The Sevan Podcast - What We Learned About the Workouts | Shut Up and Scribble Ep. 2

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

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Good to see everyone. I got off the plane from Africa with Taylor yesterday. Taylor and Michelle are in Oklahoma, so we got kind of a janky setup going but wanted to do a show and now got JR, got Taylor, both were at semifinals last weekend JR was at the East semifinal coaching two teams, right JR? Yeah, two teams from the gym and then obviously there to watch Jason too Nice, and then obviously there to watch jason too nice and then taylor was coaching michelle in africa and i was there as well

fun good old trip to africa the classic we we got off the plane at like 1 30 and lizzie picked us up and i was like well let's take the 3 30 class and then at 3 25 i text will i was like i'm gonna do the five and he was already there whoops and then he shows up and he's like wait you are you like did it did you are you gonna work out it's like yeah dude you text me i was already at the gym he's like oh i didn't think about that sorry oh that was good jr how's your experience at the east man it was great like uh i was kind of expecting something like Atlanta, like that convention center, but the one in Orlando was like, I mean, it felt like it was bigger than the Atlanta airport. It was insane. Like how, how big it was. It was easy to get lost

in, but like, it felt a lot like regionals of old, like 2015, 16, 17, 18. That's what it felt like. So it was pretty cool. It was interesting. Did it look like the crowd was the biggest on Saturday? Yeah, definitely on Saturday. And I think that's just because you could watch teams and then everyone that wants to watch team is going to want to watch individual, but not everyone that watches and only wants to watch team is going to come on Sunday to watch individual. Yeah. How was it watching Jason? It was great. I mean, he performed about as well as he could have,

maybe one or two small execution things that like we talked about, but I mean, I think it's pretty clear that he's, he's a pro now. Like he's not making any rookie pacing type mistakes. I mean, it's clear that he has game plans going in and he's just really, really fit. So all he has to do is execute and is usually right there where he needs to be. I mean, his lowest place finish was 12,

you know, two ones. On test six, right? That sounds right, yeah. Two firsts and two seconds though. I mean, it's about as good as you can ask for. Yeah, it looked like you had an awesome performance. How did your teams do? Teams were good.

I think they finished around like 22 and 30th, which one got the 40th spot coming in. And I knew they were fitted. I was pretty confident they wouldn't finish last. And then the team that I think came in at like 18th, you know, didn't quite um finish i'm sure where they wanted to but at the end of the day like neither one of them made any huge mistakes there weren't any big judging disputes or anything like that so i think they they uh the competition

met them where they were at and they ended up about where they needed to nice and wait you were at um mac last year just mac or you were at Mac last year, just Mac, or were you at both? Both. What would you say the difference was? Like talk through the difference between last year going to the semifinals and this year going to Orlando.

Just way more energy. I mean, probably 10 times as many people. I mean, there are probably 4,000 people there. And I mean, even Thursday was like pretty impressively full. I would say there were at least 1,000 people there on Thursday, maybe 2,000. And then Friday, there were probably three or four. And then Saturday, four or more. And then Sunday still, like from what people were telling me, still like probably 3,000 people there. So I would just say the loudness factor, I mean, the crowd got really loud a couple of times during the weekend and just the overall energy and vibe was really positive, which I thought was cool.

Yeah. Dude, that one team, AV CrossFit Man, their fans, that was awesome. Nuts. Yeah, I mean, I would, everyone's going to remember their name

and at the games, if they travel like that to a semi, I can imagine what they're going to be like at the games. Yeah, it's going to remember their name. And at the games, if they travel like that to a semi, I can imagine what they're going to be like at the games. Yeah, it's so awesome. Nate, thanks for the $9.99 for the lack of man buns. We got you covered. So no man buns on this show. How's the vibe in Africa?

There's, to be honest, I felt like it was more electric than syndicate last year like quite a bit i i wouldn't go as far as to say there were as many people there because the venue was just small um but dude it was it got loud people were cheering the crowd was awesome um and the event organizers did a fantastic job they don't get a fucking dime from CrossFit. They don't get a dime from CrossFit, which like is crazy. I was talking to the event, you know, I was talking to them after the weekend and it's just crazy to me that CrossFit, you know, push, you know, kicks into the curve and makes them foot the bill to put on an event for CrossFit. You know, they get to put

their name on it and everything, but it's just, they did a fantastic job with everything that they had. I was just really surprised and shocked that, you know, they were able to pull that off at the level they were with the lack of support that they have. I don't know. It just angers me a little bit that CrossFit wants to grow the sport. You know, it's yeah. The guy they had to do a little bit more than what they did there. Yeah. Yeah. The organizers did awesome. I was there cause I stayed pretty much when Taylor Michelle with the yeah the guy they had to do a little bit more than what they did there yeah the yeah the organizers

did awesome i was there because i stayed pretty much when taylor michelle would leave for the after her events i was there all day in the stands and there was times i mean during four and five tests four and five for the individuals that was really exciting you could it's you know when you get like jittery part of it was just because i was nervous because michelle was going but they were like i would get anxious before when it got close to her time to go but you could like get that kind of jittery anxious feeling because of the crowd and everyone is getting crazy during four and five and then uh during seven as well at the end i mean the end of the africa for the women for michelle and that race at the end it was i mean couldn't ask for a better

finish come from behind down 90 of the workout take it at the end and was i mean couldn't ask for a better finish come from behind down 90 of the workout take it at the end and i mean it was unreal so yeah yeah like and even before that like i mean i think taylor told me he thought the finish on test six was as exciting a finish as he's ever seen so i mean seven was awesome too but i mean i got to watch that one in the airport but i didn't get to see six live there was uh maybe it was before me and will left will's like man if michelle doesn't qualify this trip's gonna suck yeah and then on friday night michelle's like hey do you guys want to do a safari on monday and me and will kind of look at each other like fuck dude a little early to be asking that question she's like you guys want to do a private tour or a group tour and i'm thinking

well if you win private tour a private tour or a group tour? And I'm thinking, well, if you win private tour, if you lose, definitely a group tour. So there was a lot of fucking stress just the whole weekend. But we ended up doing the private tour. It was pretty crazy. It was a good weekend. Yeah, it was awesome. I had a great week. Yeah.

Okay. So what are we talking about today? What's the rundown of the show? Yeah, we're going to be going over the workouts, kind of the sticking points of each workouts. What, you know, the show is titled what we learned from semifinals week one. And I think that's exactly what the show is. And the unique perspective we have is we both coached at a semifinal this past weekend. Not to mention watched it live.

So we're going to give you guys our breakdown of for athletes, for coaches, what to look for, how to prepare and where we think the meat of these workouts lies. So we're going to start with team JR. Kick it off. Yeah. And, you know, just for like the casual fan or maybe the little bit more experienced fans, like things to watch out for. Like, for instance, first workout is is the longest for the teams just like for the individuals but it's good to kind of know when you really need to start paying attention because usually there's a point where the workout starts to shift and the really really good teams start to separate and the teams that aren't as fit start to fall back so as a fan and a third and you know in a 20 to 30 minute, it's good to kind of know where to look for. Yeah.

Where do you want to start? TE1. Team Event 1. I'm going to say the fucking event word, dude, because Dave and Christine are saying it, so fuck it. If they can say it, we can say it. Yeah. Okay.

I'll pull it up. If, JR, you want to read it. Yeah, cool. So let's really focus on the things that we didn't know before last weekend. So this is what we were given. And we, you know, everyone kind of knew that there was going to be some nuance with the sandbag hold. It didn't give a time. It didn't give maybe one of the movements that it was married to, but then it got released that essentially you have a line of movements, right? You have the bike and then you have the runner and then you have the sandbag station and then the double under station. And you're all kind of in a straight line. Each person starts on a different movement every round. And each person does the sandbag and the double under twice, but they only do the bike and the run once.

So a one is on the bike. A two is on the run. A three is on the hold. A four is on the double unders. And whenever the 150 double unders are completed, a three and a four switch while their teammates are still biking and running, they perform the other. So 150 double unders, if they were holding and the hold, if they were jumping, and then once all four are done, they move to the worm. Sticking point. So what was really interesting to see was how many people didn't have to break the double unders very often. But what was even more interesting to me is that going into the workout, everyone kind of thought that the bag would, would play a big factor,

but I don't think a lot of people thought that it would play this big of a factor. And there were a lot of times where the bag and the rope for, for a lot of teams were still moving when the bike and the runner were completed and they were chilling on the machines, like running and biking at recovery paces. And after watching it, what I would recommend, maybe some of the middle of the pack teams or the teams that barely made it, you know, you know who you are. If you're the Mayhems, if you're the East Nashville's, if you're the

Krypton team, like, you know, if you can be really aggressive on workouts like this and still hold on. But I saw so many teams fall apart because they tried to hold the bag for long periods of time and they tried to jump for big sets. But I think the smartest way to approach it is to try to stick to four minute rounds on the cyclical stuff. So you pick up the bag and you tell your partner, Hey, do 60. And I'm going to drop. You take a 10 second break. You pick it back up. You do 50. You drop, you pick it back up. You do 40, you switch. And then you do the same thing. So you have 90 seconds of jumping times two. So it's about three minutes of jumping.

And then with those 10 to 15 second breaks, you end up at about four minutes, which is about as fast as the bikers and the runners were moving. What I think a lot of people did early on was just try to hold on for really, really big sets. But what that did was that put the pressure on the people on the runner and the bike. But you got to think they have to do the hold and the double unders on rounds three and four. The people that do that, that decides the workout because people were falling apart, finishing rounds three and four being the holders and the jumpers. Love it. That's, you know, it's, it's interesting how we're going to draw a lot of kind of parallels and similarities between strategy on these team workouts and the individual workouts. But I, I, what I found super interesting was how important, you know, it's not specific to this program, programming, but watching the weekend as a coach for the first time was interesting to see how you see the inexperience, like you said, in the pros. Or you see the difference in experience.

Like you see how the pros handle events, and then you see how everyone else handles events experience-wise. And it's easy to get caught up in a race, especially – I see that most in in early heats where the guys let others dictate their pace or where teams let other teams dictate their pace and just can't do that on a lot of these workouts any of them to be honest yeah team two i think too yep i would say other than the clean which i mean i think the crowd may have gotten louder on the clean than even on the individual test four for the max snatch but we'll get to that one other than that i think this one which I mean I think the crowd may have gotten louder on the clean than even on the individual test four for the max snatch but we'll get to that one other than that I think this one was the most exciting and most fun to watch um we pretty much knew everything about this workout

going into it except for if there was going to be some kind of criteria to switch and a minimum work requirement for every athlete to perform a different type of muscle up for a certain amount of reps that ended up being only one rep so at some point every person on the team had to do one bar muscle up and one ring muscle up what you saw most teams doing is just switching every round so pair one would do bar ring go to the thruster and then on the next round when they increased reps, they would just switch positions. So if you were doing bar muscle up, that person would normally be on the rings and the person doing the ring would be on the bar. This workout really came

down to how teams manage the round of 25. So when you got to the set of 25 thrusters, there was a huge separation. Like the two teams from crash were cruising they got to the round of 25 and either one pair or both had to break that up in way bigger sets than they thought after doing the round of 20 unbroken so like for a lot of those teams it became 8-7-5-5 and when you break and you're hurting that bad on thrusters it's not a quick break but the top teams were able to hold on and hurt for that round of 25 unbroken or at least do it in two sets. And that ended up being like a 20- to 30-second chunk of time,

and it ended up being the difference between like five 10-ring muscle-ups and bar muscle-ups at the end. T-3. Let's do it. We're're gonna rip through these team workouts and then we'll get a little more nuanced on the individual yes this was a this is a pretty cool relay sprint um it really it really singled out someone obviously in a relay fashion that either was weak at bench press, had some type of restriction on pistols, or really, really struggled to do the pirouettes. So the 400 meter run buy-in was kind of a gimme, but you did have to push the pace because the cap was pretty tight. But you saw a lot of people

early struggle on the bench. You saw a lot of people late struggle on the bench. on the bench. You saw a lot of people late struggle on the bench. The squats had to be with one leg up, not touching the ground and also not letting the foot come behind the other leg, which was an interesting standard. And they kind of carried that over to with the individuals from, you know, from what I've been told. But the pirouettes ended up only being, you know, I would say about a five foot walk in between. And the box was big. I would say it was probably a six by six box due to the pirouette. So not nearly as difficult as what the individuals had to do, but the bench press only being 10 for two athletes and 15 for two other athletes. It was still a huge separator for teams. I thought it was fun to watch though.

What was your favorite team workout to watch of the weekend? Definitely the clean ladder. Yeah, that was an exciting workout. How did you feel overall, the team workouts, watching-wise? Like, the layout of the floor? I think a lot of them were pretty viewer-friendly.

Yeah, the first one was a little difficult. I mean, obviously you had the worm being in the spot, but all the work done in the round preceding the 10 cleaning jerks every time, you never really knew, oh, is this team on their second round of double-unders or is this team on their first round of double-unders within that round? Because they had to switch positions. It was kind of hard to keep up with it. but you could just see with facial expressions the teams that were

struggling the teams that weren't because the carry going from the carry into the worm was nasty it was yeah everybody yeah cool event four could you was there something in uh orlando that made it easier to track on this one this was the one i felt like i had a lot of issues really without the, if I wasn't listening to the announcer, it's hard to track who was actually in the lead on this one. So I think what's hard on this one is the fact that one pair does the round that they start on three times.

And the other pair does the part of the workout that they start on three times. So you're not doing three of each or two of each. You're doing three of one and two of the other. So if you're really not tuned in to how many times they've switched, it's definitely hard to tell who's winning. The boxes being the middle, I thought, made it a lot more viewer friendly so that if you saw one pair get to the box and start working, you knew, okay, so the pair that's on the lighter dumbbell is a little bit behind they need to catch up because if they

don't catch up the other pair can't switch so um i would say one and four were the hardest to follow and unless you were there and you knew what to look for um but i mean in general i i do think that should come secondary to the tests. How did you feel about the, uh, same, like the 30 inch box jumps for male and females? How did that turn out in your opinion? Oh, I thought it was great. I thought, I thought this workout really came down to dumbbell cycling. You know, you, you, you do the 73 times to me, that's a little bit more of an aerobic workout, whereas you do the 90s 30 times. So three sets of 10, it becomes a comes down a little bit more to how fast you can move the weight.

And although the rep scheme was a little bit odd, the best teams were finishing like within three or four seconds of their other pair. So like to me, that kind of gives kudos to the programmer as being able to time that out pretty closely. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. All right. Workout five. Yeah.

And this was the one that was, I would say we knew the least information about. And once it was released, like you could really, really appreciate not only the race and the spectacle, but you could appreciate how appreciate not only the race and the spectacle but you could appreciate how one person on your team not having them at a barbell is the difference in five to ten reps right so one of the teams from crash their total reps on this workout for all three loads was less than East Nashville's first round

only. Jesus Christ. And I mean, there, there are levels to this, right? Like they're, they're professionals, right? And it just shows you this workout was really, really cool in that way. So for people that don't know, each pair had a minute at each weight. You could switch out if you wanted to, but you could only do that one time. And if you did not contribute to the team's score at that weight, so if you did not clean the weight at least one, once you were out. So let's say you had two females that got five reps each at the first load at 195. But then when they got to 215, one went out, they failed, they rested, they try again, they failed, they switched out, that person's done. And the second female that comes on hit three reps. Okay, now that's only

three reps and only she can move on to the final barbell. So it was really cool how Boz put a, you know, once again, put a lot of stock into execution and a lot of strategy. Like you have a decision to make. Do you want to stay out there for 15 more seconds and think you can hit the weight? Or do you have someone waiting that you know can hit the weight? And do you just run out and let them come in and work? So it was really cool like a minute it's not a lot of time to deliberate which is which was i thought was super exciting and then when people got to the last weight the whole field was no longer working so you really got to to appreciate how some of the males and females moved the last weight.

Like some were still going touch and go at 315, doing like sets of six and like five and six, I think is the most I saw, which is nuts. Wow. So the final weight did end up, it did matter. It wasn't just like who could get the most at the lighter weights. I mean, a lot of cases, the second weight mattered. Just the ability to cycle it fast or the inability to do so really played like a big role. Gotcha.

All right, and then the last workout for the teams. All right, so what we didn't know on this one was the standard for the seated legless rope climb. And essentially there's a tape line off the floor. I would say about 55 inches, maybe 60. Your butt had to come off the ground with your hands still underneath that tape line. Then you could use your leg, like use your hips to keep up the rope legless. And then both hands had to be at or above the tape line at the top,

which I would say is probably 12 to 12 and a half feet, maybe with a controlled descent back below the starting line before your butt could hit the ground. Most teams didn't struggle at all with it. Everyone had to do one of those. The chest-to-wall, some teams struggle with the 10 chest-to-wall handstand push-ups a little. Those are both movements that weren't tested in quarterfinals. But what was really interesting to me and what fans should look out for

on this workout is how difficult round three is. After they've done 30 burpees, after they've done 10 burpees after they've done 10 uh 10 chest to wall 15 strict all that pressing fatigue the 20 kipping looked like for a lot of teams the hardest part of the workout maybe it's because the 10 inch away from the wall 30 inch line standard is not something a lot of people have practiced kipping because we've only used it for strict stuff but it really has been like it really was eye-opening how when everyone got to that last round how difficult the and how long the six rope climbs took and the 40 handstand push-ups took per pair like it just got really sticky a lot of teams got the failure on that

what was your favorite workout of the weekend to watch you asked that oh i did well you said the clean one yeah i would say the clean this last one was cool too only because it was um uh a regression right or like a digression i don't know which which which word to use so instead of it getting harder as they went it actually got lower in skill which was cool progression yeah overall someone asked earlier how do you feel well-roundedness how do you feel overall after watching the entire completion of the competition as a whole how do you feel all put together um i would still say i would say the team was a little bit more balanced i feel like in the individual i think is very weightlifting biased this year but with the teams and also with the individuals and i think just because

it's different it's not what we're used to the gymnastics volume isn't there as much as the execution of the gymnastics movements when they're there so it's only six rope climbs a piece it's only 45 handstand push-ups each it's each. It's, you know, around 40 muscle ups, 40 to 50, right? And you're doing half bar, half ring. But if you're not able to hold on for unbroken sets, you lose. So it's very, it's very on brand, I think, with how the programming has been. But I think that's the biggest part that stands out to me is um the density that the gymnastics are presented in versus the volume that they're usually presented yep before we leave helping boz asked us uh if you should have put the clean workout last versus workout what are your thoughts on that order wise it's easy to say yes because it was so fun to watch but i think that a lot of times especially with the best teams everyone's strong and you're not wondering like can can all these athletes hit that last bar as much as

you wonder i wonder if one of them just has a big hole and they can't do a legless having seen it i would say yeah put the clean last like and that would be so against what what most people have done in the past yeah you either put the heavy first which i thought was cool he you know that he added that on day two, but I think putting it last would, would be a really cool ring. Like at the games, if they did something like this as the last workout, I think it would be awesome. Yeah.

I did like the final team event with the burpees over the worm at the end, moving forward. I thought it was really, it was a good visual. You could easily track the race. The race component of that last event was great. Yeah. And it actually ended, it actually ended on the squats too, which was cool because you saw some teams having to pause and rest and some teams not, so that was good. Especially when it was like one athlete that you could tell

was struggling in the squats, and that just highlights part of the team competition. We're moving to individuals, but I want to move i want to we're moving to individuals but i want to address like two things i'm going to share this comment and i'll talk about it after i finish addressing what i'm talking about now you talked about how there are like levels to you know there's levels to it and there's professionals and there's people that are just out there to have fun and i was thinking earlier today that i feel like there are three kind of blocks you can put a competitor in at semifinals. Like you have three little squares. I can't hear him. Can you hear him? Nope. Did you meet yourself?

Can you hear me? Sorry about that. All right. So these are the athletes where I feel comfortable with labeling it. I would call it the safe bet zone or the green zone. And you can think about like Justin Medeiros, Pat Belner, Jeff Adler. These are the guys that they're fit enough to qualify, whether or as long as they go in there and they compete at a high level, they're going to qualify, regardless of some minor mistakes from here and there. And then that middle zone, I think I would like to label it as like you have a chance. You have a chance to make it. And then the last zone is needs improvement, the red zone. So right, you have these people that are professionals that are going to go in and they are fit enough to outwork or survive workouts that don't suit them. And then you have the people that are needs improvement where you're not going to qualify, you probably know that you're not going to qualify and you've just got to get fitter. And then you have people that are in the yellow zone where if you're going to qualify, it's going

to come down to you executing every workout, the best of your ability, staying in it mentally all weekend. And I think what I learned this past weekend, you know, coaching Michelle was if you're in that yellow zone, it is so mental. I would say almost as much as physical the whole weekend, because if you're in that yellow zone, you can pretty much bet you're going to have a bad workout and that bad workouts probably not going to keep you out from qualifying. If you're maybe towards the upper margin, um, physically points wise, but it could keep you out mentally. Um, so that was just such an interesting experience seeing how close you can cut it of throwing the towel in after a bad event um so if you're watching this you're in the yellow zone i think you know

my big takeaway from the weekend is you know everybody's going to get punched in the mouth you're going to have a bad event um and how you respond mentally is is likely what's going to be the deciding factor and i'm excited to watch that this weekend and see kind of what athletes can take a hit and respond. And what athletes don't, I think looking at this weekend after experiencing what I experienced in Africa, that's what I'm most excited to watch are the athletes that take a shot and still respond. You know, James Sprague is a, is a good example, you know, taking a bit of a hit on test six,

but responding and doing what he needed to do and qualifying to the games. Then you look at someone maybe like Anika Greer is a good example where she took a bit of a hit and wasn't able to respond or, you know, just interesting things like that. And that comment, there we go. Taylor, do you think the blocks they used in Africa to start and finish the road climate easier? They did not have any rogue equipment other than sandbags, worms, and the sputting sled. So their rig was maybe a foot to two feet taller than the standard

regional rig. And so that's why they started on those blocks. It wasn't an easier standard. The rope climb was the same height all right event one nice yeah event one or test 1000 meter echo bike 84 foot hand over hand sled pull they didn't actually make you correct me if i'm wrong jr but at least the standard in af Africa is you didn't have to alternate hands on the sled pole. Was that how it was? And did you notice that? Yeah. I don't, I didn't see one person even attempt to pull it hand over hand. Everyone started out with like a two handed pull to even to get the sled

moving. Sorry. I just got you back. I didn't hear you that whole time you hear me now i got you now you said the standard yeah i didn't see anyone try a hand over hand pull the whole time yeah everyone was doing everyone was doing a two-handed pull the hip drive yeah and i mean everyone was wondering if the sled would matter and i mean i i think i was even one of the ones that said that I thought the workout would be done like sub 20. And I was just, you know, no way. The amount of times you had to transition with the rope, which is something for people to look out for. Watch. Watch the athletes off the echo bike.

How efficiently they get the bundle of rope from behind them, back in front of them and stretched out again to start the next pull. Because I saw so many athletes waste five seconds every time they turned around. So that's 15 seconds. So that's 45 seconds over the course of the workout, just trying to untangle the rope or get it from stuck from underneath their sled or whatever. How much, how much of that, how much of that echo bike is a throw away? Um, well, so I think it's easy for everyone to just say, okay, so the only thing that matters in the workout is a sled. I disagree with that. And by the way, that, that is a pretty

far extreme. You can say that if aerobically you were you were able to hang right and when you know there's not a screen that shows paces you know maybe you know maybe one day there will be because it's easier for people to be like oh yeah the run didn't matter like even though it was eight to nine minutes or whatever but it really did matter if you were five seconds slower on the sled every time but you got off the runner 30 seconds before where you, you already made up that time on the whole sled. So I think it was really balanced and it was really cool to see a long endurance workout meshed with some strongman implements. It's not usually something we see. Um, but at the end of the day like the people that moved the sled the best were the bigger more powerful athletes and you could probably just say the people who had the most counterweight right like it was just one of those mass moves mass type things yeah I thought

the sled was the for sure the linchpin of the workout but then second to that I thought the run was crucial and the people who could get on the runner and move while being at kind of a comfortable pace and that comfortable base obviously being extremely relative to the athlete like if you're you know Roman or Jason or Sprague that comfortable pace is fast and if you had that capacity the runner was huge and then on the other end of that if you don't have that capacity, the runner is huge. It eats you up. It swallows you whole. And I thought that was a big part of the workout as well. Um, and it's interesting. You kind of label that sled as strongman implement. I think, I guess I see it as like kind of grunt work where like, who's, you know, there's technique involved for sure, but who can adapt to an implement and move it most efficiently um it was it was cool

to watch i like that there's actually a guy in africa who on his lane it's kind of similar to the spray thing his sled flipped this guy was pulling uh the sled and it bunched up his mat um and just stopped his sled in his tracks which kind of sucked but is what it is didn't didn't decide the outcome of the weekend at all. The flooring also was coming up like crazy in Africa, the flooring panels. What were your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think for the type of flooring they had,

I mean, I can only assume they tested out a dog sled. They tested out the type of sled they use, you know, for the rope chipper back in the day. And they tried this one and this one was able to move the easiest the end and like in the men's race you couldn't have asked for anything more yeah you had roman james and jason james's piece of fabric that was in contact with the floor right pull after pull kind of came up from underneath the plates and then by the last pull it flipped yeah and he had to go adjust it and that kind of opened the door for jason to win but i think what was you know no matter how fast or slow they did it, going from sled pull to ski to sled, I mean, everybody was blown up about as much as you could possibly tolerate to finish that last three lengths of sled. What was also interesting to me, too, is I didn't see a whole lot of people wear gloves

and that, that was surprising. What you did see is people chalk every single trip. And a lot of people said that those ropes were kind of new. So if you didn't chalk, there's no way you could grip. And I'm, I'm, I'm wondering moving on if they're allowed to like a lot to wear gloves. Yeah. Like if that's allowed in the athlete packet i think the only thing i saw was grips without dowels or like homemade tape grips like we used to use back in the day um because maybe you're not allowed to use wide receiver gloves because they're too tacky or maybe you're not allowed to use those mechanics rogue gloves because they put you at an advantage but if you are allowed to um i think you'll see a lot of people do it in the coming weeks.

I think with hand protection, they would have shown a picture of that. And maybe because their gloves weren't in the list of approved hand protection, no one used them. What about pine tar? Is that cheating? It's only cheating if you get caught, I guess, right? I just had that thought. I was like, fuck, man. I don't like wearing gloves ever i i have mechanics gloves and i don't feel like they grip a rope that great i've never tried wide receivers gloves but i i wouldn't want to do that either but i was thinking man i played baseball my whole

life i was like some pine tower would be fucking sick on that rope um but like i think in general for fans the people who look like they're moving the sled the best on the first three trips you can bet that they're probably going to continue to do that yeah i also think you can get out there and move that first sled too fast and blow up a little bit on it um but to a degree i agree for sure i i just want to go back and draw attention to when i was thinking what was jason's time on this workout what were their times like 22 yeah low 20s i think brian completely disagreed with me when i said the men would be low 20s and the girls would be like you know upper 20s and mostly time capped so anyways we can move on after that little yeah jason was 22 um on that workout and james and roman were you

know right behind them um for the women about four minutes slower just in general like 26 27 yeah yeah i had some athletes test that and that's why i had that information and felt like that was how the workout was going to go so it's not like i was well you've got the difference in in only 145 pound plate yeah so that that's not a big difference and i mean that's what i did at my competition this last time it's six and five and then after the fact i was like i was probably too heavy for the women to push and that sink or sled push burpee workout but the big thing is the fact that the women are doing the same amount of machine work machine work so that's already that's already a minute per machine ish right so you add that with the sled that was still pretty robust i mean 180

is over i would say almost all their body weights, maybe a few that are heavier than that, but that's like, there are a lot of guys. I mean, there were several guys out there, two 25 or two 20, but not a lot of females out there. Yeah. All right. Test two event two. So I five ring complexes, five single leg squats, right? Five left, five, right. Five left.

The standard on that was you couldn't touch the ground with that off leg. But if you did the rep that you touched the floor with that off leg was a no rep. And you just went right back into it. You didn't have to start back over at zero. I think at first we were confused whether or not we start zero. We also weren't sure if the burpees were going to be get overs using the hands or all the way overs, whatever. It was just a standard burpee box jump over. I think after

seeing this weekend play out, some of the verbiage that we picked apart in that prediction show, I think just comes down to not that they were thinking that hard into it. They just wrote the workouts how they would write them to a degree, I think for me watching this event, I, I think the ring complex for sure is the linchpin of the workout who can move through it quickly. Um, but I, I think for most people, most, most athletes, even a lot of the safe bet athletes, you don't have to do them unbroken, like a quick break on the rings. If it keeps you consistent, it's, it is, you make that time up just after five burpees and taking a rest on the ground and then taking a rest before you get back down. So like, if I'm doing burpees at a much slower cadence where I pause on the floor, get up, jump over, pause

before I get back down after five reps like that versus someone who's just moving step up, step down, step back efficiently, you've just lost all of that time you made up by doing the rings unbroken. It spikes your heart rate a little bit. One thing I'll say with that is in a workout like this, when you come down from the rings, you can't drop from the top. A, you've got the rock on. B, if you drop down and you let the ring swing around, that rest is drawn out much longer than you need it to be or want it to be. So if you're coming down on the rings and you plan a break, you've got to control that descent. And the other side, you can break the complex quite a bit more intelligently than I think most people think. You don't just have to break after the dip. You could do two complexes and do

the toter ring into your third, come down, rest, and then you jump up and you start with your muscle ups, then you've only got a muscle up dip, and then one full complex. I would, I, you know, it'd be, it'd be the smart thing to do for athletes that plan a break is to get that toe to ring in the first complex that you're going to break at out of the way. That's interesting. You said that because i actually heard some athletes saying that they thought a complex meant that they had to get credit for all three repetitions in the complex before they could break but they don't well so that that was that was something um you know maybe to watch out for if you're a fan to see if someone uses a strategy like that you wouldn't want to take a break after the muscle up because then you got to do another muscle up to get into the dip. But yeah, I think it's interesting what you were saying that there are three spots in the workout to lose or make up time, right? All three of the movements

did matter. And if you think about the pistol, someone with really, really good pistol efficiency that doesn't have to take that half second pause to regain their balance at the top of every rep over the course of 20 reps that's 10 seconds that's at least two burpees and then on the burpees it was amazing we were sitting um like parallel to where all the boxes were so you could really watch three or four athletes down the line and watch whose cadence was fastest and that the athletes that were able to hit the ground and immediately get to the floor were were almost half a rep faster yep for a lot of people watching where i think you need to pay the most attention is on round two

round two is very delicate because if you start out a little bit too aggressive on round one, you, you have to think on round two. Okay. What do I do here? Do, do I throttle back and break up the rings on this one to preserve my pressing stamina on the burpees for round three? Or do I just hope that I can hold on and then get to the burpees and maintain speed? It's really interesting. hope that I can hold on and then get to the burpees and maintain speed. It's really interesting. I saw athletes get as many as 19 burpees in the first round.

And then, you know, you go from 19 to 12, you just think you're going to be able to kick on round three. You're not, you'll be like, you'll be lucky to get 12 again. Probably not. Yep. And Jeff, Noah, Emma, they were still pretty consistent throughout. And it just shows you how professional, how good they are at pacing and knowing what's a little bit too fast and what's not fast enough. On the women's side, the 10th place score on that workout was 39. score on that workout was 39. The winner was 61. So a spread of 22 burpees on the men's side, it was only 12. So 41 was a 10th place score. 53 was the winning score. So look out for someone that maybe goes 16 and then 10, but you're like, ah, they actually look pretty good on that round. I wonder why they did that. Well, that's because they want to be able to go for 15 or 16 again on the last round.

That's when you empty it. And that's why I think most people aren't going to look out for it. But look and see how the dip outs look on round two. That will give you an idea of who's even going to be able to push the third round. And this is the other thing, you know, like you said earlier, if you're a Jeff or an Emma or Noah, you know what you're capable of on this workout. If you're not one of those people, you can bet that you need quite an intricate game plan as to what your capacity is, where should you break? What should your pacing

be? What the way I described the workout was 97% effort, 98% effort, 100% effort and perceived intensity, right? Like that first round, if you're at 100% perceived intensity, pretty much regardless of who you are, you're fucked, you fucked yourself. So I think in terms of like bodybuilding language and verbiage, they talk about saved reps. Like if you do a set of bench, 10 rep bench with one to two SRs, one to two save reps means when you get to that 10th rep, you should have one to two left in the tank. In this workout, you need to pace your burpees where you've got, I would say at least two to three in the tank after that first round. Meaning if you had done three more, you would have been at a hard pace and it may be even four or five. and that second round similar you need to work at an

intensity where you're like okay i had two to three more that round not that you're stopping 10 seconds early but you're using you're moving your burpees at a pace where you could have gone at a pace that gave you maybe three more reps and then that last round you have to punch a gas pedal and i think the last thing on the burpee yeah and where it's like go ahead no you're good go ahead i was gonna say the last thing on the burpees. Yeah. And where is like, go ahead. No, you're good. Go ahead. I was going to say the last thing on the burpees is I, I, I always hate to watch people stopping in, in different places on burpees, like stopping on the ground or jumping over the box, stopping at the top before they go down. It's when you're doing burpees, it's never good to perform burpees

where you have a point of actual rest on the burpee. You should make your burpees aerobic, like running where you're just throttling the pace up or down and you move at a pace that doesn't allow you to stop at any point. Because if you're conditioning yourself to stop on burpees, you're just setting yourself up to lose more time and more time and more time. Whereas if you learn how to throttle the pace down where you can continuously move, that's always going to be better. Yeah. Yeah. Last thing I want to say about that workout is, um, and I think it is for sure on purpose and it's becoming a trend with Adrian programming is this idea of reps being really expensive. A failed dip is so expensive on this workout.

It's like 30 seconds, which equates to six to seven burpees. A failed pistol, yeah, it's one rep, but you fail one on every round and you missed a burpee. Like the accuracy and the precision of which you have to be able to execute is like on this workout. And then with test six, just at a really high level. So where a lot of people will look at the pistols, it's just something in the way, like, yeah, they are in the way and everyone can do 60 of them. But just like the toes to bar, if you're going to win that workout, you can't

break the last set of 20. And they're just breaks, especially for the males at the highest level when you get there. Yeah. And here's the other thing. People train pistols. It's not just a pistol. You have to balance. And how many people train balance? Beyond that, how do people train balance? So that's something if you're an athlete or a coach, you should be thinking about going into this weekend is how do you train balance? Is that something if you're an athlete or a coach you should be thinking about going into this weekend is how do you train balance is that something you should touch or try to prepare for that's also a place a lot of people lost time on was not failed reps on the pistols it was regaining balance people have to take you know upwards of three four seconds just to remain in balance several times during the workout adds up exactly yeah cool workout three yeah 10 to 1 linda classic three bars of death except

we've got the dumbbell bench press and i would say generally speaking on this workout breaking the bench from the start is a smart thing to do 10 9 8 unless you're one of those handfuls of people who knows you have unbroken but again again, I don't feel like this show. I want to speak to those people. You're not listening to us. If you're those people, if you're not, you know, you might think you have unbroken and you might be able to pace the squat cleans and the deadlifts to where you get back to the dumbbells and aerobically you're okay to pick them up.

But if you don't break in 10, nine, eight, you're going to hit a wall and failed reps are expensive. So expensive, so much more so expensive with the dumbbells than they are with the bench press fail. Yeah. And I think a lot of fans are going to be going into this saying, okay, it's all about the dumbbell bench. I need to make sure I'm watching during that point. I'll, I'll give you something else to watch. Watch the squat clean cycle time. No one's going touch and go until the end, right? But if you're sitting behind the athletes, which I think is the best view for this workout, even more so than the frontal view,

watch how fast or slow someone in like three consecutive lanes put their hands back on the bar. Not how fast they drop under, not how fast they stand up from the squat. There's not going to be much difference there. But when they drop the bar, do they follow the bar down and push the bar into the floor and pull immediately? Do they grab the bar with their right hand and then grab the bar with their left hand at 145 and 105? They shouldn't be doing that ever, but watch and

see if there's an athlete in the round of nine that picks up the first squat clean and the person next to them gets to the bar two reps behind if they move back to the deadlift at the same time that was only squat clean cadence and over the course of 55 reps that's an opportunity for the less fit to rest too much that's an opportunity for the really really fit not to rest as much and to make up a break on the dumbbell bench. Like I'll just use Jeff, an example, Jeff finished fourth in the workout in a really good field. And he broke the set of nine, eight, seven, six, and I believe five. And he made up that time on the, on the people in front of him on the squat cleans. And it was really impressive. So like the best in the world,

watch how they cycle that lightweight, watch the discipline that they're able to do that with. And it's, it's, it's also interesting look at the front rack on a lot of these athletes and who has a good front rack position and can relax with the barbell on their shoulders and who has maybe not so good of a front rack position. And they're just going to continue to blow their upper body up between the bench press and that less than ideal front rack. And what you did see a lot more too, I will say on the female side for something to look out for this week, lots more breaks on the deadlifts and it's interesting what was that just to let some blood come out of the arms and

get ready for the bench or was that just a planned break because of the load that that that would be interesting to know from some of the coaches because you didn't see very many of the guys break deadlifts at all and those same guys some of those same guys struggled heavily on the bench but you saw a lot more of the females break the deadlifts. I just don't think the time under tension is necessary and the break on the deadlift is easy and it's not expensive. So like I told Michelle to break the deadlifts from the start and she's probably the strongest girl on the field

and she didn't need to, but what's the point of going unbroken there if you're just building time under tension and building time under tension and it costs you somewhere else? So it's just an efficient place to reload some time under tension. You're choosing to take a five-second break instead of being forced to take a 20-second break on the bench press. Exactly, or slow way down on the squat cleans.

You can push the squat cleans knowing you get back to the deadlift bar and you don't have to do however many unbroken. I feel like there's the one other thing that I noticed a lot was the transition to get the dumbbells from your knees to the position told you a lot about where the athlete was. Yes. And if they were going to fail reps, like if you see the athletes, if you notice and you're watching athletes and you see in the first rounds they're gonna go in from knees to straight to overhead and they're getting straight fully full extension their arms and they're not having to press out that first one that doesn't count just to get in position and then you start to see them in rounds eight seven six have to start from the pressed out position or start from the on chest position and then press out to just to get

in position you know that you can watch them and see if they are going to start filling reps because i made it i noticed a lot of athletes that made a huge difference where you could see that and just getting off your chest and that first one to get in position costs people a ton of energy because it's so hard because you don't have any of that momentum and we're still in a full rep and i can need credit for it yeah and a full rep and it was probably their heart is going to be their hardest rep of all of them oh this is an interesting take from matt do you think the length of transitions this year versus 2018 hindered the athletes and i wonder if do you mean by hindered like it held some of the athletes who are quite a bit fitter back or how do you take that jr yeah i think that's a great point uh from. And I think it would have only allowed for more separation. Yeah, I think the close transitions. Yeah, they did kind of hamstring some of the fittest in the field to like make the decision like, okay, you're going to walk slowly back to the bar on rounds eight, seven, six and five, and I'm going to slowly jog back to the bar. And by the time we get to the round of four, I'm going to be five reps ahead because of it. It almost makes running the fourth movement in the workout where back in the day,

those transitions were long and they advanced the bar. We're here. It's not as viewer friendly. They only advanced the bar three times. Yeah. I would have liked more transition for that reason, not because it would give athletes who needed it more rest but because it would allow the athletes who are about to show separation quite a bit more and i think the length of transitions also played a role in your you're putting the athlete right after they finish a set right back onto their implement and it maybe encourages them to take less rest or be maybe a little more aggressive than they um so i heard in both ways athletes who weren't as good by putting them right back on top of their implement and kind of forcing them to go and then it also hindered the best by not a operation where they could really push the workout but

cool test three test four and five yeah sorry test four and five. Yeah. Sorry, test four and five. Correct. Thoughts, JR? Yeah, so six-minute clock, 800-meter run buy-in into 100 max snatch, as many attempts as possible. Two-minute reset, eight snatches from the floor. They did not have to be squat. 185, 125 into a max effort, 800 meter run. Um, I think a lot of people said before the workout, if it's a true foot race, it's probably the most exciting workout that's ever been programmed at a regional.

Um, even if it was shuttle runs and they did 50 foot shuttles, I think they would be so close that you would not be confused about who is winning until late in the 800, which would have been fun to watch. The fact that it was on a runner did take away a little bit from the spectacle. But, you know, at the same time, we're, we're just watching for that hand to be in the air. Like there were a little, you know, there were little placards that they were moving up from 200 to 400 to 600. And then you were waiting for a hand in the air and wondering who's running at a little bit of faster pace, whether you're sitting at a spot where you can see the tape and kind of watch and see how many times it's revolving versus the athlete next to it. You can look at the athlete's foot cadence.

That's just really tough to do. The one rep max was really, really fun to watch. If you're going to have a max doing it in a fatigued state with a small amount of time to work is probably the most exciting way to do it. And you saw some of the athletes put on a show. I think this week in the West, you'll see more bigger snatches on the male and female side.

Yeah, both sides. Everyone will wonder what Anthony Davis is going to hit. Everyone will wonder what Colin Brander and Spiegel are going to hit. So I think it'll be pretty cool. I think that first run is pretty irrelevant, and I saw a lot of guys in the east get off quite a bit faster and then you see Jason almost the last off the runner and his heat snatched the heaviest so right yeah with the runner being in test five though like it really does make it more so a power output because if you're a big if you're a big athlete and you can really run your reward is almost exponential compared to running on flat on flat land for sure and good

mechanics having a long stride and being able to carry momentum on the runner is huge i'm not the heaviest guy in the field but if you have good run mechanics you can just move on the runner is huge. I'm not the heaviest guy in the field, but if you have good run mechanics, you can just move on the air runner. I love the test of both of these workouts. I think four was exciting to watch for sure with the heavy lift. I just hate how five or part two is just so anticlimactic as to what it could have been. So this workout and test seven had, um, um, very small, um, like seconds really mattered in both of those, right? Do you think that if they would have made the eight snatches to 25, it would have been a better test or do you think it was better the way that it

was both would have forced athletes to run hard but was 185 125 the right load for eight reps or do you think it should have been heavier man uh it seemed kind of irrelevant that those eight reps at that weight but what i don't think would have been the right move is making that weight heavier because you already have a workout prior to favoring the heavy snatch. So I I'm almost not concerned about that eight rep being irrelevant for athletes because it really rewards the great runners the same way that test four really rewards the great snatchers. Uh, so I thought it was just a good balance. I thought they balanced out well with the exception of both of

them being running and snatching you know um yeah yeah i think i mean you know very thematic of forcing the intensity nope you gotta go unbroken yep um you know if you want one of the top scores and you gotta cycle fast and get on the runner you you know you have no choice you you have to you have to blow the legs up a little bit and then you have to run faster than you want to. Yeah. And I think, you know, again, linchpin of the workout clearly workout for is how heavy can you snatch? There's not much to that one. And then aside from not blowing up on the buy-in of the run, and then on workout five, you're going to see a lot of people get on the runner and start to move probably a little too soon. And people who are smart runners and great runners, you're going to see build into

an extremely uncomfortable pace. And you're just going to see the tempo increase maybe every 200 meters or every 150 meters. And by the time they hit 650, you know, they're just moving as hard as they can. And those are the people who are going to win the workout. That one was exciting to watch. I like that one. Gets your nerves up. I thought four was good. Five for me.

I hated watching. But six. All right, test six. This one was awesome. 20 overhead squats, 500-meter row, three handstand walk pirouettes, handstand, or the barbell in north america east there were two bars you did 10 at one bar drop the bar move forward 10 at the next bar you got your 500 meter row and then your handstand walk pirouettes were in a big box walk maybe seven eight feet forward another big box same thing another big box to finish and then you walk forward the two seated legless rope climbs we talked about that standard there's a 55 inch tape mark

your hands had to start below it and you're seated with your feet off the ground you pull yourself off the ground as soon as your hands pass that tape mark you can swing your legs to use the momentum and you've got to grab a tape line and then touch above it come back down with a controlled legless descent until your hands pass underneath that 55-inch tape mark, and then you can fall, drop, whatever you want, sit on the ground. 20 strict wall-facing handstand push-ups, back to two legless, handstand wall pirouette, 500 in a row, 20 overhead squats. I think me watching the workout, really the crux of the workout was the back to legless, and then the final 20 overhead squats.

Like those two places were really where you could see the athletes who had it create separation athletes who thought they had it make big mistakes and athletes who didn't have it just hit a wall. Yeah. I thought the winners are, especially the males. Like I think Will did are especially the males. Like I think Will did his 20 unbroken. I'm not sure if Noah broke once or not, and he ended up winning the workout. But while there's only 20 chest to wall handstand pushups for the places one through five, that could be what ends up deciding who wins and who doesn't.

Right. So one break on that and doing a wall walk back to, you know, back into it. That's already five, six, 10 seconds. The second set of legless. I'll agree with you on that for sure. What was interesting to me is to see, especially the broader athletes, the lane looked like it was only four feet wide. And I would say that area was probably like six feet long. So if you're not very accurate with your hand placement, trying to stay in the middle of

that arrow that they provided, I saw a lot of people, especially in the early heats, step on the edge of one of them and have to go back and do it again. So you're talking about a workout with maybe 60 feet of handstand walking 60 at a semi-final level and but the them there being six pirouettes and i would love to know like what some of matt's athletes thought like was that 60 feet more challenging than 120 feet would have been just 60 60 is it more challenging than 180 feet would have been 90 90 just a straight walk like it seemed like that at least got people's neurological system a little bit fatigued as much as it did their musculature going into the row into the overhead squat um and then you saw like positionally some people

the elites right like daniel brandon alex, Alexis Raptus, Noah's overhead squat under fatigue has always been super solid and fast. It was interesting to see who, who had kept it together, whose shoulder stamina was really there of the athletes that were really pushing the pace and what athletes were starting to fall apart when they got to the overhead squats. I didn't like how they forced you to use two bars. I think you place such a premium on being able to move gymnastics quickly or a set of 20 strict wall-facing handstand pushups unbroken, but you don't give the athletes the opportunity to show that capacity on the overhead squat.

At the end, I thought it was a miss in the North American East semifinal, personally. Make them walk it forward. You don't have to have two fucking barbells. Just have a 10 and a 10. And if the athletes are savage and they want them walk it forward. You don't have to have two fucking barbells, just have a 10 and a 10. And if the athletes are savage and they want to walk it forward and do 20 unbroken, allow them to do that was my opinion. I think another thing to look for on this workout is row mechanics at the end of the workout. Because how efficient you are on the rower, how hard you're pulling on the rower is going to play a big role in those last

20 overhead squats. And I think again, some of the less experienced athletes for people who are watching our family, friends of athletes that they have going there, watch that final row and the people who are pulling really hard or pulling with the upper body a lot are going to struggle on the overhead squat. And if they're a friend of yours, you should tell them not to do that. red squat. And if they're a friend of yours, you should tell them not to do that. Yeah, I think this is a workout probably along with test two and test three is really like you, you have to stay in your lane. You have to run your own race. You can't be worried about

what's going on left and right, because if you go up for a legless or you go up for your last set of chest to wall handstand pushups too soon soon and you have to break again, that's another 10 to 20 second break. So really, really not getting caught up in the race, especially if you're not in that last heat or two. At this point in the weekend, unless you're trying to make moves, your fate is kind of what it is. Like if you're in those first couple of heats and you want to take a risk and go for it, cool. But if you're someone that's trying to stay in a qualified position or move up slightly in a qualified position, you, you can't really afford to take a risk on these movements. Not to me, not that middle chunk. Yeah, for sure. Um, just to respond to this Africa used one bar and there were no issues safety wise. So whether or not that's what boss said, I don't accept that as an answer for safety. You can find a way to make one bar work. And the other thing

that was interesting to note in Africa, the handstand walk was for sure longer than North America East. They walked all the way across the floor on each pirouette, but the pirouette was wider. So maybe with that compromise, they didn't have the narrower lanes taped out the way the North American East semifinal fields were. So maybe the compromise with boz was hey they're gonna walk 100 feet total like it was about a 50 foot handstand walk one way and 50 foot back to that narrower or wider lane interesting take but they definitely walked go ahead there was quite a few things that are not quite a few but there were some different things that were different in africa just because the floor was smaller if you go back and watch some of the layouts um were different i can't think of them all off the

top of my head there was one where barbells were laid out pretty differently but um yeah the floor was quite a bit smaller but it was all the way up against the wall there was no more room in that venue it was super jam-packed super jam-packed and there was no issue with safety with the athletes being right up against the wall right up against the judge right up against each other with the overhead squats i just thought one bar bell was so fucking exciting yeah so i was gonna say like being able to go who could hold on to the bar at the end made it so much better it was so awesome you know like just in the race if you go watch if you haven't watched africa go watch that end of that workout just seeing there was the four girls that were in the lead

all weekend all neck and neck at the very end of the workout and it came down to who could hold on to the barbell at the end overhead and who dropped it who failed reps and that was what it came down to super exciting finish on that workout so if you haven't seen that you should yeah and if you don't have wider lanes for a wider barbell for safety concerns just stagger the bars or use short bars thoughts on uh matt torres that should have been three rope climbs thoughts on that i agree really really yep so when you when you think too about interference from the weekend you had the 55 bench press and then the next morning the first workout they do has all the dips and the burpees right so it's testing some recoverability there on saturday night they do the barbell

one or max snatch eight snatches. The next morning, he puts them in that position again with the overhead squat, so I see that. But they did all the two-handed strict or whatever you want to call it, weighted pulling as the first workout on Friday. By Sunday, there's not a lot of pulling interference at all that I think that three would have still been fine. It wouldn't have slowed anybody down. If anything, it may have just slowed down the people more so that took big hits on that

workout. So I, I mean, they handled, they handled those. And I think because of the alpaca, even though it never happened, everyone was like, Hey, we have to be doing these it looked like everybody had been doing them in their training yeah already so I mean I think three and three would have been would have been great cool too too fast of a question for me to have an opinion on I'm not sure uh move on to workout seven workout seven three rounds for time 15 10 echo by cows 20 total bar and a 60 foot bear hug carry to finish biggest takeaway from watching this one especially the couple of heats on the male and female side is something that we said initially, this is not a sprint. It's not, it is a, if you go sub four,

you're, you're probably going to win or come very close to winning the workout. There are three rounds. There are six transitions, right? In between the movements. And then one after the carry every time back to the bike, there's a lot of opportunity to mess up your pacing all the athletes that you saw sprint or really really punch the bike hard on round one none of them won the workout yeah down's pacing was unbelievable luke parker's pacing was awesome jason's pacing was awesome the people that build into the bike pace to where they could really hold on to their pace on rounds one and two, or increase it slightly on round three are the people that ended up doing really, really well. And this is something I would love to ask the athletes, like

how easy or hard was it to hold on for the last set of 20? And does it change if you're a male and a female? Like are them, were the females more likely to take a quick break and still perform well? Were the males felt like they're not going to break unless they have to break? And this is a question I have. I wonder what the percentage of the field on each side did all three rounds unbroken on the toes-to-bar.

I think if you want to win the workout, that's necessary. But I think if you're looking to qualify for the CrossFit Games, the toes-to-bar being unbroken is not a necessary aspect of that workout. And are you better off having a quick break in round one, a really quick break in round two, and not falling apart in round three for a set of three, four, or five even? That's something to think about as well. And at the same time, increasing the bike pace and being really efficient and moving fast in the sandbag can eliminate a quick break on toes-to-bar at the same time. So you don't have to have that.

I view a toe-to-bar break similar when you choose it as a deadlift break. It's a very inexpensive break if you know how to do it. Something to think about. And for some of the athletes that maybe didn't test the workouts in succession, you have 40 overhead squats, you're pressing into the floor on the handstand walk with pirouettes, you're doing the legless rope climb, you're kicking upside down on the wall. The six and seven, there is some aftershock from that

workout going into ripping the bike, right. Gripping that, gripping the sandbag, hanging from the bar. So I think for a lot of people, maybe they thought the 60 wouldn't be a problem, but then when they made it through the whole weekend, especially got done with workout six, there wasn't a whole lot of rest in between those two workouts. They got to the toaster bar and they didn't really have a game plan of like okay like my grip's kind of a little bit blown up like what should i do on this yeah yeah so awesome workout i love that one exciting to watch as well and like you said you should not be trying to be first off the bike in round one it's just it's shocking to me how far we've come in the sport and how still inexperienced it seems that so many athletes are in that regard

i was maybe talking to someone i was like like watch heat three and four of the north america semifinals and these athletes you know to a large, physically, have the capacity to be so good. And I feel like what holds them back are these fucking retarded stunts they pull on workouts like that. Where they just, you know, you see some nimwit like Norman Woodring blowing the bike out the first round. And you're just like, why are you doing that? What's, why? Anyways, my rant's over. Yeah, that was an awesome workout. Super to watch what do you think and and also to counter that on a lot of these workouts i've talked about like smart breaking strategy and i feel like as an athlete myself unbroken is always best if you have it without a doubt but you don't always have it

some people don't always have it some people always have it yeah a doubt, but you don't always have it. Some people don't always have it. Some people always have it. Yeah. And something for like the, the, the really geeky fans to watch out for this weekend. If you have a couple athletes, like let's just use Justin and Pat as examples. They're both going to be able to put out on the bike. They're both going to hang on for unbroken sets. I think on the toes of our,

they're both going to carry the same bag about the same amount of speed. Like the water Palooza workout with the hurdle jumps and the toes to bar with the shuttle run, watch the toes to bar cycle rate because there are people that have really, really, really fast straight leg toes to bar that can do a set of 12 and you're on 10. So they do 12, they come off come off 11 12 they jump back up

they do eight you're still hanging you do eight and they still beat you to the same bag so like if they're able to see the race live especially watch and see on round one everyone will get to the toaster bar probably at about the same time but watch and see if someone who gets to the toast of our after actually leaves the toast of our first doing unbroken sets, but just being able to cycle it faster. And can they still do that on round three? Oh, when you watch the athletes who are really good at that,

it makes their total bar look like they have a stretch reflex in the arch position is they just bounce out of the arch. Cool. What'd you think overall? Good balance. Did you like the workouts? Yeah. I, um, again, I think that the power output and the weightlifting had a little bit of a primacy on this. There weren't as much, there weren't as, there, there wasn't as many gymnastics limiting workouts. Since the workout with the rings was weighted, I mean, depends on who you ask.

Some people are going to say the fact that you had a ruck on made it a big guy's workout because they're able to bear that load a little bit easier than someone that weighs 30 or 40 pounds less. Just relatively like landing on the floor even it's just not beating you up the same as it is a lighter athlete um but test six for sure limited by the body weight movement but test seven power output four and five you know absolute strength under some mild fatigue and then power output first workout sure a lot of aerobic uh capacity there but it ends up being aerobic power with the sled yeah and then linda uh you know that's you know that's a lot of weightlifting

so i'm cool with it because we haven't seen the whole season and what I've been telling people is this if we get to the games and they're doing a ton of strict gymnastics that's awesome because that just shows me that quarterfinals pretty dense with the skills right you had the nine handstand walk the set of 15 muscle up the set of 25 chest to walk the skills, right? You had the nine handstand walk, the set of 15 muscle up, the set of 25 chest of wall at the end of that workout. You had the grip fatigue with the chest of our bar muscle up into the nine rope climbs. How fast can you get through the nine? That gave you a good score. It wasn't the deadlifts. It wasn't the front squats and workout one.

So we get to semis and maybe it's a little bit skewed to the, you know, to the weightlifting side. Fine. And then we get to the games and we see if all these big, powerful athletes can do strict bar muscle ups, can do strict ring muscle ups, can do parallette handstand pushups strict, can be really, really technical with some other things, right? We did weighted pistols with a ruck. What if we do weighted pistols with a kettlebell? You know, what if it's all a progression? So I think seeing the games test can really sway to one side, how we view this semifinal. Cool. I agree. I, I think maybe a little bit big guy biased and I'm definitely not a small guy in the field so I don't think that's a personal bias of mine like I'm like 5 10 200 pounds I think that yeah I don't know I like the workouts overall but I just thought kind of what you said

a little bit heavy bias a little bit big guy biased. Overall good. Cool. Any other final thoughts? I'm excited to see if like some of those week one winners, Danielle on workout one, Jason on workout one, Jeff on workout two, Emma on workout one. I mean, 61 burpees I don't think is going to get touched by any female in any other region. So it'll be cool to see if the winning times and reps from this week hold on for the next two weeks, especially in this week. Awesome. Cool. Thank you all for watching awesome show follow us on instagram

shut up and scribble if you have questions people that have been sending us questions on instagram we appreciate it i've been putting them in a google sheets soon we'll get to some of those type of shows where we answer people's questions probably after semis when things flow down a bit um between semis in the game. So thanks for sending those in. Know that I'm tracking them, keeping track of

what's going on. But yeah, it was a fun first week. Excited to see. I mean, this is going to be a crazy weekend with three going on at the same

time pretty much all throughout the day. So awesome. Thank you guys for watching and we'll see you whenever these guys decide they want to do another show. Bye.