlie if he was lighter when he crossed the finish line and he said no and i said

how could that be he's like dude i drank 10 bottles of carbs yeah, so he, he made a huge concerted effort, right? Right. Because it's a different type of a competition and he's never done it before, but if he does it again, what he will do is learn from what he experienced and he is going to play it tighter and tighter and tighter. He's going to try and squeeze out more performance where is the low-hanging fruit and that's what i do like with elite athletes like where is the low-hanging fruit and where should we spend our time like you know i work with alex kazan and and i you know i'm only working with two athletes right you know in in the sport of crossfit because the sport adler and kazan just those two that's it wow because that sport. Adler and Gazan, just those two. That's it.

Wow. Those are, that's that, those are good horses. You got, God, those are two of my favorite Adler. Yeah. I mean, the question is, is like, if Alex Gazan can, can learn to run, then she will win the CrossFit games. If she doesn't learn to run, then she's, it's just not going to happen. Interesting. But what you must do is you must, I must have her understand the science behind the performance because a lot of athletes will sit there and they will begin to question things. They will begin to go, wait a minute though. I'm not doing what everybody else is doing. And the problem with that, wow, you, Ben, you guys are good.

Thank you. She is a great, she is an amazing, amazing individual as a human. She is. Mature beyond her years, right? Incredible. And her kindness. And, you know, I did this thing in europe with jeff adler i want to add this too there's a difference between kindness and generosity with her being when she's generous with her being like when she comes on the show she's generous

like like you're generous you're she's fully there she gives when she's here and you leave after a conversation with her more energized than, you know, there's a lot of vampires that are out there, and you leave and you're exhausted. You're drained. She, no matter what condition she is in, you will walk away from that experience in a more uplifted space. Yeah.

And I'll give you an example of her. So Jeff Adler and I, we did with Caroline, who is, I think, the brightest CrossFit coach in the space now. She's got such perspective between men and women. Yeah. Very smart. She's just past her level four. Oh, yeah. I heard about that. Congratulations, Caroline. Actually, someone told me that this morning. Dave told me that this morning. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Truly remarkable. Yeah. Brilliant. And and very sober, too. Right. Just like when you talk to her, like, man, this this this cat got her eye on the prize. Well, so I so about 10 days out of Rogue, I'm prepping Jeff and, you know, for the types of workouts that would be there.

And so what I did is I wrote a list of three workouts that needed to be done. And they were different. One was running, one was eco bike, and one was biker. Well, the biker workout was long. It was like an hour. was long. It was like an hour. And what I said was, is that, you know, Caroline, you need to make sure that he picks the one that he is the most concerned about. That's the one we need to get out of the way first. So they misconnect the information and Jeff does the biker workout. In that workout, there was a lot of 10 second explosive sprints to wake up his neurological

system. Right. And it destroyed him. It really hurt him. And so much so that he couldn't even walk home from the gym, which is maybe, you know, 15 minute walk from to their house. And what I wrote back was I, so Jeff is the one thing that Jeff is not great at his biker. He's not good at, at longer time domains on the bike relative to where other athletes are. It's just, it's not that great. And it's a puzzle as a coach, you're trying to figure out why isn't it better? Well, this workout, it had a bunch of standing sprints at

high RPMs and his weakness was he couldn't hit the high RPMs. So what, when you ride a bike, if you're seated, you're in the saddle, your instability, your, your balance, your agility, your stability is controlled by the saddle and your feet and the handlebars. Well, when you get out of the saddle, if you don't have good balance and change a body weight as you're accelerating, you see weaknesses. And there I found was his weakness. His weakness was he had great power output at high damper settings, high wattage output, but as soon as I turn it to damper one and I want him to go 130 RPMs, he couldn't remotely do it. So I loved it. It was a huge breakthrough and it changed the direction

of our programming. Caroline writes me a note. It Savant. It was so brutal. She said, he's destroyed. He hasn't been sleeping. He hasn't been eating. His back is hurt. He's got 10 days out.

We're trying to set up the new gym. And what did you do, Chris? I wrote back. And the only thing I can do was i'm sorry yeah yeah yeah yeah but and then like four hours later she wrote back and she's like look i was just having a bad day it was a bad moment and i told her i said that's what i love about you is you're gonna come in and you're going to speak your mind and you're going to give me real insight, no sugarcoating. And she never sugarcoats. If she has something to say, it's coming. And that I love. Let me ask you this question about biking. And I don't have the

words to articulate it. So bear with me here. But, and I'm not like a great biker, but I grew up on a bicycle. Like I rode a bike every single day as a kid, right. Just out in the street and around, you know, five to 30 miles a day, whatever, just around the neighborhood hours on a BMX bike. Yeah. I see some of these CrossFit games, athletes ride bike and, and especially in the women. And I actually noticed this in women in college too. They don't ride a bike. There's some component of biking that's athletic that's this transfer of body weight

so that you're not just i can't really explain it but there's like a bounce to riding a bike and there's like some and there's something to it to where you're using your calves and your quads and your hamstrings and your glutes and you're using the whole you're using everything but when i see these certain athletes ride a bike who haven't been on a bike they think it's pushing down right they just hold the bike there and they're pushing down what sticks in my mind the most i don't know if she still does it is the first time i saw brooke wells get on a bike i was like holy shit that's not even bike riding what she's doing she's just she's she's doing weight lifting on a bike yeah it's almost like they've learned how to ride a bike in a spin class so it's so it's so trippy those people are at a massive disadvantage and they don't even know it they don't even know it yeah how would you

explain that to someone and their balance is horrible too you can't have balance when you're doing that either right so that's but you have to be you have to actually practice the outside outdoor riding getting out of the saddle and controlling because even if you're standing on a bike and it's stationary that's a whole different thing when that bike is moving right and it's hitting mixed terrain you have to put time in the saddle outdoors. But I would even see – I would even see – and I hate to keep picking on women, but I don't see this phenomenon in men. And even when I went to college, I would ride to school every single day. And at UCSB, everyone's on bikes, more bikes per capita than anywhere else in the world outside of China.

And fucking – there was always i would always see girls doing that and i'm like these girls been riding their bike every single day to class for fucking two years and they're still riding it like just smashing the pedals yeah i and i don't know you unfuck that could you fix that so absolutely so you can but you first have to explain to an athlete yeah this. And this is what I do with any athlete that I work with is that you explain to them what the purpose is, the intent. So if I was directing you, Savan, what I would do is I would say, Savan, look, you're incredible at riding a bike in the saddle. You, you are incredible at flat sandwich. Are you making me

a shit sandwich? Oh, like, you know, the compliment and then the, I'm going to do, because my job is to convince you of what I'm about to tell you. Okay. That's my job. I have to have you believe in what I'm about to say, because I'm going to start programming workouts that incorporate this idea that I'm about to sell you on. And that is one of the most important things that coaches can do. What is the purpose of this workout? Like, why is this workout of all the workouts, the very best one that you can be doing right now? So for you, what I would do is I would tell you is like, look, your seated muscle groups eventually will fatigue and fail. And what's

your backup plan? You don't, you don't have a backup plan. But what I want to do is I want to teach you how to stand up and get out of the saddle as if you're climbing a steep mountain pass. And when you stand out of the saddle, you're going to be using different muscle groups, which are going to allow your seated muscle groups to recover. Now, when we stand, the most beautiful thing about standing is we could start now using our body weight. So when we stand, what I want you to think about is at the top of the pedal stroke, I want your weight on that side and your weight will ride that pedal down. You're not pushing it down. The weight rides it down. And now this pedal on the other side

comes up and you switch your weight. And so that's why you see people switching weight. Now, if you're outside, the reason why you see the bike tilting from side to side as they transfer the body weight is because you could create a better lever it's more of an advantage in terms of your power to weight ratio by manipulating the bike you can't do that indoors and so the only thing indoors we can do is switch our body weight from side to side that That's what you want to tell an athlete is that we are not mashing the pedals. We're trying to allow those mashing legs to recover by using different muscle groups. God, you're so patient. You're being a coach is so you have to have such crazy patients. But you also have to be smart. Yeah, you have to be really, you have to be really smart. How long would it take

someone to learn that as an adult? I know exactly what you're talking about. As you say it, I'm like, yeah, I intuitively do that. When you lean the bike over, you're in essence bringing the pedal up by bringing the bike over as you use your weight to push it down. So you're just taking advantage of everything. But I've never thought of that. But, but as you're saying it, I'm like seeing myself ride my bike. I was like, yep, that's how I ride a bike. Yeah. I think that that's where. I can't imagine having to learn that at 27 years old. I can't imagine. That sounds like so hard.

I can't imagine trying to teach it if you've never done it before. Well, that too. Oh, wow. Wow. So that's why I don't teach weightlifting i i i i it's it's not my sandbox uh wow that's interesting um do you think how about this i i when i thought this question i thought i was amazing because i don't know if this has ever been asked do you think that um running is the most dangerous modality in all of CrossFit to train. Why? In what context? In injury rate.

Chance of injury and fucking up the whole fucking, the machine. It's like, you know, like when you're tinkering with something small in your car, like get a flat tire and the car's fucked. Yeah, so I'll say two things. Is running safe or is it dangerous? Where does it fall under the... I think if we talk about in terms of dangerous, I think there's a lot of misinformation of knee-related issues. When you tell me you have Jason run 20 miles, my butt puckers a little bit. I'm like, ooh. You're not doing that just on...

Right. The longest he's ever run a 600 sprint and now he's doing 20 mile run. Jason, the week before that did 10 by 800s in two minutes and 57 seconds. Wow. With a one-to-one work to rest ratio. And that's a marathon predictor workout. So he did 257.

And what you do in that workout is you take your average 800 meter time in the 10 by 800, and he averaged 257. And you convert that minutes and seconds to hours and minutes. And there is your marathon time. It's called Yasso's 800. Now, that workout, if he trained enough volume, he should be able to run sub three. That is a confidence building workout. I mean,

as a coach, this is what gets dicey. You must be really accurate. Cause what if Jason did that workout three weeks or four weeks out from the games and he bombs it, he averages three 10, right? You had meaning you, you had fucked him on accident. And now he's going into the games and he's like, where am I? He did something that was impossible. And that's the magic of being a coach. When in that last month is you're trying to get athletes to do things that they don't believe that it's capable of being done. And that's where you're going to create a champion. And so,

you know, with Jason, it wasn't a surprise. It was a stair step. I mean, that's, we see stair steps all the time, right? Like when I started, you know, I started off by doing a local 5k and that went to a 10k. And next thing you know, I'm in Kona doing a full Ironman. It didn't just leapfrog. It was a progression, and that Ironman seemed as difficult as that first 5K. So what about the – is running – could you put a hierarchy, you think? There's a hierarchy like overhead squat, then running, then setups. I mean, is there any like – or no? Do you think you could put the the um i would put running at the very top as the safest or most dangerous

most valuable i think most valuable in terms of a bang for the buck meaning the value pack yeah manny pack yes yeah the the value that you get and the risk it has, there's no evidence of knee-related issues in the sport of running. I've never come across studies on it. I mean, it's one of the most common talked about pieces. But running does, you know, lead to injury. I mean, I see it all the time. You know, a lot of CrossFit athletes, they have shin splints. You know, you see it all the time. A lot of CrossFit athletes, they have shin splints. You see it all the time. Justin Madero said it last two years ago, one of the reasons why he really struggled was shin splints.

It does occur, for sure it does. I've been injured. I got second place in Kona, and my IT band was so messed up that it took me out of the sport for six months just to heal up that. No, so it does occur, but what we have to realize is the benefit that running provides on multiple levels. And the biggest one is, is you think about what you do when you're not working. You're on your feet and you must be able to manage your body weight. If you're able to manage your body weight, imagine all the other things that you're now able to do. So what you want to realize is that as you age, the key will be is, are you capable of managing your own body weight? The other piece is, is the cardiorespiratory adaptations. I mean, like I do a lot of work

in firefighting. The number one killer in firefighting is a heart attack, cardiorespiratory disease. And all they would need- You mean for the firefighters? You mean for the firefighters? Yeah. And so part of what, the firefighters. Yeah. And so part of what, all they would need to do is some 30 minute of jogging, aerobic pace, low intensity, heart rate of 180 minus your age. Just do that. It's not hard. We're not asking you to suffer. I just need some consistency. And so you mean just like every day, just get on the, get on the, on the air runner and knock out 30 minutes. Yep.

And that's where the sport of CrossFit's changed. I used to have athletes that would, they would, they would contact me and they're like, Hey man, you know, uh, just qualified for, uh, the games out of regionals. And I need to start up my running. How do stop losses work on Kraken? out of regionals, and I way to plan ahead. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. At Best Western, when you stay three nights this summer, you earn 10,000 bonus points.

And while you're reliving your summer childhood road trip memories, they're creating new ones. So check into any one of our more than 2,300 hotels and make more memories to look back on. Here, we'll set the scene. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for terms and conditions. Yeah, that's not how it works. It's not. It's a little late. I can help you for next year. You have to remember that in the sport of running, in cardio-based sports, there's two basic adaptations. One is the central adaptations,

your heart, your lungs. Well, most CrossFitters, their heart and their lungs are adapted, right? That your heart doesn't know what movements it's doing. It's just trying to get blood to those moving muscle groups. Well, those muscle groups are what we call a peripheral adaptation. Well, when we talk about peripheral adaptation, it follows this theory of specificity which says if you want to get good in a movement, you have to do that movement. So if you think about it in terms of running, what you're doing is by running, you're creating physiological peripheral adaptations in those running muscles. physiological peripheral adaptations in those running muscles, specifically improving those muscles ability to pull that oxygen out of the bloodstream and consume that oxygen as a fuel. And Glassman talks about this a lot, right? He realizes, I mean, I haven't had some of the best conversations that I've ever had with somebody like he is one of the best conversations that I've ever had with somebody. Like he is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met.

And it could have been 20. It was actually at the award ceremony when Camille won. I missed the award ceremony because he was talking about mitochondria and he wanted to understand how I was training athletes in 5,000 meters because he was talking to me about mitochondria adaptations in terms of multiplying them and then making mitochondria bigger. For the people listening, the mitochondria is like the energy center, the power center of what makes us move. It's where we get our energy from. So if you have more of them or you have bigger

ones or both, which occurs from aerobic level adaptations, then what you're able to do is move faster and longer in that particular movement. As we age, those things go away. So if you want to retain your youth, if you want to retain your ability to fight disease, those mitochondria matter. Well, in my opinion, if I am trying to maximize mitochondria, where do I want to focus? And that is the largest muscle group in the body and the most common thing that I do, which is standing, supporting my structure that's why um there was a great oh here we i knew running was dangerous uh a buddy and i went for a run he got hit by a car sounds unsafe to me dude i've been riding my bike

and i've been hit by an rd in the back of my head recently no this is back in my triathlon days by us by a side mirror yeah yeah imagine that did take you off the bike oh no but it put my head all the way down to the handlebars almost knocked my teeth out damn dude damn yep that's not a good place to get hit hey all the great boxers run i mean like mannyquiao, it's like his fucking bread and butter. I mean, just like, hey. Well, that's why Conor McGregor. So, you know, Conor McGregor. Yeah.

It's interesting, right, that he knows that he is going to go for 30 minutes. And he doesn't train that way. Conor McGregor, when he fights, he fights and it's got to go quick. He is training for a, basically a three minute knockout. Right. It goes beyond that first five minutes.

He's in trouble. Yep. And, and, and, and, and it's interesting the way, I mean,

he's here, he's got this, this incredible coaching staff, the most expensive staff in the world. And they're not realizing that there are athletes that he is going to, like Khabib, that he's going to have to fight that are prepared to go 25 minutes. And it's, to me, it's always interesting is that athletes don't realize that you must train for what you want to get good at and so like like diaz like the guy diaz does uh um triathlons he is he's the man right i mean

these that the level anything that goes into the third or fourth or fifth round even if he's been losing the whole fight the other dude's fucked that's and you see it so if you ever go live event you will feel that energy shift and you know it's over before it's over you mean from him like if you're in the you'll or even like mike tyson back in the day like you knew it was over um and and and that's what like i see i see that within athletes is that they know it's over. And what's beautiful about CrossFit is that as soon as an athlete gets broken, like in the middle of a competition, they're now protecting their own position. They're no longer thinking about letting that person, like they're in contention.

It's like, I need, it's about preservation of my current space. Instead of attacking, instead of attacking. That's what's so beautiful about it is that the mental acuity that we were talking about is really important. If, of how do you break an athlete if you're side by side and, and, and you have to be aware that that is part of sport, right? That because it's about what we're doing in CrossFit. It's not just about getting first, second, and third. It's not getting fourth. It's being aware of the people behind you. And that's why it's different. It's, it's, it's, and I like that about CrossFit, you know, that don't give up because those points do matter. But also, you want to keep your head in the game for the person that you're with,

because maybe they're softening. Like, let's say you, you're an amazing sprinter. And if it comes down to a final sprint, the last 40 seconds, you'll beat me every time. But I'm a great endurance athlete. So what do I do to beat you? Because I can't let it come to a sprint because I will lose. This is where what we were saying about Frazier and Froning and Camille is that you've got to be smart. What am I needing to do now so I don't get into a position to sprint against you?

And you know what I do? Is I surge in the middle of the run. And you know what you're going to do is bridge the gap. Every time you bridge the gap, I'm taking away your speed. Tactically, I have to do it. Otherwise, just take the win. And that's where the elite are. Like we said earlier in this podcast, like, you don't know what you don't know. Imagine you're competing against an athlete who is looking across the field and watching your rate of breath

and seeing whether or not you're in control of your breathing or hyperventilating and then looking at your remaining distance. And even though they're with you, you know, they're not a threat. Now imagine you think that you're intimidating this person when in fact you're just a toy. Right. Oh, right. He's, he's actually just recalibrating off of you. That's all right. That is like just the hunter watching his prey, like in the field and that's what's happening in our sport today if you're not aware of the breathing cadence of all of your competitors like so a couple years ago when becca boyd um they had a an event she won the crossfit games uh and the 40 40 44 age group um and it was a rock event it was the the rock event that that matt dropped the sandbag i forget what year that was but it was basically 1500 meters with a i mean like something fell out of his bag or something yeah like a weight or something yeah yeah like a bag and so

you did 1500 meters with the load and then increase the load and it was four laps increasing loads and and i had done a seminar hold on one second i just want to answer one thing uh but back away conor b diaz in a five round fight actually um but i do think that diaz won the fourth and the fifth round and that was a very contentious fight okay go ahead back to rebecca void so wait so let's get that person off so what i want what i want in what we're talking about- Get your shirts, get your CEO shirts at Vindicate, by the way, V-N-D-K-A.com. Thank you.

Conor McGregor. Let's talk about him just, and we'll go back to that other piece. We'll go back to Voigt. I'll write Voigt's name down. And it's no just, he's a phenomenal talent. But what I'm talking about is coaching. That's what I'm talking about is coaching. That's what I'm addressing is the

coaching. And yes, athlete and Connor can beat Diaz in five rounds, but I'm talking about the coaching and preparing athletes for the event. And the truth is, is that if Connor doesn't knock someone out early, he may have to go the entire five rounds. It could be 25 minutes. Now, if you ever want proof of coaching, look at what happens in between the five-minute rounds and watch some athletes in what they do during their recovery, right? One of the major measures of aerobic fitness is how fast can you recover? As a matter of fact, when you do a VO2 max test, they leave the mask on and they're measuring your heart rate and your consumption of oxygen after the first minute and after the second minute.

If your heart rate from one test to the next drops lower in the second test, aerobically, you have improved, right? Well, when you get one minute of recovery, what is the major thing that you're trying to do? You're trying to put yourself in a better position going into the next round. How is that done? By lowering your heart rate. And how do you do that? By practicing the same routine, the same ritual every single time, because the body adapts to that stimulus. The brain, the body knows I have recovery. So they have to practice it. And the recovery protocol is straightforward. If you're hyperventilating, get control of the breath. And then what you need to do is slowly keep moving to

keep those slow twitch fibers firing. And then with the last three seconds, get the head back in the game. We're talking about coaching and Connor. Does Connor have a recovery ritual or is his one minute random? Is it different every single time? If it's different, then I would argue his coaching staff doesn't know what the purpose is of that one minute, or they don't know what to do. And it's the same thing we see in the sport all the time now in CrossFit. We will see athletes, because intervals are a part of the sport, do you know what to do during your recovery? Or do you just go into an isometric squat, which we see all the time? that would be like recovering on a rope climb by holding on to the rope. And so you need to realize is that in everything that you do, there's opportunity. But do you even know that those pieces exist?

Are they available to you? Becca Voigt, you were going to tell the year she won the 40 the 40 i got this is a great story so in this this event so we do a seminar at her gym and becca voight is one of the kindest people i've ever met and she was kind both to my wife heidi and myself in 2013 like, and never forgot it. And I met her, you know, years later. And she said to me, she said, we were just talking. And I said, you know, I want to thank you for way back when, you know, and I really appreciate the kindness. And I said, and this was after I had the aerobic capacity seminar, I said, if you ever want me to do a seminar, I will come to your gym for free. And I'll do it to your your community for free. Because I really appreciate what you did. Like it was very motivating for me, as an outsider within the CrossFit space that a legend in 2013

did that. So sure enough, we went to her gym. And she of course, you know, we she was like, you know what, don't worry about what, you know, free. I just gave her as many spaces as that she wanted. So we do this and I teach about breathing and the protocols of breathing. And are you aware of someone around you and their breathing mechanics? Are you aware of when they're in control of their breath or you're out of control of the breath? And hyperventilation is a sign when your demand for oxygen is exceeding what you can supply. You're essentially dying.

You're in a non-sustainable pace. You have to slow down and get back in control of your breathing, which means that you're back in control of your pace. It is a way for you to assess somebody real time. So she participates in this, everything that we did in the seminar and the breathing exercise and all of that. She goes on to win the CrossFit Games that year. She texts me that night and she says, I would like to have coffee with you. My husband and I would like to have coffee with you and Heidi the next day. And I go, great, love to. And we sit down and have coffee the next day. And she says to me, I never swear ever on a podcast, but I'm going to swear because it's the context.

So she says to me, she says, you know, you remember when you came to our gym and you taught me about that breathing protocol? Oh, yeah, of course I do. Yeah, I remember that well. And she says, I just I want you to know that the entire time that you were doing that, I thought this was bullshit, that you're just full of shit. This was just stuff. And it was just trying to do some gimmicky thing to create value in your course that no one ever talks about this and and and i was like i was so bummed like it really i just sank i melted just like because when when you someone you idolize and someone that in your mind and now it was like, I'm foolish. And it was like, how do I, it was awful. So I panicked

and I'm like, so I'm here to make, why you want to make me feel bad? And she said, no, no, no, let me finish. So she says, I want you to know that during that ruck event, it was me against the person who was more than likely going to win the CrossFit Games. And we were side by side through first lap, through the second lap, through the third lap. And she said somewhere in the beginning portion of that fourth and final lap, I popped into her head. And her experience with the breathing protocol earlier that year pops into her head and what she learned. And so she started listening and what she heard was her own breathing

cadence of being in control. And she knew what her in control steps per. So what it is, is your number of steps you take per cycle of breath. Okay. She listens to the person next door and she says, Chris, right then and there, I knew I was going to win the CrossFit Games. I knew because she was in trouble. I heard it.

I made a surge. I broke the elastic and I ended up winning. It was one of the greatest feelings to know that I'm going to win. And she wouldn't have taken that risk. She wouldn't have taken that risk and played it safe if she hadn't learned to listen to the breath. Right. And that's the whole point is that athletes out there are knowledgeable, but they also must practice it. They must train it. Now, she was incredible. I've got to say, when we learned her breathing, she had a very reliable and predictable cadence.

She was a natural at it. So it was easy for her to pick it up. Many athletes, it's not that easy. But yeah, but that's why she's a great athlete is because naturally she picks up on these skills without even knowing that she has them. That's, that's where like athletes as a coach, what's challenging is that, that you're trying to prepare athletes for something that may never occur. Right. And, and that's the hardest part, but that's why I'm only down to two athletes, because the difficulties now within the sport are so granular that you have to do things that are hyper-creative. Like let's say, for example, you get hurt and you're going to the games, but something happens to your lower leg and you can't, you can't run and you have to take four weeks off.

Well, unfortunately, after four weeks, you have lost a tremendous amount of, of adaptation. So what do I do to prepare you? And, and this is where, again, coaching comes in. You have to prepare that athlete. Now I could certainly have you gradually go back into running and doing that, you know, two workouts a week, but we have to compress our schedule because we lost a month. So then how do we do it? And this is a real example. I mean, it's an example that I used in the past. And what you must do is you have to hit certain stimuluses, because we don't know what the time domain of the workout is. If I knew it was 5k,

I could train for the speeds around 5k, and it makes it simple. But I have to train everything from maybe a marathon speed to, you know, 200 meter speed and all of those speeds in between. If you don't train a specific speed, then your body's not prepared for that speed and you will underperform. So you got to hit all those spots. And that's what's challenging in all of the movements. And so how do you do it in this case? What I would do for you, Siobhan, is I would just say to you is like, look, we're gonna get back into running. The problem is, is that you don't have the capacity

to be able to do a full-blown workout where you should be because you've taken a month off. So I've got to scale that back. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna scale it back and take a third of the workout away and hit got to scale that back. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to scale it back and take a third of the workout away and hit a stimulus within that workout. Now, later in that day, six hours later, we're going to come back and do a second running workout. Same thing. I'm not going to give you the full workout. I'm going to take away a third of it, but it will be a different stimulus. So by me shrinking both of them, but doing them in the same day, I get a volume related adaptation,

but I also get a stimulus related adaptation. That ties to what you were saying in the beginning of the show too. You got to get the volume in. You have to get the volume in, but if your body's not capable, meaning it will break down if you did the full tilt, then how do you do it? And so this is where you have to become creative. And the sport has become granular that if you want to win, you've got to get people that know their space. That's why I said earlier, like if it's weightlifting, I'm not your guy because you have- Do you have a protege, by by the way do you have someone so i work with a couple of um different people that intern and bringing them up yeah were they were they also um iron men or iron women no no so that's where it's like, you know, the amount of time that I spent doing it as a professional and the years.

No, it's a very rare, like you said early on, you know, this is a unique sport. You know, when you introed me. Yeah. And if you went to a running coach, they would tell you it is physically impossible to get good at running and only doing it two days a week. But that's not true. It's not true, but they're a specialist in that space. And I'll give you an example. So when I used to do swimming, I would swim 40,000 meters a week.

Just a swimmer. I was a specialist. Is that where you started? That's your start? Swimming? Okay, not running and biking. No, I'm a lousy runner. Let me just ask you this real quick.

Is that common? When I think of Ironman, I think of everyone entering through the running door or the majority. They do. They do. They have a decent background in swimming because learning how to swim when you're an adult is impossible okay you know it's just the mechanics of it is very challenging so you have to have a decent background but the swim represents such a small amount i never understood why it was even in there you know like for me it was around 48 to 50 minutes meanwhile the

bike ride takes four and a half hours so it seems like a silly ratio but women is it's funny i'm about to put my kid into a six i found a swim coach and i said hey i want my kids to swim uh two hours every two one hour sessions every week for the next six months and when they're done i want them to hate swimming he's's like, I can do it. I'm like, I want you to just crush them in the pool. He said, I'll teach them everything. That's what I, you know, good for you, Savan. Because that is the piece that when you're an adult

and you know how to swim, I mean, and swim, it is one of the biggest confidence boosts that you have that in the ocean, if you're in a river, you're in a lake. That's why, because I want them to surf. I want them to be so confident in the water. Yeah, and the ocean is a terrifying thing, and you see that all the time at the games when athletes are hypoxic, and then they run to the ocean, and then they all stop and wait because they're afraid. Okay, so you were saying, we were talking about do you have have a protege and people like not understanding that you can't actually get good at running with just two days a week of training? Yeah.

So, okay. Yeah, that's my point. So when I was swimming, I did 40,000. When I did triathlons, I did 25,000. Okay. All right. A week. Okay.

I did 25,000. Okay. All right, a week. Okay. And then here I come into the sport of CrossFit, and I start working with games athletes, athletes that want to win the CrossFit Games. Now, imagine what my head is thinking. I went from 40 to 25.

What should a CrossFit Games athlete who wants to win, how much swimming should they do? And that's the big challenge for somebody who is on the outside. Now, a triathlon is a multi-sport event, similar to CrossFit. It's a multi-sport event. And that's what I was thinking, but they're not even close to being related. The athlete that wants to win the CrossFit Games right now will swim probably 2,000 meters a week, one time a week. Imagine that, and that's sufficient. And you were doing 25,000 when swimming was just a third of the event.

That's correct. Or less than a third. Less than a third, right? So let's say nine hours, it represented 48 minutes. Okay. Yeah. So that's where it's a very difficult transition unless you have the experience. And that's why I think about, I've had a lot of opportunity and fortune in the sport. I've been a student of the game though. I mean, I really have, I've been a student of the game, though. I mean, I really have the amount of effort that I take in terms of deep dives, in terms of the way in which I write workouts. So like, for example, the workouts that I write, if you wanted to do a biker workout, you know what, I could program that workout based upon your wattage, I could program that workout based upon RPMs. If you wanted to put a biker

workout into a CrossFit workout, I can give you the biker pace based upon a time domain of the workout that you were targeting. I can do that for all of the movements. If you wanted to work on your 20-minute speed in running, I can give you that. You want to work on your 5K speed, your mile speed. All of these are with precision. That's what I mean by a student of the game. I'm not just giving you rate of perceived exertion or easy, moderate, and fast, or there's strategy in every single piece that is being done. And that's what I mean by a student of the game. And a coach is it's opened up another chapter of programming that is, it mesmerizes. How so give me an example. Well, so let's say that, okay at, let's say 55 RPMs,

what is your wattage? If you're at 60 RPMs, what is your wattage? And so the question really would be is how would you be able to create a formula that if I plug in RPMs into like a spreadsheet, that if I plug in RPMs into like a spreadsheet, I could find the equivalent wattage. And you can just ask AI that now and get all that stuff. You can take your RPM numbers as coordinate X. And then what you do is you take your wattage in Y and you drop it in and you ask for some linear progression or some kind of equation to find a relationship between those results. And what will kick out is a formula, an X-Y formula.

and you know what X and Y are, which is RPMs or watts, you now have a formula to actually personalize either one of those. For most people, what I just said, they're mind boggled by that. But they can now do it and not even have to understand the math. They just need to understand I'm trying to find a relationship. So like you, Saban, let's just say you could run a mile in six minutes. What you can do is look at that mile and you can scrape data from other events and other individuals. I'll give you an example. Better one. High Rocks. High Rocks.

Are you familiar with it? Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Beautiful. So High Rocks on their website, they have all of their results, five years of results. High Rocks recently brought me on board to do the High Rocks Aerobic Capacity course. We've entered into it.

Oh, that's cool. That's cool. I respect the fuck out of those guys. That's a really cool. That's a cool thing. And I love Hunter. Dude, Hunter's the man, right? Yeah. Yep. So I'm going to drop this bomb out there. I, I, I,

I'm friendly with Hunter too. As a matter of fact, he was one of the people that, you know, he came out and trained with us for a week when he was trying to get that bid and there's Hunter personality, right? Yes. Right. There's Hunter personality, right? Yes. Right. And then there's Hunter. And he's a very respectful, kind, and thoughtful man.

The rest is just stick. And I thought, I wonder, you know, as I'm, you know, working with High Rocks and, you know, the ownership in Germany, and I'm thinking about Jeff Adler. And I'm like, the problem with Jeff and going head-to-head against Hunter is that Hunter would beat him because Hunter runs a lot. Running, running, yeah. He runs a lot. But I thought about Hunter and his ego loves the world record. And he doesn't have the world record in the doubles.

Yeah, yeah. He's been trying. He's been trying, right? Just missed it by 12 seconds. He made two attempts in the last six months, right? Right. What if Hunter partnered with Jeff? Wow. And did the world record? Because the difficulty is that Hunter can't find someone that is capable to keep with him in both. Now, Jeff can keep up with Hunter in the run, but he's going to need to rest before starting the obstacle, which means Hunter could start the obstacle first, which will allow Jeff to recover. And then Jeff can come in and dominate because where Jeff is going to dominate and be better than Hunter is in all those obstacles. That would be a great promo for high rocks.

Wouldn't it be? Yeah. Great promo for high rocks. And I think that that's that, that relationship that, that, that can do it. And people in the CrossFit community would love it too.

Just like, you know, sending one of its own over there and, and people really, I think Hunter's what's interesting is i think hunter's popularity is kind of in a really steep ascent right now even though he's getting towards the end of his career i think people are really into him right now here's the thing hunter mcintyre he is a big kid and he manages his body weight in the movement of running he's able to run a 430 mile

and he's up i heard he's doing wadapalooza did you hear that is that true i think i don't know if he is or not i mean i hope so because hunter is what he needs to do is things where it's pushing the edges of him being uncomfortable if and and he needs to experience that, right? Of what it's like to fight for a position versus he knows after the first event that he's going to win the High Rocks World Championships. He knows. And so in order to stay hungry, you have to do things that you're taking a risk. And that's what's important. So what you saw back there was the results for High Rocks. High Rocks prints out and makes available to every athlete. They make available all of your split times. So what I did is I thought, you know, if I'm going to do an assessment, I can write some Python code and I can mine all of their five years of data.

And so let's say, for example, so scroll all the way to the top on this. So you can enter your finishing time in on this result. You could enter it. time in on this result. You could enter it. Now, imagine if I, Sivan, I take you and you've never done a high rocks. Why is the mining of this information important? Because what I have done is I have mined now your gender and your age group. Okay. And I have taken all of the non-professional times in your gender and age groups. And what I've done is I've averaged them out and created a model that will take your anticipated finishing time and populate what people have done. Men in your age group have done historically for their first pass.

group have done historically for their first pass. And so what it does now is it gives you some information that you now can train on. For example, as soon as I do that, now I have your training paces, don't I? Because I have your fastest 1,000 meter runtime and your slowest 1,000 meter runtime and your average 1,000 meter runtime. Remember, if you want to get good at something, you have to practice it. So you practice running obviously, but those speeds and you can mine that data now. And AI makes that available for everybody. But here's the problem is you have to come up with that idea. You have to know how to implement that. That's the key. In everything, what you must do is in order to push the frontier, you're doing things that have never been done before. AI is just making it, once you come up with that

idea to test your hypothesis. In minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy. And so let's say like for you, you now do a high rocks and you're trying to find your low hanging fruit. Well, mine the data from the professionals

who should have better pacing. And I would take all of your individual results, all your splits, and now compare it against a professional in your age group and gender and come up with maybe your time in the sleds is 30% slow. And that's the worst. There's your bang for the buck. That's where we need to spend our time. And so I think that what AI is doing is it's going to mainstream programming on a vanilla basis where a individual can do it better than a coach because they can load their variables

in to the programming to spit out their workout. But you still have to know what you're doing if you want the next layer. If you want general fitness, you know what? I have a bum knee. I'm 40 pounds overweight. I'm this age. I'm this gender. I have 30 minutes of total time. I have this available equipment. Write me a workout. And it can do it in 10 seconds. But can it personalize it for you? Well, yeah. AI is definitely not going to tell you, hey, you need to say it out loud. That's right. Or they're not going to tell someone who's about to interview, hey, get this person to say it out loud. They're not going to understand the…

No, not at all. No. hey, get this person to say out loud. They're not going to understand the... No, not at all. Not at all. But it does allow, and I think that that's what's exciting now, is I think there's going to be a dramatic shift in terms of the quality of programming. Because the holy grail in programming is personalization. If you wanted to maximize value, Savant, what you would do is I would get your results, any kind of result. And over time, I get another result and another result. And pretty soon what I do is I have for any movement, and that's what I have for Jeff, is I have for any movement, I precisely know the exact stimulus to create the adaptation.

I'm not just guessing. It is precise. And that's how you, that granular level of programming is how you maximize efficiency in adaptation. And that's the holy grail. The problem is, is that it's very time consuming to be able to do that. I think that this next iteration of programming is going to make that automated. And that to me is what's going to be great. I think that level of performance, accuracy, precision, reduction of injury, right?

Precision reduction of injury, right? Over-training is going to dramatically shift. Instead of getting generalized training, like, you know, going to runner's world and saying, I want to do a marathon and not caring who you are, right? Your background, you're going to get something that is more precise, more accurate, and it will create more value for you. It will respect your time i'm going back to the breathing thing i wanted to throw this out there i made a movie about this guy named john berzink he was the greatest professional arm wrestler who ever lived and he was so fucking good it was it

was crazy and he's still wrestling to this day and it's just nuts but when i started working with him and making the movie i noticed that when he he's why he just watches the guy he's going up against. And second, they do some second. They exhale that he cranks. He's not going to. He's always timing it with their breathing. He's always timing his attacks with their breathing. And I was like, wow, very cool.

Yeah. So that's where I look. The same thing. Yeah. So there is a. I mean, he didn't even he didn't even try to hide it but so okay but maybe still some people didn't even notice i mean i never heard anyone say it out loud but that's just now but i would see him do that i'm like this motherfucker is just watching how people breathe and the second they like exhale he launches at him that's the whole

point right is that you're you're trying to get an athlete who knows more than the other yeah and and that's where athletes they they don't realize because they don't know so one of the one of the here i'll give you an example if you look at the start of the cross-country event at the games and the men are in the front and they're waiting to go yeah none of them have their shirts on and just as a and if you're a coach and you haven't done this then this is something that shows opportunity for you that you're not paying attention to the detail how many of them are wearing chest straps right because? Because the chest strap, what it's going to do is it's going to, right? Chest straps and then a watch.

So a watch is one thing, but a chest strap is another thing because the chest strap gives a level of detail. It gives you your cadence. It gives you your stride length. It gives you your balance between left side, right side. It gives you vertical oscillation and it dovetails with your watch. And so like this garment here, what it will do is it will precisely tell the athlete real time what they're doing. If you're not aware as a coach,

if you're listening, how many men were wearing a chest strap, that's opportunity to learn and be aware of where athletes are in this sport. Because every single one of them should have been wearing a chest strap. Why you're there tweaking that in real time, even in competition, you tweak that. No. So let's say that you, let's say that you have in the movement of running through all of our work, the maximum heart rate that you can manage in terms of your sustainable pace. If you go above it, you're going to hyperventilate and you're accumulating acidity. And if that acidity builds up, it's damaging. And you have to be aware that you have a max lift, a neurologically damaging workout later in the day.

So if you're neurologically fatigued or if you have this accumulation of acidity, your recovery after the event is going to take longer. It may interfere with your ability to lift heavy. And so what what I'm saying is, is that you would have a heart rate of, let's say, 175. You precisely know 175 is, uh-oh, I'm in trouble. I have to be careful beyond that, because if I go beyond that, I'm now creating fatigue that I may ruin the next events. now creating fatigue that I may ruin the next events. And so what do you do? You look at your watch. Now, a lot of athletes will say, no, no, no, you could do that by feel. But what I'm talking about is precision. That's correct. And so athletes, if they're not doing that, like, for example, I know if you're doing a marathon and what I do is I look at.

So I had lunch with Adam Knife for Prospect Fort Vancouver yesterday. And awesome guy, awesome guy. Best. And he did the Portland Marathon and I did an evaluation of his marathon time. his marathon time. And so he asked me, he says, where's the highest value for me in running? Because I'm trying to get him to do high rocks. I think he would dominate, dominate. He would become a world champion in his age group for sure. And so I said to him, I said, when he asked me, I said, here is your results. And what I want you to look at is your cadence. You have a very low cadence. And the reason why that's a problem is, is because when you get tired, your cadence, if you don't have a higher number, how are you going to maintain speed? And he says,

well, what do you mean? I said, think about it. When you get tired, your stride length, you're going to actually, when you get tired, have a shorter length because you don't have the power output to be able to keep that stride length. So it will get shorter and shorter. It's going to go from 1.3 meters to 1.2 meters. So essentially, it's going to be four inches shorter every step, which is 200 steps in a mile. shorter every step, which is 200 steps in a mile. So what we need to do is have another weapon when your length gets shortened and that is cadence. Your number one opportunity based upon this data is work on your cadence. And so going back to that- You're looking at all the levers and adjusting which ones you can,

and it's being logical though. And yes, yes, yes. But remember, I'm trying to convince him that this is what he needs to do and he has to believe it. Right. And so it's hard to argue when you're looking at the degradation of stride length and not having a weapon to balance that speed. So what happens? You just end up going slower. This is why Tia is the best ruck athlete in CrossFit because when that ruck gets heavy, Tia can maintain a stride cadence of 185 steps in a minute. She is without question the highest cadence athlete in the sport and no one's going to beat her until they could get their cadence up.

And that's what we saw from Jeff at Rogue. Wow. The reason why Jeff dominated was because he trains workouts that are cadence-based workouts, not speed speed but cadence under different loads and so this is where i'm sitting with adam and it's like you have to have something compelling is the point and then this circles all the way back to just seeing having

the data granular level personalized training and and and but loving it like i yeah i there is nothing that besides i had to bring up love well and what turns me on yeah besides heidi a good spreadsheet right and a good equation like a good equation when it works like i wrote a couple of months ago an equation where like so let's just say that you do a 20-minute test on the BIPERG. FTP test, functional threshold power. That 20 minutes – should we shut it off? Hey. We're good.

I have to have you back on again. My wife is texting me saying, your fucking kid is in the car. Get out of here. No, she doesn't talk to me like that. I'd love you to death, Chris, and you deserve better than being cut off at 90 uh uh 94 minutes listen that's all right i was just gonna yeah we'll leave your viewers on on hold for one of the most brilliant formulas that i wrote for the biker okay okay okay i'm gonna put right now brilliant uh biker formula okay let me just leave you with this um Someone paid $1.99, and they want to know if you had to marry, fuck, or kill Matt Fraser, Khalifa, or Froning.

You had to marry one of them, fuck one of them, or kill one of them. Fraser, Khalifa, Froning. Would you like to take a stab at this for $1.99? I would marry Jason Khalifa. I don't know about the other ones, but I would take Khalifa. They're safe. Okay, good. Okay, I like that.

And I really like all three of them, but Jason is, Jason's one of the most enduring humans that I have. You wouldn't mind that you wouldn't mind all that hair in the shower. Every time you got in there, there'd be shower hair on the walls. You would have to shower separate, but yeah, that would bother me. That would bother, but it's just his heart and he is one of the best humans that i've our friendship is yeah yeah he is he's the real deal buddy you demand thanks savannah appreciate it yeah uh the the audience got a shitload out of it this is is going to be a massive episode.

I was marking all the spots where there were things where we should make subclips, and I've never marked so many. You're the fucking king, dude. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks, dude. Love you. Bye. Chris Inshaw, Matt Souza, thank you. I'm off to the races. God damn, that guy's a fucking fire hose of stories and information huh yeah this already is well this

is part d or something all right love you guys sue the suzy man you guys tomorrow morning 6 a.m for members only we uh the behind the scenes here we go about the party all right later suza bye