The Paul Weber Podcast

Send us Fan Mail

I've coached athletes post-op from not being able to bend the knee past 90 degrees to squat cleans and thrusters.

In this episode, I share my approach and things I’ve learned in getting these athletes back to full function.

Hopefully this will give you hope especially if you’re post-op or considering surgery, and for those of you who aren’t there will be training best practices that I hope will save you that pain.

This is not medical advice. This is from my experience guiding myself and clients through non-surgical approaches to pain resolution.

I cover:

• The demand of CrossFit on the knee
• Why you don't have to do the Rx movements all the time
• Availability matters more than preparedness
• Training load management
• The Repeated Bout Effect
• How your injury history informs how you train today
• What to do if you're already in pain
• The three factors in exercise selection
• Progressions for the squat, lunge, running and double unders
• Common mistakes

Enjoy!

---

Whenever you're ready, the first step is to ​book an intro consult.

1:1 Coaching is for CrossFit competitors and hybrid athletes who want to see what they're capable of. Once you book, you'll get a short intake form so I have context before our first meeting. If you decide to hire me, the consult fee goes toward your first month of coaching.

Not ready for coaching? Other ways I can help:

1. ​Programming Mentor Meeting: For coaches and athletes who want to get clarity on their training. Know your training priorities, measure meaningful metrics, and make real progress.
2. ​Business Mentor Meeting: For in-person coaches who want to learn how to get online clients.
3. Training deep dives: Join hundreds of coaches and athletes who have upgraded their training for strength, gymnastics, conditioning and competitive fitness.

Send us Fan Mail

Whenever you're ready, the first step is to ​book an intro consult.

1:1 Coaching is for CrossFit competitors and hybrid athletes who want to see what they're capable of. Once you book, you'll get a short intake form so I have context before our first meeting. If you decide to hire me, the consult fee goes toward your first month of coaching.

Not ready for coaching? Other ways I can help:

1. ​Programming Mentor Meeting: For coaches and athletes who want to get clarity on their training. Know your training priorities, measure meaningful metrics, and make real progress.
2. ​Business Mentor Meeting: For in-person coaches who want to learn how to get online clients.
3. Training deep dives: Join hundreds of coaches and athletes who have upgraded their training for strength, gymnastics, conditioning and competitive fitness.

---

I once went all out to get under 30 minutes in an outdoor endurance test. I later learned that an endurance athlete I knew had done it in under 20.

From a CrossFit perspective I was fast. By endurance standards, I was slow.

That is what CrossFitters run into when they get serious about HYROX.

Familiarity with mixed training isn't what holds you back. What holds you back is running 9 km, let alone running it with any speed.

In this episode I share what I’ve learned so far in my own transition from CrossFit to Hybrid training, and from coaching clients through the same transition.

We cover:

• Training time: endurance athletes train 15–35 hours a week, which changes what “a lot of training” means. A hike, a jog with your dog, or two hours outside on a Saturday all count as training.
• Training metrics: miles per week (40–50 as a landmark for 5–10k runners), hours per week (including crosstraining), and minutes at race pace.
• The 80/20 Rule and the high-low model: three quality days a week, everything else easy. I also explain how I recently restructured a client’s week around this in prep for ATHX Worlds.
• Progressing quality work: from 20-second strides to 200s, 400s, mile repeats and finally hard 800s and 1Ks.
• Keeping easy work easy: why I start new athletes at 115–130 BPM, plus the easy/medium/hard talk test if you don’t wear a heart rate monitor.
• What stops people: plantar fasciitis, Achilles problems, shin splints, runner’s knee and hip issues. They come from load management, not a lack of glute activation or other obscure movement pro hack. My rules: start small, progress slow, give it time.
• Ranking crosstraining modalities: hiking and StairMaster, then elliptical, then bike. I also share a mistake I made by progressing crosstraining too fast.
• Learning to run: pose running, zero drop, cadence, and why skilled CrossFitters shouldn’t assume their running mechanics are fine.
• Prep work for your lower legs and hips: tib raises, Poliquin calf raises, hip isometrics, single-leg RDLs and hip airplanes.
• Nutrition: carbs are your fuel, not the enemy. Expect to burn 400–800 calories per hour, aim for 6–12 g/kg of carbs. I also briefly cover food selection, semi-solid foods for pre- and post-training meals, and intraworkout.

Send us Fan Mail

See where you stand. Get your free report: https://www.paulbweber.com/benchmark-test

Send us Fan Mail

If I could go back and sit down with myself before my first metcon, I would share these three things...and save myself a lot of pain. I hope this saves you from some.

The first is intent. The barbell was built for strength, and I brought aggression to every rep. But in a metcon, the goal isn’t to prove how powerful you are, the goal is to endure. Same skill, different intent.

Second is workout strategy. I share how I died on Open 17.1 and walk through the framework I now teach every client. Know your work requirement, know your time requirement, and use the 25% rule to choose your set sizes.

Third is eat more food. I’ve been at both extremes: living on Gatorade and gummies, and under-fueling 3-hour sessions with "healthier" options. I explain why gastric emptying is what you're managing when you're trying to eat 3,000–4,000+ calories a day. I talk through semi-solid meals around training, which foods clear the stomach fastest, my three-window pre-training framework, and when to start using intraworkout.

Enjoy!

---

Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

1. ​Book an Intro Consult: This is the next step for athletes who want to work with me 1:1. My coaching is for CrossFit competitors and hybrid athletes who want to see what they're capable of. Once you book, you'll get a link to complete an intake form, which will give me some context before our first meeting. If you decide to hire me, the fee will get put toward your first month of coaching.
2. Training deep dives: Join hundreds of coaches and athletes who have upgraded their training for strength, gymnastics, conditioning and competitive fitness.
3. ​Programming Mentor Meeting: For coaches and athletes who want to get clarity on their training. Know your training priorities, measure meaningful metrics, and make real progress.
4. ​Business Mentor Meeting: For in-person coaches who want to learn how to get online clients.

Send us Fan Mail

I recently saw a well-known hybrid athlete claim that he almost never eats vegetables. This athlete claimed he ate nothing but steak, milk, honey and sugary drinks. He also claimed that he had worked with the highest level dietitians in the world, and this still seemed good to him.

Another well-known hybrid athlete has said similar things. Once I heard this athlete say that as long as he hits his protein target for the day, he doesn't really care if he has sour patch kids for dinner.

So do micronutrients matter?

The answer of course is, it depends. 

Certainly for a hard training hybrid athlete or CrossFit competitor, meeting energy needs is way more important than hitting a micronutrient target.

But once you are adequately fueled, and your macronutrients are in place, then micronutrients do matter.

Well, some of them.

Some RDAs appear to be completely meaningless; other RDAs were established on decades of data that connect deficiency to fatigue, fracture risk, or degraded performance.

In this episode, I cover both ends of that spectrum, emphasizing the most common and consequential micronutrient deficiencies in athletes, and walk through how I built a single day of eating that covers nearly all of them.

We cover:

• Why some RDAs (e.g. vitamin E) don't seem to matter at all
• The two-factor framework I use to rank nutrients: how common is deficiency, and how consequential is it?
• Iron in female athletes — ferritin targets, dosing protocols, and why standard lab "normal" isn't good enough for a training population
• Vitamin D, electrolytes, and magnesium — practical thresholds and dosing for hard-training athletes
• Choline and calcium — the two nutrients that are functionally exclusive to a single food group (eggs and dairy)
• Iodine — the rising prevalence of deficiency due to non-iodized sea and pink salts
• The importance of B12 for vegans and vegetarians
• Omega-3 — strong mechanistic evidence for inflammation resolution
• Vitamin K2 — an honest look at a nutrient where the evidence is still developing
• The dietary fiber-SCFA-sport performance relationship
• The 11 food groups I use to structure a day, ranked in order of importance
• My full daily food log, meal by meal, and the reasoning behind every choice

Enjoy!

---

Training Camp

October 9th-11th, 2026

Dallas, TX

CrossFit Luna
11488 Luna Rd
Farmers Branch, TX 75234

Come train with us: https://paul-b-weber.kit.com/products/training-camp

---

Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

1. ​Book an Intro Consult: This is the next step for athletes who want to work with me 1:1. My coaching is for CrossFit competitors and hybrid athletes who want to see what they're capable of. Once you book, you'll get a link to complete an intake form, which will give me some context before our first meeting. If you decide to hire me, the fee will get put toward your first month of coaching.
2. Training deep dives: Join hundreds of coaches and athletes who have upgraded their training for strength, gymnastics, conditioning and competitive fitness.
3. ​Programming Mentor Meeting: For coaches and athletes who want to get clarity on their training. Know your training priorities, measure meaningful metrics, and make real progress.
4. ​Business Mentor Meeting: For in-person coaches who want to learn how to get online clients.

Send us Fan Mail

Not eating enough will slow you down more than anything else.

You can manage for a while, but eventually, it catches up to you.

All of the most common athlete nutrition mistakes trace back to not eating enough, but almost nobody undereats on purpose.

Undereating usually comes from five beliefs or habits that feel responsible.

This episode breaks down those five mistakes and gives you five, practical steps to eating more food.

In this episode, I cover:

• The five most common athlete nutrition mistakes: not eating enough, not eating often enough, "I don't like processed food", overeating protein, and fear of carbs/blood sugar/insulin
• Why undereating sits underneath all the other mistakes, and the signs that you're in a chronic deficit
• Carb targets for athletes (3g/kg floor, 6-12g/kg for heavy training loads) and why most diets fall way short
• Gastric-emptying: the reason these habits help you eat more, plus which proteins, carbs, fruits, and vegetables clear the stomach fastest
• The three-window framework for eating around training (under 1 hour, 1–3 hours, 3+ hours out)
• The semi-solid meal strategy — including my own daily pre/post-training meals — for fitting in more food while preserving hunger and digestion
• Intra-workout fueling: what I use, what to avoid, and how to build tolerance for higher carb intake

Enjoy!

---

Training Camp

October 9th-11th, 2026

Dallas, TX

CrossFit Luna
11488 Luna Rd
Farmers Branch, TX 75234

Come train with us: https://paul-b-weber.kit.com/products/training-camp

---

Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

1. ​Book an Intro Consult: This is the next step for athletes who want to work with me 1:1. My coaching is for CrossFit competitors and hybrid athletes who want to see what they're capable of. Once you book, you'll get a link to complete an intake form, which will give me some context before our first meeting. If you decide to hire me, the fee will get put toward your first month of coaching.
2. Training deep dives: Join hundreds of coaches and athletes who have upgraded their training for strength, gymnastics, conditioning and competitive fitness.
3. ​Programming Mentor Meeting: For coaches and athletes who want to get clarity on their training. Know your training priorities, measure meaningful metrics, and make real progress.
4. ​Business Mentor Meeting: For in-person coaches who want to learn how to get online clients.

Send us Fan Mail

Nutrition is not just a set of principles, but a collection of behaviors.

Before we eat, we buy, store, prepare, and sometimes measure our food.

In this episode, I cover the process I take my clients through to make these steps easier for each individual.

I also cover questions I've had myself and help clients through, like:

• Do I need to log every day?
• Should I buy organic?
• How do I make my diet portable for competitions?
• Should I worry about using a microwave?

I hope this helps you consistently meet your dietary needs.

Enjoy!

---

Training Camp

October 9th-11th, 2026

Dallas, TX

CrossFit Luna
11488 Luna Rd
Farmers Branch, TX 75234

Come train with us: https://paul-b-weber.kit.com/products/training-camp

---

Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

1. ​Book an Intro Consult: This is the next step for athletes who want to work with me 1:1. My coaching is for CrossFit competitors and hybrid athletes who want to see what they're capable of. Once you book, you'll get a link to complete an intake form, which will give me some context before our first meeting. If you decide to hire me, the fee will get put toward your first month of coaching.
2. Training deep dives: Join hundreds of coaches and athletes who have upgraded their training for strength, gymnastics, conditioning and competitive fitness.
3. ​Programming Mentor Meeting: For coaches and athletes who want to get clarity on their training. Know your training priorities, measure meaningful metrics, and make real progress.
4. ​Business Mentor Meeting: For in-person coaches who want to learn how to get online clients.

Send us Fan Mail

Supplements don't affect outcomes the way energy, macronutrients, micronutrients, and timing do.

But once those higher-order pieces are in place, supplements round out a complete approach to nutrition.

In this episode, I break down the six categories of supplements, ordered from most to least important: nutrient gaps, gut health, ergogenic aids, sleep support, adaptogens, and hormone support.

Nutrient gaps and gut health are the most important. This reflects the broader nutrition hierarchy - nutrients and our ability to absorb them are more foundational than non-nutrients.

Caffeine and creatine remain the primary ergogenic aids.

Sleep support beyond magnesium is prep/competition-specific.

Adaptogens come with a lot of individual variability in response but may be worth experimenting with during prep/competition.

Hormone support is lowest order simply because, while hormones are powerful, OTC hormone support often is not.

I hope this brings clarity on how to navigate the chaotic world of supplementation.

Enjoy!

Send us Fan Mail

Nutrient timing is one of those things you have to earn the right to care about. We can't time our way out of energy imbalance or nutrient deficiency (it may sound ridiculous, but this is some of the thinking behind certain types of fasting).

Once we do take care of the higher order concerns, we can turn our attention to timing.

In this episode, I cover the four mechanisms that make timing important for athletes: gastric emptying, blood sugar control, glycogen replenishment, and muscle protein synthesis.

I cover the "3-window system" - a practical framework for food selection around training and competition.

I cover when to start using intraworkout carbs, what actually constitutes full glycogen depletion, and when an aggressive 1.2 g/kg/hour refueling protocol is necessary.

As far as protein timing, while the post-training anabolic window appears largely busted, spreading protein evenly across the day is still a best practice.

Enjoy!

---

Training Camp

October 9th-11th, 2026

Dallas, TX

CrossFit Luna
11488 Luna Rd
Farmers Branch, TX 75234

Come train with us: https://paul-b-weber.kit.com/products/training-camp

Send us Fan Mail

Training Camp

October 9th-11th, 2026

Dallas, TX

CrossFit Luna
11488 Luna Rd
Farmers Branch, TX 75234

Come train with us: https://paul-b-weber.kit.com/products/training-camp

---

Today I welcome the first guest in the history of the podcast - Conner Custodio.

While I was coaching at the Masters competition, Conner was at the CrossFit Games supporting Gui Malheiros.

I brought Conner on because I was curious what it was like. What did the athletes think about the events? How do they talk to each other? How do they prepare? And I found Conner's perspective insightful.

Before we get to the Games, we start with Conner's path in coaching, including how he ended up coaching for Mayhem (which was very organic) and how a text from Gui days before the Games led to him being at the ranch.

We talk through the week itself — the brutal first day, the swim event that had athletes talking, and just the overall spirit of the 20th year anniversary - including an interaction I had with James FitzGerald that left both of us feeling hopeful about CrossFit.

We get into the programming — things we liked, things we didn't, and the tension between testing fitness and putting on a show people want to watch.

We close on how Conner's coaching has evolved and how he supports athletes holistically today.

You'll also be seeing more of Conner soon — he'll be joining me as a guest teacher at our training camp. If you want to train with us that weekend, which you absolutely should, tap the link below.

https://paul-b-weber.kit.com/products/training-camp