The Sevan Podcast - Programming For Affiliates ft. Andrew Hiller | Shut Up & Scribble Ep 4

Episode Date: June 16, 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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Today, we don't have Will Branstetter kicking off the show for us so we're gonna kick it off but we got hillar here and jr and uh today we're gonna be doing the second episode in the series where we're talking about programming uh last week we talked about kind of competitive athletes to a degree and today we are going to be talking about programming for an affiliate which both Hiller and JR have quite an extensive repertoire I was just on reddit I was just on reddit they opened it back up and I was reading something about how there isn't enough of this ironically enough of talking about the affiliates yeah yeah it was like what media is missing in the space and it was something about needing more talk about the affiliates yeah it's interesting i feel like

i don't really ever hear how to program for an affiliate aside from the programming online course on crossfit.com which is you know you know it's pretty basic but i don't know are there a lot of shows or a lot of people just kind of talking about how they there's like nothing out there which is crazy what route do you guys want to take with this by the way i got so many avenues i think what would be good to talk about first is what are the pros and cons of programming for your own gym for your people because it's become a lot more popular for people to outsource that and you still have some people that hold on to that responsibility and i think above all they really enjoy it i think if you

don't enjoy the programming side of it if you're not somewhat of an artist in that regard it would be really easy and probably smarter for time spent to outsource it to someone else who you trust to do it well so like hillary you were programming for your gym i guess before there was a ton of other training camps offering affiliate programming do you remember the ones that were available? And did you ever consider doing something like that? Comp train was around. And that was the one where people would have it shuttled to their inboxes, email every day.

And they go, hey, did you see this? And they'd open up their Gmail account. And then I remember people were doing, what's that hardcore dude? Outlaw Way? That's it. Yes. I don't even know if it's hardcore as much as the name is hardcore.

And outside of that, not very much. Is that what you're kind of alluding to? There wasn't much to pick from. Yeah, and how many years ago was that that you were responsible for the program? 2015 is when I took on programming at the affiliate. So in eight years, you've seen like, I mean, I can think think of you could probably name off

10 right off the bat of people that offer um 60 minute class style structure you know including cap yeah um workouts for their gym so which started as like one of those 10 cap started as like this is a hand plan yeah so when we talk about when we talk about this like when i started smtp i was like i'll do it for affiliates too and it's so much work to program for other affiliates why why why i think one i like a really personal approach like i was talking to every affiliate once a week and like helping them out with one, if you write a general program for all gyms, it's really hard to capitalize on what they have available at their specific facility. So like talking with a gym once a week to help adjust workouts to what they have available and what they're capable of doing. Yeah. Massive, but so

much fucking work. Um, and I, uh, long story short, it's so much work and i started it because or i wanted to do i was like wow ham plan killed it and like maybe we could turn into something like that and then ham plan got bought by cap or crossfit and turned into cap and then they released that they're going to offer it with the affiliate fee and i'm like nah fuck that i'm not gonna try to compete with that they include it in the affiliate fee and cap gives you like the PDF document you get for a week of CAP programming. You could probably read it for like four hours. Lesson plans, scaling modifications, videos for movements. It's unbelievable and insanely valuable. Long story short, it's just really hard to program for other gyms and be like, oh, I can be creative. I can do exactly what I want. I know how fit my members are and what they're capable of.

And really, equipment. I think more than anything, it's equipment in your space and how you can utilize it and be creative. the biggest piece of advice I would give anyone that does program for their gym or that maybe is going to open up a new gym and wants to take on that responsibility is maybe the same thing that makes it so difficult to program for other people's communities. You have to know the community you're programming for. You have to, that's the number one thing. So if I get on and start rattling off all the principles that I try to include in a week's programming, If I get on and start rattling off all the principles that I try to include in a week's programming, Hiller may say, well, you know what? Like that won't fly at my gym.

My average clientele is someone that works out two to three days a week and is the ages of 35 and 55 and don't have competitive aspirations and don't like to be in the gym six to seven days a week. So the way we program should be completely different. What we program should be different. The degree in which we program certain skills and intensities and volume and all that should vary. So when you're giving that to someone else without knowing the bodies that are walking into their doors every day, it makes it tough. And then you're wondering, wonder if his i wonder if their members are enjoying this i wonder if they're hitting the stimulus that i want them to hit

because i wonder what kind of athletes are at that gym it makes it really unknown i have a leading question for hillary so well it starts with jr jr how many times a month do you program muscle ups for your gym a month yeah uh well you know some months there are four weeks some months there are five so at least so once a week at least once a week i would say we program muscle ups me and andy program together for our gym once every two to three weeks and there are maybe 10 to 15 out of our 220-ish members that can do muscle-ups reliably in a workout. How many in your gym, JR? Ring? Yeah.

30 to 40? Do you think that's Hiller? Do you think that's a – I'm just so curious. Do you think that's a byproduct of the programming? Do you think that's a buy? I'm just so curious. Do you think that's a byproduct of the programming? Or do you think his programming attracts that type of person to the gym versus like, like that's a question I've thought about.

Like, because Andy, before I programmed with Andy, he would, we would never see muscle ups. Fucking, he loves deadlift. Heavy day. What percentage of your gym is that? Cause you said 10 to 20, JR said 30. Is that equally about maybe 10 to 20% of your membership? I have probably like – it's probably like 5% of our membership can do muscle-ups.

I feel like in JR's gym, it's probably like 20 to 30, maybe more. Okay, that's important because you guys gave numbers, but I didn't know like the relative number. I would say it's a byproduct of time. How long has Charlotte been open for? Dude, 2006. Oh oh and how long have you been programming for and been at the helm oh not long like like uh eight months maybe and jr you and crash how long eight years and in eight years maybe your numbers

will be approaching that 20 okay that's that's a good – okay, I like that. That's a good way to put it. Perhaps. And I don't know if that's maybe your intention. Maybe that's not the way you set it up. I definitely think like, hey, if there's something you – this is a Glassman quote, but your difficulties describe your needs. Like if you can't do something, that's something you should be working on.

I believe in that. I also know that we definitely have a bit of an older population and these people just have no interest in doing a must you know what i mean like they're they're like i started crossfit to get off the couch and get healthy and i'm 50 a 55 year old dude i don't have any interest in doing a muscle-up or a fucking 80 80 year old woman in one of our classes named brenda she just has no interest in that which is cool but i but yeah well jr tell me if i'm wrong maybe there are some people in a similar position as taylor but spend enough time in the environment where every single day you strive for just a little bit more and you might accidentally end up doing muscle ups if you're just kind of coached along the right path yeah i think i think a lot of times what it takes is appear appear that you see yourself um equal to like similar scores similar weights similar skills

and then one day that person's just like i think i can do one of those yeah and you give them a couple cues and they do it and then the person who watches them is like, oh no, well, if, if they can do it, then I know I can. They really had no intention of learning it,

but because they saw someone that they saw as like a, oh yeah, you know, we always do rope climbs with legs together. We never do legless. It's all good. But then one day they're like, I think I could climb it legless.

Cause I can do a bunch of strict pull-ups and they do it. And before you know it, three other people are trying to get a legless rope climb. And that's how it starts. So I think a lot of times it can just be from, right. It's not always prompted by the coach. I don't think we've, we've drifted to that. We've just drifted in that direction, which I like. I, I, to go back to the original programming for other gyms versus programming for yourself. I do not miss trying to program for other gyms i love programming in general but it's just so difficult it is so difficult when you're not there and your like feet aren't on the ground you're not inside the affiliate you don't know the members you don't know how their gym is you do not do that right

now you don't know okay jr you do not either no i don't program for other gyms and have you have you ever you've tried it, Taylor? I tried it. Yeah, I tried it and it went well for a while. And then it was just like. How does that end up being a final? You're not doing it anymore. One gym left and I was like, man, we weren't getting a lot of like new interest in it. I didn't have like a big i didn't have a good

system in place like i basically was programming on a google doc and sharing that because the programming platform that i have doesn't have a system in place to distribute for affiliates it's more like individual people um i didn't have a big enough base to go to sugarwad and be like hey let me distribute my programming through you without them fucking me in the ass price-wise probably. One person fell off and then Cap was like, Hey, this is going to be included in your affiliate fee. And I'm like, fuck. All right, Spencer, you take the dub here.

I'm out. Andy's son. He's one of the – he runs Cap for CrossFit. Him and Hobart yeah I've always had this thing about I've had people ask you hey can you program for my affiliate it's the entire sentiment that you guys just pitched up which was I don't know what you've got I don't know the vibe and the current status of your affiliate fitness level I don't know what each and every class looks like,

because when I would program for the affiliate, I would sit there and I would think, okay, I got this. I mean, people have used the term avatars in the past. Here's an avatar, here's an avatar, and just a subset of person that you imagine going through the workout as they're doing it. And maybe there's three of them in my affiliate, but the three in either of you two's affiliate or anyone else over the course of however, 15,000, many affiliates, they could look very different.

And it takes a lot of energy to figure out who those three avatars could be while they're going through these workouts. Yeah. And then I remember when I left my affiliate, they jumped on shock. And one of the last things that I did over there is I got 10 skiers and I had a member talk to me and they go, Hey, you've been gone eight months and we've got 10 skiers and I had a member talk to me and they go, Hey,

you've been gone eight months and we've used the skiers one time on a Saturday because it was a random workout. And I go with 10 skiers are going to waste. Yeah. That's when you don't have somebody in house. Yeah. Programming. Like we have, we have 12 GHDs now and most like Jr, you have a shit ton of GHDs yeah 12 and most affiliates don't they've got like one or two i'll see and we have two yeah program ghd setups for us and you program for your affiliate and we jump aboard like yeah how do we fit uh 15 people onto 12 to exactly exactly but we do them man we do ghd's once a week or or definitely once every two weeks and all of our members could do them so i think that's a you know going back to the muscle up thing like if you put it there and people see

it often enough they're going to be able to do it but and then we have this this other thing we have like outside of our building we have this grass hill that's like maybe 50 feet long and it's just fucking straight up dude andy yeah andy love we do like hill runs like every saturday people love them but you can't program that stuff for other affiliates. I think that's why people fall in love with CrossFit. They come to a place where like, holy shit, I never would have thought to do this. Whereas you have this general program that's programming the same stuff each week because they know everyone can do it and you lose that flavor. it's really cool i think if you program for your own gym to take advantage of things that your gym has that you know other people don't like you guys have that hill you have that really big flat open parking lot in the back where you could do like prowler sprints with in the summer and you can do you have access to stuff like that i have the turf where i can do as much sled work as i want and it's one of the like main principles part of my affiliate programming is like we are going to push

reverse drag for drag the sled every single week and just recently someone came up to me and they said you know i hear about some people saying their shoulders nag them occasionally and some people will talk about maybe their low back every now and then depending on what they've done extra for a lot of people that, that competitive train, but you don't hear many people gripe about their knees. And, you know, I think it's all the sled work that we do. And I'm like, yeah, I think that there is a lot to that. Obviously Ben Patrick's a big proponent of doing that kind of stuff as like warmups and cool down, but something like using the sled, whether you reverse drag it heavy with eight plates or you push it or you,

or you do whatever with it in a partner workouts or individual workouts is there is no eccentric loading. So unlike really heavy squats or heavy pulls from the floor, you're not getting the opportunity to get really, really sore or injure yourself like some of those other things. So where a lot of people hate the sled, if I don't program in a week, for some reason, they're like, what's up? No sled this week. Like, are we doing it Sunday for burn? What's going on? Like same way with GHD, same thing. So your, your clients get used to what you give them. And at least mine, they'll call me out if I'm not consistent. Like if, uh, we do strict pulling of some kind every single week. That's one of the things I try to make sure we hit because CrossFit has so much

pressing in so many different planes, burpees, pushups, dips, overhead, pressing handstand movements, uh, bench press, um, all that. And there's not a ton of pulling, right? You've got rope climbs, you've got pull-ups, you've got some other hanging movements, but they're straight arm, right? Correct. You've got hand over hand, which I can use. So strict pulling is a big, big thing that I try to do to keep the shoulders healthy and keep everyone a little bit balanced. And if I don't program them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, a lot of my members will mess with me and be like so legless rope climbs tomorrow right strict pull ups tomorrow right like they know it's coming and to me that's not a bad thing they they expect a

certain amount of balance and they expect a certain variety of movements and they're doing that which is which is awesome maybe that's why a lot of your members can do muscle ups. All the strict pulling, a lot of pulling. Yeah, for sure. Um, all right. I think what I wanted to talk about most on the show was like the process for programming for your gym. Like what, like, what does that look like? Do you use a strength template? Do you go through cycles? How do you start with nothing and then end up with a week of programming or two weeks or however? And how far do you go out in advance or what does that look like? Like, how do you sit down and do that? Either you can go.

Which one of you wants to go first? You go. You go, Andrew. I go, Andrew. Okay. I've always had this extended view at some sort of a leg strength or into endurance cyclical pattern going. And there was a point in time where I had a little bit of kickback from some members. We thought that they knew better about programming than me.

And then I took every single, what would have been a Monday. And I go, do you see the progression over the past 18 months at any point in time, you're going to jumped in on this and you would have seen that it's like a six week block here. And then there's a six week block here. And they do build off one another. And I think the term is auto regulation you almost as you coach the classes you're in the fight you're watching everybody go through it you can almost say well the next couple of weeks i wanted to continue building on this progressively heavier sets of 10 every monday but it seems as if everyone's really getting hammered down so maybe we'll switch into a seven and everyone can continue on moving with

speed positions on their squats through seven so then once you figure out that you've tapped out the back squat we move into a squat or a front squat or a lunge and then you just kind of come back around into the squat and it's always this cyclical fashion and i've never had any sort of a template as far as a wendler a 531 or a conjugate style where you're using bands and chains. And that would be kind of an accessory slash if you wanted more work, if it was a priority to any specific individual at that time, you could throw it at them and say, hey, here's some pieces you can throw in. Do this on a day, two or three days removed from Monday where you know the legs are going

to be overloaded. But the big piece there, again, is having a sense of how everybody's doing. And then having some sort of an idea of where you're going. Because there's always like eight weeks, you always look at it, but you can always play with it as well. So I'd say eight weeks was about as far as I would ever look as far as you would ever look and you would still would you start with like a strength progression and then build off that for your workouts? Was it always like two pieces in a day or like two pieces in a class where you had some strength or some sort of lift or accessory and then a workout or did you follow crossfit football at all turned into power athlete yeah with uh john wellborn

and tex i actually i did a camp with him uh did you pick up and kind of hold on to it all the parts where it's equal parts pushing to pressing horizontal and vertical and squatting hinging and lunging are kind of the points of movement in the lower body yeah i would look at it as hit it heavy hit it light maybe hit it light twice depending on the time of year depending on how many times you had pressed or pushed in the other fashion so you look at like move you look at like movement patterns in terms of like upper body push pull right okay it's like we hit the legs heavy twice this week we did it here heavy twice this week we did it here and here and then we did it four other times over the course of the week metcon strength

accessory pieces and then usually like two pieces in a class or two pieces oh really would follow the strength or olympic lifting or skill work followed by some sort of conditioning piece workout and then there, there would be that ever so often double strength piece and the members would freak out. Oh, double lift. We're doing a double lift today,

guys, no breathing. Everyone would show up and they'd be all, it's almost the opposite of the J.R.'s. J.R.'s like, we're going to do this massive cardio session and everyone's into it. That was my double lift day for people. Ben Chambliss,

what, huh? How does it look for you, JR? Yeah, I think to keep myself honest, because I'm not biased to heavy, I will always pick two days a week, two lifts, that will do a minimum of six-week cycle, maximum of 10. We're actually in the middle of a 10-week one right now with a pause squat. And it's just one that I made up. i said all right everyone pick one front or back squat

you're gonna do a heavy three for the day of three down three in the bottom explode up week two two rep max three down three in the bottom and then one rep next three weeks two down two in the bottom two down two in the bottom two down two in the bottom, two down, two in the bottom, two down, two in the bottom. And then the last one, three rep, one second, pause in the bottom, one second, pause in the bottom, one second, pause in the bottom. So the 10th week, I'll just tell them to work up to one rep max with free tempo, no pause at all front or back. And I know most of them will PR. What week was that? Did you say 10th week? That'll be the 10th. Yeah. And then likewise, I started a deadlift just as like a deadlift EMOM every Tuesday, fives, fours, threes, and then fives, fours, threes again. But you had to go heavier than the first wave of three weeks.

Very simple, getting in some volume, but also pulling pretty heavy. They could choose touch and go or drop and go. I like to give a lot of freedom when it comes to stuff like that. And then that same week they'll pull to a heavy and they can do an EMOM style where they just work up to a heavy single for the day. Or I'll give them like a 20 minute clock and just say, Hey, you can work up to a heavy single as heavy as you want to go. Cause there are some people that have been coming for eight, nine, 10 years that have no interest in one rep maxing, whether they don't want to compare themselves to a stronger self or because they have no interest in doing it because they've hurt themselves doing it in the past when the music's going and they're looking around and they're trying to compare. So as far as strength goes, I usually will pick two,

right? Two days minimum. And if there's a third day, it usually is a gymnastic strength session, whether it's, um, strict pull ups, weighted strict pull ups, weighted dips, um, something body weight based though. And then, so after the deadlift and squat is over, I'll pick something complimentary, right? So pull and squat heavy. So chances are I'll either do like a push press, a strict press or a bench press one day. And then on the other day, I'll do something dynamic, like a snatch or a clean, maybe from the hang, something like that. So that's kind of how I do my strength stuff. And then typically what I do is I don't program very far out. I usually will only have two to three workouts that are set in stone for the week and everything else I do by feel because I do the workout myself based on how that day goes. I'm looking around, I'm seeing people, oh man, like

I didn't think that was going to fatigue my shoulders. My shoulders are shot. Um, okay, cool. Good to know. Maybe a bunch of overhead lunges isn't the best thing for tomorrow then. So I'll maybe change it to a front rack or something like that. But yeah, that's, you know, partner workouts every Wednesday and Saturday, which for most gyms is like you do two a week that are partner. And just over the year, I found that people really either enjoy it or they know a partner workout is a way to keep a lot of people honest. And what I mean by that is if me and you are going rep for rep and it's a movement that you can hammer me on, I'm going to rest far less with you staring at me than I would if I was doing it by myself. Yeah. Likewise, if there's a gymnastics movement that you can carry someone

else on, Hey, I'm going to do sets of 10. This person's going to do sets of six. And we're both pushing ourselves to our limits. It's all relative. The intensity, the accumulated volume, all that stuff is relative to our abilities. So while some people occasionally have pushed back and been like, I don't really like the partner workouts. It's usually a rest day that I take. Most of the people over the course of the eight years that I've been programming really have seemed to enjoy the Wednesday, Saturday partner thing.

We do when I – so on SMTP and the way I like to program is also in kind of that like mid-range of like strength block type of stuff. And I would do like a six-week block where they have like three lifts each week. So like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for example. And then each week is pretty like variable, kind of similar to the way both of you said, like maybe week one's a tens with a pause here, week two is an eight, week three is a six, et cetera. Maybe Monday's a squat, Wednesday's a hinge and Friday's like a power Olympic dayic day or a strength and i've done a lot of that on set tv i like that and when we were doing when i first started with charlotte like i did that initially and it just from going from the way andy programmed which is very like classic

crossfit.com programming course which is about bill do heavy five for the day and you're done. Ish. Yeah. Almost like that. Pretty much when you're done. Yeah. Yeah. So people almost didn't like it. Like they almost didn't like how repetitive it was in terms of, okay, week, week one, day one, or Monday is going to be a squat. Wednesday is going to be a pool. Friday is going to be a clean wednesday is going to be a pull friday is going to be a clean and jerk complex or something like that or gymnastic strength pull or press whatever and week two is the same thing it might be a little like maybe it's a wide grip bench on week one and a close grip with a pause on week two or something like that but they it was like too

repetitive um for our gym or for whatever maybe they're just so used to like that classic crossfit they didn't like it and so the way we do it now is we stay pretty true to like there's a heavy day maybe once a week um if not every two weeks we're like like this past week we had a five by one overhead squat five by three front squat five by five back squat on the same session similar to dot com and then the crossFit me and Andy sit down and we write like two weeks out, or we look at, we look at the previous two weeks. Okay. What's everything we did. Uh, we did thrusters this week. Maybe we need to do wall balls this week. Um, and we write it out like that in terms of, I always look at things like

I have maybe a list of like 10 movements that I think like we should do every week, like some sort of pull up, some sort of press or overhead gymnastics, some sort of squat at least once a week, some sort of deadlift or pull from the floor at least once a week, stuff like that. But we got away from doing the structured progressions. It just seemed like, I don't know. Have you ever had any pushback on that? Structured progressions? Yeah. And it being kind of boring? Yeah.

I actually think I had people who would look forward to the structure. Certain days, certain people, of course, always. And it never really became too long. Because as I said, as I sensed people were getting tired of it, you just change it. Because tired also means less intense. For sure. And I have one member in mind in particular. It would almost be to a T.

I could dictate the vibe of the gym based upon what this person would think about their squats on any particular Monday. Or their lunges on that Monday. or their deadlifts on a friday like all right it's time to switch it up because this person's had enough and this person is not not too much it's like the three little pigs this person's just right in the middle and either side is probably feeling it too yeah but again it goes back to in-house programming. Yeah, what are your people like? We moved away from that a little bit. And is there an ideal way? I don't know if that's where you wanted to go with this, but – An ideal way to program?

Either in-house or out-of-house, outsourcing your programming. You mean is one ideal over the other? Because how many gyms have you been into that may have affiliate programming? Yeah. Not like I'm talking crap about it. no for sure i would i would rather i would rather for the athletes sake more so than the gym owner's sake if you know you're not passionate about it if you know you're not educated about it if you know you're really not prioritizing it. I would rather see someone outsource it to someone that doesn't know their clientele with the understanding that maybe they

can see a workout that's programmed and slightly tweak it for the people in their gym versus them just haphazardly throwing workouts together and not caring and not giving their members a good product. But I think I go ahead. I think the answer there is a couple of layers to it. Yeah. If you are to do it in-house, you must have an understanding of how to do it to a degree and your members to a degree.

And if you're going to outsource it, there better damn well be some sort of communication about who they're writing it for. And then also have people ready to push the ready to push the people in the right direction. So if you're going to be doing this workout, why? It can't just be a workout. It can't just be random crap. There has to be a sort of direction.

You said Cap does that, a giant PDF. Oh, dude. Yeah, their lesson plans are unreal. I feel like if you're an affiliate and you pay an affiliate fee, you should be looking at CAP every week. Even if you don't use their workouts, you just learn so much. I feel like in my mind, it's ideal programming-wise to have someone in-house that wants to get good at it or is good at it

and can get a good sense of their affiliate and programs in-house. I just think that that's better because then again you can utilize like all of your equipment like we can utilize our ghd's we have fucking 25 foot ropes we have the hill out back and eight prowler sleds and all sorts of shit um i think that's better than us just saying okay we're we're just gonna do cap and we did cap for a while, and Andy would just – or it was hand plan, and Andy would just tweak it all the time or just change workouts all the time.

He's like, ah, fuck that. I don't like that. I want us to use our GHTs this week or whatever. That's my opinion. I think it's better in-house. But if you don't have any in-house that can do it, anybody in-house that can do it, then yeah, outsource. What are some things – and I don't mean to,

I'm just super interested in what you guys have to say. You absolutely cannot have, as far as the workouts going down in an affiliate. What are some, you walk in there, you see it, and you just can't bear it. You have to walk out because I've had it. Like guys, I don't know why this is happening right now. Do you have any of those?

Just things that are either going down in an affiliate? I guess I can lead off with this thing, which is you walk in, you look at the membership base, and it's a whole bunch. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't be doing this, and there isn't a reason for it. But everybody, and you can pretty quickly pick up on the genre of people. You walk into a boot camp class, they want to sweat. They want to hop on the assault bike. They want to do burpees. They want to do maybe kettlebell swings and then work their butt.

And they're like that 9 a.m. class, whole bunch of women in their 40s and 50s, and they'll self-admittedly tell you, it's like, you know what? I don't really want to snatch today. And then you walk into that class and all they're doing is overhead squatting. And I'm not saying that they shouldn't have the tools to do that, but there's like a disconnect there. And it's what we just talked about. There's something somewhere along the chain that are feeding these people

these workouts. And I'm wondering if there's anything like that for you guys. Have you seen anything that's like, what's going on here? How does nobody know this? FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute?

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let us help you plan every detail with professionalism and compassion we are your local dignity memorial provider find us at dignitymemorial.ca jr do you want to take that first hmm i've been in a lot of affiliates recently and since i left mine i kind of like have been around just like okay i'm just gonna shut my mouth and save this for a story i i guess i feel like i can i can answer it to some degree i feel like for me the biggest thing that i hate seeing an affiliate is a coach that can't communicate the intent of the workout and get everybody in the class on board with why they're doing what they're doing

and how they're going to do it in the workout. For example, like if we have a population like so pick one class, if we have our 3.30 p.m. class, which is mainly older women, like think 40 to 80 in the 3.30 p.m. class, it might be 10 ladies. And the workout is like fucking JT. Yeah. So how do you, I don't think that JT is a bad workout for them. Um, yeah, do it. Can any of them do it? RX probably not in that group. But for me, the disconnect is walking in and there's a coach that can't communicate how and why you're going to do that and get a good stimulus out of it and get a good workout out of it and the coach is just like all right fucking banded push-ups for

all three movements or whatever you know fucking assisted whatever uh just like terrible scales bad communication I think one thing that we do a good job of is when you have like those classic CrossFit days where it's just like a five by one overhead squat five by three front squat five by five back squat communicating to the members like hey you're not likely to get out of breath today but that's not where the intensity is going to come from the intensity is going to come from the loading and heavy days are important. Um, so your big thing there and what might quote unquote grind your gears is being unable to tell people what you're doing things for. Yeah. Point of a coach in the first place. Yeah. I guess I'm trying to think of really stupid workouts and I guess I just haven't, like like I haven't looked at any really dumb workouts in a long time.

So it's hard for me. Well, one thing I hate her fucking 12 days of Christmas workouts. I just hate them personally. Um, I have a story, but I'm not doing it. All right.

Let's Jr's got one. I've got another one. No, that's, that's really interesting that you bring up that point because what I was thinking about is, um, that I can't really walk into a gym and see a workout for just that workout and think that it's appropriate or not appropriate. I don't know what those people did the day before.

I don't know what the coach has planned from the day after, but what I do, what I am trying to coach the coaches on is by Thursday or Friday, being able to almost give a week synopsis of where we're at and why at this point of the week we're doing what we're doing. So like this week, for instance, Monday was like an up and back chipper that was long. It was a long grinder. It had empty barbell thrusters in it. It had light sled and then tuesday was one minute on one minute off for 10 sets 30 seconds max cow biker into 30 seconds max sandbag load to a 48 inch box so really high intensity a hinging day and it was with deadlifts right so a lot of hinging and then wednesday yesterday was a partner workout it had box step ups and lunges. So it was a single

leg day there. And then it had gymnastics, right? Had wall walks and strict handstand pushup, and then had Cal skier with rope climb. So on Thursday, when people come in, I want them to be able to say, Hey guys, listen, this is what we've done so far this week. These are kind of the fields that you guys should be having at this point. Who in here's glutes are a little bit sore, right? From the deadlift day. And then all the single leg work tomorrow, right? Okay, cool. Well, today we're doing movements from the hang, right? We're still going to work some aggressive hip opening. We haven't had a lot of that this week at all. And then we're going to end with a lot of flexion of the trunk burpees

and GHDs, right? Because we really haven't done a lot of flexion of the trunk burpees and ghts right because we really haven't done a lot of that this week so i want them to be able to not only explain the workout for that day and the stimulus but why at this point of the week we're here and why we're doing those things why we're not doing pull-ups after all the rope climbs the day before why we're not doing a bunch of high volume overhead movements, because we just did a lot of handstand pushups and a lot of wall walks the day before. So I think stuff like that, people, while they might not care about the nuances of programming at all, they do care that you're thinking about their bodies and not overdoing certain muscle

groups. Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, and we don't just do one thing a day either. I, one thing I think about when I think about classic CrossFit programming, and when you take the level two, they, they kind of hammer this home and it's almost like this idea that every coach at every affiliate is like a flow master. And you should, you know, the more you pack into a class, the less coaching there's going to be and if you only do the 2k row you should spend 20 minutes on a warm-up 20 minutes on a cool down a little bit of stretching and then you have that middle block in the center where you're just getting peak intensity on a 2k row and a good coach can take everybody through that hour class that's just focused on a 2k or a 5x5 deadlift and by the end they're feeling smoked

and i don't necessarily agree with that to, I don't fully agree. I don't agree with that at all. Yeah. You can necessarily not agree. I don't agree at all. I agree. I agree to the extent where like maybe one day a week there should be, that's called an on-ramp class. Yeah. Right. Where it's like 40 minutes of coaching and taking people through PVC pipe drill instructions and then a 10-minute workout. And we don't do that. The 2K, where you're supposed to be at what points during the 2K. Exactly.

People who have been at your affiliate for some time. They know. Yeah, for sure. They better know. And I think it's important for sure for people to come in and get like, holy shit, that hour kicked my butt and I spent most of it working, working out like a lot of it working out. And so, you know,

for example, like Monday we had, our workout was a 15 minute AM wrap of 12 burpees to target and six cleaning jerks, just a shit couplet that just crushed people for 15 minutes. Uh, one 55, one Oh five.

Um, and before that we did lifting we had every two minutes for seven sets was the open complex is a deadlift power clean hang power clean push jerk so just with the stipulations that you couldn't squat it so deadlift clean hang clean jerk um so we had lifting and that progressed into the workout which we were were doing clean and jerks in. And we do that three days a week for sure, at least. Or like today we had a workout that was dumbbell snatches and muscle ups. And like prior to the workout, we had like a muscle up skill piece. And then people built up to a heavy one rep dumbbell snatch.

So I like that. That's my preferred format. I don't like days where it's just one thing and nothing else. I'm just addressing that because someone in the comments was like, so Taylor only does like a 2k row in the, in the class. Actually the opposite. Yeah, for sure. I, I like to add in more. Um, and I think a good coach can handle that. Um, but it's interesting when they do the level two and how they, you know, it's like when you do your two workouts in the level two one workout is just a metcon and there's like a 20 minute warm-up one workout 20 minute cool down and then the next day is the heavy day and so you spend like fucking 30 minutes warming up and then

you take 20 minutes going heavy and then you have a 10 minute cool down and i think they do that to emphasize that like you could do a lot of coaching in an hour and people pay for coaching but at the end of the day people also pay to come and work out like they're not always getting they don't always want to come in and be told what to do for 40 minutes if that makes sense i'd say more people come into work out than do not for sure then then i should i should probably say then to be coached yeah yeah and of course there's a gray area where most of them fall into it probably 90 of them want some sort of coaching and that level varies one side or the other yeah but more people come into workout

than dude to be coached in my opinion yeah for sure and i think the best coaches can give them both yes can steer people in the right direction and then hands off and let them crush themselves and then the program what who does that for them how does that kind of usher them towards the goal right yeah jr thoughts on that yeah um like i said earlier, I think your members get used to a certain product that you give them. And if you stray from that, a lot of the ones going to I'm going to pick a random date and a random year, month, day, and we're just going to do dot com for a full month. And that's it. Without trying to convince them that that was the right way. There would just be a lot of cortisol monkeys, right? They are the junkies. Like they, they, they, they, they want what you give, what you give them and what they're

used to. And I tell people all the time, because we do have a really, really, really fit average member at our gym for sure. But we also have people that are coming in that are on Metformin, people coming in that are 50 and 60 years old that just want to be able to play with their grandkids. We do have that. And if you have a good program, but more importantly, if you have coaches that can meet you where you are and see that, hey, dude, you not need to be doing a hundred GHC setups. I think it's important that you get on this machine and you learn how to recruit the right muscles, but we're

going to go to half range of motion. And instead of doing rounds of 10, you're gonna do rounds of five. But a lot of people just, I don't think don't have that. They, they, they don't have the person, um, leading the class to help people make that distinction of like, Hey, I know this workout calls for this, but you know, I don't think it's safe that you do that to make sure that you still get a really good workout and you're able to keep moving. We're going to tweak the rep scheme a little bit. Yeah. So you think most coaches are like, okay, we have a hundred JC sit-ups today today they're just going to do an ab mat that or um just be tough and get through the hundred like that's not that's not that's not the answer

either yeah no yeah uh my favorite is well i did this i never use myself as an example when that's why you're better than just about everyone else who says that. Ever. I did this work out earlier in 10 minutes, so you'll probably do it in 13. You'll probably do it in 17. Oh, my God. Something that I've started to do because I did get some tough love, some good critical feedback by some longtime members here recently that were like, hey, dude, when anything is for time, your time caps are super aggressive. And, and, and while you may be finishing under the cap or

the people who are semifinalists that do the classes that are finishing under the cap, like that's not a normal person. Those are people who are more than just fitness enthusiasts, right? Their job is to train or their job is to take care of their kids and then train a lot on the side. Like maybe, um, could you like maybe instill some more confidence in us because we're coming in every day and we're trying our hardest to finish under the cap, but we're not able to do it. And, and that can, that can make you feel like you're a failure. And I get that. So what I did was I took that on the chin was like, you know what I should do? I should start providing for workouts that are for time or for even for interval based workouts.

Provide a target time and then a time cap. Right. So give a target of like, hey, this is my way of telling you if you're not close to this target, you're not modifying correctly to get the desired stimulus of the workout and if you decide to not do that that's on you but then that there's also a time cap where hey if you're one of those people that's like rx or die right that hey i'm still gonna put you out of your misery at this time so let's say that the workout um like monday's workout target time was 25 minutes and time cap was 30 minutes and almost everybody was between 25 and 30. So instead of just making the time cap 25 and having most people not be able to finish it,

most people did finish and they were closer to that target. And a few people were like low 20s that just went faster and finished fast. So that's something I know I need to be more aware of and i try to do that every single workout because this is a whole different conversation but i try to stay away from the classic amrap very much because i think it just lets people get saved by the clock a lot yeah um and then you have a lot of other people that are like dude i'm gonna be a lot more sore than you i did 50 more GHD sit-ups and 50 more burpees than you did today. Yeah. We, we prioritize tasks or we put an emphasis on task priority. I think we almost had the opposite issue where for a while are like, Andy likes RX plus RX modified. I was going to say that. Yeah. So Andy loves that. And then for the longest time,

RX plus was like open weights, 50, 35 pound dumbbell, 135, 95 grays, shit like that. And I'm like watching this and then people get to the open and the RX Plus is what they're expected to do as like normal. And they just get fucking booty clapped. And there's like this, there's this like, oh, there was almost like this stigma that like, oh, the open weights are RX plus. I can't do that. And like, I, I like got super, I got my panties in a big old wad and was like, dude, RX plus is never going to be an open prescribed weight again ever. And so like now, if we have like, you know, the workout today, RX plus is like a 70, 50

pound dumbbell rather than like a 50, 35. Um, but it's because these members if you if you tell them that something if you tell a 45 year old middle aged man who's just in there to get fit that rx plus which is what crossfit kind of with a 50 30 pound dumbbell for example 50 35 pound dumbbell 50 um well i'm saying if crossfit is using the 50 and the 35 as a benchmark for most people, the open registrants, then us telling our affiliate that that's RX plus. And then if you're just in there to get fit, you shouldn't try to do that. That's doing them a disservice,

if that makes sense. So we've, I've, I've gotten like, tried to get so far away from that and telling people like, look, if you expect to get fitter, you have to push yourself. And they're so much more capable than what, you know, half the time. I also hate it when coaches like look at an athlete and they're like, I'll just do this. And it's just way too easy for them. And they're not pushing them in the right direction. We had like.

You titled this programming for affiliates, right? And I have like this closing, as you said, you also want 45 minutes. So I'm imagining it off soon. There was this person who came into Chicago who had this way, this mastermind way that affiliates need to be run. And I listened to it. And the gist of it was that everything was zero down. This is how much time you spend here, here, here, and here.

And this is going to be the way of the future. And that, that Jim was out of business in about four months because everyone hated it. And the gist of it is the back end of it was an Amarat. JR said, he's clear of them. This person insisted that it was the way. 10 minutes, because if we started at 50, we know that we're done on the hour. The only way we're going to have a successful business model is if we have the time allotted correctly. And what I think we've kind of fallen upon here is that if you're going to do something, it has to be done with both art and science to a degree. You have to coach, you have to be able to purvey to the people who are doing the workouts and if they have an understanding of those people, but you also have to have a purpose and a pattern and an idea of where you're going with it.

And that's the science. Absolutely. And intuition is huge and subjective feel. Like, how does this feel? How do people feel after the week? How does this look? All that's important. And I hate it's it's like the battle between CrossFit and strength and conditioning. We're like all strength and conditioning is three sets of 10, 90 seconds rest between

like this is what the research shows. But like CrossFit is so anti that it's how does this feel? What's the stimulus um yeah yeah i mean listen with your eyes right i know that right i know that doesn't make any sense but do that like look at your look at your members look at them are you have a member that's five to ten years like at your gym and you remember that five years ago, they looked completely different and they couldn't do a pull up and that you're doing the right thing. Like they're on the right track. They're putting in all that work. They're trusting you to help

them on that journey, but don't, don't get so caught up. I tell people don't get so caught up in the quaternary part. Don't get caught up. So caught up in the number of everything, right? Like it's, it's, it's, it's not rational to just think that as you age, you're going to look better and lift more weight all the time and have more energy and, um, all this stuff, right? Like, what do you value in your fitness? Are you getting closer and closer to that? Or are you still on the right path without taking steps backward on the way? And you can see that as a coach to program in-house if you have the expertise and if you don't outsource it. And then and ask for feedback, reach out to people who you do trust and ask them what they think about. A lot of gym owners have done that with me, just that I've never met in person before. And some some locally, like it's just kind of it's it is how you learn.

We send workouts back and forth all the time. Then me and Andy give each other feedback. He tells me that's fucking dumb, and I tell him that's fucking dumb all the time. Sometimes we yell at each other, but it ends up in a pretty good product. Feedback's important, but dope. All right. See you guys later. That's it.

Bye. Bye. dope all right see you guys later that's it bye