Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

Ever had a very structured training plan that you were almost certain would come together, but when you did the competition or the qualifier, it didn't go as well as you'd hoped?

Relying on very structured approaches of preparation for CrossFit is a standard failure mode we find in the sport, coming from athletes and coaches that are pretty analytical.

The problem with this approach is that it can mean you lose a connection to the real world and the sport and not be exposed sufficiently to the challenges you'll come across in the sport.

In this week's episode of the Legion Strength and Conditioning podcast, Todd tells a story where he was reviewing the training of someone from his university who wanted to do parkour...but there was no parkour in his training. Todd has since helped out this parkour enthusiast, suggesting that you can't Stairmaster your way into doing back flips off of a wall and that he needed to do the actual thing.

Listen to hear more of our examples of how people lose their connection to the sport and how we should approach our plans, being more adaptable and learning to fail fast.

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

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

Show Notes:

• [1:20] Todd's story
• [4:45] Over analysing and over-planning failure mode
• [5:30] Similar failure mode with training for CrossFit
• [6:20] Rigid and structured approaches versus a managing the chaos approach
• [8:30] Creating false barriers and prerequisites in the plan
• [9:20] Building the skill of competing
• [12:15] Losing connection to competition and the sport
• [13:50] The importance of failing fast
• [15:00] How to adjust plans quickly
• [16:20] Everyone learns at different speeds
• [19:30] Messy skill learning processes
• [21:45] Learning through iterative trial and error
• [23:30] Preparing someone for competition with lots of exposure to the sport

The book Luke mentioned: How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach & Practice Sports Skills - Rob Gray

We're a week away from Quarter Finals, and the qualified athletes have already had three workouts to sharpen the competing sword with the open. But as the workouts become more high stakes going into the next round, how do we support athletes?

Some athletes need encouragement and a good luck message, and they are good! Others will require a warm-up, a detailed plan and potentially some video review.

Although we might set boundaries on communication, and we tried to set our athletes up to be reasonably autonomous during competition, they will need help when they need help. And it's crucial that, as a coach, you're there to support them as best as you can.

Check out the latest Legion Strength and Conditioning podcast episode and hear how we manage competition time with our athletes. What types of things are we sending them when workouts get released, and how are good strategies overrated but poor plans can end disastrously?

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

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

Show Notes:

• [1:00] Managing a coaching relationship during online qualifiers, the open and quarter-finals
• [2:30] Setting boundaries and coaching your athletes on how to communicate with you
• [3:30] What do you need to send your athletes when workouts are released
• [5:30] Chunking and batching tasks together
• [7:35] How are quarter-finals different
• [9:10] Being proactive and reaching out to athletes during competitions
• [10:30] What to do when athletes want an individualised strategy for the workout?
• [11:45] Setting your athletes up to push themselves
• [13:15] Managing anxiety with clearly structured warm-ups
• [15:30] Athletes having misguided expectations of strategies
• [19:20] How to coach athletes to make better plans for workouts
• [22:10] Getting logistics in order - assigning videographer and judge
• [24:00] Getting others to help you in quarter-finals
• [26:30] Having strategies can be overrated
• {27:45] Repeating workouts is less commonplace

Ever found yourself or one of your athletes having a block in increasing the cycle speed with specific movements? You do 100+ burpees in a long workout, and it's the same 'step down, step up' style you do in a shorter sprint-style workout. Is it that burpees are just hard, is there a particular technique you should use, or is it that you have a strong distaste for burpees regardless of the workout?

It's probably going to be a combination of all three. It's not as clear-cut as following a certain linear progression with the movement. You will most likely have to simultaneously develop your fitness, develop the movement and intentionally practice the sport.

One way you can get unstuck with a movement could be to polarise the scenarios in which you are training the movement. Just like long-distance runners practice sprinting now and then, and weightlifters have a broad range of percentages they practice their lifting, using burpees as an example, you could regress the movement to something easier, some sprints and then your usual range of metcons with burpees included.

Check out episode #112 to find out how we work on getting athletes to move faster on things like burpees, box jumps and dumbbell snatches.

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

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

Show Notes:

• [0:30] Only developing one gear in CrossFit
• [2:00] Having different movement strategies and different gears
• [4:30] What stops people from moving as fast
• [6:30] Why regressing a movement is important to increase cycle speed
• [9:20] Learning movements correctly for competition
• [10:45] Internal maps
• [13:30] Using higher paces as a training tool for slower movement strategies
• [15:45] Long-distance runners using sprinting to develop their slower-paced running
• [17:30] Building more movement strategies to develop confidence
• [19:30] Prescribing specific paces on machines in mixed training
• [22:00] Being intentional when practising the sport

With a week to go until the open, there are probably a lot of athletes on the bubble of quarter-finals putting in those final touches to their training. But is it too late to work on those training progressions?

Many of the athletes on the bubble likely have one thing that prevents them from being more certain about being in the top 10%.

They are either not strong enough, don't have the skills or need to work on their engine. It might be heavy deadlifts in a workout or getting multiple muscle-ups at the end of a workout that stops them in their tracks. Or, even though they might have all the skills, they get a pretty average score on the more engine-focused workout.

So what can these bubble athletes do to set themselves up for success in the next few weeks? First, having clear expectations is going to be essential. Then, knowing how much improvement is realistic and how you can maximise your current abilities in a competition scenario will put you on the front foot. After that, you've got to do more of the thing you struggle with in open-style workouts.

Check out episode #111 and hear what we think might need some slight adjustments in the training before the competitive season starts.

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

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

Show Notes:

• [1:00] The three things that prevent people from qualifying
• [4:00] What you should be focusing on in your training before the open
• [6:00] Having realistic expectations with your skills during a peaking phase
• [7:00] What to focus on during a peaking phase
• [9:10] Practicing realistic scenarios in training
• [12:00] Working on smaller details during workouts
• [14:00] Practice being judged and film yourself in your workouts
• [17:00] Being clear on what it is that will move you forward to quarter-finals
• [19:00] challenge of quick wins not being the thing
• [20:00] Challenging yourself in
• [21:10] If you don't have it - set yourself up for that point
• [24:30] Make sure you're working on the right thing
• [27:00] Recreating the intensities and the stakes involved in a workout

Do CrossFit athletes need to train more in the transverse plane? It definitely sounds nice to those interested in programming, but if we look at the demands of the sport, we don't see movements challenging the transverse or frontal plane much.

It's not always clear what level of variability in movement we should include in a CrossFit athlete's training. Giving someone more options in their movement can offset repetitive training and help with longevity, but it often doesn't directly affect someone's performance, making it hard to get buy-in.

Listen to this week's episode to hear how working in the transverse plane might help you look a bit more athletic on those shuttle runs in quarter-finals, how we sneak in movement work into our programming and how playing sport might be the easiest and best movement work for someone's training.

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

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

Show Notes:

• [0:30] Getting CrossFit athletes bought into movement work
• [3:00] Why we should train to have more movement options
• [4:50] Benefits of being functionally adapted to your sport
• [6:45] What are the movement requirements for the sport
• [10:00] Addressing longevity in someone's training
• [10:55] Low-hanging fruit in developing someone's movement
• [11:45] Transverse plane and sports
• [13:30] People who are athletic in CrossFit
• [14:30] Going out and playing sports vs movement work
• [16:15] Sneaking movement/skill work into training
• [16:45] Importance of low-level skills and easy movements
• [17:30] CrossFitters are always trying to make something difficult
• [20:00] Getting optionality in movement
• [22:15] Having one movement strategy can put you in a difficult position
• [23:05] Encouraging athletes to try new activities and sports
• [23:30] Threading in movement work with other elements of training
• [26:00] CrossFitters going too hard in other sports
• [28:00] The challenge of letting go of your ego going into a new sport
• [30:20] Where does prehab fit into someone's training?
• [32:45] Using prehab work to add volume to someone's training
• [33:40] Why would you want to add more volume to someone's training?

Is working on your mindset all it's hyped up to be? Is it actually what people need to maximise their potential, or can it misalign expectations and cause a lot of wasted time?

In this week's episode, Todd talks about 'Collective Teacher Efficacy', presented to him in his rationality group. We draw on some of the parallels found in fitness.

Collective Teacher Efficacy claims that teachers having a belief in making an impact is what helps teachers be effective educators when the evidence points towards a different, much simpler direction, whether home life values and supports education. We see this in fitness a lot, with specific coaches claiming that their methods or less tangible things like mindset make people successful.

Listen to learn more about our thoughts on having a helpful outlook on mindset in training. For example, when having an anything is possible mindset can help get someone off the couch, but not so beneficial in unpredictable competitive sports.

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

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

Show Notes:

• [0:50] Fitness knowledge in rationality groups
• [2:10] Common problems in education
• [4:20] What is Collective Teacher Efficacy
• [6:20] Parallels in fitness
• [7:30] The actual cause of success in a student's education
• [8:45] Problem with mindset stuff in fitness
• [9:30] Causation, correlation and speculative YouTube videos
• [11:45] Mindset and misaligned expectations
• [13:30] Cultural narratives trickling down into sports
• [14:40] Can you accomplish whatever you want?
• [15:30] Messages that sell in the training world
• [17:20] Helpful messages for the average gym goer, but not for the competitive athlete
• [21:00] Encouraging a realistic outlook with clients
• [22:18] Is having a mindset of anything possible the way you achieve your best
• [24:45] Parallels in the business world
• [27:10] Coaches should build their athletes up with small wins

In a data-heavy sport like CrossFit, athletes are always working towards ironing out the holes in their game to progress and bring up the bigger picture. But when does focusing on priorities become myopic and make athletes pessimistic about their performance and training.

There are many examples in elite sports where dissatisfaction with where you are can lead to great performance. However, when recreational athletes who do their sport for fun start doing this, it can lead to that hobby and fun activity becoming a bit of a drag and them getting burned out.

In this episode, we talk about the different motivational tendencies of athletes, particularly those that lead to self-deprecating comments and a negative attitude towards yourself. We discuss when it's time to harness that and when to keep it in check and create some guard rails so you continue to enjoy the process. Along with references to Greek Black Metal and Conan the Barbian quotes!

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

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

Show Notes:

• [1:45] When you can be too focused on priority training areas
• [2:40] The different motivations of athletes that Luke has come across
• [4:45] Self-comparison and framing of time with skill development
• [6:00] Aligning training or competition goals with what people want to do in their training
• [8:00] The selection effect of people who choose to compete in CrossFit and get remote coaching
• [9:40] How to harness negative motivational tendencies to get to the desired outcome
• [11:30] Examples of negative motivational tendencies in elite sport
• [14:30] Can negative motivational tendencies be unhelpful for the recreational athlete
• [20:30] Creating balance in training to maximise motivation
• [22:45] Creating opportunities in training to check in with yourself
• [26:00] Being 'stuck' on the treadmill of always working on something and how to manage that

The CrossFit Games season structure has changed again, and the qualification stage of the semi-finals is set to be more structured moving into next season. Every year since the sport stopped doing regionals, qualifying for the CrossFit Games has always looked a bit different every year. The changes moving forward look to centralise the programming back to CrossFit and some changes to the distribution and the availability of spots to the CrossFit Games.

Overall this looks like it will create more standardisation in the sport, which for athletes and coaches is a good thing. This will give more clarity on how to train, prepare and approach competition. Give this week's episode a listen to hear more about the changes from Jon, our very own human Morning Chalk Up feed, and our thoughts and anecdotes over the last several years of consistent changes.

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

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

• 1:30] Overview of the new changes in the CrossFit Games
• [4:00] Positives and drawbacks to the changes
• [5:00] The benefits of standardised programming across events
• [6:40] Jon's experience with programming asymmetries
• [7:40] Will the smaller semi-final events be organised and programmed by CrossFit in the future
• [11:30] Can this make competitions more entertaining
• [14:30] Overstretching part-time competition organisers
• [17:00] Getting better organisation with dedicated competition staff and organisers
• [19:00] Missed opportunities with the sanctional structure
• [20:45] Do events make money
• [22:30] Implications for athletes and their training
• [25:15] Virtual shovelling and obscure events at the CrossFit games
• [27:30] Where to fit new skills and movements into someone's training
• [29:45] Better clarity to organise travel for athletes

In many sports, you can get reasonably frequent exposure to competitions which can take the pressure off these competitive experiences. But in CrossFit, the ratio of training to competition is significantly one-sided. Competitions, even during the 'season', don't happen that often, so when they do the pressure is on. But one part of the sport that might be even more high-pressure and stressful is qualifiers, especially during the off-season.

Managing qualifiers in the off-season can be challenging for several reasons. First, you have to start filming your workouts and working to deadlines. The self-comparison and leader-boarding can create doubt in your training direction if you don't perform well. You are usually out of competition shape, and the workouts disrupt the flow and momentum you've built in the off-season. Generally, qualifiers are a very stressful time for a lot of athletes.

Check this episode out, where we unpack why they can be very stressful and how to manage that. But we also highlight the importance of qualifiers in the off-season, why they can help in staying sharp, having focus in training and how to navigate them better.

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

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

Show Notes:

• [1:20] Why qualifiers can be stressful during the off-season
• [4:00] Understanding when you need to be peaked for competition
• [6:00] Balancing sports practice with structured training
• [7:30] What goes into being peaked for competition
• [9:45] What do you change in a high-level athletes training during qualifiers
• [12:45] Managing and handling the stress of qualifiers
• [15:30] Old-school cheats and qualifiers
• [20:30] It's important to have periods of non-comparison in training
• [22:30] Having qualifiers and competitions on the calendar have focus and intention in training
• [25:30] Handling self-comparison from qualifiers
• [27:40] Todd's DIY medicine ball back in the day

What are the essential parts that make up a programme? Is it the sets and reps, the exercise selection, or the weekly progression scheme? We'd argue that having a clear understanding and picture of what you want the programming to lead to is the most critical element when writing training.

Often people can get wrapped up in the minutia and the details of a programme, leading to less focus on the end goal. As a result, they try to do too much, not achieving much in the end. So how do you create training programmes with the end goal in mind?

We continue our series on template writing with a more tactical episode focusing on how to reverse engineer in programming. We discuss how knowing what to sacrifice is a big part of pushing the bigger picture forward in someone's training, and choosing the right things to work on and being consistent is more important than fancy rep schemes. Listen to find out more about how we set up a training week and what we consider baseline engine testers for the sport of CrossFit.

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 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.

Show Notes:

• [1:20] Difference between pre-competition and off-season training cycle aims
• [2:00] Establishing training priorities
• [3:00] Creating the training template
• [3:30] Finalising the details of sets and reps
• [5:00] What matters is having consistency and making it challenging
• [5:45] Sacrificing areas in a training cycle
• [7:30] How Jon creates a training week with priorities
• [8:45] Big chat on engine testers
• [13:40] Burpee and Row EMOM key performance indicator
• [15:00] Mental toughness with hard testers
• [17:45] Learning to move at paces that are required in the sport
• [20:30] Developing progressions with the Burpee Row tester
• [23:30] Approaching the goal and outcome while being dynamic