The Secret to Developing CrossFit Athletes

like how do I motivate this person oh it ruins yeah yeah but if I'm over here like dude stop no never do this you're an idiot you're going too fast then he's gonna like resent me you learned why I gave you the feedback next time we're in a competition and I say it trust me and see what happens we understand everyone is at a different place in their fitness journey most people come in with a handful of things they're really good at but we all have a few movements that are holding us back we want our athletes to have the ability to individualize their training to their specific needs which is why we are excited to announce the addition of skill programs as part of tdt compete if you need help getting better at things like the snatch cleaning jerk pistols handstand walk handstand push-ups toes the bar chest of our ring muscle ups or double unders go to trainingfanktank.com to learn more so I was like oh this is how Max lays it out so this is how I'm gonna lay out everybody's training because I'm pretty sure that I was writing everybody's training and uh like a Google doc now that's not 10 years ago that's probably like 12 12 years ago yeah okay yes because this was on here yeah yeah I gotta go that's another thing I gotta go back and get because I used to just write them an email sometimes so some of them are just in emails you when when you were first doing this you were literally writing the training program in an email and you didn't have like a congregated area where yeah their training file so it would say week week four cycle one end of cycle this date and I would just title the email that way and then as I was going up the emails it would just tell me where I was okay how did you create periodization or progression or anything like that on a sheet of paper on the side no way I have a training file that was like okay this is where we're going to and then then I realized I'm like you organized all those emails via folders right yeah yeah that's why I can't get off of my Gmail rather than having like a Google drive or something you just made like a subset of folders within Gmail that kept track of it all that's wild yeah well I think there's also something to be said here for like learning that's why yeah I mean hey you may do that 100 programs a month I had 60 of my own individual clients 30 that I was writing for somebody else it's actually very cool that you did that but it's it's from from our perspective like looking at it now it's like well you just didn't know what you didn't know as far as what you could use but the fact that you said uh screw it I'm gonna make something that helps is way past what most people will do before we got on the podcast we're talking about like coaching reps right not like repetitions of like assigning someone's you know sets and Reps but experience yeah experience oh that's kind of what this podcast is going to be about it experience it is yeah but like did we start officially yeah it'll be a messy start but hey enjoy the conversation people yeah so the the topic of the podcast is developing an athlete versus sharpening an athlete that's probably not the best title for it but really it's basically what's the difference between training somebody who's in a more beginner State versus somebody who is like a veteran and been doing it for a long period a time and I think it's interesting to have this conversation with you because you've worked with athletes that are high level performers you know CrossFit Games Podium finishers but you've also worked with people that everyone here would consider to be high level athletes that you would probably still consider to be developmental yeah like they're you know missing the games by a spot or you know Hit or Miss qualifying this year and then not qualifying the next year but that still probably falls under developmental because they have so many things that they're still trying to build how do you how do you you know being in this position where you've now worked with this huge range of of athletes and currently working with people from the Teen division all the way up to you know CrossFit Games you know veterans yeah how do you define the difference between those people I don't know well first of all I don't know if I really draw the distinction like if I'm coaching someone I'm just kind of coaching them I think about their past I think about their future where they want to go and then try to make a plan that moves them forward to that future knowing that a lot of times it doesn't go to plan like I'm gonna write a 12-week cycle and then a weekend they tweak something restrain something and it changes my progressions and like the process at this point is adaptable we've used the term Dynamic periodization which I feel like is just a sciency way to be like you're going according to a soft plan you have an idea of where you want to go but there's so many variables it usually doesn't like go exactly how you think that process is the same with the beginner and it's same with an advanced athlete I think the difference is that an advanced athlete is giving you insight into how you want to move forward because they have so much more self-awareness they know what progressions have worked in the past if they feel a little bit like their Energy's a little bit low they know if they need to psych themselves up to push through it or if it's like hey this is unsafe I need to take the day off like they've developed all of the intuition in how to handle the training volume in the sport a beginner athlete is very unaware of themselves they are unaware of their sport they're unaware of their technique they could be really good but they still don't have a high degree of self-awareness so I think for me there's a lot more cultivation of the thinking structures with a beginner trying to understand are they somebody who needs to look at a workout and build a freaking strategy and write it down and account for every single second like Brent fakowski or are they somebody like Travis who's going to be like Oh I'm going to do it by feel I'm going to get and he's going to get himself hyped up and he's going to get ready to go into the workout and then he's just gonna like deal with whatever comes and figure out how to go through and doing the opposite for each of those people might stress them out oh it ruins them yeah it's like school it's like taking somebody who's really mathematical and then sitting them in a poetry class and trying to get them to understand complex poetry there's very few people in the world that are like cross-disciplinary people or cross even cross intellectual thinkers there are people that can think in a realm of mathematics and a realm of emotions and like all most people's intelligence and way of operating is more like singular focused I think especially with athletes like they get a goal they move towards it every every single action in their day is trying to get better at that singular thing so you got to figure out who they are like how do I motivate this person so is it almost that the more experienced athletes have earned the right to trust their feeling to trust their gut feeling and and some of the more developmental athletes it's like they haven't earned that right yet so they need to trust your gut feeling and intuition and experience early on yeah I mean I so like Caden I start and work with or David David's probably better because he was a little older when I started he was 18. for reference David was a CrossFit games did he win he won once and took second one Stephen Bradley at what age group I think they were both 16-17 or maybe he won the 14-15 and then took second in this I'm not sure and you're still working with when did you start I started working with him right after he finished in his teen in his first year of stepping in literally we started the worst time possible to start working together the quarterfinals of his first year entering so he like came into this environment where it was chaotic Noah was here Travis was here like he couldn't really get that much attention from me and I didn't know anything about him like I literally I literally had never seen him do a workout and I was like yeah you can come here and we'll help you like go through it but I don't know like how to coach you like just kind of meeting you right now but that process when we started I had already started working with Travis at 20 years old and I don't know how old you were when we started 26 27 27 but you were still relatively early into the sport of CrossFit I think I was two years in yeah so getting people at that stage of development I've done it a lot of times and I've done it through like I used to write the blog programs before they became softwares and people were on them and I would have hundreds of daily training responses of how people were responding to the training what they were going through and how long if they got a strain they were out from training and what they needed in training if they had those injuries so a lot of times without being like arrogant about them like I know more than you about how to do this the only thing an athlete at that level knows more about is them so that's what I'm trying to learn about because they're with them 24 7. so they know who they are better than I do but they don't really know what to do training wise they don't know how to think about the sport they don't know what it takes to become a CrossFit Games athletes they don't know [ __ ] they might be really good but that's kind of what the the transfer of information is like they're learning something from me and I'm learning something from them what I learn is who are you and how do you operate and what they learn is how can you think about and operate more efficiently so you actually get to your goal so that initial process of taking someone from you know you you don't know them and you know someone like a David who was a high level you know teen CrossFit Games athlete and transitioning them into competing in the open division obviously it's an extended process so you know part of it's getting to know the athlete and also kind of you know teaching them about themselves and what works and what doesn't for them but that process is clearly not something that just happens there are some athletes who can you know jump out of the Teen Division and potentially be competitive in the next year seems like a lot more of the women athlete are doing that I think there's a a developmental there's an important developmental time from like 18 to 21 for most men where they're like going from like kind of a boy who have Purity into like getting like man strength there's a big difference between a 22 year old and an 18 year old you know man I think there's a huge difference between between those two people in just that four years of of development but also there's a huge amount of psychological development that happens in that time and I think that's kind of what you're getting at is that being a developmental athlete you know is a psychological component as much as it is a physio or a physical or physiological component yeah we share a lot of technical information in general our organization like how do you get better at muscle ups or or okay you're doing row Sprints and you're going to do them at two minutes and then rest a minute and then 159 and you're going to do progressions and get better but at the end of the day as a coach I think I've learned and realized it's just a human game like the people at the highest level the sport that you see are generally the people who want it the most and have wanted it the most for the longest they've put the time in day in day out they got injured and overcame those injuries they had bad things happen in their life and they decided to keep training anyway they went to competitions with the idea that they were going to win with all their sponsors watching and they bombed and failed and it didn't go the way that they wanted and they felt ashamed and embarrassed but they kept doing it for whatever reason some people it's love attention some people love money some people it's you know yeah habit like they don't know anything else but you gotta for me I want to figure out what that is because if somebody tells me I want to do X I'm like okay well I want to help you do X because that's my job to help you do it how do I do that veteran is just a different process that's what I was going to say it doesn't seem like that is all that much different between a novice or beginner athlete and you know your high level competitors it almost seems to me like the way you're describing it it's like early on in the developmental stages you're trying to show people like okay this is this is these are the potential paths and then learning from them and then for the the more experienced athletes it's like just having conversations with them about that or what is what does the process look like for each of those yeah so I mean I think one of the biggest differences a beginner is here even if they're competing at a higher level like relative to the potential of where they can get they're pretty low an advanced athlete if they've been doing anything right and actually advancing is close to their potential and their ceiling so they're looking at for them the way I look at it it's timing refinement and management and volume you can't take somebody with 10 years of training volume who's been crushing it who's 30 that has life responsibilities and stressors and worrying about paying their bills and their contracts and all that stuff they're never or at least there's going to be very few that tolerate the same total training volume as somebody that's young so that's what you mean by timing yes yeah I'll get to why timing but basically this person who's at a higher level if they're doing a workout and they're doing it at high intensity it means they're tapping into like 99 of what their body and Physiology and psycho psychology can handle because they've trained for 10 years to go like deeper into themselves deeper into the pain cave heavier in loads this beginner athlete even though they're trying as hard they're giving the same effort the relative intensity of what their body can actually handle is low because you need to build systems to push harder over time like your heart's not just going to let you go to Max effort and sustain that for 10 minutes of time you need to put in years of cardiac development and build new capillaries and build psychological tools to be like Oh I'm about to throw up but I'm gonna [ __ ] hold it down because I want to hold my Pace like very few people are naturally like that and even if you are kind of naturally like that and you train it for 10 years you become like David Goggins right so they can't handle that all the time but they still need to be at their Peak Performance at game day so you have to time when the volume goes up when their psychology is getting ready to shift from like you know Noah his regular life is very happy and carefree and he wants to keep it that way but like in training now as we go to the games it's not super hard it's not super high volume it's managing all of this stuff making sure he's strong making sure he's getting better but as we get like closer to three weeks out from the games he's gonna have to be exposed to a pretty good deal of volume just so the timing is right so he can handle the CrossFit Games day somebody like David can prob or Caden even can train in a higher volume overall throughout the like throughout the whole year because they're not really tapping into their full nervous system potential yet because they need to develop that and they're younger so their hormones are more robust they're less responsible for people so they can focus on that on a regular basis and they have this huge ass gap of performance that they need to cover so it's like used the whole year yeah so it's like hey you need to get stronger and stronger and stronger like doing snatches at 225 for reps good it's not good enough 2 45 next week like that's the mindset that you need to be if you're chasing the top level if you're already pretty close to the top level the mindset is more when it counts I need to be ready to beat my opponents it's very different to time those two things because one of them is about being a professional and picking a Target and going after it and the other is kind of like off in the future it's like I know I want to get there over time but it's kind of far and in order for me to get there I gotta like keep my head down do the work and run and keep getting better look up and be like okay I'm closer and like back now to work until you're close and then when you're ready to sum it that's when it's like okay well now you've become a veteran so do those developmental athletes do they get an off season essentially or does it just like take a week off and now we're going to get back into structured training progressions like yeah that I mean I give I think David took three weeks off okay two weeks off Kaden I have been fighting for since I've worked with him to get him to take more time off and his goals require more time off he's a much smaller athlete relative to the field he's very strong relative to his size profile but he still needs more time for people who don't know is 17 right now right yeah Caden's 17. yeah he qualified for the uh for the teen games this year he took first in the quarterfinals third in the semi-finals he's been to the games before not last year in the 16 17 but the year before and he took eighth but when you look at pictures of him relative to the other games athletes in the 1415 it looks like he's their little brother like he's the strongest small human being I've ever met in my life I mean you could probably quantify that as well yeah he doesn't weigh much more than he's 150 pounds and cleans 315 all right well yesterday while I was just sitting out there working out he was over there doing sets of he did 10 sets of 305 uh 10 sets of three to four at 305 with like he was probably resting like two minutes in between max watts back squats yeah yeah he's dude he's strong like he's he's the strongest person strength body weight I've coached but it's just okay well will you will you either be 150 pounds for the rest of your career or will that like keep transferring up where like as he's fully matured maybe he's 175 to 190 and in the normal like CrossFit game size profile well also none of those sets look like they were tough no that's pretty light for him I think so so he's doing double body weight back squats for foreign if it's Kaden it was probably prescribed as two minutes rest and he did 33 seconds of rest every time I get his training results he's like you know we're running a hatch progression or something like that he's like I did the sets but I added five percent because it was too easy all right but you've got him to come back off that a lot though oh yeah yeah so when we started in that little thing you just said is way less than what he'd want to have done left to his own devices yeah well see that's the human thing like Caden's gift is that he's competitive and completely dissatisfied unless he's the best in the world that's the type of mindset that you need to be the best in the world but he's also 17 and that process of having the like I'm the dominant entity and I'm training every single day of my life like the dominant entity when you're 17 doesn't necessarily always yield to being the dominant entity when you're at that time so for me I'm like okay well let's keep guardrails on it because if every single day you're revving at 9 000 RPMs in your engine and you're pushing it and every time it's heavier than your technical threshold you're not going to survive for 10 years to be good but if I'm over here like dude stop no never do this you're an idiot you're going too fast then he's gonna like resent me so it's like a little dance like okay you push the boundaries and I give in a little bit and then you start to get stupid and I'm going to push back and draw the boundary and that's kind of how we've been dancing our way to get more intelligent in our process over time I was going to say I think if I were if I think back to myself as a teenager's you know a 16 or 17 year old and I was listening to this podcast and there was an experience you know a world-class coach who's saying like part of what you need are guard rails I'd be like man shut up yeah I would have too yeah you don't you don't know what you're talking about yeah you don't know what you're talking about well that's why I don't fight it yeah like I fought it with Travis for a long time send me your results this that um that was you got to pace it you blew up because you went out too hot and like Travis was inherently you know the stories of Prefontaine and like the movie where it's like hey I'm going out to race and I'm going out hot I think Travis had that like you saw it in the Murph in 2015 I was the one piece of coaching advice I gave Travis before that event I was like just don't lead in the first uh mile that's it just don't lead like let somebody else set the pace then three two one go and it was like a race out of the football stadium or the soccer stadium yeah soccer stadium soccer stadium It Was a Race out and Travis is like 30 meters ahead of everybody within a hundred meters yeah with this bucket hat and I was on the sidelines and I was like [ __ ] this and then he blew up and it wasn't good not like I used to almost berate him for that like dude what the [ __ ] we like we said the one thing you weren't supposed to do you had one job and I just realized over time it's not productive coaching like we're not learning anything everybody's got to make mistakes to learn their process so I think had like Travis if I could go back in time and handle him like more intelligently like I may be doing with some of my next Generation younger people as I would have just been like all right well like you learned why I gave you the feedback like that next time we're in a competition and I say it trust me and see what happens like you know that trusting that instinct is not leading you to the right thing so like I think that process would happen and you know that everybody's going to make mistakes I'm going to make mistakes in my strategies or I'm going to say something that's too aggressive and both parties need to be okay with that process well that was going to be my my kind of follow-up question to that is how have you taken some of the lessons that you learned coaching athletes like Travis Noah will at the at the games level how have you taken those and because think about it like this you can't be like hey Kaden in 2015 I told Travis not to go out too hot and he screwed up and so now I don't want you to like everyone has to learn those lessons for themselves so how do you how do you take some of that coaching experience that you've gained and apply it to this new younger generation that you have this opportunity to work with I don't know I don't know if it's conscious I think I'm just like open I'm more open to learning both ways because I'm aware like you know if if I were Travis I could easily sit on here and be like you know how many times Max programmed like super heavy squats on Monday and then Karen on Tuesday and then more squats on Wednesday and then my knees were sore and like there were things that I did that were not like perfect so I think I'm just kind of in this process of realizing that I don't know things are happening and people are like oh Max is a world-class coach or you're a thinker and people and I don't think like that I'm just like all right I'm just going to keep learning and getting better and they have to teach me how to get better because they like I'm learning about coaching veterans from Noah and Travis and Masters athletes so that I could be better at doing it I don't think like I'm perfect at coaching veterans and the same thing like I know that I can probably give Caden better advice and guidance than if he were writing his own training program and doing his own nutrition but I still don't know everything and I'm still going to learn with him like hey what works or what patterns of things are limiting you or like everybody's got their own subset of things so I feel my personal process is almost like level or human agnostic like I'm not paying attention to where they are relative to being a champion or being a starter or whatever I'm more like tell me where you are let me learn and let me help like that's kind of just like the basic philosophy that I have when I'm in coach mode without yeah it's like a foundation of of human-centric I know that's that's a buzzword but it's a foundation of like humans it's a buzzword for us I'm not sure though if you put human Centric on a YouTube they'd be like well what's funny and I think most people in the space probably use it view our brand as very sciency and blah blah but being here what six seven years now it's like that is what we do best I feel like yeah I think it's the mo it's the foundation of how this culture was built somebody one of my close friends um I was talking to and I shared a chapter in my book and I was you know to hear the rest of the conversation including the key to developing CrossFit athletes how TTT survived as a CrossFit camp without any Champions our coaching athletes to win the CrossFit Games change Max and why a lack of self-awareness could be holding you back in CrossFit check out these other Clips here on the screen or listen to the full audio version of all major podcast providers

Channel: Training Think Tank

Views: 18,591

Keywords: training think tank, ttt, crossfit, max el-hag, crossfit games, TTT CrossFit, developing crossfit athletes, CrossFit training, CrossFit workouts, CrossFit athlete development, CrossFit strength training, CrossFit skills, CrossFit competition prep, CrossFit performance tips, CrossFit programming, CrossFit mobility exercises, CrossFit nutrition for athletes, CrossFit mindset and mental toughness, CrossFit recovery strategies, CrossFit goal setting, CrossFit technique and form

Id: Jv9aUDBnGo4

Length: 23min 54sec (1434 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023