Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

The CrossFit Games Semifinals are underway, and we are starting to see how the new qualification structure for the CrossFit Games will play out.

After a few seasons of chaos — precipitated by some sudden and, quite frankly, nonsensical changes and a global pandemic — we are starting to see how the season will look going forward.

In an ideal world, the Semifinals will build on the best of the Regionals format and the best of the Sanctionals format. This would result in a competitive ecosystem with a clear structure, and more opportunities for athletes to win prize money — and it would allow event organizers to innovate on the competition structure.

In a less ideal world, we end up with multiple event organizers causing inconsistent qualification standards, competitive outcomes being overly determined by the "luck of the draw," and frustrated athletes and coaches.

Having dealt with a near worst-case scenario for the competitive CrossFit season for the last few years, it seems like we are now headed in the right direction. Jon also just coached Omnia to a first place finish at The Granite Games this past weekend, so congratulations to Omnia!

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We run online workshops for coaches as well. Find out when our next workshop is here: https://legionsc.com/program-design-workshops

These podcast are posted in video format on YouTube as well.

• [0:13] How does the current Semifinals qualification process compare to the Regionals structure and the Sanctionals structure? Is it good to have large differences in event structures that are qualifying people for the CrossFit Games?
• [07:57] Is the point of the test to crown the fittest or to get the "right" people moving on at each stage? How much does event design impact who qualifies for the next stage?
• [12:17] Is the opportunity for Cinderella stories and unexpected qualifiers good for the sport as a whole? Does more variance give more opportunity for "exciting" outcomes?
• [19:26] How will the seeding process impact which athletes qualify out of different events? And, how important is it to make sure that athletes are doing certain movements or certain styles of events in the qualification process?

When designing weekly templates for athletes, it can be overwhelming to think about all of the things that they could be doing. Most people want to get stronger, improve mobility, build their engine, and improve their technique — all at once. This is hard to do!

When designing training templates, it's important to pick clear priorities. But, how much training does someone need to do to maintain traits that they're not currently prioritizing? And, how much training does someone need to do to improve traits that they are prioritizing?

There's no one-size-fits-all answer, but, on this episode of the Legion podcast, we give coaches and athletes some keys to understanding how to decide how much training to give people for maintenance vs progression.

If you're not already subscribed to our newsletter, head over to www.legionsc.com to get a weekly selection of training tips and our favorite articles.

We run online workshops for coaches a few times per year. Find out when our next workshop is here: https://legionsc.com/program-design-workshops

These podcast are posted in video format on YouTube as well.

• [0:13] How much training is necessary to "maintain" something compared to how much training is needed to "progress" something. And, using "high demand" and "low demand" days to organize weekly training templates.
• [5:53] Communication with athletes regarding what they need to work on — and how to give them enough of the stuff that they want to do to keep them happy. And, how much work needs to be done to "bring something back"?
• [11:37] Individuals vary in both baseline ability in a given trait as well as their speed of adaptation to training.
• [18:35] Athletes will accumulate different amounts of fatigue from different types of training. Some get tired from strength work, some get tired from conditioning work.
• [26:25] Summaries and take aways for organizing a week's training priorities.

We recently received a question about improving weightlifting technique for CrossFitters — especially for folks who are trying to hit heavier lifts in conditioning workouts.

It's challenging to incorporate skill work into training in addition to the volume most athletes are already doing in order to get stronger and improver their conditioning. And, even if an athlete does make technical improvement, they often revert back to bad habits once they reach a certain weight threshold or once they're tired enough in a conditioning piece.

So, how should athletes think about incorporating weightlifting skill work into their CrossFit training? Luke has experience on the Burgener Strength (formerly CrossFit Weightlifting) seminar staff, so he breaks down some of his favorite ways to improve technique for CrossFitters. We also discuss the value and application of skill transfer exercises like snatch balances, overhead squats, and no hook/no feet/no touch snatch and clean variations.

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These interviews are posted in video format on YouTube as well.

• [0:13] Ways to incorporate weightlifting skill work into CrossFit training: EMOMs, special exercises, etc. How to blend technique work with lifting heavy and doing metcons.
• [10:27] Improving your "worst possible performance" is more important for most than improving your "best possible performance"
• [18:13] The role of squatting and snatch balances in improving weightlifting numbers. And, there's not one "special exercise" or "special cue" that will fix technique issues.

Coaching athletes remotely has its challenges — and they aren't just limited to communication.

On this episode of the Legion podcast, we discuss the subtle cues we look for when watching athletes train in life, and how we can try to get that some information from athletes who are training remotely.

While the improvement in cell phone camera technology and the ease of sending video around has made remote coaching a lot easier, it's still tough to be able to see when an athlete is starting to "lost it" early on a conditioning piece or when they're beating their head against a wall attempting the same heavy snatch weight over and over again.

In a remote coaching relationship, the goal is to teach athletes to be able to make subtle adjustments to their training themselves.

Check out this conversation with Jon, Luke, and Todd to hear our thoughts on remote vs in person coaching.

If you're not already subscribed to our newsletter, head over to www.legionsc.com to get a weekly selection of training tips and our favorite articles.

These podcasts are posted in video format on YouTube as well.

• [0:13] Working with athletes and transitioning from in person coaching to remote — or vice versa
• [5:03] Learning from training with more experienced athletes. And the challenges of communicating technique tips in a remote coaching environment.
• [12:03] What are things that coaches can pick up while watching athletes train that are hard to spot remotely?
• [18:31] How do we recognize when someone needs to be pushed more and when they need to be pulled back? What are the common types of mistakes that athletes make in training?
• [26:37] Athletes often continue making the same types of mistakes: being too rigid, being too sloppy, overpaying, underpaying, etc.

Our previous Science with Sergio episode was focused on a preprint paper discussing predictive coding and fatigue. This was a pretty dense paper that relied heavily on Bayesian models of cognition. Basically, this means that our brains our constantly trying to predict what is going to happen, and that we are making little updates all the time to what we are doing (and what we are predicting) to make those predictions more accurate.

Now, this may sound like some pretty esoteric stuff…and it is!

So, for this episode, we figured we'd go to one of the sources and cover Karl Friston's "free energy principle" for brain modeling. Friston has done a lot to popularize some of these concepts, so we chose his review paper "The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory?"

Now, you may be wondering what esoteric models for thinking about consciousness and cognition have to do with exercising.

Well, a lot of folks in the fitness space spend a lot of time talking about mindset. Rather than talking about mindset, we at the Legion Strength & Conditioning podcast would like to talk about prediction error and updating our priors. (Sidenote: This is a really great marketing strategy! You should try it!)

Any sort of exercise performance is going to be largely mediated by the brain. Want to get less tired? Want to have better technique or learn skills more quickly? Want to learn to intuitively pass your way through workouts. All of these can be better understood through Friston's free-energy principle, even if it doesn't translate into immediately actionable fitness advice.

Oh and in this episode I wonder what the deal is with positive prediction errors — meaning what happens when we make a significant prediction error, and the outcome is positive. The deal is dopamine. Dopamine is released when you receive an unexpected reward.

If you're not already subscribed to our newsletter, head over to www.legionsc.com to get a weekly selection of training tips and our favorite articles.

These interviews are posted in video format on YouTube as well.

• [0:13] Introductions to Karl Friston's free energy principle and the concept of prediction error
• [11:31] Better prediction results in fewer errors which results in the opportunity to do more which results in more learning — the virtuous cycle of good prediction
• [22:40] Thinking about the free energy model in terms of improving technique on a snatch — and two common coaching mistakes
• [35:02] How does the concept of "athleticism" relate to the free energy principle?
• [46:52] Ways that organisms reduce free energy: manipulating the external world or updating their models of how things work. And, how does "rate of perceived exertion" relate to all of this?

• The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?
• Free energy principle
• Bayesian reasoning
• Homeostasis
• Information theory
• Gibbs free energy
• Dopamine reward prediction error coding
• Allostatic load
• Erythropoietin (EPO)
• The psychobiological model: a new explanation to intensity regulation and (in)tolerance in endurance exercise

Athletes can often worry that they are "out of alignment" or that the little hip shift that they have in their squat is limiting their progress.

And, to be fair, movement issues can cause some significant problems for people!

Still, many folks think of their movement as being either "correct" or "incorrect" in a way that can be unhelpful. There's also many misconceptions about the need to "activate" certain muscles or that things "aren't firing."

While this colloquial way of talking about things can be a useful shorthand, it can confuse people in a way that results in them spending a bunch of time doing silly warm-up routines or burn a bunch of brain power worrying about minor asymmetries that everyone has.

Check out the full conversation with Luke and Todd to hear how we think about movement, asymmetries, and muscle imbalances.

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You can follow us on Instagram as well for regular training tips and crunchy tactics: @legion.sc

• [0:13] Some common misconceptions surrounding muscle activation, asymmetries, and overly mechanical ways of looking at movement
• [06:57] Movement is more about the nervous system than the muscular system. Asymmetries are natural and aren't something to "fix"
• [13:55] Many things — like Active Release Technique, stretching, and low carb diets — can be effective, but often not for the reason that gurus say they are effective.
• [22:30] Doing things "to feel good" is a better framing than doing things to "correct imbalances"
• [30:30] Some of the downsides to athletes thinking that they are fragile. Plus, an update on Luke's Catalan progress.

Any sort of remote coaching relationship requires excellent communication between the athlete and the coach. Without a foundation of trust and clear expectations from everyone involved, relationships can quickly sour.

In my time as a remote coach, I've seen all kinds of things go wrong — either in my own coaching or in observing the relationships that other coaches have with their athletes.

Aloof, disorganized coaches who only follow up with athletes intermittently? Check. Weird, co-dependent relationships? Check. Controlling and manipulative behavior? Check. Athletes looking to their coach for constant validation? Check. A lack of trust resulting in an athlete questioning and doubting every aspect of their program? Check.

There are all kinds ways that a coaching relationship can go wrong, but, in this episode, Luke and Todd discuss how communication should work for remote coaches.

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You can follow us on Instagram as well for regular training tips and crunchy tactics: @legion.sc

• [01:23] How should coach and athletes lay the groundwork for communication in a remote coaching relationship? It's not just about sending people their programs.
• [13:40] The two types of communication errors that coaches make: excessive hand-holding or having weird "rules." Building trust is necessary to establish good communication rhythms.
• [25:59] The dangers of the "authoritarian coach" — and some strange controlling behavior we've seen from coaches.
• [36:12] Some people want their training micromanaged by a coach, so coaches need to be prepared to discuss exactly what clients are looking for. And, the things that observant coaches should be paying attention to when communicating with athletes

Serious athletes often develop overuse injuries. Nagging elbow tendinitis, knees that get cranky with too many squats, stiff low backs after heavy deadlifts. If you're pushing your performance, some of this is the cost of doing business.

Sometimes, these irritations turn into actual injuries which demand time off from training — or at least time off from certain movement patterns.

But, what about returning to training? Many athletes end up in a grey area where they are cleared to resume their normal activities, but they are not ready to jump back into 100% of their previous training volume or intensity.

How should coaches and athletes think about navigating return to play in sports like CrossFit?

Check out the full conversation with Todd and Luke to learn more.

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You can follow us on Instagram as well for regular training tips and crunchy tactics: @legion.sc

• [00:13] How should people navigate the grey area between injury and returning to full training?
• [08:40] How to modify painful movement patterns to continuing training
• [18:33] Being injured is not a binary state. And, how to think about improving stress tolerance in tissues.
• [24:58] How to add variation to training to help people return to play and work through irritation — and how to increase volume across weeks sustainably
• [31:00] Why providing a simple solution to a complex problem is effective for getting attention — but not as effective for getting results

In this episode of Science With Sergio, we go down the rabbit hole on the predictive coding model of cognition and how it relates to fatigue.

As a quick reminder, on Science With Sergio episodes, we dig into a specific scientific paper and attempt to apply it to practical training advice through reckless, hand-wavey assumptions and careless oversimplifications.

On this episode, we discuss Towards the unity of pathological and exertional fatigue: A predictive coding model from Aaron Greenhouse-Tucknott, Jake Butterworth, James Wrightson, Nicholas Smeeton, Hugo Critchley, Jeanne Dekerle, and Neil Harrison.

The predictive coding model of cognition can be opaque and challenging at first, but it offers deep insight into what may be happening when we want to keep exercising but just get too tired.

The authors of this paper argue that the sensation of fatigue may emerge as a response to the brain making poor predictions and realizing that there are huge differences from the data it is taking in from its sense and the predictions it made about what was going to happen.

Basically, if you exercise too hard, you start to lose the ability to predict how your body is going to react, so your brain slows you down until it finds its footing again.

While getting into the weeds of the model can have a sort of hall of mirrors, infinite regress feel to it, there are still practical takeaways for any coaches or athletes looking to better understand why people get tired.

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You can follow us on Instagram as well for regular training tips and crunchy tactics: @legion.sc

• [00:13] How does the brain experience fatigue? What is the "predictive coding" model?
• [08:15] A summary of predictive coding — how brain researchers use this model to understand consciousness and how this is related to exercise performance
• [20:31] How the body attempts to regulate systems during fatigue — and what happens when it starts to make errors both in its ability to maintain homeostasis and in its ability to predict what's coming next
• [27:14] Marcora's psychobiological model of fatigue and how that relates to the predictive coding model of fatigue
• [34:18] How does pre-workout anxiety fit into this model?
• [47:05] How would an athlete improve their conscious and subconscious predictive abilities? Is this just "good training"?
• [54:49] Is physiological compensation rooted in prediction error?
• [01:04:08] How much of "rate of perceived exertion" is associated with exercise induced discomfort?
• [01:08:40] Practical takeaways: good training pushes people just past their current abilities, which improves both conscious and unconscious self-regulation and results in improved performance

• Towards the unity of pathological and exertional fatigue: A predictive coding model
• Karl J. Friston
• "Karl Friston: Neuroscience and the Free Energy Principle" from the Lex Fridman Podcast
• Information theory
• Bayesian statistics
• Allostasis
• Moxy Monitor
• Samuele Marcora
• Psychobiological Model of fatigue
• Lactate Dynamics Training
• Fartlek

We recently received a question about using heart rate in training, so we though it might be useful to record a podcast on the topic.

People often wonder whether they should be tracking their heart rate in training—especially if they have a background in endurance sports like running, cycling, or triathlon.

Should CrossFitters be tracking their heart rate in a similar way? Are heart rate zones applicable to mixed modal training in the same way that they're applicable to running intervals?

As always, the answer to this question deserves a bit of nuance. While heart rate isn't useless for CrossFitters, it doesn't have the same correlation with intensity or rate of perceived exertion as it does for endurance athletes training in one cyclical modality.

Still, heart rate can be a valuable tool for athletes to understand their different "ranges" of intensity, and it can also help us utilize some of the tools developed for endurance athletes as "energy systems accessory work."

If you're not already subscribed to our newsletter, head over to www.legionsc.com to get a weekly selection of training tips and our favorite articles.

You can follow us on Instagram as well for regular training tips and crunchy tactics: @legion.sc

• [00:13] What is the value in data tracking for CrossFit athletes? Can we compare the way that endurance athletes in sports like marathon or triathlon track heart rate to the needs of CrossFitters?
• [06:19] What are the challenges of using heart rate in a "mixed" environment (like burpees, pull-ups, and kettlebell swings) vs in a cyclical environment (like running or cycling)?
• [10:10] How do the Legion coaches use heart rate for athletes? What have we seen be helpful for our athletes who do track their heart rates?
• [19:35] Using heart rate to do "Zone 2" training focused on mitochondrial adaptation and building an aerobic engine
• [29:38] Overly analytical athletes can have a tendency to "take everything apart" and focus too much on things like heart rate numbers, building an aerobic base, and doing their accessory work—at the expense of practicing their sport. Avoid this trap!