Double Edge Fitness

Thanksgiving Week • Programming Updates • Community Communication • HYROX Prep

• Derek and Jacob Wellock

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Start with clarity. We lay out the Thanksgiving schedule, then get straight into how we’re tightening our training ecosystem so you can make steady gains without second‑guessing the plan. SugarWOD isn’t just a place to read the workout anymore—it’s your history, your benchmarks, and the data that helps us program smarter. By unifying tracks, you see exactly what matters for strength, conditioning, and progression in one clean feed, whether you’re chasing a heavy back squat or testing a benchmark MetCon.

We also open up about HYROX. Our CrossFit base stacks up on sleds, wall balls, and strength, but the honest limiter is running—especially compromised running after big efforts. So we’re adding a dedicated HYROX track with interval prescriptions, bringing more sled work into group classes, and scheduling micro simulations to practice pacing, transitions, and fueling. You don’t need to race to benefit; better aerobic capacity and sled strength make every athlete more resilient.

Then there’s the “lean” conversation. Simple, low impact conditioning has value, but it isn’t the magic lever for fat loss. Nutrition drives body composition, with strength training and smart conditioning supporting the result. We share transparent notes on body comp shifts when running volume goes up, how glycogen and recovery play into the picture, and why consistency beats any single workout style. Expect some old‑school lean vibes on select days to keep training fun and sustainable, paired with clear progression in the main track so you keep moving forward.

Finally, we’re choosing better places to talk. Instead of chasing DMs across social feeds, we’re focusing on the SugarWOD community board for quick updates, a members‑only Facebook group for questions, and WhatsApp for event logistics like HYROX in Vegas. Fewer platforms, better answers, faster coaching. Hit play, then subscribe, share this with a training partner, and drop a review telling us your biggest fitness blind spot—running, nutrition, or consistency?

Follow us on Instagram here! https://www.instagram.com/doubleedgefitness/

SPEAKER_00:

All right, what's up, everybody? A little late in the day. Uh, my daughter had a little deal this morning, a little checkup. She probably doesn't want me talking about all this, but she ended up she had to get a follow-up colonoscopy on her Crohn's disease from all the stuff that happened in the past, and everything. If everything checks out here, she doesn't need to get one for another five years. Fingers crossed. Um, so yeah, busy morning with that. So it's a little late in the day on getting this information out. But I wanted to get it out. It's a short week this week. We have some things going on, lots of stuff in the brain. In regards to the gym, gym operations, classes, programming, blah blah blah blah blah. And um, I want to keep you, all you lovely people, informed as well as I possibly can. That's real. That's real. Doing my best. All right. So we have Thanksgiving this week. Happy Thanksgiving, prematurely, a couple days early to everybody. Love you guys. 7 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, Coach CrossFit Code, Cody, who coaches Saturdays here. He's going to run a workout at 7 a.m. I did put the workout in sugar wad. It is quite the doozy. It is a partner workout, but um, you'll be pretty confident you earn some extra caloric intake that day. All right. So I will be traveling out of town for Thanksgiving. So I hope all of you that join him. We have the cap set at 40. It's that's a full house for this workout, but being partner, it should it should work pretty good. Should work just fine. So yeah, expect a full house, expect um, throw down, have a good workout. So that's Thursday morning, 7 a.m. All right. Make sure you sign up ahead of time. I would highly encourage that. He'll be running this workout, so knowing how many people are actually gonna be there will really help him. All right, so sign up ahead of time, please. Friday, we are closed. Okay, we are closed on Friday. Saturday, back to normal, normal Saturday class. Next week, back to normal. All right. So that's this week schedule stuff. I want to talk about sugar wad. Had a few questions. Hey, if I don't have sugar wad, how do I see the workouts? Well, here's the deal. If you are an active member at Double Edge Fitness, active member, I want you to use sugar wad however you want to use it. The problem I've had in the past is when people quit or if people are only here for a short time, if I don't go in there and clean it up, there gets there's a ton of folks in there uh that aren't paying members that I need to remove from it and keep it clean, keep it tidy. You know, it is a service that we pay additional for for our members, and it's a utility that I do want you guys to use. Now, like I said last time, you can make your account private, right? You don't have to share your stuff on the leaderboard. I could care less. I mean, I do care a little bit because the more data that I have, I'm actually playing with this and some AI tools and stuff, trying to aggregate data to help guide programming better. So the more data I have, potentially, this is new stuff that I'm trying to do, can potentially help kind of guide stuff. I think it's something I'm playing with. So I'm looking at exporting the workouts data from the little tests we did this last Friday, my quote unquote longevity strength test deal, and just um seeing if I can use that in that data to make things better. Right? So obviously, when it comes to data, the more data you have, the better it is. And I only think I can export data that is logged in a leaderboard, not your personal stuff. I I don't even think I can see that from a coach's end in Sugar Wad. But again, I'm diving pretty heavily into Sugar Wad. Um, I'm gonna admit it, I haven't used it in the gym for anything more than workout distribution. I'm really trying to dive into a lot of their new tools and learning um the full capacity of how we can use this utility in the gym beyond just logging workouts. But on a personal note with sugar wad, I want you to track your lifts. I want you to track your workouts, I want you to, you know, you track the things that matter to you. And if improving your strength, health, and fitness matter to you, we should keep track of these things. You know, it's good to go back and you know, if we have we have a um back squat tomorrow. Tomorrow? Uh yeah, we have back squat tomorrow. So if you have back squat tomorrow, you can click on the prepare button and it'll show you his your history. Like, okay, so last week or the week before, whenever we back squatted last, you can see how much weight you back squatted then. You can decide based on how you feel, if you want to work up to that weight, maybe push a little heavier. Remember, you have to do a little more weight or a little more reps on movements to get stronger at them. So knowing your previous lifts is gonna help you with your future lifts. All right, that's one of the most important things in there. Now, when we do test METCons, being able to see previous times and seeing if you're improving upon that can help. It it helps. It helps. It's not end-all be all for fitness improvements, but it does help. But especially in the strength stuff, it's it's a huge tool for me personally in my training. Knowing what I all my lifts and what I did previously and what I'm gonna do again, it helps kind of hold that accountability to maintaining strength and or improving it. I will admit right now I'm not in a place of really trying to get stronger, arguably. Um I'll get into that in a second. So back to sugar wad. I do want you guys to use the tool, use it to look at the workouts for the week, use it to um track your progress. Okay, I want you guys to track your progress. I think that's important. And if you're a paying member of the gym, use it. I had a couple, and I'm bringing this up because a couple members reached out to me. They're like, oh, I'm trying to save you money. I don't use it to log my workouts, but I want to see the workouts. The workouts are on the website. Um, that function right now is actually broken. I've don't know why, but I have a work order in to Sugar Wad to fix it. But use the app. I want you guys to use the app. I don't want you to be involved in there. Another thing with SugarWad, build welded, and warrior are now on the same track. All right, I was playing around with it. I was like, this is dumb. Bounce back, you're doing a warrior workout, but you need to log your squat and welded, and you want to see all the weights and different things. It's like, why are we in three different tracks here? So I was playing with the yesterday and I changed it. I changed it, one track, strength, build, welded, and warrior. You can see them all right there. I call that a win for simplicity. All right, it's a win. Next thing, programming regards. So I've signed up for high rocks. There's like 18, 20 of us doing it. And I'm really diving into high rock's training and prepping, preparing for high rocks from a programming and training standpoint, not just for myself, but for the community, for the members doing it particularly. All right. And the more I get into it, our general crosshit programming, and I'm not just sitting here trying to fluff it. I truly believe this. When I look, just say me and JP, for example, are on a team competing in the pro division. When I do research on standards and what pro athletes in the high rocks division are doing as far as strength, as far as you know, sleds and 1K row times and 1k ski times, and how fast they're getting their wall balls done. Just me and JP, we're there. We're with the top guys in high rocks at those elements. Here's where we're not. It's the running, it's the running. And this is notorious in CrossFit. You know, a lot of CrossFitters, you're good at a lot of things, but it seems like a big hole in this goes for me, but I see it in the CrossFit culture. And I have for years of running being something we don't really do a lot of, all right? Running capacity work in high rocks, it's called compromised running. So improving running and running with Metcons is a huge part of this event, right? So we're gonna we are a high ROX affiliate and we're gonna train for high rocks events. And if we're gonna offer high ROCs, we need to do it with logic, structure, and planning. And what I'm getting at here is we have these high rocks workouts, right? It quote unquote replace lean. But you can thank my wife for this. My wife is a voice of reason a lot of times in my brain when it comes to things. And I've had a couple conversations with some members about old school lean workouts that we would do, high rocks training. Well, the idea, and I've said this before with lean workouts, is to be a low impact, simple movements do that you get a great full body workout in, but it's not a progressive overload training. It's not something that builds on itself consistently like our CrossFit, our Build Well to Warrior CrossFit programming does. Like that's training programming built Monday through Friday. It's built to build on itself to grow and evolve and progress. Lean was never meant to be that way. It was meant to be just a good conditioning workout, a sweat session, simpler movements, things that aren't um scary, if you will. They're not complex gymnastics and heavyweight, and like a burn, you know, a good burn. But it's also not the best workouts for high rocks either. So it's just it's just a good exercise session. It's what it is. So talking to my wife, and one of my problems with it is I like progressive. I like things that are progressing you, that are building you and moving you forward. And that's why I really stick to the build welded broke uh warrior programming. And personally, I follow that. That's why that's the staple in the gym, because it's a training program for continuous progression. General physical preparedness, but it is progression. But you know, my wife was saying, you know, some days I just like to do lean workout. I want to feel good, I want to move the body, you know, clear the clear the brain. You know, she she's like, I don't I don't want to train like you every day. I don't want to do that. I want to work out, I do want to get stronger, but not everybody has the same mindset as say I do when it comes to you know training and exercise. Don't get me wrong. I I think I would like everybody to, but also I know I know I can get a little off kilter with it in about you know, with you know, training and whatnot. So here's what I think. Now Jacob and I were sitting here at the gym yesterday talking about this and kind of thinking through all the things. Now I'm coaching pretty big classes in the morning, trying to figure out the optimal way to integrate high rocks training, preparing for an event, lean style workouts, so people have those opportunities Tuesday, Thursday to get a good full-body workout in, you know, and we do have a chunk of members that do enjoy those type of workouts. And the most important thing with training is what I meant to say, and what I was talking to my wife, is that you're consistent. And if lean workouts help you be more consistent because you enjoy them and you have fun, then we're winning. Okay, you're winning the fitness game, just purely on that note alone of consistency. It is the most important thing. And just because it's not the way I prefer to get workouts in, but if I only had to do only got one or two workouts, and like she brought up, when I go on vacation stuff, I do lean style workouts. That's what I do. Um, I'm not trying to do progressive overloading and high skill stuff and Olympic weightlifting and all the things. So I get the desire to have some of the old school style lean workouts, and I bring that up because they're more variety to them. Um, our high rocks workouts have been written for high rocks, they've been very written around capacity work for those events, and let's be honest, 40 minutes of wall balls and running can be kind of boring, which is tomorrow's workout. It's great capacity work, great, but it could be a little bit boring. I get it, which might make it to where you know training isn't as fun for you, which makes it less consistent for you, which is a loss. We want it to be fun and consistent. So, most likely next week, we're gonna be riding more lean-style workouts. Probably just gonna keep calling it lean, even though I despise the word lean. And the reason I despise the word lean is because it has this connotation that that is the kind of training you need to do to get lean. And that's simply not true. You need to do all training to get lean, but lean, getting lean, comes down to a caloric deficit. Okay, it comes down to what goes into your mouth. I know people that do zero cardio, zero, all they they only lift weights. Some of the leanest, fit, best bodied people I've ever met. Then you look at CrossFitters, not to toot my own horn, but I think I do all right now in the physique department. And the big change in that was 100% dietary. Okay, may or may not believe that, but I've kind of trained the same way for many, many years. But when we had the big diet overhaul with uh Claire's ordeal with her Crohn's, that was when I really started to see long-term sustainable change in my physique. There's also other variables, midlife stuff, hormone optimization. There is other variables, don't get me wrong. And yes, I'm one of those people that are on HRT. I'm 41 years old, and yeah, you know, I'm transparent about this. I'm transparent about all men's health, and to the my limited knowledge when it comes to women's health, I'm very open to monitoring, managing your overall health and looking at the whole picture. I think it's important for vitality, I think it's important for everything. But I can tell you that getting lean is not from the lean workouts, and I hate that connotation, but it has been ingrained in our gym culture, those style of workouts, and it's just, you know, it is what it is. It is what it is. But if I get another person that asks me if that's what they need to do to lose weight, I'm I'm gonna a little it's not. It helps, like all training. It helps. But at the end of the day, it comes down to what goes in your mouth is the most important thing when it comes to getting lean. All right, not gonna get into the perimenopause stuff, not gonna get into the menopause stuff. It's a whole nother animal, and training affects that. And I'm gonna tell you right now that extra cardio is most likely, in my most humble professional opinion, not gonna be the thing that gets you lean. It's gonna be strength training and correct dietary things and managing your blood work and working with somebody that knows what the hell they're doing. For instance, I've started running a lot, okay, for HIROCs. Way more than normal. Did an in-body scan. My muscle went down and my body fat went up. All right, muscle went down from 101 pounds to 97 pounds, most likely due to glycogen storage, glucose storage in the muscle. And my body fat went up from 11.1% to 11.9, and I've increased my cardio dramatically. Am I concerned about this? Hell no. Alright, it's fine. I'm training for an event, and the event requires me to be a hell of a lot better at running because the event known as high rocks is over 50%, probably 70% of the cardiovascular output is related to running. Okay, so most of the time it's running. So yeah, it's the nature of the deal. But it's not like I started running, my body weight dropped, but it's not right. I'm not gonna keep beating this dead horse, but I am gonna start riding workouts with my brother, like our old school lean workouts. They're gonna be written with a mindset of a large class and how we can keep that flow as high quality as possible in the group class experience from a class management standpoint, and provide a nice, full-bodied workout at the same time, the way we've always done it. Right. I will say it is frustrating not knowing how many people each day are doing, you know, we'll be doing lean or regular group class. It's really hard to plan. I'm still trying to work on logistics of trying to figure that out. It's really only an issue for um bigger classes. Um, are the non-peak classes, it's really a non-issue. But like 5 a.m., I got 37 people tomorrow. And planning that does take effort, and um it's not something us coaches can just wing it. So these workouts will be very intentionally programmed around a larger class to be able to accommodate and work that together. So probably next week, okay. No reason to go on. So you might think what's happening with high rocks. You know what? I'm really digging it. I'm digging it, something to train for, looks fun. The event looks like a spectacle. I do believe our group class training is the best base of fitness training and straight training for the event, but we need to run more. All right, so we need to run more. And what I'm looking at doing is I have a high rock's track in Sugar Wad. Like you can see Buildwater Warrior, you can flip over, see HyRox track. My plan is to really start putting a lot of intention into running intervals in there that you do on your own. Um, we're gonna get more sleds to incorporate into group class because I feel and truly believe that sled work is good for everybody. It's a good part of CrossFit in general. It's great low impact strength and conditioning work. It's great. I do believe sled work is great for everybody, and we're gonna work a way to where we can start having those incorporated in the group class more often, not just because I'm doing high ROCs, it is a piece of overall fitness that can be used in any style of training, and it is a staple in CrossFit. We've just never done a ton of it. So we're working on that. When it comes to high ROX events and leading up to events, I will be programming more stuff in the HIROCS track leading up to events, and then on top of that, I'm planning on running a handful of micro simulations leading up to events for us to get real down and dirty with 60 to 90 minute efforts. Um most likely be on Saturday, and we'll do a handful of them leading up to events for prepping, you know, learning your transitions, learning where your holes in your fitness are. And basically, for this first time leading up to Vegas, I am your coach for High Rocks. And um, if you want to sit down, talk about your training, talk about how to maybe plug some holes that you might notice in your own fitness, and um, if you want to talk about that, but I can tell you right now, all of us need to run and do more running intervals. So, right now, through the end of this month, next week, the week after, I'm just increasing my running time. I'm doing more zone two, okay, just out running, getting some volume running. Once we get into December, uh I'm gonna be doing about 50% zone two work is gonna be running, and then I'm gonna be at least once, maybe twice a week. One day is gonna be just running intervals, and then one day is gonna be compromised running intervals, which means that I am going to be doing workouts such as you know, lots of wall balls, lots of um sled pushes with running, and it'd be just a butt kicker kind of deal. But honestly, most people would it find it boring. But compromise running intervals. We get the strength work in group class, and I still plan on doing group class every um, I still plan on doing group class every day. So this will be training that I personally do on top of group class, if that makes sense. And again, you guys that are signed up for high rocks, you want to sit down with me, we can game plan, talk about things that you can you can work on and build upon, incorporate, and then follow the high rocks track as I progress programming in there and the intervals and various things you can do. And then when I'm planning on doing high rock simulations kind of workouts at here at the gym, I will let you guys know when we're doing those well in advance so that um we can all partake um leading up to an event. All right, so that's kind of the plan right now. With that, next online community, communications, marketing, this, that, and the other. I've mentioned it before, but I am very much uh social media is exhausting. And um, not negative, there's so much positive with it, it gets negative when you let it get negative, and it's just like I really want to limit my protect my time on it. Um, and I know a lot of members like they do communicate with me and engage with me on Instagram, for instance, and I love that. I do, but I also feel bad when a member asks me a legitimate like coaching question and I didn't check it for three days. And um I don't know. I don't want that to be like the main place that double-edg coaches and members like we're communicating. Don't know if I have the best answer for this yet, but some things I'm looking at, I'm looking at sugar wad. There's a community on board in there just for double-edged members. I'm trying to communicate on that a little bit, just seeing what it's like. I can't post a video in there, so like let's say hypothetically I want to post some movement videos or a little extra knowledge on something in regards to a workout, or the other coaches have some insights on various things. Looks like I can only post photos and written commentary in there. So that that may or may not be a place where coaching dialogue takes place. Not sure. We do have a Facebook group that I'm gonna put in this newsletter. You guys can go join it. Um, right now, my mindset is it is for current double edge members only. If you're a current active double edge member, that's the people I want in that group, and us being able to communicate, ask questions. You know, I'm theoretically, and let's be honest, I remember when Facebook came about. I remember when Cassie accepted me as her, you know, as her boyfriend on Facebook way back in the day. Been around forever. But I haven't used it hardly at all in the last like five years. Okay, I now have it downloaded on my phone again. And we're gonna see if this Facebook group is a place for sharing information, sharing thoughts and ideas related to the internal double-edged community, and if we're getting value out of that. The other tool that was brought up for me was WhatsApp. Uh, one thing I'm gonna use WhatsApp for is all the people going to HyROX in Vegas. So I have a central place to communicate, uh, various things, travel, warm-ups, um, any insights that I'm getting from HyROX, the event for the event down there that I can share with the people who are participating in the event. So things like that. I also created a community in there, a double-edged community, that I will put in this newsletter that you guys can go join if you're on WhatsApp, and maybe that will become a place of utility, communicating with double-edg members and um having a forum where me as a coach can go in there and share things, you know, nutrition knowledge, movement stuff, you know, extend our coach, I'm saying me, but all of us coaches, extending our coaching arm beyond the class and be able to answer questions and help you guys out and being you know accessible. Now I know people have questions and this and that and want help with various topics. And um, if you have a question, most likely 10-20 other people have the same question. And I'm just looking in a platform where I can spend more of my coaching energy there versus creating content on social media. Um, and I'm still gonna be on there, I'm still gonna be on so you know Instagram and whatnot. But um, my desire for social media usage is to connect with our current double-edged community and any like just outside the community, potential members who might be interested in the community. That's kind of it. I don't want being an influencer and like ugh sounds gross. I mean, there's a big part of me that wishes cell phones and social media didn't exist, but it is a part of our world now, and fortunately, unfortunately, businesses and people and service businesses and stuff like that, you have to be on it. You have to be on it. So I can't ignore it, but I also want to make sure it's an effective use of my time, energy, and is providing value to our members, people here at Double Edge Fitness. And if we can isolate a for a platform here, Facebook group, WhatsApp, um, the Sugar Wad community page, kind of see where a lot of conversation starts to take place, and then ultimately decide on the utility that we're gonna use the most of to where people can go for information, sharing information. You know, we have members that sign up for various events and they want to say, is anybody else doing this? You know, they we can post that in this deal so everybody sees it, you know, as a way to communicate versus just writing it up on the whiteboard out in the gym. So if you have thoughts on that or you know the online social world better than me, which most likely 90% of people do, a lot of this is new to me. And um, at least new in the sense, since the last time I looked at it, it's come a long ways. So, yeah, the links to join the Facebook group and the WhatsApp group are gonna be in the newsletter, and then um Sugar Wad, that community board. Like if you're subscribed to the Double Edge program, you can go in there and look at it. Anybody can post on there. I made a couple posts on there about some changes I made, and somebody engaged with me, so you know that might be a good tool. And then last thing but not least, um, we have the Christmas party on second to last thing. I I messed up the date in the last newsletter, but I got the day right. Saturday, December 13th. Okay, that's here at the gym, and then the following Friday, the 19th, we got a little organization going on for. Little going away party for coach is Coach Chase. That'll be his last day before he heads off to the police. All right, well, it's the Academy, Police Academy. And um, yeah, so that will be on the 19th after last class here at the gym, most likely Parlay 6 right next door. So throw that on your radar. We're gonna have to get a head count for that, I believe, pretty soon. Um, so we know what to plan there. Um, so yeah, I'll be looking out. I think we're gonna probably do an e vibe for that. But just want to throw that out there on the radar. And yeah, that's all I got. If you guys got insights on any of this stuff, questions on it, hit me up. And um, I love you guys. And yeah, see what I can do to annoy you, maybe drive you crazy on the next video or informative. I really want to get a good podcast out with somebody besides me and more something different than this stuff. You know what I'm saying? Trying. Nobody wants to come and talk with me. Nobody, right? But I am trying to plan one. Want to get a recap of Faye's whole fitness history, but then that ultra race you just did. Uh I want to do that. You know, but if anybody has any topics, you want to come and chat, love to do it. Love to do it. We're ready. We got the podcast deal all set up. Um, just need to get some content so I'm just not sitting here talking to myself. Feel me? All right. That's it. I'm done. Peace. Love you guys.