Misfit Podcast

Quarterfinals Are Back: What to Expect and How to Prep - E.387

• Misfit Athletics • Episode 387

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Quarterfinals are back, and we’re breaking down exactly what that means for you.

In this episode, we dive into what to expect from the 2026 Quarterfinals based on past data, how to prepare (whether you're following Misfit programming or not), and how we structure our Quarterfinals peaking phase to maximize execution and intensity. We cover volume distribution, workout styles, movement trends, athlete IQ, and how to navigate prep during the Open.

We also get into:

  • Why Quarterfinals returning is a big deal for the sport
  • The in-person semifinal structure debate
  • Movement patterns that consistently show up
  • How to approach redos and stress during Open season
  • What makes comp prep different from standard phase training
  • Sprintervals, in-WOD lifting, and why stimulus is king

If you're aiming for Quarterfinals, chasing Semifinals, or just want to understand how to think like a competitive athlete for the next six weeks, this episode lays it out clearly and practically.

Quarterfinals peaking phase begins February 16th. Execution starts now.

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Housekeeping And Community Shoutouts

SPEAKER_06

Good morning, Misfits. You are tuning in to another episode of the Misfit Podcast on today's show. Quarterfinals is back. We're going to talk through what you can expect in quarterfinals, how we would go about prepping, how we're going to go about prepping. The Misfit Athletics quarterfinals peaking phase starts on Monday, February 16th. That'll be a few days after this drops. We'll have the free trials turned back on. But more than anything, whether you're following the programming or not, again, the idea is to tell you what you can expect quarterfinals to be based on past data. I always think that's super helpful. And then how we use that to get people ready. Before we do that, as always, a little bit of housekeeping, and then we will jump right in. Paige, you have a funny, I'm looking at the notes here, shout-out of the week. What you got?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'm gonna talk about the uh the yappers on Fitter. We got just a couple people in there that keep the train going. Um Midlife Crisis. I don't even know who that is, but they make me laugh a lot.

SPEAKER_06

Right. They're they're an Aussie. I do know that. And I've tried to figure out who it is, and I can't, even with like like the data that I have. Like the customer data says midlife crisis. I'm like, wow, this is great.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I mean, they, you know, they keep the the culture of misfit alive in that app, and you know, they're all on the leaderboard, things like that. So shout out to those guys.

Athlete IQ And Open Simulations

SPEAKER_06

I'll do basically the same shout-out, but in a different spot. Um, I just think the athlete IQ exercises and then the open simulation stuff is really putting people in a much better place to understand. Like, and I I've talked about it in the past. Like, we'll do an athlete IQ episode and we'll say you need to do this 150 times a week, and this is how it is. And I think the overall concept is just so huge that it's like, where do I start? How do I start? And doing the worksheets and having people talk through stuff, you can really see. I think it's hard for people last week's with the, you know, the super heavy squat snatching in there to dial things back and actually, you know, scale it to the percentages that we recommended. But so many people got such a good work out there, and they'll know more about what they can actually do and accomplish when they have a ladder like that because they, you know, you're not sure where you're gonna land. If, you know, let's say it's two rounds or five rounds of how it ascends. You're not positive where you're gonna land, but I think you know more when you scale than when you just go in and do like I did see there were a few people that only did the first round, and there's actually like nothing wrong with finding that out as well. We talk a lot, yeah, definitely talked at camp, but we talk a lot about like making a bunch of mistakes with athlete IQ exercises is like half of the point, anyways. So I just thought it was cool that we're continuing to roll in that way. And then a little preview for this week. This week's is highly accessible and very dirty. Uh, and I'm just excited for people to dig into that side of it and see what it's like to do the athlete IQ exercise when we know that it's a cardio stimulus and we know that you know certain strategies are gonna work in certain places, but there's actually like this one is intentionally a bit of a puzzle. Like there's there's more to this than you would think. And I'm intrigued to see people's sheets um this week. So if you're listening, you have no idea what we're talking about. We do a uh we do an open simulation workout every week and in the telegram group, which is free whether you're on the program or not, we do a sheet where you put in how long it's gonna take you to do each movement and then what your strategy is for that, and then the exercise afterwards below is to have the actual factual information and then you try to learn from what you did. So keep your eyes out for that. Join the telegram group. Uh, if you're on our email list, you've got probably 5,000 invitations down there at the bottom. All right. Sponsors, ways to support Misfit, ways to support the show, our programming. Obviously, we got those free trials turned back on for the quarterfinals prep peaking phase. So you can click the link in bio on our Instagram, get signed up on Strivey or Fitter. Also, if you're looking for our affiliate programming, that's teammisfit.com. Team Missfit.com, click on sign up now, free trial at sugarwad, stream fit, or push press. If you want to see what subscribing on the website looks like, shoot me an email, coach at misfitathletics.com, and I'll get you a sample and we can hop on a call if you want to talk through all that good stuff. I would tell you to go buy the new shirt, but at the time that this drops, you will not be able to buy that anymore. I'll probably throw a few in the store afterwards for you people that are going to contact me one hour after it shuts down, but it'll just be like two to five shirts total. So sharpen theaxco.com where you can find all of your misfit gear. And last but not least, GorillaMind is sponsoring this episode of the podcast, GorillaMind.com forward slash Misfit, or just use the code word misfit at checkout. Um, there isn't just a product of the week, there are products of the week. I think they got clobbered on Black Friday because I like to mix my so for for the for the proper fans out there, I have recreated our recover product with two of their products. So I buy the vanilla ice cream Gorilla Whey that just came back in stock. And I buy the, I haven't, I I bought the other one, but I haven't tried it yet. So Paige can vouch for the other flavor. But their intra workout, the strawberry kiwi, I mix the vanilla ice cream protein with that. I get protein, carbs, electrolytes, and creatine. Stop me if you've heard that before. And we get it all in one go there. I do stick with the one-to-one ratio. So, like you got to do a little math. Reach out to me if you need to. But I do 40 grams of protein, 40 grams of carbs after each workout. So there's a lot of stuff that's restocked, but that, and then I always point to the can up over my shoulder here. White frost is finally back in stock. That's my favorite energy, energy drink flavor that they have. So I have a nice little restock coming uh for that. So gorilla mine.com forward slash forwards, I can't say slash today. I keep saying flat. Flat misfit. Slash misfit or use the code word misfit at checkout. All right. Quarter finals is back. And I want to be nice. I don't know if I do. Some part of me wants to be nice. We got open signups in a better spot. You'll cross it. Yeah. Yeah, guess. Open signups seem to be trending in a positive direction. They're higher, quite a bit higher than they were last year, trending back towards some of the some of the really good years. I think we're right around 100,000 right now, somewhere in that range. And they brought back quarterfinals. And if you were around in the heyday when the crowds were so crazy at the CrossFit games that it was like hard to leave your seats after an event, when there was the magic of someone from your gym trying to get into regionals, that sort of thing. Bringing quarterfinals back is a step in the right direction to get back to that place. I think a lot of the signups that we lost last year were because of quarterfinals. Obviously, there were other reasons why people didn't sign up, but I also know that when you participate at a local level, you realize that people who aren't huge fans of the sport need some sort of connection. And quarterfinals, I think, is that connection. Now, unless, and I I honestly am thinking about trying to get one of the like the CrossFit nerds to join the show and explain this shit to us. The way that I understand the way that they're doing semifinals invites is just like we're driving in the right direction and then we're pulling the e-brake and jamming it in reverse and going in the other direction. Are they inviting the same fucking people to every single quarterfinal?

Sponsors And Training Tools

SPEAKER_03

The top 20 from the games? That's what it looks like.

SPEAKER_06

It's just as bad if you guys have not explained it properly. Okay. If I'm missing something, I shouldn't have to DM Brian Spin and be like, hey, you've read every word of everything and seen every video. Can you explain this to me? It should be very obvious how this works. And at this point, it's become such a joke that this stuff isn't obvious. So as far as I can tell, they're inviting the same people and they're doing the backfill thing that they did last year, where if whoever qualifies, say out of mayhem, mayhem's early, there's a few others that are early, they cannot go to syndicate or whatever. I do know that that's part of it. But like last year, we had an athlete who was invited like five or six days before it started. I just, and I know that they moved the online afterwards, and that's gonna help some of this stuff. But like if you guys want to get back to a place where, because right now, like syndicate had last year had plenty of stars on the men's and women's side. There was nobody there. That place was empty. Right. Right. If you want the crowd to come back, if you want the money to come back, if you want the signups to come back, you need to give opportunities to the not household names to make it to that place and to have a spot like in the spotlight that will get all their whole family to come. Like that's where all the people came from, right? They came from your gym. Your gym qualified, someone in your gym qualified. We all got together, you know, you basically just partied the whole time, like or at least most of the people did. Yep. And it's just like we're we can do that. It's very possible for that to happen. But there was the whole narrative last year of like, oh well, people are just gonna go online and none of the stars are gonna want to go. And it's like we just overcorrect back and forth and back and forth. So I don't know how you feel about it. I just, I either want a really clear explanation from somebody that's actually in charge of this shit, or you guys are doing it wrong and you need to fix it. Like those are the only two things that I can think of.

SPEAKER_03

It's it's funny you mentioned that. I don't, I don't know if you saw like, you know, Barbell Spin did actually put out a video today talking about how like in-person semifinals were like bring it back to like the local regions because that's how you get people to show up is you have athletes that are qualifying from that region and people that they know that want to go see them there. Like it's not I think the participation at semifinals isn't always about going to see the top athletes compete. It's about going to see somebody that you're invested in. And that brings people back to those places and gets crowds to show up. And I think that's a big part of it that we're missing.

SPEAKER_06

I need a lot of, I don't have a lot of free time. Sometimes I have more free time. I don't have enough to wade through the like gossipy chunks of all those videos. Like I just, I'm sorry that I don't care. I'm just not like the target demographic for that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

The Rant: Quarterfinals And Semifinals Mess

SPEAKER_06

And again, maybe if I had more free time, I would be into it. I'm very into the community. But like, just yeah, I'm just frustrated because I know the people that are gonna drive the sport and the future of the sport are people that you don't know very well yet. And they have no clue how they're gonna get to a certain spot, when they're gonna go, when they're gonna get invited. Like, give people a very clear like this is how this works. Right. When you put it in the hands of the promoters, they're gonna be like, oh, we need to get these big names here. Listen, I've been to a lot of competitions with big names and nobody in the crowd, right? So it's not all that. Right. That's not like the entire picture.

SPEAKER_03

So that's my rant. Yeah, how how are you supposed to be a athlete coming up in the sport if you don't have access? Like you invite these athletes who have these high-level sponsors that have the money to go and do these things. Not everybody has that. So it's like, you know, again, those local competitions are the ones that are within their regions are are the most financially feasible to get to. So we just make that a lot less accessible.

Why Local Pathways And Clear Invites Matter

Quarterfinals Format And Data Breakdown

SPEAKER_06

Well, and and back in the day, it was there were more people qualifying. So like Northeast males, like it was Fraser and Velner, and then who knows? Like that kind of thing. Now you're only sending two or three people, and it's like, what is it's just like just to use an example of somebody who's not actually competing, like is TIA just gonna be at every competition? Like, what how the what so there's no spots available, like that kind of thing. So I just don't think that you're gonna build that like depth of farm system. Like those people that don't believe that they're gonna have a chance are gonna quit. Like people with that level of ambition that don't know where to put it, they're gonna just they're gonna find something else. They're gonna go to high rocks, they're just gonna go to some other place, they're gonna put it into their professional career, whatever it is. So I did not mean for there to be a full 10-minute rant on this topic because I am very excited that it's back. And I do think that like the top 2,000 in the online semifinal is really cool. Yeah. Um, but the in-person thing's gotta be figured out, or I do not understand and I need someone to explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old. All right. Quarterfinals is back March 26th through the 30th. It is the top 25% from the open. The top 2,000 from quarterfinals advance to online semifinals, which is June 11th through the 15th, top 400 in the 35 to 54 divisions, and then top 300 in the 55 plus and teen divisions. The age group semifinal is May 7th to the 11th, so not as long of a kind of a runway there. In 2021 to 2023, they did five workouts. Two of those three years, one of the workouts was a lift. Um, so four Metcons and a lift, and then there was another year um where they did not have a lift. Um 2024, there were only four workouts, and one of them was that clean and jerk with 10 rest a minute with the ascending ladder, that kind of thing. Um durations 59% of the workouts are short. We're gonna talk about that quite a bit. Yeah, yucky. We've done the like we do the CrossFit Games recap episode where we talk about how a lot of the fluff is removed from workouts, and I think that's part of what's happening here. You're gonna get a very similar score in the like five to seven minute range as you are in the like nine to eleven minute range. Kind of the high end of short, the low end of medium. Um, and I think that's that's what's going on here. And and there is a lot of gray area when it comes to a competition like this because it's rare that the best in the world and the 2000th best in the world, or it's not even that, that's semifinals, the you know, all the way up to 25%. That gap is so massive. So 24% are medium, a lot of the short ones bleed medium for the intermediate athlete. So I'll just kind of put that out there. 18% of them are long, 96% of them are for time. They could be a little bit nicer and give you those like short amraps, but you're not gonna get very far. So they let you bleed medium without like a lot of those time caps are we're gonna let you try to do this workout, which is probably smart. Um, and then I don't know if I already said 24% are amrap. Style, another, it all has gray area. So I'll just address all of it as we go. 37% triplets, 32% couplets. A lot of those include the kind of thing where they rotate from kipping handstand push-ups to strict to chest to wall, where they go from toe to bar to chest to bar to bar muscle up, etc. Monostructural 5%, that's just the one clean and jerk workout. It's enough conditioning that I wouldn't consider it a lift. Like you had to be fit to do well. And I'm definitely a fan of tests like that. Um chippers, 16%. So they throw some chippers in there for sure. Um, and then 11% are lifts. And again, that does not include 24.4, which is the clean and jerk ladder. Stimulus. So this is gray because we invented these words. Um and it depends on how fit you are. So we can essentially establish a spectrum where on the left side we have cardio, in the middle we have gas, and on the right side we have muscle endurance. Cardio is basically unbroken, quick transitions. You just do the workout. You just go through it. Gas is a workout where you're strategically breaking it up or it breaks you because you're breathing so heavy. And then the muscle endurance workouts are where you are stopped or you stop intentionally because physically you cannot do the movement, the muscle contractions, not gonna be there. The easiest representation of that is something like a strict handstand pushup. If they have that in a certain amount of volume, it's it's not gonna be cardio for anybody. Now, the fitter you are, the more to the left you are. The closer you are to turning muscle endurance into gas, gas into cardio, that sort of thing. The less fit you are, you can turn cardio into gas, and you can turn gas into muscle endurance. So what's important here, the reason we talk about this for people even outside of the misfit ecosystem, is over 50% of the workouts are muscle endurance. They take this platter of movements that they don't want to have in the open and they serve it to you in quarterfinals. And for your cardio masters, it's like, well, shit, take me back to the open. And for your more skilled athletes, potentially someone who likes pulling or pushing a little bit more, certain workouts are like, hell yeah, this is this is my kind of thing. So over 50% of workouts are ones where you are served with, and it could be barbell, but it's typically gymnastics, could definitely be weighted, um, where you're just served with movements where it's like, I need to know how to break these up strategically because doing them all at once is going to be a problem. Um, and even if we lump together muscle endurance and gas, that's 80-some percent of the workouts. Yeah. Athlete IQ is so paramount here. Um, cardio is also an athlete IQ test, but it's like it kind of like an idiot test. It's like, do you have the base knowledge of how to execute this? So that is there. But if you are like a really solid fit person that just doesn't know what they're doing, cardio can also be a problem. But I digress. So we need to know how to execute these workouts because they are putting a bottleneck in them and they can be different bottlenecks for different people, but they're putting those into the program, and we need to be able to identify them in training, not only so that we can say, okay, wow, so we got to go get better at these things now, but also I know what I'm gonna do when I'm faced with this. Um and we do it in a bunch of different ways. You know, one of the hunterisms is dropping you in the desert where Hunter writes a workout and it just says like 40 muscle ups in the middle of it, and you're like, uh still revenge. So there are a bunch of, yeah. I think it's there are a bunch of ways to it was 50. I still need to release Hunter's Revenge. So Hunter wrote a workout. Hunter snuck into the actually, no, it was open prep. Hunter snuck into the open prep sheet and dropped it, he put a turd in the punch bowl. And I will release it for fun. It just did not fit the program or the timing at all.

SPEAKER_03

It was actually fur this last week, too. It was.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, he went rogue in a big way, but I will release that at some point. So we say all of that because that's what we can expect. And I'll talk about the movements as well before we get into the prep. But you gotta know what these things are so that you can practice them, so that you can be reminded that you you probably guys probably still have videos and data on old workouts that you could go access, which could be really helpful in prep and actually executing. So when we look at the movements, we have four that have been in every single quarterfinals. Rope climbs, rowing, burpee box jumpovers, and some handstand pushup variant have been in every single quarterfinals. Rowing and burpee box jumpovers, you better be fit, but you also better be efficient. That's what's cool. You can be pretty fit and not row with very good form and kind of give the points back to your opponents. Burpee box jumpovers are just such a Athlete IQ conundrum for a lot of people. So something to work on, something that is in quarterfinals prep a lot, always. Rope climbs are awesome because they there's there's a huge fitness element, but it's one of those movements where if you can really, really, really figure out the technique, you get to pretend you're fitter than people that are way fitter than you. Right. And there are a lot of people who are just so good at crossfit that no one's ever told them that they climb rope like an asshole. Um, because they're like, somebody should beat me if they want that. But you you can make it, you can make it easier, I promise. And then the handstand push-up is a bit of an outlier there because the kipping handstand push-up in moderate volumes is just like the rope climb. Like if you know what you're doing and you're fit, you're gonna be totally fine. But they the second they take them to a certain place, it's very individually specific.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

You gotta know are you fast twitch or slow twitch? And we gotta know if you're a puller or presser, right? Like those those things are huge because I love, I love quote unquote handstand push-ups until I don't. Like I am a pusher, but I'm also fast twitch. So it's like if you give me a short workout with these and the volumes kind of in the middle, I'll annihilate the workout. But if we get into a place where I'm accumulating waste elsewhere and it's kind of dragging on, and then I go back to it, I have I have problems there. We have four movements that have that have been in three of the four GHD sit-ups, muscle ups, snatching, and wall balls. The GHD sit-up thing kind of just kind of is what it is. Castro didn't put it in the last time after we were like, all right, and every year you got to do 8,000 of them. We're still gonna do quite a few. I actually had somebody reach out this week that was like, you said on the podcast that it was easy to get better at GHD sit ups. And I was like trying to think of the context of when I would have said that. And one of the things that I've said a lot of times is when you need to get as a coach and a programmer, an athlete better at 30 things, one thing's pretty easy. And I might have been talking about it in relation to GHD sit-ups. The thing is, it requires a significant amount of patience on the side of the athlete. Like if you did low volume, high frequency GHD sit-ups for, I don't know, six to nine months, like really manageable doses, but like two or three times a week, and got yourself to a baseline, and then we just worked on them once a week, you'd get way better. But like people want the like, you know, five-minute abs version. So GHD sit-ups are unique. I would love to see them in an actual like burner of a workout instead of like park your ass on there and do 800.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I thought it was well They did that one year for Masters, didn't they? The tall boxes.

SPEAKER_06

They did, but it was they did, but people were like, it was the the it was an exaggeration of it, and it was so much of a merry-go-round that people were like jumping into the G HD and not remembering to touch the pad. So it was like like careful what you wish for, maybe a little bit.

SPEAKER_03

It was strict handstand push-ups too, right? Yeah. So like or you're getting bottlenecked there. Yeah, tall box jumps.

SPEAKER_06

Right. But I think it was all manageable. I just remember it being like like like mounting and unmounting the GHD at an alarming rate.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, right. You better get out of the way. Yeah, if you're good at the movements.

SPEAKER_06

Exactly. Snatching, you know, it's it's the movement. It's an amazing stimulus bomb. It requires coordination, it requires mobility and stability. It's it should continue to pop up at a very high rate because of all of the boxes that it checks. And then wall balls, they've put them in some nasty workouts.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, they have.

Stimulus Spectrum And Athlete IQ

SPEAKER_06

If I remember correctly, all three times they were really bad. And that makes me happy. It's just a dirty old, you know, it's a squat, it's a press, it's, you know, again, movement efficiency is at a premium. There are people that should be good at wall balls that aren't because they're jumping all over the place. So three out of the four years with the wall ball.

SPEAKER_03

What's the third one? We had the rope climb shuttle run wall ball. We had the burpee box jump over wall ball.

SPEAKER_06

That the burpee box jump over wall ball was 2024. 21 and 22, they were, I think, both with rope climbs. Was it G H D rope climb wall ball the first time?

SPEAKER_03

Can't remember. We had GHD rope climb pistols one year.

SPEAKER_06

Right. Yes.

SPEAKER_03

I don't know, I'm drawing a blank. But I do like that they, you know, they're bringing the wall ball in. It's such a simple movement, but they're gonna be like, here's a high volume dose, and here's like a ascending volume dose. So, like, you know, just the variety that they brought with it and the stimulus that it brings is pretty wild.

SPEAKER_06

120 wall balls, 120 calorie row. Remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, yep. That's a real hoot. Yeah, how could we forget about that? I know things can get so bad that you forget about that specifically. And then last but not least, we got three movements that they've done twice, and then a lot of movements they've done once. And I won't, I won't subject you guys to listening to that. So clean and jerk, front squat, and pistols have all each been done twice. So it's a it's a good list. It's a pretty well-rounded list. The usual suspects are down below, variants of different things. Like they've done you know, squat cleans in the same in a year that they haven't done clean and jerk. So technically you could say, you know, that that that we've cleaned three times that could be added to that list, but none of it's going to be super shocking or surprising.

SPEAKER_03

So do you find it interesting that like handstand push-ups have showed up so often, but yet all the polling gymnastics have not?

SPEAKER_06

They haven't I said muscle-ups, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Muscle ups was in there. Three. Muscle ups is three. We've got toe to bar, bar muscle up, chest to bar have all been in once. They are always there, but the polling gymnastics are significantly more accessible to CrossFitters because there's so much pulling in the sport. And I think the barrier to entry is very high for people in the open to be able to do the handstand push-up. So I feel like they just moved it.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. Like it's fair.

SPEAKER_06

Because we definitely did more handstand push-ups back in the day in the open.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

So I feel like that's one of the reasons why that's been moved because as we know, the leaderboard is what it is at all levels in CrossFit. So they know that they can get the test and get the right person roughly to win the open and be in the top 10 without putting those skills in there. I also think that just demonstrates the power of CrossFit, that someone could be good at each level, even if the programming changes a ton. Okay, so quarterfinals prep, like I said at the beginning of the episode, starts this coming Monday. And I'm gonna do my best to explain how we are doing quarterfinals prep, but also talk through just kind of the expectations of what you would need to do to prep yourself. Say you were on a different program and you were auditing that, you wanted to write your own programming, et cetera. So one major change, it is two on, one off, three on one off versus the opposite. You can shift those days in whatever direction you want. So it will be posted as Monday, Tuesday, rest Wednesday, train Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. A lot of athletes, when they make the jump from open prep volume to quarterfinals prep volume, need those weekend days. It's one of the reasons why we program the way that we do, not just because we're prepping for quarterfinals to be in the back half of the week. So if you need that extra time, I do recommend doing the Monday and Thursday rest days. So you can you can shift those. The peaking schedule itself is the way that we have, and of course, these things have adapted over the years, but the way that we've prepped athletes for semifinals in the CrossFit games for a pretty long time with a with a very high success rate, just in terms of I finished in this place last year and I moved up the leaderboard and finished in this place this year. So we know that it works really well. And those athletes are almost always remote coaching athletes or at least have, you know, a direct line to me. And that is the environment in which we create a lot of the stuff that ends up going out to the masses in that remote coaching setting. But my question has always been like, I think three years ago was the first time that we did a quarterfinals peaking phase for the masses. And it was like, we know that drawing it out for that seven weeks or that eight weeks is probably not necessary or realistic for a lot of people. So we decided to try out the five, five-week version. And we have had a hatchet athlete who has never qualified for semifinals qualify for semifinals by following the hatchet variation of the quarterfinals peaking phase every single year, which just gives us proof of concept and something to build on. And when you're looking at a smaller cohort, it's easier for me to reach out to them and say, hey, how did this go? How do we make it better? What did you struggle with? What did you not struggle with, etc.? So the principles that we use within this peaking phase are what have gotten the best misfit athletes over the years, the finishes that they have in terms of a program being successful, obviously always have the asterisk. The athletes are the ones actually doing the work. So that's where this comes from, this style. Important, who should follow what? If you are a pro and you are pretty damn sure you're going to an in-person semifinal, that is the pro is the program that you should follow, the subscription that you should get. If your goal is online semifinals or like a Hail Mary to get to the in-person, you should be on Hatchet. So basically everyone should be on Hatchet. There are instructions every single day for the Hatchet open athlete. And you should follow those instructions on the program if you don't think you're going to advance, or you're like, maybe, we'll see. It's kind of a coin flip. I'm on the fringe there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

Movement Trends You Must Prepare For

SPEAKER_06

Because execution and intensity is going to do way more for your ability to get to quarterfinals than adding a bunch of volume. Adding a bunch of volume is just not gonna not gonna do a whole lot for you. So here's how these six weeks play out. Weeks one and five, the beginning and the end, are the lowest volume that we do. There is an insinuation that you better be getting after it in the lowest volume. And we don't just start there for the intensity, we also start there for the habits. And we've been doing the habit stacking exercises in Telegram because that is the expected behavior in a quarterfinals prep peaking phase in any peaking phase. Like you start out and you're setting the tone with the energy that you bring to your lifting and your accessories and your skills. You're setting the tone with the intensity that you bring to conditioning. And then you have more time outside of that than usual to work on warm-up, cool down, mobility, sleep, nutrition, recovery, athlete IQ. Do I need double sessions? That sort of thing. So we are doing that in week one because you're just gonna add a little bit of volume at a time as you go. And maintaining those behaviors as you add volume is paramount. On the back half of it, execution is everything. So if it's it's week five, we are a week and a half out from quarterfinals, and quarterfinals does not have high volume. We just said it's the 26th to the 30th, and you can expect four or five workouts. Quarterfinals is execution at an extremely high intensity. So we are presenting the fittest version of ourselves that we've had the whole year thus far in week five, and we're smashing workouts and we're executing, and then we're leaving and recovering because that's what we need to do in quarterfinals. Weeks two and four are moderate volume, and then week three is hell week. Week three should feel like too much volume. It is very intentional. There is a ton going on in terms of the adaptations that you're making. We are overreaching in search of supercompensation, but your ability to execute when you don't want to with the limited resources tells a different story to yourself about yourself. I can do this. Are you kidding me? Another zone two row? Are you insane? Like I would rather do, yeah, fuck you me. I would rather do triple fran right now than sit on that stupid thing and get more blisters on my hands. I've told this story a lot of times. I got into the zone two rowing game for a while. I asked a collegiate rower how the hell I could like fix what was going on with my hands. Do I wear gloves? Do I tape it? Like my hands hurt all the time. And he was like, You should keep rowing till it doesn't hurt. Like, there's just nothing. Yeah, there's nothing you can do. You will get used to it. You haven't gotten used to it yet. Like, end of story. I was like, damn. All right.

SPEAKER_02

Ever.

SPEAKER_06

Good to know. Right. All right. So again, weeks one and five, lowest volume, two and four, moderate volume. Week three, right in the middle, is Hell Week. That is our peak volume there. And then we end week six, taper and showtime. Um, you guys will have a template on how to taper. And if you follow Misfit Athletics, you will be following an RX or scaled version of quarterfinals during quarterfinals. This is what we are aspire to. This is what we are shooting for. Um, and you always, if you are on comp, have the backup of GPP if you need it, if you're, you know, salty and don't want to do that. Um before we jump into we have to talk about navigating this during the open, which is is its whole beast. What can you tell the listeners about about prep? About like how you thought about it, what your experiences were like. You've just been through basically every iteration of a comp prep we've ever written.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Um, I mean, what I can tell you from like a feelings perspective, because again, like most athletes that I talk to, it's like everything that they've experienced. I've I've gone through the emotions, the highs and lows of it all. One thing that doesn't change is like the intimidation factor of looking at the first week of a prep. Like there's always like that one workout that you're like, that gives that oh shit factor of like, oh, we're in it. And like we're in it for the next six weeks, eight weeks, whatever it is. That doesn't change and you have to embrace that. So that's like my one piece of advice for you know, everybody that's about to tackle quarterfinals prep. You have to embrace the fact that it's gonna be a little intimidating and you just have to be like vulnerable enough to put yourself out there with it. But I mean, I've gone through eight-week preps, six-week preps, and like I do like the lower, like this, the six week because it's like I know for myself at some point within like an eight-week prep, whether it was for the games or for semifinals, there's always been a point where I needed a D load, whether that was just like a long weekend of a D-load. And that usually would come like after Hell Week. So, like after whether it's week three or week four of Hell Week. So what I like about the way that we peak and then we descend is, you know, kind of what we talked about was the execution, the intensity factor of like you get into Hell Week and you're overreaching, and it's really hard to bring intensity into the things that you're doing, and your mind wants to start playing tricks on you. But when you're coming back down that mountain, it's like you almost get to a point where you're starting to feel a little restless because you don't have that, you know, that added volume in there, but you're able to put so much more energy into the training pieces that you are doing. So, like, you know, another piece of advice I would recommend is when you are in week one and it's the lowest volume, don't try to add more. Just be patient with the fact that you have minimal pieces to do and really, really learn how to execute on what's given.

SPEAKER_06

One thing that's funny that's a little psychological that I've found is quite a few athletes, aside from like the volume monsters, are like, they look at week one and they're like, this is low.

SPEAKER_03

That's too.

SPEAKER_06

And then they're in week five and they've already done all of the volume and they're like, this is too low.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

The Six-Week Peaking Plan

SPEAKER_06

And it's funny because it's basically the same thing when you get there, but when you come back down the other side, it's funny. Some people feel good right at at the end of Hell Week. Some people feel good a little bit during week four, feel the best in week five, that sort of thing. So that side of it definitely does change. Navigating a program like this during the open, 26.1 is in week two, 26.2 is in week three, so hell week, and 26.3 is in week four. One thing that Paige definitely noticed in our programming meetings, and you will definitely notice, is the second the open ends, not fucking around. So if the gloves were on sort of, they're not after that. You can tell literally the day after the open ends. It's like there we're there's some workouts in there that are just a little bit of a like, hey, um, we have a different thing that that we're looking at. So let's talk about it from the perspective of the quarterfinals athlete versus the open athlete. A quarterfinals athlete is going to, on the day of the open workout, they're going to prioritize the open workout and then they're going to add volume after based on that. But there is an expectation to do more. Some athletes will feel okay to do, you know, the full training day, and some athletes won't. It is really important that the that you get right back to it, that the other days are very much that, you know, you get back into the rhythm and you get back to work. So that's just sort of something that's that's very important. You have to be able to live in that headspace for a very short period of time and then get back to prepping because it's going to be a little bit of an issue if you don't.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. When it comes to read sorry, it's kind of like uh, you know, someone who gets off track with their nutrition for a day. It's like you just have to hop right back on the train the next day, just to give that some perspective.

SPEAKER_06

You got like half of a training day every week that is just locked in to the open.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

This is one of the reasons why we're doing also why we're doing open simulation, because that's not the only thing that you guys do on that day. If you're trying to prepare you for the moment of getting that done and then essentially getting back to work. Redos are interesting and tricky, and I think there's a huge spectrum here. My general opinion in a vacuum, you know, in a bubble, is I love redoos. That changes a little bit during a quarterfinals prep. Like if we're on the fence, really sure it makes sense for a redo, quarterfinals prep is a reason not to redo it. Um, but if you feel like you bombed it, if you felt like you went out too hot, if you left too much on the table, um, then we're probably going to try to slot that in on Monday. Um, if that's what your training schedule looks like. But there's so much nuance here that it's one of the main reasons why the Telegram group exists. Like get in there and ask questions about when you would redo and how you do certain things. The day before every open workout is very doable. Like it's not quite a primer day, but it's a primer day in disguise. For open athletes, there will be a PDF download of a primer day every week in Telegram. And it'll tell you that in your instructions. So you're on your instructions for Thursdays and it will basically say, like, quarterfinals athletes, do all open athletes, download your template in Telegram. And you will get a very traditional primer day because you're prioritizing what you're doing there. And redoes for an open athlete, I don't want to say they're mandatory, but they're damn close, right? If you are like a fringe quarterfinals athlete, or if this is your Super Bowl, like you should be redoing workouts most weeks. Every once in a while, you knock one out of the park, it's long. Okay, I could change this, I could change this, and I get one more calorie. But a lot of them are tests that we don't have the exact answers to. Then you get the answers, and then you get a chance to retake it. Anything to anything to add there about navigating quarterfinals prep during a competition?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, there's the stress management that you really have to kind of keep as a priority of like, you know, we talk about it, we've talked about it with the open sim that we've been doing. It's like it's gonna add that heightened sense of like alertness and like the anxieties that that can cause that that can, you know, cause and and things like that. You just have to find things, you know, maybe it's outside of the gym that are, you know, grounding for you that, you know, kind of bring you back down to all right, I just competed in the open workout. Like, how do I get back into my just like Everyday routine, just you know, kind of like how we just talked about with the nutrition stuff of like, how do I just get right back on track? And again, with that heightened sense of of alertness and the stress that it can cause is like you just have to be a little bit more like hyper-aware of those things.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_06

All right. Um we already talked about the habit stacking a little bit, but the narrative and the big idea that quarterfinals prep is starting, I want you guys to take it very seriously. I want you to pretend like you're a professional athlete. When you walk through the door on Monday the 16th or Tuesday the 17th, I want you to feel a little bit different. I want you to carry yourself a little bit different. I want you to set the tone with these behaviors. And if you can't do all of them and train, you're probably training too much. Like, I would rather see, again, I'll read the list that I wrote down warming up, cooling down, your mobility, sleep, nutrition, recovery, doing your athlete IQ work for most workouts. And then, like, do you have time to get in? You know, you want to do that second intense piece, but you know if you do it right now, it's gonna be a problem. So you got either got to leave and come back, or you gotta go fuel and you know, hide in the coach's office for a minute and then go back out, that sort of thing. So those habits are mandatory. The higher end of the volume is not. So I just want to put that out there again. I talk regularly about if you're not sure whether you want to be like a high-level competitor or not, there are times in the year where you can try the lifestyle on to see if it fits, to see if it, you know, excites you and motivates you or just, you know, drives you into the ground because both are are definitely possible. Some people get driven in the ground and get excited, and then we can talk about what that means. But I think pretending to be just one step above where you currently are at or where your behaviors are at for these five weeks could tell you a lot about yourself, about your training, about your aspirations, all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I think uh even, you know, if you kept your volume pretty normal to what you do on a daily basis, like testing out double sessions, it's like it's not necessarily about adding more volume always. Sometimes it's just like splitting the stress of training pieces of like, I'm gonna get in and really put my focus on this and my intensity is coming from the focus that I'm putting into my lifting and my second session later in the day is about putting the intensity into my conditioning piece. So, you know, just to kind of give a different perspective on like double sessions doesn't necessarily have to mean more volume either, but it is something I think that's worth trying out, even for, you know, a quarterfinals athlete, even an open athlete that's, you know, got a decent amount of volume that they do.

Navigating Prep During The Open

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, I I can think of a few examples. So we've talked on the show, gave the shout-out a few weeks back to McKenna for, you know, basically becoming a full-time CrossFitter for, you know, this part of her life. And she's not gonna get different volume than everybody else. But I'm gonna write double sessions in there. And there's two very important reasons. Number one, if you leave and refuel and rest and then go do it again, the stimulus is better. You are getting better at a faster rate than other athletes. But that's also a skill. And any level of competition requires you to go up and down and then back up and then sometimes back down and back up again. And your ability, it's it's not that easy. Like for me, naturally, I would rather have a long training session than the idea of getting your shit back together and getting back there and doing it again. And you have to train that. You have to get better at that. So you can get better at a faster rate than other people who aren't doing so. You can execute better than they can when quarterfinals rolls around. And we're gonna talk through the strategy of here's what we're going for in the AM, here's what we're going for in the PM, etc. So there's multiple reasons to do that, and volume won't come into play until probably week three related to that. Yep. Weeks one through three, low, medium, highest volume, stimulus is everything. You should be in a pile of yourself regularly. And of course, there are more opportunities to learn and things like intervals, and we'll talk about a special version of intervals that you guys get to do that Paige is very familiar with. But I just cannot stress enough that you need to go there in these pieces. And one of the reasons why this became a narrative that we put out there is because I've had a lot of athletes dealing with injuries during these. That's right. And it's like, well, we either need to stop, like, this is too much, this isn't a good idea, we're not, you know, we're sitting this one out, like that kind of thing. Or we need to accept the fact that there aren't a lot of injuries that make it so that you can't sit on an echo bike, right? Like if you can't ride an echo bike, something is very wrong. Right. A lot of people in CrossFit, when they're super stressed, deal with elbow shoulder stuff. Wow, you can run a lot. You can ride that C2 bike a lot, you can squat and you can lunge and you can do all these different things. So we have you have had your two best finishes at the CrossFit Games ever with navigating this world in a pretty crazy way. Right. And you bought into the narrative that you could get stimulus and you proved that you could. And we had conversations where you're like, Am I even going to be ready? And it's like, how bad did that workout hurt that you did? And you're like, uh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_06

So I can't stress enough those three weeks of just getting after it. Like, don't be a dum-dum. If it's 20 minutes long, you shouldn't be redlining two minutes in. Um, but like, if you feel like you're leaving too much on the table regularly, you're not doing it right. Yep.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I mean, that's exactly where I was gonna go with that is like you are still getting really, really fit, even if there are movements that you have to kind of shy away from right now due to an injury. Um, and you know, obviously it I I think for most people the goal is like I'm I'm staying off of these movements because this injury is something that potentially will get better before quarterfinals rolls around. So it's like, you know, you're still getting a ton of different movement patterns that are going to keep those movements that you're not doing like pretty fresh. It's pretty like again, from experience, it's actually pretty mind-blowing that you can skip out on ring muscle ups for four months and all of a sudden you're out doing a set of 12 and it feels like you've never left doing them. So, you know, if that is you, if that resonates, like, you know, reach out and telegram too, because we can also help direct you as to like how to approach the training pieces if you are dealing with an injury.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, stimulus is king because GPP is king.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

Habits, Recovery, And Double Sessions

SPEAKER_06

You know, stay fit and you will do very well. Weeks four and five, we need to be very sports specific in our execution. And we need to be at the the this peak version of ourselves that we've tried to create throughout those first three weeks. But now we don't want to get cute with our training, but we we have to make sure that the athlete IQ element is staring us right in the face. And we're gonna be in Telegram talking to you guys through this stuff. But weeks four and five, like, if you are fit, strong, skilled, but like a bozo, please ask for help. We will help you. We know how to help you. You know, we had a few people at training camp that were like finishing workouts that they never would have been able to finish. And this is based on their own feedback. And they're like, but you almost kind of just had me like stand around in workouts, and then I got like four minutes faster. And it's like, you know, I can probably only do one clean and jerk every 10 seconds at this weight. So do I do two or three as fast as possible and then I can't do them anymore, or do I have the athlete IQ to wait and do those things? So weeks four and five execution is incredibly important. What I want to talk about now is how if you follow Misfit Athletics, how is competition prep programming different than phase one, phase two, phase three, off-season one, off season two, et cetera? To start, you're not really personalizing it unless you're an open athlete and you're cherry picking and not really following the instructions. Everything is mandatory outside of the reps column. The reps column stays there, the volume is lower than it is normally, and we're just making sure we're greasing the groove on any movement patterns that are a weakness of yours that don't show up in that week's programming or that two or three day block. All of these, you don't have to memorize any of this stuff, all these instructions are in there. We also progress through variance versus very standard linear progression. The easiest way to think about that is the lifts still stay on the same days, like we snatch on Mondays and we squat on Wednesdays, but the stimulus rotates. So it's not like five by five at 70%, then five by five at 75%, then five by five at eighty percent. It's volume squats, then the next week it's heavy squats, then the next week it's speed squats. And we work through those things because we are chasing GPP. We don't know whether they are gonna ask you to lift that weight once or twice or 50 times. We're not sure. So we are gonna expose you to the things that we know create a stimulus to get you better at each of them. The potentially more complicated, and you can tell me if I'm doing a good job of explaining this page, is the quarterfinals specific movements are prioritized. Let me see how I want to say this. So the quarterfinal specific movements are prioritized, but we're not gonna stick them like right now, for instance, we're doing the deadlift wall walk. Each week you're going in and doing that. We're not gonna pair movements like that together, and we're also not going to go like this many sets to this many sets to this many sets. It's gonna be I want muscle ups to show up in intervals and met cons and skill. I want a lower um, you know, amount of reps in a set, a ton of sets, I want the opposite, all of that different stuff. So we're creating the adaptation through variance basically in each and everything that we do.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

So basically, if you looked at a single day of programming, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but you guys will definitely be able to tell the difference over the course of the whole thing.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I I think you can kind of just think of it as the rotating stimulus that the lifts are gonna go through, just in a different sense. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, just to kind of give a little bit of a comparison there.

SPEAKER_06

We also, those quarterfinal specific movements, um, there are enough of them that we can't just program the same thing over and over. So you're gonna have two mandatory skill sessions per week that are going to have the one, the movements, the muscle ups, the rope climbs, you know, pistols, that sort of thing. Those are gonna be on their own twice a week. We are bringing back, this is a staple of competition prep. It's called inwad lifting. You guys will recognize it when it says as part of your warmup for your Metcon, work up to a heavy single on this lift or a double or you know, drop and reset triple. And then we will do the actual weight in the workout. When we do it in competition prep, though, it's almost never a percentage-based. That will only be in an instance where you need to scale. So we'll give you your do not exceed numbers when it comes to that. Um, but in wide lifting is essentially just there's a lot of it at the quarterfinals and semifinals level where it's like, how do you navigate a workout that has a really heavy barbell for low rep or a moderate weight barbell for a decent amount of reps? We got chippers, don't program a ton of chippers. I don't want to throw shots out at other programmers, but the amount of shit that I see in the offseason where people are doing workouts that have got 19 movements in them, I'm sorry. Like you're gonna get a good stimulus, you're not gonna get that much better at those movements. You know, we joke that you it when you're not that fit, couplets are like the worst thing ever. And we talked about there's a bunch of couplets. So I'll just that that's a bit of a side tangent there, but we need to know how to execute chippers. So I personally think of chippers as like straight-up athlete IQ tests. You put all these variants of movements and like this one in there looks like a throwaway, and then you execute it at a high intensity and you realize that it's affecting something that's happening later in the workout. I'll give you guys some of the answers to the test. I am almost always trying to run interference in shippers. I want your hip flexors to feel terrible, or your grip, or your shoulders, or just a nasty leg burn kind of a workout. I'm gonna put you in a place that challenges you to figure out the best way to execute once you're just not in a good spot, basically.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I I think, like you said, you can look at this and it looks like, you know, a throwaway movement, or like you don't really understand it, but you're gonna figure out the intention as you work through the workout too. So, and that's you know, those are the types of workouts where I think you have to have the most like this is my plan going into it, but it's most likely gonna be like, okay, I I have plan A, but I'm gonna need to maybe fall back to plan B or plan Z, C. So it's like you have to have that flexibility of the athlete IQ to really be able to execute on them. But you're definitely gonna learn a lot within those pieces.

SPEAKER_06

Something that's similar but different and the exact thing that I was just talking shit about, uh, movement family chippers. So we are looking at the type of workout where we typically do it in an interval fashion, where say interval one is toes to bar, interval two is chest to bar, interval three is bar muscle up. That can obviously very easily be flipped. And again, athlete IQ is really put to the test here, and it is a great stimulus. So it's not that we don't ever rely on something like this, but there are coaches and programmers that overcorrect too much related to this. And that, you know, kind of grunt work, bitch work type thing that is a staple of the offseason isn't really there. Okay. This is one that Paige actually had a very her feedback on programming. And I don't remember what season this was. Part of me thinks this is the 24 games.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, this thing was two years ago.

SPEAKER_06

She was getting much better stimulus in the mixed modality bitchwork pieces. And if you've ever done mixed modality monostructural conditioning, just because, like, like for me personally, like my legs burn out faster than my lungs do on a C2 bike a lot, and like my grip and my biceps, it's embarrassing to say, but on the rower fairly regularly. When I get to, you know, you you have a lot of affiliate workouts that are like that just because of how many machines are there. And when you do get to rotate and you don't get that localized muscle fatigue, you really can push. And then there's definitely a mental element to it, right? Like if we're doing, if we're doing an aerobic piece and you've got three machines in a 15-minute window as opposed to one, it feels a lot different mentally. Like you're able to really kind of stay locked in. So we're gonna do a pretty, like a lot more than you guys are used to. Um, quite a bit more mixed modality bitch work, also known as monostructural conditioning or conditioning three. And the stimulus is just fantastic. And there are certain times when you're gonna be able to hold a higher gear than than is called for, but we always like negative splits. So we'll say the uh do the regular gears first and then try to get faster if you can. And it also can just be easier on the body, right? Like a ton of run volume or a ton of skiing. There are certain things, you know, you can really blow up your legs if you go long and and are really pushing zone five on like a C2 bike. So it can just be easier on the body, and then we're gonna be able to recover a little bit faster and and kind of move forward.

Execution Weeks And Sports Specificity

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, I think um, like really keep in mind the intention with the gears that you're seeing too, because it's like we're trying to work energy systems and not necessarily like, you know, you're improving different machines, but it's like again, they're all like gear one is real like gear one biking and gear one skiing, like we're looking at those energy systems instead of like just the machine itself, if that makes sense. Like, so again, that adaptation there, like the mindset of like getting to switch machines is just to help you kind of stay like up on your pacing.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. And one thing that's cool here is if you survived the misfit off season, you're doing 50 wall walks in a workout, you know, you're working on these machines and you're really putting in the time and effort that is necessary to move the needle in a single modality, you're gonna be able to execute these workouts so much better. And we put you through that because we know that it works. You could follow a program that did this year round, and you would have a pretty good level of GPP, but it'd be really hard to get better at weaknesses. You'd kind of just say, stay stagnant related to that. So you have earned the right for the workout to feel easier and put you in more of a hurt locker simultaneously by doing what you guys have been doing, what you're currently doing. Last but definitely not least, we have Sprinterbulls. Sprintervals came from the conundrum of athlete IQ in finals style workouts. So we get to. I mean, honestly, they've been in quarterfinals. We've had plenty in quarterfinals. You know, we've had the snatch box jump over, we've had the the row snatch burpee box jump over. Yep. The, you know, you could say that the clean and jerk kind of the clean and jerk 24.4 kind of had that feel a little bit. The problem is the risk on the stimulus and the stakes are so high in those moments that we don't know where the line is exactly. It's hard to find. And I don't even fault the athlete or the athlete IQ here because it's like, okay, you have that heightened level of adrenaline. It's also the last workout. So you're probably beat up a little bit. And like they almost always have a gymnastics element that is like, you could go unbroken if you wanted to, should you? Um and it's hard to kind of find out. And there were athletes that followed our programming that historically did not do well in this style of workout. So I tried to create the high-risk stimulus and a low-risk environment by doing multiple rounds. So we started out probably more than anything doing three rounders. I think the two rounders are definitely beneficial because sometimes sprintervals are a little bit longer than others. You know, we had the year with the the bike sandbag totabar. That one required quite a bit of athlete IQ at the semifinals level. So basically, what we're looking at here is repeated rounds of one of those finals. You almost always do a machine and then a gymnastics movement, and you end with a weighted movement. And we're gonna do two to three rounds of it with a ton of rest, and you're gonna get to try different strategies, and you're gonna rest enough for those strategies to actually be valid. So you have it's like it's almost always pretty it's it's usually pretty obvious. Like, I'm gonna go a little bit too hard at the beginning and see what happens. I'm gonna go unbroken on the gymnastics, I'm gonna see what happens, and I'm going to like be the person that passes everybody on the weighted thing at the end, that sort of deal. So high risk stimulus in a low risk environment is what we're searching for with the sprinter rules. Make no mistake, when you look at them, you are supposed to be going very hard.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

If we're gonna give you five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 minutes rest, you can probably infer what we're trying to accomplish with that. But we'll just not mince words at all here and say, like, we expect you to be in a very rough spot. And there's usually not much volume surrounding it, or there's just like zone two surrounding it. And that's another nod to just being like, This, you need to make this feel like you did a lot, even though it's two or three rounds of something that's one to three minutes long.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, this is the type of like training piece where it's like you don't want to feel like you left anything on the table. And like this is to help you kind of get that experience without being in a competition setting. I think what I like too is it's it's planted right on day six of a training week, which is again last day of quarterfinals. Um, you're beat up after a three day weekend. Like you're gonna also get that type of feeling as well of like, okay, how can I execute on this when I feel like shit?

How Comp Prep Differs From Regular Phases

SPEAKER_06

Yep, for sure. And some athletes are bad at both, but Most athletes either understand how hard can I go for a long time, which is definitely a skill, right? Like 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes is so long to know how to flirt with that line and not go over it, or at least not go over it too far that you can't recover in in some portion. This is the inverse of that. Like, how hard can I go for a short period of time? And the insinuation for a lot of people is going really hard. But there are unfortunately a lot of people, especially at a high level, that are sick of going hard, that are like, I don't wanna because they know how bad it's gonna be. They've developed the machinery to put themselves in a place like us, us, us normal folk, um, me and and the people listening, like, you don't want to know what the paces are and the sets are. It's dirty. It's dirty business. You know, it's 800 watts here and it's double digit muscle ups and it's, you know, touch and go snatches over your one rep max, that kind of thing. But it's hard to know because you can like I mean, everyone's just think of a 500 meter row. It's 90 seconds long, you know, give or take, plus or minus 10 seconds. Almost everyone out there, you can go too hard in a 500 meter row. Ouch. And then you can definitely go too slow. Like if you're not in real rough shape after a, you know, a time trial that's related to that. So you would think it's simpler, it's not.

SPEAKER_03

I think a a you know, a pretty decent way to approach it is like when you do look at these sprinter valls, it's like I know for myself personally, there's always a question that pops into my head of like, can I do this movement in two sets? Or like there's something that pops in my head that I'm like, I don't actually know if I can, so I'm gonna try it in in this training. Exactly. And that's you know, again, you're gonna get data from that, and you're gonna be a better athlete for it.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, for sure. So that's a lot of information. It's a very dense episode. How does this whole system work? How does, you know, what can you expect? How should you prep for quarterfinals? What I'm hoping that we get out of this is people are excited for quarterfinals prep. It's it's an exciting time of year, not being bogged down in you want me to squat snatch how many times again, that kind of thing. And just knowing that every single thing, if executed with intention, is a stimulus bomb, and you can get a ton of stuff out of it. And if you are already a misfit, you've earned the right to train this way four or five weeks. And if you, I mean, right now, I don't know how many people are like super, super active in Telegram. I would say it's less than 50 people. That is 10, 15 of all you out there. You know, it's a pretty low number compared to the people that are following. I highly recommend getting involved. Yeah. Um, get into Telegram. It'll be part of all the advertising that we do. We'll send out the emails. Um, put yourself out there, become part of the community. It will be incredibly helpful for you to do so. Um, and yeah, I I'm just I love the off season. I love the programming. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to get after I'm ready for the open. Yeah, come on. Ready for the open. I'm ready for quarterfinals, I'm ready for semifinals, I'm ready for the games. Like, let's get into it. And this time of year flies. Like we talk about scary season, whatever the opposite of scary season is. Like this time flies. This is that for sure. It is. And and we've got some time. We don't go straight into the open, so we're gonna be able to do content to help you guys suss more of this stuff out as we go. But I hope everybody's excited. Again, link in bio on the Instagram to get signed up on Strivey or Fitter. I will say most misfits are on Fitter, and that's where you're gonna find more of the leaderboard can be challenging because maybe the one of the interfaces is better than the other, but one has more people on it. So go into Telegram, talk with people, make your decision on that, get your free trial. Yeah, any final thoughts on your end?

SPEAKER_03

No, I mean, stimulus is king. And when you look at that first training week, if it brings excitement and intimidation at the same time, then you have the right feelings going into this. You're in the right spot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Hell yeah. Did we do it? We did it. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Misfit Podcast. And thank you to our show sponsor, Gorilla Mind, that vanilla ice cream way, and the white frost Gorilla Mind energy drink, saving my life currently as a business owner, father, etc., are available at GorillaMind.com. And if you use the code word misfit, you save money and you support the podcast. SharpenTheAxco.com to get your gear. See you guys next week.