WHOOP Podcast - World-class endurance coach Chris Hinshaw on increasing aerobic capacity, managing intensity, and prioritizing recovery

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

Chris Hinshaw is one of the world's leading experts on endurance and aerobic capacity. He has trained 30 CrossFit Games champions, along with a series of Olympians, professional surfers, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world champions. Chris sits down with Mike Lombardi to detail everything you need to know about increasing your own aerobic capacity and what training missteps you should avoid along the way. They discuss Chris' coaching style (2:36), the role coaches should play in working with athletes (5:04), strength training for endurance athletes (11:00), Chris' career as a world-class triathlete (15:38), improving recovery (28:52), intensity and recovery (30:36), the importance of feel (44:52), and understanding recovery and HRV with WHOOP (48:59).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

what's up folks welcome back to the whoop podcast where we sit down with the best of the best scientists experts athletes and more to learn what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak and what you can do to unlock your own best performance i'm your host will omit founder and CEO of whoop where we are on a mission to unlock human performance we got a great guest this week, Chris Hinshaw. Before we get to Chris, I'll remind you that you can get 15% off a WOOP membership if used the code will. That's just WI-L.WOOP membership comes with the new WOOP 4.0. Check that out at Woop.com. Okay, Chris Hinshaw, one of the world's leading experts on aerobic capacity. Chris has trained 30 CrossFit Games champions, along with a series of Olympians, professional surfers,

and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world champions. He draws up. on experience from his own athletic career as a world-class triathlete and all-American swimmer to help athletes across many sports build up their endurance. Chris shares everything you need to know about increasing your own aerobic capacity and what training missteps you should avoid along the way. He sits down with Mike Lombardi to explain how you should think about straight training if you're an endurance athlete, the relationship between intensity and recovery. I think this is a really important theme. His coaching philosophies and why he's in the athlete empowerment game, why it's important that athletes are taught to feel strain and intensity in the moment, and how technology is

helping athletes reach peaks that they have never reached before. This is a great one. And without further ado, here are Mike and Chris. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Wu podcast, live at the CrossFit Games. I'm here with Chris Hinshaw. He is probably best known for working with several CrossFit Games champions, runs aerobic capacity in the space, and personally, former professional intra-athlete has really accomplished. So I'm actually going to let Chris introduce himself a little bit. I'm not good at introducing myself. You know, a lot of the things that I did individually were so long ago. It's like, I mean, you can't take them away, but let's discount how much they count. Well, it still led you to this path that maybe we're currently on.

So you were former swimmer? Is that the original? So I was a swimmer, very late in developing. So I was, you know, to hit puberty and maturity, it was late. And so I wasn't very good in sport because of that. And you were always judged, you know, by other coaches based upon performance. And so a lot of exclusion. And I carried a lot of that with me today.

It's part of my style where I don't want to leave people behind. I know what it feels like, and the biggest risk you could take is showing up. And so that shaped me. But I eventually, you know, as I got into my 20s and my body started developing, I realized that I was born with some fairly unique gifts in the endurance side. So my V-O-2 max was naturally high. My ratio of slow-twitch fibers to fast-twitch fibers was really high. My lung capacity was 50% bigger than normal.

And so those, let's call them, like genetic defects were something that allowed me to go fast for a long amount of time. And I found the sport of triathlons. And as much as I would love to be fast in a hundred meter sprint, my destiny seemed to be nine hour long events. When was that first moment that you realized, okay, I've, you know, I'm not necessarily going to do the team sport route. And you figured out, okay, I can run for a long period of time. time or I can swim for a long period of time. Where was your sort of light bulb moment as an athlete of, all right, I need to just lean into this now and this is, you know, develop this skill set. The thing is, as athletes, it's like anything. You don't know what you're doing is unusual.

You think that everybody does a certain thing. And so you don't know when you have talent, whether or not you're actually good. Right. Until you go against somebody else. Yeah, if you're training in a vacuum, you're just like, you don't know. This is what I do. Right. Yeah. And so that's where I noticed was I entered in a triathlon in Santa Cruz, California, and that was in 1981. And I happened to get second place. And I never trained.

I just swam. I didn't really ride a bike, and I didn't run. But it was kind of easy. And it made me feel good. For the first time, I felt like I was able to do something. you're this skinny kid underdeveloped. You're always picked last on teams. If you're playing baseball, you're off and right field.

That's how it was. And all of a sudden, that happens. Right. And it was like, it built my confidence. Yeah. And again, that also shaped me that I think that coaches really are in the confidence building game. That's what we do.

Whether you're young or old, that's what it's about. So I wanted to do that again. And I entered again and I had some success. that year, you were able to just register for the Hawaiian Iron Man, the one in Kona. Yeah. And entered it, and I finished it in about 12 hours with very little training because, you know what? No one knew what to do back then. The sport of triathlons back then was in a state of transition where in the early, late 70s, early 80s, it was a bunch of big guys.

There was this belief that you had to be big in order to do something of that duration. Right. Like it required strength, which was exactly. exactly opposite of what you need for that distance for sure right so what happened was is that the sport was evolving where the big guys were going out and athletes like me were coming in and i happened to be a part of that transition and that that transition throughout the 80s revolutionized the sport of triathlon where you know we were running 30 minute 10ks we were running um sub three hour marathons after a 112 mile bike ride and a 2.4 mile swim

Okay, so you went from never doing a triathlon to getting second and then you did a half Iron Man and then you did an Iron Man. Okay. With very little to no training. It's interesting when, and I love this day and age where there's access to information. Back then, I knew I had to do a marathon in the Iron Man. And so I figure what better way to train than to do a marathon. Yeah. I didn't know.

Why not? So entered the Oakland Marathon. and I was at the starting line of the event. And I found a guy. He was in his, you know, 30s. And I went up to him and I'm like, because he looked like me. He was skinny. Well, I didn't know that was the body type.

That was good at running. It was going to be ideal. Yeah. Right. I had no idea. And so I went up to him and I'm like, so what's the point? Like, do you have a target timer or what you're going to do? I'm judging him based upon what he looks like.

Yeah, pure appearance. And this guy, he's like, yeah, no, I'm going to go three hours. And I'm like, oh, that's a nice round number. like, that sounds good to me. And I'm like, what mile pace is that? And he's like, 6.50. And I remember thinking, I wish it was seven because it would be easy to calculate. Little that I know that that was a bad idea.

And, yeah, from about 16 to 26, I think, yeah, I don't really remember. I finished, but it was brutal. So you were on pace and then? I was on pace for halfway. And next thing you know at like 14, 15, which is not where you want the wheels to fall off. No, no, no, no. Yeah. I underestimate. And then, of course, because I didn't train the amount of muscular damage that I had from that, I was, I was crippled for a month, you know, hobbling around. Right. And even after that, though, you knew it wasn't the right thing, but what was the,

like, what was the proper way? And a lot of the things that, when I think back on my day, and I don't know, do you do it? Like, where you think back on your day and you said, God, it could have been better. I think that all the time. Do you? So that's, and it's only, and it's only, 10, 12 years for me. But yeah, it's, you know, even still, going no sleep, you know, so for those of you that know, my background's in rowing. So I used to show up, you know, a Saturday morning practice. That would be five by 1,500 meter pieces that were ray capped.

And I would still go and I tear the doors off the workout, but on four hours of sleep, imagine what I could have done on eight hours of sleep or better nutrition. It's just, you know, kids today are just going so much faster. you actually look at the times of young athletes today and their physiology, you're like, I wouldn't even get recruited now. Like, if you look back at that time, everybody's just getting so much fitter and smarter. I mean, that's the amazing thing, right? It's like the access to information.

And I'm not talking about athletes' access. I'm talking about coaches. Like the amount of resources that we have available. And so I learn a lot from what other coaches are doing, whether it's right or wrong. You know, it's like I always look at it and go, What is that really measuring? What is it that they're trying to do? And it makes me better.

I'm always evaluating those workouts. And sometimes workouts are just fitness. But other times there is a specific targeted adaptation that they're chasing in that particular progression. And that's where the gold is. And we didn't, I didn't have that. I think back on my day and I had been, I went into the gym, but I never lifted. I never. And one of the things that I didn't have was.

a finishing sprint like I didn't have an ability to kick at the end and I have a high ratio of slow twitch to fast but even with my limited number of fast twitch fibers I never fully optimize them I never develop those and if you don't train something then they're not going to be available to you so although as a small percentage of my capacity I left the majority of that capacity untrained right and that was a huge mistake like to not go in and do like like one to five rep heavy lifting and focus on power output, it was a mistake of mine. I had available muscle fiber capacity that I left behind.

And that also I carry into my coaching, that I never want athletes that I work with to look back and go, I could have been better. And this is a perfect way to jump into this topic that I think is still in the United States, particularly in the endurance discipline misunderstood or misused is this understanding of where strength training plays in to the you know in conjunction with longer distance and different pace training so you obviously learned you left a lot on the table so you could bring that in what kind of advice

would you give to somebody that's trying to build more capacity well still you know what's the strength training kind of look like in your mind so it doesn't have to be the movements but it could be so the thing is is that the brain is is in charge of all of the motor unit recruitment, and the brain is always going to match up with the amount of force that you are creating and match up with the motor unit recruitment. So let's say you're doing a walk. It's never going to recruit fast-twitch fibers.

It's going to give you the slowest of the slow, and it's going to give you just enough to match that intensity. The thing that strength training does, like the Olympic lifts and deadlifts, bench press, front squat, back squat, you know, cleans, if you're training high strength and you're focused on that one rep to five rep, what we're really doing is we're training the brain to free up more of those motor units. And once they become freed up, we have a higher percentage available to us in whatever activity that we do. So one of the things, like here's an example to talk about is you can do like

a ballistic movement. And a ballistic is something that surprises the brain because it's not quite ready for what you're about to do. So an example would be a box jump. So let's just say it's a 20-inch box and we decide that we'd want to do a bunch of repetitions up and down off of this box. Step down, jumps up. That's a fitness workout. But if we rebound off the ground and back up on the box, now what we're doing is we're

working on a plow metric, right? It's really a CNS type of a workout where you're training the brain to react quickly to hitting the ground and then back off the ground. So what happens, though, is the brain, when you're making that jump back up on that 20-inch box and rebounding, the first time you do it, the brain doesn't know how many motor units to recruit to make the jump. And so it's going to give you more. But in a short amount of time, the brain's going to adapt. And that's where you see athletes start clearing by a quarter of an inch.

Right, as opposed to just really flying back up over the box. Because the brain gives you just enough. But it's always evaluating your risk. Now, let's just say we switch up from that pliometric jump. on the 20 inch box and we're going to turn it into a ballistic. Instead of 20 inches, I'm going to make it 24 inches and instead of jumping with no weight, I'm going to give you two 80 pound dumbbells and say, now I need you to make the jump on a wood box. The approach is going to be completely different because of the risk. If you miss, you're going to go to the hospital. So the brain knows

it and it's going to recruit a higher percentage. So you do a small volume of those. And then what you now know is that because it was a ballistic, you have a higher percentage, recruitment of those fast-quitch fibers. Now, since they're recruited and active, what we want to do is we want to make them endure with some kind of a short-time domain sprint, like let's say a high-intensity row and develop the legs from the jump into the row on the legs. And so what you're doing is that you do the ballistic to help recruit a higher percentage of those fast-switch fibers.

And now that they're captive, you're going to do a high-intensity effort and allow them to go long give them endurance right and so those are the things that that i never knew about and those things would have absolutely made me better in my ability to make sprints up hills you know sprint for preams on bike races to sprint to a finish and i didn't have it i lost every single time again that was like you said you were you're coming up in the era where people are just understanding what sort of the physiological capabilities were for somebody doing, you know, an Ironman. So, you know, there's going to be some broken eggs along the way.

And even still, even still. Thank you. So you have a good career and you kind of are learning things along the way. You're kind of part of this test group of, you know, first real athletes in the space. At what point you're like, all right, I'm good. I want to go into coaching. I feel like I'm not necessarily done with the sport or I think, maybe I could, you know, really help people.

I mean, I had to leave the sport of triathlons because my body was just so banged up. I mean, we were doing 25,000 meters in the pool. We were riding 300 plus every week. We were running 40 to 50 every week. And, you know, doing that eight years, it's like, it just adds up. So when did you officially retire from? 1989. So would you do it for about eight years?

Yeah. It's a pretty good run for, you know, all that mileage. And did it all through college. I realized it was going to always end. And so I always focused on college and my education, but I still had a great time. The problem was is that my body was beginning to fail, and I couldn't do the things that I once did. And, like, I remember my longest runs. I would run 16 to 20 on weekends and that I wasn't racing, and it would start feeling good about 10 miles in.

and everything else was just like I can make my body do it but it hurt all the time and the biggest problem that I had was I had this huge imbalance where my right side didn't work with my left side like it was fighting with one another and that's why I left

is because my body was just it didn't function and that's and then and then you also realize that it's time to quote grow up and that culture is changing now where you should stay in if you're enjoying something and do it. Yeah.

And what's the hurry to go get married, have kids, get a mortgage and a full-time job, and lock in until you die? Like, but that's what I did. I thought that that was part of growing up. Yeah, different time. Different time. Yeah, it's definitely shifting, but I think some people that, you know, still get to that point and say, all right, it's time to do those things.

Yeah. So that was for me, like, when my body was failing, it's like, all right. It's time to go. That's the, yeah, it's time to grow up. And that's when I went in, got into high-tech sales in Silicon Valley. So when did you find your way back to coaching? So I met Annie Sakamoto, the original CrossFit HQ space, which I thought CrossFit back when I met Annie was just the name of the gym.

I didn't know it was like a brand and you can get these, you know, like a franchise type model and affiliate model. And they were looking at moving the original space that glass. started in SoCal, California, and I happened to be in a meeting in a building that they were looking at. And I was just fascinated by, and I was now in my, like, early 40s, and Annie took up an interest in my background, but I also took up an interest in what they were doing. It was interesting to me when she was explaining these workouts, but she said something that resonated. She said, you know, Chris, you've done a lot of volume in your day, but it's the same muscle groups over

and over again, which was really profound that she knows that I was training, you know, all of this volume, three different sports, but I was neglecting certain muscle groups, and those muscle groups, they atrophied, and that's where my injuries were. And she says, maybe if you work on those neglected muscle groups, you can become functional. And that was really appealing to me that she said the word functional, because that's all I wanted. I just want my right. said to work when I left. And so eventually I worked up the courage to go into that gym. And yeah, that was probably, if I had a midlife crisis, that was probably that day when I was so intimidated by what I saw that after I parked my car, I didn't get out, and I couldn't, I didn't have

the courage to go in. I was so afraid. that I drove home, and my home was an hour away. Oh, wow. So you had committed, and you're like, ah, no, no, not today. Because, what was going on in there? Dude. Okay, so the problem was, is I wasn't very educated in what weights were. I knew a metal plate, like a 45-pound metal plate.

Right. As heavy. Like, you know, if you, like, some people when they go and they run for the first time, they just have running speed. So I just knew things heavy or light. Yeah. Right. And so I was thinking that I didn't know it was rubber that they were lifting.

And I remember it was all women. You saw these massive plates. Dude, I'm thinking that's 100 pounds on the side. Yeah. So at least maybe 200, 200 plus 200. They're lifting 500 maybe. And so, and then they were doing pull-ups and coming from swimming. So swimmers, when you enter your arm in the water and then you rotate, you know, in order to breathe and to also create more leverage in the water.

you'll get an impingement in your shoulder. And so if you do enough of it, you'll get shoulder issues. Well, they were doing Kippin pull-ups, and not one. And I don't even know if I've done a pull-up by them. They were doing like thousands of them. I mean, the roof was shaking. Yeah. And I, I, there's, I couldn't do it.

There's no way. And what's crazy is, is that my recollection of myself, when I pulled in, was I'm gnarly. I'm not afraid of anybody. and all of a sudden that just crashed and who I thought I was was gone and it disappeared

in a moment and I've never been afraid and there I was like I didn't have the courage and yeah that was a really a brutal time when did you finally go in the next day

okay so it only took one day but I had to have a whole talk with myself and the thing was is to reconcile that that person that you were is gone. And it's true with a lot of people that when life gets in the way, because you know what, you eventually go into the working world, you have a family, and stuff happens. And next thing you know, 10 years is gone. And now you're starting from scratch, except now

you're old. And I get it. I was there. And I remember that too when anybody has the courage to walk in and see me, whether it's at a seminar or I had two hours here at the games, you know, where, you know, these classes and people came in and they're nervous because all of a sudden they see me and it's like, uh-oh, this could get bad. And I will never take advantage of the trust that they give when they walk in the door. Any coach could write a workout. That's brutal. But can you write a workout that challenges an athlete gets them to do something that they didn't think that they can do? And then when they do it, they feel.

that level of confidence. So that's the trick. And that's what my mission is, is that I really, I take all these things of when I was younger, laid in developing, not good in sports, growing up in a competitive household, and having success individually, but then losing that when I hit middle age. And that feeling when I, that drive home for me an hour, oh, I was awful. It was awful. Yeah, buying a Corvette wouldn't have helped me either. So I think what you just said is so profound and people don't think about in terms of athletes and the impetus that's actually on coaches

to empower the athletes to basically build sports-specific confidence by putting them in situations that put them to the edge and then, like you said, they can learn something or push through and then they reach a new level. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, I've been here, I can do this, I can do this. Because truly, anybody can write. a workout that buries you.

Right. But what was the point? Yeah. Right. Because here's the problem. Let's just say you're doing a workout and there's 10 rounds and you crush. You do so well in 1 through 9 and then you bomb. You're only going to remember number 10.

Everybody remembers the last rep. And so there is a art to doing that and to be able to write in a way where athletes are challenged and they know they're challenged. You can't just give them something easy and they do well. because they're going to know it was a joke. You have to make it so that it's seemingly impossible. And then when they do it, it's like, wow, they just saw, you know, Bigfoot or the lock desk monster, right?

Like the Bermuda Triangle, something that doesn't exist all of a sudden the sky's open and it does happen. Yeah. And then that person evolves. Middle-aged athletes that have lost their fitness and come back, the thing that they underestimate is their ability because of, confidence. There is no difference between a middle-aged athlete and a teenager. The same insecurities sit with them. The problem is, is that a master's athlete, like middle-aged

athlete, they know that no one's going to come and help you. When you're a kid, you think society will help me. Like if I mess up, if something bad happens, I'm going to get belled out and someone's going to take care of me. But you realize that when bad things happen, as you get older, your friends can be there, but if you don't want to turn your life around, everybody's just going to give you the shoulder to cry on. You got to do it. And so that's what makes it hard for a middle-aged athlete to get their fitness back because they know it's 100% on them. If they make that commitment to me, I will always be there and I will always do my share. But I'm only the coach. You're still the athlete. You own your workout. Your job is to execute

per the stimulus that I'm telling you is that purpose. Yeah. And that's what they need to do. And that's with every relationship that I have. It's like my job is to find the highest and best use of your time, explain what that purpose of that workout is, and then you take possession of it. Because that's what life is all about.

Yeah. It's your journey. Yeah, it's more than just the workout, right? You know, that setting them up empowers them in other spaces as well. Yeah. So when you decided to make your, self available to anybody that would agree to work with you, was it more personalized programming for them at that point? You're sort of, you know, because I think the tough part is like

scalability, right? I think what you've done so well and why it's kind of moved past, like, we'll still Chris Hinshaw attached to aerobic capacity, but like aerobic capacity is just like understood and accessible to everyone. How personalized was the training versus as you took all these data points. How did you then make it accessible to the masses? That is a great question. So part that I realized was is that you can't cover up mistakes with volume because we're trying to maximize adaptation in the fastest possible way. And the fastest way to do it is through personalization. Right. And so that's what I did is that for every games athlete that I've ever worked with, every single thing they do has a personalized intensity that is based upon their prior results,

everything. And I'm a math guy. And so I'm good with Excel and Google Docs. And so to do algorithms and math equations to figure out how as you progress into longer and longer time domains, your rate of fatigue as you move into different time domains based upon different movements because they're all different. That was the early projects that I had. And so when I had a lot more people, it made that that it compressed my learning. turning curve. And that's what really started it was, I need to always be able to provide personalization because it's the accuracy that creates these improvements faster than what I did when I was training. So would you say that really what's made it successful and accessible is that

the workouts are the same, but you help people understand the correct speed and the stimulus for each workout. You have to hit the right target. And the way to do that is through the manipulation of the, so every workout has qualities, but what you want to do is you want to look at the athlete and what's the highest value of their time. And then you manipulate volume, intensity, and the recovery for each one of those athletes. And they must everyone be specific. So meaning, what is the specific interval distance? What is the specific intensity? And what is the specific recovery. How much time?

Is it active? It's passive. Is it active? How fast do you move? You're walking, you jogging, you're running. And you manipulate those variables. And a lot of coaches, what you'll see is they will program the interval distance. And they will program the interval time.

But what they'll do is say, walk 200. Well, I've seen people walk 200 meters in 10 minutes. Yeah, it can be as slow as you want if you leave it open-ended. And that's what they do is a catch-all. And the problem with that is you're not respecting the rest. because what if that person takes six minutes versus one minute? Yeah. Whatever they do next is going to be harder if they took one minute a rest.

It's like a five-by-five back squat. You take three to five minutes of rest. Why? Because the focus is your five reps and the load you're lifting. That's why you sit in a chair because you're not training that quality. Right. Same thing. If we look at the movement of, let's say, running and if you take only one minute

to rest versus three minutes, it doesn't matter what's coming next. The next interval is going to be tougher. on the short rest. Right. Exactly. And so that's where it's like, I tell people it's like you need to really understand your recovery because in most cases it is an elite athlete's weakness is fatigue. They just get tired.

And so what you do is you manipulate the quality of rest. You don't manipulate distance, volume. You don't manipulate speed or intensity. If you want to drive a particular adaptation, in this case, case recovery, then that's your focal point. And what happens in most cases is that people sit around and do nothing in your recovery. And you've got to remember that if you put a stimulus on the body, such as sitting around and you get good nutrition, you get good rest, you create that adaptation, meaning if you're sitting around always, you get good at sitting around. And what we want

people to do is move. Runners, they don't run a sprint and then sit in a chair. They run. They run. and then they jog. They keep moving. Right. Rower's sprint into an active recovery. An active recovery isn't an hour-long row. An active recovery is intentionally designed to clear fatigue in the same movement pattern, the same muscle groups that just created the fatigue.

Right. And it's a way for us to extend the length of the workout. The intensity gets you up to this high level of fatigue. And then what you do is right when you're now primed to create adaptation, you sit and share. Why? Let's continue down the backside. Right. So you're more or less you're sneaking in ways to keep the heart rate elevated for longer periods of time, which would you say is, is just sort of the floor is too low. Not that the ceiling couldn't be high, but the goal with this is ultimately to take their base level of fitness and just raise it up several levels so that everything else improves.

Because your maximum sustainable pace is a relationship between your intensity and your recovery. Right. You can't just shove more intensity in and hope you improve your maximum sustainable pace. You eventually goes to your knees. Right. So what's the problem then? Why aren't you going faster in your 5K run? Your 20-minute time domain workout. Why?

Because you just get tired. Yeah. That's your recovery. You haven't primed yourself for that. Right. So why are you doing more speed when you told me that your weakness is not in the intensity side? You just said your weaknesses in your recovery side.

So why isn't that the focal point? And that's where people miss. They're not, athletes need to be able to tell their coach. The reason why I can't do more push-ups is because I'm tired. I want to be able to do 10 more, but I can't just shove more push-ups and I eventually tap. So they have to be able to go to their coach and go, hey, here's my goal. And by the way, here's my limitation that's preventing me from hitting that goal. Would you say that's the hardest concept that you've had to get across to people? Yes, for sure. And what I have to do is you have to be careful in the way in which you're

delivering content, and you can't deliver it too fast. Yeah. Because you'll get rejected right away. If you deliver it too fast and it goes over their head and they don't understand it, it's never going to take off. They'll never do it. So, okay, so you've worked with these amazing elite athletes. They've produced so many champions or helped produce these so many champions.

They did the work. They did the work. And they have teams. Like, I just contributed my share. Right. But you also have completely changed. I hope you recognize that you've changed how people think about the full body of work of trading and physiology. Maybe, you're probably a humble guy, but.

I mean, I think that I was an influence in that because I like sharing what I know and I never hold back on that. That's the piece that I always give. If someone has a question, it's made it easy. Here's how I do it. I give everything I know because it encourages me to go out and learn something different. Towards the start of our conversation, you said you're always looking at coaches learning. who would you say you've maybe learned the most from or you've really gotten a lot of value of it could be multiple people

it doesn't even have to be in CrossFit so I look at outside of our sport that's where I look because part of it is is we look outside and what you're finding is parallels because of what we know by being in the sport for so long we know the framework that we need

and so like a good example of this is like you take a running coach and how do they take like an athlete like a Usain Bolt who has a high percentage of fast twitch fibers he races in short time domains so his anaerobic capacity is extremely important but he has a very small percentage of slow twitch fibers right so what if we have a a game's level athlete that has a similar high percentage of fast twitch fibers would we do something different. Well, why not look at how these elite Olympians that are doing something similar and how are they training? And so does Usain both do five mile runs? Of course not because his time domain is 20 seconds and under. Right. So he doesn't need it. But he does do prelims semis finals in the 100, the 200, the

four by one. And so recovery does matter. Yeah. So how does he train his recovery? He does a sprint and then what he does is a slow jog. He builds his fatigue and then he actively clears it. He doesn't sprint and then sit in a chair. He builds it in the framework that he competes it as. And so that's what I do is I look at it and I go, you know what? That's what a fast-twitch speed strength power athlete is doing. But look what this endurance athlete does. And I look at that coach. I see the two differences between those coaches and how they're treating these types of athletes. Well, are we saying that there are not fast twitch athletes in the sport and slow twitch athlete dominant athletes of course there are so then why wouldn't we based upon your observation of the outside

athletes train inside crossfit a similar way and so if you think about it like let's say that you're a sprinter and we want to go out for a nice easy one hour run because i have a high percentage of slow twitch fibers, what's going to happen is that my brain is going to match up with whatever easy speed we pick for that hour. And it's going to give me a very small percentage of those slow twitch fibers to match it up. You are going to get the same amount, let's say. What's going to happen is these fibers will fatigue and fail, and the brain shuts them off, and it recruits another batch. It fatiguing, failing, shuts them off, recruits more. But because I have 85% slow, and let's say you only have 15 slow,

You come around to your original recruited motor units first. Well, what if you haven't done enough volume? Then those haven't recovered. They're just fatig. It's just going to be muscle fatigue. Right. And so now you only have fast twitch fibers to go into, which now that's the kiss of death.

You're done. But meanwhile, for me, I'm not even halfway around. And because I've had double the amount of time, mine have actually recovered. So I keep circling, right? And that's what the stamina side is. So here, you're a unique athlete. You can't do that one hour same pace as me because of your genetics.

So then what do you do if you want to practice that speed? You should stop and rest so that you don't trigger fast-twitch fibers. You always allow those slow. So you're going to stop and rest. But what if you want to do an unbroken hour? Well, if you want to do an unbroken hour, then what you need to do is take the same amount of time that I do to get back to the originally recruited motor units, meaning go slower. Right. And so I knew, and all of that what I just laid out, through observation of other coaches,

but the types of athletes that they coach. And what I do is I go, is that applicable here? And that's what you're always asking. Is that something that can apply here? I'm glad you talked about the two different ends of the spectrum there. So for the average person, or just any person, do you have something that you use to kind of see where they are on that spectrum? That's a good question. Because I know there's so many different ways you can see,

oh, well, I've got to spend more time in this heart rate training zone, but something easy for people to just be like, wow, I'm this type of athlete, not even where I need to train. It's like, this is my physiology, and that then leads. That's the bigger question that needs to get answered before you can then dive into the training. Because that I understand their strengths and weaknesses and the why, right? And they understand they buy in. And that's part of it is that you want to get athletes to buy in.

And so you have to have, it's interesting to me, most of what people are saying, it's subjective. It's, it's, it's their own, like, comments. And it's like, but where's the facts? Like, where's the evidence behind this? It needs to be objective. It's like, otherwise, like, why would you do it? Right. Right?

It's like, no, I'm not, I don't just buy into that, you know, I'm not going for the Kool-Aid. Nope, not doing it. You have to have objective data. And so the thing that I recognized was, we need to look at the rates of fatigue. between an anaerobic time domain and an aerobic time domain. So we know as you go into longer and longer time domains, workouts become more and more aerobic. And so what I did is, is in the beginning, I took a 400 meter effort in running and a mile because no one would talk to me in those early days. And so 400 meters being mostly an anaerobic time domain. And what I did is I

looked at the finishing times that you would have in that 400. And that would tell me a lot, right? your meters per second. Well, then I compare that to what your speed is in an aerobic time domain, the mile. And I looked at your rate of fatigue between those distances, the slope. And that told me information about you. The problem was I didn't have any information on a large enough sample size to find out what is average for a non-runner because everything is based upon sports. Like a gold standard of the sport.

Right. So that's what my quest was. And I couldn't use what running did because these aren't runners. They're recreational runners. And so part of what I did in working with so many people is I was able to collect all this data. And that's what I love. I love data. I love spreadsheets.

I love crunching numbers and figuring out the puzzle. And so what I learned was is that a normal rate of fatigue between 400 meters and a mile is rough in the movement of running is somewhere. We're around 21 and a half percent. Well, let's just say that your numbers turn out to be, like Rich Froning, 28.7. Well, if the goal then is to get them down to 21.5, do I improve his 400 time or do I improve his mile time? And if you look at it, I can slow down his 400 time and it'll get down to 21.5, but that won't keep me around long.

Or I drop his six-minute mile down to 520 and now he is right there in the sweet spot. based upon, you know, 20,000 people, I believe that there's a high likelihood that you'll get close. So now I have a target for them as well. And that's how I do it. I then spent a bunch of time working on rowing. And when I got into rowing, my preference is one minute test versus a six minute test because it's a relative intensity. So if you run a 400 and I run a 400, if we don't finish in the same time, the intensity is going to be different. Like, if it takes you six minutes to run a mile and I do it in five, that's not the same. But if you do a six max effort and I do six max, that's, so that's what I do in rowing. And the rate of fatigue between

a one minute effort on average and a six minute effort is 9.5%. And are you, is the metric you're using meters per second? Yeah. So what you're doing is, is you're looking at the time of one event, the distance of one event and you're comparing it against the time and distance of the second event. Okay. And you're, it's a really a logarithmic equation. Got it. Yeah. And you're looking at the slope. proprietary. No, no, no, I share people. No,

I give it to everybody. No, so that's part of the thing is that I really, like, I thought that that would have been proprietary. And I'm like, God, I spent all of this time. And you know what I decided? If you share, you share everything. You can't just hold back bits and pieces. Oh,

I can't tell you that. I can't when coaches control athletes and then an athlete is, you know, like they're isolated and they're not allowed to talk to their coach and then they have to go out and compete, they're paralyzed because the coaches train them to not be able to think on your own. They control them by not sharing. And in my opinion, we are preparing these athletes for life. Like, we want, I want you to have everything because I want you to grow up and recognize that you, you're make decisions that affect you. And if you want to improve things in your life, you do it. I'm never going to do it. That's why it's not my, I never think that I win on, you know, it's like,

all I'm doing is helping you create the greatness that's inside of you. And that's it. And if I hold back, then you're not, your potential may not be there. And so I don't do that. I'm going to talk about this like in the vacuum, right? So there's obviously a skill and technical component to all of these modalities, cycling, running, rowing, ski org. How do you also then incorporate the technical proficiency required to then raise the floor and ceiling even more? I mean like in terms of technique. Yeah, and technique, like, you know, people run, but a lot of people run poorly.

Most people row terribly. People even can cycle poorly. So how do you kind of address that? You give athletes information all the time. But unless they know how to apply it into something, it stays information only. The trick is, why tell somebody something, information, if they can't convert it into knowledge? So what I mean by that is like, you could be incredible in gardening because you watch YouTube and never have gardened. That's just information.

Yeah. You could be an expert. But I don't want that. I want you to take that information and now apply it. And now it becomes part of your arsenal. It's knowledge. And if I can get you smart, knowledgeable, now I can create layers of confidence. And so that's really, I want to be respectful of the workouts, but also like the information

because can they convert it? If they can't, then why? Right. And so that's what I'm trying to do with my workouts is to be able to make my communication clear. It's really all about that understanding. I think that's such an important thing. the transparency, clear articulation of the stimulus, the why, and here's how you're going to execute.

And what you said, knowing when to pull it, right? I think you and I probably know, even if we write a workout, if it's either not hard enough, we can adjust in, or if it's too hard, it's like, okay, the next one's going to fall apart. I just kind of messed that programming piece up. All right, I know for next time. So if I was to share this with somebody, I will make sure that that mistake doesn't happen. Exactly. Like I was thinking about you this morning and watching that run. And it's amazing to me, they announced this run. And then people are like, I don't know what pace to hold. All you're going to do is get to that maximum sustainable pace, which you should know by feel and sit there until you're close enough to where you think you could make a move to the finish and you sprint in. You can't do any more than that. And it's amazing to me that people don't know how to feel that specific intensity. Right.

How do you not, you're here. Like, you, you don't need your heart watch. You don't need to know your pace. You should know by feel. I don't like pointing out things in workouts. I want an athlete to experience and they go, wow, you know, I really felt like I was at my maximum sustainable pace in this workout. I felt like I was going over the edge and then I would come back, over back.

That when an athlete figures it out is empowering versus me telling them. Well, that's the aha, right? it's yes people need to have that moment whether it's a failure in that is successful they pushed past a point that they didn't recognize like you said that 15 interval workout you know it's maybe you know it was always going to be 15 but as a coach you could be like all right we're going to go do these and you kind of like all right and you see that they're you know they have the capacity to do more yeah and it's like okay we're just going to do another all right another and they're like wow I didn't think I was before they realize it they've done the 15 intervals and

they've gotten faster or sustained the pace and it's like That's, you know, I think every endurance athlete probably has, hopefully somewhere between like five and ten memories of like, wow, I remember this piece so vividly because, you know, 3,000 meters into a 6,000 meter rowing test, I was like, I'm going to blow the doors off the back half. I've never felt this good that, you know, you're getting that sort of euphoria flow state. Yeah, you guys, so it's interesting, like I've read a lot on rowing. And like your tests, it's a 10 second test, a one minute test, a 2K test. It could be somewhere between 5 and 6K and 10K or 30 minutes test. A 6K, right, and then I've seen an hour. It's always a 6K.

Yeah, it depends who, yeah, international usually does. Well, actually it depends. I think U.S. is more 6K, international is 5K. People have been doing 30 minutes, hours. It really depends on the training protocol. But the 6K was tying into a specific, like, target time domain, right? That was the original intent, like it was a 20-minute. it's i mean it that's what you like i think good high school rowers break 20 minutes now

and it's crazy 6k yeah so that's a 140 point zero split is 20 minutes but that's awesome you know that's the best in the world are going 18 low 18s yeah so that's like pretty close to like a 131 132 split for 6 000 meters that man i'm so glad i'm you know it's so interesting though it's like So I started running through COVID, and I got a pair of these Adi Zero Adidas shoes. And Adidas sent them. I've done a couple of seminars for free for Adidas over there in Germany. And I maintain the relationship. So I saw that this pair of shoes just set a world record in the half marathon on women.

And I got a pair, and they're really high sold. And the reason why they're high sold is they've got these carbon fiber rods that line up with your metatarsals and your foot and I had been running but I never ran hard all through COVID but I get these shoes and I saw them and I was like I can't wear that shoe like it's all this like I picture racing flat is something like a minimalist like light you know like four ounces or under it's like that's what it needs to be and I'm like so they sat there for like three weeks and like I got to go I'm going to go so I did a nice a five mile run and I have never been in a product that was like that good and it

made me want to run fast. And so I finished the five-mile run, and I had an 800-meter loop that I knew the distance of it. And I'm like, I'm just going to do it 800 for time, like to just see. And I'm 58. And I, again, this is at the end of five miles, no real training. And I ran like sub-240, 239 high. Like I call it 240, but it was sub-240. And I'm like, so then I'm like, I go up and I start looking at like what was master's like worlds yeah well the mile time when i think for third place was a 516 like huh i can drop 15 pounds and i think i could do that and so that was like for me it was like wow like what a surprise that's where like i think that there are product that comes out where it's like like whoop HRV no one talked about and all of a sudden now it's like it's commonplace

It changed everything in terms of recovery. And I think that that's the cool part is every now and then there's something that provides like real value. And that's the key. And that's what I also look for is providing things where, you know, what does make sense? Like what should you buy? Yeah. Like swimming. You should always have a pair of fins.

All my athletes have two pairs of fins, short ones and long ones. And so you want to keep your eye out for like these breakthroughs and products. and every now and then there's ones that come along that redefine what we're capable of doing. We appreciate the love there, obviously. Well, I mean, it's true, though. It is true. I mean, I think WOOP has definitely changed the game.

I think coaches were probably trying to figure out some elaborate equation with a combination of, you know, I mean, I can tell you that I was doing it. I was using urine color mood, subjective hours of sleep, SBO2, like all this stuff. And you're like, all right, where are we today? because this, you know, it's not just so stagnant of do the training anymore. It's we need to achieve the goal while staying healthy and moving forward.

Right. And then getting that historical perspective where you can weigh out those variables. You know, I have people that send me like their data. There's so much data in there that you don't know what you're looking at. You need it in a summary. I take that data and what you do is you reconcile it and that I do like. I love doing that with spreadsheets. That's like the workouts that we did, Rich's original 12 weeks. We had 2,035 people doing that.

And I personalized every workout for every single person. I'll not do it again. So if you're hearing this, don't think that I'm doing it. It was a lot of work. But I did it for every athlete. Right. At that point. And now you do how many videos a week, like live classes on YouTube?

Oh, boy, we do a shoot a lot. Do you do two, three a week? We do. Well, it depends. So sometimes we do way more than that. but it's usually it's a minimum of two. Okay. But we'll shoot like 50 at a time.

Oh, okay. So for those that want to like learn a little bit more, Chris does some online coaching. They're on CrossFit Mayhem's YouTube channel. Yep. And they're different all the time. Sometimes it's running, cycling, rowing, different time domain, different intensity.

So if that's, they're your first dabble into this, definitely check it out. Chris absolutely knows what he's talking about. You don't help produce all these champions and know all this. At this point, you haven't realized that he really knows what he's talking about. And this podcast could go on for five more hours, then maybe we miss something. But where else can people find you? So aerobiccapacity.com.

Aerobiccapacity.com. And there you could find programming. You could find the seminars just where I'm going. I teach all of my seminars. It's a way for me to find out what others are doing and what they want to be doing. and so it allows me to reshape the course. Yeah. So, yeah, those are all in there.

So, yeah, aerobic capacity, or you can go to the aerobic capacity, Instagram or Facebook pages. Awesome. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you, man. Yeah. Appreciate it.

Thank you to Chris for coming on the WOOP podcast. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please give us a review, a rating, and subscribe. You can check us out on social at WOOP and at Will Ahmed. And you can get 15% off a WOOP membership by using the code will, W-I-L-L. Okay, that's it for now, folks. Stay healthy. Stay in the green.