The Sevan Podcast - How We Program for CrossFit: Competitors | Shut Up & Scribble Ep 3

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

J.R. and Taylor go through how they program for affiliates, games athletes, competitors, etc Get programming from Taylor at Self Made Training Program Free 7-Day Trial - https://www.selfmadetrainingprogram.com/ Follow the boys on Instagram: Taylor Self - https://www.instagram.com/taylormidself/ J.R. Howell - https://www.instagram.com/crossfitcrash/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. All right. Shut up and scribble. Episode three, programming. We're going to do three shows on this kind of topic,

talking about the general show name, how we program for CrossFit not how we program because I don't program that'd be disaster but how we program for CrossFit and thinking about three categories for this kind of series it's going to be competitors affiliates and then live competition just kind of running through um in this one more running through how they each program thinking about for competitors two categories that we're really going to look at are going to be quarterfinal athletes that want to make it to semifinals and then the second big tier of athletes are going to be semi-final athletes that want to make it to the game so we'll kind of get into both those uh categories more in depth we're also we're starting a shot clock you can see it on the bottom right hand corner of the screen

my heart rate is so high i feel like taylor like you you watch the comments how i'm gonna how i've been watching that clock for 54 seconds now you were talking about the performance aspect of a podcast and all i could think of like after you said that was how jr's t-shirt is his performance my t-shirt yeah dude just absolutely jocked right now though you look like a fucking cinemax porn star dude hey you know um you know what i've worn in the gym the past two days what so beaters oh my god so yeah so beaters go back to my hooping days right so i used to wear beaters all the time when i played in high school and in college that's what most basketball players wore huge shorts and white beaters,

white ones that when they got sweaty, like got super long and stretched. And I went to this, uh, this birthday party this past weekend that was, um, trailer park theme. And I took my tooth out.

So I showed up like this with a beater on and like Jean shorts. and i like no one could touch me and i was like i kind of like the beater i'm gonna bring it back so i think just wearing a tank top felt right wow well we're very different um let me check uh some reason we're not live on the oh there we go there we go popped it in well they can rewind okay awesome cool thanks everyone for joining us in the comments tonight uh we'll read some of them don't read all but um quick things real quick for everyone following along thanks for joining if you want to go ahead uh selfmade training program.program.com for Taylor's programming. The two tracks, SMTP 60, it's a 60 minute everyday athlete track. There's modifications, tons of notes on intent of all the

workouts, how you can modify equipment modifications. Taylor does a lot of work to put in really in-depth notes there to help everyone out. And then there's also the compete track. And so for $20, you have access to both those and you can check them out on a seven day free trial. So that's at selfmadetrainingprogram.com. And then also go follow JR, CrossFit Crash on Instagram and then also Crash Crucible, his individual competition will come up in the fall.

And we'll let you guys know when those registrations open up so people can get signed on and follow that along. But let's go ahead and kick it off. I want to kick it off with this. I fucking strong-armed Savon so bad. I was like, listen, dude, you're fucking having her on the show. And he was like, oh, okay. Really nicely.

Cool. Let's get started off. We're going to touch on quarterfinal athletes that want to make it to semifinals. And so, uh, Jared, you just kind of want to lay the stage for that. Yes. I think it's really important, um, for maybe coaches out there who program people that program for themselves, people that follow a blog style program to pay attention to the tests that have been administered. And we've got 2021, 2022 and 2023 quarterfinals all programmed by the same person

a lot of people don't know that but that was boz's first part of the season that he programmed back in 2021. we've got the games from last year we've got semi-finals from this year we've got the open from this year so we have a little bit of everything at the end of the games we'll have all the parts of this season that we can kind of look at in order chronologically. But I think for right now, focusing on what you need to be good at for quarterfinals to make it to semifinals should be the way you steer your train. You shouldn't be looking at games programming and looking at semifinals programming to try to get better to qualify for that stage. It should be, where do I need to be finishing on the quarterfinals style workouts? And they are specific styles or specific movement combinations or specific stimuli that he obviously likes that you would be silly not to target your training around.

And that is, I think first thing that comes to my mind when we're thinking about Boz's tendencies, especially within this year's quarterfinals last year, being 2022, maybe to a slightly lesser degree, but definitely this year with the opening quarterfinals seemed to be a theme of like gymnastics density. Whereas instead of there being chunks of reps within a longer workout that are manageable,

there's one big set of high-skill gymnastic movements in a workout placed where it's really important, but the overall volume is relatively low. Like the nine, was it nine rope climbs in that workout? Like nine rope climbs in that workout? Like nine rope climbs in a single workout, maybe not super dense, but nine to finish incredibly dense. For sure. For sure. And for the people that may not know, like what he's referring to when he talks about density is more so like chunk volume. You can think about it that way

versus having like 25 rope climbs and doing two or three every two or three minutes of a long workout having a set of nine to finish after your grip's already blown up finishing there um you could think of it as like bottleneck style movements right this pre this past year you've got the nine rope climbs there the chest of bar and the bar muscle ups are just to create more grip fatigue for the rope climb. So for the people trying to make it, it all came down to how fast you could do those nine. If we'll go to test one, we see, we see the same thing with the chest to wall handstand pushups. Sure. There are people that struggled through the nine handstand walk links. And there are some people that struggled through the 15 muscle ups but what it came down to is how fast could you get through the 21 at the end yeah right so i would

say bottleneck style skill slash gymnastics components right we see it here will if you go back to 2021 and you look there we'll see similar themes there workout one all three years 2021 2022 2023 some kind of shoulder stamina test yep this one had a mandatory rest but we see kipping shoulder we see kipping handstand push-ups 30 of them we see 30 strict we see dumbbell hang cleans which is just to blow up the shoulders even more with the double unders with 10 push press for three rounds. Right. So a lot of shoulders. If you go to 2022, we saw all the lunge variations with dumbbells and it had different handstand pushup variations. Right. And then we just showed you 2023's test one.

So what do we see as an overarching theme here? Shoulder stamina, right? And specifically when you get to the end, can you finish strong, right? Did you pace well enough? Do you still have left in the tank muscularly to finish? So we see that really, really specific trend all three years. Another one I think you can just say overarchingly is you have to be able to move moderate to heavy loads under fatigue. Yeah, out of breath. And we can see that everywhere. But look at 2021, 963, burpee box jump over, power snatch. For a lot of people, that load in that tight of a timeframe just really slowed people down. The second year, 10 power snatches at the end,

30 cow row, 20 burpee box jump over 10 power snatches. It just slowed some people down at the end of the point where they couldn't qualify. Those two years also had what you would call rested one rep maxes, right? Four rep max front squat. And then the other total this year, the heavy test was the two 75 cleaning jerk once again with burpee box jump over variation. So if I'm a coach, he has given you moderate to moderately heavy barbell with burpee box jump overs of various heights three years in a row. If you are not working that combination into your training for your athletes, it's a big mistake.

Or something like the ring muscle up GHD or some sort of pull GHD variation. What I think is interesting when I look at 2021, 2022, and then 2023, I almost feel like 2021 hands tied maybe to a certain degree with things that Dave wanted or ideas that Dave had 2022, Dave gets the boot and he's kind of scrambling. So it's pretty similar to 2021. Like all the tests, you know, we did a show last year when right after quarterfinals and laid them out and it was crazy how similar for enduring and volume and Boz's affinity for execution and not necessarily volume, but being able to do a lot of something in a really short time period really fast. And then beyond that, you know, Dave is almost obsessed with the idea of surprising people or being unique or being original. And when he had, when Sevan had him on the other day or last week, two weeks ago, they

were talking about his olive oil line. And Sevan was like, how come not coffee? And he's like, everybody in the CrossFit space does coffee, but nobody's done olive oil. And I want to be unique. And that's true to who I am. And I think every year, Dave found a way to surprise the shit out of everyone. I think Boz cares less about that. And what he cares so much more about is OG style CrossFit, early dot com movements, things that Glassman preached on in the early years, like the L-sit press to handstand, the seated legless rope climbs. So it's interesting in terms of, I almost feel like Boz is,

dare I say, maybe a slightly bit more predictable. But I think one tendency I saw this year that you can look back and see has carried over is within those gymnastic kind of density movements. back and see has carried over is within those gymnastic kind of density movements. You see that he really likes the format of a lower skill gymnastic movement at a higher volume, higher skill at a moderate volume, highest skill at the lowest volume, but within the same workout and kind of a progression of one another. Like with the pressing workout, the handstand walk is shoulder support. The ring muscle up is catching potentially in support but another shoulder driven movement or a pressing movement and then finishing with the wall facing or with the pulling you have the was it chest to bar bar muscle up rope climb progression um so interesting and i've kind of

adopted that format i like it a lot so you don't have to do as much volume yeah yeah i think simply put um where a lot of people like we won't get into affiliate programming but i think a staple You don't have to do as much volume. Yeah. Yeah. I think simply put, um, where a lot of people are like, we won't get into affiliate programming, but I think a staple of a lot of people's affiliate programming is, is complimentary movements, right? You program a push with a pull and do that a lot, right?

Deadlift, handstand, pushup, clean ring dip, whatever. Like there's super OG workouts that are like that. What promotes intensity, what you,

what you're seeing now. And he said it many times before, there's more to this sport than engine. And there's more to this sport than just being strong when you're rested. Right? So these, these things that it seems like he really values, I don't care what you can lift. I care what you can lift heavy when you're at a high heart rate. Um, I don't care that you can do 30 rope climbs in a workout. I want to know that you can do nine in a minute at the end of the workout. You're seeing a lot of interference in workouts. I would say an overarching theme would be deliberate interference. Yeah, redundancy.

Press, press, press. Pull, pull, pull And there's nothing wrong with that. It is a lot different than what we're used to, where you're seeing, okay, in this workout, all these things matter. The bike matters and the barbell matters. Well, yeah, and the gymnastics matters. With a lot of his workouts, at least to this point of the season,

you can pinpoint, okay, that's the movement. There's the bottleneck. There it is right there. It's that movement. It's this okay, that's the movement. There's the bottleneck. There it is right there. It's that movement. It's this movement. It's this movement. And what I'm hoping for is that the games, it's nothing like that. Yeah. And it really swings because I think what's maybe even more important than what types of things do we think are, we need to be focusing on for next year, as you should always let the governing body kind of dictate that as a coach. What did Dave do in 2016 and then in 2017?

And we can pull that up, right? 2016, in my opinion, was the most aggressive, most aggressively heavy regionals ever. With a barbell. Had a snatch ladder that was all weightlifting. It had 405 deads it had 225 overhead squats power right this will work out so you have that and then what do you do the next year you guys are lifting too much man no one's doing enough dumbbells and then you had a dumbbell regional so look for that maybe next year. Right. We're like, Oh yeah. You guys think, you know, no,

like we're not going to do it that way. You think he'll do that this way? I don't know. I think even though Dave did that, there were still a lot of things in his programming from year to year that you could still tell were his right. People's art is still their art. You can still kind of pick it out. So while Boz has you run and lift a lot right shuttle to overhead um age group qualifier shuttle run with uh max national 225 um you know uh four and five at semifinals right i mean there's a lot of running and lifting running

and lifting i think you need to be able to run and lift heavy. That doesn't mean that you're never going to see that combination again, but it also doesn't mean that you're going to see it every single year and every single stage. Yeah. I still stay, you know, I could be proven wrong and that's fine. I, and granted, we don't have a lot of, we don't have a whole lot of material to work with in terms of, you know, where Bob's concerned, but I think Dave's level of obsession with being unique and catching people off guard

is degrees higher than Boz's. So in the sense where Dave always found a way to be like, oh, shit, I wasn't expecting that. I think this year Boz's maybe homage to that was getting everybody obsessed with the crossover and then pulling it out of semifinals or not having it at semifinals, which I particularly wasn't super surprised at. I remember I was programming it a lot and I was thinking I wouldn't be surprised at all if he just doesn't do this.

Or if he does triple unders, everybody's working crossover and then he pulls a triple under. So if you think of there's like high level buys programming, then thinking about if you're someone that's 120 in North America East trying to crack semifinals how much are you thinking about what it's going to take right because some of this is more well you see a lot of this show up in semifinals we see it as you showed in quarterfinals so what are you prepping for how are you programming for that athlete that's 60 spots out of qualified semis but once I crack that right i think it depends on the athlete so

while we're assuming that he may just flip the script we we still know that those athletes that haven't qualified haven't qualified by the test they've been given let's just say they've done quarterfinals the past three years and they're not getting in with these styles of tests there's a lot of overlap there yeah well so okay let's just assume that the demographic's not going to change. Still going to be 10%. So we're not going to see every workout's not going to have 400 reps. So it's not just going to flip to super, super high volume of everything. And let's just assume that someone who's not great at high grip endurance workouts is not going to continue to be good at that workout.

And if they happen to get a workout next year that has rope climbs without interfering movement, great. They're going to do, they're going to do really well at that. But now that we have tests to go off of, then we need to be targeting those things week to week in training. Using intervals is a great way to do it. Using training. Using intervals is a great way to do it.

Using on the minute training is a great way to do it. Using on the minute training where you're trying to get a ton of work done in one minute and then resting for a full minute is a great way to do it. But knowing that these combinations have come up, using those combinations in training is really going to be the only way to get better at them. There's a lot of movements that have good carryover, using those combinations in training is really going to be the only way to get better at them. There's a lot of movements that have good carry over, but if you always blow up rowing and toes to bar, yeah. Can you do double unders and toes to bar? Sure. Can you do deadlifts and toes to bar? Sure. But maybe it's just the aerobic component that the rower does to you. You need to do row

toe to bar combinations to get better at that sometimes. Yeah. I think specifically you touched on EMOMs and interval work. And I think particularly that's a really good tool to use and pro and working on weaknesses, um, with any movement, but definitely gymnastics. Um, I think again, if you had like, if the handstand pushup workout kept you out or you had a really bad finish there, that's what you look to work on because, you know, there's going to be a lot of shoulder stamina in one workout. And you better be able to do a really high skill after doing a higher volume of a lower skill prior to it. And with all of these athletes, we're probably taking for granted things that are very low hanging fruit.

Right. So if you've got someone who's let's say their top 200, so they're pretty close, but they're still one of those people that it's going to depend on the workout type people. How's their movement quality. We know that you've got to be good at gymnastics. We know you have to be very efficient at gymnastics. You can't just muscle your way through tons of reps of everything. It's more about when you get there and you're pre fatigued, is your movement pattern sound enough to where you can execute that at a high heart rate? So backing up a little bit, let's say you have an athlete who doesn't have the best shoulder position. They need to work on that or chest to wall handstand pushups probably aren't going to get any easier for them. Right. But then if you have that person

who does move well, it's just, they need to build the capacity there. It kind of becomes easier as a programmer at that point. Right? So looking and seeing where's the limitation, is it the movement itself? Is it the movement under fatigue? Is it the movements that are interfering with that movement that are actually creating the fatigue? It's a lot to think about as a programmer, but there are levels for sure. And I think knowing who your athlete is and being able to identify what the thing is that's holding them back is the most important thing. This time of year, dialing in movement efficiency, spending less energy, doing a repetition, rep for rep for rep is so valuable. That's what it kind of is coming down to in the sport. Who can do the same movement and expend less energy. Right. So doing that, building the movement quality, then layering in the

intensity and the volume as the season goes on. Yeah. I think working with positionally challenged athletes is the hardest thing you can do as a coach because it's to some degree, especially if you're like you and you don't have those limitations and it frustrates you. Especially if you're like you and you don't have those limitations and it frustrates you. It's just, yeah, it's challenging because no coach wants to program mobility for their athlete to work a position. Maybe that's not true. It's just challenging to program. So ideally, if you want to make semifinals, you have to move well.

And that just doesn't mean getting your hip crease below the knee on a squat, but means like a vertical torso in a squat or good shoulder positions. And I really liked that you said that doing the movements and expending less energy, because that's extremely important. To extrapolate on that programming for an individual is so different than writing a general track, a competitive track. is so different than writing a general track, a competitive track. I think if you are within the top 300 and you're really making a name to crack for semivinals, there is not a general program out there that is going to fit you perfectly. It just does not exist. But there are general programs you can follow that give you a good base of training and that you can layer your weakness work on top of. And I think that is key.

I think a program that lays a good foundation, touching all modalities, and then you having the wherewithal to program your weaknesses is extremely important. Unless you can afford an individual coach that's actually good at what they do, then that's always ideal. Yeah, definitely think some responsibility falls on the athlete, especially if it's something that they're not paying for individual design, which is far more expensive. And you should expect to just be an athlete and do what the coach says, not have to process it too much and look for things that are wrong with it, right? Just you just do it. But I'm using something simple like the V up. Let's just say that in that quarterfinals workout,

whether they ever come back again, the V ups just hammered you. You're generally pretty good at GHD sit-ups. You're generally pretty good at toes to bar, but for some reason, all that trunk extension inflection on the rower, and then all the trunk flexion on the GHD, you got to the V ups and you just couldn't do it. Well, let's say you're following a blog program and you say to yourself, hey, my toes to bar are pretty good. GHD are pretty good, but I'm not bad at V-up. I'm not good at V-up. Well, then once a week when one of those other movements come up, substitute it with the trunk flexion movement that you do need more work on. Or Tabata V-up three times a week. I mean, people overcomplicate weakness work a lot. I think, I mean, in terms of if you have something you really suck at, that's glaring, like do an EMOM

of it two to three times a week. And it doesn't have to be by itself, pair it with something you're good at, or which is always an easy thing to do is to pair it with the machine and alternating EMOM, or like you said, one minute on buy in machine, the rest of the minute max reps or a certain amount of reps at that moment and then a minute off for however many minutes or alternating minute one machine calories or meters minute to reps at that movement, alternate back and forth. You could even do minute one machine minute to that movement for max reps, minute three rest for a certain number of rounds. But it just doesn't need to be complicated. I think for some people just accumulating volume of good reps at the movement they suck at helps, you know, for me, that has helped a lot over the years. I mean, I cannot, you know, I can't count the number of times I'd go into the gym like late at night and just practice movements on an email. I got when I first started, for whatever reason, I couldn't count the number of times I'd go into the gym like late at night and just practice movements on an emom like when I first started for whatever reason I couldn't get rhythm with chest to bar pull-ups and I would just do like an emom of chest to bar pull-ups three times a week

um and squat snatch too like I would squat snatch all the time and the first time I was asked like why the fuck are you doing that I was like because I suck at it yeah so maybe to wrap up this section we can move on to the of, and it's been mentioned in the comments, thinking of seeing some shoulder fatigue be tested over and over and over at this level, if you're the 200th person in North America East, are you skewing your position practice to get first, like to be in a good shoulder position? Are you skewing it at that level? Taking a bet on that showing up consistently? skewing it at that level taking a bet on that showing up consistently well i mean the sport is overhead right that's not going away yeah no matter what the combination is if you're amazing at monostructural stuff so if you're great at high rep double unders if you're great at rowing

if you're great at like box jump overs because i would probably put like those in burpee box jump over sorry everyone i would put that as more of a monostructural element at this stage in the game than a gymnastics element you don't need to be spending too much time on the things that you're already good at like that's a basic thing and while it is important at like the semifinals level to be able to hit home runs and win events you're not there yet so if you could be spending 20 to 30 minutes of your session working headlong into the things you suck at, you're going to get way better than if you continue to do the things that you're already good at. however many years of opening quarterfinals you've done and pick out 10 of the workouts you did the absolute worst on or five or however many, just look at your worst finishes, not the ones that are like, okay, that's moderate.

Look at the absolute glaring worst finishes and take the movements and combinations and email them and work on them two to three times a week. And it doesn't even have to be under intensity, like start with practice and then as your body adapts to the added volume then add intensity cool any last thoughts there no that's good let's get it let's get into the people that we know are perennial semifinals athletes that are now trying to crack into the games cool let's start with just go over like what what are the differences there between the two categories that we're talking so all the things we've talked about leading up to this they they don't have a hole right they don't have a glaring hole because at this stage in the game

of quarterfinals, you can have an okay workout or maybe a not great workout and still get in. If you're one of those people, maybe you are a smaller athlete. Maybe you are a really big athlete and you're always going to struggle with one type of test and getting to semifinals is harder than getting to semifinals and finishing top 20. There aren't that many of those people, but there are some for the rest of them. They're pretty well-rounded. There really isn't going to be anything that they get caught off guard by. They adapt well, but it's more about, Hey, when I get to semis and the tests change a little bit and we're racing and it's not online in my gym with all my favorite stuff, what do I need to do to maximize my

performance from a programming standpoint? You can look at previous years. You can look at this year, which I think is a really good idea, but Taylor, I'm curious, like when the programming came out and you thought specifically about Michelle, Emily, those athletes, what was the overarching thought that came to your mind? Was there a, oh man, that's something I just really didn't put in or I knew that was going to be in there. And I'm so glad that we did so much of X, Y, and Z.

I think for both of them specifically, they both have deficiencies in opposite areas. And I programmed a lot of those deficiencies for both of them. Um, there was still worry and like fear of, man, this is going to be tough. Um, but I, at no point when the workouts were announced where I was like, damn, I didn't touch that or damn, I didn't do enough of that. I knew, I knew I had approached their training and programming the right way or the best way to this point. And I think it can be similar to that quarterfinals athlete where if you're a semifinals athlete, you know, you're training at a much higher volume. If you're expecting to qualify for the games, you're expecting to qualify for the games. You need to allocate the time to train four to five and leading into semifinals, maybe even six hours

at times. It's hard and it's a lot of work. And you also have to be very self-aware of your deficiencies. But at the semifinal level, you also can't discount how important an event win is. And if you have the capacity to hit home runs, you don't want to lose that to go from a 30th to a 25th. That being said, it doesn't have to be that way. You can make incremental progress in some areas and still retain insane fitness in others. And Emily's a great example of like this whole year we worked so much on gymnastics and have not run a ton and have not snatched super heavy a ton. And she goes and has the best combined score on those two workouts out of all the women fucking smashed it. But it's just that's another kind of nod to getting better at some things has the transfer of skill to retain

fitness and other things. If you're a semifinals athlete athlete and there are things that are keeping you from the games you have to you have to allocate time to those things and a lot of it um because it's funny you say that's a good segue talking about her specifically on the snatch run event um not spending a lot of time in it we brushed on it before boz has been a big proponent of trying to encourage athletes to live in that second wave adaptation a little bit more and that people have probably been spending too much time in the third wave where you're trying so hard to go from a 300 to a 310 snatch that there is no carryover and trying to pursue that heavy snatch isn't getting you any better at gymnastic skills whereas if you worked on your three-minute l-sit hold your snatch probably would stay the

same or maybe because of midline stability it would even get better right something like that so living in that second wave and clearly emily is a good example of that things you've been working on have kept her good at the things she was already really good at and maybe even helped get her better at them from a strength stance standpoint specifically because i think for a lot of semifinals athletes who are making it to the games, for some people, it's going to be the strength event. How is it tested and how can I either manage it? How can I win it? Or, Hey, I know I'm just kind of middle of the pack. When you saw the way that the strength test was administered,

did it like, had you been programming some like, Hey, I want you to do a snatch ladder where there's a 30 double under buy-in you just go on the minute until you fail or like you know i want you to get on a biker again i want you to do a 1k uh every four minutes and i want you to do one snatch at 90 and do that for five sets like did you train that way of like lifting under fatigue with very, very little time to execute? Yeah. So for both Michelle and Emily, cause both of them are incredibly strong and I did not give either. I didn't give Michelle any lifting that was not under fatigue. Um, from when she started with me in December to semifinals, there wasn't a single time where she just lifted in a lifting

session. Um, and that was because we had a lot of work to do in other areas. Emily had some lifting, um, on its own, but again, the massive bias was towards lifting under fatigue because a, I know she's strong as fuck and her, an increase in incremental increase in one RM strength is negligible to her being able to lift under fatigue, which I knew was coming. And also she's strong and we needed other things to work on. And so if I can work on her engine and her strength at the same time, good. Two birds, one stone. That being said, if I had an athlete where strength is a deficiency, like they're going to have to lift alone.

So it's just different. They're going to have to lift alone because if they don't get their raw strength up, they're still not going to be able to compete under fatigue. Um, but there is always a place for lifting under fatigue for sure. And I think it's notorious to CrossFitters. They always, you know, fuck people PR in the open all the time when they just fucking smash themselves in a workout. Like it's pretty typical when you get a good engine, um, and the adrenaline's racing. racing it's just a just a weird thing about crossfit where people pr after workouts um right and i think your point is one to come back to and

really drive home if your snatch is 250 guys taylor's not saying that you should just be lifting under fatigue for a full year because yeah maybe you can still hit 245 or 250 under fatigue you're still going to be finishing bottom 10 or at a semifinal. Men, for men. You don't need to be doing that. You need to be building a base, squat, bench, deadlift, whatever. And you need to be weightlifting on top of that because you've got to drive that absolute number up, not under fatigue. And then as that number increases, you're going to be able to hopefully hit a really high percentage of it under fatigue.

So that's a big distinction to make. And unfortunately, I don't think a lot of athletes know where they really fall. They're really self-aware enough to know. No, no, no. I'm pretty strong compared to what? People in your gym? Yeah. Plug your stuff in to the semifinals leaderboard and see where you stack up.

Yeah. As a girl, to be really competitive at the semifinal levelboard and see where you stack up yeah as a girl to be really competitive at the semifinal level you need to be snatching over 190 i'd say probably 195 under fatigue and then as a guy you need to be snatching 290 under fatigue um a reliable 290 snatch it's not something you have to hit you know every week at the gym but you need to know that when the lights come on you're out on the floor, you can hit that. I think – well, I lost my train of thought. What about for the other major Olympic lifts?

Kind of what ranges are you guys thinking? Clean and jerk for men. I think you got to be over 340. Women, 220, 215, 220. Maybe more than that. Maybe – sorry, I'm thinking of a Bella complex or the complex from last year. I think women in the clean and jerk probably 235 plus yeah i mean in my head i was just kind of thinking like 340 240

yeah nice this question from rambler can you define fatigued like when you're talking about lifting or fatigued can you just talk about what you're talking about there you're out of breath and you have a heart high heart rate so you're not fresh so for example the difference between programming for someone who has a 240 snatch as a guy and they're not competitive they need to be snatching just alone like okay every two minutes one snatch or even a snatch on the minute is relatively low fatigue i think if you're working percentages you know 70 80 90 percent um under fatigue would be like what jr said every 90 seconds until failure uh 30 double unders one snatch starting at this weight and adding five pounds every interval until you fail

that would be lifting under fatigue or every two minutes 200 meter run one snatch building or at the same weight and then this question from nicole i'm interested in how much is the difference between a semi and games athlete capacity versus skill efficiency enormous in which direction well i think too we need to know how nicole is defining capacity um because that that is that can mean a lot of different things um if she's just saying let's just say engine in quotation marks um to me at the semifinal level, the sports become so good. Everybody has an engine right now. If we get into the really, really long time domains, right? Let's just say the 30 plus time domains,

because this year we had something mid to high twenties. Then you do start to see a pretty big difference in the tanks of some athletes can, you know, uh, compared to others. But I would say it's generally, are you strong enough and are you skilled enough? And sure, you can say, well, skills can be strength limiting. Right, I get it. But usually it's either, can you do the skills at a high enough level?

Can you move the loads at a high enough level? And there are always outliers. There are outliers everywhere. And I would also say that there are pretty big gaps in semifinals as well from the people who are on the bubble to the bottom heat uh it's it's a it's night and day um did you get in this category go ahead jr i was just gonna ask taylor if he had if he had them train a lot of gymnastics movements loaded so with yeah with vests with dumbbells in between their legs like whatever and what what were those and like is that something that was only a part of the individual design or do you layer that into the competitive track blog program

i write quite a bit of weighted strict pull-ups and weighted dips um and i've put in smtb compete several times weighted pistols um and then for emily michelle both have gotten a ton of that and i would i would encourage people who are weak and need to work on strength is to not neglect that because i both michelle and emily pr their jerks not split jerking heavy but doing a lot of weighted gymnastics weighted strict pull-ups weighted dips and bench press as well and and both i mean i didn't let michelle jerk for like weeks and she pr'd her jerk it's like 275 which is heavy as fuck um maybe it's 280 i can't remember heavy um i was just thinking in this category i've heard multiple people i've heard justin madero say it after the semis people keep talking

about mental game is such a key component to be able to make a semifinal athlete go to qualify to be a games athlete. How do you think about that when you're programming? Can you think about it? Is it who you're training with? Like, how does that factor into how you program for this level of athlete? It's not much in the programming. I would say it's more of a mentorship and being around that person. I don't like the thought of programming. And for some people, it's different programming hard workouts to build mental strength. But you could also easily force an athlete into quitting a workout and you just lost whatever you may have gained. So I think more than anything, it's a mentorship. And that's getting into the weeds a

bit. But I think what he means by that is there are a lot of athletes who have a bad event and they quit when, and they just, they, they check out when there's a, there's a shitload of points left on the table. Um, a prime example in me at granite games, I blew it on the second event and I kind of checked out the rest of the weekend. the rest of the weekend um that's the difference between an athlete who has all the physical tools and doesn't make it and the athlete that has all the physical tools and does make it uh is when you get handed a bit of adversity and competition which everyone's going to get is how do you respond and you just have to believe in yourself and recognize that you're there to do a job and every fucking point matters cool um uh follow up on that so i mean this might be a different conversation but then like how do you think about that year round if you're prepping are you encouraging this athlete to compete outside of uh the season to and then kind of like hey this is our focus is like if you get down

that we want that to happen almost so that we can see how you respond and coach from there yeah i think like i think like as a just a blanket statement like typically you're gonna compete how you practice so the tent the intent the focus um the attention to detail that you have in every single training session developing really really good habits. They just become that on game day. Right? So if a Taylor, let's just say, um, Taylor always does V ups with his feet touching and he always touches his toes and they may never come up again, but when they do come up, he doesn't have to think about, am I doing the V ups correctly? I just need to go out and execute. I don't, I can turn my brain off and I can just go. So little things like that, movement wise, always holding yourself to a super high standard, having people around you that will call you on it when you're not is huge because it's not an ego thing, right? It's a, Hey, like if, if, if my second hand isn't getting back to the wall walk line before my first toe hits the floor, someone needs to tell me that.

Because if I do thousands of wall walks all year with my toe coming down early and I get into a competition, I get no repped over and over and over again, and I don't know why. It's because you just drilled the wrong way to do it for a full year. I naturally err towards the heart of standards I think a bigger focus for me in training is when I'm not doing the movements what am I doing what am I doing during a period of rest and my hands on knees am I going to the chalk bucket excessively am I walking around or stepping away from the barbell I think those little things as well are important to address. Yeah, I think like most sports, video review can be a really, really useful tool. And if you're a really high-level competitor, I would say someone who's aspiring to make a semifinal and you're not filming your workouts and going back and reviewing them, counting your rest breaks, looking at your split times, like a really good habit to get into for a lot of athletes is negative splits, right?

To build into the workout look at like dallin um look at jason look at the people who paced test seven at semifinals perfectly to where they built their pace on the bike to end and they just hawked people one by one by one that kind of stuff is practice that kind of stuff is trained that kind of stuff is drilled in by their coaches it's not just oh i'm, I'm just going to go off feel and I'm going to make my third round my fastest round. Yeah. Yeah.

Cool. Well, we have a few minutes left. I know Taylor wanted to talk about process. Do you want to kind of get into that? Briefly. Well, I'll make it as brief as I can. I think one thing a lot of people are asking about is how do you go from nothing to like a cohesive program that works?

is how do you go from nothing to like a cohesive program that works. And for me, it's different for an individual as it is for a general program, but also pretty similar. I think the way I do it to like to start from scratch as I start with the strength progression that I would put the athlete on, I just like to build around that it's easier to build around that. So if I look at an athlete, and I want them to squat three times a week, and pull heavy from the floor twice a week, and go overhead, you know, strict press once a week, jerk once a week, and then only twice a week. I layer that in. And this is, you know, for example, for a competitive athlete, or someone I'm programming for individually. know, for example, for a competitive athlete or someone I'm programming for individually. And I write out a progression, whether that's a five week or an eight week or two week,

whatever, depending on the time of the year. And then I build off of that and I look at, okay, where, what are the biggest deficiencies this athlete has? What are the movement combinations? I want them to work. And I'll go in through a Google doc that I already have the strength progression laid out and I'll type in, okay, this ad, she needs to work on a wall ball pull up combination or a double under burpee combination or something more redundant. Ring muscle ups with something else. And I'll put on this day, OK, ring muscle up and that second movement. I'll go to the next and I say, what do I want to work here? And throughout this time, I've got like of movements, um, and variations of each movements that I know we need to touch every week. And then there's like

a second tier that I know we need to touch every 10 days. Um, and then there's a third tier that I know we need to touch like every three weeks. Um, and I focus on variants in those movement combinations. So like if one week I had them do a lot of barbell thrusters with a pull, the next week, we might do dumbbell thrusters, or squat clean thrusters or something a little bit different. Because you're getting the transfer skill, but you're also practicing a different movement. And I'll just kind of layer that in the CrossFit, then I'll layer in some monostructural intervals for every athlete. And again again depending on the athlete time domain specific machines running whatever um and then the accessory will come last and when i look at

accessory i think of it kind of in a few ways i focus heavily on shoulders heavily on hips and then anterior focus like midline and then posterior focus midline and then of course if somebody has like a deficiency somewhere else like in in, you know, their triceps or something like that, we'll, we'll work that, um, or hamstrings, et cetera. Um, but for example, if I had an accessory session that was focused on like posterior chain, like for example, GHD hip extensions, um, sandbag bear hug holds, um sandbag bear hug holds carries um things like that and then for the general compete track it's pretty similar um but i'm not working off a base of okay this specific athlete has these specific deficiencies i'm thinking of kind of what jr was talking about and the tendencies over the past three years the movement combinations the movement variations, patterns that we've seen formats of workouts that we've seen. Um, yeah. So I'd say like,

you know, just to interrupt you for a second about that kind of thing, like paying attention, right. Paying attention to all levels, because even though you may not coach teams, you need to still be looking at that programming. Even though you may not have age group athletes, you need to be looking at those workouts because you'll see things. Sometimes you'll see some trends and you'll say, Hey, look, the age groups had a handstand hold to make it to the games. The teams had a static sandbag hold to make it to the games. The individuals haven't done anything. Hold if I taylor and i'm getting an athlete ready for the games if you're not working isometrics loaded or unloaded like that that's that is your job right there is to look at those things and say you know what i i think holds are coming right so you so you so you lay that in that doesn't mean that you have to program handstand

hold handstand hold handstand, hold handstand, hold in a four, you know, like a four by four inch box under extreme fatigue, put it in the warmups. Like he's really good about that. Jump rope skills and hand balancing drills. Um, dead hangs from a pull-up bar L hangs from a pegboard, that kind of thing you can put in as a programmer at the beginning or at the end where they're not going to take away from the primary focus of the session and they don't have to be the focus of the session

hey emma the my recommendation is scrolling across the bottom of the screen for a quarterfinal bubble athlete let's see what the good shit's about, man. We really tried to stay under 45 minutes, but that was good. Yeah. We did. Any last thoughts? No, it was great. I mean, I think we could go on and on and on talking about this. It'll be, it'll be fun to talk about where our paths diverge me and Taylor, because we

do feel pretty strongly, um, based on our clientele, based on the gyms that we are a part of, what affiliate programming should be like day to day. And then also too, with competitions, you know, we've, we've reviewed each other's programming and there's been times where I've told him I didn't like something and he's done it anyway and vice versa. So it's cool to kind of have some, some, some pushback on things like that that we'll get into. Hopefully we'll have Hiller on next week for the affiliate show we invited him waiting on confirmation awesome thanks everyone

for joining uh yeah i think there's gonna be more stuff coming out from these guys uh for shut up and scribble and then hopefully some looking at doing some short form content on the channel as well that'll be uh recording in 10 minutes or less. Just kind of touching on one single topic and their opinions and kind of talking about that. So you can look forward to that. Self-made training program, seven day free trial. Follow JR on Instagram. Keep an eye out if you're a competitive athlete and you're looking to compete individually.

Then CrossFit Crash has been the stomping grounds for a lot of athletes that have gone from semifinals to games. So we know that JR's really in tune with looking ahead and programming for that. And a lot of people have had really good things to say about that competition and have seen a lot of success competing there and then moving forward in the season. So follow us on Instagram. Shut up and scribble. If you have questions you want to see addressed on the show, send them in our DMs. We have a Google sheet started

and we'll eventually start getting to those questions, maybe doing longer form Q&A shows, going through y'all's questions. And then also we'll do the short form videos, just answering one single question. So thank you guys and bye-bye.