Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Training Smart AND Hard on Machines: The Misfit Gears Matrix 2.0 - E.367
Dive into the evolution of precision pacing with the newly updated Gears Matrix 2.0, a game-changing tool developed through 11 years of coaching data and countless athlete testing cycles. This episode unveils the comprehensive framework that has revolutionized how competitive CrossFit athletes approach machine-based conditioning.
The Gears Matrix organizes training intensity into eight distinct "gears," providing concrete pacing targets across rowing, biking, skiing, running, and more. We break down how this system bridges the gap between objective data and subjective effort, allowing athletes to systematically improve their conditioning through linear progression - something traditionally reserved for strength training.
What makes this approach so powerful? Our data shows that athletes who train across multiple intensity zones show dramatically better adaptation than those who stick to familiar paces. The matrix gives you a roadmap to explore everything from power-focused sprints to sustained aerobic efforts, all with specific work-to-rest ratios designed to optimize adaptation.
The updated version now includes expanded categories for zone one/two training and dedicated power output sections, providing a complete picture of your conditioning capacity. We share practical tips for implementing the matrix, tracking progress, and avoiding common pitfalls like machine variability and improper pacing.
Whether you're a competitive CrossFitter looking to gain an edge or a coach seeking better ways to quantify and improve conditioning, this episode offers invaluable insights into the science of speed and the art of perfect pacing. Download your free copy of the Gears Matrix 2.0 and transform how you approach conditioning forever.
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We're all misfits. Alright, you big, big bunch of misfits, you're a scrappy little misfit, just like me.
Speaker 2:Biggest bunch of misfits I ever seen either of the Misfit Podcast. On today's episode we got a real banger. I'm not going to bury the lead here. I got a lot of assets ready for life chat. I have three life chats. I have three life chats and two of them have videos associated with them. One just came to light last night. I already had one queued up from Sunday, so you should watch it on YouTube. We only get a couple hundred views on YouTube, so that's why I'm giving you guys the warning.
Speaker 1:Most of you listen.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, hunter can try to help narrate. But the real episode, after we get through all that that's going to take two or three hours at least is about the new Gears Matrix, gears Matrix 2.0. I teased this and then I got sick and Hunter went to the games and I went to Phoenix and phase one times 12 happened and all that good stuff. So, um, this podcast has been kind of sitting and waiting. Um gives us an opportunity to go back over the gears matrix, what we've learned from it. I've updated um, the actual matrix itself to include other things some more specific workouts with work to rest ratio all that good stuff. Um, so good time to go back over it now that we've got some new windows in there. So housekeeping is super straightforward. This week, if you want our individual programming, head to the link in bio and choose between Strivee or Fitter, and all of our programs are there. Our pro program is for semifinals and CrossFit Games athletes. Our comp program is for someone who would like to be able to see the Masters. Gpp and Hatchet Hatchet is for open athletes and semifinals hopefuls, and we have the standalone GPP program, which is a pretty good segue into a shout out. I want to give on here. It's funny because so much of what we do on this podcast to explain the programming and dive into things is either very specifically from the context of you're a competitor or you're an affiliate coach and sometimes an affiliate member, and that sort of leaves out the GPP athlete a little bit, and the results from that program have been pretty incredible. I think that can happen, as we know, at the affiliate level, when you kind of shorten up that movement tracker a little bit and people just get to work and they run, they row and they bike and they lift weights and get to practice their pushups and strict pull-ups and stuff like that on a regular basis. So it's a really cool program. It's basically to get people involved that don't have an affiliate to go to and don't want to compete. It's our cheapest option. Again, really great results on here. Really great program, if I do say so myself, and then I will update this story and tell you the name of this person, if they give me permission to do so next week, but I'm going to read the message anyways. Pretty fucking cool man.
Speaker 2:Back in June I weighed 229 pounds. I fluctuate a lot with my weight. I've got a poor relationship with food. I used to weigh 303 pounds before finding CrossFit, so you can imagine what that has left me with and my behaviors and how I handle nutrition, but on Friday I weighed in at 215 pounds. I've been really trying to make a mind shift nutritionally. I've been reading lots of books and articles on this topic that have helped. It was the first time I saw a real change in the workouts in a long time. I shaved over 90 seconds off my time.
Speaker 2:So this is in a specific kind of benchmark type workout. If I remember correctly, there's running in it as well, which is obviously, you know, your strength to body weight ratio is pretty damn important and honestly, just your body weight almost your body weight to fitness ratio I guess could be another another way to put that Definitely feel like this type of programming is perfect for me where I'm at in my life and the culture you guys have created with Misfit is something really cool and something I'm really happy to be a part of. Not sure where I'm going with this, but I guess I just appreciate what you guys have brought to my life with Misfit Athletics. Much love, those messages are awesome. We get that type of message. We got a really cool one that we'll go over in another episode, hopefully with some supporting media from a gym member. Recently we got the 66 PRs from Nicole at CrossFit Roots. That stuff really sort of keeps us motivated, keeps us going. Lets us know how you guys are doing so. Always cool to always stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome and I'll keep that train rolling here. This will be. I don't know if this is life chat. At this point I feel like you got way too many important things for that to have been life chat. But this will caveat nicely into that and I we chatted a little bit about gave kelly and justin props and the masters crossfit games the other week. But back home one of my athletes, tony, that I've and I'm not afraid to say his name because we've done that before and fuck you, tony, sup, tony kidding.
Speaker 1:Um, I have a one rep max overhead squat pr. C2 bike cube cube test PR 75. Continental drive PR row cube test PR 30. Muscle up for time PR King Larry PR chuckles one and two PR skier cube test PR might not PR bumper cable PR power clean max PR. Fairy dust PR PR or a tie push jerk PR. Cupcake lungs PR echo bike cube test PR. And the almighty ever sought 300 pound clean, which I'm convinced Tony just did because he was terrified of the jerk, so he forgot that he was concerned at all about the 300 pound clean which looked like an air squat, but he'd never cleaned it before.
Speaker 1:That all occurred over the last five weeks of phase one retesting, so wanted to give him a shout out. And what was kind of cool is that over the last year, really the only thing that's changed is nothing that's changed about his program. He hasn't been doing more or less. All that came down to a conversation we had that resulted in just saying like, hey, you don't need to necessarily do more, just do what you don't need to necessarily do more, just do what you're currently doing a little bit better. And that wasn't even necessarily like the physical act of doing it better.
Speaker 1:This came down to things like actually putting some detailed notes as to how the workout went, what happened whether it was a strategy thing, whether it was a workout execution, whether it was just like fucking life got the better of me today and I felt like shit. And this a strategy thing, whether it was a workout execution, whether it was just like fucking life got the better of me today and I felt like shit and this was just a check in the box. Whatever it was, all it came down to was just a little bit more intention, with like hey, I'm going to warm up and actually think about what I'm about to do when I'm cooling down. I'm actually going to reflect on what I just did resulted in, you know, zero theoretical additional time in the gym and all just kind of optimizing the time that he has to train, which is effectively lift conditioning skill. He doesn't do more than that.
Speaker 1:His job and time doesn't allow, and I think that's that's worked super well for him. So kudos to tony on that massive phase zero pr where they they just kept coming and coming. He even had one or two in the first week of uh phase one where we front squatted like 365 pretty easily and in uh the back squat survivor, poor bastards doing volume front squat instead. Um, yeah, wanted to make sure he got a shout out for all his hard work last year and that kind of segued nicely from that message.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we need these.
Speaker 2:We need that are set by people like Tony and other athletes in our community for athletes to look at, because we can sit here and talk as much as we want, we don't follow the competitor program.
Speaker 2:We need these examples to show people how to set a standard for themselves, for the community, and one of the ways that you can do that is by looking under new rocks, like if we know that his volume is going to stay similar and yeah, you're going to change the program for strengths and weaknesses, but like what is going to? I mean, I don't know how many years he is into this game, but he's been doing it for a while and he's been very consistent over that period of time and it's a reason why and we'll revisit here within the next couple of months our yearly Athlete IQ episode but it's not just this or that. There's so many different avenues that you can go down and he spoke publicly and passionately about onus on like. I got to start taking notes and paying attention to what I'm doing so I can refine. And that is not the same as like I see brick wall, I run through brick wall, I smash head against brick wall, like you have to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:but there's 50 other things you got to be able to do, and one of them if you want to get good at this, and he's the kind of person who puts himself out there and goes and does not just local comps, but he'll travel and go to a comp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, get ready to head to Wadapalooza in SoCal, Exactly.
Speaker 2:So if he wants to be able to do that and wants to be able to improve, you have to put that responsibility on yourself of like what's my next frontier? And I'd shed a single tear for someone who says they're going to actually going to take notes and pay attention to them and do it, Because it's like you have this mountain of data that could tell you exactly how to attack a workout. And so many people have CrossFit amnesia and they're like is this the one where you take the bar and you go from this to this? And it's like, my fucking God, you've snatched 800 times in your life.
Speaker 1:Don't you dare.
Speaker 2:And you've snatched 800 times in your life, Don't you dare and like. Obviously that's an exaggeration, but well, just, I wish it was more of an exaggeration.
Speaker 2:I had one person and this is typically in an affiliate setting but I had one person who, like, when you're, when you open an affiliate in your first like year or two, and you've got like 30 to 60 members, you do a lot of like personal training for free without knowing it, like people stay and they like wanna know, like and I'm the kind of fucking person who wants to go over the thruster for 45 minutes in detail. And I did this with someone and the next day they asked what the movement was and had forgotten our entire session and I was irate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, I could not fucking believe it.
Speaker 2:We spent literally 45 minutes on thrusters and he's like what movement is that? What are you even talking about? And I was like you're fired yeah, refund go away.
Speaker 1:I didn't actually do that. Yeah, I'd like, I'd like to pay you to leave, do you?
Speaker 2:have a live chat.
Speaker 1:I'll keep it. And also, by the way, this is a six-year anniversary for Tony and I.
Speaker 2:Wow, congrats, guys, september 2019.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's the traditional?
Speaker 2:gift on year six. I always have to Google that every year. It's unclear.
Speaker 1:We have our annual camp photo. Yeah, that's always good, the father-son photo.
Speaker 2:So maybe we'll take one of those up and make it the Maybe we'll stage it in Boulder, Colorado, in front of a snowy mountain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, amazing my life, chad, is that I'm a headband guy now.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's unclear whether Tell me about your shirt yesterday. I need you to paint them a picture. I was thinking about that too.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about that too. Maybe I'll wear it. No, I copped one of the tie-dye pukey t-shirts, so yeah.
Speaker 2:I like it.
Speaker 1:Maybe this will be a good life chat, aside from the fact that I'm either just accepting that my hair is long or it's a potential like one third life crisis, both equally likely, possibly both occurring at the same time. Yeah, maybe a a rare, at least recently shout out crossfit for dropping the old pukey pukey uh tie-dye t-shirt I was like seen any of their new marketing too well, that was that was going to be my segue.
Speaker 1:The the marketing. I like I'm a big fan. I'm stoked that they're finally starting to push a little bit more eggs into the basket of the affiliate of the. Hey, this is how crossfit changed your life. If you go to dot com, let me see what it. I just want to make sure it's actually correct. Yeah, it's like the marketing campaigns, front and center. There's the crossfit is for you, like here's a whole bunch of content on like why this works, find a gym you know articles and stuff like that, so and then the workout is actually you got to kind of scroll down a little bit. It's kind of funny. Sherb and I were shooting the shit a little bit about it and we were talking about, like you know, main site of various kind of eras of crossfit, the main site, which looked like, you know, aolcom for a little while.
Speaker 1:And then, good, yeah, we were when we were talking about like, well, the should the workout be like the first the thing? Should it look likecom of old? And I my arguments like, well, like I don't know how many individual people go to crossfitcom with the intention of doing a workout of the day. I feel like that was maybe more so where gyms were sparse, few and far in between, and now the fact that there are as many gyms as there are becomes a little bit less about seeking the workout of the day and actually providing information for people as to like, hey, here's the thing, now go find your local affiliate, which you know can argue that they should have been doing that for a really long time. But better late than never.
Speaker 1:So I'm a fan of the marketing push. I'm glad to see there's a good blend of athletes who are, you know, in these videos and stuff, but also the people who really need to find CrossFit for, uh, for the sake of their their own health and longevity, shout out CrossFit. But yeah, I'll drop, I'll wear the uh, pukey tie dye t-shirt I had to call it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just walked in yesterday and hunter was wearing a headband and was wearing a tie-dye shirt.
Speaker 1:Honestly, even I think he's ripping a bomb reflected.
Speaker 2:Yes his mood reflected that. And then we were in the meeting, in our monday meeting, and kyle beat me to the mentioning the tie-dye shirt and the headband together. So we were, we were on the same page there. All right, hunter, would you like to start with my? Nfl preview, or my Wilbur story from last night.
Speaker 1:Wilbur. Come on, man, I'll take a nap during the NFL story, but hit me with a good one.
Speaker 2:I'm going to make the NFL one entertaining, and if it's not, if you don't like sports ball, fast forward. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.
Speaker 2:All right, my wife is in ireland for work, I am solo dadding and I let wilbur out last night and I actually walked outside onto the porch to give the people a very brief description of wilbur yeah, so wilbur is a 14 year old french bulldog shaped like a potato, um, and if you're watching on youtube you're about to see him very upset and trying to bite me and he he doesn't run anymore for sure, like sometimes you can't walk.
Speaker 2:But I saw him running last night and he runs under the deck and we have like a deck deck and then we have like a screened in porch and like this little area between the screened in porch and the garage. That's like just just barely up off the ground kind of a thing. So I saw him run under there and I was like that was weird and like he cuts across a little bit and kind of comes out under the screen porch and comes inside. It's no big deal, I go inside, I come back out and I hear him under my feet and I was like this is not good like you're standing on the deck and he is, I'm standing on the yeah, the screened in porch and I can hear him rustling in the leaves under my feet because the landscapers just blow all the leaves under the fucking thing.
Speaker 2:All right, so let's pull this baby up here. Can you see this?
Speaker 1:Not right, this second let's hit play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're good, all right, all right, you see.
Speaker 1:Wilbur, I might even watch this episode on YouTube just to rewatch this.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is me realizing. So that's him way back there. That's him way back there, just above, where the light is shining Right in front of his head, you can see like a line, that's like a pipe or something. That's the oil pipe Turns out. I don't, I'll fast forward, I don't fit under that pipe, all right. So let's he laid down so for the listeners.
Speaker 1:He is now walking further under the spot that I cannot fit under Into the corner of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So How'd you get that close? All right.
Speaker 1:You can fit.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. So here's the thing. This is what happened. I walked back over to the other side and he this is in the future, but he's about halfway under this area and I like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to rip up the deck, but the, the piece that is on the bottom looks like you could just move it, but there's like two by four stacked behind it, so I couldn't get that. Um, so I'm looking for my crowbar and I'm literally gonna pull up my boards, which would ruin the fucking deck.
Speaker 1:Is the deck pushing on top of him Like he's that he can stand.
Speaker 2:Okay, he can stand. But I was like, okay, I want to check on him first, let me see if I can shine the light under the deck. So this is my phone is jammed under the deck here.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And I have the light shining on him. But then I realize that I can dig him out. There's one tiny little spot where the pavers are, they end, and then the outside wall ends. So it's like about this much. So I'm like, oh, thank God, I didn't find my fucking pry bar. Also, I'm thinking to myself if I crawl under there and I get stuck like Carter's sleeping, but it's probably not good.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, he also, as you'll find out later in this video, would never have. Let me pull him out Like that would have. He's towards the end.
Speaker 1:That would have been really traumatizing for him.
Speaker 2:That would have been bad.
Speaker 1:He would have been like screaming and trying to fight. You don't want to be yanking on those turkey legs there.
Speaker 2:No, all right, so we'll jump back in here. Yeah, he's not happy. And do you see that pipe there? Yeah, did you see that?
Speaker 2:yeah, so that this, this black piece right in front of him no, um right top, right corner top right, yeah, yeah, okay that is uh some electrical that goes out to my heat pump condenser um so don't touch that. I was able to dig it, but he got scared of that pipe. Yeah, so I had to go. I had to leave him under there and go inside and find a drill to remove the conduit off of the concrete. So so it so on the right, I'm digging a small trench and he's like all right, I'm going for it, because he can see the hole that I'm creating he sees what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he's oh yeah, yeah, he hasn't started. He just started frenchie talking, like six months ago. Yeah that's him trying to buy me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll get a better, all right. So this is. I came back. He had been under there for a couple minutes. I'm going to get my drill and a new battery, all right, and I'm filming this to show maya, basically yeah, I was like oh, this would be good for the podcast yeah, oh, come on bud it's like you have pulled my paw.
Speaker 2:I'm getting out because I want to, not because you're making me.
Speaker 1:Luckily he can't bite me when I push his ass.
Speaker 2:That's how I got him out, because I want to, not because you're making me. Luckily, he can't bite me when I push his ass, that's how I got him out. Yeah, not very flexible still still just going for the nip, fuck it. The funny thing too is that's my dad voice yeah, yeah, that's how I talked to carter, that's where that came from. It's like okay, buddy, we're gonna do it, we can do it oh so that was my night last night what a potato.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wait, so could. If. If he was respectfully an intelligent animal, would he have been able to u-turn and go back out the way that he came? Yes, easily.
Speaker 2:He walked under there yeah okay, all right just wanted to be clear. Uh-huh, and he looked pissed when I was shining the light on him. Yeah, maybe he wanted I'm hanging out under the warm down there.
Speaker 1:Leave me the fuck, do you know why he like unexpectedly ran out of the woods. I was. I was worried we were going like coyote story here no, I have no clue.
Speaker 2:I honestly he's, he's, he's my special boy, he's.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, might have just I don't know that there was been the vibe at the time going exactly, yeah, so so with him, who knows, I think I need-.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly, and yes, I took the time to edit that in iMovie this morning for you guys, for your entertainment.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:All right. Nfl preview the misfit NFL preview. Here's what I'll say before we get into the videos, because I'm going to make this entertaining. If you're watching. The Steelers have Aaron Rodgers as their quarterback now. He is old and looks like the lower half of his legs are broken. He did Terry's Achilles two years ago but the kid can sling the rock and is crazy. On third down and in the red zone the Steelers played the Jets. The guy who started for the Steelers last year is now the Jets starting quarterback. Aaron Rodgers was on the Jets last year and ceremoniously punted from the organization and kind of treated like shit, according to him. Yep, now for my story for the week.
Speaker 2:The Steelers have a kind of legendary cornerback named Jalen Ramsey that they traded for from the Dolphins. Legendary cornerback named Jalen Ramsey that they traded for from the Dolphins. Jalen Ramsey is not only a shutdown corner but also like lays, the fucking smack down on people, which is kind of rare, is a little bit big for that position. The top receiver for the Jets name is Garrett Wilson. He went to college with Justin Fields. They were together in college at Ohio State, so they're like buds. So the first video I'm going to play here is Justin Fields getting hit by Jalen Ramsey and then subsequently drawing the 15-yard flag here.
Speaker 1:Is that a roughing the passer?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no. He gets this the. Jets got a 15-yard penalty because the lineman came over and did that, and then this is very Jalen Ramsey right here to be doing that. All right. So Garrett Wilson decides that he is going to essentially try to fight with Jalen Ramsey for the rest of the game, which is honestly what Jalen Ramsey wants, clearly. So this is the following play How's this going for him? And this happened. The rest of the game, the rest of the fucking game. Love that.
Speaker 2:And then someone. So the play that I will try to pause for here is literally the deciding play of the entire game. Okay, so we'll watch a little highlight tape of my boy, jalen Eat it. So that's fun. Here comes wilson catching a pass to extend the game. Jets win. Question mark. Let's see oh yeah, that's what happens.
Speaker 1:You start shit of the great, that's a clean hit too.
Speaker 2:That's a beauty of a hit. Let's watch it one more time. Garrett wilson, one of the best wide receivers in the nfl, nice easy catch, bye-bye, head was down. Yeah, fuck, yeah, it was a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:Man, there's like part of me that dislikes the theatrics and like the celebration and the like antics.
Speaker 2:Yeah yep.
Speaker 1:And then there's like it's got to be 50-50, where I'm just like fuck yeah, like get up, get in somebody's kitchen, stay there, charge rent in their head.
Speaker 2:Like I want to see it all game drawing a 15 yard penalty is an art form in that sport, yeah, and getting people to like, when you do that, you are entering his world in his game garrett wilson is like quiet, incredible player. But he's like sticking up for his guy. You get it. But then Jalen's like all right are we doing this? Is this how we want to play this football game? Space?
Speaker 1:for rent in your dome. I'll take it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's funny when I was like I've very much been through both sides of it, like when I was growing up it was like like no, like no showboating act, like you've been there before, that sort of thing, and then it's like this is literally a entertainment form these guys are not paid millions of dollars because they can run around fast yeah, that makes no sense. Clean and sanitary, like exactly, and they're actually trying to cut down on it again this year.
Speaker 1:Supposedly there's been some, some flags that are kind of eh cut cut down on the antics or cut down or just let the boys play.
Speaker 2:No, it's the post. So they're being cooler about the celebrations in the end zone, but they don't want the taunting as much after the play. But I see when they throw the flags. So far it's been so arbitrary, it's crazy yeah, it's like you can't discern one thing from the other.
Speaker 2:It's supposed to be like a warning, essentially right. So aaron rogers threw for four touchdown passes. The jets should have won. They played better almost the entire game, but they fumbled a kickoff. And that's just what the jets do they fumble or throw an interception or do something stupid. So that's my nfl preview. You get to listen to me for one to four minutes a week talk about the steelers. Last but not least, oh, what do you got?
Speaker 1:no, I, I was gonna have you seen america's team, the netflix, I don't know I haven't watched it yet.
Speaker 2:No team, the cowboys one. The cowboys one. Yeah, I watched episode one it's sick.
Speaker 1:It's really well done.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, it's funny too because there's like a continuation of it. I don't know, I don't think it. I don't know how much of the Micah Parsons stuff was going on during the documentary or whether they reference it towards the end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't seen it yet, but I've only seen the first episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my third live chat. I'll make this one quick just so I can update you guys. I have acquired dad bod for the third time in three years of being a father. I'm really just.
Speaker 2:It boils down to confusing what sacrifices I should make.
Speaker 2:I am sacrificing my personal health for work, which can sometimes get lumped in and be confused with.
Speaker 2:I am perfectly fine sacrificing basically anything for my wife and my son, but they get that those worlds get kind of like mixed up a little bit, cause you're like okay, I got to make sure that I'm home at this time and I'm present and I'm paying attention, but it's very much like not doing certain things that I should be doing. Based on my schedule and what I've come down to, what I think my fix is is my backup plan has to be quick CrossFit. So if I don't have the time to do my zone two, if I can't go do a long bike ride, if I can't do whatever, you know hour long strict press session, so get out there, do your 12 minute warmup, do the workout of the day, modify it, that sort of thing. Like I get too wrapped up in the like this is what I had scheduled for the week for my sessions, and if I can't do those which has been the case a lot recently then I don't end up doing anything, yeah. So, um, we're gonna. We're gonna work on that.
Speaker 1:It seems to be once a year. See a smiley face next to your name on strict press day. Um, which was mildly concerning.
Speaker 2:I didn't have. I didn't have time since Maya's traveling, he went out there and did the workout and then left.
Speaker 1:So I very much would have loved to try to do 165.
Speaker 2:Correct, I see, yes, I would very much love to see if I could beat Jack. I don't know if I could, though I don't know if I had. I don't know if I had 165 by five after that workout. I was hurting after that work.
Speaker 1:You did the Metcon first. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Something like that. Yeah yeah, that was the gift that kept on giving. It was like pretty bad during and then I did not feel well for like a few minutes after. All right, the Gears Matrix. Here's how we're going to do this. I want to give you guys the origins of where this came from. Then we'll explain it, we'll talk about the original version and then we'll sort of get into the additions, the new matrix, how to use it, where to download it, all that good stuff. I'm actually going to read my origins thing here, because it puts me back into the headspace of the sort of when I did this in the beginning.
Speaker 2:All right, the origins of the gears matrix combined 11 years of data, a simple remote coaching tool and a meathead kneeling at the altar of linear progression. It took eight or nine of those 11 years to develop a chart showing the optimal duration of rounds, total volume and rest periods needed to move the needle in a test and retest format consistently. So think your cube, test your Mount Dooms, any of your power output, wattage tests, that sort of thing. Along the way it became clear that the more time spent at different paces, that resulted in a trend towards high intensity. So maybe you start round one of any of these workouts we'll reference in zone three and then you end up in zone five, the better that the retest data looked.
Speaker 2:As a remote coach, this led me to track my athletes' results in a spreadsheet that allowed me to personalize workouts to force that different spectrum of pacing. Setting aside zone two and power output sessions, I found that I could create workouts at roughly eight separate speeds that could all trend into uncomfortable territory by the end of the workout. Not only should all coaches and athletes have access to this document, but it should be used to gamify and track progress all year. Any thoughts on that, hunter?
Speaker 1:I mean it's like is that in the document? You said? That's like the intro to it. It's in that article.
Speaker 2:It's like the intro to the article that I share with people that I'm now going to update and put the new one in. But I really just wanted people to know that I didn't set off to create this, this kind of created itself over that period of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things, I think, that gets kind of built out of necessity, especially at the higher for a higher level CrossFitter. I think it's probably too in the weeds for your affiliate athlete and even maybe a GPP esque athlete, not because it's not valuable but because, like like there, because I feel like there are so many other fundamentals that probably need work ahead of dialing in the perfect pace on certain machines.
Speaker 1:When it comes to the competitive side and actually optimizing for the ideal amount of either effort, pace, work, score, know, score in a workout. If it includes other stuff, like we've talked about so many times, the machine provides free information in the fact that there's a monitor and objective data associated with it. And if you're a competitive athlete and you go into an event and you don't know. I had this conversation with Justin actually, about his K run at the CrossFit Games. It was kind of funny Even I talked to him about that.
Speaker 1:I was like what was your pace? And I knew what the answer was and he kind of admitted like well, I didn't really have one. And even guys on the start line were like where's your watch? And Justin was like I don't have one and I'm like motherfucker, you got a free pacer that could be attached to your wrist, um, and and those are, and that's the and like that. Maybe that was the difference, maybe that's the difference for him in 10, 15, 20 points, um, because he came out a little bit too hot and limped a little bit to the finish line and like you for sure.
Speaker 1:So, um, kind of a real world example of those gears and we've I've even talked to kelly about this and like when we get into the actual nuts and bolts of the um kind of like breakdown, where we go power, anaerobic, aerobic, there are like again, when you get to the higher levels you can actually you can really notice like where an athlete has gaps. And uh, I'll share this because kelly is, I'm sure she wouldn't mind, but like kelly is an extremely strong and powerful athlete. Right, we're talking like a near 250 pound clean, like 300 pound back squat, like some seriously impressive numbers and she's a master at this point. And on the other end, she actually really improved in some of the aerobic stuff. The running event was one of. Her was a far better finish than maybe we both expected and would have historically expected. She really really struggles in the like.
Speaker 1:The easiest example is like the think the two, two, two, three interval type format like two very hard minutes of work, one minute of rest to recover and it's like you know, it's the. It's the game of like can I get this workout done in three intervals or do I need the fourth or can I even get it done in two? Whatever, she really struggles with that like kind of black hole area of it's not a dead sprint, but it's still a really really hard effort. And to be able to maintain a certain pace there and then get off the bike and do double unders. You know, go handstand, push up, bike hard, double under, like at the Masters Games. That's an area that we need to improve.
Speaker 1:On time domains, the machines are the easiest place that we have to really kind of dial in as far as like objectively measuring output as opposed to, you know, doing burpees and thrusters and like how that feel sort of vibe. So I think it's a. It's a really useful tool. I think it's a the way that not to get too far into like the the thing or the the sheet itself, but like I think the improvements to it are. I think it's valuable because there's a definitely a distinction when you get into the upper end power output ranges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:I think it's just one of those tools that you need to have in your arsenal as a competitive crossfitter with this thing and it was obvious for them and for everyone else can you move the needle on it?
Speaker 2:because we're going to test it again and everyone's going to know whether you can get somebody better at this thing, and a lot of those things over the years have been machine or running related. So like. For me, so much of this came from like. One of the things that can be really tough for people is like I'm not a runner and I need to become one, and having an actual plan of like, how to move the needle for them and show them in real time how they're doing before they go to retest, is incredibly important. So, again, that's where so much of this came from was like I need to be able to get this person better, obviously.
Speaker 2:And then the psyche of an athlete who has a weakness how do I show them that they're getting better in real time? Because we can do all of these different intervals and categorize them in whatever way that we want, but if they are kind of random and always changing whether it's always changing modality, always changing you know whether you're measuring watts calories. It's an AMRAP, it's a specific distance. Sometimes it can be hard for athletes to know whether you're measuring watts, calories. It's an amrap, it's a specific distance. Sometimes it can be hard for athletes to know whether they're improving or not yeah, I mean actually I think sorry go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, I was going to get into the explanation of the of the actual matrix.
Speaker 1:So if you want to add, I think it's like to to your, to your point the of this can be. This is a good lesson because, like, an athlete can get frustrated for the wrong reasons really easily and they not know it. And an example of that is I coached the class today that was skiing and front squats, and front squat's a perfect example of a movement where it's like I don't like front squat, I can't do it very well, it's uncomfortable, it's like yada, yada, yada, whatever. Understood. Then you start to ask the athletes well, what don't you like about it?
Speaker 1:It's like I just like I'm not very, I'm not very strong at it. It's like, well, why aren't you very strong at it? Because you back squat a house, like why don't you like it? It's like, well, you, your your overhead, your shoulder mobility isn't great and you, because you sit at a desk all day, you walk around a little bit of kyphosis, like rounding of the upper back. It's like so the problem isn't the front squat, the problem is like let's just tackle a little bit more mobility in, like, the upper back area. Let's spend a few minutes before you start the front squat session or take a class like here's a couple of mobilizations to help, like, loosen those positions up and all of a sudden it's like well, my wrist doesn't hurt anymore, I can keep my elbows up and now I can actually use the leg strength that I thought I had.
Speaker 1:But this front squat workout was making me question. And now it's not that I hate the front squat, it's that my mobility is not great and it makes this exercise harder. So, instead of being upset about not being able to hold a pace, for example, or not more likely, not knowing what pace to hold, and therefore the unknown element makes you anxious, confuses you, makes you not like the workout, like, we now have a way to like at least answer a question for you Like what's the pace I should hold? Well, this is the pace you should hold, and this is why yeah, all right.
Speaker 2:So the gears matrix is essentially we have we'll keep it simple to start and then talk about the additions. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Those are eight gears, one being the slowest, eight being the fastest, and the matrix shows all the gears and then each machine, and the idea would be we'll pick fifth gear, for an example, amrap, four minutes times four, rest, two minutes and 45 seconds. And then the matrix shows row run, ski bike, erc, echo bike. If you were to do an AMRAP on any of those machines or during a run, what would your pace be, what would your cals per hour be, what would your wattage be? You want to make sure you're recording all of those so you have the context for how they're different, and then you kind of have to audit a little bit of like okay, was that like crash and burn, was that really good pacing? Did I kind of nail it? And we'll get into a little bit more there. But over time you have this sheet that gives you, on five different machines, eight different speeds, which honestly takes care of basically the entire range of what you would be using in almost any context within the sport, which is really cool and that's when we can begin to bring in this concept of using linear progression. And you know, strength is just a little bit easier because we can always just add. You know we can grab the fractional plates. We can add two and a half, two and a half pounds. You know we can add five pounds, we can add 10 pounds, depending on what the lift is. And over time we see the progress. If machines, if we don't have that same option on a machine, there can be a bit of the like pissing into the wind because you are increasing GP through stimulus but the athlete IQ kind of stays stagnant. And bringing those together is how you learn how to be an actual competitor. So the original Gears Matrix only showed no, you're good. I was just making sure we weren't cutting each other off. I will only make sure on the times when we're not going to. So the original Gears Matrix again is just Gears 1 through 8.
Speaker 2:Aerobic stimulus, higher volume, sustained pacing, meaning I am going to be 100% sure that I can hold this pace throughout, but I want to be in kind of rough shape by the very end of the last round. That's gears one, two and three. Gears four through eight are a bit more of an anaerobic stimulus. It's moderate volume and it's reach pacing. Anaerobic stimulus, it's moderate volume and it's reach pacing.
Speaker 2:What I typically like for most athletes when it comes to the build stuff is what we would call it gears four through eight is you choose a pace, sort of like the aerobic that you're positive that you can hold, and then you audit after a round or two like I feel pretty good today I can go for negative splits and that can just be. That doesn't need to be like I'm going from a 155 to 154 to 153. I like the projected finish and just being like if I get a meter that's a negative split right. So I'm sort of working in that regard and then by the end what you would do is you would take your average over the course of those. You don't want to take your fastest because then you'd be real sad when you're going to try to repeat that workout. But you take your average over the course of all of those.
Speaker 2:And the workouts in the original came from actual workouts. I was writing for specific athletes. So all of those workouts I created, I realized, man, if they and this makes sense in CrossFit, but probably less so in the monostructural, you know, sort of endurance community. The more separate speeds they do, the better they are in the retest. The more I repeat workouts, especially weakness workouts, the lower they do on that.
Speaker 2:So there is something to like. You still give them, you know, maybe their wheelhouse workouts eighth gear and another one is first gear. You still give them those because it creates a great stimulus. You know they really execute on it well. They probably go into it with a bit more confidence, that sort of thing. But those workouts again were written for specific athletes and what happens is you get an athlete who either from a physical or mental standpoint can kind of lock in in specific areas that another athlete can't. And one of the workouts that was in the old gears matrix was like a seven minute by two and it was either fourth or fifth gear and it didn't really fit very well with the rest of them and basically Caroline could do it, so you guys needed to be able to do it.
Speaker 2:Turns out that's just kind of that middle distance which is fucked up, is a bit of wheelhouse for her Again, whether it's a physical thing or a mental thing, and a lot of athletes are just like what the fuck is this workout? This is harder than my six-gear workout.
Speaker 1:I don't understand what's going on here.
Speaker 2:So after enough time here, it's like okay, the new matrix, we're going to make sure that we know which workouts slot in really well and create that different speed for more people and then the ones that don't are going to be simple math. On work to rest ratios, so like very and another thing that I did is I very much like. These are gears one through three. This is their own classification. The work to rest is significantly less. And then when we jump up to fourth to eighth, giving people an opportunity to, and then when we jump up to fourth to eighth, giving people an opportunity to definitely go faster when we're going to that moderate volume. And then the other addition here that you're going to see if you are already using this is I have zone one, zone two and then all of our power output stuff, because, again, the more data that we have, we know our floor, we know our ceiling, we have all these different tools that we can use and we can just go back to a place where we have that.
Speaker 2:So I'll have the PDF for you guys to download. I'll have an Excel sheet for you guys to download if you want to be able to type your stuff in there. But yeah, that's kind of the gist of like, okay, we need a gears matrix 2.0. We know that this one works well and this one works well and this one works well. But if I go back and look at the data, where are the discrepancies? Where is someone jumping four seconds you know what I mean In like one gear to the next, which would be a lot for like a C2 machine split. And then where is someone either going slower or staying at the same speed from one gear to the next, and that's what gave me sort of outliers there.
Speaker 1:So I have a question One. The addition that I think is really useful is the power output ones, what we call P1, p2, p3. P3 being 30 seconds of work, p2 being 20 seconds of work, p1 being 15 seconds of work. So the implication there is just you know, you've got it in the notes here like a controlled send, a nearly full send, and then like a reckless sort of send. Where do you? We're getting really nuanced here? But so this is 15. The p1, the most powerful output one, is 15 seconds of work. Yeah, so theoretically you could go quite a bit harder than if you were going for 30 seconds where do you see, um, where?
Speaker 1:where do you think of programming when it's like even shorter than that? So true, like using a machine for true, and at that point we're probably talking more about like a bike, or just straight up sprinting, which I know we don't share a ton of.
Speaker 1:But like where? Where do you think of like the five to ten second output of? Just like? That is full, all out, reckless. But it's also from a physiological perspective. It's short enough. Where you're, you know, even anaerobic system doesn't really have time. Your glycolytic energy pathway doesn't even have time to kick in, it's purely you're just tapping out your atp and then getting full recovery and it's borderline a lifting session. At that point, where do you? Do Can athletes expect to see that sort of stuff? Is it? What do we?
Speaker 2:say Like, and this is honestly, this is honestly the perfect question to also explain the difference between power output gears and like your normal ones, because there is a range. So I would say, if it's going to be conditioning and it's a continuous machine, so I have it broken up on here.
Speaker 2:If it's a continuous machine, you're thinking, your, you know your echo bike, c2 bike, pushing a sled, running that sort of thing. If it's a ski or a row, we find that people can sustain the pace for longer because of the recovery period. So that's upwards of 2x timing when it comes to that. But I will start an athlete that needs to work on this all the way down at 10 seconds. That's about the lowest that I go there. I would consider anything outside of that to be more in the strength realm if we were separating strength and conditioning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just think 10 seconds is that number that I was kind of thinking of.
Speaker 2:And what's funny is that has actually changed a lot in the last few years. So tongue in cheek a lot of times when people start to call it the machine games and not the CrossFit games. With the amount of monostructural conditioning that's in the sport now, the athlete's ability to repeat with less rest is getting a little crazy. So am I talking to someone who's on the GPP program or an open athlete? Having them go five by 10 seconds and resting as much as they need to to be able to truly send it each time is awesome. It's great. But I have athletes who are so aerobically inclined that they can do every three minutes for five sets. They can sprint for 15 seconds on an echo bike and their power output doesn't drop across five. They need to go up. I'll go 16 and then 17 and then 18.
Speaker 2:In P1, I want your last score to be worse than your first score. I want to go in and tap that to the point where you're not doing as well. In P3, I flip it in the opposite direction. How long can we go and maintain power output? We would do a thing where we would actually probably be shortening that just to make sure that we're good there. And the gears here are incredibly imperfect. I got a message from a competitor recently that was like hey, sometimes the timing is just different, like I can sprint for you know, let's say it says that it's P3, but sometimes it's 25 seconds and sometimes it's 35 or 40. Like those are different speeds. I care more about the stimulus. I like the idea of the speed because I can track if I'm getting better over time. But we don't tell athletes to stare at their P1, right, like they manufacture it with their effort and sometimes their nervous systems along for the ride. And sometimes they've done a fucking nasty five byfive back squat before. Other times they got 10 hours of sleep and six cups of coffee and they're ready to go, that sort of thing. So we're going to see real differences here.
Speaker 2:What we want to do is take really good notes about all of our power output stuff and see how it's trending in different spots, that sort of thing. And obviously the longer you go spots, that sort of thing and obviously the longer you go. So if you are doing, you know, every five minutes times three, am I up one minute. You know, row for calories like first and foremost. Yuck, that's not very fun. Yeah, I'm skipping that day. You can probably get pretty close to to see, like, like, comparing workouts day to day on something like that.
Speaker 2:But the true power output stuff, like I mean I've said this on here before and I'll say it again I have to check a box. I have to mention this every six months for my ego. The first time I ever did the Maffetone warmup, I did 20 cals on the assault bike in my garage in 12 seconds. That was a PR and it was like wow, warming up is so cool. That was a PR and it was like wow, warming up is so cool. I have yet to do that again. So, like, really just changes, like how much water you drank, like there's just so much to it, the way that you feel, and everyone's had those days where they just feel like a monster and they feel like they can repeat power output. Then you have those days where, like you're literally your second one.
Speaker 1:You're like, wow, no glycogen in my hamstrings, good, good to know yeah, beautiful, yeah, yeah, I mean at that, at that level of effort, it's more like a.
Speaker 1:We talked about kind of like a lifting session than a, than a conditioning one, where it's like you go into the gym and you're supposed to, yeah, build up to 90 of your one rep max and you're like, motherfucker, that is 10 pounds over my one rep max today, like just based on how you feel your nervous system, and stuff like that. Yeah, I just think it's a. It's like there's a. I think there is a big difference between the 10 like a 10 second effort. A lot of people can, you know, repeat that like over and over again. Once you start to to creep past that, obviously we're tapping out the immediate ATP energy stores and are banking on some muscle glycogen to assist the other end of the spectrum.
Speaker 2:that has been added and again just to give you that full picture of your monostructural conditioning, is our zone one and zone two work. This is all below threshold. Zone one and zone two work. This is all below threshold. It's long and slow. It's your forever pacing. You can base it on multiple things so you can do more pacing or wattage based zone one and zone two stuff so that you don't fluctuate as much.
Speaker 2:There's the idea of cardiac drift where if someone is forcing themselves into high end zone two and they're not super used to it, you're typically going to see someone get slower over the course of their whole workout from a wattage standpoint or a running pace standpoint, and we don't really wanna teach the body to do that right, like zone two is not meant to be.
Speaker 2:Like I'm gonna flirt with threshold at one second in and then slowly get slower over the course of the whole thing. So we don't want that. And one of the ways that you can combat cardiac drift is you can start at the lower heart rate or you can start at a wattage or a run pace. That gets you into that low end zone too and eventually gets you to the high end zone too, and then that way you aren't teaching yourself to go slower as you go. But the instructions related to this stuff are super important, because I think a lot of people do this stuff wrong, um, and end up essentially doing an extra like 45 to 90 minute conditioning piece which is going to torch your nervous system.
Speaker 1:Well, it's also like at that point you're pushing into like kind of that zone three range which is essential, which is like the junk mile range. Right, it's too. It's too slow to get the aerobic benefits or two, I'm sorry, too slow to get the like anaerobic or any sort of power speed benefit, but it's too fast to get the the aerobic benefit of a zone two session.
Speaker 2:And if you are fast enough that zone three is actually a good workout for you, then you're really fucking your nervous system.
Speaker 1:You're going in the wrong direction, exactly. If you're super fit, you're fit enough to go fast and think that it's benefiting you.
Speaker 2:So the window that we create is a heart rate of 160 minus your age. So if you're 40, 160, that is a 120. That would be the low end of your zone two, flirting with zone one. And then 180 minus your age, if you're 40, that's a 140. So you'd be staying between a 120 and a 140.
Speaker 2:I personally like to use that to establish our pace or our wattage, and then I either keep an athlete and this is in a remote coaching setting, but I keep an athlete at the same wattage over the course of a whole phase and I increase the time that they're going, or I keep them based on you know if it's schedule or you know their strengths and weaknesses. Maybe I keep them at 45 minutes or 50 minutes and we try to increase the wattage or the pace incrementally over time. But I find that athletes and this kind of goes back to the whole point of this thing do a little bit better with are we getting better? Like is this are we getting better here? They can wrap their mind around it and I can do it in a safe way, like I can really tell if an athlete's ready for me to just give them a few extra watts or a few extra minutes.
Speaker 1:You just talked, so maybe good time to clarify, because for a while there we prescribed the 180 minus your age as kind of like that's the heart rate and that's what the Maffetone method kind of recommends. There were a couple of caveats where you might add or subtract a couple of beats per minute to that heart rate based on your fitness level, but for the most part that's actually like a fairly high heart rate 180 minus your age. For zone two is like probably slightly outside of the like one, the traditional strength and conditioning Like I think it's what 60, 70% of your max heart rate, and I know that's not a great metric.
Speaker 2:Right, because two actually stands for how much lactate you have in your blood, and not Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah and then. So why the building in of the range now? So now we've kind of just added, you added the 160 minus your age is kind of the lower end, to 180 minus your age being the very upper end. Why did we go away from just the?
Speaker 2:singular kind of two reasons, when the true intention of that was to to be around there but never go above it. So which is again?
Speaker 1:if we are.
Speaker 2:People saw it as a challenge to exactly yeah so that's, that's one reason this gives us again a range to teach ourselves to what this is actually supposed to feel like. And then the other side of this is dependent on how much of a beast someone is in a particular modality. We had issues with it three or four years ago as well. So it's not just other people, but athletes will skip. Really, you know, top 10, top 20 athletes in the world are skipping their zone two bike sessions, especially on their active rest day, cause they're like I'm fucking torched. You know what I mean? I'm holding 250 Watts here for an hour Like how is this my rest day? This is crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so what we need to do is that heart rate. The fitter you are, the lower that should be, that lower that number should be. That's one super easy way to put it. If someone who's not very fit goes out there and flirts with 180 minus their age while they're jogging and walking, they're fine, you are going to be absolutely fine. You need the fitness. You need the fitness. You're not torching your nervous system. You're not going fucking fast enough to torch your nervous system.
Speaker 1:Anything's going to torch your nervous system. Just get after it Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's not a problem there. But then we go to the opposite end of the spectrum and the greatest runner who has ever lived or at least in has been measured basically only runs in zone one and training because it's like a 630, 640 mile for hours. And if he was to go run in zone two he's probably 550. And what does that do to you? You know your muscles are not along for that ride, for that mileage, for that long, that sort of thing, especially, you know, once you get beyond the, your golden years of testosterone and growth hormone flying out of your veins at all times. So as we trend back towards so again, the better you are on a machine relative to how you want to be, compared to your competitors, that sort of thing the closer in zone two you should be to 160 minus your age.
Speaker 2:Again, we see this all the time on the C2 bike. Hey, why don't first of all do the fucking warmup and do the RPMs the way that you're supposed to right 85 to 95. I don't allow myself to up the damper on a particular wattage until I've gotten up into the mid nineties. That's how I know my body is agreeing to become an aerobic machine and what I used to do is just push the wattage at all costs and flirt with that 180. And again, not the worst thing in the world. I'm not very aerobically inclined and I don't fucking work out anywhere near as much as 99% of the people listening to this thing.
Speaker 2:But like we are using this for two reasons One, we use zone two so that we can help someone who is what did I uh? Aerobically challenged, I believe is what I put in there. But then also, when we get into a competition phase, we need to be able to add volume without overtraining, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to create volume through lower intensity and more time, those things multiplied together. So if you have super high intensity, you can get stimulus from very short period of time. We move those sliders into the opposite direction and that creates something where we are moving the needle and you actually might even feel better because you did it. So those would be the two reasons that we're doing those things.
Speaker 2:Zone one is interesting for a couple reasons Recovery for most people.
Speaker 2:I mentioned this either on the podcast or just the Hunter anecdotally. But if I do an hour and a half long bike ride outdoor on the podcast or just the hunter anecdotally, but if I do, uh, uh, you know an hour and a half long bike ride outdoor on the road and I'm in zone four, zone five, the whole time. If I take a rest day the next day, the day after that, my HRV is still struggling. I'm still having a rough time, like my body's, like hey, do we need to be in zone five for an hour? Is this necessary? And I'm like, hey, do we need to be in zone five for an hour? Is this necessary? And I'm like I live in zone five.
Speaker 2:Bitch, I'm fine, don't tell me I'm dying. Watch, I know how I feel if I do in. The longer I do it the better actually. But if I do a zone one session on a C2 bike the next day, not only do I feel better the following day, but my watch tells me I feel better as those things actually like line up together so my HRV improves in that space.
Speaker 2:So it's a really good recovery tool. And then if you're a again, if you're a fucking monster on a machine, you will get fitter from zone one. The fitter you are in a particular modality, the lower you can have your heart rate and still do better, and that's just because you're going faster. Like that's just kind of what that means. So if you are a monster on the C2 bike or you struggle to get your heart rate in range for that, care more about your wattage. Like, hey, if you can, if you can get on there and you know 200 Watts for a guy and you don't worry about your heart rate, as long as you're not getting up beyond what we're looking for, it's not a big deal, right? That's that stimulus kind of it's. It's more of speed related than that. So if I'm doing that for an athlete, I just tell them hey, every five or 10 minutes, look at your heart rate and make sure we're not being stupid here. Like, make sure you're still in zone one or zone two.
Speaker 1:What's the?
Speaker 2:range for zone one. The range for zone one is one 60 minus your age down to one. 40 minus your age, down to 140 minus your age. So for me that's roughly 100 to 120 beats per minute and that is very much a like through conversational pace I don't getting.
Speaker 1:Are you getting aerobic zone 2 like benefits from zone 1? I guess probably depends on like yeah, you alluded to it, like if you're aerobically inclined and don't need the zone to volume per se.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's just really good research. Like if you were to decide to, if you really struggled with zone to running would be an example.
Speaker 2:You're like I basically can't and there are athletes that are like that, walking a ton is really good for your aerobic output. Now again, what's the volume? Right? Like, if I was to do six hours a week of zone one, I would probably get a pretty good benefit from it. That single session is probably worth half of what the zone two is for somebody like me. So I think we're just using those sliders again.
Speaker 1:right, the lower the intensity the more we have to have more time.
Speaker 2:We see that physiologically, like, like in the ice bath, like you can do. You can get the exact same benefit in ice bath. That's 50 degrees if you sit in it for 15 minutes or whatever. I'm just giving an example. Same idea with the sauna and I don't recommend it. It's actually worse, um, those moderate temperatures for a really long time, um, but so again, it probably depends on on how you're able to do it. Now.
Speaker 2:The other place that this has specific to misfit athletics is if you wake up on, if you wake up on a day that you're supposed to do your zone two bike and it's your active recovery day and you're really in the shitter, like you don't feel good. Something's going on. You know it's the beginning of a phase. Hrv is absolutely tanked. That's when you would do a zone one and then the zone one. I mean, if you're you know, david Goggins jr and you want to do what you got to fucking do and you want to be in a black room, go for it. But zone one could be like I'm going to watch a shitty two hour movie and just pedal and every once in a while look down like that's something that you can do again to really like dampen.
Speaker 1:Definitely more of a recovery bias for zone one. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean I don't, I don't want to. Part of me wants to do it, but I'm not going to do it to you guys. I'm not going to read all of these. I'm going to go down and read every single one. If you are a Misfit Athletics athlete, you're not going to notice some massive difference to these things Like, for instance, eighth gear used to be eight times a minute, 30 with four minutes rest. Now the quote unquote benchmark of it is seven times one, 30 with three, 30 rest. It's very similar, but I saw too much of a jump in power output in that. I want to keep an athlete in that place where they're, you know, kind of having to fight to get to that place.
Speaker 2:And like little sort of nuanced things here. Third gear and fourth gear are separated by an entire minute of rest in terms of round to round Again to designate the idea of aerobic threshold. Work is still a bit longer and a bit slower. We get into the anaerobic, you get a little bit more rest, you get to push harder and I mean, yeah, it's really just volume is the lowest in eighth gear and the highest in first gear, um, and that's inverse in terms of rest. So you get one minute of rest and three and a half minutes of rest and those would be the differences between first and eighth year.
Speaker 2:A lot of the workouts that you're going to see this year at Misfit Athletics is another iteration of me realizing what it takes for an athlete to improve and giving you guys credit for your maturity. We were way, we were really bad back in the day at trying to. We changed workouts and the way that we wrote stuff in hopes that you guys would think it was fun and do more of it. Like a lot of what we wrote. Like we used to write Zone 2, where you got to like jump off and do a Metcon because you were bored, that sort of thing, and I used to really like hem and haw over. Okay, this week it's an AMRAP, this week it's rounds for time, it's distance, it's calories, it's. We're still doing distance and calories, but they're all fucking amraps.
Speaker 2:Every one of them is an amrap because I am trying to get a particular stimulus for multiple athletes right, like if I know your pacing and I want to throw you a bone and say, hey, we're going to run 800s. I can figure out exactly where that goes into this. But I mean, we've got athletes doing vastly different workouts. If we give them it's this many calories or it's this much distance, right, it's just so much different. And I switched to, with certain athletes, amraps only so that I could really convince them. It's another linear progression thing. Hey, you held this pace for four minutes. Now let's see if you can hold it for five or six or seven, whatever it just it was easier for this whole system to work. So so much of what you guys are going to see in the programming this year is going to be AMRAP, this much times, this much. And then it's also a lot easier to compare scores, um, in terms of how?
Speaker 1:just a thought. I wonder if it would be useful for you to plug in the that pace derivatives link, you know, or the, the little sliding graph that shows what, like a two minute per 500 meter pace equates to in cals per hour in wattage, yeah I'll see that I have you had to have seen that so one really cool thing here.
Speaker 2:Nerd side note I have made all of those in excel and since had chat gpt do them and make them look better, and I had the amount of fucking things I could export for people like. So I can actually add that as well.
Speaker 2:That would be one thing that you could add there, and I do again recommend having slashes in your gears chart showing like, okay, I held this, and then I held this, and then I held this, and so if you're starting from scratch, here's how to think about it. You have none of this entire thing filled out. You show up day one and I'll pull up a workout here real quick, or actually I just read one of the ones off this. So, fourth gear AMRAP, six minutes times three, you would do for row calories. Rest two and a half minutes.
Speaker 2:You have your brain and your personal history and you probably have some rough idea of what you should do for this workout. We find that athletes are very wrong when they show up at our programming for what these things are. But the good thing is all of your machines, or your watch or your phone, will give you the average pace that you end up doing. We don't typically see people go too slow and then get faster. We almost always see people go way too fucking fast and then get significantly slower. But in either scenario it's going to spit out an average and that is what you put into your gears matrix.
Speaker 2:To start Now, if you range all the way from a 145 to a 155 in a workout and you put the 150 in there, it's probably close, but like the next time you do it, figure out whether you know you started at 150 and again you can project it go a little bit faster. You're like I actually still might be like a 151, 152, um, and then that is. That is how you update the matrix. We find that athletes are two to three seconds per 500 meter, or 1000 meter if it's a c2 bike split on a machine between gears two to three seconds. So if your third gear is a 145, you can estimate your fourth gear being a 143, something to that effect. That's typically what we see for jumps and the fitter you are, the closer those things are going to be together. Basically, like the distance from first gear to eighth gear, if you are aerobically inclined, should be shorter.
Speaker 2:Essentially, you should be able to just kind of keep getting after it, that sort of thing. And when it comes to running it's about 15 seconds per mile roughly per gear. So if your first gear is a seven minute mile, your second gear might be a 645 and then a 630 and 615. That's just kind of historical data. And then the Echo bike is. This one's pretty easy. It's usually about one RPM, sometimes it's two, but like the again, the fitter you are and the harder you can go in those aerobic ones it's you kind of just jump in an RPM every single time you go there. You know, on the women's end we see low 60s roughly on the first gear and we see 70 to low to mid 70s, depending on the size, all the way up to eighth gear.
Speaker 2:And we fill these things in. We project based on the ideas that I just gave you and then we use it as linear progression. You continue to show up. Hey, this is what I got the last time. I've been feeling really good lately. I gonna fucking, you know, try to chop a second off. I still think negative splits are the best way to do that, so you can figure out whether your idea was actually a good idea or not. And you just, over time, try to get faster in each block on here. And it's simple, boring, good, old-fashioned. If you want to get better at the thing, do the thing. Mixed with constantly varied functional machines performed at high intensity, different speeds, variable intensity. We'll clean that up. We'll clean that up a little bit.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it works really fucking well and if you lean into it and you lean into the test retest model, you're going to get better at stuff basically, I think my only additional note on that just when you were talking about like I'm going to go up one RPM in, you were saying like one RPM-ish per gear.
Speaker 1:On the Echo Bike yes, on the Echo Bike. Okay, well, I mean this still applies because, just understand, this is more just like a kind of tip here, when, unless you are using the exact same concept and this is concept two specific unless you're using the literal exact same concept to machine, I don't mean like it's a rower and it's the no, literally literally the, the, the model down to the serial number, like that that your damper, a four damper on machine a is going to be slightly different than a four damper on machine B, if you want to like.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're talking about optimizing to the second of pace here, so might as well go the full Monty and like. Understand. That's where the drag factor feature. In those concept, two machines plays a role. Your goal would be to match the drag factor, more so than the than the damper setting, because it might be like four on one machine yields a specific drag factor and then it's like on the other machine it's like four and a quarter. It's really small.
Speaker 2:It might be it might be more than that, but like sometimes it's literally, sometimes it's over a damper, yeah, like a full damper.
Speaker 1:I've had yeah, I've had some crazy zone two sessions where I'm like I am the fittest man alive. And then you go down and use the other brand new C2 bike and you're like you are the slowest man alive.
Speaker 2:So here's how I deal with that. Personally. I have to have again. We all the way back at the beginning here I talked about my dad bod, and I get wrapped around the axle way too much, but I have a way to deal with this. So let's say I'm doing third gear and that is a two. We'll use round numbers. It's a two minute pace for me. I will go onto the bike and I will move the damper until two minutes gets yielded from 85 RPMs. Yeah, you're doing the exact same thing. And then I know that I'm probably I'll go look at I'll, you know, right up to 90 RPMs and be like, okay, that's, that's this. And here's, like my band I'm going to start at 85 RPMs.
Speaker 2:That's going to be my floor and then knowing that I am going to try to get those those negative splits there. But we know from the cycling community that that's kind of that sweet spot of where athletes are essentially the most efficient on the machine and of course, with the drag factor that's probably a little bit different. But that's probably getting too far into the weeds. So I don't pay attention, I don't give a flying fuck what the damper says on that thing. I get on it and I'm like 85 RPMs, slide the damper, two minutes done, like that's the setting that I'm going to be on, because my bike at home is like legitimately 10 seconds or is it 10 seconds?
Speaker 2:No, it's like 20 Watts, I think, like different on a one damper than some of the bikes here. It just and it feels different too, and I would say the bike is probably the biggest culprit on that. The swings aren't as crazy. But if you are again getting into the nitty gritty, if you are wondering why your row feels shitty for that day and you have your strokes per minute data and you're like that's it, I'm two strokes per minute low, I was probably on the wrong damper, like that kind of thing, and that's just the kind of stuff where like that could go all the way back to talking about athletes being confident in a particular setting and not in others.
Speaker 2:Like that can fuck people up like I don't have it anymore and it's like actually no, there's just a shitload of dust in your rower yeah, literally that's the yeah yeah, has absolutely nothing to do with your fitness.
Speaker 2:You don't need to quit and become a triathlete anymore, or probably after in this, in this instance. All right, um, I think that's it. You know you can hit us up on social media. You can email me, coach at misfit athleticscom If you would like this and you're not in a telegram or you know sort of already. On the program, um, it's a way to steal free programming it is. It has the workouts written in it. Does it tell you exactly how we do them and how often and how to test and retest? No, but it's a little sample. You know it's. You know you're going to Sarku and you're getting a couple nuggets of that chicken.
Speaker 1:You're like I should probably go back. You got to walk by in the other direction, Got a mustache on.
Speaker 2:Oh, we got a lot of fucking. We got a lot of window shoppers at Misfit Athletics we always have. Some of the best athletes in the world have been Misfit Athletics window shoppers. Why don't you just come on in? All right? I don't know what do I have for final thoughts. I just think that giving people actual paces to hold actual paces to beat tracking how good you are over time within these workouts and they literally range from 15 seconds to an hour and a half Just gives us an opportunity to help people get better in a bit more of a controlled environment, where CrossFit in its original form tends to be a bit more esoteric and hard to measure and hard to take really good notes about. It gives us an opportunity to work on our conditioning, to work on our GPP if we're rotating machines as well.
Speaker 1:It's kind of weird. It's like it's the one, it's like probably the defining feature of CrossFit is that it is like you know, it's measurable, observable, repeatable, like you could calculate your power output on the thruster.
Speaker 1:the thruster burpee row you know row workout, but it's a pain in the ass and you're not gonna do that. But but you can do that much more easily with machines. I think my final thought is just like hey, you, you, probably you, you listener, you athlete, you probably track your lifts pretty maniacally. You know what you've hit for one, three and five maybe, or just a very, very, very good general idea. This is the same thing you have to, and it's more important it's more.
Speaker 1:I was going to say it's more important. It's a conditioning sport. You have to understand these things. I think they have the potential to. It also just helps you in inform you like you don't need to necessarily think about the gears matrix as like machine specific. It's like you know their intervals, you know the let's. Let me see here. Try not to backtrack too far but like in that in that gears matrix, like you've got working windows that range from one and a half minutes to 15 minutes. Like how many metcons do you do that live in that range of? You know, probably more realistically, like the four minute Metcon all the way up to the 15 minute AMRAP. You know, like gear one through five. Like how valuable would it be to know what your pace is supposed to be in a 14 minute AMRAP of various?
Speaker 2:And how you feel like well, what is that?
Speaker 1:And that's the point right. That's the point right. That's the connection. It's like you might not be able to see a heads-up display with your burpee thruster power output and compare it to your, your gears matrix, but you can certainly compare the feeling that you have, like, what does my heart rate feel like? What does my physical capacity feel like at this point? You know, six minutes into the 14 minute AMRAP, like you can use this to extrapolate things that apply even more directly to the sport, which are, you know, our conditioning tests.
Speaker 2:Did we do it? We did it. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. Go, steelers, wilbur is safe Blessing Go.
Speaker 2:Wilbur I will report back on whether I catch myself in the mirror and shake my head again or if we're trending in the right direction. If you would like again, I told you guys how to contact me personally if you would like this information. If you want to jump right into the program, you can head to the link in bio on our Instagram and sign up on Strivee or Fitter. If you're looking for our affiliate programming, you can head to teammisfitcom. Click on sign up now and you get a two-week free trial on SugarWad, pushpress or StreamFit. See you next week Later. We're all misfits, all right, you big, big bunch of misfits.
Speaker 1:You're a scrappy little misfit just like me Biggest bunch of misfits I ever seen.