Why I choose to focus on movement patterns and strength over weight loss.

I feel like it’s important to start this podcast off by saying that I don’t have anything against aesthetic goals. I typically have a few aesthetic goals myself. But I address those goals through performance goals that I know will yield the aesthetic changes that I might be wanting. So this is not to shame anyone who wants to change their body. Especially by adding muscle to it. I personally think it’s amazing that we can manipulate the human body via what we do with it. It’s fairly fascinating and what drew me to this field in the first place. But more from a performance standpoint, rather than an aesthetic one.

I get asked a lot if I ever competed in bikini or fitness competitions as well as powerlifting. So I get questions on both sides of the performance and aesthetic spectrum. And the answer to that is that I’ve never done either nor have I wanted to. My answer has always been that I wanted to lift for life. And I’ve been asked dozens of times in the gym over the last decade or more what I’m training for. This tends to be a common question when someone witnesses a woman lifting weights, or training with any intent beyond doing cardio and abs. I hope that that becomes less of a thing, and that training for life via intentional weight training just becomes the norm. Within the health and fitness industry anyway. I don’t know that it will ever be the norm and main stream.

So today’s episode is going to mostly be about the importance of training movement patterns and skills.

As well as the focus on performance goals over aesthetic goals. And What I’ve seen from having that focus with my clients over the past seven years.

I was extremely intentional in choosing the name of my signature 12 month training program back in 2017 - Built by Annie. I wanted it to be known that we were building things. We were building your body, building muscles, building movement patterns, building your work capacity, building efficacy in the gym. Much more went into choosing the name of that program then it just sounded good or making sense.

I don’t have science to back this up, but what I’ve seen anecdotally is that when people have a performance score, or a skill that they are invested in learning, their adherence and joy with that process increases. And I think that’s missing when we only focus on aesthetic goals or wanting to change our body.

Again, even if your main goal or objective is aesthetic, I encourage you to look at certain performance goals that might lead to the aesthetic change that you are wanting. For instance if you want a bigger butt, maybe your goal is to hip thrust two times per week, increasing your capacity one of those days with high reps, in increasing your strength or working towards a strength goal on the other day, say for six reps. Maybe you want to hit 300 pounds for six reps. That’s going to be a lot more of an enjoyable experience than just focusing on growing your butt.

If your goal is to get bigger deltoids, the same thing applies. The performance goal of getting a pull up, or a certain number of inverted rows for your rear adults, and reaching a performance goal for your overhead pressing is going to be some thing you will be far more invested in and proud of than simply growing your delts.

Now, I don’t coach or focus on nutrition but really the same thing applies there. Your performance goals with nutrition if you want to lose body fat would be around getting a certain amount of vegetables in per day, or drinking a certain amount of water, or practicing a certain habit.

There are several different approaches to doing cardio within the conditioning world. 

Two of the most popularized by the fitness industry are high intensity interval training (HIIT), and low intensity study state training. I think most people understand what LISS is. But high intensity interval training has been very incorrectly marketed to you by main stream media and fitness professionals.

So today we are going to dive into what each of these are, and how to best implement them into your training for their purpose.

There are more types of cardio than this of course. In my Built by Annie premium one and premium two options we include cardio. And it is a rather linear progression from low intensity steady state cardio all the way up into cardiac power intervals. And those progressions are largely taken from energy systems development. You could progress this much much quicker if you were to implement these strategies multiple times per week. And Built by Annie cardio is mainly done one day per week but women certainly see the effects of that progression over the year that they’re inside the program. Doors open October 25th to the waitlist, so make to sure to get on that!

Most people might think that high intensity is inherently better, but that’s completely relative to things like your aerobic base, the goal of your training age, and many other things.

I would argue that most people lack LISS - 

Low intensity study state is traditionally cardio done past 30 minutes, up to 90 minutes or more, in zone two of your heart rate zones out of five. That is typically in the 60 to 65% range.

High intensity would be considered zones four and five, say 80%+ and if you want to be technical it refers to using intervals. So this would not apply to staying in zones four and five for say 12-20 minutes. That would be something called high intensity continuous training, or HICT. And I’ve talked about that and other episodes. That, to my knowledge was popularized by Joel Jamison.

Both approaches have their purpose within conditioning. The idea with high intensity interval training is to get your heart rate up very high for a working period, and then let it recover so that you can go again at the high intensity. This trains the alactic and anaerobic systems.

HIIT is high stress on the body, and may require more recovery and low intensity exercise.

LISS on the other hand trains the aerobic system. It is low stress, low recovery demand, burn some calories, increase aerobic base.

You will likely experience some thing with high intensity interval training known as epoc. Or excessive post-exercise oxygen consumption. This is the period of time where the body is attempting to get you back to homeostasis. It’s restoring glycogen, bringing the heart rate and respiration down etc.

This does increase the caloric demand of high intensity exercise. And yes you may burn calories for a longer period of time after high intensity interval training. My main question would be what is the purpose?

As a coach and professional, the purpose of high intensity interval training, which can be implemented in a lot of ways, would be to train those a lactic and anaerobic systems.

Or as the purpose of low intensity study state cardio would be to increase someone’s overall aerobic threshold, and work capacity base of fitness. And two generally increase caloric output if that is something we’re looking to...

If you missed it,  be sure to listen to episode 171 for how I went from skipping college to a four year ESS degree, to denying jobs and starting my own business, to low key failing and changing my life with a Instagram course under $300 during my not your father’s rootbeer kitchen counter breakdown.

Today we are headed into brighter waters. Well, it’s starting off that way, then things get a little dim for a bit before we see the light again. 2018 to present day was a rollercoaster to say the least. I mean, it included a global pandemic, so perhaps that’s expected.

We left off in 2016, having purchased Marie Forleo’s B school and feeling like I actually had some direction for the online side of my business.

I’d largely built up the in person portion. That wasn’t my issue but since starting Fitdesignbyannie in 2015, the goal was ALWAYS to be fully remote. I was motivated by no alarm clocks and working from my laptop on my own time. Freedom is one of my personal and brand core values. I really hate feeling restricted by outside forces. Like a job LOL.

So, in July 2017, I’d built a sustainable business online. I had grown a following + close to full 1:1 roster of online training clients. I’d also built out a few other offers which brought in cash but were proving to not be for my ideal client long term. That’s besides the point.

Focus on the sustainable income piece.

Flashback to 2013, I marry Nate before my last semester of college - he’s working at a local high end hippy grocery store. We’re straight up poor.

Four years later, we’d both increased income significantly. We didn’t NEED more money. Of course everyone can use or want more money, but that never ends. We were comfortable and that, for Nathanael had brought up some reflection on life.

That brings us to number four of the six experiences that changed the trajectory of my life

Nate asking what if we traveled [then doing it]

I was sitting on the couch, writing programs and he walks down the hall in his towel after a shower and says to me without any preface, “what if we just traveled the world?” Just like that.

He says he expected me to push back, or question him but I literally said “Yeah okay I just need to make a bit more money online.”

And that was that. The research began almost immediately. He gave his work 8 months notice, and we were off to Santiago Chile nine months later.

I don’t think I need to unpack how traveling the world for 367 days straight changed the trajectory of my life but I will give you the bullet points. And the moral:

* Personally, travel is amazing for perspective. Most people may never leave their home town let alone their country. For a multitude of reasons.  I’ve talked about travel, myths and expectations in other episodes, so check that out. But just to take the leap was massive. To say we’re going to take advantage of the career path Annie has chosen and do this NOW with what we have, was unmatched.* Business: My goodness did traveling give me SPACE. More space than I’d ever experienced in my adult life. I three ‘x’ed’ my revenue that year because of SPACE and the ability + demand to go all in. I built out three tiers of Built by Annie, added educational trainings, got rid of all past offers and built Body Weight for Weight Lifters and the Big Lift Audit. That choice led to clarity by fire.

Sometimes I think we have a tendency to think we need some rock bottom or very large event to change the trajectory of our life. But I’d argue that’s rarely the case. Yes a person can certainly have a near death experience or some kind of epiphany. That’s not my personal experience or expectation for you.

Today’s episode is about both decisions, and also outside scenarios that lead to a large or small change to the path of my adult life. That’s the other important piece of this context - I am referring to my adult life. When I feel I mostly had autonomy and control over my life choices.

I’ve organize these in chronological order. And to be fair, there is actually six of these. Because I just thought of a prequel to what I have listed here.

6 experiences that changed the trajectory of my life:

After graduating high school with honors, in every after school club, and a three sport varsity athlete I decided I’d take off a semester because I hadn’t fully decided on what I’d go to college for, and I didn’t see the point of racking up debt until I knew what that debt was going for.

I had no desire to leave home, I was coaching competitive cheer locally and was happy with that. I am sure my mother was dying inside.

Fast forward - I enroll in a local community college in their fitness training associates program. I was deciding between fashion school, cosmetology or being a trainer. And landed on being a trainer. But wanted to go to school, not just get a cert.

In my second to last semester, we had to interview someone who was doing what we wanted to do. So, I knew of a local strength and conditioning coach who worked with a few MMA fighters in the UFC. He was willing to have me interview him and he told me I needed my CSCS, certainly if I wanted to work in college athletics. But that required a 4 year degree.

After that interview, within a week, I was shifting my whole life, researching Exercise Science, Kinesiology, or biomechanics programs at local universities. Found Concordia, met with their advisor and changed all classes at my community college to essentially set me up for an easy transition to their exercise and science program in a year.

All because of that one interview when I was 19 years old. Thanks to him, I had a new route for my life, which very much so lead to the next 5 trajectory changes.

* Me declining two dream jobs

Fast forward to 2013/2014. I complete my ESS degree, get my CSCS, all to decide I wasn’t going into college strength and performance. You’d think that decision alone was the life changing one, but it was the two that came after that really set up the new direction.

I’d interned at two places - University of Portland as a strength coach, and a Physical Therapy Clinic that focused on the gap between physical therapy and return to sport. I’d had a lot of injuries and was always fascinated by the PT world. I used to joke with them that I wish I could get a PT education but use it to train normal people.

So, did’t honestly love my experience at the PT clinic but did love and support the owner.

After my internship I was offered the job of my supervisor. Which never sat right with me, because I was fairly sure he was unaware of this - though I was not one of his fans. Side note, another mentor told me while I was interning there that I should take it as an opportunity to learn what I don’t like, what I won’t do, what doesn’t make sense to me. So, I did.

The pay was good, it would be an amazing job right out of college, but it was also an hour commute and the hours were shit.

Today we're covering 9 mindset shifts for entrepreneurs:

These are questions, ideas and maybe ways to challenge your current mindset as an entrepreneur.

* Just because someone else does it or doesn’t do it, doesn’t mean you should or shouldn’t do it.

I follow a VERY successful fitness business owner. World known, who still edits his own podcasts and content. He doesn’t have a team outside of coaches and a marketing manager that I know of.

I know another female colleague who is similar. Still edits and uploads all her own content. Still writes all the programming, still works with clients etc.

These examples hit home with me personally because I am that entrepreneur who really is and has been EVERY possible role in her business. And I enjoy doing a lot of aspects that someone else could technically do. I am not the best video editor or podcast editor but I have learned these skills and take pride in doing them. Now, that can change as priorities change. I have the time to do these things now. In the future perhaps I pay someone do them. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve looked up podcast managers and the price just isn’t worth it to me right now.

Point being, I’ve had mentors tell me to outsource things, but I don’t. I tend to trust my gut and feel pretty aware of how I spend my time in my business. As well as where profits come from.

On the flip side, if you see someone taking an approach to an area of their business and a little voice in your head says “you should be doing that too,” I encourage you to question that.

Maybe it makes sense for you, maybe it doesn’t. It’s very important you figure out the motive behind that feeling.

I am 100% for seeing something and saying “hmmm how could that apply or work for me?” All for it. But if it’s coming from a place of thinking you’re behind, or missing out, pump the breaks and find the truth. Might just need to smack on your blinders and get back to your own mission.

That leads well into the next mindset shift

* You're not behind

I am not one for toxic positivity. Though, I do think perspective matters and can change the actions we take, especially as business owners.

In the online space we are surrounded by highlight reels that very easily breed comparison. But fact is, you’re not behind. It really is that simple. Your path is not Susan’s path. If you start today, or keep going today, you’re right where you’re supposed to be in YOUR journey. Because it’s YOURS. Not Susan’s. I would push into WHY the feeling of “I’m behind” is coming from. Where is the gap that is allowing that narrative to seep in?

* You have what you need to start

One of the biggest lies entrepreneurs believe is that they need “x” in order to start and/or be successful and more often than not it’s just an excuse to stay put.

You’ll only ever make progress by using what you have to do what you can. There is literally always room for growth. So, just start, and keep going. Think of how you can do your best in this season. My first videos were made on an underwater camera we had. I debated making my first podcast episodes via voice memos on my phone. But ended up buying a $63 mic I could travel with. No fancy pants needed. Value is not determined by things. You can provide value and build your portfolio NOW. 

I feel very passionately about this because I really do see it as an excuse. I believe everyone has options, and its more about whether one is willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to start.

Over the years I have gotten asked several times about what makes the perfect warm-up, or what a warm-up should include for a given day. Just as there are infinite possibilities for exercise selection in the book of a work out, the same is true for a warm-up. So it can be very overwhelming to narrow down what exactly is a necessity, and what is not. But today we are not stopping at warm-ups. We are going to go through each individual section of a complete lift and define what happens in each of those, and what the intent of each of those sections is.

Daily warm-up

I use a daily warm-up for myself and my clients. Perhaps this is because they come from a sports based background where the same warm-up is done before practice no matter what is happening that day. It’s a way to get the entire body prepared for the exercise that is about to take place.

That’s the value of a daily warm-up in my opinion. It just touches on each area of the body, it brings familiarity and routine to your training, and it also allows you to check in with your body and mind to see how you are doing that day before you head into your main sets. I want to be clear that the daily warm-up should not take any longer than 5 to 7 minutes.

This would include a full body flow. So you would see things like some T spine mobility, warming up the wrist, a spinal flow of some kind, getting into the end ranges in the hips and ankles, and dynamically stretching the quads, hamstrings, and any other area of the body that you think is important to stretch daily. More often than not these are not going to be static stretches. They’re going to be dynamic as we are prepping the body for movement. But if a static stretch is included, whether it be in the daily warm-up or the movement prep, it would be in order to increase the end range that you are Going to use that day. So the static stretch would be preemptive of a dynamic use of that range of motion. 

After the daily warm-up you would move into a more specified movement prep.

Movement prep

It’s called movement prep because it is prepping the body specifically for the movements being performed that day. I don’t see a huge need for movement prep if you are doing a more body part style split, commonly thought of as a bodybuilding split. But if you are doing any large compound movements, or the nervous system needs to be prepped for any of the exercises you are doing, I suggest implementing a movement prep.

This is absolutely some thing that is included in the Built by Annie, my 1:1 programming, and is taught inside my Pure Programming course.

Movement prep is going to have a far less movements involved in comparison to the daily warm-up. Movement prep might have 3 to 5 active mobility or core exercises. And again these are put in place in order to prime the patterns, or work on deficiencies that are common in that day‘s movements.

For example, if it’s a posterior chain focused day, or a dead lift day, you might have some glute work ahead of time, some bilateral or unilateral hinging, even some lat and core work in order to draw attention to the muscles that are going to be used within the dead lift.

For a 1:1 program, movement prep would be much more specified to any deficiencies or discrepancies that the client has. But more generally speaking, it’s going to prep for the programming ahead.

Warm-up sets

The warm-up doesn’t stop after movement prep. Warm-up sets are not needed for many lifts depending on the intensity.

There is no one size fits all for lifting cues. Some thing that will work for you might not work for me. But the goal is always better neuromuscular control, more muscle fiber recruitment, and ideally better movement patterns. That’s what today’s episode is all about. After coaching for a decade in person and online, I have used and heard my fair share of lifting cues and tricks. I might share 10 to 15 today. And I will keep them more broad stroke. Because you could have 20 cues just for your core. That is not the goal of today’s episode. 

You may have heard these before, and some of them might be new to you. Or if you have heard them before, perhaps the way that I explain them or reference them might make some thing Klick. Whether you are a trainee or a trainer today’s episode is hopefully going to be a value and very applicable for you or your clients.

Let's get on to lifting cues...

Big back, tight lats - this applies to almost everything. Or certainly large compound movements. I could see this working for squats, deadlifts, even the start of an overhead press, and certainly for bench press. It also has carryover into most hinging patterns or barbell squatting variations.

Big back and tight lats don’t necessarily always feel the same or mean the same thing. But I put them together because I find that I get the same results with clients when I see either of these.

Your lat is one of the largest muscles in the body and it is the largest muscle in your upper body or back. So often times when you say big back people will automatically engage their lats. Or when you say engage your lats, and it will make their back look larger. Both are the goal.

Your lats attach from the top of your upper arm bone, your humerus, to part of your scapula, to your mid spine all the way down to your hip bones. So you can see why we would want to engage the lats, as they really lock everything in from your shoulder girdle to your hips. And we want that, for most compound movements.

I find that big back works best for back squats when a client seems to just be resting the bar on their back, without actually engaging muscles in the upper body. Tight lats can do the same.

The next cue can have a similar effect.

Break the bar - especially on bench, RDL and deadlifts. This has always worked really well for me personally. I just think about driving my pinkies backwards and bending the bar. That typically gets everything engaged that I need to be. With benchpress, I really feel like it locks in my shoulders and lats. And with dead lift it keeps the bar close to my body. It really makes no sense for some people, but I think it’s worth a try.

Elbows forward - same effect as break the. Bar but VERY specific to deadlift. If a client is having a hard time keeping the bar close to them, or locking in their upper back, telling them to turn their elbows forward can be very effective. The lats engaged as well as teres minor and infraspinatus really work to lock on that upper back.

So try yourself or telling a client to show their elbow pits to the front and see what happens with their upper body engagement. Particularly with the dead lift.

Screw in - applies to feet and glutes or hands depending on the lift. Screwing in your feet, especially with soft knees causes external rotation at the femurs via the glutes. Or, rather, the glutes cause the external rotation of the upper leg, and for tension to be created at the foot. Now, the foot creates tension itself as well. And that ideally means a solid foundation. Think of opening the toes, pressing the toes, ball of the foot,

Today’s episode comes from what feels like the expectation even with one on one to have some kind of community aspect (or group program) to your offer. I hope to keep this episode short and sweet, and really just gives you some things to think about in order to determine if you do or don’t want to have a group or community aspect of your offerings. One size does not fit all here, so you could have a large group community of all of your clients across all of your offers if you have more than one. Or you could have a separate community for each one of your offers, only one of your offers could have a community piece, or they could have nothing. And then within having a group or community, you’ve got different structures that you can work with as well.

So let’s get into the different types of communities that you can have.

Because we need to know that in order for you to then say yes I want to have a group aspect or, it’s not necessary.

You can have it from the loosest terms, just a group that people join when they are in one of your programs. There is no structure to this, people can ask questions, or you can maybe post like a weekly wins. But there is no expectation of structure or aggressive value being added. That, for me, is the most loose way to have a community.

Nothing wrong with that, it’s actually the type of community that I prefer to run myself. That is what you will find if you join either my Pure PROgramming or a FitsPRO Foundations courses. It’s just a communal place that people can ask questions and get feedback from either me or other people in the group.

The more extreme approach to having a group aspect to a program is when your clients join at the same time, and there is a structured group aspect. So maybe its group calls on a monthly basis, or it’s that you go live every week that the program is active for, or there is something specific they are learning on a timed schedule. And only the people in this particular round, or cohort are involved in these calls.

Then we have the in between. So really take any aspects of each of those types of groups or communities and you’ve got the middle ground. So maybe everyone who has ever joined the program is in the group or community but different people have different access to certain areas of the platform. This is possible on platforms like Circle, or Slack. You could also have a community where everyone who has ever joined has access to it, but you do go live or teach on a topic every month forever. And maybe those calls are archived somewhere so that when someone joins they get access to past calls in case they missed a topic.

Sharing these three types of community or group aspects is really just so that you can see that you have options. And you don’t have to go balls to the wall with a group or community. There is a spectrum of you being involved in the group. Which is typically the concern for most people - Is that time commitment.

Now on the flipside of that, I’ll ask you some questions that will hopefully lead you to a yes or no answer. Or closer to one of those.

I want you to look at whether or not your service or program requires and or benefits from a group aspect.

This somewhat depends on what is already involved in the offer or the service. Does the group or community aspect fill a needed gap? It may just not be needed. And it also might be the missing piece. But that’s completely up to you and your offer and what is involved in that.

The next thing I want you to think about is whether or not your ideal client or niche desires to be a part of an active community, or if that’s not necessarily needed for them in order to find...

Is the fitness industry saturated?

Since I entered the online health and fitness industry in 2014 to now, the answer to this question in the broadest sense has been yes and no.

I will ask my favorite question and the answer is undeniable.

If the answer is yes, the online health and fitness industry is over saturated, then should you not coach? We should never add any new coaches?

I hope you see that is obviously absurd. Of course there is room for you, your perspective and your passions. You will have a slightly different approach than a coach who agrees with you on all levels. There is still room for you.

So if we established that the fitness industry does have a shit load of coaches in it, then how do you navigate that as to stand out from all the noise as some people would say. That’s the goal of today’s episode.

Health and fitness is also not limited to just a writing workout programs and teaching people how to count macros. Health and fitness spans nearly anything having to do with the human body and or habit building and behavior change. That’s doctors, in chiropractic, physical therapy, pelvic floor health, neurological therapy, and your wider scale fitness trainers. It spans kettlebell specialists, yoga instructors, weightlifting coaches, running coaches. It all falls under health and fitness. Is every single one of those areas saturated, probably not. But as a whole, yes I do believe that the industry is saturated. But I don’t believe that it’s saturated with high-quality professionals.

This is why I think niching down, and establishing your messaging and brand is so important. Because we’re all talking about health and fitness to some extent. What is going to set you apart from other coaches is your ability to communicate, and your messaging.

Your Ideal Client

If you haven’t yet downloaded my free Ideal Client Avatar Creator be sure to do so. This is a great start if you have no idea who you are speaking to online. If you have feelings like you don’t know what to post, or you have trouble coming up with content. Understanding your ideal client can help mitigate some of that.

Outside of your ideal client, your messaging also comes down to your own passions what you want to speak about or create contact around. You truly do not need to create contact that you don’t want to create. In fact I encourage you to steer away from that.

This is also where I think having experience in person can help refine your gifts and passions. What comes easy to you that doesn’t come easy to someone else. This will likely be a part of your messaging and your niche.

Your Niche

Get my Know Your Niche Content Guide here

For instance I was always very good at modifying on the spot, and correcting form. I always really enjoyed program design and I knew that that didn’t come easily to most of my colleagues. So after 2 1/2 years of frolicking a bit aimlessly through the online world of health and fitness, I started to talk about what I wanted to talk about. And that brought about who my ideal client was pretty organically.

I just want to make clear that those two things need to be married and I believe that that’s what makes up your niche. It’s a combination of your ideal client and your passions and area of focus. It can be a bit of a which came first? The chicken or the egg when we are talking about your messaging and your ideal client. Spending some time honing in on both of those will undoubtedly help you gain...

CrossFit gets a lot of cult like love and a lot of, frankly, ignorant hate. Some justified I am sure. In light of the recent CrossFit regional qualifiers, I asked my Instagram audience a few questions. The questions were aimed only at those who have consistently participated in CrossFit for 6 months or more. So 3-5 days per week of CrossFit for at least six months. That was the requirement in order to answer my questions.

This episode is NOT backed by science. In fact a physical therapist friend actually said they had some recent decent research that debunks some of the common beliefs about CrossFit and injury volume or frequency, but I am still waiting on that data - I can’t and wouldn’t speak to it until I got the chance to read and dissect it myself. Because truly so much research is bias. But we always hope it is not.

The questions I asked were as follows:

* What are the positives/pros/things you love(d) about CrossFit?* What were/are the negative sides of CrossFit? Personal experience or observation

* How long have you done/did you practice CrossFit as your main medium of fitness?* If you stopped, why?

* If you still do CrossFit, why would you ever see yourself leaving? Or doing something else? If you can imagine that.

* For those who no longer do CrossFit, what do you do now as your made modality of fitness?

I was so amazed and interested by both the volume of responses and the content of those responses that I had to be consolidating that information into a podcast episode. Especially because no one but me gets to see all these responses in the question boxes!

As a disclaimer, I feel I need to share my background with CrossFit because I do and have undoubtedly had biases over the years. Now I feel much much more neutral about CrossFit - largely due to the changes I’ve seen.

I did CrossFit for over six months, under one year in my early 20’s. Loved it. So much. Thought it was way too heavy on overhead volume to lower body volume, and also lacked unilateral work, and lateral work - things I was learning about in school at the time. Ended up with a meniscus surgery, and an undiagnosed shoulder injury that the doc chalked up to bicep tendonitis. So, stopped and changed modalities back to weight lifting and more traditional conditioning with some retcons here and there.

I then as a professional jumped on the CrossFit hate train - “they use momentum for everything, that’s not a real pull up, lack of regulation and anyone can be a coach” etc.

I interned at a physical therapy clinic as a performance coach for six months at the tail end of my college career and past graduation. I was actually offered a full time position but turned it down. The owner and PT’s used to say “as long as CrossFit exists, we’ll stay in business.” They weren’t wrong. A massive percentage of the clientele came from CrossFit. Mostly  knee, lower back, and shoulder injuries. That’s the side I was introduced to next. Thus, my disapproval continued.

Even with that said, who doesn’t love watching the CrossFit Games? I watch them every year. Always have.

Stick around till the end for my current stance/view of CrossFit. But now let’s breakdown YOUR DATA.

* What are the positives/pros/things you love(d) about crossfit?

Intensity

Unknown Challenges

Mindless workouts - show up, do what’s on the board

Randomness or Variety

Strength, aerobic and skills work all involved