The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 64: CrossFit's Good, Bad, and Ugly

Episode Date: March 5, 2015

This episode delves into the good, the bad, and the ugly of all things CrossFit, straight from a world-class CrossFit coach. It answers many important questions, including: -What are the 3 most dangerous exercises in CrossFit gyms?- What are the most common nutritional mistakes of CrossFit athletes?- What do elite CrossFit athletes do differently than the rest? Example: How do Rich Froning and Jason Khalipa warm up?- Is the CrossFit Games really CrossFit?- Is CrossFit a fad?- What is the future of CrossFit? The man to answer all this (and much more) is Kelly Starrett. He's trained CrossFit athletes for more than 130,000 hours (!) and 10 years at San Francisco CrossFit, which opened in 2005 as one of the first 50 CrossFit Affiliates in the world. There are now more than 10,000 Affiliates worldwide. Kelly's clients include Olympic gold medalists, Tour de France cyclists, world record holders in Olympic lifting and powerlifting, Crossfit Games medalists, professional ballet dancers, and elite military personnel. Even if you have zero interest in CrossFit, this conversation invites you inside the mind of one of the world's top coaches.  Kelly discusses habits, strategies, and thinking that can be applied to nearly everything. We cover a lot. QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: If you had to pick one sport or weightlifting movement for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? Please share and explore answers in the comments here.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kelly, what did you have for breakfast? I ate 20 dwarves while doing a handstand on the carpet. That's the key to that carpet. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

The Tim Ferriss Show. the eye. I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. Me, Tim, Paris, Joe. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D

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So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's Tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. I am thrilled to be bringing you yet another example of world class performance. And of course, in the Tim Ferriss Show, what I

attempt to do is deconstruct those performers to give you the tools and tricks that you can use. And whether those people be from the world of finance, say investors like billionaire Peter Thiel, celebrity like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or sports. And this episode is going to focus on the one thing besides politics and religion that get Americans all hot and bothered, and that is CrossFit. We will delve into the good, the bad, and the ugly of all things CrossFit. We will answer many, many questions, including what are the three most dangerous exercises in CrossFit gyms, generally speaking? What are the most common nutritional mistakes in CrossFit? What do elite CrossFit athletes do differently than the rest? For example,

what do Rich Froning and Jason Kalipa do for warmups? Is the CrossFit Games really CrossFit? And what is the future of CrossFit? The man to answer all of this and much more is Kelly Starrett. He's trained CrossFit athletes for more than 130,000 hours and 10 years at San Francisco CrossFit, which was one of the very first 50 CrossFit affiliates in the world. There are now more than 10,000. His clients include Olympic gold medalist, Tour de France cyclists, world and national record holders in Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting, CrossFit Games medalists, ballet dancers, elite military, on and on and on. This is going to go very, very deep. It involves significantly less alcohol than

the last long conversation I had with Kelly, which is also included in the blog post at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, where you can find show notes and other things fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And without further ado, enjoy, discuss, debate, yell and scream. Here you are, Kelly Starrett. Sir Kelly, welcome back to the show. Oh, thanks for having me. Thank you.

A little more lucid this time, perhaps? A little lucid, a little less alcohol, a little more caffeine, whatever you gave me here. I mistakenly thought it was one cup of coffee. You're like, it's strong. I was on the phone and I was like, no, don't worry. Yes, strong, fucking strong coffee, whatever. I think it's supposed to be diluted at like eight to one, but it's fine. I'm sure it'll be fine.

So we are here at San Francisco CrossFit and you have quite an anniversary, I suppose you could call it. You've spent 10 years in this world called CrossFit. Yeah, this year now is 10 full years. So I want to dig into this because we've known each other for quite a while. And to perhaps lead off for people who may not be familiar with this world or have heard the word a million times but don't know what it really means, for you, what is CrossFit or how do you define CrossFit?

There's the official definition of trying to get people to work at higher intensity in movements that replicate the movements that we see in life. It looks like squatting and deadlifting and pushing and pulling and running. If you had to sort of mash up the tenets of gymnastics, Olympic lifting, powerlifting, and all the aerobic responsibilities also that come along with that, that's what the programming looks like. But that's not what it is. For me now, 10 years, I've been, I mean, we estimate even in our gym here, we've been doing it for nine plus years. We've done maybe 130,000 athlete hours here, which is a lot of pattern recognition.

That's a lot of people going up and down, squatting, moving. And what we've come to, I've really come to understand this. I mean, this is my own interpretation. It's basically saying we have figured out now here are all the things that a human should be responsible to be able to do. You know, can you put your arms over your head? Yes or no? Well, can you do that in a handstand? Can you do that with a dumbbell?

Can you do that with a kettlebell? Can you do that with a barbell? Can you go from ground to overhead to do that? Can you press overhead? What ends up happening then is we've been able to window down to say, here are the positions, the archetypal shapes that are represented in every sport, in every situation, every position. But in the gym, I can say, do you have this position, yes or no?

And then I can say, oh, you do? Well, let me challenge it. And the obvious one for the gym for most people is load. Let's make it heavier. And you know because you've come out of a serious strength conditioning background in the past, powerlifting, that a long time ago our answer to everything was, oh, just get stronger. Oh, he's got glute weakness. I'm like, seriously?

I mean, that guy deadlifts 700. You think his glutes are weak or she plays like, seriously? I mean, that guy deadlifts 700. You think his glutes are weak? Or she plays in the NFL? I mean, people are ridiculous. It's not a weakness problem. And what I found for a long time was that we were throwing bigger and bigger engines onto cars that couldn't handle it. Well, how much do I need to squat if I'm a runner? 400?

500? 600? Guys like Pavel were like, you can double bodyweight back squat. You're probably good enough. You're excused from getting any stronger right you know dan john was like hey you should front squat you know a long time ago greg glassman was like hey look at the overhead squat versus your front squat just presupposing you can do those two movements right right and then look at the difference between there and that's a pretty good indicator of how robust your spine is and how good your shoulders are so we've got now we can start

asking a little bit different question besides is it because what we what we evaluated was well i put more weight on the bar so it must be better right but now we can say hey what about if i have you run around the building and you start breathing hard and then show me how strong you are show me how that position was oh okay so now i can challenge your position with cardiorespiratory demand. And boy, that starts to look a lot like sport, huh? Like fighting. Looks like skiing at the bottom of a bump run or running all the way down and having to cut.

I mean, that actually starts to feel like sport. What happens if I start to burn or I'm fatiguing? Metabolic demand. What happens if I add speed? I'd make a lot of errors if I go fast. What happens if I'm competing? Like you and I just decide right now we're going to go have a push-up contest. Whether you are the world champion in push-ups or not,

a little bit of your brain starts to freak out because it's on the spot. So we add the psychological pressure. What happens if I make you change mechanics? And so there's a bunch of block practice. Instead of doing 100 swings, we're going to do a burpee, then to a kettlebell swing. So suddenly, I can change the motor programming. And what we found,

and this is my own language around this, is that all of those things are really the definition of intensity. Metabolic load, right? Car respiratory demand, load, speed. The other aspects are aspects of the training

that are the sort of intellectual piece around sort of programming the training. But my estimation is the people who can maintain the best positions are the best athletes and remain the most robust and have the biggest work capacities and as a side effect because we teach all these principles can apply them to things that matter like life and sport not just more exercising no it's uh i was having a conversation with, you mentioned Pavel, and he has a tendency for very short answers, which is fun to listen to. He has a great voice, too, for those short answers.

But somebody asked him for basic advice related to endurance, and he said fix your posture, work on your posture, whether that is running posture, standing posture, sitting posture, et cetera. And what I'd love to ask you is if you look at the CrossFit community as a whole, there are so many gyms, so many boxes. What are problems that are very often not being addressed? So people come in, they jump straight into the workout of the day or metabolic conditioning. What are some common mistakes of whether it be CrossFit instructors or trainees where they come out six months later and from your eye you're like, A, B, and C has not been fixed?

Sure. Well, I will correct and just play the devil's advocate around this statement because my experience has honestly now been no one just jumps right into a gym anymore. You can see on the internet and go explore on your own garage. But I think about 100% of the gyms I run into have some sort of, holy crap, you don't know how to move. You may have a big engine, but you don't have any exposure to this. Our cyclists are the worst. They come in with the most robust aerobic engine.

They generate huge amounts of concentric force, have no eccentric control at all. So it means they can't lengthen under load, basically. For those people listening who are not in the gym much, if you're in a squat position and you move up into a standing position, you can think of that as concentric doing the reverse eccentric where you're lengthening. So what we saw was that people were coming in relatively aerobic fit. I mean, people aren't slouches anymore they really aren't they're exposed they're doing intervals i mean the internet has blown people's i think general conditioning now much higher like for example and i'll come back to the question but for example

you know the the crossfit unofficial crossfit mascot everyone loves the show is pukey right pukey the clown i haven't seen someone vomit in a crossfit in eight years like it used to happen CrossFit, unofficial CrossFit mascot, everyone loves the show, is Pukie, right? Pukie the Clown. I haven't seen someone vomit in a CrossFit in eight years. It used to happen all the time. People used to come in, do a workout, and vomit because technically there's an area in the back of your brainstem called the areopostroma. It samples your blood circulation, right? And what ends up happening is people are generating so much lactic acid that their brain was like, you've poisoned yourself, blah, you activated your vomition center.

That's the mechanism for vomiting from workouts. That doesn't happen anymore because people's conditioning, whether you're at soul cycle, dude, go to soul cycle, blow your brains up on a bike, you're going to be protected, not from movement or eccentric love,

but you'll be able to buffer some lactic acid. So we've seen, I've seen the general fitness go up, but what has happened now is that people have said, okay, look, you can't just come in here and train because you're going to wreck yourself. And more importantly, you're not going to understand what it is we're trying to do, which is here are the fundamental movements that are the sort of, um, sort of signature positions of the CrossFit method,

and you don't know any of them, right? So we force people to come in. And the mistake is, as a coach, that I need to get people moving. And this is why, if you go to a CrossFit Level 1 seminar, they are going to teach you, and they're really excellent. Excellent coaches, very thoughtful. The course has evolved in 10 years, a ton. We've become more sophisticated in 10 years, but we teach you with really low loads, i.e. a PVC pipe or a medicine ball,

because I've never seen anyone die from those things. But the ego gets involved, and pretty soon there's a barbell in it, and you can still see people performing a tremendous amount of work in bad positions. And what ends up happening is, as we get people in, we have to give them a little taste of intensity. And we do that with the rowing machine and some burpees. We get them saying, hey, I need to show you what happens when you start breathing hard. And we end up making, I think, a set of decisions about getting people moving. Because if you're my mom,

maybe you don't have the ankle range of motion, you have an artificial hip. The most important thing is that we start squatting, right? And I have a lot of ways of making that difficult. Oh, we're going to get on this airdyne and we're going to sprint a little bit and then come back and air squat for me. Like that's enough for a lot of people. The problem is, and I might turn your feet out and I might be okay with you rounding your back a little bit. It doesn't have to be perfect, but now at least you're squatting. We can have a conversation about what's next, right? I can make errors.

The problem is we start loading this inefficient, this compromised movement because we said, hey, the first thing is let's get moving. Now what? And what is we need to continue to refine the mechanic for life. And that's the biggest mistake. I think people aren't understanding. They're like, well, they're squatting up and down now continue to refine the mechanic for life. And that's the biggest mistake. I think people aren't understanding. They're like, well, they're squatting up and down now. We'll find the mechanic, meaning the movement.

The principles behind the movement, right? And it's all there for us. It has always been there for us. Hey, limit motion of your spine under load. Everyone agrees. And yet when I take the average person off the street and just have them squat very fast, I see a ton. I had a young NFL prospect in today, right, getting some advice about his knees. He's going to go to the combine. I asked him just do an air squat and the amount of reversal in his spine, he literally rounded

into a dumped like dog taking a poo position. And he had massive fins in the middle of his back where his musculature has overdeveloped from him basically rounding underneath. And I was like, so that's not really good. Let's do less of that. And he's like, what, what, what are you talking about? Like he couldn't even identify that this thing was going on. Right. And, you know, from the physical therapy side of things, from the sports performance side, the highest level form on these issues that I hammer on and hammer people on are the limiting factors to you getting, stopping injured. And they're the limiting factors to you being the best in the world and winning a gold medal.

Like these little details. And so we should be constantly refining technique to express what is full physiology. So for example, there was a, you know, one of the things, there's so many voices in fitness now and so many people coming in, but like someone basically, do you know what apologetics is? Like that's, I get the first part,

not the plural. Apologetics is basically in religion where people come around and explain a phenomenon in terms of the dogma. Oh, this is what that meant now, right?

And they, it's because a lot of it was allegory and metaphor and lesson, right? In science fiction, apologetics means you can explain any technology away based on some other thing. Well, I see apologetics happen in human physiology. Oh, the reason you can't squat all the way down is your hip structure, right? Oh, some people don't just have long femurs, so they can't take a poo in the woods and squallow it down. I'm like, what are you talking about? The issue is that we haven't given people clear benchmarks about what is normal and what is disnormal. Cook and those guys, Cook and Burton, the functional movement screen, have tried to establish baselines for performance.

But those don't even go all the way to show me that you have full range of motion in your ankles. Like you, one of the secrets I don't think people understand is that you have good positions. And those positions have protected you for a long time. You can squat with your feet together, ankles together, all the way down. Full hip function, full ankle function. But people are coming into the gym basically as demi-human. They have big aerobic engines because that's what someone said they should do, but they don't have even

like 50% of the ranges of motion they should have, and they don't even have the motor control to be able to start to express this stuff. What is it if you want the great tranquility, be willing to sweat the white hot beads? I mean, Olympic lifters got it right. You can see why the Olympic lifters are like, what the hell? Why aren't you

Olympic lifting? You can't even put your arms over your head. You know what I mean? And the Olympic lifting demands that we have basic capacities in all of these shapes. The only thing that's missing is the bench press shape. But guess what? Olympic lifters do some bench pressing. You know what I mean? So they figured it out. It's a lot easier to go that direction than the other way around. Right. And that's right. And so it's interesting. I think that what we have not done a good job of is showing people how far away from normal they are. You should be able to keep your back flat and legs straight and hinge over and pick up a barbell. And I bet, I know you can do it because I've seen you do it, but I bet that 95% of the people in the street are stiff, don't have the motor control, tight hips, whatever.

It doesn't matter. It's not an indictment on their lifestyle. It's an indictment that we don't understand what good function is, and the training we've been doing for the last 50 years has not necessarily heightened that. Now, there are populations. The jiu-jitsu guys have been on this a long time, right? That you have to have these good positions. They're requisite. Hip flexors the size of camel hip flexors.

It's true. It causes a little low back soreness, but otherwise. Besides that, but what you're seeing is a lot of people have worked this out many, many, many times, but we haven't applied it to sort of the rigor of modern humans. And that means modern strength and conditioning. And we haven't couched it in the terms. So when people walk into the gym, I don't think people realize as a coach,

it is an enormous fucking challenge to say, oh, by the way, you have no understanding of how you move. And if I make you breathe a little bit hard, you throw it away and you move like crap. And by the way, you eat like an asshole and you don't sleep. And what are we going to do in this hour? We have to start a conversation. So for me, there's this line of,

well, we got to get people in the door and we got to get them started, right? But that's not the end of the conversation, you know? Yeah, you can squat with your feet turned out like ducks. You totally can. You can set a world record in powerlifting like that, but you know what you can't do? You can't run.

You can't jump and land. You can't cut. I mean, it really causes all these problems. I see it. And I also see people losing performance that way. So the question remains, this dichotomy then is, sure, my feet are turned out because that allows me to squat all the way down. Great. That's a beginning of a conversation. But the optimal position is the position that allows me to take my fitness and now transplant that into motor patterns instead of just saying well you're really fit now so you're protected now you say well i've practiced these shapes and this pattern and the the theory and the principle and i can then apply

that to whatever i'm doing and that's what's missing from the gym so this is a this is a really fascinating topic for me the the gym to sport transition huge and and whether that is a really fascinating topic for me, the gym to sport transition. Huge. And whether that is a worthwhile goal also. For me, just as a side note, I mean, I've been spending time exploring, just chanced upon meeting the co-founder of Acro Yoga. And I'd never had much interest in yoga. Well, let's just stop. I mean, Acro Yoga sounds really stupid.

Yeah. But what it's not, it's not really stupid. No, it's not. And it's partner yoga involving gymnastic and acrobatic positions. So if you've ever seen, say, a Cirque du Soleil performance with two strong men where they're linking arms and holding handstands overhead and so on, the motions are quite similar. But you spend a lot of time on your back balancing people on your feet and so on. The motions are quite similar, but you spend a lot of time on your back, balancing people on your feet and so on. But coming back to your squatting position, I remember asking Jason, I think his last name is pronounced Niemer,

really excellent coach, why he was recommending that I hold my hands a certain way when practicing handstands because I've been instructed elsewhere by other gymnastics coaches to do it a different way. And he said, the reason you're holding it that way, even though it's a little more uncomfortable is because when you go into the actual positions in acro yoga and you're doing it at speed, you're going to maintain that exact hand position. So you want to train that pattern. And I was like, Oh, got it. Yeah. And uh, let's talk about athleticism, though. The training versus athleticism conversation. I hadn't heard of this because I'm not exposed to the CrossFit games much, but can you talk about the softball phenomenon a bit?

Well, it's CrossFit as originally conceived by greg glassman and if you look at the original fitness in 100 words or less in there it says regularly learn and play new sports hey nice middle splits bro well you started doing the middle splits we're sitting here on the floor in the gym and i was like i'm like getting sort of adductor jealousy so although your ties look like swollen ticks and mine look like... I don't know. I just woke up and I was like this, bro. I don't know what happened.

I came with the kit. So the tenet always has been, hey, you need to keep learning and you keep diversifying. They call that lateralization, right? People have been talking about it and surfers or some skill, the big wall climbers suddenly are doing breath holding and they learn something about that, right? Or slacklining. Yeah, exactly.

Lateralization, right? Stephen Kotler's been all about it. So that's an important piece of like saying, okay, you have the skill set, let's go challenge it in no domain. That's the crucial. What is interesting and is always going to be a problem with,

for me, with CrossFit is that I can't always, you know, CrossFit is the single, for me, the single best integrated way of training I have ever come across. I still haven't seen it. I've seen it refined. I've seen McKenzie apply it, the concepts and principles to endurance athletes. I've seen Wellborn apply it to power athletes. The kernel and the methodology is the same, right? But I haven't to date seen something that looks better at general physical preparedness. Like I want my daughters to have a skill set and a base fitness and strength, and this is the model. Is it the model?

Should I have all of my NFLers do something that looks exactly CrossFit? No, but I can still keep the tenets there. The base code is so good. The problem is sometimes we confuse the ability to perform a lot of work with the ability to be athletic. One of my definitions of who's the best athlete is who picks up the new skill the fastest. This is why, I mean, your little experiment about the Tim Ferriss experiment about how fast can I learn really piqued my interest because I'm like, that is the limiter. How fast can I apply this base skill set? What does that base skill set look like?

Remember Robert Heinlein had that little quote. It was like a man should be able to butcher a hog, captain a ship, et cetera, et cetera. Like plan a war, like set a bone, right? Specializations for insects, right? That was like... Some strong girls in the background. I don't know if you heard that. But the issue here is, you know,

what we should be doing is trying to ask ourselves what constitutes the right skill set to quickly pick up new skills and to reapply as myself as a learning animal. And what I can tell you, and I believe this in my soul of souls, and I've seen it, that good strength and conditioning programs, and I'm talking about et al now, right, beyond CrossFit. Good strength and conditioning programs reinforce skills and positions. Ido Portal, for example, is a good example of this, right? Beyond CrossFit. Good strength and conditioning programs reinforce skills and positions. Ido Portal, for example, is a good example of this, right? I don't know if many of his guys are going to play in the NFL,

but that doesn't mean he isn't right about this concept. But that how do we what's the language of creating a ready state in the human so that I can constantly be not limited by my physical capacity? And that is position two.

That's positionally driven. That's my ability to pick up and learn new skills. And I think what you're referring to is in the CrossFit Games, what we saw is that people were freakish about their work capacity. And then some people asked them, I'm very strong, huge aerobic engines. And they were like, just throw this ball. And you're like, brr. What was the event?

I didn't see it. It was a softball toss. Three throws. Yeah, throw distance. Throw the softball as far as you can. Now, check this out. Turns out that Rich Froning played football in college. Guess what?

He's a pretty good athlete. Yeah. Graham Holmberg, two-sport college athlete, right? Oh, what did he do? Oh, he was the pitcher and the quarterback. He's a mutant. He did all right. But there's some other kids who obviously had deficiencies in there,

have thrived because in CrossFit, but the nature and the limitations of challenging people's fitness, it's hard to see the aspects of athleticism. It's not always the case. They really do try to program those things in, but it's also limited by how do we have a pickup game of basketball. You can't really see and judge that stuff. They make people swim.

They make people run. They make people bike. The obstacle course was a great example of the expression of just moving through the environment. I love that event. But there were some people who had some really horrific soft, they ended up rolling an underhand because, and that really begs the

question because the central tenet of what this experiment was, and it's important for I think the average person who is CrossFitting, is that there's two CrossFits, and I think CrossFit HQ would back me up on this, that we have the highest expression of CrossFitting which is the CrossFits, and I think CrossFit HQ would back me up on this, that we have

the highest expression of CrossFitting, which is the CrossFit Games. And I just came from an athlete camp that Reebok put on in the Bahamas. I'm not going to lie. It was okay. Yes. Right? But we did a bunch of training sessions with some of the best athletes on the planet. And the first thing that all of these gamer guys did like these are

the like these are rich fronings jason kalipas all look really extraordinary athletes they all went and played pickup football and on some astroturf like boom immediately and you're like oh wow these guys are pretty legit athletes there was some aspect of their athleticism that they carried to crossfit and then crossfit allowed them to heighten this this rope this these functions and what I think happens sometimes is now because people can't sort of separate that out it's easy to put on a pedestal if I can just work really hard then I'm going to be a really good athlete be able to pick up all these new sports and yes one of the things that I've seen Greg Cook pivot on and some people pivoting on around CrossFit

is they've realized that people aren't giving up capacities to CrossFit. They still are. Most of us still have flankel range of motion because we do pistols. So it's additive, not replacement. Yes, yes, yes. And for a long time in the strength and conditioning world, we have seen people get a really big power clean, and then everything else sucks, right?

It all sucks. So what's interesting about the program here in our gym is that we really ferret out all the crappy movement patterns, you know? So let me ask you this, if I could, this is just top of mind right now, I guess two things. If someone were to ask you,

is CrossFit Games really CrossFit? Should the multitudes of people in CrossFit gyms aspire to that as an objective? Number one. Let's start with number one. But got a bunch top of mind. No, I don't think they should. But I will tell you that the athletes involved

and the experiment involved has been so informative for me as a coach, as a physio, because I can really see what the deficiencies are at day five, at day three, under these loads. And it really starts to matter when we see that the best athletes refine position, refine position, refine efficiency, and win, right? That's been the name of the game. It used to be that you could just outwork people. People are trained two and three times a day.

They are the most meticulous athletes I've ever seen in any sport anywhere. They're on top of the nutrition game, on top of the recovery game, on top of hydration, adaptation, mechanics. They really, really have depth. I mean, Rich Froning, he's a little tiny guy. How much does he weigh? I think he's probably like 190, 195. Just something like that.

Snatches 315. Like in tennis shoes. In Reebok flat nano shoes. Not Olympic lifting shoes. And he does that in the context of also being able to do all these other things. So I think what it has done, the reason for me that the games are so important is that it's changed the consciousness about what's possible.

By the way, you can still run this mountain 7K and be brutally strong. In fact, why aren't you? And I think people have been having that conversation for a long time. It also has gotten us really clear about what works and doesn't work in a very sort of pressure cooker situation in terms of...

You're talking about programming and training load and all that? Well, a little bit of the programming, but I would say about nutrition, about... I've never seen any athlete in the history of the world do more work than these kids. I know the Tour de France guys. I mean, I know them personally, and their wattages are insane.

The best run... Everyone's putting out hard, but no one, like the CNS load, the crazy loads, and that has really made it very clear about the lessons that we've been able to pull out of it. So as an experiment, as Formula One, but not all of us should aspire to be Formula One drivers or even drive our cars like Formula One,

and very few of us have the genetics, which is the also sort of lie, right? The lie that we tell ourselves, well, I can train like them, so I'm, no, you can't, you're not them genetically, I'm sorry. But. Sorry, Tim Ferriss, you're a bad meth lover. You sit in the corner. You know what?

Play Scrabble. You are relatively strong. You're strong-ish. Strong-ish. You're an aerobic fit. Good thing you're a smart kid. And you're a good dancer. People don't know that you you're you are relatively strong you're strong ish strong if you're aerobic fit a good thing you're a smart kid and you're a good dancer people don't know that about you and um i learned to throw the javelins at the people who are stronger and i can run away so you know i think i think that it's vital to understand the role of the games that played

in terms of raising the boat also sort of distilling down the essences of what's important and not important and the lessons we've learned out of that and how to program, you know, cause I think a long time ago, you know, even guys like Louie was like, well, we're all powerlifters. So we'll just apply powerlifting. Well, that didn't work at all. Right. And what we're seeing is very sophisticated training, a mega wave, heart rate variability, like what people are doing.

What is a mega wave, heart rate variability, like what people are doing. What is a mega wave? It's a way of sort of looking at biorhythms, heart rate variability, and really coming up with recovery scores so you can understand in real time the effect of yesterday's training. So the HRV would be part of that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But like HRV on steroids, right? And so what's amazing now is we see that level of sophistication, and I've been able to take that and apply it to NFL. I mean, not like, hey, we do thrusters, we're going to be good at the NFL,

but really the principles. And also it's given me the view of understanding all the corners that we're missing, that you have to have the corners of your range of motion and capacities, otherwise we're going to have issues. What do you mean by corners? Sort of the edge cases, like this is a 10% case in your sport? No, more like show me that you actually don't have 85%-ish of your shoulder range, but you have stability and capacity in the fullest end ranges,

so in the corners of your range of motion. So if all the way overhead is one of those corners, I have my arm over my head. Like if you're not, if you can't hold two dumbbells over your head with your arms, like straight, like your hand, holding like hammers and your rib cage down, that's an incomplete position. And it's that position that's costing you when you swim. It's that position you're costing you when you throw a ball. It's that inefficiency that's costing you when you fall. Now we have a way of really understanding. And what I've been able to do is, for me,

I've been able to repurpose CrossFit into the greatest diagnostic tool ever. And it's independent of you breathing hard, right? The intensity is an important piece that other people don't understand. So the GPP that everyone has been talking about for a gazillion years, general physical preparedness, the Russians, I think, invented that word, right?

And they got into it. They're like, you have to be able to jump off a ladder without your knees wobbling. That was a really simple way of just loading a squat, right? That's what that was. It's not mystical. You know, what we said for a long time was, you know, get your kid in gymnastics.

That's really good. It'll make good athletes. We're like, why the fuck does that matter? Like, really? Tell me why. Well, it turns out that the things that you have to be able to do in gymnastics teach you certain positions and principles that you can then apply. Yeah, use your skeleton, not just your muscles. Yes.

And then we can get away with big muscle-bound guys who get their asses kicked. Or the little skinny cardio whippet who falls apart, can't lift 60 kilos off the ground when they're breathing a little bit hard. Like those are both ends of the spectrum that aren't good. What you mentioned nutrition, and I've got a bunch of, a bunch of questions, but, uh, in, in brief, what would you say are the most common nutrition mistakes or, uh, let's see detrimental beliefs that CrossFitters have? Well, this is the first, for a lot of us, me included,

I'd actually heard the zone was the first thing that Greg talked about. Back when I was first training in CrossFit, I think I've told you this before, but back when the Santa Cruz guys would come to Mountain View to train at the Half Gracie Academy, it was all about the zone. And I remember training with those guys.

Well, and so again, let's get to understanding why that mattered. Because people's macronutrients, their combinations in terms of what they were eating was way, way out of, was wacky. Not eating any fat, not barely getting enough protein, massive amounts of carbohydrate. And that was the first way we could just identify the problem, right? So, but then we started measuring and weighing.

So then we had an idea of what we were taking in. And to this day, I look at a banana and I'm like, three blocks. You know, like that's 30 grams of carbohydrate. You know, it's been useful. It's like a metric unit, right? that you know like i it's been useful it's like a unit like a metric unit right that's a kilometer that's a meter right it gives me a baseline of understanding how much food i need to be eating but then and it was always about food quality that was always an important conversation but then people would be like well i can eat this bacon and drink this beer

and i'm still in the zone and i was like my macros. I was like, come on. And so what happened then was that we saw this paleo revolution wash over the CrossFitters. And the first time I said this to my wife, Juliette, bless her little heart, she Googles online because Juliette's the biggest skeptic, and she was like, this is some bullshit. I'm like, what? She's like, the first thing that came up was hornet's nest soup,

like wasp nest soup, Kelly. She's like, that's what you fucking mean and i was like i don't i think it means no grains you know and we should eat vegetables she's like this is some bullshit but that was really again a conversation about food quality right well then we saw this revolution juliet literally is just like the greatest bullshit detector. Thank you. Everyone just get yourself a Juliet. But then what we saw was that everyone got super squeaky clean. Didn't even use salt.

I was like, oh, salt is really useful. I saw a bunch of my friends who cleaned up their diet and they were literally tanked. They were blacking out because they weren't getting any salts ever. There's this thing called salt. It's amazing. Humans invented the salt routes for it.

I read a study on primates and why humans are so fond of fructose, the naturally occurring sugar in fruit, and why it's so problematic to have, say, a high fructose corn syrup or agave nectar. It's like 75% plus fructose and we get fatty liver disease. When we were migrating apes, the way that we would sustain higher blood pressure without salt was with fruit. Oh, doesn't that make perfect sense? Yeah.

It makes perfect sense. But yeah, salt, guess what, folks? Pretty important. Or like blood pressure. It's so important. Like Stacey Sims is a good homie of ours, right? She is an exercise physiologist out of Stanford. She's been exercise physio to the best athletes on the planet, especially the best aerobic athletes.

But she assists everyone. Her company is called Osmo Nutrition. And her thinking about hydration is vital. But she's like, hey, there's this stuff called sea salt. Take a pinch of it. Throw it in your water and quit being a jerk and deluding yourself. Not deluding. Deluding.

Right? And what we've seen is that people are not applying the lessons that we've learned in sport for the last 20, 30, 40 years to day-to-day life. So people got really squeaky clean and they could not eat enough carbohydrate to support the level of training that we were doing. And all the endurance athletes were like, dude, you can't eat 100 grams of carbohydrate a day and expect to thrive. And sure, just be a keto-adapted athlete. I'm like, yeah, that works if I have to do it. But man, that's not working for me so well. You have to be very meticulous.

And you have to have the genetics to really support that. And like, boot, I looked at some sugar, and now I'm not keto-adapted, right? And, you know, the key is always, and this has always been the CrossFit HQ position for one, number one, eat enough carbohydrate to support exercise. Well, I've finally figured out what that means, right? And that's a fluctuating norm, you know?

And also, in the last 10 years, we have figured out, that means, right? And that's a fluctuating norm, you know? And also in the last 10 years, we have figured out, for example, through the miraculousness of, um, blood testing of genetic testing. Like we can actually get that stuff now done pretty easily. It turns out, for example, I'm an aerobic responder means big aerobic workouts cause my body to be like in nirvana. And power athlete stuff, I have to train that stuff, of course. But that is not where I should be making my money. Why? My genetics tell me, and it's interesting that any success I've had as an athlete, I've basically been swimming against that stream my whole life, right?

Well, my genetics also tell me that I don't process saturated fats very well. And they call it lean paleo, which means eat high quality food, Kelly, but you don't need bacon every day. I don't eat bacon every day and I don't eat nuts because when I do, my cholesterol goes through the roof and I know we can be sophisticated about cholesterol, but when your cholesterol is 400, like there's something up,

right? That's not, you know, and I had a bunch of calories in a big, in a Whopper. That's right. So I think that's the, what we found is that people have gone back to rice.

They've gone back to, hey, I've got to source my carbohydrate intelligently in order to support the amount of training I'm doing. And that was, I think, a reaction. People are less afraid of gluten. I think they really try to stay away from it. Maybe that's just Monsanto that's talking there. But, you know, I'm sorry you're going to have to edit that out. Sorry, Tim. No, no, no.

They'll send a letter bomb to your house, not mine. It's fine. Just kidding. I love you, Monsanto. That's boss free. You know what's funny about weeds? Nothing's funny about weeds. So the bottom line is I think we've seen that correction,

but once again, we should take that lesson from the highest level of sport. That's what coaches are trying to do distill principles not methods and also i think particularly when it comes to macros is know thyself and know thy sport or training load right so pita tia dr pita tia who you've never have you ever spent any time with you have to meet this guy you guys would love each other but uh he was on the podcast we and we talked about cancer research, but he's also, he would. He's the sugar cancer connection guy? Well, he would talk about that, certainly, but he is a former oncology researcher. He's also been a surgeon, and he's a high-level.

He would not want me to say high-level, but he's a high-level endurance athlete you know 100 mile swims and things like that i'm not gonna call that high level and he's also uh but he's also very strong uh for his for his body weight and he he loves doing time trials for cycling and so he is almost always keto adapted he's in ketosis for those people who haven't heard uh my conversation with pete tia uh all that means is you're you're you're utilizing fat as this is highly simplified but fat instead of glucose as your primary fuel and when he's doing these intense rides though he he knows exactly his respiratory quotient when he kicks over to anaerobic and how many calories he can consume and how many calories his liver can store so that he never comes out of ketosis so he can be pounding gels but he, okay, I know that my liver and my body

weight, I'm going to store about 400 calories of carbohydrates based on this target distance and this target wattage, et cetera. I can end my race and still be in ketosis or my time trial. But that's because- And my problem with that, of course, is that that's true. And he is the freakish outlier with the data. Right, and very few people are going to do that. That's amazing, by the way. But what's fascinating is, so yeah, the paleo community, are there any other common dietary mistakes that you find people make? Oh, yeah, people are terrible around water.

Coffee has been the cult, like black fluid. What do we call it? The cup of fear? Cup of fear. Cup of fear. And, you know, people are like, I don't need to drink water.

I drink coffee all day long. And then this Kill Cliff, you know, which is an amazing CrossFit soda, you know, it's not related to CrossFit, but it's sponsored by some,

anyway, you get the idea. It's amazing with vodka too, by the way, but, which also can be gluten free. So you're still paleo. It's fine.

But I think what we're seeing is that you can – here's what's crucial. You can be at 80% of your function and come in and do relatively okay once you move well, once you've been doing this for a while. You can just be on the edges of your sleep. You're borderline. Eat some extra ice cream. Budge a little bit. Not deal with stress. But of course, we know all of those things I've got to keep an eye on. This is what a physical practice is. And what we've seen then is, for me, it's important that you're actually signing up for a race. You're signing up for an event. The gym is not the event. This is the place where we train.

And yes, it feels like competition here because it's intense. It's deep practice. Daniel Coyle, thank you. It's me really, really practicing. It's the telecode. That's right. Nice, dude.

It's deep intention. It's hard aerobic conditioning. But it's still not the same thing as stepping into a ring or lining up on a 5K or signing up. And what you realize is how important all those aspects are to your training. You have to eat right.

That's why I'm like, look, CrossFit does the CrossFit Open, which is the biggest sporting event in the history of mankind. That's what it is every year. More people sign up for the CrossFit Open. They do five workouts and it's a big international competition. It's a virtual game? It's a virtual game, basically. It's a feeder

to regionals. Whether you like it or not, I'm like, why don't you do it? For no other reason than, why don't you have something hanging over your head for five weeks in a row? That's really... Which also gives you a target other than the next day's WOD.

Yes. So you can actually decide what the optimal diet is given that five-week goal. You just make a whole bunch of different decisions. What do they say? I mean, deadlines focus the mind, Mr. Deadline Guy. And you stay up all night because you realize you're like, wow, it really does force your thinking about this. And I think that's what sometimes gets lost in the CrossFit gym. Initially, it was terrifying.

I didn't know if I was going to survive. Let me give you an example. When I started this thing 10 years ago, Adrian Bosman, who is a CrossFit headquarters uber-mench, right? And he was one of our first coaches. I did all the coaching. This was all unknown. We were the 27th CrossFit.

I think officially 50th. Now we're 27th on the list. How many are there total? 11,000 roughly, which is a revolution. It's not a gimmick. What ends up happening was there was a workout that was snatch 135 pounds 30 times. Adrian and I didn't know if we could do it we didn't know anyone who had done it except like olympic lifters you know who had like seriously trained and were strong and one day we're like we're gonna do this even if it takes us all day

and like we psyched ourselves up and like now like they throw that as like an after effect you can do that in 90 seconds i mean things have changed dramatically in 10 years because you know it's like the four minute mile everyone's like oh you're still running four minute miles it's so quaint you know we're in the one minute mile now and um but you know 10 years we didn't know and so now we're starting to see that you know what's what's possible yeah for sure now coming back to the snatch for a second. So, I've never been a practitioner of Olympic lifts

for a whole host of reasons, but primarily because I had reconstructive shoulder surgery in 2004 doing silly stuff like grappling that made my arms

jump out of the front of my chest. Maybe you should have been an Olympic lifter. Maybe I should have. So, I had a lot of apprehension about that.

Rightfully so. So, like terminal, itension about that terminal overhead last 15, 20 degrees. But I found a lot of value, particularly in the last six months or so, with focusing on overhead squatting movements. Still not to the point where I'm going to do snatches. And I think that's where I've become smarter over the years is recognizing that you can really refine movement patterns. I don't have the go big or go home mentality anymore that I used to because the risk-benefit is so unfavorable to me. But why is Rich Froning so good at the snatch, and what are the common mistakes that people make with that movement?

Well, Rich has excellent mechanics. His full range of motion, his ankles, his excellent shoulder range, and understanding of stability. He's able to get his – I mean, he just does things that are naturally important to snatching. He does them effortlessly in terms of getting his torso upright. Obviously, it's a lot of training stimulus and these things, but he understands how to create stable shapes, and he's able to get into those shapes. He doesn't have to work very

hard. The work he does goes into, he gets 100% benefit from that. He doesn't have to, he's not working at 80% of 70% efficiency. Does that make sense? That makes sense's he's working hard on those shapes what you what you discovered though is i think underlying the sense that you know it's a part of the functional movement screen since 1996 dan john is like always all his throwers say i wish i had overhead squatted more glassman valued it as like one of the most important capacities and in fact one of the earliest best crossfit workouts i think it's called Nancy, and it's run 400 meters. So innocuous, right? And then just overhead squat 95 pounds 15 times. Like, that's pinche weight.

15 times 400 meters doesn't sound pinche to me. No, you'll have to overhead squat 95 pounds 15 times, run 400 meters, and then just do that. Oh, I see. Just do that, like, five times. And what you're going to see really quickly is when it happens like everyone can fake it for three but then as you start to fatigue or your your your your positions aren't robust you you bounce off the the tent you you no longer have access right and you know you start the world gets really small and then you start suffering and then you eventually labrador retriever in the closed sliding door it's a true fact

so you know i i think what is key is understanding what are the salient positions you know all we're doing when we say overhead squat is i'm saying show me you can squat with your torso upright and that looks a lot like sport doesn doesn't it? And if you have to lean forward really far to do that, then it says you have incomplete hip and ankle function and you don't know how to create stability in your trunk. And that is a very powerful idea, right? And what's nice about the overhead squat is I call it a category one movement. I can get very organized and I can grind down to a position where either we agree that it's full range of motion or not, or till I start to lose position, I can come back up.

And what I've removed out of it is the element of speed. So for my 9-year-old, for example, Georgia, the overhead squat is something we do all the time. Sometimes we just bring the little kiddie barbell into the living room before she goes to bed. Even less, maybe 10 pounds. And she just has to do three sets of five. Why? It's practicing the shape, practicing the position. And that's where we're going to get the bang for the buck.

You don't need to snatch heavy. Do you think too many CrossFitters focus on working out and not practicing? Well, totally. And I would say that let's take it out of CrossFit for a second and let's put it into running. Sure. Running is a very, very technical skill that we should be developing from a very early age.

And there are only like, what, 30 million runners in America who run three times a week and only 80% of them are injured in a year. Wow, that's like the worst statistic ever. Listen, if you're listening to this, do not let your children run. It's dangerous.

Comma, if you're a runner and running is one of the things that makes us human, if you're a runner, and running is one of the things that makes us human, you should be able to run. That is one of the tenets of being a good athlete. In fact, look at the NFL combine, for example. They jump, they have to bench press, which is a joke. That's the one piece that's a joke.

But everything else is a run drill, change of direction drill. It's about fluency and economy of running and changing mechanics. No wonder a couple years ago CrossFit put this big cone drill thing in there because they were like, hey, look, this thing you should be really competent at and you're going to get punished if you suck at it. So if we look at most people's running, how much actual skill development do they do in running?

You mean besides tying their shoes? Next to none. None, and they just start running. Unless you're with, say, Joe DeFranco, planning on being in the NFL combine. And he's like, actually, if you're right-handed, you should switch your feet this way because you cut one step out of the shuttle run. And then, wow, now you're a superstar. And Joe does a whole bunch of stuff about being, do you have the positions to run?

Like, for me, the most dangerous sport to middle-aged men is a track workout. Oh, my God. It's so dangerous. Like, you're just asking for a pulled hamstring or torn calf because you're at the end ranges and when your back starts to deflect because you can't buffer your huge engine, and then you have a neuromechanical compromised tear hamstring.

It's the same thing that happens in basketball. We don't even talk about what the end, do you have the required range of motion to run, yes or no? And resoundingly, the answer is hell no. And do we do any skills or drills about improving economy? No. So what ends up happening, of course, is that we should, and what I can tell you that I see is that I see very, very intelligent coaches

practicing skills, teaching skills, and then challenging those skills in a workout. And that is good programming. So if I am getting to a point where I'm comfortable with overhead squatting with a barbell and consider... That never happens, by the way, because it always gets worse. Well, I've... No, you should have... I'll send you some photos.

They're hilarious. If I'm considering going into, say, training for the snatch, what are common mistakes that I should be aware of that I should avoid? Well, you know, we have basically been able to break those fundamental positions down. So how about this? Show me that you can actually put, you know, just put some 10s on the bar. Grab a women's bar. Make it really light, you know.

Better for my tiny little midget hands anyway. Well, hey, they're called dwarf hands. All right? Yeah. And one of the issues is, show me you can keep your back flat and actually get to the bar. And what you're going to see

is that people can't do that. Get to the bar. Get to the bar. Yeah, no, no. Just get into the setup position for the bar. And what you're going to find is that people can't even get

into a decent setup position without rounding their back and dumping their shoulders. And then we start asking the question, what the hell are we doing? Your setup position is so shitty. Setup meaning that bottom position. Yeah. Show me you can put your hands in a snatch grip and then sit all the way down on your ankles.

Sit down and get into a good position. What you're going to find is that people universally can't do that. So suddenly, I've learned something about myself. Why do all the best coaches teach from the hang? Well, if you teach from the hang, then I take that portion out of it. I can derive a lot of the benefits from snatching without taking you to these compromised shapes. And the problem is, I know you can snatch from that compromised shape, but that's not the shape we all agree is the best shape. Does that make sense? So if you can't even get all the way down to the bar, an issue of technique is never,

we're never going to solve this because you're making basic type one errors from the first inch off the ground. Right. Or in centimeters because everything's in kilos in Olympic lifting. Let me ask you, I want to put you on the spot for a second because I've always wanted to ask you this and I'm not sure why I haven't. Yes, these are my real calves. They're not calf implants. I was curious

about your chesticles. Also real? No. It's just the left. I noticed you only put one in just testing it out. If you had to remove three common exercises from CrossFit gyms in the interest of safety, what would they be?

So. If you had to, gun against the head. It doesn't have to be three. Three or fewer. Let me deconstruct that for a second. And that's crucial. Because first and foremost, all the movements in the training language are inherently safe. If you have full range of motion in the motor control to do them.

Presumably, though, you get 1,000 people come in. There are certain exercises where a higher percentage of those people will lack that prerequisite. The number one most dangerous skill, bench press. Why? Because people don't have any internal rotation of their shoulder. They've pinned their back down. Right? You can press all day long, standing overhead military press, strict press.

You're going to fail safely. When you fail in the bench press, that shoulder is going to translate forward. There's your labrum. Can you bench press safely? Yes. Do we love floor pressing in our gym? Absolutely. We floor press

a ton. But what I find is that people do not have the basic mechanics. And that's one of the ways that we've got in our head that we define strength, how much you bench, how much you bench. My friend, Mark Bell, benched over 900. Our friend, Mark Bell. Our friend, Mark Bell. know That's an amazing amount And what I will tell you is that His positions and mechanics, it is so technical Like I think Hyper technical

And also just the assistance work and everything that he does related to it Is so sophisticated I think after knowing Mark and Jesse Burdick for several years I feel like I finally learned how to Bench press, even though I've been bench pressing Since I was what, like a man Mark and Jesse Burdick for several years, I feel like I finally learned how to bench press. Even though I've been bench pressing since I was, what, like a man? I came out, like, my testicles dropped and they handed me a bench press, you know? And so, I mean, I pull the bench

out of that. I also will pull the rings out. And the reason is, what we see is that people can do movements that look like ring dips. They go up and down, but they don't lock out. Their shoulders are in terrible positions, and what we value is them doing work going up and down. But if we put the rings back in for stability work, show me you have a good start position and finish position. Like, here's what I promise. Like, the TRX is a great piece of home equipment.

Like, you can, one of the things that we, I'm a big fan of is understanding that if your hands are on the ground doing a push-up right then you can cheat off the ground you have what i call a closed torque environment if you grip a barbell that's closed closed torque it's basically a circuit right and i can create stability off that in really strange positions because i can still bend like bending the bar that like bending the bar. That's right. I should be bending the bar, but I can still bend the bar even though my body's in really strange shapes. As soon as I put a dumbbell in your hand, you can't do that anymore.

Different game. Right? That's why kettlebells are so important, why dumbbells are so important because I call it an open torque system. I have to create all the stability at the big primary engine. I can't cheat it up through the chain. And so why are rings so important? Well, one of the reasons rings, dips are important is because they force me to show my hand what's

really going on at the shoulder in an open torque environment. The problem, so one of the reasons TRX is great is that you're basically taking really simple movements and being able to apply this. I'm in a strap. I'm hanging, right? And I can't cheat anymore, right? Because if I'm disorganized at the shoulder, I don't generate force. But the problem is with the rings that you can still cheat yourself into a terribly internally rotated position, cranking your neck back, and you can still go up and down until you can't.

And remember, the gym is a diagnostic tool. I should be figuring out what's going on. cranking your neck back and you can still go up and down until you can't and um and remember the gym is a diagnostic tool i should be figuring out what's going on i think the shoulder will hand the hips will handle a lot more silly bs a lot longer than the shoulder will right if i had to pull out one more movement you know hand against the gun against the wall i would say the butterfly kip only because I think it's, that's how I, if you asked me to do a bunch of pull-ups, guess what I'm going to do? Butterfly kip. But I understand the principles and I have good range of motion. It's a completely safe position. But what we see is that people do not have, I asked them to put their arms over their

head, for example, right? And they can't do it. And then so suddenly magically hanging from a bar is going to increase that range of motion. No, they're going to compensate. Then swinging and landing. So what we do is we add speed to a bad position. And then that's really the recipe. Kapow. Goes the pan of water. But once again, we program all that stuff on our gym.

But you'll notice that we have a lot of static ring stations because what we saw as well, people can't even do, they can't even get into the start position on the rings, which is elbows locked out, butt squeezed, thumbs turned out. They can't even get into the finish position or the start position. So what are we talking about? You know, what we're doing is we end up arguing about bullshit, right? You can't even get into the bottom position of a snatch. Why are we talking about your snatch? Right. I mean, I'm getting into more gymnastics these days, and I want to be able to do a back tuck.

I've never been able to do a back tuck. Really? Yeah. Attribute-wise, I have the attributes necessary, but it's a long story. No, because I was obsessed with that, too. I told you. Yeah, so I want to get to that point. You can do that safely, but you can certainly do it very, very unsafely or attempt to do it unsafely. And I think that the question of sequencing and how you put things in a proper order from diagnostics to refinement to training.

We have not given people the background or the language of how their bodies work you know i get to work with kids like children like first graders and some kindergartners in our swim team all the way up to masters olympic athletes i mean like we i see it all right and what i can tell you is that most along the way no one gets any formal training. And the mistake has been always, like I think CrossFit is doing it more right. The DeFranco's gyms, the Mike Boyle's, the places like that are, you know, Shannon Turley at Stanford. There are pockets of really excellent thinkers who are teaching people how to move. And that's a specific thing, right?

And that's not just jumping back and forth and chasing a bouncy ball. That's very specific skills and challenging those skills with the things we talked about. So, you know, what we've seen is a decentralized, and CrossFit, for example, is like a decentralized Soviet sports system, right? We have 11,000 states. And what you'll see is that kids will grow up through the CrossFit system in a generation, and they will, they'll already be like, well, of course I can overhead squat. What do you mean? Why can't you overhead squat? You know what I mean?

And we'll solve a lot of problems. But the key piece is we can't confuse exercising for full human capacity. That's the missing link. And speaking of full human capacity, you look at the the most elite crossfitters what are are there things that they do that the lower ranks do not commonalities that you've observed that people can can borrow or emulate or incorporate you're saying that top crossfitters that the bottom aren't doing that's just the recreational yeah like top top uh quartile or decile of they they all have most of them i know are obsessed with mechanics most of them and really spend a lot of time refining that mechanics um that's really you know their positions are more effortless

like there was a you know i had this physical therapy instructor and she was like she taught pediatrics and she's, let me be fucking clear. Muscles and tissues are like obedient dogs. And I was like, my mind was like, gadoosh. This is coming from the pediatric physical therapist, who was like, what the hell's wrong with you? Why are you so stiff? And the key...

We're doing synchronized stretches. And, you know, the key is that people aren't spending enough time working on full position. And maybe it's because I have not made the case for it. Because what we've done is we know you can get by at 80%. But show me you have full capacity. Because that's the thing that these top athletes have. I mean, they obviously can work really hard. Full capacity, meaning the corners of these positions. Yeah, the positional, full position. And I always use this example, but squat down with your feet together, keep your heels on the ground, knees together.

Can you do that, yes or no? If you can't do that, knees together all the way down, chilling out in the bottom like we're at a campfire, then you're missing full hip range of motion, ankle range of motion. One of those things is missing. And that's the mechanism for your hip impingement. That's the mechanism for your plantar fasciitis, for your bunion, for your torn Achilles, for your pulled calf. That is the fucking problem.

And you should be obsessing about this. CrossFit is like any good modern strength and conditioning system, because we're not the only ones doing it now, but they force us into these shapes that are diagnostic, you know? And, you know, if you've been around Pavel, well, then you probably have done a pistol at some point. Sure.

That's because you have to be able to have that open torque control on your leg, right? That's how he gets away with not having to do lots of step-ups, right? Show me that you can squat up and down on one leg with that strength. And immediately, I can tell if you have the ankle range of motion, you have range of motion to do that, right? So it's interesting that that got pulled into the language because it was so diagnostic. If there were two or three movements that people listening to this could videotape

themselves performing for sort of maximal diagnostic value, let's just say it's busy, professional, and it's like, ah, you know, I'm probably letting go, but I want to get back into training. I want to be able to videotape myself at certain points just to see how screwed up I am before I try to do something I did when I was 20 years old. Is there anything in particular you'd recommend? Well, the problem with that is that you somehow devalue some of the other positions. And in physical therapy school, they had this great statement. They're like, test something you think you changed and something you didn't think you

changed. And I was like, that is so eternal and amazing. And then I was like, well, fuck, it's my fucking shoulder. And if I'm compromised on this end, I maybe don't have the intellectual capacity to understand how that compromises me on the other side. And so what's crucial is that you can go from the start position. So, for example, you may not think that Olympic lifting is important to you as a swimmer, but Olympic lifting forces you all the time or swinging kettlebell into having full internal rotation of your shoulder. So even just doing the Bergner warm-up with a PVC pipe, he's an Olympic lifting coach.

You can Google Bergner warm-up. How do you spell his name? It's like B-U-R-G-E-N-E-R. Got it. Mike Bergner. And if you just get into this high hang position, like you're doing the robot dance out to the side. Do it all the time. You should be able to get your hand all the way down to your hip,

and your shoulder shouldn't twist forward. So people are like, oh, I don't need to limp lift. Well, you should be able to snatch PVC pipe without hurting your shoulder. But those same people will go to the pool and not recognize that the finished position for the crawl stroke is the same position. And so what ends up happening then is in the swimming language, if I'm missing that internal rotation at the end, that means my shoulder comes forward and that means my next stroke is compromised. And that's why you have to have full range on both ends of your shoulder right because i'm going to compromise and that's going to mess

up my next start or my next rep i've been amazed how much my entire physiology has changed just focusing on terminal knee extension just like lay on your back put your legs straight up in the air pull your toes back straighten your legs and if in the air, pull your toes back, straighten your legs. And if you can't straighten them completely, I was like, wow, my legs are shaking like, you know. I handled that over to two NFLers today who were coming back from an ACL repair. They sit all day long. They're sitting 14 hours a day, knees slightly bent.

They don't have that range. Posterior chain is, you know, you should, like, why can't you do a long sit? Last time you saw me, I could barely do this, and now I'm like. That's right. Out to the. You know, one of the things that you, you know. I'm touching my toes first. The truth, PR, lifetime.

One of the truths is that, you know, we're always talking about putting the hip back into the socket. Like, that's the capsule stretch. That's four- our body stuff. Definitely. But what you figured out was, boy, if I have some more, some load, my legs are up and I put some load through that, that's seated that hip back into the position and reinforce that mechanic. And then you had to be stable in that shape.

Same thing happens when you squat. Theoretically, same things should be happening when you deadlift. But what we see is that the modernness of us is what messes us up you have to have a movement practice pilates is a movement practice yoga is movement practice acroyoga is movement practice because they're exposed crossfit's movement practice but then i also have to probably breathe hard a little bit somewhere and get stronger and your movement practice can handle that can be kettlebells based i you can go to the Olympics that way. And then the last piece, of course, is that you have to be able to take care of your tissues.

You have to know how to do some basic maintenance. One of the reasons that For Our Body spoke to so many people was that it was like you gave them a blueprint, a Betty Crocker cookbook of how their body worked and the things that they could do that were actionable, that didn't require a doctor or a physical therapist. That's the revolution. Thank you.

And thank you for helping with that also. I have to ask this. It's a common question. It's not one that I ask myself much, but I'm curious how you would answer it. Is CrossFit a fad? Oh, I would say totally. Totally it's a fad.

Because front squatting and running is a fad. It's a gimmick. No, look, gymnastics is not a gimmick. Olympic lifting, not a gimmick. Power lifting, not a gimmick. You know, one of the things that I don't think people recognize CrossFit so much, and you can even go back to Pavel's book. It's like he interviews some MMA guy who was legendary for his conditioning.

He does the 100 kettlebell snatch test. He does it in like eight was legendary for his conditioning. He does the 100 kettlebell snatch test. He does it in like eight minutes and it destroys him. I have 13-year-old girls who can do that version of that thing in like three and a half minutes. So what we've done is we've gotten a lot better conditioned. And I think people understand that CrossFit has always prioritized conditioning and aerobic engine first. You've got to take care of that stuff. And the body weight control stuff is the easiest way and the most democratized way.

Then let's have a conversation about how much you weigh, how strong you are. If you're going to be the best at the CrossFit Games, you're going to have to be really, really strong and really aerobic for the rest of us. We can keep putting money in that strength bank, but that aerobic function bank, it goes dry. Now, the conditioning to,

and I know you've got a bunch of people to train here and business to handle, so I'll let you go in a minute, but to thin-slice conditioning for a second, because for me, of course, I want to dig into the measurables. Is that primarily, when I look at, say, a metabolic conditioning workout, a Metcon workout, is it primarily trying to push up that anaerobic threshold so that you don't get crippled by lactic acid and hydrogen ions and all that and puke into a bucket? Is it VO2 max? What are the primary components that you can kind of perform, that you can track?

The idea is that we could maintain all these other functions, strength, power, all the things that sort of valued us as powerful, functional people. And I could get all the benefits of the aerobic and aerobic training with interval-like training, with high-intensity training, right? Izumi Tabata proved that a long time ago. But what we found is that, hey, probably you need to go long once in a while to make sure you can. And there are some adaptations that only happen at that long, steady state, right? I'm signed up for the malachi i'm paddling oc1 it's like a five to seven hour race 20 minute workouts are not going to do it for me this is

kayaking outrigger canoe outrigger canoe right but my point is that i'm gonna have to go long how long we need to go is up to my coach you know i'm probably not doing longer than an hour still maintaining respecting this aerobic piece but that the intensity, all of our energy systems work in concert and at the same time. If you go longer than two minutes, two minutes is a 50% anaerobic effort. So running at six minutes, eight minutes, you're full aerobic power. That's just so much more interesting. Do 1K repeats. That's something people don't understand about Brian McKenzie's model.

He has me do 5K repeats and stuff on the erg, and it's brutal. That's brutal. Is this the standing or seated erg? That would be the skerg, the ski erg. The ski erg. You know? Got it. Those are terrible places to be.

1K repeats. I think people are not afraid of working hard anymore. We've gotten past that. Now let's have a little bit better conversation. What do you think is the future of CrossFit? And you can answer that any way you want. Well, you know, it's going to continue to refine itself. I think, you know, people are coming in, and all the coaches I know and work with, you know,

are starting to understand what it is we're doing and how sophisticated it is. It's not just we just don't throw a bunch of random shit up and exercise until we puke. It seems like that. A bunch of jerks swinging around the bar. That's not what's happening at all. There are some jerks swinging around the bar. Well, that happens. I mean, I always point out, I'm like, the physical therapists out in the world,

you had a business long before CrossFit, FYI. People have been fucking themselves up in every sport for as long as there have been people because we're ego-driven people, because we're driven to perform. The key is to pull your ego out of this and really play the long game. What do you look like?

How strong, how fit can you be when you're 50? The conversation changes a little bit. For me, it's not, can I deadlift 600 anymore? It's, what's this look like when I run an ultra what's this look like how effective am I at running a 10k or paddling

those are for me starting to be more interesting conversations than just absolute strength or absolute work power how does this make me a better mountain biker if there were any parting tips, suggestions requests that you could make of the

people out there who are either currently cross-fitting or considering cross-fitting? What would you say to them? What would you suggest? It's not about who can work hardest anymore. That ship has sailed. If you're in

a serious strength and conditioning program, you are very fit. Probably fitness is not, unless you're a beginner, fitness is not the limiting factor anymore. Your positional quality at intensity is the limiting factor. Because you're going to do the same experiment that everyone has done, and you will end up in a little tiny box at some point wondering why you're George St. Pierre and you've torn both your ACLs. No one was fitter. No one was more powerful.

But his positions cost him his ACLs. And now that consciousness has come at a very, very high price. And you should be able to do these things forever. There's not a time where you don't need to get up off the ground or do a push-up. But just let's become more sophisticated. Let's advance the conversation a little bit. Don't be a douchebag. That's a big one.

If I walk into the room and you're around in your back, I'm going to cock-punch you. Come on. It may happen once in a while at your heaviest loads. I was drinking coffee and you tried to cock-punch me earlier, which I thought was aggressive. Luckily, I did. I think that's the issue. You need to bring the awareness that we're supposed to bring to this. If we're doing a five rep, we're just not even a five rep max but we're just

squatting, that fifth rep should look fucking good. You just did four more. Make it look better. Okay. Okay, we got to run guys. Last question. Any lesser known strength coaches or coaches, period, that you particularly, that stick out in your mind that people might want to look up and learn more about?

Joe DeFranco is amazing. If you haven't ever listened to Pavel talk, he solved a lot of this a long time ago. The Internet is rich right now. I would say look at who's been on the podcasts. There have been some serious banner carriers for a long time. Mark Verstegen at Exos has been talking about these basic shapes and positions for a long time. Who are on his show? Who's around?

Right. And I think the working coach piece is it. There are a lot of models, but you just need to start a practice, and then from there we can advance ourselves. But there's a lot of really good thinking in the world right now. It's very exciting. This is a good time to be in the world. Definitely.

So, yeah, question your assumptions, folks. Test your own rules. And don't be afraid to suck. Suck. Don't be afraid to suck. Find a place where you can suck. Privately. Safely.

Kelly, where can people find you on the internets and elsewhere? I'm on your couch, timferriscouch.com. Not to be confused with other couches on the internet. Dude, we're at mobilitywad and mobilitywad.com. And man, I can't believe I've been doing this for 10 years. That's a lot of pull-ups. Yeah. Well, to many more decades.

All right. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate you.