Miles to Madison Ep. 08.21: The Art of CrossFit Games Programming

do i remember my first time at the ranch [Music] i don't know if i do [Music] my first time at the ranch was the very first crossfit games in 2007. my level one back in 2008 was actually as a prospective trainee [Music] i think the ranch is important because it really was the birthplace of our sport [Applause] [Music] you know where the first crossfit games happened and uh where a lot of stuff still happens so it's like that farm that you would see in a horror movie that looks all nice and serene and pastoral but there's some real nasty stuff going on [Music] if crossfit had a super villain with a secret lair it would be dave castro and his secret lair would be the ranch [Music] so [Music] what most people don't realize is that while the entire season is going on dave castro is tucked away in aromas california the entire time slowly curating and chipping away at creating the test we're gonna see at the crossfit games early on you know i would get a text saying hey can you come tomorrow morning and i'll say sure i changed my schedule around show up and then it was just me and dave sometimes sometimes me dave one other person it was again here's the workout warm up hit the workout talk about it you warm up again hit another workout maybe he wants to make a few changes to the workout you just did and you do it again and the next day you do it again and the next day you do it again sort of thing we would just kind of go with dave's brain as it was working things out i don't think we've ever done heavy thrusters of games we've done 135 but 135 was probably the heaviest thruster we've ever had 10 wall walks 10 thrusters 9 8 9 8 8 7 all the way down to one maybe we make it 165 that's going to be a grind both of them the thrusters will be quick relative to the wall walks but yeah you don't want to just like blow yourself up on the thruster let's have fun we'll have fun he's not gonna have fun [Music] two more two more i just remember being in the middle of it like if i was at home i would have just stopped like this workout's terrible but because dave's just sitting there with his notepad and pencil you just gotta go [Music] so uh [Music] ah that was awesome way longer than i expected holy i didn't really have a time in mind yeah but i love it oh my god that's like that's a great little combo and your shoulders are just blowing up that whole workout i feel like they're gonna pop that's a good one dave and then he goes cool here's your next workout how much time do you need and you're like well uh a week like a few days and he's like all right five minutes you're like yes dave [Music] let me brief you on the workout you're going to run a 300 before every lift so it's run 300 245 run 300 255 1300 265 1300 270 1300 275 you're gonna have to be fast and strong [Music] you'll probably go through five different variants but i like i like what i'm working with it'll be interesting the hardest part about game session honestly it's like the five minutes in the car before getting here or you're like what am i doing so this one i'm really excited about it's 21.59 ecobite calories and snatch with 105. they'll have you pace it and then great now like do it all out again you're like what no that didn't work last time he's like whatever just try it again to see what he goes through the stages of pain how he is afterwards how it looks those are the things i look for i want to do one pegboard 10 simulators 20 double unders am wrap 10 minutes [Music] so far i like what i see heavy breathing really pushing it [Music] oh how'd that feel gross yeah 425 on them no nice work tweak it play around with it lay it out on the field see how we can pull it off with the timing but uh 80 likely that this will happen in the games these are all the time from yesterday i need to figure out some of these other events but that'll come over the course the next few days weeks a lot of different ideas all over i thought the games were figured out six months before and then once i started testing i realized six months before nothing is figured out it's an ever evolving process i think annie dave cares deeply about making this event something really special actually maybe i have a cutting out of 30 there but maybe do 40 so everyone goes through two complete days and then saturday morning we're down to 30 20 20 10 10. started off as me and dave doing workouts and then one by one more and more athletes start coming then a team of athletes start coming and by the end there was we had some big crews some long days so it definitely changed over time so we're gonna do 20 ghd and then eight up and over and then four rounds [Music] how much was our 20 ghb set up in the last event 38 seconds 30 plus our 8 up and over about a minute for jake but with but no burpee it's a lot faster oh that's true too yeah [Music] should we reduce the rest reduce our sleep oh man i think it's good the best teams are going to crush this true [Music] so for demo athletes the idea is you want to get a diversity of athletes so you see what more of the field is capable of one of the hardest things probably is just being available oftentimes it's literally like hey i want to test tomorrow find someone to make it happen hold on i'm putting on secrets do you want to be on the demo team but am i going to die no no no no here's the really good news like we're more prepared than ever if anything i might shorten these up a little like a rep or two let's do six on this one and see what happens time you should take a minute rest you're gonna do it again around at seven okay that might have been too aggressive time [Music] he's doing they're doing good the difference obviously is the skier he's got a lot of mass and i mean he's so tall it's easy for him to climb what they say about it [Music] the rope there is 20 feet this rope is 15. so maybe four on the 20-foot rope then when i said go to five your pace definitely slowed down right yeah you could tell she slowed the whole thing down probably gonna do four rope climbs on the 20-footer gonna have this tested a couple more times probably not gonna tweak with the weight but maybe so we got in on monday lucas texted us and we landed like 10 minutes before and he was like okay we'll see you guys here in like an hour and we slept like maybe three hours we've been traveling for like eight so first day was definitely the hardest i think he's looking just to be on the verge of breaking you just you have a few seconds to get that yolk it's either a sprint with a yoke or no go three two one time did he make it he's not done that doesn't count it didn't finish no because he had like six or seven feet to go and he picked it up jake you're not done i mean the athletes are great they're really really good sports about the whole thing but they're out of their element they're in a new place a lot of them traveled a long way to get here and it's non-stop so you know they come in first day they're really excited and you can kind of see the energy meter just deplete as the week goes on i think it's been going good i mean dave just talked to you the whole time so you don't know if you're doing good or bad it was tough i mean i usually love kind of stuff like that but it definitely got pretty hard for the end i feel very sore yeah it's i feel like i'm at the games right now you guys are gonna handstand walk so uh warm up for that so there's three sections in 144 feet and then you're gonna go down and back that'll be a little longer than i was hoping for but it's okay um i think they'll go faster at the games putting that at the beginning so you get it out of the way and then putting that at the end to fatigue going into it at the end yeah i like it [Music] if you guys want to stay you can or if you want to head home you guys can do that too i think we had a plan to either head towards santa cruz tonight or stay in gilroy and then just do a beach trip tomorrow for the day oh she's gonna do a beach thing tomorrow yeah okay cool well if that's the case you guys are gonna come back tomorrow morning and retest that yeah seriously so you'll get your beach muscles up i think a lot of people like to look at dave as the evil genius type person and then the discourse follows that path everyone was talking about how he's a dick and how he's a prick okay you guys stop doing pull-ups homeboy keep doing pull-ups oh boy so he's holding them up there's definitely other times where dave makes my life a little bit more difficult so we're not going to get much good data from you anyway so dave castro is a prick i love him yeah dave's dave man he's he doesn't waver for anyone without being so aggressive you're like yelling at me and i just think you gotta appreciate dave for who he is as a person and if you understand that that's who dave is i think he's just such an awesome like funny guy to watch i absolutely adore the way that that guy is able to push people to do more than they're able to do i kind of had this joke with him that like 50 of the testing workouts were for actual information for the game's workouts and the other 50 is just for his amusement i guess we did the workout two days ago and i think i paced it perfectly and dave was like i just want to see what happens if you just just go full scent from the beginning and i was like it's not gonna be good and uh yeah then i just tried to survive the rest of the time and i don't feel so good afterwards i've only ever puked one other time i'm gonna go bathroom again beefy that's her dancer look at this thing i think i just did 20 calories oh i did one oh this thing sucks it's not just a random workout or random set of workouts it's tested and really refined in a lot of different ways [Music] okay so this snatch one were firm on 21.59 for both yeah and we're firm on 105.75 for the loading yeah i think so okay and then the time cap dave's programmed the game since their inception in 2007 and every year since he understands the methodology better than anyone else he understands how to select for the very best in some discipline and he understands that that comes with making tough decisions i think the big thing for dave he's looking for a way to test the athletes not showcase them he wants to find a balance between something that is very difficult that some people can still complete and something that is so hard that no one can complete it a few months before the games i really start zooming in and focusing and putting a couple hours in every night on some of these concepts it's an exercise in logistics it's an exercise in timing and figuring out where everything's gonna fit and i really need to look at the schedule and look at what's happening in total like what the complete picture is what things we're doing on the same day what movements we're doing what time domains where we're at dave has a very specific idea of how he wants an event to go if the test that he has these athletes do doesn't procure either that response or that stimulus he's like all right what do i got to do to change it and so he'll just test retest and retest until it has the kind of look and feel that he's looking for let's do six on this one and see what happens okay 10 seconds i start testing the workouts on a yellow notepad writing down the times and you look at some of these like their workouts we've tested five or six times uh this one's been tested a lot and these are all the different athletes with all the different times in chronological order from when we tested them just to give us feedback on the workouts and to see what we're going to change [Music] super excited this is going to be one of the toughest games and i mean it the athletes i've ever faced [Music] i did a pegboard workout and it was actually pretty good um we did tested another version kind of of this the other day but this one i felt like i paced it really well and i actually had a lot of fun doing it in 10 minutes he actually got more work done than conor so and that's why we test just to see that it it's appropriate so success in the testing gonna take another another crack at this uh salt bike snatch ready go [Music] i think that's really what dave is trying to get when he has these testing periods is how is it going to fit as a puzzle piece amongst the other 15 or however many warehouse city has planned and when you come back you have to go up and over so imagine this is a wall of head don't go around the wall i sometimes think when athletes agree to be on the demo team they don't quite understand what they're in for army guys show up at 9am tomorrow show up at 9am are you flying out three two okay both of you show up at night you really have to be willing to put yourself through some through some suffering for the greater good set of 21 is that right or is that too light [Music] you know what i think he's doing that might help all of you i think he's before he brings it down you're putting your hands together aren't you think about that guys touch your hands together when you tell them what you're doing hey where's doug she hates this guy where's doug here's what i would do if anything i'd add one half of a round to that and here's why it's strategy work it's a 90 done but there's 100 percent chance they're going to change seeing a lot of things making a lot of changes but they're all good and they're all to make the tests at the games um that more complete and more prepared it's a full dress rehearsal essentially of of what's going to happen in madison and so by practicing by rehearsing we're setting ourselves up for success [Music] what you see at the games is a piece of personnel people management schedule management and at times chaos i'll tell you what like the scale of this and the scope of this is massive who's the fastest kid on the block we're about to find out in a good old-fashioned foot race here everyone's just gonna pretty much grab the shoes that they're running in full go full sin we're stunning today briefly cover some big picture things let's start with kovet you might know more than i do i'm calling because they told me that uh you had a pair of positive tests today for the first time in two years the athletes return to the coliseum at the alliant energy center in madison wisconsin give the people what they want they want home runs it's only wednesday and the whole freaking stadium is packed i have no words and with that the 2021 noble crossfit games are underway we still have friday saturday sunday no we still have thursday friday saturday sunday after tomorrow

Channel: CrossFit Games

Views: 71,114

Rating: 4.9407406 out of 5

Keywords: Alison Scudds, Connor Schmitz, CrossFit Games, Dave Castro, Dave Eubanks, Documentary, Fitness, Justin Cotler, Miles to Madison, Preganancy, Rachel Vonderach, Road to the Games, Sports, crossfit games 2021, kari pearce power abs, postpartum, postpartum abs, postpartum care, postpartum workout, best crossfit programming, crossfit games programming, adrian bozman crossfit, CrossFit Ranch, crossfit games training program, alison scudds crossfit, dave castro interview

Id: TeDUP7iH9Ko

Length: 20min 48sec (1248 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021