WHOOP Podcast - Live at the 2019 Reebok CrossFit Games: Jared Stevens, the Buttery Bros, Kelsey Kiel & Tola Morakinyo of Invictus Boston, Barbell Shrugged's Anders Varner, Jess Coughlan & Bobby Downton from RAW Strength & Conditioning, Revival Strength owner Marcus Filly

Episode Date: August 7, 2019

Live from the 2019 Reebok CrossFit Games: Anders Varner discusses the One Ton Challenge (3:33), the strain of working at the Games (12:41), coaching with WHOOP (21:51), and creating separation between workouts and daily life (25:31). The Buttery Bros talk making pancakes (35:17) and the "CrossFit game of thrones" (36:33). Jared Stevens explains how he's getting more deep sleep (42:15), the effects stress has on his body (42:54), and why he'll probably keep his beard (49:56). Jess Coughlan & Bobby Downton open up about what the demo team is like (51:04), being a coach-athlete couple (54:34), and WHOOP coming to Australia (1:02:02). Marcus Filly elaborates on intelligent training (1:07:29) and quality of movement (1:14:35). Kelsey Kiel describes a day at the Games (1:21:03) and what she's doing to prepare for next season already (1:24:01). Tola Morakinyo shares his thoughts on the new qualifying format and early cuts (1:28:52), as well as what he does for in-competition recovery (1:36:10).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

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. Our clients range from the best professional athletes in the world, to Navy SEALs, to fitness enthusiasts, to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives. The common thread among whoop members is a passion to improve.

What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone? And now that we've just launched all-new whoop strap 3.0 featuring Whoop Live, which takes real-time training and recovery analysis to the next level, you're going to hear how many of these users are optimizing their body with whoop and with other things in their life. On this podcast, we dig deeper. We interview experts. We interview industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. How can you use data to improve your body? What should you change about your life? My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the

Whoop podcast. It's funny to look back on, like I've been wearing this thing since 2016. It's cool to see my data from each year I was at the games and then the regionals and like seeing different times of how the stress affected me and the volume. And that brings me back once again to like outside stress has been so much more devastating in my body than actual physical stress. How we doing today, folks? This week, we recorded a special episode of the WOOP podcast because we were live from the 2019 Reebok CrossFit Games in Madison, Wisconsin. Our elite performance manager, Mike Lombardi, a former Olympic rowing coach and our in-house CrossFit expert, got to sit down with a variety of athletes and other big names to discuss their training, their overall experience at the games, and what they've learned from their whoop data,

while competing. Some of our guests include Jared Stevens, long-time competitor in one of the game's most recognizable faces, the filmmaking duo of Heber Cannon and Marston Sawyers, better known as the Buttery Bros. Kelsey Keel and Tolop Morricino from Team Invictus Boston. Anders Varner, host of the Barbell Shrugged podcast. Jess Coglin and Coach Bobby Danton of Team Project. X from raw strength and conditioning in Australia.

And lastly, Marcus Philly, revival strength owner and six-time games competitor, not to mention a former guest on this podcast. Whoop was thrilled to be a part of the CrossFit Games this past weekend. I hope you'll enjoy listening to all these amazing athletes and coaches. So this is Mike Lombardi here on the WooP podcast. I'm here with the host of Barbell Shrug to Anders Varner. We're returning the favor here.

That's awesome. We're at the CrossFit games, catching up about some really awesome stuff that's been going on with Barbell Shrug. So the one-ton challenge, I'm just going to let you talk about it. We crushed it. Yeah, you crush it. The people showed up. First off, that was, anytime you go from zero to one and everything's just like an idea and in your head, it's perfect. And then you lay in bed at night and everything's a disaster and like the anxiety of our people going to show up or the athletes going to really care.

as far as the first time. It went really well. I was standing on stage and I looked out in the crowd after the games ended and everybody came in. I was like, oh my God, there's like thousands of people here right now and we don't have video. Like how are we going to keep all these people here? Because there was no way they could see it if they were in the back of the room and we were just on the floor. But yeah, the one-time challenge is super rad. We had our first event here. Kind of The long story of it is in 2012, I started training with John Sina. I owned a gym in Pacific Beach. And John Sina, just the way the world works, walked in one day.

And I was on a rest day, and he came in. So naturally you worked out. I definitely worked out. I was like, if there's a workout that you want to just show somebody, like, this is where my training has gotten me, it's when John Sina walks in. Yeah, he called the gym. It was like you, it was exactly like you wouldn't expect John Cena to show up at your gym. Like he called.

He was like, do you mind if I work out? And I was like, you're John Tina. This isn't how this works. And then like a Ferrari goes down the street. You're like, oh, John Cena's really here. Holy crap. This is so weird. Yeah, we trained together for four years.

And then 2015, we kind of always talked about going to Tampa to where it's like real houses or his first house. And just lifting weights and all this stuff. and he came up to me and he was like, hey, we have this weekend, it's free, I'm taking a vacation from wrestling and movies and all this. We're going to do this thing called the One Ton Challenge, and we're going to fly out. So we hopped in a private jet, which was awesome, flew across the country, got super hammered on a private jet with John Cena,

like exactly what you're thinking in your head was exactly what it was. Landed the next day, it was squat, bench, dead, snatch, clean jerk, goal of hitting 2,000 pounds. You both competed? So my business partner at the time, Brian, who I owned the gym with, we were the ones that he brought down or flew out. And he has already done it. He already has like a real career.

There's no sense in him like going and doing this thing again. But we got our name. So I hit 2009 pounds. My partner hit 2006. And my name is now painted on Johnson. Tina's garage door, which is like, I thought when I was lifting weights when I was 13 that I was doing it for sports. And then I got out and I thought I was doing it for girls. And then I thought I was doing it to like be good at CrossFit. And then I was like doing it professionally to own a

gym. And then 23 years later I was doing it so I could be on a private jet with John Tina and like have my like this trophy that nobody in the world has. And now my name's on John Tina's garage door. On John's garage forever. Yeah. Like it's really, really interesting. where a barbell can take you. So to all the people that hit over the 2,000 pounds this weekend, get their name on Johnson's garage? I'm going to talk to him. I imagine he has some money to invest in this idea that was his

that I've kind of like taken. So as I was leaving, he kind of gave me the nod that he was like, he could see that like my life had changed. And it wasn't just the weightlifting event. That was like a big piece of it. but he's definitely like a friend of mine that I can talk to about, like he operates at the highest levels of success. So as a mentor and a friend, it's, there's nobody better.

But just watching him, like, live his life for a weekend. I feel like just in the four years, I just went to, like, a doctorate school and being successful in, like, watching how hard people at his level work. And the dedication that they put into their craft, Like just the way that they talk, the way that they make people feel when they're around stuff, like their magic switch is like so charismatic and it's like a skill that they practice to like be very good at making people want to be around them.

But also like the work that they put in behind the scenes to be really good. Like for example, like after we hit this one ton challenge and everyone's celebrating and partying all night, we went eight like gigantic. steaks and beautiful bottles of wine and everyone's partying. And I like rolled downstairs the next morning and like just looking for a cup of coffee, like feeling bad for myself with a big hangover. And I hear people in the kitchen talking and he's in there at like 7.30 in the morning with a Mandarin tutor like speaking Chinese and like telling her about the weekend and they're just like having conversations. And I was like, whoa. Like even though we were partying last night,

you still woke up at like seven this morning to like get better at Mandarin. That's really crazy. It's pretty wild. It seems like that's kind of the way it goes and, you know, you know, a Sina or a rock where I think, you know, I imagine that the schedule is similar with like, hey, I slept three and a half hours when I'm getting up and I'm going to do my training and I'm going to. There's a discipline. There's a discipline.

I do wonder how terrible the recovery score would be. But, God, they are amazing human beings. Yeah, I think it's a life. that you have to you have to really be okay with the tradeoffs because it's very lonely

it's very like that's one thing that I've learned is that at that level one your inner circle has to be so tight but it's also you can't be a dad because you're always on the move you live your whole life in a jet which is cool

for about a week I imagine and then you haven't talked to anybody you're just always jumping into random gyms, you're always eating out, you're always, like, in the next city. But if you're driven to do it at that level, like, that's what it takes, which is really cool to see.

It's not that different from what you're doing now, though, with kind of the traveling podcast. I've literally been in the red duration of the game. How about yourself? Brutal. Yeah. And it's like, all right, I've got 25 minutes before we go to dinner. Yeah.

Let's go do something. it's probably going to be shit and that's okay. We just try, if we're just there and we do like push-ups and stretching. Right. Where you're happy. And honestly, people, when they hear me working on the podcast, like on their drive to work, I think they think that I'm extremely healthy while that's happening. And it's the most unhealthy time of my life.

I have no, we were just eating breakfast this morning and I was like, can I just get like the biggest omelet you have and like the potatoes and let me slam some coffees because I don't know what I'm going to eat again. So if food is around, I need to eat as much as possible because I might not eat till like 10 o'clock tonight. That's very reasonable. Especially it's an event like this where there's very few windows and there are no clocks inside. How about there's no water? Yeah.

The fact that there's there's no water and there's a few little like water hose that you can fill up your water bottle. I drink. There's caffeinated water. Yeah, caffeinated water, flavored water. Very hard to get the most basic element of life here. It's, yeah, that's really the water's a really hard one. I'm like, it's a fitness event, but everybody's got their oxygen water. We've got it all.

Everything is here. So you're heading out of town tonight? Yeah, we're actually, so I just have a 13 month. we try to keep the trips around five days because that's when wife starts to know that I'm having a really, really good time. And it's like, okay, there's like a life back here that I'm running the whole show. I'd like some help. So we just had a 13 month old. And I actually, it's the first time in my life where I like leave for trips. And I'm like, yeah, like, I kind of want to, like there's another side to pulling you instead of this like super fun life.

out here. Yeah, there's something to get back to. I remember when we looked at your data the first time, like when we were in-house in Boston, I was like, hey, did something happen here because your numbers really just kind of went down? Do you feel like they've bounced back at all? Yeah, it's been really good. I want to say that was about five months ago. So she was right in the six, seven-month range, and now she's like more human than ever, like understands what bedtime is. So we sleep better. So it's allowing you to actually get some sleep? Yeah, we sleep a lot better. The stress levels aren't. That's crazy that you can see that stuff. Right. I love it for that. When you're in the red here, it's so funny because, like, it doesn't look that stressful.

No. You're just standing behind the booth. But trying to have, like, a five to ten minute conversation that's meaningful where you make a good impression 50 times a day. That's so hard on your body. Yeah. You have to be on. Yeah. You have to be on. Yeah, you're strained prior to literally working out or doing anything as like 15. You're like, all right, now what are we going to do? Yeah. This is ridiculous. Totally, totally on board with you.

Like, I can actually see like a spike when we do an interview where it's like, normal day, one hour. Normal day, one hour. Where it's just like, it's like just elevated because you have to be. You have to be engaged. You have to be present. Yeah. And there's only

dialed in. Lots of hanging out, walking around, trying to meet as many people as possible, like fans of the show. and all that. Friday was like the craziest day because as soon as we got here and we had the once-on challenge of event, it was just like even more extreme, like, work.

Well, yeah, you're organizing, planning. You know how to make sure it happens. You've got, there's even a relatively simple event like that where there's not many moving pieces. We've got 15 judges and volunteers. You've got 16 athletes. We've got all, it's like, there's a lot of people to make sure they're in the right place to make it go off so how long

you've been involved with CrossFit um I like to say that I was inside like the first 2,000 people that ever did it um 2000 I graduated college in 2005 and in 2006 I was pretty much in it there wasn't really many places to do it but I was in a gold's gym with my buddies and we all were really either bad college athletes. We were all like good high school athletes for the most part. Some people went on to play but when we got out of school we had already been training for 10 years but we didn't have shit to do and we knew that we wanted to play sports at a much higher level

than like flag football, kickball. Yeah, you weren't doing wrecked stuff. Yeah, and just wanted to be some people around like we were all friends because we enjoyed training so the fact that we could like play a sport where we just basically tried to out back squat each other every day was awesome. Yeah. So you've been in it for a long time. Yeah, 12, 15 years now, something like that, 13 years. It's a lot. It's enough.

What's your hot take on this year's cut system? My take every year about the CrossFit games is like the only people that complain are the ones that aren't doing well. And Castro's not really like, he doesn't, he's here to find out who the best is. So even if you cut it to four people, the best person's still going to win. I feel bad for the people that flew all the way out here from whatever it is, and it cost them $10,000 to get here, and then they got to work out once. Yeah, they did a 400-meter run and did a couple of rope points. That's a tough one.

But, yeah, man, it's tough because in order to create a sport, you have to break hearts, right? Someone's got to lose. So depending upon where you lose is not, you're still losing. And then Matt Frazier's still winning. Yeah, from the spectator's standpoint, do you think that people that, let's say it's their first experience at the games, and they're hoping to see someone like Sarah Sigmund's daughter kind of worked through the weekend or Pat Vilner, and they're like, well, damn. Oh, man, there's so many stakeholders in a thing like this that I don't know how you make them all happy,

but I think there's probably room for like 20 people. Yeah, I agree with that. I think 20, or at least through maybe Saturday, and then if you want to go to 10 then. Yesterday's cut that early is probably, it doesn't cost them anything to let them keep doing events. Let some people do the pegboard and the, you know, a lot of people throw. up some heavyweights. I think that... It kind of offsets, right?

Yeah, I think that probably one of the biggest losers in stuff like that is the companies, because you guys are here for content. You're here for people that are, like, wearing your brands and being a part of the whole experience. And then all of a sudden, it's like, you guys pay X amount of dollars or partnerships and all that. And it's like, oh, by the way, like, they don't even get to play for the whole weekend. You're like, wait a second.

No, like, that's part of... thing that they get to make it the whole time, like the assumption that we're all going to be a part of this event together. Yeah, I think a lot of the athletes side of it, they complain about it, but they complain right after they lose. Matt Frazier doesn't have an opinion. No, no Olson's not like, oh, man, Felner, I'm sorry, bro. Yeah, no.

They're busy. Yeah, yeah. We used to think about that stuff all the time, like in the open or in the regionals and people like, why are muscle ups the first movement? Like, not everybody can do that. and be like, yeah, they don't want you in the competition. Yeah, there's a weying out process, you know, at that level. The open is, you know, it seems like the open always goes with fairly low skill,

one and two, and then by the time we get to three and four, it's all right, we need to see who can actually do this. Yeah. Especially now since it's direct qualifier. I think that that part of the new system is really cool. Yeah. I think that the, from somewhat insiders, people that are kind of talking about the fact that Loudline is coming in, buying up some of the big events, that we'll see like a structure

in the same way that like the PGA tour or tennis does it, where there's like four really big events and then anybody else that wants to pay the money to be a part of it can do that. But at least there's like a big structure in place of like these are the really important ones. I think the athletes are getting just crushed right now. In terms of how many times they have to kind of peak? Yeah. We talked to a couple of them and it's like if you were at the French throwdown, which was the last qualifier. It was a month ago, right? Four weeks ago, you were supposed to be at the top of your game and then turn it around and now you're, you have to do it four weeks later at a bigger stage. And I think if we looked, I think anyone that

qualified probably from that is no longer in the competition. Yeah, I would almost guarantee that. It's not possible to turn that around like that. But it's on the other side, there's always a good piece. It's like they make money now. They do make money. It's possible to go and make $5,000 in a weekend, but that did not exist. Like you had to win regionals to make like $2,000.

So now the company, like you go and win, Rogue, like, $10,000 to the winners? I think Rogue was the most substantial payout outside of the game. games. Yeah. So there's a way to go be good at fitness now and actually make money, which as an athlete has to be very nice, even if it beat your body up. Right. You know, I think it probably has been the next step like you're, I think you said it right. It's going to be like a PGA tour or tennis where there's main events and, you know, if you don't do well on one, that's all right, right? We're still talking about Tiger winning. Yeah. The Masters, dude hasn't made the cut in the last last two nature. So, like, you have opportunities. Yeah. I think a lot of people, if you were to just like

look at the field in CrossFit and you see them on this big stage, the assumption is that somebody's paying them enough money to do well. It's like, oh, you're good at CrossFit. You must be good at money. But that's very rarely the case. Like those people just in gyms working their asses off hoping that a sponsor comes to give them money. Yeah. And it just doesn't exist. It sort of exists now. But if you're in the bottom, it's really hard. It's incredibly hard. Yeah.

I think that's where, I think probably the people that were complaining about regionals is like that was that stepping stone of, hey, I just, if I can get the regionals, it's validation of what I'm doing. I'm working really hard. And now it's, I got to do this qualifier. I got to do 10 qualifiers in the open. Yeah. I mean, I think it's cool.

But again, and anything with change, people are going to be up in arms about stuff. I don't actually coach any CrossFit athletes anymore, so... So what kind of athletes are you coaching now, then? So we coach the one-ton challenge. It's not... Are you only coach one-ton challenge, basically? Yeah. Those six movements, and that's it.

So we... If you think about, like, the larger structure of, like, the business behind barbell shrug, which nobody really knows even exists sometimes, I think. They just, like, oh, you're on like a pot. You work, like, one hour a week. Yeah, so the one-ton challenge is the challenge, and then we, or the goal, to hit 2,000 pounds, 1,200 for ladies. And then we have a year-long training program that Coach Travis Mash wrote.

He's like probably the best coach in weightlifting right now, three-time world's strongest man and like power lifting. So how are you adjust? You know, you have whoop. You can look at your recovery and say, hey, I know today is probably not going to be a day where I'm going to max it. For somewhat, like, how are you looking at an athlete and being like, hey, I can see that they're not, I guess not going to be their day. So we actually spend a lot of time talking to the athletes that have the WOOP bands. Oh, so you have a good amount of athletes that are using them.

I mean, with the partnership with the show, it builds trust with everybody. And then they know that we wear them, and I actually talk to them about their HRV. And then they buy it and they, in our little private Facebook group. When I talk to them about them, like, look, it's a tool that you have, the same way you have like a macronutrient calculator for your food. Like if you feel like you need more energy, you should eat some more carbohydrates. Don't live your life by the calculator.

But if your HRV goes to shit for three nights in a row, like don't max out your back squat the next day. Yeah, exactly. Right? It's that simple. If it's super red and you're sleeping like crap and your day's, like you're not even training, but your strains high, you're stressed out.

Don't just take a day off. We don't need you to do it just because it's written on the program. So bringing awareness to it. Like that's, I think HRV, everybody knows what it is, but they don't really know or understand. And that's part of the education process. But everybody understands, like, macros. Like, what should I eat? It's like, well, what should you sleep?

Now we have a sleep thing that can teach you how to get better. Yes. Like, the macro one everyone gets, like protein, fat carbs. Like, now we have heart rate, daily strain, and HRV. let's put those into a little graph and talk about where you need to be to optimize health and actually what you should be eating so you know you're digesting food exactly yeah it's it's a really awesome tool like another piece in the puzzle yeah I really feel like all the coaches need if they're operating on athletes so the way that with the ones on challenge it's really easy for us to find out

like where you are in your training life um and our we we we kind of hit that like if 2000 is like, you're strong and you've been at this a decent amount of time. We write the program for people that are in that like 13 to 1,700 pound range. And that's like the perfect spot also where people are like starting to turn the knobs on like optimizing health, nutrition, because they've gotten to a point. They've learned weightlifting. And it's like, all right, well, like what else is out there to make this process keep moving in the right direction. Everybody always turns to nutrition first, and then recovery is kind of like

this, like, oh, I can't train three times a day and still feel great. Right. I can't max out every week. So how do I create a better structure and actually, you know, listen to my body? Right. So the Woot Band's awesome for it. That's amazing. Yeah. It's really crazy because we do use it all the time. No, that's awesome. Yeah, I think a lot of people still just look at it and be like, oh, man, What a bummer. Yeah. I'm in the red. I'm going to go do this five-repper anyway.

Yeah. I, it's everything, right? Like weight loss. People are like, I've been on the diet for like two weeks. What happened? You're still dealing with the last five years. I don't know. Like you got two weeks isn't enough for me to know anything.

Yeah. So like, let's get a month with the band on. Let's see what it looks like over a period of time, how well you sleep. Yeah, just collecting data, right? People need a baseline. They always want to know what it means, but let's get the base. line and then we can make some changes from there. Yeah.

I love the, I try to hang out in like a 12 to 14. That's like a, I had a good day of work. I moved and then I had like a decent training session, decent to good training session, and I'm going to be in that range. Yeah. If I crack off like a 12 and I haven't even gone to the gym, I'm like, something happened. Wasn't a great day at work.

Way too stressed. Yeah. Um, it's, those, those, the, the, the, the strain level where I'm not training is like the most interesting thing to me. Yeah. It's, it's really interesting. Yeah. And if you don't think that that has an effect on your ability to perform if you haven't trained yet. Yeah. You're just lying to yourself. It's super wild. Yeah. It's, it's pretty unbelievable. I actually also, um, this is just my own personal training. If I am, might sound like a crazy hippie. Um, but I actually try to, to, so when I think about training, I think about it on like a spectrum of how low can I get my body? Like how parasympathetic can we go? And then how high can we get it? And then all the way back down.

So we're getting this like big wave effect during a training session. So I'll try to begin all of my sessions with just like separating work and training and like do 10 minutes of breath work or meditation, whatever the hell you want to call it. And I love looking at the app because there'll be this like dip. Dip for heart rate. And then all of a sudden it goes all the way up. And it's got the little jagged edges and all that of ups and downs and sets and reps. And you can see how it all plays out.

But if you can see your whole heart rate and you can get it down into like 45, 50, whatever you're like a really good resting heart rate is for you. And then slowly see the build up. Oh, we peaked at max heart rate for five minutes, whatever it is during some conditioning efforts. And then how do you recover from that to get it back down to a resting heart rate where you started? I don't think that's hippie at all. I think that's very in tune, and, you know, people talk about mindfulness, nobody practices it. Yeah.

Do you do that before every session? Yeah. And do you think, have you, how long you've been doing that, I guess? Probably like two years. And have you seen a huge difference in the ability to basically, like you said, separate, and then you're like, your body's now primed effectively to work? Yeah. The biggest thing that I notice is that, well, I guess one of the biggest ones is you,

get injured a lot less. The nicks and dings don't show up because your body isn't holding all that tension. That's just a massive piece of it of just creating separations. You're not bringing anything that happened at home or at work into the gym with you because that's just going to lead to problems.

I also, I've been doing this long enough that I'm not on a program, but if I wrote out what I did every day, you'd probably be like wow that looks really smart and like healthy but I just make it up on the fly and most of that stuff happens while I'm sitting there trying to like clear my brain and just relax and I'm like ah like this is what I'll do today effectively you're listening to your body you have an idea and you're like all right let me put the pieces together yeah yeah I'm very similar

too I have an idea I look at the recovery try and separate myself and say okay yeah this is what we've got today. It's a really good process. When we started working with you guys like six months ago, it was like, now I have a thing that I can just kind of check out. It's like, oh, this is where we slept last night. Great. What do you do for, you talk about less injuries? What kind of recovery work do you do? Is it? Just the breathing. You just do the breathing. You don't do any sort of rolling. I actually think all that stuff has its place, but for the most people, if they just breathe and like get rid of tension in their body. We don't really need to do most of that.

I think most... That's the hot take of the... Yeah, I think that a lot of that is just... Look, Kelly Starrett is a genius. Like, he revolutionized the way people do it. But what he did in his original... Then the next person got it and had to make it more extreme. And then the next person got it, had to make it more extreme.

And now someone got people putting lacrosseballs all over the place and, like, grinding it. Now there's probably 15 different rollers here are all super special and the right one. And it's like, man, if we could just get people like creating a little space in their life to listen to their body. And when it comes to, like, warming up, do you really need to warm up like 20 minutes? Or you could just like put a bar on your back and just move around. But before you do all that, just create some space, close your eyes, breathe a little bit,

downregulate, listen to your body. Yeah. This is also coming from somebody that's been doing it for 20-something years. So, like, I've gotten better at it. Yeah, it's a refined process now. Where a lot of people are going to stick to programs or whatever their coach says. Yeah.

Yeah, I think we run into people hear something. They take that as fact, and this is the truth for now because they see other people doing it without self-experimentation or, you know, doing a little bit of a deep dive. Yeah. like you said. So for you, you know the breathing works incredibly well. Everything, right? Like there's a, it's everyone's on the spectrum. So like Kelly Starrett comes up with

in a way, a theory about how we should all be able to perform self-maintenance on our bodies. And here's a couple tools that'll help you do it. And it's all amazing. CrossFit. Here's a theory on how we should all train and optimize health and fitness. Three days on, one day off, constantly varied, functional move, blah, blah, blah. Like, it's all this theory that this guy created that gets really good results. Well, if you're not relatively mobile and you're not relatively athletic and you're not relatively smart enough around a barbell without the right experience, you're going to get hurt.

Yes. And you're going to also, if you are not aware of how your body feels, you're going to redline every day and you're going to wake up one day and hate CrossFit because it beat the crap out of you. Right. It's not CrossFit's fault. it's not Kelly Start's fault it's like you took the tool and went to level

12 with it. Exactly. When what you should have been doing is like learning and seeing how it fit with your body and your experience and your training age and how well you're sleeping, how well you recover, how well you eat. But everybody gets the identity of like, well, I have

to foam roll for all these things and then it becomes there like how smart they are. Things become crutches. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Where like you said, the simplest thing is just getting, let's start with just getting more sleep. Yeah. If you get some quality sleep, it's going to alleviate a lot of these problems.

Yeah. And then the mindfulness. I think the breathing, you've seen it. It's really cool. You're talking about like pre-workout. We talk about doing it kind of anytime during the day, sometimes just pre-bed. Yeah. You know, kind of getting your thoughts out, you know, writing some things down.

Hey, let me just kind of either lay out tomorrow's day so I'm not waking up in the middle of the night thinking I forgot something. Yeah. Or let me just like unload today so I can actually be at rest. when we do this thing. I get it when people tell me, they're like, I just don't have time for this stuff. Well, you might not,

but you definitely have the five minutes before you fall to sleep that you own. Yes. So just do that. Yes. Like, own that time. And maybe the five minutes before you work out, you could just show up like a little bit early,

a little bit, like go find a quiet corner, something. Yeah, dial it in. There's little tiny pieces every day that you can own. Absolutely. Yeah. The pre-bed one's huge. Yeah, you're winding down anyway. Just lay there and watch your brain, try to process all the stuff you did for the day.

And that's why I slept like three hours on Thursday night. Because Friday, we had an event. And I was like, oh, my God. What if the people don't show up? What if no one's here? What if they do show up? Something's just going to stress you out. Yeah.

It's the nature of the beast. Totally. But the most you can control the best you can. Yeah. So, yeah, it was great. And I actually, like, that practice really, I think it's changed my overall perception. Like, as I was leaving the cross, I shouldn't say leaving, because I guess I'm still in it very deeply with all the people. But as I was leaving the athlete side of being in the CrossFit space, that was the thing that I found that, like, radically shifted my.

my whole perception of strength, conditioning, and health and fitness was learning how to breathe. What you think is the basics. It should be the basics. That's kind of the crazy part, too, right? It's, like you said, people have taken something that's an amazing concept and just added layers and layers and layers. But really, when you strip it back down, the basic thing was the thing that was right anyway. Yeah. And that we should just be focusing on the lowest hanging fruit of...

Yeah. wasn't that like the access point to success anyways it's like you could go and do everything but if you just do one thing really well it's strip away all the other crap yes life gets a lot easier like everything gets a lot easier yes exactly so I like that yeah I think that's a good spot to end it I love it yeah this is awesome I was on the woo podcast all right welcome back to The WooP podcast here. We have the buttery bros standing by. What's up, everybody?

How's the weekend's been going? Weekends been going phenomenal. Thanks for making pancakes today. Yeah, dude, those were tasty. I've never had the flapjack pancakes before. I think we really figured it out by round three. Yeah, Margin got the advantage where I came in and got the bastard stepchild round one of the pancakes. And then he got to come in after we had mastered the formula and just, like, blew my pancakes out of the water.

I like they were all wearing matching whoop bands, too. You guys don't get to see this, but foie, foie, yeah, you're ready to go? You guys can't hear Mars, but he's ready to go. Oh, hey, I'm getting charged up on my whoop right now. How's it going, everybody? So, days, how long are we going? What time you waking up? What time are you actually going to sleep?

Are you sleeping? Yesterday, my sleep was 140 a.m. to 7.23 a.m. That's pretty typical. That's about the range we're working with. Are you guys getting at any training while you're here, or this is just pure work? It depends. So, Marston, Marston should speak to this, but I beat his ass in Jackie the yet. Can I say that?

I mean, we got in a nice 11.30 p.m. Jackie session over in the RV park. I tripped over a metal cable and really messed up my shin, so I'm going to credit Heber's win to that. One game win street. One game win street. Yeah, good for you. Let's go whip some Porsches and see who wins that. Is that on the agenda? Yeah, that's what we're head-hacks. Post games, whipping some Porsches around?

We're trying to go right now. Have you guys done this? They're right next door. Yeah, no, that's amazing. Yeah. What do we think so far of a new format for you guys? I know it's, you know, first year kind of the press is wild and do as you please. It's the CrossFit Game of Thrones.

Yeah, I would say it's a combination of like it's crazy, it's kind of fun. For us, like we have the best, it doesn't matter what happens because all of it's new and fresh so we can tell whatever story we want to based on what happens. So, like, the more different it is, the better it is for our story. Yeah. Back in the day, you were the fastest cameraman in the history of cameraman. What do you mean back in the day, man? You know, is there going to be any video proof of you on the sprint field?

I mean, I've been sprinting around. I mean, who won the sprint the other day? I mean, Hebrew won the sprint when we were up in Canada. You know, he actually outran one Patrick Vellner and James Newbery. I was hot on their trails. That's true. Yeah. That was a good one.

I've been out there, you know, floating around trying to chase them down. I don't think I can quite sprint with the rig I have like I did in the past. It was a smaller rig. But, you know, I've got, you know, some top end speed. How are we sleeping in the trailer? Dude, I've been sleeping in the same bed as Heber this whole week. And I've been sleeping solid because, like, by the end of the night, I get back and I'm so crushed. Like, we get back.

We offloaded footage. We do podcasts with Tommy. And then by the end of the night, I'm just, like, mentally drained. and I fall asleep and I wake up, and I feel like I'm getting solid rim, you know? Oh, yeah, you're probably getting an amazing REM and slow wave. Your body's just so taxed from the entire day. Yeah, so I'm not even budging or anything. I'm out the whole night, so.

All right. That's awesome. Yeah. I know you guys got a lot to do. I don't want to keep you for too long. Okay. But thank you guys for stopping by. Yeah, thanks for having us, man.

Yeah. Thank you guys. We're here on the Whoop podcast with Jared Stevens, longtime Whoop and CrossFit O, G. Yeah, glad to be here, man. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for stopping by. I know it's first time not competing at the games in a few years. Yes. You did still compete in the one-ton challenge. Oh, yeah. Yeah. God, that ripped my body apart. Yeah? Seriously. I haven't been lifting a ton. Mostly, I've been more naturally strong, so I try to focus a little bit more on the Metcon side of it. And then just not competing, I've kind of just been taking it easy. but the get in that situation you get so competitive yeah so I'm hurting pretty bad so you're

pretty bad did you get the the ton yes yeah um so there were six lifts and I actually did something popped in my shoulder on the snatch which was the second lift and then I was able to still jerk quite a bit but then when I went to bench press it was like I had no strength on that left side I ended up benching 185 oh wow yeah but I was I had accumulated enough. So I was going to say, so even with the 185 bench, you still were clear of the 2K. That's very impressive. It was a cool event.

It was fun. How are you feeling going into that? Nervous. Nervous? So I did a video photo shoot with Noble and Will Greer, like three weeks ago, I think. And I hyper-extended my knee. So I hadn't really squatted or anything because it was so painful. And then in the hotel, I had done 50-pound dumbbell thrusters.

So that was the heaviest I'd gone, and that was pretty painful. So I was nervous. I was going to snap something in my knee, but it held up really well. The knee held up, the shoulder. The shoulder said, nah, not today. The shoulder took a pass. You know, that's four hours of basically strength training, which is, you know, something that people don't necessarily do regularly.

You know, people... Max efforts. Yeah, and max efforts on top of it. What does that look like from a strain perspective of basically, maxing out six lifts over the course of... You know what? Let's look. Four hours. So, that was Friday.

This will be interesting. Well, so the day that I did it, I had a recovery score of 19%. All right. So you were super primed to really move some heavy weight. You got a knee problem. Well, and about that. So people live or die by these recovery scores,

I'm noticing. Like, there's athletes of the games who will take theirs off because mentally it's like, It messes them up if they see red. I always kind of thought, like, oh, 19% recovered. Hold my beer. You know, it's like, this is a challenge. My body's saying no, but is my mind going to be like, we're doing it anyway. So I always think that's fun.

So then what does your mind tell you when it's green? It's like you can go to the skin pills off today, you know? It's like a little extreme, which is probably why I get hurt a lot. But, yeah. Yeah. It's definitely helped with my sleep. That was one of the biggest things. And I've noted drastic change with outside stress. So, like, physical stress, it'll affect it a little. But if I'm, like, mentally stressed or, like, friend stress, stuff like that, man, I go in the way easily. Oh, yeah. Well, I think that's interesting, too. Yeah. You know, obviously you're going to accumulate strain just from being actually stressed, whether that's work. relationship, whatever, right of kids, all that stuff adds up. But like you said, the sleep, even though you're going and saying, hey, I got 100% of my sleep need and you're still waking up

in the red just because you basically got no deep sleep. I think people aren't always cognizant of that. Just because you got enough sleep, it doesn't mean it was the right sleep. Quality is trash. Yeah. Yeah, the deep sleep has been amazing. So I would say I've been averaging like 30 minutes or so more sleep, but my deep has gone from, I think I was averaging around 20 minutes a night for years. And recently I've jumped up, it hasn't been under an hour of deep sleep for probably six months. Wow. Which, and I feel a big difference inside of my body. It's like nuts. Yeah, I mean, that's enormous. Yeah. And I'm hitting up to two hours some nights, which is just wild. Yeah, which has never really happened. And now I assume those are the days you're waking up in the green.

Yeah, a lot of those, yes. For sure. Get the muscular regeneration. It's funny to look back on, like, I've been wearing this thing since 2016. It's cool to see my data from each year I was at the games and then the regionals and like seeing different times of how the stress affected me and the volume. And that brings me back once again to like outside stress has been so much more devastating in my body than actual physical stress. Yeah.

And I think a lot of times people think that doesn't play a part in potentially getting injured or their ability to perform. It's just like, oh, let me just check this. It's still taking a physical toll on your body in one way or another. So, you know, really good point there. It's like constantly being in fight or flight. Yeah, effectively.

It's like your body's not made to be constantly in that it's almost like a fear state. Yeah, the high rate's always just kind of elevated like a wear. So what did those lifts look like? Oh, so the lifts, yeah, yeah, sorry. No, no, it was a good sidetrack. All right, so Friday. night. So Friday night. Max heart rated at 168. So it's like a Metcon, that's nothing,

but you think about maximal lifts. That's like some high blood pressure. Yeah. It has a lot of spikes in there. Strain-wise, what is that? 11. 11 for two hours of basically max effort lifts. And then what was your next day recovery? So interesting. It's making me think I was a little more nervous for this thing than I thought. So I woke up that day of the one-ton challenge at 19% following day, I recovered up to 69%. That's wild. Yeah. So even after that. Yeah. So the stress maybe, yeah, and then you got basically... Two hours of deep. You know, you were asleep for seven hours. You spent basically over 50% of your night and restorative stages of sleep with a rem and slow, like, that's amazing. Huge. Yeah. So literally a weight off your shoulders.

getting some sleep. Yeah. It's just cool to have that kind of data, you know? It's like, I know meditation has been a big deal for me. I've never done it until I got the whoop. And I remember the first time that I sat down. I think I only did five minutes the very first time. And it was nice.

Like, it was in the middle of the day. Two o'clock usually is the best time for me to meditate. And seeing what my heart rate did for those five minutes was just crazy. Because I was up around, I think. I think 88 or 90 when I first sat down. And I dropped down, I believe, was in the 50s the first time. And that was in five minutes. So it's like, it kind of showed the benefits of that meditation.

Once I started doing it for a while, and this is still when I was getting terrible sleep, I started seeing like massive recovery scores, like an increase in them, mostly to the yellows. When were you doing the meditation throughout the day? Was it right before bed? No, it was usually when I was really on, like 2017, I just came off a really bad season and had a bunch of outside stress. And so Brute had actually mentioned to me because I was working with them about, hey, you maybe should start meditating.

So during the 17, almost the entire year, I meditated around 2 o'clock. And then again, sometimes before bed, if I was still kind of like amped up. And the benefits were awesome. And you're still practicing that now? Yeah. Spiratic now, but definitely when I start feeling that anxiety inside, I'm like, all right, start getting inside myself a little bit. Yeah, so it's funny.

That's not the first time that meditation has come up today is, like, a huge factor. It's nuts. It's so simple. Like you said, it's as simple as five minutes of basically lowering your heart rate, separating, and, like, that makes a big difference. Yeah. I always think it would be kind of cool to, like, go up in the mountains for, like, three months, meditate, stay off social media, and, like, just see what your body does, do some intermittent fasting. I bet it would just be like years off your life. Do you play with that at all now, intermittent fasting?

So I did, like I was having some crazy health issues. I was trying to figure out what was going on. So I was like, all right, I'm going to start doing some intermittent fasting to see if it like clears up. So I did two weeks of, it was, I had an eating window of eight to ten hours, just kind of depend on the day what my schedule was like. And I definitely noticed some increase in recovery. I feel like there was some hormone changes.

And that's just in two weeks. And was there, I think there's one more thing. So you basically had eight to ten hours to consume everything. Yes. So I believe my window was one. Yeah, one to nine or one to ten. Because sometimes I get home really late from the gym. I like, I got to eat.

So it'll push through a little bit. Yeah, the intermittent fasting is very interesting. So how are you managing training? basically around, hey, I haven't eaten since 9 at night. I can't eat again until 1. Are you waiting to eat before you train? Or have you already done some sessions? So I would try to go in around 9.30-ish warm up and train from 10 to noon. And then, you know, get out of the gym and go try to find some food. But it was rough. Definitely that first week was like, you're so used to immediately getting food in your body. And like that spike of insulin, you know, gives you a little bit of energy.

that being gone, it's like your body's like, it's almost like withdrawals, honestly. But it started leveling out and then had a competition very shortly after that. And so I started eating a little bit more. But I still try to wait to around 10. So I'm getting more of a 12-hour window of eating and then 12 hours of no food. I would like to get where I'm out of the gym because I run a gym. So get out of there a little bit earlier, have dinner around 6 and then try not to eat after that. because there's like a lot of research coming out about fasting at least a few hours before bed.

Yeah. And the results for not getting dementia Alzheimer's is like a big deal. Yeah, there's that. And then also the slow wave sleep right as well, which is something you kind of touched on in the beginning is you weren't getting a ton. You know, we get these protein buildups in our brain that if you don't get that slow wave sleep, it effectively can't clear that out. So that's also tied to that dementia Alzheimer's. Yeah.

And I think the food part also is, you know, we've shown. and stopping people from getting in that stage of sleep. And I'm a little nervous. I played a lot of contact sport, so I've had tons of head trauma. And so I'm like, I feel like I'm already kind of at risk. And then I'm like notorious for eating late. Like, it's just, I don't know, food just seems better at night. And I'm like, my schedule kind of pushes me to that.

So I want to figure out in the next year or so kind of how to start getting things pushed up into the day a little bit more. Yeah. Sounds like a great plan. I mean, it's like you've already made a lot of really awesome changes. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a learning process. You know, you've got to always try to adapt.

Yeah, it's always learning, right? Where you were two years ago is very different from where you are now, and it will be different than when we're, we are from one year from now, six months from now, honestly. In one year, look at all these gray hairs in my beard. It's insane. It's driving me crazy. Is the beard going to be a lifetime?

I don't know. I've always kind of, I remember 17, I started getting like these white, like, little blondeish, like, really prickly hairs and I was like, cool, I'm going to go with this for a while. So I had this like ratchet beard when I was really young. And then all through college I'd grow on and shave it, grow and shave it. So I don't know, maybe. It's more out of like early on it was for sure laziness. And then it's like almost like I've kind of built my brand off. Yeah, yeah. So absolutely. We'll keep it for a little while. It's great beard. Thanks for me. Most recognizable

beard in CrossFit, no question. Yeah, that's crazy. So, well, that's good. That was great. Awesome, dude. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Back on the Wooop podcast here with some amazing athletes and coaches from Down Under, raw strength and conditioning. We've got Bobby Downton and Jess Coglin. Okay. Thank you. First CrossFit games in this new format. First CrossFit games in this new format. Third CrossFit Games at Madison. At Madison. Jess, how many times have you been to the CrossFit games? This is my first one on a team. I went as an individual in 2017. And then last Last year I was on the demo team, so I third year in Madison as well.

Okay, interesting demo talk here. You do all the workouts, right? Yeah, you do all the workouts multiple times. Dave has already done pre-testing, sort of in the months in the lead-up, but the week of the games, he likes to see what it's actually going to look like in terms of an entertainment perspective. So he'll look at it aesthetically and make small changes in terms of weights and time caps and, yeah, all that sort of stuff.

I really enjoyed it. interesting. Is being on the demo team harder than actually competing on the CrossFit games? Maybe. Yes. Yes. Volume-wise it is. Mentally, obviously, it's a lot easier. You're really enjoying it, and if you fail,

it doesn't really matter on the demo team, so... That's fair. So, just to elaborate a little bit on that for Jess with the demo team, she actually has, last year they had to do all the individual workouts, they had to do all the team workouts, and then they had to demonstrate, I guess, the movements for teenagers, masters, individuals, and...

So you literally did every event of the CrossFit Games. Yeah, we did. We do. Yeah, it was crazy, but I really enjoyed it. It was really good motivation-wise. Were you wearing Woop then? I was last year. How long have I been wearing one for?

Maybe a year. I've been wearing mine for coming up to three years. Okay. And Jess says it would probably be a year and a half to two years. So we can just talk this year for both of you. The stress of competition, obviously, with the cuts. How is that affecting? One, how high your strain actually gets during the day

because it's not just competing and the activity. You know that there is a cut line. How much is that adding to the strain of the day? And how hard is it to actually sleep before? kind of big events. Yeah, definitely my daily strain was a lot higher. I think when it comes to competition, one thing I always struggle with is a little bit of anxiety. I'm a brilliant sleeper at home. My sleep performance is always really, really outstanding. But coming here, you know, where halfway across the world, you do have the stress of competition. And yeah, my day strain

has been quite high. And that's definitely something I've been working on, trying to replicate that same kind of sleep and recovery while in competition, you know, it's easier said than done. Right. Yeah, it's something to work on. So you, your team qualified pretty early on. Yeah. How easy to make it to train and Bobby, do you write the training for everyone? Yeah, so our team qualified back in January, so it wasn't really a stressful lead-up to the

games. And yeah, I programmed for everyone. Three of the team live in Sydney and they could get together occasionally. and train and then our fourth member Brandon lives in Brisbane and he would come down probably ended up averaging every three weeks I guess and we did two more sanctional events together as a team and yeah I would write the program and then send them all off the same program with a little bit of individual you know strength and weakness work to do together right so you're a couple

correct all right still together still together I can relate I did I've done the same with my wife through two Olympic cycles. And I think there's probably both an added benefit and a detraction of one knowing the person so well and then obviously having that personal relationship. Do you feel like it's easier to write training or receive training from someone you're so close to? Or do you have a completely separate relationship in terms of there's the coach athlete and then there's the human being outside of coach athlete. Yeah, this is going to depend who's going to answer that question.

So I can easily differentiate between coach and partner, and I can be coach and, I guess, quite assertive when need be. And then I can switch it off because we train at home, I'd say, 95% of the time. We've got a very good garage setup. So when we're down in the shed training Either together or I'm watching her We're doing something I give advice whether she likes it or not

I can leave it in the gym But she'll bring it back upstairs When we go up to the house And if it's not a good day Then everyone kind of knows about it Until the next day What do you think, Jess? I think I'm a lot more mature than I used to be

So we've been together for Eight years? Nearly nine years now When he first met me me. He introduced me to CrossFit. I was very young. I was only 21. Probably like a little bit immature. And I used to bring everything, take everything personally. Anything, you know, if my performance was shit, I would take that as I was shit. And hold on to that for the rest of the day. I definitely think in the last sort of two, three years, I've just matured a lot.

And I can now see that difference and appreciate that he's the one who knows me best. He knows my strengths and weaknesses is an athlete and you know how I'm feeling day to day as Bobby said we do most of our training at home so we'll do about three sessions a day together he's always in the gym with me so he knows how to moderate things accordingly but I've gotten a lot better I have so I assume that you're using you know just as data I don't know if other athletes are on but you know I know you have a large team that is on whoop are the program that you're giving them, are you giving them kind of tips how to adjust their training,

whether that's loading or intensity based on their recovery, their trends? Are you kind of giving them that feedback? Or do you feel like they've been along enough that they kind of have the education and knowledge himself to do that? Yeah, so we've got about, I think there's 35 people on our raw team back home. And at the start, that's definitely how it was. Like, they were very fresh to it. and I guess they jumped on the whoop bandwagon,

I guess, as I was kind of talking to them about it, and they liked to, I guess, nerd out a little bit on their stats. And at the start, I was helping them out and I guess just giving them guidance because everyone was different and it would take up too much time to actually individually tell everybody what to do. But as a group, we've got like a separate group, you know, on Facebook

and we would do posts and just give guidelines, I guess, with what people's recovery was in kind of percentage brackets about how hard or what intensity they should lift or lift or train for the day. But what I think it has actually helped is now that people can see when they wake up in the morning their recovery and with a bit of education as well, they can realize, I guess, the difference between training and competition

and not treat each day like they have to be first on the leaderboard that they can if they wake up a little bit kind of underdone and less recovered, then they can say, okay, well, today's just, we're just going to get to the gym and move the dirt, you know, do some recovery, and then tomorrow we might be able to hit it a little bit harder, and they're a lot better for that, you know, that education and stuff that we provided early on that they monitor a lot of that themselves now. Are you looking at the Sanctuals next year to try and do them as close as possible to Australia?

We will do the Australian ones just because it's cheap. I guess, you know, being in Australia is kind of semi-isolated compared to the rest of the world, especially when there's quite a few sanctionals, say, over in, you know, America and Canada, and, you know, it's quite a distance to travel, so it does get expensive. We are lucky that we've got quite a few sponsors that have helped us out because I don't know how we would have done it otherwise. Just this year has made me realize how much more expensive a team is to travel and compete with versus an individual. Yeah.

You know, four people trying to get a house in Madison with, you know, their partners goes to 10 people. It's very, very expensive versus getting a room. So, yeah, we will be doing a lot of Australian, well, every sanctional in Australia we will do, and probably two overseas. So how much lead time do you give yourselves to acclimate? So you're coming to the U.S. You've both done it multiple times, knowing that you're basically, what is it, to get to Madison from Australia is, you got to, what do you fly to L.A.? and then L.A. to Chicago and to here? It's about 13 hours to either L.A. or San Fran.

And then you make the trip across. The last two years I've come straight from L.A. and come to Madison. This year we spent a week in Utah. We had a house courtesy of Reebok up in the mountains, and it was absolutely amazing, training at elevation. We're pretty lucky in Australia. The winter is fairly mild, so there's no real sort of heat shock coming across here. But it is just sort of getting used to that sleep and eating routine.

Again, that's probably the hardest thing to establish once you come over. So, yeah, we've had a week and a half before we competed. How hard is it to, you know, with your training on your own, it's really easy to control nutrition and really all the factors. When you come to the games or even a sanctional, the schedule is just kind of random, so to speak. So how hard do you find it to recover and fuel in between events and then kind of even just the beginning of this, you know, these games.

What are you doing at night to kind of try and prime yourself? I didn't actually find it too hard this year. I've been training three times a day. So my volume hasn't changed, but just the structure of my training has changed. So I do three sessions a day and practice sort of my nutrition between those sessions and my recovery protocols. I have the help of a company called the sports dietitian. She organized all my food in the lead-up,

and she's actually over here traveling with us and she's taking care of our prep completely. So, yeah, she takes the guesswork out of it and it allows me to focus just on recovery rather than having to worry about that nutrition as well. So it really hasn't been too bad. Yeah, just to add, I guess, on that, we actually practice this for our sanctional,

even though it was local down in Wollongong for the down under CrossFit champ and we had Taylor, the sports dietitian girl, come along with us, with us, cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner, prepared everything, bought all the food and gave it to everybody in the team. And it worked amazingly. And everyone was so fueled, you know, everything was there. So we actually brought her over this year and she's been staying with us in the house and she does all our meal preps for every meal of the day, does all the shopping. That's amazing.

All they do is concentrate on performing. So you actually got a house here in Madison, hotel last year? We've got a house this year, and it's got two kitchens. So it's pretty good. So we've got like, I think, eight or, no, 10 people. So we can have two meals cooking at separate times in different parts of the house. So it's pretty cool. I think you guys are doing Madison better than anyone else. Well, it's expensive, but yes, we've done it.

If you're coming once a year, you've got to make it count. Anything else you guys want to talk about? Really? Just a whoop coming to Australia, I guess. Yeah, we're coming to Australia. Yeah. So one thing that I get asked at least probably once a day, five times, five times a week, is if Jess is doing a, does a post on social media or I do a post or something, we'll get a private message saying, where did you get your whoop? You know, I've wanted to get one.

They only shipped to USA and Canada. And I have to explain that we did, you know, a bulk order and we got a whole team kind of sent over. but I've been chatting to AJ from Woop and we're going to set up something because I think you guys are ready to launch in Australia and we're happy to be part of that to try and get as many people with their hands on the device.

I know that there's such a demand in Australia and it's finally happening so everyone that's been waiting it's only a few weeks away which is exciting. Yeah, I think it'll go very well in Australia. No, that's exciting. and, you know, we're obviously excited to keep working with both of you.

Yeah, yeah. That's fun. No, can't wait. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you guys for stopping by. No worries. Thank you for having us. Of course.

Here on the Whoop podcast with Marcus Philly of Revival Strength. Yeah. Also, functional bodybuilding. All of it. All of you. A man of wears many hats. Thanks for sitting down. Thank you for having me.

Long time. Long time. Yeah, a long time. I was trying to track the total. time on WOOP, and I think it's been over two years now. Really? Over two years? Yes. And that kind of coincides with the shift of your focus on training a little bit, right? Yeah, precisely. I think I was, when I first got it, I was still in the mindset that, like, I'm going to make a continued run of being a competitive CrossFit athlete.

But that was when the transition really started to happen for me. So I guess kind of what was the thing that said, hey, I think. think I don't want to do this, the grind of being the individual CrossFit athlete every year and there's other ways that I can basically help individuals. Yeah, well, a couple things. I'll try and keep it, you know, to the point. But my last two years of competing were I had like an internal voice that was telling me, hey, I'm getting to my maximal potential as an athlete. And the sport was getting more and more competitive. So I was, I was in the right place of the right time to peak and have good performances, but I didn't have, you know, I was 31 my last year. I didn't

have many more like years of growth in me. It was kind of, I was kind of tapping out with my potential and guys were just investing more and more and more time in the sport, which I didn't have more time to give. I couldn't remove the other obligations that I had in my life, like some of these younger athletes could. So I kind of just felt like, man, this is going to be hard to stay here at the top, hard on me personally and physically. And then simultaneously, I had started a brand new business,

had recently been married, my wife was pregnant, and so I also knew in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, it's not easy to begin with, and it's only going to be more challenging with more obligations and responsibilities. so I sort of like consciously started to take a step back and and then every year since then I have with without the stress and the time commitment of being in the gym as much and being on competition floors I have really had a chance to explore being a coach and a you know running a

coaching brand that puts out education information training programs that are impacting people in a positive way. And when I come to events like the CrossFit Games, now I have a much bigger fan base than I ever had as an athlete. I feel like the people that come and talk to me don't just say, oh, you were awesome on the floor, but like, man, your programs are changing my life. And that started in 2017 at the California Regional. I went down and I had that experience. And it's just been something that has been way more fulfilling in so many ways than, you know, the, the year-round grind to come out here for two or four days and sort of get punished. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Work all year for four very, very hard days. I know a lot are a big part

of what you do with your program or part of it, not necessarily a big part, but it's, you know, sometimes you're just moving for time and quality. Yes. It's a bit on feel, but it's the main focus, I would say, you know, I don't want to put words from your mouth, is quality of movement and repeatability. Is that something that you employed as an athlete, or you learned from your athletic, you know, training periods and said, hey, this is what, if I was going to do it all over again, and here's how this is kind of sustainable for every level of athlete, or, you know. Well, I think that if I were to go back and redo some of the years of competitive training, I would implement a bit, a little bit more of the quality focus.

And that would come in the, because I think I was under the wrong impression, right? I didn't have enough experience to know just how much intensity you needed to bring on a day-to-day basis to training. The sport of fitness is kind of like, it's scary as an athlete because you just never know what people are doing out there. It was always like this new territory of like, well, maybe I should be training more and what's the rest of. amount of training and we all just like did everything we could at every given time and trained as much as possible kind of out of fear of like well there's somebody else doing it more and harder than me right and there was no like no you got to take this many rest days you got to do this amount of you know skill work or quality work um so in hindsight yeah probably overdid it sometimes which led to

some injuries along the way and some really like rough months yeah um and with that said you know the sport of fitness and is way different than like our typical client right now is that it takes a lot of intensity and it takes a lot of training volume and you have to do more of the hard painful stuff than is conducive to longevity right for sure so if i wanted to be successful in the sport i would i wouldn't be able to just like you know let's do more quality work let's kind to tone back the intensity. It's just not, that doesn't lead to champions, you know. Matt Fraser's not taking, you know, that many days off like that or changing his focus.

But certainly now, with the perspective that I have, what I know is that most people are seeking general health and wellness. They want to feel fit. They want to feel like they're challenging themselves. And the amount of like high intensity stuff that they need to do relative to what we're preaching and what we're coaching. this, you know, it's hard work, but it's with a different mentality of quality over quantity. It's just totally skewed out there. The perspective is skewed and people need to

recognize that like there's just a huge opportunity to increase people's awareness around what training can look like that doesn't have to be the highest, highest intensity that they can perform. Yeah. So with your, you know, again, you've been using whoop, it's a little bit different focus right now. You have a little, you know, this functional bodybuilding. So still principles of what CrossFit and this kind of breach, but also in a way to, you know, I don't know if you would say you're doing a ton of hypertrophy work, but it's, you know, you're doing things that also are going to make you look like bodybuilding, right? Yeah. So how are you using kind of the data you're getting, you know, let's say a recovery score to, you know,

inform your own day worth of training? And also, you know, members of kind of your program or is there a way that you're kind of telling them, hey, scale based on X, Y, Z? Like, how are you kind of instructing them to change the program if they need B? Well, what I've seen is that, you know, in a peak performance setting, having an awareness of where you sit on a recovery score, HRV every day, has a greater impact, I think, on how you look at your training on that day. It's like, is this a day that I can go for peak performance, or is this a day that I have to actually, you know, moderate my strain and keep, you know,

keep things in perspective. In a program that I'm running, our functional bodybuilding style program, you know, the, it's not as essential to come in at 100% recovery. What 100% recovery are green scores to me indicate is that I'm balancing out all of the other recovery methods or factors in my life from sleep, quality, nutrition, the stress of work, et cetera, because the great thing about this training method is that it keeps the strain and the stress somewhat constant as opposed to like high-intensity training for sport of fitness. One day could just be off the charts because you had to do these three

really tough workouts and the next day might be different. It's inconsistent. So using it for me, it's like, I feel like I lead a pretty normal life. Like I've got two kids, like I've got a job, like a business. I still want to get in the gym for 60 to 90 minutes a day and train. So I need to optimize all the other aspects that are going on. So I look at my data and I really find tooth like what's happening with the sleep that I'm getting because I only get this many hours with the two kids that are getting up early. how can I optimize that?

What aspects of my day are impacting that? And I help clients understand that, you know, to switch gears to the perspective of the client, I think people get so caught up in like numbers and thinking that more is better. Even when I'm preaching a different message to them, quality over quantity. And they see strain as this number, this metric that they want to chase. they're like, oh, more strain is better. Like, it gets stuck in their head. Right.

And so it's a great way to say, hey, you know, it's, you come on to a functional bodybuilding program, you do a tough workout with us, but you don't have an 18 strain. You've got like a 12 or 13 strain. And that is actually really great for you. And that's, and the way we know it's great is because you're recovering well. You have great energy in the rest of your day. Your HRV scores are solid. and you're still looking and performing, you know, adequately for what you want.

Yeah, maybe you don't have that 300-pound, you know, deadlift yet. But when do you need to deadlift 300 pounds in your day-to-day life? You don't yet. Yeah. Yeah, it's more of a process-oriented program for you, right? It's building the foundation. So we're eliminating injuries later and you can keep kind of progressing. Exactly.

Otherwise, you're going to peek and you're going to wonder, why can I, Why can't I improve? There's a ceiling, right? Yeah, precisely. And I think things like that you're doing are so important to just kind of want this community, but the gen pop at whole because, you know, functional fitness has become bigger within just gyms, you know, like big box gyms, and people just move absolutely terribly. Yeah.

So, you know, I think the more that people can learn to rein it back in and kind of get back to basics. It's really awesome what you're doing. Well, thank you, yeah. Just echo and reiterate what you just said that the quality of people's movement and how we move as individuals as we age and we get older, that will ultimately be the thing

that people care more about than the absolute maximal potential that they have as physical beings. It'll be, can I do this adequately for my day-to-day life? And that will come from people doing it correctly more than it will come from people doing it really, really hard and really, really fast.

And that's not to say there's not a place for going hard and fast in your life. And I've done plenty of it. And I know it's, it kind of nurtures maybe a competitive side of people and like a spiritual side. But from a physical standpoint in the long term, you know, I'd love just getting more people to hear that. Like, move well. Learn how to move well.

And you can't learn how to move well when you're trying to go 100 miles per hour. very fair point yeah awesome well thanks for stopping by thanks for having me really appreciate it yeah you bet thanks we're here on the woo podcast with kelsey keel hey how many games is this for you now this is my third games third games yes so twice with invictus boston correct and once with parallax yep in 2016 um crossfit parallax out of new jersey how long you've been doing crossfit Um, I have been doing CrossFit since 2014. Oh, so really kind of a short time in the sport relatively. Relatively, yeah.

I signed up for the 2014 open and, like, didn't complete most of the workouts because I had been doing CrossFit for a month. Everyone, yeah. Most people's initial experience into CrossFit. Yeah. I would say 2015 was like the real start of it. And was it, you won the liftoff? Is that 2017?

2018. 2018, yeah. So, for those that don't know, the liftoff, it was clean and jerk, 1RM, snatch, and then there was a Metcon after that. Yep. And Kelsey won the entire thing for the entire world. That was cool. Yeah.

I almost didn't do it. Oh, you almost didn't do it? Yeah. because I don't know what I didn't do it the year before and I don't know I just was like I don't know I'm not going to win this and then so at what point did you realize that you're just kind of incredibly strong incredibly strong because you played soccer before right yeah I was a soccer player but I think it was 2015 it was the open of 2015 when Castro programmed the clean and jerk after the Metcon for 15, the first workout of 2015. I did really bad in the first part. And then, like, in my region, I was probably, like, 3,000th or something.

And then I got second in my region in the clean and jerk part. So I'm like, okay, maybe if I can, like, figure out the other part of it, I'd be all right at this. But if you had told me then that this would be my life, I wouldn't have believed you at all.

If you were just going to become one of the most recognizable people, CrossFit. It's still crazy. It's pretty awesome. So I guess we've known each other for about two years and you've been on whoop for that long as well, right? Yeah. So two things. You already kind of nailed it was you're very good with strength work. So slow twitch is there. Excuse me, fast switch is there. And you've probably been working on as what you would call Cheetah season for multiple years. Not multiple years. One year. Yeah. One year. I would say like really seriously, and I say seriously, like seriously working on that

aspect, like the last six months. The last six months. Obviously with the changes of this whole format in the season, the team Invictus Boston that went to Wadipalooza, I was not on that team. And part of that reason was because of my aerobic capacity and my running strength, which is, is, lacking. So since then, I've been really focusing on that. And we could say that after this games, it's going to be even more of a focus for me going forward. You do coach at the gym. A lot of times, and I'm sure a lot of other coaches, CrossFit coaches, see this if you're on whoop that you coach two, three, four classes and you haven't actually trained yourself and you have like a 15 strain. Yeah. How are you kind of managing your day out of

that. You're getting up at 4.55. You're coaching the morning classes and you're like, okay, well, now I got to take care of my dog and I got to do two to three sessions today. Yeah. And what are you doing throughout the day to come back around and perform? It can, it's hard sometimes, especially those early morning classes. But that's also just part of what we do. I kind of like to compare it to like this weekend. Like we didn't know when we were going to have events. we had the opening ceremony, we had to be there at 7.30, and we didn't compete until 10, and then again at 3. That's kind of like what we train for anyway, is being able to work hard while you're fatigued and that kind of thing anyway. So even though there's some days that I

just want to go back and take a nap, sometimes it's like, okay, let's see what we can do here in this training session or whatever it is. And if it's like, I know I'm not going to get a lot out of it, then I'll reassess, maybe go take a nap or go get a big meal in or something like that. So you will nap if you have some time. Sometimes, yeah. If I have the time in the day. A little bit of time to get it in. I try to.

I'm a really bad napper, though. Oh, yeah? Yeah. What keeps your room napping? I don't know. You want to do other stuff? Yeah, like my brain, it's sometimes hard to turn my brain off. I just prefer to like get in bed at like 8.30 p.m. instead and get like a really, really long night's sleep,

good night's sleep. It just takes me a while to unwind. Just how I am. Always have been that way. So after, you could say a hard week of training or even the first two days of the games, really kind of what does a day at the games kind of look like in terms of stress on your body? Because it's not, it's a higher stakes environment, right? Right.

So the output is already there, right? You're all more than capable of doing the work. Right. But because with the cut system this year, it's really like fire to the ass. I mean, how much more does that, do you feel like that affected you? I think it did. I mean, not only are we, I mean, the volume, people have talked about this game's from a team perspective, the volume has been pretty high.

Not only that, the adrenaline and all of that takes a toll on you as well. So I, after, and I mean, a 6K run with a rucksack on is for me going to take a lot out of me. It's just, we just talked about that. Added with being upside down for almost 500 feet of handsy walking, that takes a big toll on me as well, being a bigger athlete. Sort of gymnastics, something else you've really been focusing on? Yeah, big time. I think that my gymnastics, like strict pulling and pushing has gotten exponentially better in the last seven months. And it will only get better as I focus more on my aerobic monostructural stuff.

That will go hand in hand, I think. So on days when you know that you're going to do things that you're not quite as good at, Are you consciously thinking about kind of fueling, like, nutritionally and trying to hydrate more or get more sleep because you're like, not only is this day going to be taxing because it's physically hard for me, like, the mental struggle of like, man, these handstands are killing me or I can't do another freaking 200 meters on the, I guess you guys use the assault runner or outside, whatever the case. Yeah. I don't know if I focus more on it because I tend to focus on my nutrition and my sleep pretty heavily anyway But if I know like I will admit that going into day two of the games

Like I didn't if I had a recovery I wouldn't have known Like I don't even want to look at what my whoop would have said Just because I the mental side of that like I want to go in I just want to like give it my all whether I'm 98% or Yeah, you have to compete anyway, right? Right, exactly. There's definitely a difference between using kind of that information that you get on a day-to-day basis. And then, you know, the point is that we're utilizing it, right, to inform the training decisions.

So on game day, it doesn't matter, like the prep, the hay's in the barn. Yeah, right. So to speak. Upcoming season. Yeah. Are you excited for the open? that's like five and a half weeks away yeah not that not that far away um i am it's i have to sit down and talk with you know the team and coaches and that kind of thing because um

last this past open in february or march whenever it was it was almost pointless for a team athlete to do the open we couldn't qualify as a team out of the open anyway so it was almost like okay what does it matter but this year there's sanctioned events that are using the open as their qualifier lots of them actually okay um so we have to figure out if if and when you know like if it's beneficial for all of us as a team to do the open my guess is the answer is going to be yes because we're there's I off the top of my head I think there's four sanctioned events so if you could basically qualify for those out of the gate it's going to allow for better training and continuity throughout the year instead of having to spike.

Have you found it very hard to kind of keep the rise and fall and rise and fall of perform, basically maintaining on having to perform? Yeah, I think that this year, I mean, one of my friends texted me after Friday's competition and said it's not about those two days that we just competed in. It's about, you know, everything leading up to that. it was a pretty crazy season for us, you know, getting second in Iceland and then getting second at Rogue. And then that last ditch effort in France, it was kind of like, we didn't really have a down.

Right. That's not a ton of time to even kind of rebound. Yeah. So, like, for an example, Invictus qualified out of Dubai, which was however early in the season. So they had a whole different kind of tapering and. rebuilding and tapering and making sure they peaked for this. Whereas for us, it was like, okay, France was three and a half weeks before the CrossFit games, so we just kind of have to make sure that we're feeling good and not injured and

ready to go when it comes game time. So I think that this next season is going to be a lot different in how we manage, like, our recovery and tapering and training schedule and that kind of thing. Did you deal with any injuries this year? Yes, kind of. I'm just dealing with a shoulder thing. AC joint type deal. Is that just this year?

Yeah, actually. I don't remember when it first came about, but it's just when I do a lot of high volume gymnastics, especially the dip out of the muscle up tends to bother it. So I work pretty closely with my PT to get dry noodling and stuff like that. It tends to be my first rib trap into AC joint and rotator. So you are doing a good amount of body. maintenance.

Yeah. Obviously outside, you know, I know Romwad, obviously. Yes. You're doing dry needling. Dry needling. Like kind of probably like ART, soft tissue. Yep. Yeah.

Everything. All of it. How many times are week? Leading up to the games, I was getting dry needleed on a Tuesday and then PT, like, ART, dry needleing on third, like I was doing twice a week. Okay. I have someone that I see for a massage. You know, I try to go like every month, but.

that kind of gets expensive. Oh, yeah. No, that's a tough part. Just trying to manage all that, too, is tough. But, yeah, I'll probably stick with the PT dry-needling just to make sure that my shoulder's feeling good when we ramp up the season again. Absolutely.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, thanks, Kels. Yeah, thank you guys. This is Tolomorquino of CrossFit Invictus, Boston. This year, third game. games? Third games. Third games, all team. All team, yep. For those listening along, you've probably

seen Tola when CrossFit actually had social media as snatching the heaviest ever in competition. That's correct, right? Yeah. Was that Dubai? It was in Dubai, and then it was in Iceland. In Iceland as well. So with the new sanctionals this year, how many did you do? Dubai, Wadapalooza, Iceland, Rogue, France, five. Five. Yeah. Plus the open. Plus the open plus games, seven, seven competitions. So seven comps as opposed to the usual open season plus regionals to the games. Yeah.

So you've been on WOOP for what? Two years? Three. No, right when it came out. Yeah, right, yeah. Very since the beginning. How has training been different this year having to peak basically multiple times? Not like with both the qualifier and then actually going to the competition,

having to win the sanctional. I think you have to be really smart with your training, listen to your body a lot more, and really pick and choose when you want to up your intensity. I know especially when you don't have a lot of time in between events, that in between time is more just maintaining and you're not really able to necessarily improve on anything, but you can keep kind of the level you're at

and you really have to pick when that time domain is, is that you're going to try to improve this or that. Right. So that's a really good point that you have limited time to train with that. So you've always been pretty strong. You know, when I first met you, you're always really fast, but then over the last two years, your capacity has, like, for aerobic work has just been crazy.

Is it because in those down times you're putting a more focus on conditioning or weakness work and just kind of touching what you're good at? Yeah, honestly, we will snatch or clean and jerk one or the other every other week. So, really? Snatch and clean and jerk basically one of each a month. Just because we don't really need to do it. When we do it, we generally go heavy just to make sure we're not losing. And if I hit 85, 90%, we know we're good and continue on.

most of our training is centered around biking and running. Biking just because it's lower impact. It's like C2 and assault bike just to build base and then running it because it's our biggest weakness. And then a lot of strict gymnastics just to keep the body feeling good. So have you seen that when you do strict gymnastics in a session that maybe the next day it's almost helping your ability to perform or even just...

So what I notice about strict gymnastics is that I don't lose my capacity in faster, kipping gymnastics, higher skilled movements, but my body holds up a lot better. I feel a lot better, which I think is the most important thing. Yeah, so you're basically building

the structural foundation to make sure you can do everything else under tension. With, you said, kind of just capacity being the team weakness, do you see higher strains on those days? Absolutely. I mean, with your aerobic work, you're going to get a higher strain anyways,

just because the way it tracks. But, I mean, we're, you know, upwards of 60-minute straight bike pieces, you know, long runs, even the interval work, just because your heart rate's so much higher, strain upwards of like 10 to 14 just for that one piece. Yeah, no question. based off, you know, this is the first time that the games are kind of going, this cut format. Yep.

You know, it's only 14 teams because I guess that's the amount of Sanctions this year, right? Correct. How do you feel? You can just give me your hot take on it. It's a tough question because I think, had we come in and had a better weekend, I would have liked the system more. I would have been more open to it. I think it makes sense to a certain point. I think with the amount of teams we had this year,

it didn't really make sense with the number of tests we had. And when they made cuts, if that makes sense. Yeah. For the individuals, I think it made a lot of sense. The first two, maybe the first three, but once you get to 30 or 40, I mean, you're looking at multiple times games athletes who haven't had their best events yet,

so you can't really use it as a full picture of their fitness. Right. And for teams, it's just tough because, you know, we didn't come in and have a great weekend. But again, only 14 teams. Was there really any need to make cuts? Because these are clearly, with the amount of sanctionals you had already the 14 best teams in the world. Right. Even looking at next year, we're upwards of 25 to 30 sanctionals.

I think you're going to see the level of the competition actually go down next year. And so then cuts are going to make sense, you know, down to 10, 20, down to 15, down to 10. But with the five teams that are going to end up making it to the final event this year, there's equal opportunity for all 14 teams to compete with whoever wins that event, if that makes sense, but they're not going to have that opportunity. Correct. Yeah, that totally makes sense. You guys did a lot of international sanctionals this year. Yeah.

By design, or it just kind of happened that way? The only international sanctional we had actually planned as a team was Iceland. Dubai, I actually didn't do with this team. I did it because we were not going to do it. And I thought it would be a cool trip. And, you know, it was like a no stress kind of just go compete, see where we're at. And so that was more just for fun. And then France was kind of just, it was obviously the last sanctional, last ditch effort.

We knew we deserved to be here, even though we didn't have a great weekend. This weekend, you know, we competed at Rogue, had a great time there. Got to compete with basically the same field that you're seeing this weekend. It's several second place finishes, right? Yeah, did really well there. At the same time, if you look across the board, I think you're going to find that you're out of the U.S. Sanctionals, competition levels, a little lower. That's fair.

just because you do have to travel. How much did you feel like that affected the team? How much time were you building in knowing that there is going to be a time change? It's going to be harder to sleep with the time change prior to these sanctionsals. We actually have a system. We try to get the red eye and then stay up that whole day and then sleep. Sleep on the plane? No.

Do your best to sleep on the plane, but take the red eye over so you get there in the morning. stay up that whole day, no naps, and then you're so tired by the end of that day that you just... Are naturally on the schedule? Naturally on the schedule, yeah. What kind of recovery were you seeing, like having basically been up,

a little bit of sleep, that first full night after you've been exhausted? So the flight night, terrible. Yeah, absolutely. Always red, always a low red. And then that first night, usually like a yellow.

So just because you're so tired that your sleep is going to be so deep naturally. Yeah, you're getting high quality sleep because your body's just taxed. And then how far ahead of time are you usually going ahead for these international ones? We try to get there, have a one full day before the check-in day.

So two or three days. Two or three days. So you've got a little bit of time to acclimate. Yeah. You go. Yeah, I've got to make sure you can, you know, figure out where you're going to eat. If you need to flush or train

or whatever you've got to do, try to get those things taken care of ahead of time. What kind of in-comp recovery do you do? Obviously, it's a lot easier in your normal training schedule to build in Ramwad, and you could take more naps. And with a comp schedule, you've got to be there, you've got to perform. So basically, what are you doing, either in-between sessions or overnight to kind of prime yourself for the next day?

So that's a tough one because different events are going to have different schedules. So in Iceland, we had all our events in the morning, which I absolutely love. I love having your teams and individuals split up, teams go in the morning or in the afternoon, and then the individuals are opposite. I think it just benefits the athletes a lot to be able to know when they're going to compete and be able to fuel properly and have a chance to eat and recover. I know personally having events, you know, 9, 1, 6, it's tough for me to recover because I generally have to get so much fuel in.

on a normal day, and I struggle to eat through those events. So for me, it's a lot of, like, easy foods that aren't necessarily what I need. Right. And I can get that better if I know the schedule. That's a good point. So the biggest thing you see is, honestly, a change in your ability to fuel your body nutritionally income. Yep.

So I think this is an interesting thing because people are always asking, what kind of food should I be eating and timing? Are you pretty strict on that during training because you have kind of set training times around coaching and things like that? Yeah, absolutely. Super easy for me to eat during the week because it's basically for me, I think, a lot different than a lot of people. From the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, eat as much as I can, whenever I can, all the time. And I eat pretty good quality foods, but there's not really a point where I'm going to be eating too much. And so when I get into competition, the big thing is making sure I'm trying to eat enough,

which is difficult when you're upwards of like four to five thousand calories on a normal day. You get into competition, you're only trying to scrape in three, four. You definitely feel the difference as the weekend progresses. Thanks, Tola. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it, man. Thanks again to all our phenomenal competitors for coming on the podcast. excited to continue growing as part of the CrossFit community. If you're not already a

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