Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
WANJIRU: New Misfit Affiliate Phase - E.378
We lay out a seven-week “stimulus bomb” phase that aligns coaches and members around five by five back squats, pulling gymnastics, and a smart rowing bias, all aimed at real adaptation and Open readiness. We explain the why, show how to coach it, and offer flexible tools for holidays, engine work, and competitors.
• Five by five back squats as the universal strength driver
• Coaching neutral spine, bracing, stance, and glute activation
• Personalising squat style to anthropometry without losing depth
• GPP lifts in metcons to test strength under fatigue
• Pulling gymnastics through hollow and arch shapes
• Logical progressions from strict capacity to kipping efficiency
• Rowing bias, zone 2 strategy, and machine rotations
• Holiday-friendly swaps and keeping lift-only days intact
• Engine add-on structure and Sunday long slogs
• Competitor Extras tied to class for retention and readiness
Head to gorilla mind.com forward slash misfit or use the code word misfit at gorilla mind for checkout. You support the podcast and save money at the exact same time.
You can get started for two weeks for free by going to teammisfit.com, click on sign up now, StreamFit, SugarWod or PushPress. You can also email coach@misfitathletics.com for a two-week PDF preview.
------------------------------
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 in to a special edition Misfit Podcast. Monday, December 8th, the Misfit Affiliate Wanjiro phase gets started. You can head to teammisfit.com, click on the sign up now button, get two weeks for free at SugarWad, StreamFit, or PushPress. We're going to take a deep dive into what the phase is all about, talk about some of the progressions from one phase to another. And, you know, we mention it each time we do this podcast, but I think it's important to say that this is very much a like narrative builder for your gym. So if this is coaches listening to this or members listening to this, rallying behind and around a concept can be really powerful within a gym. And then it's a little bit of an audition for us. We're going to talk through how we think about programming, how we think about coaching these movements in an affiliate setting for those gyms that are looking to make the switch. And again, you can get started for two weeks for free. Um, we're gonna do this episode a little bit different. We're gonna do housekeeping, then we are going to talk about the phase, and then we are going to do live chat with some special extras at the end of the podcast, partially because I have a new co-host next week. Don't worry, I'll guys, I'll try to bribe Hunter as much as possible to get him in on some affiliate stuff. But if you've been listening to the podcast recently or maybe haven't and been living under a rock, Hunter has taken over as the owner of Misfit Gym Portland. And I am coming to you from what looks like an empty room in Colorado. So, housekeeping. Let's talk about a little bit of housekeeping here. One thing that we should try to ramp up, and it's on us, and it's on the affiliates, and on it's on new affiliates getting signed up, but is the chatter in the affiliate channel of the Telegram. Would love to see more people in there. And, you know, I'm gonna set some reminders to do maybe some weekly prompts and just check in on people, but always good to sort of talk with other coaches, to talk with other people that are doing the program, coaching the program, all that good stuff. A lot of times the questions that I get via email are kind of FAQs, the kind of thing that could be helpful for you to ask in the Telegram and have more people see the answer to. The second thing, I extended the early bird pricing for camp at CrossFit Roots in Boulder, Colorado, January 30th through February 1st, because I did not want to mix it in with all the promotion for Black Friday stuff and clothing collections and whatnot. So you're gonna see some content this week related to camp. Um you can get signed up at the link in bio on our Instagram. Again, Boulder, Colorado, CrossFit Roots, January 30th through February 1st. This is the probably the best place that you can go if you want to make a connection between our programming and our coaching style. You're gonna get a firsthand look at how we coach things, how we break things out. And while you don't get, you know, 20, 30, 40, 60 minutes in an affiliate class to do things, when we do those longer breakouts at camp, what's really cool is as a coach, you get a lot of ideas for the ways that you can do your little group breakouts, the way that you can explain workouts, the way that you can explain warm-ups, uh, things of that nature. And then we have a QA and you know, we're always just kind of around um during the break. So if you guys have questions, um, I think it's a really fantastic place um for coaches as well as athletes. So make sure you get signed up here in the next three or four days. Um I actually think it's the fifth. I think I have it set for Friday. So make sure you get signed up. You can get signed up after that, but you're gonna have to give us an extra 50 bucks because if we add people sort of at the last minute, we have to potentially make some changes to our coaching staff. So we like to know what's going on there. And if you're looking for our individual programming, you can obviously head to the link and bio on Instagram as well and get signed up on Fitter or Strivey. Last but not least, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by GorillaMind. Um, it's my favorite place to get supplements. Moving and driving and all that has been sponsored by maybe a few too many of these GorillaMind energy drinks. But if you look at the ingredients in them, basically you're mixing um a couple of cups of coffee with some really powerful nootropics, the kind of thing that you would have to pay quite a bit for in pill form. So you can head to gorilla mind.com, use the code word misfit, or you can go to gorilla mind.com forward slash misfit. And again, thank you to everybody who's been buying so far. Um and I would love to hear what you guys think of the products. All right, hunter Wenjiro. I am going to bury the lead a little bit here and not say why I named it this, because I would like a live reaction to what you thought of Sammy Wenjiro at the I believe 2010 Chicago Marathon. What it what did you see when I sent you that?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, the little the three three and a half minute video that kind of gave like a brief overview of Sammy, his like the 20-second version of his history, and then kind of skipped to the end of the race where who was he racing at the end? Do you remember? I don't remember, no. Yeah, one of the like a race. The favorite uh fellow like Kenyan rival peer sort of thing. And they just it just kind of like tailed him at the end of the race where they basically got super close, one pulled ahead, one pulled behind, then one would leave the other a hundred meters and behind him and whatever, and ended up Sammy ended up coming back and winning. But I was saying before, like watching that takes like 12 layers of imagination to fat even like consider fathoming what was occurring because at the end of the way, at the end of the race, he came in at 206, I believe, two hours and six minutes. So just like okay, layer number one of imagination, a two hour and six minute marathon. Okay, I can't even fathom that. Let's next layer. Okay, well, that's a four minute and 48 second mile average for over two hours. Like, okay, can't I can't fathom what a single mile at that pace is like. Okay, can you fathom a one-minute and ten second 400 meter run? And then it's like, okay, holy fuck. Like that's an that's an aggressive pace for a lot of people. That's still faster than their best ever 400. And this, these guys are, you know, running it for two hours straight. Okay, I can kind of fathom that. Now try to fathom running at that pace, having run at that pace for two previous hours, and now you're at the end of a two-hour CrossFit Metcon, and like victory is you having to go faster for the last. I don't know. I'm curious to actually know when they kind of started that back and forth. Because it wasn't, it wasn't like the last 200 meters, right? It's like the last half a mile, last mile, maybe. Yeah. So you're so you are now watching after having run at an unfathomable pace for an unfathomable amount of time, and now we're watching these two like literally change gears at what is 47th gear for all of us peasants, right? It's like at a near sprint pace, these guys are fluctuating their pace. You know, it's like, okay, now I'm running at a 105, now I'm running at a 102, now I'm back to a 115 because like I got I'm behind 100 meters, and just the ability, like the energy system capacity, and we're we're obviously talking about world-class marathon, super sports-specific athletes, but like again, trying to fathom how those guys are able to do that mentally and physically was just is just fucking mind-numbing. It's like it's hard enough to try to race somebody the last 200 meters of your your sad 15-minute AMRAP, you know, to come in the door and get a get a couple of pride points on the whiteboard, let alone this is an Olympic race with all kinds of like crazy background and history and injuries and comebacks and stuff like that, all to be like, you know, finished in the last three minute. You you know, it turns what started as a two and two hour and six minute race turned into a three-minute race at that pace. It's just like good fucking gravy.
SPEAKER_02:His body language throughout that video, especially for the first half of the video, the first like 90 seconds. He's in rough shape. But he should throw this clip in the like last notes so people can like classically didn't seem to care, which is kind of the basis for why we why we named the phase this, but he's kind of toying with him a little bit, and then they get to the final 400, and it's uphill, and he just takes off uphill, and his body language completely changes, and he's sprinting, and he's got his little like celebration at the end where he's pointing at the the different people in the crowd, and you can see the guy behind him.
SPEAKER_04:We won by 19 seconds, too. Yeah after all of that, he got a headbite.
SPEAKER_02:That guy's body language for trying to kick with him was hilarious. You can just see this blurry figure in the background, like so incredibly unwell, which is amazing. So I looked at the phase, what we've got for what we're gonna bias in this phase, and I saw five by five back squat, gymnastics, pulling, and rowing. And in my mind, I'm like, I'm gonna intentionally curse here, but you walk into the gym and by fucking osmosis, you're gonna get fitter. That is a stimulus bomb, those movements, right? Like those are movements where you gotta you look at the whiteboard and you gotta take a deep breath. Like if we programmed a squat row chest to bar workout, you know you're in for something. And we're gonna bias those movements throughout the phase. And I was like, I sort of inspired by the idea of you know, back in the day it was if you deadlift heavy, your CNS won't work for six months. And they did actual research on it. And no, if you go long and keep your heart rate high, that's when you get that real CNS dump. And it makes sense, right? Try harder for longer, more tired. Like, it's a pretty straightforward. So I was like, is there a Steve Prefontaine in the endurance community? Like, who is known as the person who was willing to push to a place that really is like antithetical to the idea of endurance? And every single response that I found on the internet was Sammy Wenjiro. And he's known for trying to break people in the first half of a marathon, so basically running too fast so that he can have people sort of fall behind. And he famously missed a in when he won the Olympic gold medal. He was very young when he won the Olympic gold medal, it might have been the youngest, or it was something like he was the youngest since 1932. Um, he missed a water station, and that's like as big of a no-no as you can get. And the dude behind him caught up to him and gave him a water bottle. The dude that ended up coming in fourth, which is just crazy. So yeah, when I think stimulus bomb, I think long and dirty and like, you know, it's it's I think stimulus bomb is the is the is the right way to do it.
SPEAKER_04:Like between the sh the machine rotations, some of the benchmarks that get tested and retested, and just like yeah, literally the the five by five back squat session in and of itself is a is a stimulus bomb.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, for sure. So this phase again starts on Monday, December 8th. It is seven weeks long, and we'll make our way through here on what we're gonna bias and how we think about that coaching at the affiliate level. How many hours? So so at the end of this episode, we're gonna have a conversation about the swear meter. One thing that would be more challenging to figure out, but is would be the second most important meter on this podcast would be how many minutes we've spent talking about sets of five back squatting. Five by five Texas method. Like it would be nice to feed every podcast transcript into uh AI and have it tell us.
SPEAKER_04:Render render a video with sentences that are only the words five by five.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my god, that'd be great. So Texas method, for those who don't know, traditionally, every single week you find a five rep max and then you do 80 per no 90, 80, 90, 90 of your five rep max for five by five. Now, we're not gonna do that in the affiliate setting, but luckily we've been crazy enough and young enough and naive enough in the past to toy around with different ways to find the correct version and stimulus related to this. So, what it turns into in this phase is you do find that five rep max in week one and then you do some work related to that. But as you go after that, it is the classic starting strength style of five by five linear progression. And that's really what we want because if we're not super dialed in on where to start and where to go, we have too much fluctuation in an affiliate setting for a Texas method. This style, again, that has been adjusted a little bit this way and a little bit that way, and we've kind of found that sweet spot, allows someone to really find how heavy they can go early. And then we're gonna dial them back and be like, okay, if let's say, you know, what you're working on today is a little bit easier than it's supposed to be, we're gonna keep you at that weight and we're gonna have you squat with incredible form and maybe stand up a little bit faster, get some of that force production, because then you are training your body to handle adaptation, get those buildup weeks that we would normally get in a Texas method. And then when we get into week three, week four, week five, we start to have really the meat of the phase there. And if there are any affiliate athletes listening, I will say, do not bring, we've said this a bunch of times to our competitive athletes, do not bring session three or four or five into session five, six, seven. And what I mean by that is you will do a five by five during this phase where you're like, can't go heavier. It's not gonna happen. And then you will have a subsequent in the next week or the week after where it's easier and you're five or ten pounds heavier. And it's just it's central nervous system, it's what else is in the programming that week. There's so many different factors, could be your headspace, could be, you know, your your pal canceled on class or the music sucks, or whatever it is. There's so many reasons why it could go exactly how you want. Or, you know, had a breakthrough with an athlete, you know, coaching in my last week at the gym where it was like, have you tried bracing? It's like, I, your squat, you're strong as hell. Don't fucking tell me that I'll sell it back to you. Gorgeous. So in my mind, I'm like, the only thing I want you to think about is squeezing as hard as you possibly can into your belt. Because then I think it was maybe sets of five. It was definitely heavy. Yeah, it was I think it was sets of five. But was your back squat? Like, I can see your midline deteriorating. So why don't we just push into the belt the whole time? And it was like see the and like it was a bit of a joke after he was like, Yeah, imagine bracing in a heavy back squat. It's like, listen, you're good at it. All right, man, I'll see you later. Yeah, it's like it's like you're good at it and you're strong, so you think that you can rely on just using that. And it's like, well, no, the heavier you go, the more your spine's gonna be a little upset by not being surrounded by, you know, contracted musculature. So, man, it I don't know, it just what can we say? It works really well. It works for people who need to get stronger, it need it works for people who need muscle endurance, it works for people who care more about hypertrophy. It is the sweet spot for adaptation across different muscle fiber types, different skill levels. It's the best.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I I think that's probably the biggest point is that like five by five works for there are not many workouts that you can write that work equally well for the beginner and the experienced CrossFitter alike. There's always some sort of like modification that probably needs to be made, with the exception of, you know, the real like straightforward, hey, we're gonna run and do burpees, you're gonna go fast, you're gonna go slow, it doesn't matter. The weightlifting equivalent of, you know, of Cindy of a one mile run for time that everybody can do is is five by five back squat. Yeah. It just like you just kind of hit set on all hit on all of it. It's like when we do real heavy singles, say it's seven by one heavy back squat, it's like, no doubt that's a stimulus bomb. But for the athlete who hasn't been squatting very long, just doesn't have the motor recruitment, the skill to do seven really heavy singles, it's like we probably need to modify for that person and make them do doubles or triples or something like that, so they get a little bit of volume and practice and they get the strength stimulus a different way. You do speed work, you do three reps at 50%, and you tell athletes to stand it up as fast as they can. Okay, I'm a really powerful athlete. Fuck, this is a great session. Problem is that most of your affiliate athletes are not, you know, former athletes who are extremely powerful and can get a stimulus out of that. Again, your beginner, you know, they they're gonna struggle to kind of understand the concept of speed because of skill, of, you know, just experience, whatever it is. And then right smack in the middle, you know, is is that five by five. You want athletes to do sets of ten. If things start to break down for a lot of people after a few reps, and it becomes more about bracing and their lower back stamina than their legs. Like five by five, we don't usually see that. It's the right, it's that sweet spot of I can load this properly for everybody, essentially. It's a long enough time under tension that the stimulus is going to be there again, regardless of who you are. It's not so long standing under a barbell that it no longer becomes about the back squat and becomes about, you know, low back endurance or, you know, when when my when when's my arm gonna like wake back up after falling asleep? It's like we're not worried about almost any of those things with this with five by five. And it's like, like you said, it gives athletes a lot of runway over the course of the seven weeks because it's the only phase of the year where that is the lift-only day for a seven-week period. Maybe a a little bit more biased away from a true GPP style versus, hey, we're gonna for seven weeks, we're gonna be slightly less GPP, but the trade-off is really, really big, especially if you can get athletes coming in from most of those squat sessions. Maybe you tell athletes what those days are each week to give them so they can mark it on the calendar. Now we don't want to go so far to say that that you know, we we don't want people doing their conditioning to get in for the back squat day, but it works really well too. And at the end of the phase, whether an athlete PRs a five rep max or not, like all of that time spent squatting heavy, under tension, bracing, developing leg strength, like it translates just so well to not only everything you do else you do in the gym, but obviously just just life in general, right? Put the body through a full the hips and knees through a full range of motion, brace your midline, stand the weight up. Like it's about as functional as you get from a from a kind of you know GPP longevity perspective.
SPEAKER_02:So one thing that I want to bring up is that you get the you get the either affiliate owners, coaches, or oftentimes more the athletes who are paying you a couple hundred bucks a month to be the expert where they're they want a MetCon on that day. And honestly, like I'm not gonna get into that. I was gonna create my my new training methodology right there.
SPEAKER_03:I was getting ready to fucking shadow box in the corner guy. Um, I got a balloon that needs to be popped out of anger.
SPEAKER_02:Again, if you just did five by five back squat every day, you would end up tearing something, you wouldn't recover, it wouldn't go very well. If we get away from the conditioning side of things, that GPP magic doesn't happen. There is a competitor extra on every five by five back squat day that is a conditioning piece. And if your members truly need something like that, they can stay for an extra 30 minutes after class. So I know that there are some gyms that have asked, and every time they ask, I do my best to convince them to say, don't put that in class. The five by five back squat with the proper warm-up and the proper cooldown is how we have those adaptations and how somebody comes back to you and thanks you when they get that new five rep max. But I want to talk a little bit about the coaching side of this, and you can take it in whatever direction you want in terms of how you're gonna coach a class like that. But there is a little bit of an embrace debate thing that's top of mind with how a coach, specifically a coach and not a gym, coaches squat mechanics in whether there's a right way, a wrong way, or how do you feel about it changing? And it's just top of mind because I teach a little bit more of the vertical torso skill transfer to the front squat to the overhead squat. And there are still some coaches who are a little bit more L1, kind of sit into the squat, that sort of thing. And I I wonder, you know, sort of what your opinion is on that, and then what your opinion is on coaching that kind of class.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I mean, think kind of you can kind of think about two extreme ends of the spectrum. You've got on on one extreme the like Mark Ripito low bar back squat where that bar is slid well down onto your scaps. There is, you know, your borderline looking at a horizontal shin. And it almost looks like if you pause somebody at the bottom of their back squat and you just turn their arms from back here to hanging down in front of them, they'd be in almost a deadlift setup position. The benefit to that is, you know, in true Mark Rippetau fashion, hip drive. And we can really like that forces a really, really closed hip. It also puts the majority of the loading into the posterior chain and the back, which I guess are the same thing, but the spine, but and and in a way, right? The spine. So like just that moment arm of the the back angle being like this as opposed to this, there is a a shearing force occurring at the spine. And yeah, while there's nothing inherently incorrect about that, because as a as a CrossFit coach, like we teach it, we teach more of a high bar back squat, probably somewhere in between. Like you said, you're you know, you prefer the much more vertical, and I'd I'd classify you as like a little further, like even further on the vertical squat kind of dimension than than I would be. But as long as to go back to the L1 thing, it's like does the athlete retain a neutral spine throughout the entire range of motion, whether it's a vertical torso or you know, a super pitched forward one, does the athlete's spine remain neutral, especially at the bottom of the squat? Is there any deviation in the lumbar spine? Because that's not really acceptable in either style of squat. Does the athlete express full range of motion through the ranges that they are physically capable of, right? So I'd say uh uh an issue that I have with a low bar back squat is that because of the angles that you're encouraged to be in and because of where the bar is positioned, and in order to remain, keep the center of gravity over the middle of your foot, there has to be like an aggressive pitch forward of the torso, which also means that hip depth is really, really difficult to obtain. If my shin is vertical, the only way that I can get below parallel is is a really, really odd position that may be like physically impossible just from a leverage and center of gravity standpoint. So if an athlete's not moving their hips, knees, and ankles through a full and safe range of motion, I'm gonna I'll probably criticize the the efficacy of that squat.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_04:So neutral spine, full safe range of motion, and kind of the other elements of like, hey, can we keep the weight centered predominantly in the foot, maybe a little towards the heel, but for the most part, let's just keep it centered. And then, you know, which which version of this squat there is a there is a minor comfort element for the athlete, a low bar position for a lot of people's wildly uncomfortable, a super high bar position for people's wildly uncomfortable. And then there's the element of like, what is this person's anthropometry? What's their body proportions? Because not everybody is well suited to do a low bar back squat or a high bar back squat to position the bar in certain spots. And we just need to find the agreeing with you, just so you know. I kind of want you to know. So, like again, if like we from there, it's like neutral spine, full safe range of motion. Aside from that, we can tinker with where does the bar exactly sit on the traps at the base of the neck, maybe a little bit lower. Does this look more like a, hey, you're gonna initiate by setting your hips back? Or is it a little bit more of a as long as we screw our feet in, I can actually get you to sit directly down and be a little bit more vertical? For me at the affiliate setting, it's way less about skill transfer from one movement to the next, and more about are we maximizing the efficacy of the back squat, which is can we develop leg and core strength as well as expressing that strength through the maximum range of motion that an athlete's joints are capable of doing. And if we're changing the style of squat in order to lift more, but in, you know, in exchange for, hey, I'm just not gonna squat as low or yeah, my spine angle's not as great here, I'm never gonna make that trade. So that's kind of how I think about the styles. I think they're both like effective and if taught correctly, and probably more importantly, like if a coach understands these concepts and can look at an athlete and say, like, hey man, I know I just told everybody that we're gonna squat like this, but looking at your hips, I actually want you to turn your toes out a little bit and bring your heels in because it looks like the hips are pinching, you're not getting low enough, your torso's rounding, you know, your torso's pitched forward and you're rounding in your back. So I'm going to personalize my, you know, general cue to be specific to you, because like I need a neutral spine, I need a midline that's braced, and I need full range of motion with your joints. If we do all three of those things, we're good to go.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the the I personally like teaching, and normally I wouldn't tell an athlete this, so earmuffs, if you're an athlete, this is for coaches only. I believe that the vertical squat cue is an overcue that typically yields a better squat for more athletes across the board. I don't actually think that each athlete needs to squat that way. The example would be I have long shins and I am in an incredibly unsafe position with my spine if I sit back in my spine. If you have long femurs, it's the opposite. When you're in that position, you've got this, you know, you've got this big wide base underneath you and underneath your torso. And I am essentially setting rules for each athlete. Like we do this at camp where we find your ideal squat position. So we start with the feet, and it's like, okay, in the like best case scenario, I'm gonna have an athlete go as wide as they can, big toe and heel touching the ground with their toes pointing forward to create a little bit of torque in the hip, as long as their knees can track outside of their feet. So that's kind of where I start. But then as we start to squat and we see which athletes need to bring their feet in, which athletes need to turn their toes out. And like one thing that I really try to get rid of is the athlete who sets up in the ideal position and then their body moves as they start to squat or during their squat. Like we had one athlete whose every time they did their first squat, their left toe would turn, you know, maybe an inch, something like that, or that their foot would turn out. And it's like, that's your squat stance. If you want to work on that, that squat holds, that's couch stretch, that's banded distraction, that's working on your ankles, it's flossing your knees, it's doing all of these things, it's getting your glutes involved so that you can actually use those. But when we're squatting, you need to squat in your squat stance. But I find that if I get people to really try to squat between their feet and use those principles and find their own squat stance, things like the midline bracing, things like the skill transfer, and not necessarily for the sport, but just for like, we're gonna ask you to have the bar on the front rack a lot in CrossFit. And what I don't want is for your first cue to make you feel like the bar is gonna dump forward. I think a squat is a squat is a squat. Um, and I wanna see how close I can get all those to blend together over time. So again, the real answer is your squat is going to change based on you. But I personally find that the overcueing of teaching athletes to squat between their feet to try to look a little bit more like an Olympic lifter typically yields a safer and stronger squat, even though we end up landing at, you know, kind of that, like I would say at camp, tight is strong. Like if you're squatting and it feels kind of comfy, then you're probably don't have hip tension and we're gonna see things like your arches are gonna cave, your knees are gonna cave, you know, your midline's gonna round, like that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And I think what you said kind of at the end there, like regardless of what the cue is, like it's it's the end result that you're exact you're you're assessing, right? Like I'm I might tell somebody, like, I want to try to think of a good example, like someone who maybe maybe they try to squat too upright and the result is their entire posterior chain is completely turned off. So I initiate my squat. Coach told me to keep my heel, the little little maybe the heel comes up, and then when they realize their heels are up, they have to they replant their heels and the hips go back and now they're in a weird spot. I might cue the athlete. Hey, I want you to send your hips way, like kick those hips far back. I want your chest pointed at the ground. And like in a vacuum, you snip that clip on the internet and say, Hunter says send your hips way back and point your chest on the ground. It's like that's not a that's not a general cue that I'm gonna give everybody. It's a specific athlete who's doing something wrong, and I'm going to over-compensate and over-correct and tell them to do something really far in the opposite direction in order to get them where I want them to be, which is actually just neutral. I'd say one one other thing too, I think for like coaches, because the the squat is we could, I mean, I don't know if to tell you, we could do an entire podcast on the squat alone, and maybe maybe we're we're on on track to do that right now. But be one of the biggest things, again, from like a GPP, just general population perspective, a huge theme that I've noticed over the last you know handful of years. One of the core concepts in CrossFit that defines functional movement is posterior chain engagement. And it is maybe the thing that the broad general CrossFit community does the worst at. The result, what that looks like is you know, rounded backs during deadlifts. Why does my back hurt when I run, when I do a combination of box jumps and wall balls or hinging and squatting together? It is not necessarily intuitive how to use the posterior chain. All of us human beings, our day-to-day life does not is not necessarily conducive to using those muscles, right? You sit on the you sit on those muscles the entire day. So everything gets shut off. You're not getting blood circulating to them if you sit in front of a desk all day and you're only getting a couple, you know, a thousand, two thousand steps. Like you're not setting yourself up for success. You're also sitting in a chair and you're slumped forward. All of these things are compounding and creating an athlete who either isn't aware or simply just doesn't know. Like, I don't, I'm like, am I supposed to use my butt and my hamstrings when I squat? And like we can have a debate about that too. But the point being is like, hey, like posterior chain engagement is actually midline is midline stabilization, right? If I can't cue an athlete to use their glutes and their hamstrings, I know for a fact that the loading is going predominantly into their low back, regardless of what kind of their squat looks like. Sure. They're using their quads instead of their glutes and their hamstrings, and they are they're if they're not gonna get hurt today, they will eventually because they're not, they're simply not learning to use the entire back half of their body, which is also like, hey, my knee hurts. Okay, hamstring, like hamstring strength and stabilization is huge there. My back hurts, yet your glutes don't fire when you do hinging, when you do squatting, anything. The only reason you when you feel your glutes is when you lunge because there's no way to avoid it. And like all of these things combine together. And when we're asking athletes to squat heavy, there has to be an element of like, hey guys, we we need you to like learn how to use the back half of your body, less so for like, you know, I mean, well, certainly for maximizing weight because those are the strongest muscles in your body. But from like, again, kind of a longevity and just GPP perspective, an athlete who doesn't know how to use like the stabilizers on the back half of their body is like asking for injury in the long run. So a little bit of an aside for why I find like the hips back, knees out sort of thing, you know, combine that with learning how to create tension, screwing your feet in, like the old K-Star stuff. Like if we can do all that, you might maybe some's gonna someone's gonna be a little more vertical, someone's gonna be a little bit more horizontal, but they have they understand posterior chain engagement and midline stabilization, and now we're in business.
SPEAKER_02:I find the glutes to be the linchpin because yeah, for sure. So when we get to the bottom and I see again the knees cave, the arches go a little bit. To me, that is not having enough of the glutes turned on to keep your hips in whatever position they are in. Yeah. And what it does is we go back, and then you're like, oh, coach said hamstrings. It's all hamstrings, glutes are off, and if glutes are off and hips are off, then erectors are. That's just the way that that system works, and that's scary. And that's when you get the low bar style by accident on the way back up, and when you can really feel like that everything all the way from the low back up into the mid back, really torched kind of the next day. So a little bit different than maybe your butt wink, that sort of thing. But I find that if that's why we love the glute activation as part of the warmups on these days. Can you really teach? And and I personally, my favorite variation of that, even if it's after something that you've already done, is having them squat with the bar on their back with the glute bands on still. Like I really like that because if you can feel what it's like in that transition period of maybe you're catching a bounce or you're just going to the bottom and sort of standing back up steady, I find that that keeps the erectors on. It keeps the hamstrings as sort of as part of the party. And it makes sense, right? Because it's in the middle. It'd be really hard to turn those off and not have those other parts really engaged.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And I think the like when we're when you're talking about looking, thinking about someone like everybody, but maybe, maybe you're the athlete listening to this right now who this applies to your coach, and you see the athlete who really struggles to actually drive their knees out. Maybe their arches actually aren't even collapsed, but they can't drive their knees out. A lot, there's just so much like it's you know, a function of society, but like we don't move laterally as much as maybe we should. So the lateral hips and the lateral stabilizers, your glute mead, the outer hips are hugely responsible for one, like man, you get a runner whose low back hurts, like glute meads, the outer glutes really help stabilize the hips and the pelvis when you're doing something like running or like a unilateral type movement. When we're talking about squatting, like the ability to drive the knees out, you know, I I try to explain this to athletes, like it's not an arbitrary cue. I don't want just like the visual, the visual component of are the knees outward? Because you can push your knees out and have collapsed arches and be in a dog shit position. It's like, hey, the idea is that we can create tension in our hips when you squeeze your glute and turn on those lateral, you know, those lateral glutes, the rotators, like that is what has helped creating the external rotation in the hip and for the knee to track out. And if we create that tension before you even start squatting, I don't need you to think about driving your knees out. There, you're pre-setting the position. I just need you to squat and the knees are gonna track in the direction that they're supposed to, assuming that those lateral stabilizers are actually doing their job and rotating outward. And it's the same thing, like a super often missed like element of warming up squatting is like internal rotation. So that's like adductors and inner thighs, which helps like with that bottom position. And then, you know, the lateral, the gluten mead, the outer glutes, the ability to create external rotation at the hip, that's your knees out element, is like if we don't have those two things, you know, you that's where we might see athletes doing some weird shit. And like the butt wink, you kind of alluded to that. That's totally like a multifaceted thing. But in a lot of ways, it's like if if I got an athlete who's able to use their glutes, like all of them, that athlete is probably not butt winking. Like they are stabilizing their their hips and their spine in a way that like it just doesn't, it just doesn't happen because they're they're getting rid of the potential problem areas for that movement or for that that that a lot of the butt wink for we'll go really quick on this.
SPEAKER_02:A lot of the butt wink is just it's one of those squatters again that has the longer shin. And the easiest way to see that is if you ask someone to squat as low as they can and it looks like their butt cheeks are gonna drag on the floor, if you have them sit way back into their squat, mechanically, they either need to be like the strongest person alive, or it's probably not the best position for them to get into.
SPEAKER_04:Another, another fun way to kind of like prove this to you or your athletes is like I love to do the extremes for athletes to see, like, okay, well, you know, here's what I'm recommending. Why am I recommending this? Well, let's look at the two opposite ends of the spectrum. I want your feet to be towed out slightly. It's like, okay, fuck, that's a little bit vague. Okay, well, do this. Point your toes inward like a pigeon and now try to squat. And it's like, what the fuck? I can't do that. It's like obviously you can't do that. And also you get someone who squats, tries to squat low enough like that, even with their toes forward, and they get the butt wink. It's like, okay, now I want you to turn your toes out like a duck. So the hips are super open, and all of a sudden the butt wink goes away because there's nothing for your no, your pelvis, your hip bones to run into, right? So it's like you were alluding to the the short femur, the long femur athlete. It's like my toes are straightforward and I get to the bottom and I butt wink. It's like, yeah, your your bone structure is not conducive to that style of squat. I need you to turn your toes out. We create a little bit more room for the hips to sit down and the butt wink goes away. So I think, yeah, the butt wink is certainly like mechanical issues, but there's also just like, hey, we can make minor tweaks in your setup position and just like try to educate you on what's happening and it'll it'll it'll go away.
SPEAKER_02:Final back squat note. I swear, I swear to God. I don't coming back. Banded clamshells. If you struggle with the butt wink and your back hurts relating to five by fives, every single time, you know, could be you might have time during the cooldown, you might have to do it after class, and it's gonna sound insane, but three by 15 per side with the kind of band where you can get that full range of motion and really kind of contract at the at the top where you're the most open. Honestly, you can have no back pain and you could also probably add 10 pounds to your fiber at max by the end. So just a little bit.
SPEAKER_04:Dude, when you're when my hips are rotating correctly, both like internal and external rotation, it's amazing how like how not loose, but like how how much space I find I have at the bottom of my squats. The difference between feeling like tight and like I gotta work something out and just being like and uh like firing on all cylinders.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Um, next we move on to the GPP lift, and we kind of say the same thing every time we do one of these episodes, but that's kind of the point of GPP. As we get closer to the open, just based on feedback and kind of throwing people a bone, we will bias the clean and the snatch a little bit more than we normally do. So you're gonna see that in the phase. You know, there's build up to the heavy snatch, there's build up to the heavy hand, clean, and jerk. And then when we have weeks where your sort of second strength day is gymnastic skill work, you're gonna see what I personally would consider, and I don't know what you what you call it, Hunter, but sports-specific lifting. I see a heavier deadlift in one of those weeks, I see a heavier front squat in one of those weeks. And it's really just having that GPP lifting rotation, which is either going to pop up directly in your traditional 20 minutes to build up to X, 15 minutes to build up to Y, or, you know, you get a front squat 195 pounds or deadlift 275 pounds in one of your workouts. But it's just a nod to making sure that you guys know that there is a method to the madness when it comes to exposure to these things. And we maintain variance through different lifts and whether it's NOD or just actually a solo lifting session.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I mean, I think like the here here's the here's the problem. So from a programmer and coach perspective, let's say I'm writing programming exclusively for CrossFit Hunter, and it's five predominantly like most affiliate athletes, my the week, the Monday through Friday, kind of runs my life. Some folks get in on Saturday, some folks get in on Sunday. From a programming perspective, those days don't necessarily get, aren't in the same rotation, so to speak. Like you're not gonna, you're not gonna get our lift-only day on Saturday, like ever, really. That doesn't mean we're not gonna go heavy on a Saturday eventually uh from time to time, but like the five by five back squat's not gonna fall on a Saturday. So we're we're a bit kind of constrained to the five days a week, two of those days per week as lifting days, and all of a sudden, 40% of what is meant to be a general physical preparedness program, about half, is now exclusively weightlifting. So an athlete who is, let's say, a four-day a week athlete just happens to come in on two of those lifting days. Now 50% of their program is weightlifting, and 50% of their programming is, let's hope for their sake, just gnarly conditioning pieces, some shorter, medium just shit workouts, because that's what that person needs. There is not a GPP athlete who needs two of their 50% of their training to be exclusively weightlifting. We can have that. I'd love to have that argument with someone who's not a CrossFitter in the context of getting somebody fit for the purpose of life, but there is a lot of utility in putting a moderate to heavy barbell in the right set, rep, and weight in a Metcon when you're breathing hard. And it just brings so much of the CrossFit methodology together. It's like, do you, you know, we just talked about for fucking 30 minutes about bracing midline stabilization uh and full range of motion. It's like the greatest expression of that from a CrossFit perspective is can you do that when your heart rate's at 180? Right. And like from there we scale back and say, like, hey, I know you can front squat that 195-pound barbell, but like, can you do it with sound mechanics when your heart rate's at 180 after having just done 20 bar facing burpees or something like that? The ability to do that says a lot more about an athlete's fitness than their ability to do that movement in a vacuum as a weightlifting only session. And it also happens to move the needle a hell of a lot more on their overall work capacity and therefore, therefore, fitness. So plenty of days, plenty of weeks where like you do have kind of like, you know, there's I'm looking at, let's see, find uh week two is a great example where, you know, one day you have 20 minutes to build up to a heavy single with the squat snatch, but there is a METCO that follows. It's just squat snatch, but it's like, hey, you're gonna get your heavy breathing here. We're gonna do the things that I just talked about, you know, mechanics and consistency. And then let's see, let's do that with your heart rate elevated. And then later on that week you have the lifting session, but there's not, you know, I I want you to be lifting heavy in a METCO, but I can't ask for 40 to 50 percent of a GPP program to be weightlifting only. Yeah. Uh it's it's just no longer a CrossFit program.
SPEAKER_02:The person, the hypothetical person that we would be arguing with here doesn't un isn't, doesn't really speak our language. You would be sure, you know what I mean? You would be having an argument. It'd be like having an argument, you're on vacation and you're screaming at a cab driver or you know, just someone, a pedestrian in another country, and you're speaking completely different languages because our athletes, if you go to other gyms, I don't know, I don't want to be like a dick, but our athletes are the people that come to our gym are stronger because of GPP.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I mean, we're like go tested and get deadlift PRs on the board.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. So so for me, it's like it's like I don't know, we don't even really have we don't have time for this. If it didn't work, we wouldn't do it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, we're yeah, we're also kind of like skirting around the elephant in the room, which is that like just because it says Metcon doesn't mean that there's like, oh, I'm not doing strength work at all, right? It's like that's the nature of CrossFit. It's like we're gonna do this is like a great kind of little primer on energy systems for coaches, but like, you know, when we do the five by five Texas method, it's predominantly that phosphocreatine explosive, you know, kind of pathway. When we're starting to, when we're talking about like, man, see if I can find a workout here. That makes sense. Yeah, week one. Oh, there's the fucking goddamn 195 front squat. Fucking kill me. Okay, like, you know, it remember like our energy systems are working in conjunction all at the same time in one capacity or another, right? So, like if I'm in the middle of a 20-minute MECCon, like that, yeah, sure, a 20-minute workout is by nature, is it like aerobic in nature, but in that 20-minute METCO, I'm called upon to do three front squats at 225. Like my aerobic energy system is not the one powering me through those three front squats, right? Like I'm breathing hard, that's the baseline. Like, but as soon as I put that bar on my front rack and I start squatting it, like I'm tapping in to that phosphocreatine pathway. And hopefully I have developed robust enough energy systems in order to be able to handle that loading. But right, it's like, oh, I couldn't front squat that 195-pound bar 12 times in a 15-minute workout, therefore, my aerobic energy system is insufficient. It's like, not necessarily. It's like, oh, okay, well, my strength is insufficient. Well, not necessarily either. It's like your fitness is insufficient, right? It's like all of these things are working together at the same time. Um, and just because it doesn't say, you know, strength or there isn't a weight component to the score doesn't mean that athletes are not getting stronger when they are doing the workout as intended with good mechanics, consistency, intensity at the right, you know, at the appropriate weights. So like I don't did I don't I don't want to say I'm trying to think. Louis Simmons. I want to say Louis Simmons, but like he's famous for like he was the GPP king, right? For West Side Barbell doing sled pushing and like mixing up the lifting on such a consistent basis. But I'm trying to remember, if someone said like what I'm trying to remember is CrossFit is the best accessory program for weightlifting. I don't remember who said that. Maybe it was you. Yeah, maybe it's like but it is true, right?
SPEAKER_02:It's like it's the greatest excess strength accessory program ever created. Yes. And that is based on Louis. Louis and and it trended out to his disciples uh over time. Like John Wellbourne talking about doing aerobic work for his NFL athletes is like crazy, right? It never would have been the case before. But Louis, like, you show up at his gym and he puts like 500 pounds on a sled and tells you to go walk for like 15 minutes with it. And he's like, if you aren't in shape, like how you expect to be like a physical person, basically. So GPP and that whole concept is a lot of it is from Louis, which is which is really cool. And and honestly, that came from people coming over from Olympic weightlifting and being like Olympic hopefuls and then hitting PRs and CrossFit. And it's like, well, how's that possible? They're lifting less, they're in better shape. And wow, I mean, when you do 9,000 pull-ups, maybe your upper back gets stronger or your grip strength goes up, like things of that nature. All right, we're gonna move on to stimulus bomb number two, and that is bar pulling. When we talk about bar pulling, we're talking about pull-ups, chest to bar pull-ups, bar muscle ups, toes to bar, and then there's sort of a slash in there for muscle ups because there are ring muscle ups in this phase as well. And again, the style for GPP that has worked best for us is that bouncing back and forth between a dedicated session and then putting it into an actual workout. So you're gonna kind of see a mix of those things over the course of the phase where you might get a single chest to bar skill sort of gymnastic strength day, and then you get it in the workout. And then you'll see it again for the bar muscle ups, and then you'll see it in the workout, that sort of deal. I would like to focus here on just put the stimulus aside. Like, hey, guess what? You're moving your body a long distance, and you know, you're using your body weight. It's it's it's a stimulus bomb. Everybody knows what it feels like to do a big set of chest to bar, and then come down from the pull-up bar and have your heart rate go up 30 beats per minute. This is such a great opportunity for the concept of teaching shapes and teaching skill transfer and how sort of one thing is everything. And, you know, starting with the basics of, you know, pinky knuckle on top of the bar, and we're not just flailing here. We're opening and closing the shoulder on the pull-up bar. How do we create leverage over the hip? What is the difference between a pull-up and a chest to bar and a bar muscle up? You can teach so much in each week that can transfer to an athlete really understanding how to manipulate their body through space while holding on to rings or a pull-up bar.
SPEAKER_04:Anytime we do gymnastics work, especially like skill sessions where we're actually breaking a movement down a little bit more than you know, we might usually, I try to remind athletes that like if you can master the hollow in the arch position, like done. Gymnastics are done. That's it. Bye. Like you like, we can't do a handstand push-up. You can do the hollow and arch, but we can't do a handstand push-up. Okay, like there's from there, like, okay, well, I I can do hollow and arch, but I can't do X movement. Okay, now we're talking probably about a body weight to strength ratio. Like, are you carrying around too much body mass? Great conversation, uh, probably would be a little bit softer in how you present that to an athlete. But again, like gymnastics are strength to body weight ratio. I want to get better at gymnastics. I don't want to change anything about my body composition. Like, we gotta we got an issue. And also let's let's not forget the gymnastics is lower, but therefore higher on the movement hierarchy than weightlifting and throwing, right? It's like nutrition, metcon, gymnastics. What you can't, as a coach, trying to emphasize the importance of those hollow and arch positions and say, like, hey, like you do kip swings on the pull-up bar, fantastic. Like, okay, now do a knee raise, like kipping knee raise, hollow, arch, hollow arch, you're just bringing your knees higher. Toes to bar, nope, it's hollow arch, it's hollow arch, kipping pull-up, hollow, arch, hollow arch, muscle up, hollow arch, handstand push-up, maintain a hollow position, don't lose your midline, press, like all of the gymnastics movements funnel into can I like master those positions, the hollow and arch, and then coordinate my body, which is another conversation for a lot of folks to, you know, and then there's a mobility component as well. But like, if I can master the basics of those two positions, I can then like, and something is wrong with my gymnastics, it's way easier to diagnose what the actual issue is if the assumption is like, well, this person has at least an understanding that basically all gymnastics, at least the upper body ones, you know, funnel through. Can I do the hollow and arch position perfectly? Can I put my hands on the pull-up bar in the correct spot? Am I compensating for range of motion by putting my thumb on top of the bar rather than underneath? Another topic we could do an entire podcast on. Yeah, that and the bar the bar pull gymnastics, I think, is a little bit more accessible for folks. Not that we don't do the pushing gymnastics, but like upper body pressing is a little bit different than upper body pulling. And at the end of the day, like pretty much all of these mechcons or skill pieces that have pulling gymnastics in them give the opportunity for a coach to tell an athlete, hey, like, you don't have any strict pull-ups. Like, no problem. You're gonna do strict pull-ups until you can do them, and you're not gonna kip until you, you know, you demonstrate the requisite strength to be able to do that because we're we're interested in your shoulders remaining attached to your body.
SPEAKER_02:Um yeah. Yeah, and like everything that you said as a caveat to your point about hollow arch, you could argue is still just hollow arch.
SPEAKER_04:Sure, yeah, for sure. Right. I mean, even like I said, the strict you said the strict movements too, like shapes, doing a proper strict pull-up is like, you know, that's a that's a hollow position pulling gymnastics movement.
SPEAKER_02:And a hip extension is just transitioning from hollow to arch. You know what I mean? It's just opening back up into that position. Yeah, and and you're not in true hollow arch if you don't have the mobility, right? We can't get into those proper gymnastics positions. Strength to body weight ratio isn't necessarily where we need it to be. We're not opening and closing with the shoulder, we're not using the lats, we're not doing sort of the hanging variation of hollow arch because we don't have again the strength to sort of compensate in that. So, coaches, this is just another opportunity, like when we talk about doing the front squat and the clean together, where you can talk about how, hey, this is an easier variation in terms of how technical it is. This is the same thing as you work your way through this. And one of those things where where this could be a really good topic to go over in Telegram and sort of talk through, because you can make some really significant changes to an athlete's gymnastics by being kind of obsessed with the basics and going through those, you know, breaking down the component parts of the movements. Okay, next, stimulus bomb number three, and there is an asterisk to this one based on feedback from gyms and equipment. So we have a rowing bias because we are getting closer to the open, but it doesn't always display on the program as a rowing bias. So this is something as a coach where you could sort of pick out that athlete that you know wants to do a little bit better in the open. And hey, on those machine rotation days, guess where you're sitting? Not the C2 bike. No, you're not. No, don't get Hunter started on the C2 bike. So what you'll see more podcasts to shoot about kind of exactly the back and forth of there's always either rowing in a workout or rowing slash machine rotation in your cardio days. Honestly, originally, I think a lot of the machine rotation stuff was being friendly to gyms, and we are even more cognizant of it, you know, being in colder areas just because it's hard to, you know, to send athletes out on a run, you know, even now, honestly, you know, especially like a 5 a.m., 6 a.m. class, that's pretty gnarly and starts to get honestly unsafe with the ice and the snow. But talk about stimulus bomb. When you don't get the localized, so this is for a GPP athlete, not necessarily a sports-specific athlete. We don't get that localized muscle fatigue or just the mental fatigue of the same movement over and over, you can really bury yourself. Like if you know I'm gonna do round one on the rower, round two on the echo bike, and round three on the runner or the skier, the C2 bike, whatever it is, um, holy, you can you can hold some paces, right? Um, and and that's one tool that I use a lot in like competition prep programs. But the barrier to entry to exceeding expectations in the open is being really, really, really good on the rower, physically and mentally. So on those machine rotation days where it doesn't explicitly say you're on the rower, you need to bias the rower if you're if it's not like your A number one strength, if you care a lot about the open. If you don't, thumbs up. Like, fantastic. That's not our number one focus, not our number one goal here. Um, but this time of year, I always think it's important to tell people hey, let's not start sitting on the rower in mid to end of February. Let's start doing it in December. If you're gonna do the competitor extra zone two day, get your ass on a rower. There's plenty of rowing in the competitor extra. And then on those machine days, the way that you can carry out that bias that we've talked about in years past is by sitting your keister on a rower.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean, aside from the fact that I think the rower is the best machine that we have in CrossFit. Aside, you know, running, I would probably make a different argument, different machine. But like we could also to our previous argument about GPP and CrossFit being the best accessory work for weightlifting. Like you get somebody who wants to improve their pulling gymnastics and they're not using a rower as well for conditioning. It's like, hey, there's an easy, there's an easy route to convince somebody to to improve their pulling, uh, their pulling stamina. We use we've used the ski erg and the rower for zone two work, and have seen people get really good at things like muscle ups, thinking, you know, Caroline who did a shitload of zone two skiing, and all of a sudden muscle ups are now like real fucking easy. Um little bit specific there, but like again, you get somebody who wants to either show out, show out in the open, move on to quarterfinals, or just simply wants to like, hey, I want to get better at my pulling gymnastics. Like, motherfucker, I got a concept too with your name right on it here.
SPEAKER_02:The joy. Number one thing. So so my crypt tonight is pulling gymnastics and rowing couplet, or honestly, even a triplet with those two in there. And I'm I present as better at muscle ups than I actually am because I'm fast to. So, like if you ask me right now, I could give you I could give you 13, but then the second set would be like one. Right. But I'm pretty good at muscle ups. I would, those are those are one of my stronger movements. And if I got a row before, I'm cooked. The I tried so many different things because again, as a remote coach, if someone comes to me and has that same issue, I want to know on a personal level, like what the best thing is zone two rowing. And I'm talking slow, guys. My zone two on the rower is like a you know, like a 418. And I'm go, I'm going really slow. But the biggest change that I made in terms of my the ability for my body to clear waste, you know, in the wrist and the forearm and the bicep was by doing low intensity, you know, for a really long time and getting, you know, God knows how many, you know, thousands of strokes on the rower. So if you struggle with that and you care about making a change, that recovery day zone two rowing is super powerful. So another asterisk here would be we try to be really friendly to the members when we get close to Christmas. And you'll sort of notice that, like one example would be the gymnastics bias goes to deficit push-ups. I think it's on Christmas Eve. We're just trying to give people a way to do the workouts. Whether you guys do an open gym or you have classes, still great workouts, or you know, they're they're actually at home. So we have, you know, on that same day, I think we have like machine AMRAP, where at the very least somebody could run if they don't have a machine at home, that sort of thing. So any of the caveats to a bias around those times are going to be related to making sure that people just get good workouts in, get a little bit stronger, get a little bit fitter during the holidays.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I think just for like the we're talking about as we're past Thanksgiving now, into essentially Christmas and New Year's. Um, a lot of the program is written like because I'm at this gym, like the first people I think about are the members. Okay, what is what is the habit of our members on these holidays? Lots, you know, a decent number of folks like to come in on the eaves if we don't have classes. Yep. A small number, but fewer like to come in on the actual, you know, Christmas Day if the gym's open, we'll inevitably get a few. New Year's Day, a little bit more. That's not as much of a holiday. But the point being is like if you're a coach or owner looking at the programming, and I put this in the December programming document, like feel free to move things around. Understand that we did position things in the week to be like, okay, if done in this order, like people are still getting the stuff that we want. And if they miss, you know, either the Eve holiday day, the actual holiday day, or both, they're still getting a good blend of fitness on the other three days. Yeah. But it really comes down to like what the what kind of the culture and the habits of your community are. So you can certainly feel free to swap something around, move it, you know, or you know, it's like, hey, we're gonna be closed on this day, so I'm gonna chop this day out of the programming completely, or I'm actually gonna not actually like this day, I'm gonna put it on another day and chop the other one out. Just make sure to do your due diligence, kind of look it over, look over the week, like, hey, I'm cutting this day out. What do you think about that? You can one, you can ask in Telegram, or two, just kind of like step back, look at the program. Okay, I accidentally put three 15-minute Metcons as the only days of the week. We should probably mix that up a little bit, or you know, at the end of the day, this we're we're kind of counting pennies here. But the point is feel free to move things around a little bit based on the habits and the culture of your gym, understanding that people gym schedules are a little bit odd and weird during this uh this time of year.
SPEAKER_02:All right. So we bury this at the end, and it's not it's not intentional in the way of like people really want to know the biased information here. Um, but we also have some some biases in the engine program. Um, so you get a three-day-a-week add-on um to your program, you know, I want to say it's free, but it's a it's an add-on that comes with every subscription. Um and, you know, the joke on the podcast is always um if you have an engine class at your gym, whether it's three days a week or like like Misfitch in Portland, one day a week on Sunday, the athletes that go to that end up kicking your ass in Metcons a lot. And the day one bias is the step up, which honestly, boy, like I could I could stand to, you know, I got the got the new garage gym uh going. I could I could stand to not no punching. Yeah. Get a little engagement. And it's the it's the kind of thing where it is with Chris, it's definitely equal parts. Like there's a hazing element to it. Like you earn your you you earn, you know, what you do within the within the the engine workouts. Um but again, like stimulus, you get fitter, like that's that's what we're looking for there. And we are on day two pushing into what he refers to as the gassier intensities on concept two machines. So please be with you. That's always fun. And then day three is a really cool class that is run at again at Misfit in Portland on Sundays that we think is the best option, uh, not just for the programming, but for your members and what they're looking for to sort of end the week and get go into another week, is essentially really like low skill, barbell-free CrossFit. Like longer duration, you know, you'll see things like lighter wall balls and single unders, and really just kind of a like like nowhere to hide longer duration beatdown, but it's got enough variation and wrinkle to it that it's fun. Um, I would say the engine program is is the type of thing where when we go back and do like a when we do like a survey, the gyms that use it really love it. So make sure that if you're you know thinking about subscribing to the program or if you are already on it and don't use it, that you find a way to either give it away to your members or incorporate it into what you do because it works incredibly well. Next thing would be that competitor extra. And basically, any day that there is only a strength movement, there's gonna be a conditioning in the competitor extra. Anytime that like there's less of a skill bias in the week, there's gonna be a skill there. Anytime it's conditioning only, you're typically going to see, unless it's a really heavy MECCO, you're gonna see strength work there. And that competitor extra is based on creating enough exposure to the movements that athletes will do at the open and quarterfinals level. And I personally think it's a huge retention tool because those gyms that have open gym culture, they typically don't get involved in the community. They're not, you know, necessarily interacting with coaches and other members. And when they're on the fence about whether they want to stay at the gym, they don't have that same pull and that same support system to keep them there. Also, don't you want your competitors at your gym to actually be fit? When you do class and then mix and match a bunch of random stuff, it just doesn't work. The competitor extra is actually based on the program itself. And then basically you've got daily warm-ups, workout notes, scaling. You're gonna get all of that information every single day within the program, no matter where you subscribe. Anything you would like to add to that, Hunter?
SPEAKER_04:No, I don't think so. I think you put a bow on that nicely. So we're gonna end up. Members here like the sorry, yeah, I was just gonna add memb members here really like the engine program. We we used to coach it multiple days per week. We don't anymore, but we provide it to members so that they can do the day one and day two stuff should they choose to. And then what you alluded to, I I don't think Chris would take offense to this because it is what those Sunday classes are. It's that long kind of slog grind. It is yeah, it this is a bit of a background. I used his words to explain it. But it's like, yeah, it's a well, it's it's what everybody who has never done CrossFit correctly wants CrossFit to be. Right. It's a 30-minute AMRAP where I kind of try moderately hard. I feel really good about doing it in the moment. I feel really good about it after. But if that was the only thing you ever did for your fitness, like you would be a you you would not be nearly as fit as you think.
SPEAKER_02:14% of the programming at Misfitch in Portland. I'll put that out there. That's what it is.
SPEAKER_04:But it is, but when it when it's put in like that, it's like it's great. It's a perfect, like we've had gyms ask about like, hey, we you know, we're open seven days a week. It's like beautiful Sunday engine class, like perfect. Or call it, don't call, don't call it engine, call it CrossFit class and use the engine workout for that day or any of the three engine programs or and engine engine day workouts. But members members really enjoy it here. It's a perfect like weekend kind of class, so really good option there for your gym. For sure.
SPEAKER_02:All right, uh, so we're gonna end with live chat. Uh this is Hunter's last podcast for a while. Paige is gonna be joining me next week and for the foreseeable future. I know that we've sort of done this song and dance a few times, but I also know that the the people that listen to the podcast appreciate you, Hunter, the amount of information that you've given them over the years. I think you provide a level of entertainment that we will show here in a second. And I would have to guess that of the average 38 fucks, you are definitely at least 25. I didn't have the time to do it, but you gotta be at least 25 of those, right? There was one week, though. Well, I thought you were gonna say 25%.
SPEAKER_04:I was feeling a little sad about that number. 25 of the 35 rookie numbers, gotta pump those up. Yeah, yeah, I gotta imagine it's over 50.
SPEAKER_02:Myself and all of the listeners, thank you for all the information that you've given us. And we're we're happy to give you back to the Misfit Gym Portland members, but really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I appreciate you guys. You know, it's still MisfitGym Portland over here, so when everybody decides to venture uh into Maine, I probably wouldn't do it now. I don't know what you're looking at out the window, but it's fucking happening here, and I'm on suicide watch. We got 6 30 p.m. class canceled, so we're just getting a classic, a classic GPP of sleet, snow, and rain just coming down on us. This is the fuck meter.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, here we go. We have the Misfit Podcast swear meter, and I was able to go back to August 10th. And honestly, fitting that I had time to go back to yes, to August 10th of this year because we said fuck 85 times on August 5th. It was the CrossFit Games programming breakdown.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, I was gonna say it had to be was it the master's one or the regular one?
SPEAKER_02:The regular one. It was almost two hours long. Um, and we did have like a 40-minute live chat, and you were coming off of like a nasty workout. So the amount of like the the Venn diagram was beautiful. Yeah, but that just a circle second place was, and this probably isn't a coincidence, on October 21st, we said fuck 68 times, and we got the review right after. So the second highest that I could find, it was like, all right, guys, like slipping a few in is not a big deal. But if you say fuck 68 times in an hour, we couldn't. Our bucks per minute were over one on that episode. Um, and we averaged 38, but that includes the week. That includes the week where we only said seven. So so we're probably back on the upswing, though, it appears. Yeah, we're back on the upswing. Um, so let's see, we've got 85, 30, 30, 33, 50, 42, 31, 36, 43, and then the 68 that prompted the unnecessary fucks or unnecessary f bombs galore, I believe is what it was. Yeah, I think I think if we look at that bottom line there, I think Paige and I can keep it below 25. There's I was gonna say Paige has got some shoes to fill. Yeah, yeah. And she curses, um, for sure. Her last name's Cimenza. I don't want to, you know, put any anything out there. Um in my mother's name, maiden name's Montante. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all tracking here. So that's our swear meter, Hunter. You had some uh very important golf updates for the people.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I feel like that's definitely the place to wrap. All right, yeah, stats for the people. Okay. Started at a 20.4 handicap. So this is like just actually starting to track. Sure. Pulled that thing down to an eight point five by the end of the year. I think the low was an eight point one. I couldn't find that, but ended at eight point five. This year we went from eight point five to seven point eight with a low of seven point one. The original beginning of the year goal.
SPEAKER_02:Beginner gains are serious. Yeah, yeah. Chopping another stroke off when you get down below ten is not the same as going from twenty-four to twenty-three.
SPEAKER_04:I had very wishful thinking that five, if I had gave put the same amount of effort in, which I I would say probably a little bit less time spent this year, but um I thought I could get closer to five, and it just did not all come together often enough to make it happen. Um, high in 2024 was 94. High in 2025 was a 95. I dropped a 95 at some point. That was not a proud moment of mine.
SPEAKER_02:That'd be so proud moment for me.
SPEAKER_04:Lows were 76s both years. I just had a lot more of them this year. Uh, but probably the most important one, scoring average went down from an 84.3 to an 81.7 this year. So trending in the right direction. I was hoping goals were to see a five-point something, see five as the first digit of that handicap, and then to find a 75 or a couple of those around the year, but none such closed yesterday. Fucking it's shitting and pissing from the sky everywhere, and we're in we're in simulator mode for the rest of the year.
SPEAKER_02:You're a small business owner, you have no hobbies.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I have no, I no longer have any free time. I'm actually instead looking to install a simulator of some sort in the gigantic garage that I have out here. So we'll figure something out. Hell yeah. But yeah, we'll uh we'll fucking keep grinding.
SPEAKER_02:What's the goal in 2026? Do you know yet? Is it still five?
SPEAKER_04:I feel like it's gotta be. I can't I don't think it's I don't think it would be wise to update that to make it even lower. But um yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But a stroke a year if you had the macro view is probably pretty good.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I the long my I think my my long, long-term goal, and who knows, maybe two years from now, I won't like golf anymore and it won't matter. But I think I can get down to scratch over a long enough time horizon.
SPEAKER_02:I understand that's a lofty one, but uh You don't, but you you don't have your, you know, we're talking about two years. You don't have your 10,000 hours. Whatever that is for sure for golf, yeah, whatever that thing is, like like there's a point where like I can say from baseball and football, there is a point where it doesn't in in snowboarding, honestly. I have my 10,000 hours in snowboarding because I didn't go for 10 years when I came home from Maine, and I was scared, and I was ripping the day the first day that I went. She comes back. It's just it's just there, it's just built in. So like the first year that you pick up a club and go start swinging, and you're like, uh-huh, there it is. You'll know, like, okay, now we're cooking. Like, I've got my 10,000 hours in. This is a very natural thing. Because talk about component parts. My God, watching those golf videos is terrifying.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's fucking wild. I'm working on change. Yeah, that's I've thought about that. It's just like, you know, for for someone like like Alex Cardamony, you know, not setting not touching a club for three months is not a huge deal. He's gonna pick it back up and and operate at a certain standard. For me, having only, you know, he's played for 25 years, having only played for two, like the first time you pick up a club after six months is you know, what is this? Maybe the swing of my career as opposed to the 30,000th. And it's like yeah, it's not that's not the same thing. So yeah, we're shanking balls in simulators for the next couple months trying to trying to get some tour-like hip rotation. Uh but another.
SPEAKER_02:My live chat is going to be about 30 seconds long. Unpacking is not cool. Like, we got rid of a lot of stuff, and we have too much stuff. Luckily, I'll learn this lesson because I'm moving into the house that we're building in eight or nine months. That like you can't be bringing shit you don't need to the like actual place that you're staying. So I gotta go back inside right now and deal with some some issues life chat related. And yeah, I mean, moving and listen, where we are, like in the Redlands in Grand Junction, is beautiful, and it's good that it is because again, moving, especially with a toddler, is a wild. Yeah, that ain't I can tell you that right now.
SPEAKER_04:Has has Carter adapted or adopted anything uh new Colorado specific?
SPEAKER_02:We are we still Yeah, he tells me that the when we're taking a walk, we're not in Colorado, but the up on top of the cliffs is Colorado, and he you I gotta take him there. I haven't taken him to Colorado yet because he needs to get on top of those cliffs. Yeah. And I mean, you know, that's the spirit of Colorado, right? You know, the mountains and the adventure and all that stuff. He's like, this walking path, and I'm like, dude, look at the view. And he's like, that doesn't make any sense to me. I'm two years old. Yeah, I want to be on top of the cliffs. He's like on the view. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yep. He he talks about Colorado a lot. He asked me to go to Colorado a lot while we're in Colorado.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, dad of the year material right there. Hey Kim, I got a surprise for you. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:And his toys unboxing the toys he already had was like Christmas times 10. Yeah. So excited. I could just be like, oh my god, God.
SPEAKER_04:Here's an actual like this is this is a tough one. What sports fan is Carter gonna be?
SPEAKER_02:So I had this conversation recently because two of my best friends, husband, CSU Rams, wife, CU, Buffaloes. And those are like bitter rivals, like so fun going to the CSU CU games in college. So their little boy has Rams shirts, he's got buff shirts. The seminal age where they start watching, whoever is good or has that like Ken Griffey Jr., Kobe Bryant, you know, the thing that they can latch on to something will latch on to, yeah. Exactly. I think will make the call, right? So, like an example, I guess right now wouldn't I'm trying to think of yeah. So right now, the the avalanche are incredible. One of the best goalies in the league. McKinnon is, you know, it would be considered the best player in the world in a lot of other eras. It just happens to be that maybe the second best player ever is also alive and playing currently. Yep. But McKinnon is, you know, he usually has more points than than McDavid. Yeah. In the Bruins, while Kale McCar's got more points than those forwards. Fighting for their lives, you know, and they look good standings-wise. I'm not buying it. I could be wrong. Hockey's fickle like that. There's a lot of parody in hockey, but like, you know, I'm probably latching on to McKinnon and the Avs and all of my friends are wearing the jerseys if I'm growing up at this point. But the amount of propaganda, I mean, this kid's gonna be wearing Bruins jerseys. I'm gonna take him to the garden. Like, I'm gonna take him to Denver when the Bruins come. We're gonna get yelled at by random people who drink too much beer. Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna do the work. Get a beer dumped on that kid's head early. I have a four-foot-tall Wally, the green monster, bobblehead. I have a four-foot-tall Bobby Orr bobblehead.
SPEAKER_04:All right where you're doubling, you're doubling down. We're not we're not making allegiance changes as you know, 40-year-old. Oh my god. Okay. No.
SPEAKER_02:No, and and honestly, being the heel and being a pain in the ass is like less of my brand as an adult, but is a huge part of my brand as a human being. Like fucking with people is just fun.
SPEAKER_04:As the as an average human over the last couple decades. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:The last serious fist fight I got into was because I wore a Kobe Bryant jersey to a Nuggets Lakers playoff game where the Lakers waxed him. Love that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we'll we'll try to keep Carter out of the fist fights um for the most part, but uh the propaganda for the sports character, it's gonna be going strong for sure. And I'm gonna be really sad if he's a CU fan. That's gonna hurt a little bit. It's like a really good school though, and it'll be in state, and maybe he'll want to go there, and maybe I can talk him out of it. You know, he loves trucks, construction management, Colorado State University. Let's go, big dog.
SPEAKER_04:College is gonna be gone by the time he gets there anyway.
SPEAKER_02:So seriously, right? Yep, true. All right, did we do it? We did it. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Misfit Podcast. Head to gorilla mind.com forward slash misfit or use the code word misfit at gorilla mind for checkout. Uh, you support the podcast and save money at the exact same time. If you're looking for the Winjaro phase, you get two weeks for free by going to teammisfit.com, click on sign up now, stream fit, sugar water, push press. You can also ask me, coach at misfitathletics.com, via email for a two-week version of the PDF. So you guys can get a peek at that and see if that's what you want to get into. Also, any questions, obviously do that. And I will send out another link to the affiliates for the telegram. Let's get in there, let's chat. If you want to chat with Hunter, if you want to continue your communications with Hunter, I'm guessing it's not going to be on social media and it's more much more likely going to be on Telegram.
SPEAKER_04:Individual Telegram, you can you can email me to hunter at misfitgymportland.com. That's probably the the best route. I have dabbled back. Instagram is back on the phone.
SPEAKER_02:You're supposed to dabble the brand. I know it's a whole thing.
SPEAKER_04:Yep. Keep an eye out.
SPEAKER_02:Keep an eye out for Hunter's grand return to Instagram until he quits again. All right, big dog. Thanks again for everything, podcast related and otherwise. Um I'll see you around, and if the people want to find you, head to telegram or hunter at misfitjimportland.com. See you guys next week. Later.
SPEAKER_00:Make a bunch of misfits my version later.