Own Your Workout

If you're following and exercise program, there is a temptation to try and follow it to the letter (or give up trying). We want you to OWN YOUR WORKOUT. To keep you empowered to do what's right for you, your goals, and your abilities on that day- here are some tools! 

Transcript

0:00

Okay. From the top, sorry, what were you saying from the top? Um, I was saying this episode is all gonna be about owning your workout, which I'm sure we've talked about to some degree in the other episodes because so many themes are overarching. Mm-hmm. But this is one that as a coach, I have found myself saying this to a lot of people in the last just couple of weeks. Mm-hmm. With conversations that I've had in progress reviews and. It's one of those topics that I think comes up if you're even making that appointment, like you're owning your experience here mm-hmm. To take the time to meet with your coach. Mm-hmm. And so I just wanna open that door for everybody just a little bit more, uh, to really fully take advantage of what coaching can really provide for you. Yes, we, yeah, actually talked about this with our coaches recently too. Mm-hmm. So this is actually mm-hmm. Coming out. Mm-hmm. Uh, once a month we get together with all of the team and we do what we call a coaches collab, uh, where we collaborate as coaches to help each other improve. And, uh, right now we're early building this team, so it's a little bit of top down, but, uh, the. Hope for that is to be just more and more collaborative as we all grow together as a team. But there was a big theme that we talked about is helping each individual in the class get what they need out of it and not just what the program says they should do. Because we don't want to be a cookie cutter program. It is great to be able to follow programs online or be given a program by, by a coach that some people really find value in just being told what to do without having to overthink their whole programming. We hear that a lot, don't we? Yeah, yeah. But at the same time it's a framework. It's not, uh, a religious text that must be followed by the letter. Right. It's like, well, it's a framework for you to follow and for your coach to help you follow Exactly. By. Customizing it for you in the moment based on what you need. Right. And so people need, and that's the difference between coaching and just going, leading a class. Yeah. Or just like going to any other gym and following an app. Like you are not gonna get the customization in the moment. Mm-hmm. And I know a lot of people might just attribute that to being a response to your fitness level, but it's more than that. It's like what your actual objectives are too, don't you think? One of the reasons that I wanted to bring this up is because I feel like this becomes more apparent or obvious to people who have been with us a while, or people like you and me who are really experts at tailoring workouts for ourselves. Mm-hmm. And what we're currently challenged with, or what we're wanting to work towards. I feel almost maybe too much liberty sometimes. Looking at a program and mm-hmm. Contorting it to fit my needs. Mm-hmm. But I want everybody to develop that skill. Yeah. I'm really explicit about that. I wanna talk about a, a little bit of that balance too, because you can swing way too far the other way and I want to, I think I do that, I wanna address that, but I think even for a more experienced athlete or someone who's been working with us for a long time, can still. Forget, uh, about taking ownership of their own workout and, and making modifications where needed because sometimes. Part of the growth path is to get closer and closer to an RX workout, right? So if something's on the board and we celebrate those victories of when people can do them as prescribed mm-hmm. That becomes sort of an objective for some people. And I, you can be on a really good path for six months, 12 months, three years, getting closer and closer to being a more RX athlete in quotes. Um. Then something happens to set you back. That person I think, can sometimes need a, a good reminder that, you know, you're just here to get the best workout that you need for the place that you're in right now. Right now. Yeah. Uh, it's not about getting closer and closer to that rx. Yes, we wanna celebrate that 'cause it's just a signal of growth, but it is not the objective. The objective is of this program is not to follow the program to the letter. The objective of the program is to make you a healthier human being. So let's with changing, with constantly changing circumstances. Yeah. And let's make sure that that's the priority. Yeah. The workout isn't the priority. Your body is the priority, and those changing circumstances are. You know how you slept last night? Yeah. How old you are today? Yeah. Job change. Um, did you just come back from vacation? Pizza? Um, yeah. I just, we just had a new pizza. We just had a new signup start the other day. And I was showing her how to use the readiness score and train heroic and I'm genuinely curious how many people use that. I don't think that the readiness score is. By all, by any means, like a requirement or necessary for you to do well in the gym. However, what I think the readiness score, so when you open up your train heroic app and it says start session, it asks you about your sleep, your soreness, your mood. Your something. Oh. Do you remember any others? Uh, yeah, it's sleep, soreness, mood, energy. Mm-hmm. And there's a fifth one. I forget anyway. You get the idea. One of those. And so what I think I, oh, I'm already getting warm. Um, what I appreciate about it is that it reminds us or trains us to check in with ourselves. Yeah. And I think if you are one of the people who just come into the gym and look at the board and already expect of yourself. I'm gonna do that as it's written without checking in with yourself. That is a little bit of a dangerous game to play, in my opinion, and to me, that's not owning the workout. To me, that's being almost like. A slave to the word, right? Mm-hmm. Like you are not making decisions for yourself with ever changing circumstances. Yeah. And that's how people get into really dicey situations, right? Yeah. Well, and this kind of brings up a point I wanted to talk to you about. We, when we were discussing what this podcast should be about, you had mentioned a couple things and weren't sure if they would, make a hole. Podcast, the whole episode. Uh, but one of those was self-talk and Oh, okay. The reason I relate this together is that I think it's, it's. When people are discouraged with their own performance, it has less to do with their performance and more to do with their expectations. Mm-hmm. And so if your expectation is, oh, I should be able to do what's on that board. Yeah. Should is it really does not exist in the gym. Yeah. And so, it's kind of a reality check that I think we should all, should we, we would all benefit from taking a mindset of. Working with where, what we have versus what we wish we had or what we think we ought to have. And a good analogy for this that I just wanna talk to you about is my experience with drawing in the last few years. Mm-hmm. It's frustrating for me, but the reason why drawing is frustrating to me is that I know at a time in my life 30 years ago, I was better at it than I am now. Like I was immersed in it. I was doing it. Often. I would pull all-nighters working on an art piece, and I was part of that culture. Like I was working at an art gallery and I was, you know, surrounded by artists all the time and. And making your own stationary and yeah, trying to start, that was one of my first businesses I ever tried to launch, and so that was my world. And then here I'm 30 years later and I sit down to draw. And one reason it's frustrating is I know I have so much more, you know, quote unquote potential to be able to draw. Better. And I can see the mistakes as it's happening, but I just don't have the skill to fix it. And so that's a frustrating place to be, but the only reason it's frustrating is because of my expectation of thinking I should be able to draw better. But here's the reality, I haven't drawn consistently for 30 years. So what diluted part of myself thinks that I should be able to draw better than I am. And it's like, well, I haven't. We, what does the last 10 years look like? You know, I see people in the gym kind of shaking their head about oh, I didn't do that well, or I didn't do as many as I thought I should. And it's like, Hey, you've been consistent for the last six months or a year we've been seeing progress in you. But I think sometimes that expectation is like, well let, let's just take a bigger step back and like, look at the last 10 years. Yeah. What's the last 10 years of your life looked like? And then. Compare that with your expectation of what you think you should be able to do. It's like, well, then it makes 'em a little more sense. Yeah. There's evidence to support that, and I'm not trying to like knock on anybody. I'm just saying like, I think sometimes our own self-criticism is just a little bit of a lack of a reality check. Yeah. It's like, oh, well I can't do. For instance, right now I'm not hitting any of my old strength numbers, but I've also had a ton of ups and downs in the last few years and a huge hiatus during the COVID era. Mm-hmm. And so it's like, why should I expect to be able to hit those numbers? It's silly for me to be disappointed. I'm not disappointed 'cause it's like. I haven't put in the work to be able to do that. Okay. We're veering off just a bit. But I do wanna just say that in the last 10 years, even in the last five years, you have attended art class. Mm-hmm. A structured opportunity for you to practice your drawing. Um, we did this at the Josephy Center. And what I think is important to circle or like to tie in here is that you had an instructor that you were able to get feedback from. Mm-hmm. To not only give you that reality check, but to give you the next steps or this is what I think you should focus on, and that's what our job is. I would really hate for people to come to this gym and just think of it as, oh, this is my opportunity to get a workout. This is an opportunity to have somebody. In your corner who can give you the feedback to get you unstuck. Of where you perceive yourself to be stuck. Yeah. And I say perceive yourself to be stuck because like you were saying, we could have really unfair expectations of ourselves and what I might just suggest you all think about or maybe even just ask about. If you're wondering about what we think you need improvement on, we are very happy to share that with you. Most of the time we operate wanting you to lead that conversation because we're meant to be a support system for you. So we don't want to make you do anything. Or you know, we've got our own set of values that we. Coach from, but if you are wondering where your deficits are or where your blocks are, that might get you further. We're happy to share that with you. And I think you might be surprised because we've been able to work with you all from day one here and everybody's, been with us for a different amount of time. But every single member that I work with, for instance, I can think of a time where. They were up against something that they couldn't move through, or I've been able to just see progress within everybody. I think I can point to progress for every single person, and it's kind of like. I'm trying to think of like another experience, like maybe if you're like on a weight loss journey and you get feedback from people who haven't seen you in a long time and they're like, wow, you look amazing. Sometimes you're too close to this situation. Mm-hmm. To notice change. Mm-hmm. But we have this perspective, even if we work with you regularly enough, removed from the situation to really notice and celebrate your wins. We try to do our best to remind you all of those and have the member spotlight. You know, we only do two member spotlights a week, and. On any given week, there are so many moments Oh, yeah. That we celebrate, like at our dinner table, you know, you and I are talking about our members all the time of the cool thing they did that day. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. In my rat pack class yesterday, somebody was asking if we just sit around and laugh about them. Oh my gosh, what? And I said, no, we actually, it's the opposite. We're actually just so proud of. Everybody here, we're always just bragging on about you guys. Oh my gosh. Let the record show. Oh, that is so not Well, it was funny in the moment because we were doing some agility, balance drills where we're throwing, it gets silly lacrosse balls and standing on one foot and, you know, doing kind of silly it, it feels silly 'cause you're doing stupid human tricks. But, the hope is that it's improving high hand eye coordination and balance and all this stuff, but it can feel awkward in the moment. And it was, it was funny. But no, we're very proud of all of you. We actually almost always just have conversations about, the people in the gym that we see winning on different levels. Like whether it's a family who's all training together. Mm-hmm. And just how amazing we think it is when there's like parents and kids all working together in the same class and just how cool that is or well the other night you had told me that one of our students is paying for this class on their own. Yeah. Out of their own allowance. Yeah. Or the money that they've made over the last few summers. And like that brought me to tears, you know? Yeah. And that was just something that you and I exchanged like. Brushing our teeth before, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. We're, we're off topic. It's fine. I wanna bring it back. So, um, I had mentioned that I had had a few conversations in the last few weeks of how to take ownership of your workout, and there's a lot of different reasons why I want to share this or a lot of different ways that you can go about this, but some examples to give you. Or we have had members who have maybe not gravitated towards the circuit kind of training that we do, and they want to appeal more to strength. And I'm just gonna tell y'all, like we started this as a weightlifting only gym. Mm-hmm. But we came to find that that is not what the people wanted. There's a reason that we enjoy CrossFit. Like it's a good time too. So it makes a lot of sense. As to why we became the gym that we are. But this particular member wanted more of a strength bias and how do we help them with that? I've had members who use this as a supplement to their running, uh, that is their main jam. They wanna do races. How do we support them in our classes for that pursuit? Mm-hmm. And I've got another sprinter who I work with in sport who, um. We wanted to talk about how to appeal to that stimulus too, in class. And then somebody else who came to me earlier, just yesterday about, um, another course that they were taking on their own about, posture, structure and restructuring. Mm-hmm. Uh, really from the bare bones if you will. And so, um, I've had conversations with all of these people of, okay, let's look at this workout. You know, we always make adjustments for this workout for our fitness level. How do we finish it successfully within the timeframes, get the stimulus we want, but also leave here feeling accomplished. I always try to remind people like, this is not meant to beat you down. I want you to leave here smiling, and the most important skill that you can develop here is how do we adjust a workout for you. So that can happen. But we can take it a step further. And how do we customize, or how do we adapt to this template that we prescribe? 'cause that's what it is, it's template. How do we tailor that for your specific goals, if that is for a strength bias, a speed and power bias? Or how would we like a stability bias? I don't know how else to, to phrase that in the moment. Um, and so. Or cardiovascular output or whatever. Yeah, totally. Some people need that, first and foremost. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. And I think that this is where training really gets interesting because it's no longer just this like thing you're getting through. The closer, like the faster we can get people to the that point where they can look at a workout and this is gonna work for me and challenge me where I want slash need to be challenged. That's where things get so much more interesting and it really does take an extra mental step and a little bit of. Preparation and strategy that, you know, if you're not appealing to that, it's no biggie. Like the fact that everybody is showing up and moving is really priority number one. Mm-hmm. I just wanna say that there is the opportunity to kind of advance the experience and you and I as coaches do this for ourselves all the time with, our own goals and. Very rapidly changing lifestyle. Sorry, I just said a lot. No, that's fine. That's, uh, it's all good. I think that's the meat and potatoes of what we're talking about is to identify what purpose of a workout is, and hold that up against your purpose for being here. And then try to get those things to match because if the workout doesn't seem to match why you're here, then that's the perfect opportunity to take ownership of it and say, oh, instead of this, can we try that? And, uh, because I think it's more in line with my goals or my needs, you know, you just said something that I don't wanna g glaze over and you were you didn't say it directly, but the thing is, is if you, if you start to, I feel like if you don't tap into why you're doing it or how this serves you mm-hmm. That's where it's really easy to skip class. Or get really unmotivated or like to get frustrated like you were saying before. And it's like, well take a minute to think about really what is it we're trying to achieve here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. The getting frustrated. 'cause you can't do. Thrusters. Properly. It's like, well it was your goal when you signed up here to be able to do a thruster properly. Mm-hmm. Because I don't think it was right. I think your goal was to like get leaner and feel more capable and have more energy in your life and to be able to do those other things you wanna do. So, totally. Let's not get hung up on the thruster. Totally, totally. Yeah. It's really too detail oriented sometimes. And you know, I do have some people who will sit in this room with me and say, like. You know, I've been here for three months now. I really want to get the RX movements. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think that's a great goal to have because that gives us a really clear path, right? If we have an objective like that, I know that we can't just skip to the end. We have to build the blocks to get to those ranges of motion demands, whatever. Mm-hmm. But it helps me as your coach know that that's what you're after. Because if it's just to. If it's something a little bit more vague, like to feel better than like just showing up is gonna do that. We don't have to contort much or tailor much to make that happen. Mm-hmm. But I would say I actually really appreciate these members that come to me with these asks, because it makes me, it's the kind of coaching that I really like to do. I like to get into the specifics. I like to look at outcomes, in sport or outcomes in, really specific domains that they're interested in improving and seeing how we can help with that. So, I just want you all to remember that, progress reviews with your coach are encouraged, especially if these things are becoming more solidified for you and it's never something to apologize about. This is, at least not to me, I, this is what I dig. It makes me feel like I get to, I get to investigate a little bit. I get to learn more as a coach. You know, leading class is not challenging for me at this stage in my career, but being able to work with people's very individual goals. You know, how do I help somebody increase their running time in a stimulus that's completely different? That is fun for me. Yeah. Yeah, I think communication is key there, uh, as well sometimes. I get, I, I know we've mentioned this on other podcasts, but sometimes I get the comment of like, I'm sorry, I don't mean to, you know, bother you, or I don't mean to be such a pain in class because I mean, you know, asking for these specific things. And I always try to stop that person and, and tell them like, I, this is what I'm here for. Yeah. This is what, this is why I'm here for you. This is not a departure from what's going on. This is what's going on. You, you know, if you didn't need me. Then I could just post this up on a video and walk away and have everybody just follow along. You know? But that's not, that's not my job here. And I think that communication is really key too. And I just wanna take things back to Snatch Day, which we had really recently. And. You know, every time we've got snatch day, I try to remind everybody, like, just go with the flow. This is not a testament to how strong you are as a weightlifter of many years. Y'all like it is really not a testament to how strong you are. And it can be a lift that almost like we intentionally give you because we want to. Challenge your body and your brain. Mm-hmm. It's not always about strength training. There's other domains of fitness that we wanna provide for you all, and some of that is skill acquisition. Mm-hmm. And general physical preparedness so that if you are out in the world and wanna learn water skiing, you're going to be given a set of instructions and you're gonna know how to move through those because. You've done step-by-step progressions of a very complicated lift in your peak fit class. Yeah. So what I wanna say about that though is that if you find yourself in a position where. It's more meaningful for you to take that time to get stronger as opposed to that skill acquisition, especially if it's maybe a vulnerable place for your body to be. That's where we really get to collaborate together. If your goal is like, it's really about postural stability for me, and I feel like this movement really throws me out of alignment. No worries. We're gonna work with a snatch grip overhead press for strength during this time. For us as your coaches to make that time productive for you is the most important thing. And it takes time to figure out what that is, of course. Mm-hmm. And a lot of that I think has to be self-directed. I am happy to prescribe special things for everybody, but I also don't wanna, um. You know, if they wanna participate with the group as the way that the group is experiencing in class. Like, I don't wanna deviate. I feel like that's a, a collaborative thing for sure. I don't wanna make assumptions about anything. Um. And it's kind of wild, like how I made it so far into coaching without using that word, productive. I feel like that's been a newer thing in the last five years mm-hmm. Of coaching for me, of how do we make that time productive. But that's because I was also a part of other gyms that I was not the owner. I was not in charge of the values that we wanted to set. And a lot more of it was CrossFit assimilation, like you were talking about earliest. Mm-hmm. That the programming was the most important thing and getting good at thrusters and snatches and all those things were the point, not necessarily the individual. Yeah. Which I think is a miss in a lot of gyms. Mm-hmm. Um, but I mean, that's what's cool about owning your own gym. You get to decide what the. What the values are, what those values are. Yeah. And ours are very specific to the individual and really just wanting like overall wellness, health and capability and competency. Yeah. Yeah. And this is one thing I'd like to touch on that's a really, sorry, I have to, it's conce not competency. Couldn't let that go. The the idea of. Swapping out like you were using snatches as as an example. So I'd like to just stay on that for a minute. Sure. Because it's a fine line between taking ownership. Based on what you want and what you need. And I think we need to be real with ourselves of whether we're just avoiding discomfort. And so there's, this is why it's kind of a fine line or sticky subject or however you wanna phrase it, because we do want everybody to feel like they're. Productive. Yeah. Every time they come in here that they can be productive, even if the snatch movement is out of reach for them. Well, especially if it's your first time and like, don't knock it until you try it. Yeah. Um, but even if it's not your first time, even if it's a frustrating thing for you. I just want to touch on this a little bit because one reason why we have technical movements in our programming. Is that as we age, and I don't just mean when we're older, I mean as we age from about the age of like. 25 on, we begin to gradually lose coordination and balance and fast twitch muscle fibers. Mm-hmm. When we, uh, when you hear statistics of a certain amount of, uh, muscle loss every decade of your life, the first to go is your fast twitch muscle fibers. Right? And this is why balance and coordination and you're. Ability to be stable decreases with age. And we see it more as like a reflexive thing. Yes. Yeah. Reflexes slow down and all that. And so some of it's nervous system, but some of it's that fast twitch muscle fiber. So I do want to, uh, this kind of relates to a broader topic that I wanted to bring up, which is. Sometimes I get the feedback of like, well, I just don't like that. I don't like that movement, or I don't like to do that, and so I just don't want to do that. I want to do something else, and I am okay with that to a point. Like, I do want you to stay motivated and I don't want you to be discouraged. And every time you come in it's like a, you know, a friction point. I don't want that. But on the other hand, if we only work with the things that we. That feel easy to us, we will lose the ability to learn things, we'll lose the ability to develop that coordination and that balance aspect of your fitness. So I, I, I just want to be cautious about just giving into comfort all the time. Well, because there's, uh. I think people sometimes get this backwards, like, I don't enjoy this thing because I'm not good at, or I'm not gonna get good at this because I don't like it. And I'm thinking in my head the opposite. It's like, you would enjoy it if you put the time in to get better at it, because when it clicks, it's so rewarding. Like you don't know the victory that's on the other side of that. You know, when you like work at snatches for six months and then all of a sudden it just clicks into place and you're like, whoa, that felt so good. And then, then it's like, then well it's a, it's a clue, right? Yeah. As to where your deficits are. And it's a clue as to, what your body needs to learn. And I think that you're also touching on something that there's even more underneath it, is that the things that we're programming in here are not just 'cause there is a reason. Yeah. For every single movement, there's a reason for every single workout. You know, we wouldn't do it if we didn't find it valuable or find it to be an important function of your body that. You otherwise would never have the opportunity to train. Mm-hmm. Especially if you're at a job that is sedentary. Like, think about how many hours of your life you're missing out on movement by doing that. So, or even just, it might feel. Even a non sedentary job. Sure. But it's, most jobs are repetitive. That's their jobs. You're there to get the work done. Yeah. And so if you're waiting tables, you're getting ton of the steps in, but how much overhead lifting are you doing? Right. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I kind of have people think about that when we're, when we're learning things, uh, in on ramp, like how many times do you reach over your head at work? And they're like, never. And I was like, well, that's why we're training it. Yeah. You know, that's a function that your body. Has that we wanna tap into. And so that is, I think, an important thing to just kind of share with our community is that we program what we program because we think it's beneficial to make a well-rounded, uh. Strong body. Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of brings up another que topic that you and I talked about earlier today, which was various program styles and different types of exercise and this sort of mm-hmm. Uh, uh, mindset of like, well find something that you enjoy 'cause that's gonna be the exercise program that's best for you. And the i the, it's a little bit of a myth, isn't it? The thinking behind that I understand, is that if your choice is. Yoga or sitting on the couch, yoga's better, right? Like yoga's the better choice if that's the thing you enjoy. But you can't just, you can't muster the, the willpower to get to the gym and actually do a weightlifting, a strength and conditioning program, but you enjoy this other thing, then it's better than sitting on the couch. And I agree with that, and that's a great place to find some movement to build upon, however. I eminently disagree with the idea that just because you enjoy it, that is the thing that's best for you. Because if that were the case, I would just eat, I would just go out for pizza like six days a week. That would be your sport of choice, right? Yeah. It'd be pizza and ice cream all day. And so just because all night, all day. Just 'cause it's like the thing I enjoy doesn't mean that it's the best choice for me. Yeah. We had a discussion over breakfast as to why we continue to train this way. Yeah. Because regardless of the things that you and I have specialized in, we always come back to this kind of training. Yeah. And for me it's really important. Just I do a lot, a lot of research on this. I. I don't have a PhD. I'm not gonna cite a whole bunch of PubMed papers or anything, but just like generally speaking, all things point toward maintaining strength as high as you can because it gives you a better runway at the end of your life. Yeah, to stay strong and stay mobile and stay independent. And the high intensity conditioning portion has to do with all sorts of other. Biometrics, if you will. So whether it's cancer, diabetes, heart disease, like all these things that plague us later in life, and especially decrepitude, all those things are mitigated through strength and conditioning, like good old classic barbell work and high intensity interval training. Those two things are the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to health and longevity and vitality in every. Bone density, like everything points to that as being the biggest. Priority other than, quality, sleep and nutrition, all that well, I'm just talking about exercise specifically, so I'm not knocking yoga or Pilates or a kettlebell only program or people who just love to run, or people who are just into weightlifting or whatever, or bodybuilding. You know, I have nothing against. Any of those programs, but the reason why we focus on what we focus on is that this is the bedrock, this is the core, and these are the things that just about every body on this planet would benefit from whether you like it or not, but you will like it. My, I guess my circling back around here is that you will like it if you, you will like it if you devote some time to it. No, I'm just saying like, if you develop the skills to feel like you're winning. Yeah, if you come in and you see improvement, you'll like it like that. Oh yeah. You will like that part. Like it doesn't, it doesn't have to mean that you love burpees or you love thrusters. I will never love thrusters. I can just tell you right now, no matter how good I get at 'em, I will never love thrusters, but. If I can execute them properly, they're a lot less sucky than if I'm struggling to get the movement right? Yeah. And so practice does help with the enjoyment as well. I'm gonna say something controversial. I kind of wish there were burpees on our baseline. Ooh. Because that would be a really amazing opportunity to see what kind of progress there is with not only like living through them, but how they can be improved. Like that's a, an easy thing to always feel challenging. And so it'd be kind of cool to have a workout that would showcase progress there, you know? Yeah. Oh no, I have to sneeze. Go ahead. Nope, you're not, it's not gonna happen. Nope. Um, I do wanna like continue to circle back 'cause this is a really easy topic to branch out in a lot of different ways, but I wanna talk about like what owning your workout could look like. Mm-hmm. Does that, is that an okay mm-hmm. Direction to take? So I wanna give some examples of how we do this ourselves. And then how does that look in gym like in the, in classes, in the gym. So sometimes in class when we're doing the whiteboard brief and we're going over the workout, depending on the structure that day, you might hear me say things that will be encouraging of if you add more weight, you know, this is gonna be an opportunity to develop strength here. So I think about like. Kettlebell swings or goblet squats, like, and we don't prescribe a weight. Uh, and we're working with maybe a fixed time domain. Fixed time domains are really great opportunities to kind of choose your own adventure, right? You can either, because a lot of that's gonna be structuring pace, so you know, you can go for that. Steady cardio benefit if you work lighter and more consistently without taking breaks. Mm-hmm. Or if your goal is to get stronger, I would say prepare to go slower. But build more strength here. Yep. So you have sometimes the opportunity in any given workout to kind of choose a lane of what you wanna prioritize. Another way that this can be facilitated is, you know, with your coach ahead of time, I'm working on hurdles this season. How can we structure class in a way that's gonna benefit that fast twitch that you were talking about, that power development. So for instance, I just wanna share a way that I have modified some things for a sprinter that I'm working with right now who is in group class, right? This can be done. In a group setting. And it, at least on my end, it doesn't take a lot to. To structure these things, but my hope is to eventually start to teach you the pattern in which we're making these adjustments so that you can do it yourself. So it's heavy back squat day, right? Build to a challenging five. We've got 25 minutes to do it, or 30 minutes to do it. Rather than working with increasing weights, we worked with, squat jumps instead. Mm-hmm. Weighted squat jumps. And so we're working with change of direction rebounding and explosive power, but at a weight that really didn't change much. Uh, so the objective, rather than climbing in weight and building strength, we had a different priority that day. Or if we had a 20 minute amrap, say like Cindy. Rather than, uh, you wanna explain what that is? Oh, yes, Cindy, of course. Uh, we recently had, that was, uh, 20 minutes, uh, cycling through five pullups, 10 pushups and 15 air squats. What's the other workout that's similarly structured? It's like five rounds for time, not Cindy, but. Five rounds for time, something like that. It's like really similar. Oh yeah, I forget the names. Do you remember what the workout is though? No, go ahead. All right. I used to always get them confused, but I've since then forgotten the name anyway. Rather than trying to have like a steady working pace for 20 minutes, which is what I usually suggest for people to do because it's very easy to blow yourself up too quickly. Mm-hmm. And then really struggle through whatever time you have left. And so for this particular athlete we did on the minute work. So we actually kept a lot of the movements the same. We made the pushup a little bit more plyometric, so it became a burpee instead, uh, so that we could get that explosive power. And I think we adjusted the reps a little bit. He was able to do one strict pull up each time around. So we just did one, and then I believe it was like. Three to five burpees. And then rather than. Squats since we're prioritizing hurdles, we did split jumps, which are in a staggered stance, kind of like lunges would be. Mm-hmm. And essentially performing lunges with kind of a plyometric jump. Uh, and so it really required some good stability work too. Um, but also making sure that we're getting that single legged sort of stuff that you would see in a traditional hurdle. And so. We wanted to kind of build power in each of those areas, and rather than working with 20 minutes straight, I had him work on, I think a three or five minute clock. Mm-hmm. So like, get this done as quickly as you can in three minutes. I think it was more like, yeah, it was probably three and so whatever time you had left was yours to rest. Mm-hmm. Let that heart rate come down and then get ready to hit it again really hard because this is somebody who has to be prepared to go zero to a hundred within seconds. Mm-hmm. So that's. Just a little bit of an idea of, for someone who has a very specific goal but wants to train with us because of the modalities that we use that they might not see in their sport, we can very lightly tailor the workouts so that it fits their goals. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a lot of fun for me because it really requires me to, to be creative, uh, which I appreciate and. This person is probably gonna work with us longer because it's in support of what their goals are for themselves. Mm-hmm. In a domain that's more meaningful to them. You know, it is important to, to, for us to be aware that for some people coming to this gym is their bread and butter. This is their athletic physical life. Where for others, this is just supplementary to what they are already doing. Oh yeah. We see both. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any examples either for yourself or any other members? Well, recently I was talking with somebody who's on a slight caloric restriction. We're trying to get a little bit leaner and they have some goals around that. But we don't wanna lose muscle and some muscle mass is a really. A critical thing to not waste away muscle while you're losing body fat. Right. And which is why we try to just avoid the whole term weight loss anyway. It's too vague. You might lose weight, but we do, we care more about what kind of weight you're losing. We wanna lose bo excess body fat and we retain or gain muscle. So for this individual, I was talking about the fact that in order to keep that strength and muscle. Uh, up as much as possible while in a caloric deficit that they could bias their workouts, even the conditioning workouts in a class to be slower and get a worse score on purpose. Mm-hmm. But to do yes, but to do more strict movement. And so yes, there's a sacrifice a little bit. Yeah. Right. So, or a perceived sacrifice. Yeah. Lower score. In the case, what I was describing with him is like, because he can knock out kipping pull-ups, which are uh, yeah. High intensity cardiovascular. Biased pull up basically. 'cause it's a really fast cycle time. Mm-hmm. But it may not help you retain your muscle mass. And so what you may want to do is just stick with strict pull-ups and you may only get, like, you know, you may only get three where you were getting seven kipping ones and so your but your strength gains are gonna be significant. Yeah. So your score may go down, but you might retain the muscle, which is the most important thing here. That's a great example. Yeah. And a, yeah. I like that example a lot because there is a real trade off when you do it, but what it does is also kind of pulls back the curtain of how program design works and how we. How we're doing this. Yeah. And that there is intention behind it, and that each workout or each exercise can really favor a very particular part of fitness. We really wanna get to all of them, and that's why we see so many different things and so many. Different styles of workouts. Mm-hmm. But you might have something more specific that we need to focus on. Yeah. We, we wanna build a broad base, but that for you might be focusing on one corner of the brick structure, you know, that is weak that needs to be bolstered up in order to build that broad, base. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, I know I've done that for myself a lot. Just in being competitive in competitive weightlifting where I know you've heard me say many times, like, I don't wanna do any of those movements in timed workout. Mm-hmm. Because I don't wanna muddy the waters. And so a lot of times y like I. I'll use this week as an example. So we had the weighted pullup work, and I would like to have been in the weighted pullup category, but really I can only be relied on to do one really good pullup. And so it wouldn't have been all that productive to just leave it there. And so I asked Coach Brogan if it would be okay that I did sets of negatives, but rather than doing three negatives, could I do one strict pull up? And then make my next two reps negative. Mm-hmm. So that I could continue to train that movement. That's so difficult for me that I, you know, I've lost and gained so many times in life, and now that I have it back in my grasp, I really don't wanna let it go. Mm-hmm. And this felt like the best way to apply it in the day. And so that's just another example of how that looks. Like. I talked to my coach about, you know, this is what I'm thinking. What are your thoughts? Does that seem like a good use of today? Because sometimes I will get those questions and I'll say, no, that's actually not a great use of today, and I'll tell you why. But having your coach in on that conversation, I think is really important because if we see that you're just kind of like deviating and doing your own thing, it might give us an impression that you're kind of like. Scrapping the day or like not interested in what we're doing, but you know, open that door to be collaborative with us and open that door for us to share our expertise. Mm-hmm. Or if you're like thinking, you know, I really wanna get my first pull up. What's gonna be the best choice for me today? Yeah. Everybody comes into this gym with varying points of view, priorities and needs. And the more that you figure out what those are and share them with us, the better we can work with you. Yeah. We've, I think, talked about this before, but coaching is a communication two-way street. Mm-hmm. It is not a top-down authority situation. So I, I think it's one thing that separates coaching from, say teaching. I love to do both, but teaching is a top down situation where I am like giving information, but coaching is. M more like your co-pilot. Like we're, we're helping to direct you where you need to go, but we can offer, advice and mentorship and instruction and form correction and, having those eyes on you and. Guide and, and program design. And there's so many things we can offer, but the thing we don't know is your body as well as you do. And so it's up to you to share with us, uh, your inside perspective so that we can use all those tools at our disposal to help you make better decisions. Totally. Yeah. And I just think it's important to remind everybody that. Our objectives might be moving targets, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, I know in the last five years, my objectives with my physical goals have been all over the place. Whether it's like simply like get back into quote unquote shape or get ready for this weightlifting meet. And if you think about that time that I did get ready for the weight lifting meat, it was like this time last year. Or maybe a little bit later. But it was more like three or four months of like really intense focus, right? Mm-hmm. So there were things that I had to kind of let go in that time or redirect, and then once that meet was over, new objectives came to the surface, and the way that I was working out was really different. Mm-hmm. So I think it is important to just be flexible, uh, and just kind of pay attention to what is feeling important now. And if you're unsure we are happy to help identify that with you. And again, if your current goals right now is just like to simply continue to move. That's a great place to be. Yeah. I would say that this is kind of an advancement of your experience here. I wouldn't jump to it right away if those things aren't clear for you. But my hope is that this kind of like makes people start to notice that like this gets to be a deeper well and this is where it gets to be a lot more interesting, I think, and a lot more fun. And what's cool is that we're in this kind of phase of our gym where people are really turning this corner of having been with us for years now. Mm-hmm. And so we can see that really that deepening of the experience and not just being able to like, I couldn't do a pull up. I can do one now kind of thing. But people really learning how to make good decisions for themselves. I often kind of. Throw that out before the 3, 2, 1 go clock. I just say make good decisions. If you are working out and something is starting to like really break down, like you don't have to wait for me to tell you to stop, like you move on if that's not serving you. And I want to empower everybody to know their body better in that way. Yeah. So there is kind of like an additional objective that I think our gym offers. It's not just about creating a productive space for everybody, but there's a level of understanding that you're gonna have of your body to know where its thresholds are, of what is safe and what's unsafe. Mm-hmm. What's gonna be productive and unproductive and what is you really breaking through your barriers. Mm-hmm. And if we can facilitate that self knowledge, that's a huge gift. That's a huge gift that I remember cultivating for myself. And you know, that's an ever long process, but. It's what I think is gonna allow us to stay healthier longer because we're gonna know when we need to pivot or when we need to make different decisions so that we can continue the work. Yeah. Yeah. Outside the gym. Yeah, yeah. I think we're talking about you, you're talking about being flexible and being willing to pivot. Not only in the moment, but I think this is where consistency really comes through, is in your ability to bend, not break. Like if you're really rigid, you will break. Yeah. Uh, and, but if you're willing to bend, you can be. Consistent and we can continue to make progress in lots of different ways, and we've already had a whole podcast about that, but I just wanted to bring that up as part of what we're talking about here, of taking ownership of your workout is being willing to maybe change your mind of what the objective was today. Totally halfway through through the session. Totally. Yeah. Like, oh, that's not feeling good. Or this isn't, this is getting worse, not better. Mm-hmm. That kind of thing. It's like, well, let's, let's pivot now because it's your workout. Well, that's why on those circuits that you program where we've got like three rounds of like five different stations or whatever, I sometimes set the expectation of like, I wanna see your score improve Yeah. At the end. You know, I want, I want you to restructure how you would normally go about this to finish stronger than as you would expect, like everything feels fresh and good in the beginning, and then it like falls to shit. So I hope that we're facilitating that for everybody in ways to make some really meaningful changes in the gym or meaningful experiences in the gym. But I also hope that. Just throughout talking about this, you can also recognize the importance of having this skill in life, of like taking ownership of your experience and how is it gonna serve you best? And sometimes it's not the most obvious route. Mm-hmm. Right? Or comfortable. Right. I would say both are just as. Like those are on par with each other, and it is exactly our job to help you make those choices. So, please don't hesitate to take that ownership, even if it means asking for some help. Yeah. Yeah. Let's collaborate to help you take ownership. Yeah. All right. Does that sound like a good place to wrap up for today? I think so. Thanks for taking this topic on. It's, it's an important one to me. I have a couple questions for the audience. Ooh, yeah. First off, y'all, if you have, uh. Topics that you would like us to see us address, please let us know. You could, drop us a line on the business phone or email us or, uh, comment on wherever you're seeing this posted or whatever. Just give us some feedback on some things that you would like a little deeper dive on than we have time to go over in class. We would love to hear your suggestions. Totally. And the other thing is, um. We come into these usually with some sort of topic to riff on. And there's a lot of different ways to approach a podcast. I love conversational podcasts. Those are my favorite ones to listen to. However, when my business mentor puts out a podcast and it's some very specific topic, I get pretty hungry for that knowledge too. So there's benefits to having both very, very structured or very, very loose. And I'm just curious what you all wanna listen to. Hmm. If we're, uh. Going on tangents, is that a great thing or is it better to have a shorter, concise podcast that you're just getting some value bombs out of and then just and it's quick and dirty, but clean, you know, like, uh, value bombs. Yeah. You know, just like getting those those quick lessons or. Uh, is the, are, are the tangents valuable? So, I was gonna say we have lots of stories Yeah. Between us. Yeah. We've been doing this a while. We have, yeah. Yeah. Right. As a whole team. I was just thinking about this the other day as a whole team here, at Ruby Peak performance, if you take the whole coaching staff together, we have like 40 years of coaching experience. Cool. And so that's a lot of, that's a lot of stories to tell. Oh yeah. Yeah. A lot of hours under the belt, that's for sure. So we can go there if you want, but, uh, some feedback would be great for, you know, both of you who hear this. What? I'm just kidding. Oh, I was like, who are you talking to? I'm sure there's at least two people who will hear this. Yeah. Alright. Wanna wrap it up? Yeah, sounds great. Okay. Happy weekend everybody, or whenever this posts. Yeah. See you in the gym.