WHOOP Podcast - Christian Harris Talks Coming Back Strong at Next Year's CrossFit Games

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Christian Harris, one of the most recognizable names in CrossFit, shares how sport is so much more than just your individual performance--it comes down to the team you build. Christian sat down with Mike Lombardi at the CrossFit Games for a deep dive on coaching, culture building, and leadership. Christian talks candidly about his team’s disqualification from the Games this year after one member tested positive for a banned substance, and says his squad, Move Fast Lift Heavy, will come back stronger for next year’s Games. Christian discusses getting into CrossFit (3:53), balancing business, performance, and family (7:00), sticking to schedules (8:27), managing strain (9:23), CrossFit Games disqualification (11:18),  building a winning culture (15:53), his coaching philosophy (17:09), power vs. endurance (23:20), sleep and heart rate variability (23:53), and the role fitness plays in mental well being (26:40). Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we sit down with top athletes, scientists, experts, and more to learn what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. You can learn more about WOOP at WOOP.com. You can sign up for a WOOP membership. If you use the code Will Amid, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D, you will get 15% off. We are fresh off a week of the CrossFit Games. So that's the theme for today's episode.

Christian Harris joins us, one of the most recognizable names in CrossFit. First, I want to congratulate newly crowned CrossFit Games champions, Justin Medeiros, and Tia Claire Toomey. Also, big congratulations to Team Mee. Mayhem Freedom on bringing home the prize on the team side. We love the CrossFit community. I have to say it's very cool for me just to see all the different CrossFit competitors wearing Whoop.

And of course, Whoop is proud to be the official wearable of CrossFit. Christian Harris sat down with our own Mike Lombardi at the CrossFit Games to discuss coaching, culture building, and leadership. Christian talks candidly about his team's disqualification from the games this year. after one member tested positive for a banned substance, and why he thinks his team move fast, lift heavy, will come back stronger for next year's games. He also shares his philosophies on balancing performance, work, and family,

and why keeping a regimented schedule is one of the most important keys to success. Without further ado, here is Christian and Mike. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Loop Podcast. I'm Mike Lombardi, live at the podcast. CrossFit Games with Christian Harris. You've probably seen Christian following you around the internet. He is a multi-time CrossFit Games athlete. He owns Move Fast, Live Heavy, and based in New York. Yep, Long Island, New York. Hell yeah. So, Christian, let me tell us a little bit about yourself.

I gave you the easy bio. Give me your bio. So my bio, I am 34. I've been in the CrossFit space for just about 10 years now. This fall I'd be in there for 10 years. Prior to that, I played sports my entire life, baseball, football, basketball, played football at a D2 school, CW Post, played wide receiver there. After my time there, I started working at a place called Perisi Speed School, which is a speed and agility type training facility. and one of my co-workers there, his name's Greg.

He kept telling me about this thing called CrossFit, and I kept telling him how dumb it was and how stupid it was and blah, blah, blah. And after a year, I finally try to work out. And like most people that try CrossFit, they get hooked. And that was me. And here we are. What was the shift like for you going from that sort of like team sport mentality and then finally making your way to CrossFit?

obviously you had Greg introduce you and hesitant like basically every person ever that played a team sport at a high level is do you remember what the first workout was that you were like okay I can do this and I like it so it was a workout cold fight gone bad I think everybody's pretty familiar with it just just what people do it because not everybody knows crossfit so fight gone bad is an interval style workout so just off of that it was something that kind of intrigued me just because I've done style training um so it's a workout there's five movements box jumps there's sumo delaf high pull ball ball there's wall ball there's push press and maybe rowing for calories for cows yep and then there's a minute rest and you repeat that for three rounds and you're trying to get as many reps as possible each minute for each movement um as soon as I finished a workout I'm dead on the floor sprawled out and I'm like I need this quick 15 minutes of work yeah you're like okay I get it. I understand what this is about. So, I mean, when I tell you I was hooked, pretty much the next day I looked up CrossFit Level 1 training seminars. I booked one in Brooklyn, got my level

one, started working at the gym, and that's how quick I got hooked onto it. And when did you set to open your own affiliate? I'm trying to think back. It was when I got injured. I tore my peck for the first time at the O.C. Throwdown, I believe it was 2014 or 2015. And, you know, when you have a significant injury like that, obviously you're not training much. So you have a lot of downtime. And I kind of use that downtime to look into opening a facility. So I did that. And that was short-lived. I opened my first gym, and my landlord was basically throwing us out maybe two months into it. So I ended up merging with a buddy of mine, Anthony, during the time that I wasn't training, I was bouncing into a lot of gyms just to make connections with people, the network. And there was

this one guy, Anthony Burranta, who's my partner now, who I've taken a great liking to. And I remember him telling me about his landlord and he was going through a similar situation so i was like hey do you want to merge and uh we basically combined both of our membership bases under a new facility and that's where we're on now that's where we're now so what does it kind of look like uh as you're coming up and still competing in crossfit art so you're opening the gym and you're also you know competing at a high level what was what was kind of like the split of time for you as you're kind of getting a business up and off the ground and you're still, I want to do this sport at a high level. Yeah, so in the beginning, I pretty much lived at the gym.

So I'd wake up, do anything that I needed to do, whether that was, I don't know, paint a wall, fit some training in, and then, you know, coach a class, like basically just living and breathing the gym all day, 24-7. And once I partnered with Anthony, it was a big relief because we were able to kind of delegate, you know, different duties to each other. So it allowed me to free up some time to focus a little bit more in training and eventually focusing on my other ventures that I have. You also have family. Yep. How many kids?

Two boys. My older guy, he'll be 10 in a couple weeks. Wow. August 29th. and then my little guy will be six this October. So now you've had kids, how do you kind of factor in kids to this equation? Because, you know, Instagram is one thing, right? People see that and they're like, oh, that's what life is.

But obviously you're running a gym, you have a family, the kids have their own stuff, you have another lifestyle business. How are you going to managing all this in your head, physiologically, like all of it? I'm literally all of it. Yeah, I mean, it's always something that I'm continually working on and always trying to evolve with. In the beginning, it was not a great skill set of mine. I'd say over the last two years,

I've definitely done a better job at managing that kind of stuff. And it all comes down to a schedule and maximizing the amount of time that you allocate towards these things. So my schedule right now, I'll kind of run through my day and what it looks like, I'll wake up, 503 in the morning. Is that an alarm or natural? That's the alarm. 5.03.

I don't know why. I just like weird numbers like that. 5.03, I wake up. I get to the gym by about 5.30. Write the workout on the board. Coach the 6. That ends at 7. I'll train from 7 to 9.

You know, what I have programmed for that day or what I think I'm going to do, I try to fit it in within that 2 hours. If I don't, so be it. In the past, I would kind of, if I didn't finish, I would do something later on in the day, but I'm trying to really compartmentalize everything and maximizing the most time. So I don't finish everything by nine, and that's it for the day. I coached the nine to ten, and then from 10 to about two o'clock, I'm doing either programming or design work for Move Fast, you know, networking with different vendors, all stuff like that,

or doing stuff for my sponsors, and I work closely with Deb, who's my manager. Once 2 o'clock it, I make my way home, and then it's pretty much family time for the rest of the day. And someone else coaches the back half of the day? Yep. So Anthony does most of the afternoon classes. We have a couple of other coaches that are on board.

What does whoop strain look like by the time it's 2 o'clock? By the time it's 2 o'clock, it's usually about around 16-ish, which is kind of high, given that it's that early in the day but it depends on what I'm doing when I'm home that sometimes it'll only go up a little bit more or if I did do another workout or if I'm running around with the kids

that can easily go up to 17, 18, 19. For sure. Which part of the day is easier? I would say honestly the first half of my day where everything is very regimented. Structured, yeah. Yeah. There's just a lot of unknowns and things that can happen throughout the day with the kids. You know, they can be in their own moods and, you know, if they're feeling cranky,

they don't want to do their homework and stuff like that. At what point did you realize that this sort of regimented schedule was the thing that was going to allow you to do all these things? Were you just trying to make it happen before? Or have you always been somebody that's been structured in how you go about the plan? never really structured always willing to put in the work um but i think it was when i started to really feel like i was running on fumes is when i said something needs to change and i think you know competing at a high level individually it takes a lot out of you and i kind of made the decision to from this day forward i want to go team

It doesn't require as much. It still requires a lot of work, but not as much as an individual would. I know that there's some individuals that are putting in, you know, somewhere between three to five hours. I don't really have the bandwidth for that. Let's talk a little bit about this year. So just before the games, somebody on your team pops positive for a banned substance. And unfortunately, the team is not allowed to compete.

Yep. obviously devastating yeah devastating yeah it's pretty gutting i know still gutting i'm sure it's going to take a long time um coming back are we coming back next year we are coming back next year okay so you heard it here first heard it here first good that's what that's what the people needed to know okay small small setback um but coming back strong for sure what's the you know are you just taking some time off now or are you focusing more on you know move fast when does the training get uh kick started again and is the fire even bigger now that this sort of i'm not to say missed opportunity but you know the team was probably poised to do quite well yeah

this year definitely um i mean the fire's still there if it's not even more now like i didn't joke about it but i said maybe this is my last year but i cannot go out on that note um so i'm definitely going to be back next year for sure i'll be looking for another girl so if you guys are listening in and you're fit and you're in the long island area shoot me a dm i'm taking applications there is a roster spot open for a team that will be going to the games in 2022 um but yeah you know it's an unfortunate situation um i really feel for katie She genuinely did not know that, you know, there was a banned substance. And after doing even more research, it doesn't even seem like it's something that can aid in performance enhancing.

I guess, you know, if you look at stress levels, because that's what it's supposed to help. It's supposed to help manage stress and mood. So if you look at that as a performance enhancer, I guess maybe, but is eating grilled chicken and sweet potato to keep your information down? is that a performance enhancer? You know, so I know it wasn't anything malicious. But moving forward, I definitely will look into my team members and question them on what they're taking and really do my due diligence to make sure that that's not

anything I ever have to worry about again. It's kind of one of those situations where the question is not whether or not it, well, it's performance enhancing, but it's, you know, it's just on the list. It's kind of like the Shikari Richardson, like, okay, great. So you smoked and then you still ran fast and everybody. Is that performance enhancing or is it just the rules? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little different because she knows she was smoking,

which is. You know, yeah, you know it's against the rules. Right, yeah, yeah. I think in this instance, it was, like, purely innocent. Like, she had no idea that this was a band thing. Like, this is something you can get over the counter. It's next to your melatonin, next to your vitamin C. So it's...

Well, same thing in Massachusetts. I guess, yes, yes, you're right. So for us, it's very commonplace. You can go to... You can walk down the street and get anything you want or have it delivered. So, yeah, I guess when we think about it, it's like, yeah, I mean, it's totally normal. Yeah. So, you know, the rules are rules, and we'll see.

um do you think that next so next year you'll be 35 after so you do another team do you see yourself as starting to shift into that uh masters 35 39 yeah maybe um you don't think you could throw down i know i know you could throw down um i say it now i don't know i got to see what time we'll tell yeah how you've been on how many different crosswood games teams so i've really been at the games one time, and that was 2016. 2019, we qualified, or I guess 2020, we qualified, but then COVID happened. So missed out on that year, and then qualified again this year, positive drug test, so missed out on this year.

So two back-to-back unfortunate circumstances. Yeah. How much of that composition was the same from the 2020 team to the 2021 team? Was it three? None of it. None of it. A quarter of it, me. You, okay. So when you're looking at compiling a team now, what sort of culture, I assume you're kind of the leader of the group? Yep. What do you think is the most important factor of the culture, of like, building that culture of this, you know, now your future team, but the team this past year even?

Yeah, I think it's just people that are willing to work hard and that really like each other. like it's it's hard to it's hard to want to work next to somebody if you don't really vibe well with them and i think from the first time that we all practice together uh we all jelled pretty well but um yeah moving forward definitely people that are willing to work hard and that you can vibe well with what do you think is the most important thing or the most valuable thing you bring to your facility your uh your gym as a coach The 6 a.m. class, maybe the, I don't know if it's the hardest one because it's like a combination of people that are like, this is the only time I can make it. And also the people

that are a little bit crazy and are like, I love it this early. Yeah. I kind of mix in the two. And like, I imagine you kind of bring your high energy to it. But, you know, from a coaching thing, what do you want your members to get out of, you know, each session that they get with you? I want them to learn a little something, each class, have some fun, and obviously get fit. And I try to do something every class that they can execute those three things. If somebody was, you know, kind of go down this path of, okay, I just fell in love with CrossFit, I'm getting my L1, and I think I want to open a facility, what advice would you give them? don't open a facility right away definitely uh spend some time uh coaching athletes and being around the gym setting um just kind of like perfecting your craft and and finding what type of style that you have

and you know how it fits into what you would want to present to the world is how you hire coaches for your gym different than how you think about teammates because their teammates it's in a way, but they're also an extension of the brand that you've created. Sure. I mean, from a coaching standpoint, I usually like to hire people that are from within the affiliate. So we usually don't hire, like, anyone outside. So we kind of like them homegrown. Yeah.

So maybe it's a member that just really likes to be around the gym a lot. We can work with them that way or somebody that just really has a passion for this stuff. We have a few members that just got their L-1s just because they just have such a passion for it. So sometimes we'll look to those members to either coach or do some sort of apprenticeship with us. Do you take them under your wing or is it just they show interest and they kind of start hanging around? And it's kind of the two schools have thought of like, I'm going to teach you how to swim or just like I'm throwing you in the pool and good luck and you're going to get a little better each time. Yeah, so nowadays, it's more of a, I'll take them underneath my wing. We like to do a little something where the coach spends a certain amount of time just observing and shadowing,

then a little bit of time where they are just doing warm-ups, maybe doing some corrective stuff, but not much, and then doing like a cool down with the class and then some hours where I'm shadowing or Anthony shadowing that coach through a class and then once they feel pretty comfortable with that then kind of let them roam free. If someone's thinking about, I just talked to Chris Hintchoff for a long time

and it's not the first time I've heard this story of people who are from different disciplines or have never done CrossFit before who are like, I'm going to go and then they look in the door and they walk out um okay what advice do you have to somebody that's one nervous as they see it and then once you get in to the box and you say right i'm going to do this what you know how how do you think a new member should kind of think about the experience and like their own progress and having realistic

expectations and then even you know what are there any certain movements you're like why don't you just think about this like if you can get the air squad or something like that's the win. Do you have little marks like that for at Move Fast or just your perspective on the whole thing? I know that was a lot in that question. Yeah, no, no. Pretty much for most new people that come in, we used to do a foundations program where people that were coming in, we'd take them through a three week, three day a week foundations program, teach them everything from an air squat to the snatch by the end. of it. But we kind of got rid of that only because what ends up happening is a lot of people will forget everything that you just kind of went through them with. So what we do now,

we kind of just have people jump into the classes. And I know for myself and Anthony, we're creative enough that we understand how to scale people back appropriately, that they can walk in. Somebody's doing a snatch and all right you're going to do a light dumbbell snatch today or we're doing box jumps you're going to do a step up today right we're running you can't run we're going to hop on the bike today you know so it's just and i think it works a little bit better that way only because in my opinion that person is still sharing the same experience but they're automatically off the bat understanding that oh they make this appropriate for anyone no matter what uh skill set you have or what fitness level you're at so do when you you see someone's just jumping in so you're going with

that um that formula okay we're going to see how they move and we're going to adjust on the fly how many coaches do you one do you have a class cap and how many if one does you have class cap yes we have a 20 person class okay and is that still just one coach still one coach okay um when you when you see this new person how much time do you feel like you feel like you can give to them in the skill portion while still giving to your other members. Yeah, that's that whole experience thing. There's a little bit of a fine line. You don't want to spend too much time with that person because then it takes away from

your other members. So I think if anybody else that's out there that does this type of formula, if you struggle with it, try to give them something that is super basic, that it doesn't really need much coaching that anybody can pretty much pick up. Um, so stick to your things like air squat, maybe front squat, deadlift, strict press, things of that nature. Um, just because the amount of coaching and technical components in with that is, it's very low. Right. So basically foundational movement crossfit. Yep. Keep it to those. Keep it in the warm up and then, you know, make sure you scale appropriately. Would you say that you're more of a power athlete or an endurance athlete?

Or are you like truly like a smack in the middle type of guy? I'd say I'm pretty smack in the middle. In the beginning, I would say I favored more towards power. But now I've put in so much work from an aerobic standpoint that I really enjoy it. And because of it, my power numbers are definitely not as great as they once were. I think age has a little bit to do with it as well. How is, speaking of age, right? You know, like just in general, heart rate variability decreases as we age.

Have you kind of found the magic formula to either just maintain your heart rate variability or even increase it? For me, a lot of it has to do with sleep. Sleep? Yeah. Okay. I have to make sure that, like, I just don't sleep enough.

What would you say sleep on average? about six to seven hours six to seven hours and what kind of quality are you getting you at least sleep for those six to seven hours or are you awake a lot so here's the thing I'm usually in bed so like when I look at my stats my time in bed sometimes it's nine hours but I sleep for six maybe seven hours damn yeah what's going on I don't know like my awake time on the in the app is usually like an hour and a half we'll talk about it all fair yeah we got to figure this out yeah that's That's a lot. That's a lot off there. Yep. I mean, I always wake up in the middle of the night to pee at least once, so sometimes twice. So that right there, it takes me a few minutes to go back to sleep. Yeah. Kids are old enough. That's not a thing.

They're fine. That's a fine thing at all. So how much do you feel like what you do through the day is impacting your kind of ability to wind down? Because you're kind of go, go, go in terms of like you get up at 503, you're at the gym, you're writing the workout. then you're coaching and training and then you're working on move fast and then more coaching and then get family is there a time in the day where you can just be like yeah one of my favorite times of the day is when I get home and the kids aren't home from school yet and it's about I just have like maybe a half hour to 45 minutes just to kind of like not hear anybody not be in my own

head or anything like that I usually come home yeah make lunch and just like just so that's your time You get about 30 minutes. At about 30 minutes. Okay. And then it's until you go to bed, basically. Yep. I mean, I have an almost one-year-old next week. Oh, wow.

Solo, solo time is when he's at daycare sometimes. Yeah. Or at the Crosswood games, I guess this is it right now. Yeah. So do you have anything that you found is, you know, let's say you woke up and you're a little bit tired? What's something like through the day? You're just like, I know that this thing's going to at least let me get through besides coffee. Do you like mobilize more?

Do you know that like this is the certain type of workout? It's like, like I could do something. I might even do any amount, but it'll just be like, all right, I'm going to put 40 minutes on the clock and I'm just going to like bike, dumbbell snatch and do something else that just kind of keeps me moving. Yeah, for me, it's, honestly, it's doing some sort of fitness. It allows me to have a more clear head. when I work out and I think it's one of the reasons why I really like to work out first thing

in the morning just because it allows me to kind of like all right one that's off the plate like I don't have to worry about that for the rest of the day but two just after the workout I guess there are endorphins that you release it just really allows me to like be in a better mood and it just keeps me a little bit more even keeled I'm definitely a little bit more high strung when I don't when you don't get the workout in have you trained today yes Okay, that's good. Do you feel like you make any sort of like lists or like how organized is your next day when you're getting up or when you're going to bed? So do you feel like as you're kind of winding down or at least, you know, getting into bed and trying to go to sleep?

Sure. You know when that alarm goes off exactly what's going to happen or is there a little bit of I'm not totally sure and still trying to figure out exactly what the flow is going to be and things like that? For the most part, I'd say 80% of my day, I know exactly what's going to happen. Again, a lot of that has to do with having Deb, my manager, she kind of like structures the focus for Move Fast, whether she needs me to finish the design so I can submit that so we can get a production going. Whether it's something with a sponsor, I need to make sure I post for them,

so I have to, you know, do some sort of content creation with that. So anything from those standpoints, like, she helps to keep me organized and on task with that stuff. You do all the creative work and design work for a move fast? Yep. Where do you kind of come up with this stuff? Because you have so many different collections. Yeah. A lot of it has to do with just inspiration that can come to me at any point.

For example, I'll give you an example, the latest one. I'm a big fan of Kanye. Okay. And he put out that Donda live concert, but I stayed up past my bedtime. Just for it. Just for the live listen. And I put it live at 8 o'clock, because that's when I was supposed to start. And after about an hour, I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore.

Because it didn't start until 9.45, I found out. Oh, man. And all it was showing was, uh, people. people in the venue, like going to their seats or, you know, walking into the arena. And it was just like this streaming, like, security footage, basically. And it said Kanye West presents Donda. And then at the bottom of it, it said, stand by, the event will start shortly. So I kind of, like, got inspired by that and applied it to move fast Latvei.

So we kind of, like, used that same font. And the way it was written, so we went Move Fast, Lift Heavy. And then at the bottom, we said, Stand By, the fitness will begin shortly. And then our logo underneath it. So that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, hearing the creative process for really anybody, and because you turn over so many different collections, it's very, very cool. So I just want to reiterate, definitely go check out Move Fast, Lift Heavy stuff.

It's very, very cool. And it's always changing. So if you like something, you should get it because it's not. It will not exist. It does. It does go pretty quick. There are no reruns. Where do you have the new Kanye album in the pantheon of Kanye?

It hasn't dropped yet. Well, where do you think it's going to be? Now that he's got collabs on it again. I think it'll be top three, I think. Is Kanye your favorite? He's one of my favorites, yeah. Just from a production standpoint, the lyricism, he's always got a sound that's very uh very ahead of its time yeah oh for sure you know um one

i think my favorite album is probably life of pablo oh yeah yeah just because as like a straight through listen or just straight through the elements straight through listen um there's so many different sounds on it um plus it's a longer album so i feel like it's it's something that you can always listen to and not be sick of it in my opinion what are your top three kanya albums straight straight through listen straight through listen probably life of pablo uh my beautiful dark twisted fantasy and then late registration oh good i was like please don't say like 808 something like man no what's this guy okay i agree i think that that's probably true good choices where can we find you if you want to find me you can find me on instagram uh i am chris harris

If you want to find the clothing company or the programming, you can go to Move Fast, Lift Heavy.com. We also give away a free tea for anybody that signs up for the programming. It's only $9.99 for right now. So I would definitely try to jump on. And what can people expect from that programming? Like time to May. Yeah, sure.

So on the programming side of things, we have three tracks. We have the train with CH. So with that, you're going to follow exactly. exactly what I'm doing. You're going to follow that two weeks behind me. So it's great because if there's anything that maybe is a little bit too much, I can kind of tone it back. I also put my workout times in there, so people have something to shoot for.

But if it's something that's maybe more interval style, like I'll give a specific RPE. This way you can have an idea of how this should feel. feel. So that's the train with CH track. It's usually two sessions. You need about two hours to get it all done. Maybe a little bit more if you're not familiar with some of the movements and you need to watch through the demo videos and things like that. Then we have our peak program, which is a slight watered down version of that. It'll probably take you closer to 90 minutes to get done because there's no second session. And then we have our base program, which is,

basically an A, a B, and a C. It's a strength, a skill, and a MECON. Well, it'll take about 60 minutes. Close to the 60 minutes. Yep. Two hours. Yep. Awesome.

Exactly. Well, congrats on that launching that. It feels like that's newish. Yeah, for sure. We launched it earlier this year. So that's awesome. Christian posts some great stuff, some great and fun challenging workouts. Oh, yeah.

If you have longer time demands, I've played around with a couple. They're very good. If you're looking for that 45 to hour plus stuff of multi-modality skill and endurance so oh yeah um thank you christian for joining us thanks for having me and uh always appreciate having you for sure of the whoop team thank you cool thanks to christian for coming on the whoop podcast if you enjoyed this episode of the whoop podcast be sure to leave a reading or review great way to share your feedback and help other people find out about the whoop podcast you can check us out on social at whoop and at will omit and you can get 15% off a

Woot membership by using the code, Will Ahmed. All right, folks, thanks for listening, and we will be back next week.