Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Freestyle Episode: Quarterfinals, Athlete IQ, Big Fish / Small Pond, Why Do We Do This?!, Extra Credit for Affiliate Competitors. - E.370
The season just got sharper. Quarterfinals are back, the pathway is clearer, and the middle tier finally means something again. We break down how the top 25% advance from the Open and why landing inside the top 2,000 in Quarterfinals is the new threshold for Semifinal eligibility. Beyond the headlines, we talk about what this structure does for real athletes who need meaningful checkpoints, not guesswork, to plan their year and build toward in-person competition.
Then we get practical. If “Spiders on Mars” or any long mixed piece keeps humbling you, the problem probably isn’t the movements—it’s pacing. We unpack athlete IQ for metcons: setting reps-per-minute targets for burpee box jump overs, choosing row paces that preserve downstream capacity, and using smaller, faster wall ball sets to win the average. You’ll hear why 45 seconds “earned” on a row can cost minutes later, and how a short-to-long interval progression can teach sustainable effort without blowing up. Take notes, measure your splits, and build a pacing language you can trust on game day.
We also explore mindset: how top athletes stay hungry without obsessing over daily leaderboards, and why chasing “winning or nothing” is a dead end. For most of us, training is a structure for growth—confidence, capacity, bone density, stress tolerance—not just a podium fantasy. If you love group class but want more, we outline a simple method to add smart work: fill the day’s missing bucket—lift, conditioning, skill, or accessory—without wrecking your recovery. Done well, that combo has already taken athletes from affiliate floors to the Masters CrossFit Games.
Ready to train with intent and navigate the new season with confidence? Subscribe, share this with a training partner who paces too hot, and leave a review telling us the one pacing rule you swear by.
------------------------------
Misfits! We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did and you're feeling generous throw us a review and let us know how we're doing, we'd really appreciate it.
If you'd like to join the Misfit family and get fit head to the link in our Instagram bio to get started today.
Misfit Athletics Programming:
https://strivee.app/marketplace/p/misfit
https://misfitathletics.fitr.training/t/misfitathletics/
Misfit Affiliate Programming:
https://teammisfit.com/subscribe/
Misfit Apparel at sharpentheaxeco.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/misfitathletics
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/misfitathletics
Thanks for clicking like and don’t forget to subscribe!
Good morning, Misfits. You are tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. On today's episode, we got a bit of a Misfit Freestyle episode. We're going to talk a little bit about the never-ending changes to the CrossFit Games season. Quarterfinals are back. Are they actually back? What do they do? We have some leftover questions from the QA that I thought were just good general topics. So who knows once we get there whether we will answer specific questions or open them up into broader topics. But there's a few in there that I think serve as really good topics that can help a multitude of people and not just the person asking the question. Before we do that, as always, got a little bit of housekeeping, live chat, and then we will dive into it. If you are looking for our affiliate programming, you can head to teamizfit.com, click on the sign up now button. You get a two-week free trial to StreamFit, Sugar Wad, or PushPress. Our individual programs, as always, click the link in bio on Instagram, and you can get signed up on Fitter or Strivey. Yeah, I mean, there's some stuff coming up, but it's probably a little bit early, so we'll hold off. Live chat. Hunter, what's up?
SPEAKER_03:I suck at golf. I'm gonna fucking kill myself. God damn it. And the US Ghost on the Ryder Cup team. I have literally, yeah, I'm literally was at the Ryder Cup playing at the same level as every other American and American fan, apparently. No, yeah, that's uh that's my life chat. It wasn't that bad. I'm just so sick of like two golf shots ruining an entire nine. Yeah. Just like you asked me about it last week, and like I was like, there's no one single part of the game that's bad. I would say the one that gets you in trouble is just like the one or gets me in trouble is the one-off, really poor shot that results in either a lost ball, having to take a drop, putting it into a hazard, something like that, or off the T doing the same thing. And none such, especially, is like as as short of a course as it is, where length isn't an issue. There's just like you know, there's just fucking woods everywhere, and it's just like so punitive to you know punch something into the woods, and it's just like it's just so easy to let a score get away from you. Going from shooting two over on the front to like nine over on the back is enough to make me want to jump into like the non-site five southbound traffic, which half the time is at a standstill, so it wouldn't even fucking work. Sure. Yeah, losing all the way around. But um, yeah, so that's uh that's life chat for now.
SPEAKER_02:I'll flip the order this week. Operation No Dad Bod is going great and terrible simultaneously. I've done a dozen CrossFit workouts in less than three weeks, some somewhere in that range. And if you know me, you know that that's a lot of them. I actually don't think that these things are correlated, they might be, but I am also dealing with um doing some home improvement projects and my back is torched. Not like, oh, it's sore because I did a bunch of work. Like my discs are not inside of the area they're supposed to be and sending neurological and back spasms left and right. So, like right now, I would I'm not gonna stop, but right now I would say I can probably go out there and do push-ups, echo bike, strict pull-ups, ring dips, maybe a walking lunge. My movement tracker is short.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm not gonna let it like stop me from going back out there, but I'm not gonna be able to be very creative. So basically, what I do in these moments is just try to match time domain and stimulus of what's on the board. That's really kind of the only thing that I can do. Because that doesn't allow me to go out there and say, like, I'm just gonna do like this many push-ups, this many pull-ups, and like flush on the bike, like that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03:Can you can you jump? Can you still box jump?
SPEAKER_02:Well, no, I did jump.
SPEAKER_03:Did you do an actual box jump, not a crossfit box jump?
SPEAKER_02:Rx workout. I did an entire RX class on Friday. I did the lift and I did the workout. The workout was the push press box jump. I had to, I worked into it pretty well, but especially during warm-ups, the amount of core bracing that I had to do to jump on the box was like, I think my body was like, hey, if we go from compression to extension in your spine, you might slip another bad boy out of there. So why don't we not do that? But I would I did it. I will say though, like in that kind of workout, it was kind of funny to think back after on it. My only chance of getting up near, and I don't have any business being up near the top of a of a leaderboard, basically any leaderboard, but I would have had to scale the box jumps down to 20 inches. Because like towards the end of that workout, it was like I would finish my push press and walk over and do that single box jump, and then I was allowed to rest on top of the box. So like it got gassy to the point where it's like, I really don't think like I don't even think lowering the the weight would would really do anything. Um, yesterday you had us doing burpee bra jumps in our warm-up, and my body just hates that moment of again, like just standing and gravity is some level of compression on your spine, and then jumping is extension. And when I hurt my back for the first time, it was basically compression, extension, compression, or you could call it traction, I guess, sort of instead of extension. But I did like a cliff drop on a snowboard, and you just have that moment where you get really elongated because you're in the air, and then you land, and it felt very weird. Like I definitely had some kind of weird tingling down in my legs and like my hips, but I didn't actually get injured there. Like a week later, I went up for a rebound in a pickup basketball game, and my discs just like jumped out. And that was that was the first time that I hurt my back like really bad. And it's kind of honestly been a battle ever since. And I've learned a little bit more about it. You essentially have this like mesh lining around your spine, and if that wears down, that's what's like holding the discs in place, not just the fact that they're compressed between actual bone. And if that gets broken up, you know, through essentially, I would assume not having proper bracing around your spine and going into, you know, intense modes of flexion and extension. So yesterday with the burpee bra jumps, like it was like I had to squeeze like I was trying to back squat 500 pounds and I could jump about a foot. Okay. So jumping is a no. And I don't know some of this stuff is hard because like part of it's just feedback from your body. And like, is your body saying like you can't do you literally can't do this because you're injured, or you can't do this because we don't want you to, because it's going to injure you. Like when it is disc, nerve, spine stuff, that feedback can be confusing. It's not the same as like a cut on your arm or a bruise where it's just obvious what's happening, that kind of thing. So it's all just self-preservation. So I'm working on it, and I'm not gonna stop exercising, but my movement trackers are real.
SPEAKER_03:Have you tried? I feel like every time we talk about your back, I just start to throw ideas out there, most of which you've tried is the like I can't remember what the machine is called, but it's like it's a s it's the squat, like it's like a belt squat or something like that, where the weight hangs, like you attach it to your hips and the weight hangs below you.
SPEAKER_02:I've done the horizontal version at a chiropractor where they put the diaper on you and they pull, basically. But like your back is on your back is on basically just like a table, and then the machine pulls you, and like you're not supposed to let your torso slide because the tension is what's pulling and creating that. Like, so it'd be the same thing, you're just turned 90 degrees, same kind of deal. And I don't know. The the issue is there are interventions that can help with in the moment, like, oh, I go get an adjustment and like my back feels better for like 45 minutes or whatever. Like there are things that help relieve and they're not like a like a solution to the problem.
SPEAKER_03:To be to be clear, I mean like as a training, like gotcha. Yeah, so like the not like a traction thing, like I mean literally like a squat, like a belt squat for I'm thinking like I've never had access to the to a machine or to one of the rig things.
SPEAKER_02:So whenever I tried it back in the day, you like hurt your back enough, like with you got fucking kettlebells swinging between your legs and you're jumping up, you're getting up onto a box, and like that's harder than than the squat itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how I feel about farmers' carries, it's like or heavy dumbbell bench press. I'm like, I can't even pick these things up, I can bench them. But like, yeah. So that's the update there. The uh your your weekly sports update. The Steelers tried very hard to lose to the Vikings after kicking their ass for the entire game, just being morons at the end of it, but they did win. The Vikings are good, one of the best regular season teams for a while, but I don't know, you probably won't have context for this, but Carson Wentz was their quarterback. I actually know that name. Being a jet at some point, he was let me see if I can get this right. He was an Eagle, a commander, a cult, a chief, one of those, and now a Viking. Yes. Nice. He's the one who lost his job through injury to Nick Foles, and Nick Foles won the Super Bowl. And then they gave him his job back the next year, even though Foles was the one who won the Super Bowl and he sucked. Anyways, so I mean the Steelers are three and one. I can't complain. They win games, they'll find a way to lose a game to a team that's not very good at some point, or maybe I'll change my tune. And more excitingly, the Red Sox and Yankees are playing a three-game playoff series starting tonight. This is like some old school shit.
SPEAKER_03:Oh shit, actually.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and sort of like CrossFit, they like to change their rules. So the latest iteration is the two wildcard teams that play each other, all three games are at the higher seed. So all three games are in Yankee Stadium. Yeah. Um because before that extra team wasn't in the wasn't in at all.
SPEAKER_03:So like is a wild card for a divisional thing or uh the conference conference?
SPEAKER_02:So the Blue Jays won the division, and the lowest wild card team, I believe, plays one of the division winners, and then the other two division winners get a buy. So there's two wildcard round series, I believe, and then two teams have a buy, and that's like how it like funnels into it, basically. But the Red Sox are like they're not great, but they're like a fun young team, and they seem to have that like that like edge and like camaraderie, like that kind of thing. They seem to like, I don't know, like like each other, and there's like some kind of like vibe there. And the Yankees seem to be like a very fragile franchise because they spend still spend an abs like an absurd amount of money and almost always have a few of the best players in the entire game, and they can't like do anything with it. Sounds like US right now. So what I'm yeah, so what I'm hoping is it's two of the best pitchers in all of baseball are pitching against each other tonight. Um and I'm just hoping if you find like if they get their foot in the door and the Yankees and their fans and everyone's like, here we fucking go again, I think they have a chance. But like if they lose tonight, the idea of winning two in a row in Yankee Stadium is. Yeah, that's tough. They're not supposed to win and it'll be fun. So I'll take it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's crazy. I've been served a bunch, I think I talked to you about this once, maybe on the podcast, about I've been served a whole bunch of like pitching like camp type stuff, like academies where dudes, you know, prospec high school, collegiate prospects, even pro prospects will go to like I don't, you know, it's a pitching camp, so I don't know what exactly it all entails, but watching like the coaching, because they're like, you know, they've got the coaches like working with them on every pitch and trying to like adopt some sort of change to what they're doing, whether they're trying to learn a new pitch or you know, focusing on something, but it is crazy the like the nuance that there is to to pitching at a high level. It's like I think the pitch like in baseball is the equivalent of like the golf swing, where it's just like and that's new too, by the way.
SPEAKER_02:There's the a lot of the stuff that they're talking about is very new, just in the realm of like like there are pitchers who were supposed to be really good and then couldn't figure it out at the MOB level, and in years past a lot of them would just sort of be cast away, and now they have data on like hit rate, spin rate, like what literally like tracking how the ball spins and whether that's an elite pitch, and if it's not, don't fucking throw it to these guys, like that kind of thing. So they'll literally now remove one or two pitches from an arsenal, and a guy just shoots rockets, like his stats get way better. So yeah, the data on all that stuff is actually kind of new.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, which is that's funny. They talked they talked a lot about that. I yeah, I would watch that because they'll use like track man to like actually what are you watching?
SPEAKER_02:What did you say this is? Like what's it from?
SPEAKER_03:Um it's just YouTube shorts. It's the SNE group. I'll try to remember what it is um or or find it and look up what it is. But it's basically, yeah, they're just you can just see that here the coaches talking to them. Like they that it's usually like split screen with like the track man data data, which if you don't know is just like a ball basically tracks the movement of the ball, the spin, all that sort of stuff. The golfers use the same the same thing, but it's crazy too. And that it's funny the like similar sort of tangent, how you're talking about like how stat and data heavy it is. It was the same thing, same thing over the the weekend at the Ryder Cup. They were talking about it at the end at the end of the season, basically, or end of the weekend, like how well Europe did as far as like just using like stats and shit like that, and how terrible the US did when they paired up like Colin Morikawa and Harry English, and like one of the which the basically there was a website, the one the video I'm thinking of, they were talking about it's some like open source like golf stats.com or something like that, and they evaluated like the like they ranked basically like all of the possible combinations and pairings of golfers in like the foursoms and like the alternate shot and shit like that. And the US like paired Harry English and Colin Morikawa, which was like the 10th out of 136 combinations, like it was like the fourth worst ranked decision for the entire weekend, and they like did it two two mornings in a row, and who would have thought they got fucking annihilated, even though the end score was a little bit closer.
SPEAKER_02:It was like the US never fucking had that stuff's fun too because it's like the old versus the new in a lot of ways. They're like the people that like consider themselves old school and they hang their hat on it. Yeah, and you better be real fucking good if you want to hang your hat on that stuff, because there's still like even some of the commentators in football, because like it's very the the the data now is why teams go for it on fourth down, why they go for two fairly often, why like like there was one thing towards the end of a game not too long ago where the kick returner was literally catching the ball at the towards the end of the game and then looking at his head coach like all the way across the sideline, and his coach is like, get out of the end zone because he wanted him to run time off of the clock. So even though the touchback gets them all the way to the 35 now, um, he was like, it's the data tells us that you running it out and taking 10, 12 seconds off the clock is actually more beneficial to us, yeah, like that kind of thing. So it's just crazy how that stuff pops up, but the the commentators, some of them are like, I don't agree with this decision. And it's like, yeah, yeah, that's what's awesome about math. Like, like your risk tolerance comes into play, that's obviously there, but like more often than not, if this situation is more advantageous to you winning, like even though it goes against conventional wisdom, like some of them are tough to watch as a fan because you're so used to like give me the three points, and they're like, Well, it's turning a two-score game into a two-score game, so who cares? And it's just like little things like that, where some of the younger coaches do it and they're like, Oh, look at this young hot shot. And they're like, Well, actually, no, I just have a nerd in my ear telling me the exact statistics on this.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, it begs the question about because Keegan Bradley, when he got interviewed, one of the reporters was like, Like, this was a terrible pairing. Why are you doing it again effectively? It's like statistically, like the wrong pairing at the wrong, like, there's nothing correct about this. And he's like, Well, we got a plan and we're gonna stick to it. It's like, okay, I guess, like you know more than I do, but like that kind of just begs the question when like does somebody's job become obsolete eventually because of just like, no, we're just gonna do it's just the computer. The computer's now the coach. It's like make this decision.
SPEAKER_02:It's like well, the unicorn is the person who uses that and brings people together and does the right, you know, rah-rah, like all of that. It's those things combined. And unfortunately, a lot of times the like really good, like glue guy kind of coach. Yeah. So the a lot of times your like traditional like coach that's that's good at bringing people together and you know, giving the right speech and whatnot is also the old school guy who doesn't want to like doesn't want to do that. All right, so we are going to talk about the return of quarterfinals, and I did Hunter get clarification on something just now in real time. Wow. But we will we're gonna run this for entertainment purposes like I had originally planned. So we're gonna listen to Castro talk about the changes to the season because there are some there are some kind of nuggets in there. All right, we're gonna pause there for one second. So I appreciate him taking responsibility for this lapse in judgment. You know what I mean? Like because that's not necessarily, I think, been his strong suit in the past. But at the same time, it's more of the same because it's like, why did you like why did you think that people would want that? That just feels like a kind of a tone-deaf, like, like cooking. It's like the kind of thing that would happen in like an echo chamber where you're not actually thinking about and taking into account the history of everything. Because the magic of the old school days was Billy and Jenny from your class could literally try to qualify for regionals, and that was the craziest shit ever, right? Like, we could be on the path to being a professional athlete. And like, I don't know that a lot of the iterations have tried to capture that, and I think that's what creates the size of the sport, right? Because there's two different things. There's your professional athletes, and all of these iterations I honestly that they've had, I think are fine for the top, you know what I mean, the tip of the spear, and then you know, as it dovetails out a little bit, but where you get all of those people from and the people to like pay the I know my camera turned off, I don't know what the fuck's going on there. We'll figure that out, I'll keep talking. Um the like the people that are going to pay for the thing need the carrot dangled in front of them, right? Yeah. That has just always been so obvious to me, and I don't understand why some of these like one-off things I don't know. It just doesn't it's it's never made any sense to me. I don't get it.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I think that I think your like your point about the regionals thing being like, oh a gym member could qualify for regionals. Like I I just think we're we're like so far past that being like a thing. It's I think that was just the nature of a new sport in which like it's honestly like I th actually thought about this as a lot of our members were doing high rocks. Like, high rocks is in that stage right now where everybody can participate, and it's like you could even be a decent, like a moderately decent CrossFitter and perform well. But like if HyROX continues to be a thing for the next handful of years to come, it will progressively become less inclusive and go in a similar direction as semifinals and regionals, where it's like you actually need to be of a high enough caliber in order to compete in these events, unless they just continue to do open, like straight up open registration to compete. But like the the fact is is that like the comp the level of competition is so is so far exceeded what somebody at an affiliate who's reasonably athletic can do just on a whim on a weekend in you know March or or February or March. I do think which kind of just popped in my head, an alternative could be, and this kind of goes to maybe what we were talking about right before the podcast, is like is quarterfinals like does quarterfinals become the like the affiliate CrossFit games where it's like, hey, you you have to do the open, you are in the top X percent, and then you get to compete in online quarterfinals, and at the end of online quarterfinals, like we crown the fittest like affiliate athlete on earth or something like that. And then semifinals, like a semifinals path is reserved for like you know, competing at the CrossFit games are like the fittest on earth as opposed to the fittest affiliate athlete, you know, on earth. And it's like there there has to be, I think that I think that once the sport got out of reach of the somewhat average everyday person, that kind of chasm, like there's no going back from that. It's like, okay, I don't like unless I turn into a professional athlete, I have no chance to qualify for semifinals. And like that that just became a really big divide, which I I don't think was like I don't think CrossFit helped themselves um throughout like all the changes and shit that they made, but I do think it was a natural evolution of a sport that just go went from like being a recreational thing for former athletes to like still be competitive to now it's like nope, now you actually need to treat it like a sport.
SPEAKER_02:And what I mean is not that that can still happen. What I mean is using that as an opportunity to understand like behavioral economics. So there is a version of that person that still exists. We've sent three people from the hatchet program to semifinals in the last three years, and those are typically people that have a full-time job. And what happens is the degrees of separation that you get from those people to yourself are what makes this thing possible to me. So you go to the gym with so-and-so that qualifies or is a fringe athlete, and there's one person that's 10, 20, 30 percent, you know, worse than that person for lack of a better term, like then you are 10, 20, 30 percent. Like you can understand the realm of their capacity, not like if someone who won the CrossFit games was in your gym, it would make what they're doing would make absolutely no sense. And again, not just how good they are, but the idea of like a bit of like a community and a culture thing where if you have a huge gym and you have people that slot in at sort of each level there, I think you're just gonna get more people to sign up because like, oh, they're signing up, I'm gonna sign up, I'm at least close to them, I might be able to take them in one workout, that sort of thing. So I think it just like if you make it seem like this is only actually in practice for the best of the best, you're gonna lose a lot of people. Because, like, with any other political thing, like honestly, you're probably gonna create kind of a 50-50 sort of situation. Roughly half of the people that they lost last year um were actually probably lost due to this. Because, like, oh, I'm just gonna sign up, like, why am I gonna give you my$20? That sort of thing. And whether that's correct or not is a totally different thing, but it's like you kind of have to do what the customer behavior tells you about.
SPEAKER_03:Well, what's the argument for throwing signing throwing$50 and signing up for quarterfinals, knowing that you're not going anywhere beyond that?
SPEAKER_02:You're special, it wasn't an open sign up. You are done that for some. I mean, why didn't why didn't that person do it last year? What do you mean? There that didn't exist. There was there was no you couldn't sign up. You were done unless you were the top one percent.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean Yeah. We'll get to that part. There's a new version of that. Online, you couldn't pay to participate, you had to qualify semi-fine online like online semantics.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, one top one percent in the world qualified for that. How could you? Would all right. So the to stick on quarterfinals first, the top 25% of people from the open advanced to quarterfinals, and then the way that they're combining last year's system with this year's system is essentially that one percent from the open last year that got you to the online semifinal is now the top 2,000 people from quarterfinals are eligible to compete at a semifinal. Where I was very confused during the rollout of all of this was at some point a week or two after they announced quarterfinals were back, I was really excited. They were like, you still need to qualify for these semifinals. So if you are going to Syndicate Crown, maybe they have an online qualifier and you have to do that to qualify. But it sounds like you are not eligible to qualify unless you came in the top 2000 in quarterfinals. Get out, get some yarn and some tax.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So, okay, I guess that last part answered my question. You just alluded to the idea that I could qualify for, say, Syndicate Crown, for example, by doing an online qualifier. Yes. Which so does that mean that I could theoretically not do the open, not therefore not qualify for quarters, I could just qualify for the syndicate crown qualifier. That is the confusion that they created, I believe.
SPEAKER_02:You are not eligible to qualify for the CrossFit games via semifinals unless you are in the top 2,000 in quarterfinals. So essentially they've moved that thing, that semifinals, like, okay, this is a quote unquote semifinals level athlete. This is top 2,000 in the world in quarterfinals. We get to beef up the programming a little bit. And my concern was that they moved the community cup back into March and called it quarterfinals. But turns out that's not the case. Essentially, what I want for people, what I want for our athletes, why we would peak for quarterfinals, is we get a very like intimate look at where we stack up relative to what our goals are. Am I in that top 2,000? Do I even get a chance to go qualify? Am I in four thousandth, three thousandth? And then I go and try and figure out what is my weakness. Do I need to get stronger? Do I need to get fitter? Do I not have the skills? Is it pulling gymnastics? Is it pressing gymnastics? Is it my snatch? Is it my clean? Whatever, any of these things. That information is so invaluable to the trajectory of an athlete that's either just getting started or has that lifetime goal of competing at a semifinal, something of that nature. And to me, again, that is a little bit of dangling the carrot and just saying, hey, like, like this is actually an online competition that matters. Now, for the best in the absolute best in the world, how hard do they have to try to be the top two thousand? I don't have to think they have to try that hard, but uh with how fit they are year-round now, they're still gonna kick everyone's ass. It's not gonna matter. So I think it will still be fairly accurate data because if you are in 1900 or 2021 hundredth, you don't care if the top 30 shuffle doesn't have any effect on you, really. Yeah. So you're still gonna get the data that you want, and that's what I was hoping for. And that just sort of brings us all the way back around to what my original take on this was. I think even though it's annoying to change again the growth of that team to be able to say, like, this clearly wasn't the right decision to go in this direction, and to actually go in and make that change. And there's some other changes that I think are really cool. I think it's awesome that teams or age group and teams get opportunities to compete. In person. So like there will be sort of like last year, like there will be masters competitions where you get a berth that takes you to the CrossFit games. And like they just don't get opportunities to do that as often with the stakes being as high. So I think that's pretty cool. So I would say after more investigation and thank you to Brian from Barbell Spin for clarifying that top 2,000 thing. This is a this I I can't see a reason why this isn't a positive thing and the right decision.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I mean, uh like gives everybody the chance. It's kind of sucks if you're uh an elite athlete to need to do the open quarterfinals, online semifinals, the games. But I mean, I guess that's how it that's always. So you don't have to do online semifinals.
SPEAKER_02:That is now essentially last chance.
SPEAKER_03:Or yeah, I mean, or yeah, I mean, or then qualify for. So I I still like if I'm if I'm number one after quarterfinals, I still need to qualify for the qualify for a semifinal. I still need to do an additional qualifier. I don't just automatically get slotted into a semifinal, correct?
SPEAKER_02:Correct, but also maybe not. So here's an example the event organizers get to make a lot of these decisions. And things that they can do is they can, you know, geofence the situation like they did last year. Syndicate Crown, I believe, can say east of the Mississippi and your quarterfinal scores. That is our leaderboard. That's how you qualify. Yeah. Like they can still do that. And I don't know if they're going to. I don't know if CrossFit wants them to. Cause like last year, I think NORCAL or TFX, one of those, yeah, TFX was the like western side of the country, is basically just like old school East and West. So I think that they're still going to be allowed to use those as the qualifiers. And I think that would be best case scenario for the buy-in for quarterfinals, would be a lot of them saying, like, this is a quarterfinals ranking system. But if you are open to everyone, I think you got to do an online qualifier. And then I think if you are in it for the dough, you got to do an online qualifier. Like, like the amount of people that are going to try to qualify for that are probably in the magnitude of the, you know, sort of the 2,000 people that that are there and potentially beyond. Because no offense, there are some delusional characters out there that think that they're going to go to a semifinal that are not in the top 2,000. So essentially, you are skipping online semifinals and replacing it with quarterfinals for a lot of the athletes. Not all of them did online. Like Alex Gazan didn't do online semifinals. She just decided to put all her eggs in the basket of the in-person one. So, like, that is a thing. Now, what is frustrating for a coach, give you my perspective from dealing with this from coach's point of view, is we don't know when the semifinals are. We don't know how many of them there are. We don't know how you qualify. We don't know how many total people qualify from all of them. We don't know how many spots they're leaving for the online. And while they probably don't know either, they do know to a certain extent. So that part of it's frustrating because, like, there could be a qualifier that's going on that's been announced that is literally a qualifier for semifinals, and we don't know that that's the case. And it's like not a good situation. And you can make the argument if you want that, like, if your athlete is in the top 10 in the world, they're gonna be fine. And it's like, okay, so we're this system is okay for 10 people. That's sick. You know what I mean? So that part of it is like, I want to be able to give my athletes the peace of mind, this is when we're peaking, this is what our schedule is, this is our backup plan. If this event doesn't go the way that it should, this athlete's better at online competition, this better, this athlete's better at in-person, that kind of things. Um, yeah, that part of it is still frustrating, but from a community-wide perspective, for you know, we've got dozens of people on our pro program and hundreds of people on our hatchet program, like this is for the community, this is good news. And I think the kind of thing that people should kind of rally around. And there's one more thing that I would say about it, but I'm actually gonna save it for for one of the questions here. Anything else on that? Cool. All right. Um, so we're gonna get into now uh some questions that were left over, and it's not necessarily that I wanted to do another QA episode, but I thought that some of the questions would be helpful for people in their training. So we'll jump right in. I have a specific workout where I see the biggest difference in my scores compared to some of the other girls. Spiders on Mars. Do you mind pulling that up, Hunter? Be from phase zero. Spiders on Mars seem to be an example where I fall behind the other girls I normally compare my scores with or similar workouts. It doesn't seem to be a movement thing per se. I'm gonna put an asterisk on this sentence. It doesn't seem to be a movement thing per se, because in a shorter time domain or a sprint situation with the same movements, I think I would put up a competitive score. Basically, it seems like I was 45 seconds to a minute 10 behind their paces, but some of the longer aerobic tests, like the 40-minute road test, I do fine with. And she goes into a little bit about why she thinks that this would be the case, but I don't necessarily think that we need to read that for our own personal context. So for a new listener, Hunter, do you find it? Yep. What is the hatchet version of Spiders on Mars? Hatchet, standby.
SPEAKER_03:Hatchet version wrap 25 minutes, 50, that's 5-0 burpee box jumpovers, standard height, 2420, 75 slash 65 calorie row, 100 wall balls, standard weight 10 slash 9 feet, 75 slash 65 calorie row, 200 double unders, and then max calorie row in the remaining whatever time you have left in that 25 minute clock. So 50 burpee box jumpovers, 75 65 cal row, 100 wall balls, 75, 65 cal row, 200 dubs, max calorie row.
SPEAKER_02:So I come to you, Hunter, you're my new remote coach, and I say, I don't understand my 40-minute row test is just as good as everybody else's, and stuff like this when it's more of a sprinty variation, I'm good at those movements. Why am I a minute behind all of these people in this test? What would you say?
SPEAKER_03:I mean, first is like, do you have a video? Okay, you've got a video. No, I don't. The answer is, well, how long did the first 50 burpee box jumpovers take you? And maybe a good question is, how many did you do in the first two minutes? Something along those lines. So leading the athlete down the track of like, you're good at these movements, you're clearly proficient with a machine when you have a monitor directly in front of your face to say, like, I can hang with the best here. Is it a movement thing? Maybe, maybe not. More likely is you don't actually know how to pace movements that don't show you a screen right in front of your face. How, you know, how long did those first 50 burpee box? Basically, I'd like to see kind of like the workout split, your split times. How long the first 50 take, how long the first 25 take you, how long the second 25 take you, what was your row pace, how'd you do your wall balls, double under? Basically, like let's let's break this thing down, you know, in five minute chunks, movement by movement, that sort of thing, and you know, try to determine if, you know, where the where the discrepancy is. Again, kind of taking it face value that you are proficient in the like aerobic time domains and assuming that you're reasonably good at the movements that are themselves. The video is helpful, but like, hey, let's talk about like exactly how like dissect how you approach this workout and why it seemed to to kill you.
SPEAKER_02:You are explaining the context of the creation of this workout. Um I remember that. I I really keep a close eye on patterns from our community. And if I create a misfit leaderboard and I sort of sort by that and I see outliers, especially related to something like this. This, this, what this is, this style of workout, the I mean, was that workout three rounds 50 and 50? The the burpee box jump over. Yeah. Well, if we see that discrepancy and we know that you have the capacity, then we got to talk about athlete IQ. And one of my Jesse Smith was one of my testers for this, and she wrote back, What is wrong with you? And I said, They don't know how to pace, Jesse. We must teach them. And and honestly, when something is an athlete IQ test for more and more and more athletes, that means it's kind of a tough nut to crack. It's like not solely on the athlete. That this kind of thing is really fucking hard to pace, but you have to figure it out if you want to reach your goals. So that's part of it. And there are some people who are just so damn fit or have the right mindset that they can kind of come back to the mean, anyways, where they're like, if they go a little bit too hard, they can maybe sense the warning signs early enough to back off and then create a little bit of a better average. But for most of us, um, not being professionals, you really gotta look at how long did it take you to do zero through 10, 11 through 20, 21 through 30, you got to get that granular and be like, my rep speed changed by two seconds or three seconds per rep. And that doesn't seem like much, but if you did all the variations of burpees um fresh that you did while you were fatigued, you would be like, holy shit, I am all over the place. This is the equivalent of a 135 and then a 150 and then a 202, like that sort of thing. So that to me is a number one, and you uh theorizing about this and coming up with all of your splits and then not executing on it isn't gonna do shit for you. So we're gonna lay we're gonna talk about the solution here in a little bit, but like it's not just knowing this thing, right? Like executing on it is a challenge in and of itself, even with all of the information. The second thing that pops into my head that I think honestly is just not a correct statement, would be it's not the movements because I'm better at them when there's less of them. Um, if you are strong, this kind of thing resonates with me being a fast twitch athlete. Like I can make it seem like I know what I that I'm good at a movement if you give me few enough of them or you give me a heavier ball or that sort of thing. That does not mean that I have the capacity to go out there. It's why like the engine program for our affiliate has things like trying to do unbroken Karen with a light ball, like developing capacity in these things, true capacity, the like holy shit, that person does Karen unbroken, or every time they you know go to do a set of wall balls, it's like robotic. There's a lot to that. It's not just in a specific setting I can excel at those things because you don't get the specific setting. You might have to do a set of 10, you might have to do a set of 150, you might be doing it in a five-minute time domain, and you might be doing it in a 25 or 30-minute time domain. And everything in between that creates so many combinations that like saying you're good at a movement may or may not be true.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, I see that argument more as like just an athlete not quite understanding that like the the energy system, like it's like, yeah, I can. I mean, this is this workouts perfect, right? It's like snatch, heavy snatch, burpee box jump over at the end of quarterfinals, you know, the other year, where it's a tall box and a and a squat snatch in a workout that's you know, less than 10 minutes, you know, three to four minutes for the fittest. It's like you like saying that you're good at that movement, I should be therefore good at a movement at the same movement in a 25-minute time domain doesn't like doesn't make sense. I understand why an athlete would say that, but like from an energy system perspective, obviously those two two couldn't be further away.
SPEAKER_02:10-12 minutes long would Tola win that event at the CrossFit Games. Sure. Right. Another thing here that is extremely common is people over-emphasizing their strengths within a workout. So if you're a really good rower, you can athlete you can athlete IQ your way out of this workout by deciding before you start my row pace is X. Because there's the idea that Hunter could beat me off of the rower and just be ahead of me and get further in the workout. And that is true in a lot of instances, but there's also the idea that Hunter could row at the exact same pace and leave the rower in a wonderful state, in the kind of state you should be in in a 25-minute workout to then go do your double unders, your wall balls, etc. So we find that athletes that have strengths within a certain thing get a little bit too locked in on that and aren't willing to row at 900 calor because it feels easy. But the other movements are the thing that is causing your heart rate to go from, you know, 160 to 180. And if you are getting back on the rower at a 180 and and staying in zone five there and then trying to continue to iterate as you go through, that's that's a pretty big problem. Um, again, there's the athlete IQ element here, and I think again, for the masses, this is a this style of workout is so fucking challenging to figure out. Dialing in your burpee box jump over pace, like you really got to know what you're doing. And in a lot of instances, you gotta have someone there with you being like, all right, 12 in a minute, we're right on target, we're right where we want to be. But you you did 16, you did 15 because they felt smooth.
SPEAKER_03:Because because you weren't working out before. Yeah, I mean that that's like a good example of that. People love big sets of wall balls, right? Yeah, and I mean here. I'm gonna do a little little experiment here so I don't have to do the math, but I got chat GPT in front of me. I need to row 75 calories on a concept two rowing machine, period. Tell me how long those calories will take if I row at 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, and 1300 calories per hour. Put this in an easy-to-read table. And and like while it's kind of doing this, it's the same, it's the same con like you just explained it with the burpee box jump over, right? You can convince an athlete, it's like doing 12 reps in a minute is not hard for most like athletes at the level that we're talking about. Doing 12 reps a minute for four a little bit over four minutes straight is obviously a little bit different. But like the difference between 12 reps per minute for four minutes versus the demand of say 10 reps per minute for five minutes, especially over the this like super long term, this like long workout, it's like that one minute of difference is so easily found later on in the workout, whether it's transitions, whether it's just picking a ball up a little bit sooner, or like just pacing, you know, it's just so easy to find that time. Whereas you come out a little bit too hot, it's effectively impossible to use any of those movements to bring your heart rate back down into a place that you can like actually operate without, you know, without disrupting your taking like you know, a full fucking minute off or spending a full two minutes rowing at 300 calories per hour just to bring your heart rate down a little bit. You're gonna have to run your mouth for a second here.
SPEAKER_02:This is uh fucking so so when we're talking about the solution now. I have good news. Our bitchwork bias for phase two, which gets started here in a few weeks for anaerobic is CrossFit. So you're gonna be doing cube staked, which is kind of the cube test version of spiders on Mars, and then in open prep and sort of leading into quarterfinals, your aerobic bias will be CrossFit and you will do Spiders on Mars again, and you will do, you know, 15 and 13 and 10 minute windows of these movements on repeats so that you can figure them out. And it's interesting because typically to get somebody better at something, we go long to short. I I find in this instance that short to long works better because you because it is more about the pacing and the athlete IQ test that the person needs a more digestible format to then figure out what to do when it's increased. So this is just the kind of thing that we will, the nuance that will be in our phase structure. Actually, the the when I do it in this order, it works better for people. Why would that be the case? And if there's you know logic behind it, we look at it. So we're gonna work on this from 90-second windows to 15-minute windows for 18 weeks. And if you take really good notes, and honestly, like I would be psychotic if I was a competitor, and I know that this is partly because of my personality, but I would be psychotic about the data on this stuff. I would want to know my rep speed from 90 seconds to the 15-minute windows. I would want to know what I'm accomplishing across all of that because it's always mixed with rowing. It's not always all of the movements together, but they're all there to give you enough context that there will not be a test that you do not have context for. It won't be possible. The idea that there would be more than 30 minutes of this stuff in a workout, it's like I pray for you, because they programmed it for 20 minutes and we're probably not having a similar conversation. And then all the way down to you'll be doing, say, seven rounds of the 90 seconds, but all the way down to 90 seconds with huge rest, you will know what you're supposed to do if you iterate from week to week and also iterate from round to round. Like if you've got four or three and a half minutes after your 90 seconds, you should be able to figure out whether that was a good idea or not.
SPEAKER_03:To round out the conversation. The difference between a male rowing at a thousand calories per hour, so most would say like that's a pretty conservative pace, I would, I would argue, up to twelve hundred calories per hour. A little bit more of like a yeah, I can someone saying, like, yeah, I can hang, I can hang there, is 45 seconds. So across both of those rows, you're talking about only a minute and a half difference. And again, put that that sounds like a lot, and it it might be, but in the context of 25 minutes total. It's only a lot if that's the pace you were supposed to row at, because what would happen in between? Like but like just think if you're a a male listening to this and women the equivalent would be somewhere in like the 700 on the slow to like 900 on the upper end of that that number. Just just think like physically what the difference of those two paces feels like and what you're physically capable of doing after you get off the row or having rowed for four minutes at a thousand calories per hour versus three and a half minutes at twelve hundred. And it's like the difference there seems a little bit more apparent. So when it comes to these types of workouts, like again, the rower is easy because you can do the math and the monitor tells you what's going on. You have to know what you kind of just alluded to is like understand what sort of pace like you think about it in terms of reps per second. I personally I think it's I like digesting it more in like reps per minute. That's a little bit more that's easier to track as like an athlete. But the idea here is like, what is the 1000 calorie per hour equivalent in burpee box jump over pace? And do you know that?
SPEAKER_02:If not, like there's there's the what is the difference between 900 and a thousand? What is the time difference there?
SPEAKER_03:30 seconds. It would take you five minutes to do it at 900 calor per hour, it would take you four and a half minutes to do it at 1000. So a 30 second gap.
SPEAKER_02:And to give again, to give you guys context, I've written on my little whiteboard while reviewing open and quarterfinals workouts, you rested for 39 seconds, circled it, put an exclamation mark next to it, and sent that photo to the person that I'm reviewing their video. Yeah, yeah. Like that, you thinking that that's a long time in that context when you're costing yourself five minutes, like it's really just isn't.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I mean, you just think about it like 30 seconds, like, okay, where where can I where else can I inject 30 seconds into this workout? Well, it's like if you took twice as many, if you if in you know you're in your head, you're like, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do four sets of 25 on these wall balls and I'll rest for five, 10 seconds in between. And it's like, well, if you just do 10 sets of 10 and rest for half as long, like you just found those 30 seconds real fucking easy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we had someone qualify for semifinals two years ago, and they messaged us and they were like, I had no business being where I was on the leaderboard in that three rounds of 50 and 50, but it's like my cryptonite, and I just did tens and I smoked people who were way better at those movements than me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we still have the like the old Max Bragg, he's just like, Yeah, I do Karen in sets of 10, and it still took me four minutes. It's like, what? Like, that doesn't even make any sense. It's like, yeah, well, if the ball's on the ground for like less than two seconds, like I beat someone to 90 in nine sets of ten and they went unbroken.
SPEAKER_02:I'm just gonna throw that out there.
SPEAKER_03:That's crazy, actually.
SPEAKER_02:All right. What do you tell your high-level athletes who are always at the top of the leaderboard to keep them pushing the intensity? I know most are self-motivated and thrive with ideas of constantly getting better.
SPEAKER_03:If you gotta ask, you can't afford it, might be the he answered the question. Yeah. You you the the differences in the the answers in the question, my friend. Um that that is largely what differentiates right the best from the wannabes, right? It's like they don't necessarily need that external motivation. That's not they don't they don't need zero, but like the motivation is like, no, I just I just have this goal and I know what is required of me to obtain it, and like I just need to do it. There's no like, you know, if I if I either of us have to convince an athlete to compete at like that, it doesn't make sense, right? Like, come on, Kelly, like I believe in you, I know you can be a CrossFit Games athlete. Like, what's what does she reply with? Okay, all right, I'll do it, fine, coach, and then takes top 10 at the Masters CrossFit Games, or is it like, you know, it's like I like I know what I need to do. Yep, okay, sorry, coach, I've been in a little bit of a funk, whatever. Like, knock me out of it. Hey, athlete, like, wake up, you're a top 10 CrossFit games athlete. Let's let's giddy up. Like, okay, got it. Like that that's the difference.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, one element to high athlete IQ is having a very clear picture of like what you need to get better at. And I actually have known some pretty damn good athletes that don't know, they just think I'm not good enough as a blanket statement. And it's like, actually, you have these two gaping holes, and if we close those up, you would be like, Holy shit, what would happen? Like, you would not believe how good you could be. But because those things are commonly programmed or that energy system is required, then they don't necessarily see it that way. That is when they like and this, I don't know if this is a thing anywhere anymore. Like, this was such a part of CrossFit and such a part of having a quote unquote training camp back in the day. Like the leaderboard was everything back in the day at so many gyms, and then the leaderboard of the comments section, like you like athletes, like were like really good athletes, were basing their self-worth on like whether they want a Metcon on a Tuesday. And so much of that is gone. Like a lot of it is gone. And I don't know, for me as a remote coach, it's probably because I'm like, I want you to run so fucking hard to open this workout to see what it's like to be in zone five for rope climbs that they're like, well, I would never do that, like in a competition. You know what I mean? So, like, like maybe part of it is not knowing what you're supposed to be working on from a macro perspective. What do I need to get better at? Because if I don't get better at these things, it's not gonna matter how competitive I am. And then on a micro, on a day-to-day, are you reading the stimulus of the workout and doing your part as the athlete to create that stimulus? Because like a lot of cardio workouts are gas the second you don't choose the row pace that allows you to go unbroken and in quick transitions, right? And like a lot of muscle endurance workouts become closer to cardio or gas if you just chop everything up, like you're gamifying the workout, that sort of thing. So I would say I see this at a high level, but we get rid of it by talking about what you need to improve on overall and in an in a given workout.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I was gonna say to like make my answer a little bit more useful for the masses is that like, so I I like we've talked a little bit about like the training progression that somebody needs to go on. Like a hatchet athlete needs to do a lot of crossfit, right? An elite games athlete needs to spend a lot of their time managing like fatigue and intensity so that they can peak for their season, which might mean that their like early off season contains a little bit less CrossFit and like progressively adds more of it toward the end. There's more weakness work and stuff like that. But for the like everyday person, the regular gym goer to like the quarterfinals level athlete, like you guys just need to we need to do CrossFit when it comes to like thinking about the comparisons and the leaderboard stuff. It's like again, that high-level games athlete is so unconcerned, or just a high-level athlete, whatever it is, is not very concerned about where their like day-to-day placing is on a given leaderboard because of what you said, right? They're trying to focus on maybe a specific component of a workout. Maybe they have a different workout because that's what their remote coach asked them to do. So comparing, you know, doesn't they have somebody to compare it to? And also like that lat athlete also understands like, hey, just you know, it's like when you when you're looking at a score on the leaderboard, all you're seeing is numbers. You have no context for what that athlete did before, what that athlete needs to do after. When, you know, is this athlete on their third of three training days in a row? Are they completely fresh and ready to roll? Did they sp really get after this workout? Did they not? Like, there's there are way too many variables to just glue your, again, like self-worth to that single score on the board. And the higher, higher level athlete you become, the more you tend to realize that. And it's like, okay, this doesn't really matter until the open, until quarters, until semifinals, until like we're all competing together, you know, it's all like, you know, head to head. And like that's when the athletes like come out and it's like, okay, now I need to get the best score, the best time possible. But for the rest of the year, like there's not a whole lot of helping the at the high-level athletes stay motivated, like because they understand kind of like the life cycle of like the cycle of the season, so to speak. It's like you can't care about a score on a whiteboard in September. It's like it's useless.
SPEAKER_02:Um there's there's I'm trying to think of like the kind of notes that I get from an athlete based on a workout. Because if it's not the actual score, it's like I think we need to incorporate more front squats in a workout because those surprised me, that sort of thing. I couldn't believe I was able to hold on for that set of toes to borrow. That's kind of new information. So they've got these little workouts within a workout where they're thinking about movement combinations, time domains, things of that nature. So I think that would be um an important thing. The only devil's advocate that I'll throw out there related to this question is just when you train so much alone and don't have context for intensity because you've gotten to a point where this is hard equals intensity. And spoiler, it's always hard. Even when you don't go that hard, it's kind of hard. You know what I mean? Like a seven RPE in a Metcon sucks because it's just the nature of what we do. So that would be when you need to make sure that you're not always in a big fish little pond situation. You go train with other people to kind of see where you're at to push yourself, that sort of thing. Some people benefit from that more often, some people benefit from that just sort of in the, you know, three or four training camps a year, that sort of deal. But that would be my only devil's advocate there. This next question is just one of those ones that I almost want to just ask because it gives people context for the idea that like everyone goes through this type of thing. And it really boils down to like, why am I doing this? Should I be doing this? What am I gaining from this huge time and investment and money? How do I realize like whether I am going to win the CrossFit games or whatever? And then there's some pieces in there of at the end of the day, isn't the goal of competing just to be the winner? So, first and foremost, there's a like a shared suffering situation here. Like, people are going to question this, not just because it's really hard and one person gets to win the CrossFit games, but also because like you are diminishing your resources like almost no other human on earth if you have a full time job or kids or whatever, and you're training for competitive CrossFit. Like you questioning things on a somewhat regular basis might just happen because you're kicking your own ass intentionally over and over, and you don't have the resources again to be like, yay, this is fun. This is great. That sort of thing. So I'll throw that out there and let you respond to that. But I do want to pick up on one part of it that stuck out to me, which was it may be helpful to hear the experiences of others and how they handled the situation and potentially the undeniable truth that they just won't be the winner. I mean, at the end of the day, isn't that the goal of competing? I look at that as an incredibly reductionist view of what we're doing here. Um no one would, you know what I mean? It would be Jason Hopper or Tia, they would be the only people that show up at the games. And they're like, yay, we won, right? Like the struggle and the what you learn about yourself between the lines. There is way more going on. That is the idea of like the posters reading the only thing that matters is the destination. The journey sucks. Like, like that's probably not going to be the motivational poster, right? And again, I have reached five plus professional and honestly personal and sports mountaintops in my life, and they're not what you think they are. Like, I just I promise that. So that's when you really learn. You almost have to win to learn that the way that you spend your days in your life is significantly more important than one day, like that sort of thing. So like I don't know, you know, what your opinion is. I mean, I I can probably guess what your opinion is on these questions, but like that part of it was the only thing that stuck out to me that was like, I think we gotta reevaluate this portion.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'll I'll give I mean maybe an anecdote. So I mean, to your point, what you just said is is an important one, right? It's like the immediate one that comes to mind is the somewhat famous interview that Scotty Scheffler did after he won, I don't remember which major it was this year, but he basically like alluded to the idea like, what am I doing? Like, what's the point of this? It's like I you know, you win, you celebrate for five minutes, and then like the family's like, hey, where are we going to dinner? Gotta get the kid in the car, like the we fucking forgot the stroller at home. It's like it's like you won, but like life goes on and almost like abruptly and immediately so, right? So like the the idea that the only destination is to win is kind of like when the people who are at the top, and you just said it too, like who are at the top say that being at the top, like you're you're there for a short period, and then it doesn't fucking matter because I gotta go play golf four days later again and I'm back at the right in the mix with everybody. Understanding like why you're you know what what benefit is this hobby to me. So and and the personal anecdote that I have, I think having picked up golf has actually given me a a slightly renewed sense of why people compete in CrossFit. And I think there's a there's a couple of big important distinctions as to why like I still I personally like place value over one versus the other, but like this idea that like so for me, golf serves as a competitive outlet as somebody who competed in sports, predominantly hockey, for about 20 years, and then that was gone, right? There's a void there. That void was somewhat shortly filled by CrossFit for a little while. And like for me personally, the timing worked out exceptionally well that regionals was like that, you know, I qualify for regionals when it was like, hey, you're a pretty good athlete, you figured out most of these movements. Good job. Like regionals, there you go. You know, and and like that was sick and that was cool, but um at the end of the day, it's like the it filled that competitive void for me, but like I have no, you know, I have no uh I'm never gonna I'm not gonna go to the PGA tour. What what do you mean by win? Win sure like beat Scotty Scheffler, like because I ain't gonna do that. Like, is it win the match that I've got going against my buddy on Tuesday afternoon for nine holes? Okay, we I now I can now I can play with now I can get behind that, right? And like what the the value that it provides for me is it it provides that competitive outlet, it's physical, it's both it's both physically and mentally demanding, more so the the mental side of things, but it's something that like in CrossFit, like there's always something small to improve on. You know, it fill it fills a lot of voids for me, but I have no illusions that I'm gonna be the bet like again, what does it mean to be the best at or to win? Talking like number one in the world, because there ain't that many of them, and it's not you, respectfully. So it's like figuring out what value does that thing add to your life, because I spend a whole shitload of time and more money than I'd like to admit on like this hobby that is ultimately gonna only do like only gonna serve me like personally, and you know, it'll do other it provides social opportunities and stuff like that. There are kind of ancillary benefits to to this hobby, but at the end of the day, like the hobby itself isn't going to bring me any future, you know, val like golfing itself, like going out and talking to people, sure, like you get connections and stuff like that. But the point is, is like you have to figure out what this hobby is doing for you. So having picked it up kind of reminds me, it's like, well, maybe CrossFit is just that thing for somebody else who comes into the gym, they they get bit by kind of the they drink the Kool-Aid, so to speak, and they really want to get better at it. I think where my personal the distinction for me between a hobby like golf, like a like a like a more traditional sport or a game or something like that, there's a big difference because a CrossFitter, like, I want to go get better at golf. Like, I can go chip and putt or go to the driving range. And this isn't that's not necessarily demanding, that's not beating myself up physically. A CrossFitter who's like, man, I really like CrossFit, it's a hobby. I'm gonna go to the gym and hit a five by five back squat. It's like that has for me, that has like ramifications. Like, it's like you are you are draining significant amount of energy from a gas tank if you don't move exceptionally well, like you are compounding poor movement patterns that ultimately like you are your your body's only got like so much mileage on it from a like perspective from a physical beatdown perspective. And so for me, that's where I struggle a little bit as a coach, where I see an athlete who really likes this whole CrossFit thing and wants to get better at it. What I see as a coach is like that person's not moving very well, like they might get hurt. It's like, what what is this doing for you? Because like, are you just half-assing your way through another MetCon just because you like breathing hard? It's like that's one thing, but you're also like all of these the ri literal repetitions that you're doing is is putting wear and tear on your physical being that is not maybe necessarily like providing any benefit to you other than that immediate feeling of like I feel better, like I, you know, my stress levels are down and whatever, and maybe that trade-off is worth it. But I think for me that's like the distinction between adopting a like quote more traditional hobby versus the hobby of of exercise. There's nothing wrong with that, but I I think there's an important distinction between like those two possibilities. But the super long answer is like you have to know what this competitive thing, what it what does it mean to win, quote unquote? Is that your actual goal? And what value is doing additional training? What value is exercise bringing to your to your life that can't be either found elsewhere or like is so worth doing that you just have to identify maybe a a better goal than like to quote win?
SPEAKER_02:Well, we're all living proof that winning isn't the thing. None of us are the winners. Yeah. Yeah. So winning winning isn't the thing, and I'll let you guys in on a little secret. You siccos are just looking for an excuse to continue improving yourself. Like you wouldn't just do the like, I'm gonna play a nine-hole match with my friend. Like, that wouldn't be the only thing. You would like an excuse to play some more golf, right? You like going and playing golf. Clearly, that's a thing. But the way that our minds work, the way that we're wired evolutionarily, there's this thing of like always improving and evolving and moving forward. So the trick that you can play on yourself to make it seem like your time is being spent is worthwhile is oh, there's a tournament, there's a this, there's the open, there's the local thing or whatever. But in reality, if you just remove a couple days of the year, you are showing up to either golf, which is probably more mental anguish than physical, or you are showing up to put yourself through the fucking ringer. And like whether people notice it or not, there is a reason, right? Like, again, you are you're gonna be able to deal with stress better. You're gonna live longer. Like, there are so many benefits from a lot of these things that we're talking about that like it makes sense that you would want to keep doing them. But these, this like obsession with the like the the peak of your mountaintop, I think honestly is just an excuse to work around the idea that you might be in pursuit of something that's like, I don't know, not entirely necessary.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, is it necessary for you to obtain a 500-pound back squat? Like, no, like nothing. But if it keeps you back squatting, but if it keeps you, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Muscle, bone density, confidence, testosterone, like the things that it can do for you. That that is actually the point.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think it's and I think it's acceptable, but I mean, but you're not thinking about but the athlete's not someone's not thinking those things, right? It's like, well, I I just feel better. I know I inherently know that this is like good for me, and it just happens to be the case that I really like it. And that's fine. Like that it's just like, well, I just I do it because I like it. And you can then you can investigate further, like, well, what do you sure what about it do you like? And like we can get all sorts of woos woo-saw up in here. But like, yeah, it's it comes down to like identifying one of the one of their like side questions is is this hobby of mine helpful and healthy for me? It's like, well, like again, to my point, I think of it like okay, if you do, you know, you're you just train all day. I think about it as like a beatdown on your your physical.
SPEAKER_02:You think more is better, you're confused.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, for sure. But it's like, but then the other side of the coin is like, well, if you didn't have those things, like what would what what would you fill your time with? And it's like, is the other things that you would fill your time with? Are those bad? Like, well then video games and cheese. Maybe I'll maybe I'll take the go ahead and do some rowing intervals. Like, sounds like that's better than the alternative. And we have members who are like that at the gym, right? It's like if it's the difference between coming in and doing a workout or going out and drinking or you know, doing drugs or something, or getting back on the sauce, whatever it is, thinking about some like some of our sober members who have worked super hard to maintain that. It's like, motherfucker, like you do all the rowing intervals you want, like go for it. Like fuck your HRV. Yeah, stay alive. Yeah, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. Yeah, being a little tired tomorrow is better being the better than being dead. So agreed. Yeah, it just what what is what does it do for you?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and listen, like these are I'll circle back to the beginning just to put a period on it. These are very normal things, yeah. And I can say that from a personal level too. I had existential dread when I was like five. So, like the whole like why are we here? What's going on, and then like as often as you can leaning into like the day-to-day is the thing. Optimize your day-to-day, the like real boring shit, just the stuff that you do in your life, because that ends up being the whole fucking thing. All right, last one is a very specific question, but there is actual context to this, which is fun for us, kind of a proof of concept. So, how would you expand training for someone that is following Misfit affiliate and is committed to group class, but wanted to tack on even more than the competitor extra? So, to give context, you show up at the gym and you have a MetCon in class, your gym follows Misfit Affiliate. There is something called the Competitor Extra that is essentially like a built-in like extra piece that's either strength, skill, or conditioning or accessory that makes a well-rounded program for someone who wants to compete. Again, whether it's just kind of local throwdown sort of thing or all the way up to the to the master's CrossFit games. And you basically just want to stay in class. You want to get the benefit of the community and of the intensity and of the coaching and the camaraderie and all of that. And we've had in the last two years, two people qualify for the master's CrossFit Games following this program and doing the competitor extra, which is really cool, proof of concept, and kind of tells you a little bit about more is not better, better is better. And maybe if you're at a good gym and you're being coached and you've got the right people around you, that you can get a lot out of a out of less. So here's what I'll say this very specifically is some form typically of a remote coaching type situation. We are open to hybrid remote coaching situations where, like, because remote coaching is if you sign up for a year, it's 350 bucks a month. If you sign up for six months, it's 375 bucks a month. If you sign up for one month, you're a bozo because we priced that so terribly to deter you from doing so because it usually wastes the coach's time. So this would be a situation where it's like, I want to add a third or fourth row to the spreadsheet. It is possible for us to charge kind of an in-between amount for something like that. But if I was going to say, how could someone get better in doing one more piece here? I would say we should write it. I don't want to be like a like a dick about it, but like what you could do is take the entire program and add a row and figure out what's missing and how to personalize and all that good stuff. I know some people who are pretty good at that, that I think have a little bit more context. So this is a very specific thing, but an interesting question. Not sure what your opinion is on it, Hunter.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, uh it's you you're it it seems like do we know this person? Is this Jesse? Jesse asked this.
SPEAKER_02:Jesse did not ask this. Okay. We do know the gym that this came from.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean Yeah, the the easy answer, or like, well, I don't even know if this is the easy answer. One answer is what you just said. So for the most part, it's like the class programming is either like a lifting only day, which means the competitor extra is probably going to be some sort of conditioning. If it's a conditioning only day, if it's yesterday when we did terrible C2 bike intervals, the lifting piece was a back squat. Nice. Everybody loved that. Back squat, which means like, so you've got like basically the competitor extra fills in something that was missing from class. You add, like Drew said, a third piece, and you say, like, okay, the class was the lift, the competitor extra was conditioning. Third thing is skill. I think thinking about things in those three categories is helpful. Lift conditioning, skill, whatever thing wasn't hit in the class, the competitor extra, and now your personalized piece, like lift conditioning, now it's skill. You did conditioning and skill, great. Now you need to lift. So it's like fill in the void of those three things. And if all three are there, I do accessory, so it's not, yeah, it's sure straightforward in that regard. There's Thursday has the zone two stuff. So there's obviously that. That's a good place to start. Usually, where I direct like an affiliate athlete. But beyond that, what you're asking for is like another in-bet like the in-between option is like, okay, I'm a competitor, I do affiliate program, I do the competitor extra, I'm top of the leaderboard every day. I still want to be competitive. Like the hatchet program is that next thing. This this person, it seems like they're asking for something even further in between those two things, which doesn't exist as a product, it exists in the explanations that you and I just gave for somebody to do. Right.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. But the way that it has existed is that is what Jesse did. Yeah. So basically it's like, oops, I qualify for the CrossFit Games, what do I do now? And it's like, probably need a little bit more volume, but like if you're going to personalize a program, you should give those reins to someone who knows how to personalize a program. So the the version that Hunter is referencing that I did a little bit as well, I think would only work in a group setting. I think that would if we're gonna be generic about it, it would be like we got this group of five that come in at noon. Like, I think uh I think a third or fourth piece would be fine in that context. But if you are an individual, the idea that you're not personalizing in this scenario is kind of crazy, right? Because like the skill rotation, we could go X number of weeks without doing a muscle up, and that's totally fine in the context. And then you're like, well, not in my context. I suck at them and I need to be good at them. Like, so we need to work on those weekly, like that kind of thing. So I think that kind of answers that question. And and I I would tip my cap to anybody who's committed to like staying within their affiliate, you know what I mean? Even if they are like a high-level athlete, I think that's really cool. But if you are looking for a product that doesn't exist, you typically have to kind of pay a premium for it to make it exist.
SPEAKER_03:And also, like if I knew this person, you could tell me after, but like expand the framework.
SPEAKER_02:This question came from from roots, but they didn't say who the person was. And they actually have a lot of people who compete that follow the program. So I don't know if they are asking for an individual or if they're asking for like, you know, yeah, you get a bunch of kids from CU Boulder who like love class but also want to.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I think there's only there's one other like category of athlete that I'm thinking of because we have plenty of athletes who do take class, maybe then do the competitor extra after class. And if you gave them another piece, they would do it. I would also look at a large number of those people and say, What are you doing? Like, why are you doing this additional training piece? Like, is this a legitimate competitive aspiration? Or are we at this point just exercising because you have the time versus like, what are what are we actually getting out of this piece? Is this athlete, are you an athlete who is consistently at the top of their leaderboard doing the workouts as prescribed? Like, if not, then the question is like, well, how do we get your intensity high, your fitness up? Yeah. And, you know, then we can talk you kind of the the earn your volume conversation happens here.
SPEAKER_02:But and I normally wouldn't give this context, but yesterday is an example of me maybe letting some people know that they don't need to do that piece. So yesterday at our gym, we had a scenario that would be any given Tuesday for a real competitor, like a high-level competitor, where they have to do machine intervals and a lift where they're using the same muscle group. Like that's extremely common. But when your weekly volume of C2 biking is the literally the exact meters that you just did, you're not going to be able to recover from that and go do heavy back squats. So, like sometimes it's like, hey, this is literally for hence the name, competitor extra. There's a handful of people at our gym that can push themselves pretty hard on a bike and then rest 10 to 15 minutes and go back squat. And that's great. Good for them. And then there's the rest of us, right? Like, I can't even fucking fathom. I don't want to do air squats after that workout.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. That's that's funny because I I heard that conversation in what was yesterday? Monday, I guess. Yeah, it must have been, I guess it was 3:30. I heard it, I heard it in two separate classes. People preemptively planning to back squat after before like after warming up, but before doing C2 bike intervals. And I abstained, but in my head, I'm like, motherfucker, if you can back squat heavy after this, I'm gonna make you do this shit again because there is no world in which you should be able to recover and do the competitor extra back squat session before my next class starts. Yeah. Yeah. And they were reasonably qualified to do that. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And everybody else was like, I don't think I they finished the first 1800. I don't think I could back squat after this. Like, motherfucker, I knew you couldn't. I'm glad, I'm so glad that you are going hard enough that you are making it yourself incapable of squatting. But that yeah, that's funny. I heard that that two separate competitions. And that was the death.
SPEAKER_02:Honestly, that concept was in a lot of ways not like part of the was just the convenience factor and making the gym better for the members, but where the hatchet class disappeared. Like our the culture at our gym is you hand me a Metcon and I'm gonna torch myself with it, right? I'm gonna go really hard like three times a week, and everything's gonna be fucking hunky dory. You want me to strict press right now? You insane? I don't even know if I can put my arms over my head, right? Like that kind of thing. So it's like that's one way to audit this stuff, yeah. Right? Like if you're going to do the competitor extra and it says 80% and you're at 40%, the writing should probably be on the wall. I don't know that we can have final thoughts. Quarterfinals, hooray. It's back. I'm glad they listened. I'm glad masters get an opportunity to compete in person. We'll see what that actually looks like. I think that'll be pretty cool.
SPEAKER_03:Uh I want to see some flow charts for the qualification process.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm I'm gonna get some yarn and some tax and really fucking lay it out. And yeah, it's cube staked and spiders on Mars. We are going to haze the shit. Listen, if you're not gonna fucking learn how to pace, we're gonna force you to learn how to pace or at least not have fun while not learning how to pace. Yep. Did we do it? Yeah, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Misfit Podcast. Hit the link in bio on our Instagram at MisfitAthletics to get signed up for any of our individual programs on Fitter or Strivey. We do not have free trials going right now, but if you DM us, I will email you a copy of any of the programs that you want to take a peek at. That includes our affiliate programming, which you can get by going to teammisfit.com, clicking on the sign up now button, and getting a two-week free trial at push press stream fit or sugarwad. We'll see you next week.
SPEAKER_01:All right, you big take bunch of misfits.
SPEAKER_00:Biggest bunch of misfits I ever say.