Lionhearted

This week the boys sat down for a chat about an opinion piece titled “CrossFit Still Needs Its Heroes”, written by the Editor-in-Chief of The Morning Chalk Up, a daily CrossFit focused email dedicated to keeping it’s readers up to date with the CrossFit community. This article was the perfect follow up to our conversation last week in episode 34 about the changes to the CrossFit.com main site and the overall change in focus of CrossFit HQ because it raised the questions of “who will we all look to as inspiration to help us dig a little deeper at the end of a workout?” Which is where we all know the most progress is made physically and mentally. And, “who will be the face of the sport that our kids look up to and pretend to be when they’re lifting weights, running laps and doing pull-ups? Who will be the Michael Jordan or Mia Hamm of CrossFit if we don’t remember to promote our sport as a sport?” As Justin said at the end of his blog post, “young athletes need to pin up posters of champions in their garages, imagining they’re going rep-for-rep with Mat Fraser; grabbing just one more before the time cap. The next generation needs to wake up hungry, hungry to compete, to grow, to sweat, to hurt, to earn it, and to win.” and Danny and I had a fun time chatting about how and why this is an important piece for the future of CrossFit.
 
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Check out The Morning Chalk Up at morningchalkup.com or @morningchalkup

Read the opinion piece here: https://morningchalkup.com/2019/01/25/crossfit-still-needs-its-heroes-opinion/
 
 Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

This week the boys sat down for a conversation about the exciting changes to the main site, aka CrossFit.com, that showed up on January 1st. As many of you know, this past fall CrossFit HQ announced a sort of shift in their focus, or at least in the outward facing content that they produce, from being mostly about The Games and the Sport of CrossFit to being more dedicated and focused on improving the health and wellness of as many human beings as possible. Not to say that this hasn’t always been the focus for almost everyone behind the scenes at CrossFit HQ and the focus of all Level 1 and above seminars, but what we’re seeing now is a shift in investment of time and resources to what Danny and I think is the correct bigger picture. This is a change that we’ve been talking about needed to happen for years and we’re very excited to see where this takes CrossFit as a training methodology and as a business. And, we’re even more excited to see how much bigger our reach as a healthy and happy community can be, to hopefully change the lives of millions more Americans and people all over the world. So, if you haven’t already, go check out the new CrossFit.com and then sit back, relax and enjoy this conversation about where we’ve been and where we’re headed.
 
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Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

This week the boys sat down for an episode filled with laughs about Gym Etiquette and what NOT to do when you’re traveling to another gym for the holidays. This one started as an idea on good behavior for your home gym, but because of the time of year and some of the things we’ve seen from visitors quickly developed into a survivors guide to being a good guest when you’re working out in someone else’s gym during the holidays. As I listened back on parts of this episode to jog my memory, I was hooked and just cracking up the whole time. So, even if you’re not someone that drops in to other gyms or doesn’t travel much, this episode is still filled with lessons on gym etiquette and hopefully we’ll make you laugh at least half as much as we made ourselves laugh during this episode.
 
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 Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

This week the boys sat down for a quick chat about how to stay fit during the holidays. To be honest, they didn’t really have a plan for this episode, they just kind of went for it, but sometimes that produces the best content. Well…….funniest at least. Since Danny and Dave both started CrossFit they’ve been through more than a decade of holiday seasons, and they’ve stayed fit during them and also been very fat and happy during them, so this episode includes their tips and tricks from all the lessons they’ve learned the hard way.
 
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 Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

This week the boys sat down for a chat about one of my favorite training tools to make sure you’re doing what you should be doing mentally to get the most out of your training. The idea came from my coach, Kyle Ruth of Training Think Tank, and it is to give yourself a score from 1 to 10 in the categories of Intensity, Concentration and Effort after each training session and use this to determine if you gave each session everything you had. This was a new idea to Danny, so we used his workout from that morning as a sample and the result was fantastic. If your’e someone that’s been in a funk lately or ever and you’re looking for a way to re-focus and improve your training, I think this is one of the best ways to recalibrate. If you’re a coach, this is a great tool to use to empower your athletes and to help them self reflect on each training session. We hope you use it as just another tool to improve as an athlete and human!

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 Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

This week the boys sat down for a chat about the tough conversations and situations that CrossFit Coaches and Box Owners have to have or have to deal with. We touch on managing athlete expectations and keeping them safe, keeping the class moving smoothly and dealing with the chatty members as well as the over-eager ones, and finding a way to establish trust with the member that’s feeling a little down and out or going through something tough in life who’s negative energy is dragging down the class, but what they really need is just someone to talk to.

This was an interesting conversation because as we had it Danny and I did a lot of self reflection and realized that there have been more than a few moments where we’ve been on the other side of almost all these conversations or made some of the mistakes we regularly have to correct as coaches.

This is a great episode for box owners, coaches and athletes to learn from, I know I learned a ton about myself as an athlete and coach from having this conversation.
 
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 Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

This week the boys sat down for a chat about athlete motivation. More specifically, why people start CrossFit, what we think are the best long term why's that make people successful over the long haul, what to do once you’ve reached a specific goal or made it through a test that was your target, what motivates athlete mid-WOD and some tips for positive self talk, and finally, how all of this happens in the gym, but relates directly to your life outside the box. This was a very fun conversation that allowed them to explore their own experiences as athletes and coaches and they hope it helps you get or stay motivated as a CrossFitter.
 
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 Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

This week the boys sat down for a chat about the mental side of intensity and one of our favorite books, How Bad Do You Want It? by Matt Fitzgerald. They talked about everything intensity related from how to get fitness results using intensity even if you’re just a casual CrossFitter, to how to train with intensity daily and not burn out for the more serious athlete, and even talked for a bit about how the brain controls the body’s limitations and how to get yourself to achieve more than you ever thought was possible with proper mental preparation and controlling your thoughts in competition or in a tough portion of a WOD where you just want to rest. If you haven’t already, the boys highly suggest you pick up a copy of How Bad Do You Want It? by Matt Fitzgerald and if you’re not convinced yet, listen to this podcast and you won’t be able to resist giving this book a read or listen.

Coach Dave gives his thoughts on the breaking news that CrossFit will be getting rid of Regionals and proceeding with a new CrossFit Games qualifying format.