Mainsite Programming // Shut Up & Scribble Ep 22

Taylor Self (00:00):

14 deadlift at 2 25 and then seven reps of a wall walk plus wall facing one minute rest between rounds like sprint rounds ish. So Holly man, then that I did 13, 11, 9, 7, 5 clean and jerk, 1 65 burpee Chester bar and then at the 15 seven rounds for time 11 bench press with seventies 15 GHG sit-ups, annihilated. So then I went mountain biking later that day I went for like a 60 minute mountain bike and

JR Howell (00:29):

This yesterday.

Taylor Self (00:30):

Yeah. And the whole time my left tricep is cramping up every time I straightened my arm out on the bike.

JR Howell (00:36):

Sounds like you may have done more than you needed to do yesterday.

Taylor Self (00:40):

Probably a lot of pressing for sure. Maybe did a little more than I needed

JR Howell (00:44):

To do. I did the class workout with Jason. I dunno if you saw it. It was two rounds for max reps. It was three minute stations.

Taylor Self (00:51):

Three, yep, yep, yep. Love that.

JR Howell (00:52):

We just took the one minute rest out. He got there kind of late and I had the kids and I was like, hey, we’re just going to do, we’re just going to go 30 minutes, 30 minutes straight. And it was still good because it was one works, one rest and then I did dumbbell bench to bar intervals. That’s a good combo. And then did my strict pullups and pushups later.

Taylor Self (01:11):

That’s a good combo.

JR Howell (01:14):

I did one HILLER’S programming workouts this morning. What was

Taylor Self (01:18):

It?

JR Howell (01:18):

A 10 minute amrap? 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. 12 kettlebell swings American with a 70 and pushups.

Taylor Self (01:26):

Oh, how long?

JR Howell (01:28):

10 minutes.

Taylor Self (01:28):

Nice. Nice. That’s simple, easy. Continue to ascend or just 2, 4, 6 8, 10 12, 4 14. Repeat

JR Howell (01:35):

Simple. Not easy.

Taylor Self (01:41):

Did it continue to? Yes. Okay.

JR Howell (01:44):

It keeps

Taylor Self (01:44):

Up. Is main site a great program to follow? Is my apple mouse working? Yeah. Here we go.

JR Howell (01:56):

Alright, so you were working, we’re going to get into B’S a couple weeks today. We did Dave’s last week. We will continue and do Ben’s the following week. I don’t know, next week we’ll see competition starts next

Taylor Self (02:07):

Friday. Yeah, we might not do a show next week, but then after we got to do our Howie program for our gym show, I really want to do that, but we’ll review Ben and then I don’t know how I feel out about reviewing Dale King. It’s just a fucking hero every day. So do I even it’s not,

JR Howell (02:26):

I still think we should do it and it might actually be a really good experiment for us to do because we can go into it with the premise that we know hero workouts are already programmed as is and is there a way that you could possibly just take two weeks straight and make it what we would consider a really well-rounded program?

Taylor Self (02:51):

I think you could could with heroes, but I don’t think that has been the start with this guy.

JR Howell (02:58):

It would be good to look into. It would be good. Just be like, hey, three out of the first five days there was running or because they’re all

Taylor Self (03:05):

30

JR Howell (03:05):

Minutes, a lot of hero workouts have a ton of running and today’s was an interval, right? So you have to look for those. When you look for the hero workouts, different formats, most of them, like you said, are long grinders for the most

Taylor Self (03:16):

Part. Okay, so Boaz went from, well real quick, we were just talking about the season changes and it seems so ridiculous to me that they would claim that switching the open from five weeks to three weeks is better on affiliates and those are the guardrails that they’re using to make their decisions is let’s make things easier on affiliates, then expand quarterfinals to top 25%. How in the fuck does that make things easier for affiliates? I mean what me and you were just talking about. So that just seems like a ridiculous claim

JR Howell (03:55):

And I mean I listened to Adrian and Chase’s podcast right before we went on yesterday to kind of give our initial reactions and there was a lot in there that I could jive with and I really did agree with trying to make things a little bit more simple, trying to make the season almost broken down into month blocks where you’re like, okay, cool. March is going to be for the open, April’s going to be for quarters, May’s going to be for semis in June,

(04:21):

But keeping it three weeks for affiliates and I’m sure they reached out to a ton of affiliates. I don’t remember getting a survey of asking how quarterfinals went, asking if there was any feedback. I don’t remember getting one of those, but I imagine they reached out to a lot of affiliates that probably had a ton of participation in both the open and quarters. No they didn’t. One of the thing that was really surprising to me is the lag in between open and quarters was there feedback that one week in between was not enough to recoup and rally the troops again as far as volunteers go for judges or figuring out a schedule because now there’s almost a month in between. That was a huge thing that stood out to me. It’s like, hey, I don’t like the 25%. I think it makes it too easy to attain stupid, but if your reasoning behind it is hey, quarters is almost a continuation of the open, okay, fine. If you don’t want to make the open five weeks and you want to make quarters just kind of a continuation of the open for the people that are better, then just continue it the following week or just leave it one week in between. Now there’s almost a month, so you get ramped up for the open, you do three

Taylor Self (05:36):

Weeks come

JR Howell (05:37):

Down, people move on up. You got to wake another three weeks until okay, now we got to do the quarters. Then you wait another, there’s some stuff in between there, right? Teams will start a little earlier for semis and stuff like that. But yeah, there were some parts of it that definitely made me scratch my head and yeah, yesterday I was a little frustrated probably just because the constant change and trying to make plans selfishly running a competition that I choose to do there kind of in the middle of that season is difficult. And knowing dates well in advance makes it a lot easier. We still don’t know the exact dates for semifinals, but we can kind of estimate when those will be. But then also too, yeah, just thinking to myself, man, I have a really fit gym. I have a ton of people that want to compete now I’m just going to have a ton more people that have to set aside time accommodate to make sure it’s legit because I don’t know how other gyms do it, but I mean you have to have a registered judge and that’s not just like a okay cool, judge them and then you can put me down as your judge.

(06:42):

No, it’s like you have to have that if you are going to get videos set up, it’s got to be legit. There’s nothing worse as a competitor then thinking you set up a video and learning that something wasn’t and you have to redo the workout because then not only does the athlete have to do the workout again, the judge has to judge it again. All that stuff has to

Taylor Self (07:03):

Happen and just any claim that they make that, Hey, we listen to your feedback, we’re doing this for you, blah blah blah. It just is not true. And I have no qualms about being fucking blunt and hard about this because it’s just fucking ridiculous expanding to 25% a gosh, just the claim that hey, we switched from a five week open to a three-week open to make it easier on affiliates. Okay, that’s a good claim, but now make it 10 times harder during quarterfinals because like you said, it’s not going to fall on the athlete to say, oh, it’s my job to get a registered judge, it’s going to be my job to take the floors off. No, these people are paying a monthly membership at their affiliate and the expectation is going to be that if I qualify for quarterfinals, you guys are going to have this set up for me to go.

(07:56):

You’re going to have a judge for me. That might not be right, but that’s going to be most people’s expectations that I pay $160 a month here, I qualified for quarterfinals. When can I go? You tell me when to go. So now you’ve given every coach at every affiliate, 200%, 300%, maybe 400% more fucking work to do during quarterfinals for people that to be honest, have no business doing quarterfinals when the quarterfinals intent is to find the semifinal athlete. Additionally, how the fuck are you going to make programming that can properly find a semi-final athlete, not only in the open division but in the age group division while also being a test that is safely prescribable to 25% of open registrants?

JR Howell (08:47):

Yeah, this is what the

Taylor Self (08:49):

Fuck.

JR Howell (08:49):

This is where the questions really, and we don’t know clearly it’s hard to just kind of wait at this point, but what we know is you’re going from top 25% to top 200 in each age group, which is a lot. You have a lot more leeway for programming, but going from top 25% to top 40 in North American and Europe talking about and having that way broader net of athletes. Yeah, I mean, hey, from a programming standpoint, if they know it and they’re just like, yep, we know it and we’re going to crush it, awesome. But a lot of the feedback last year was, Hey, this is top 10%. The programming was too hard and I understand what they’re coming from when it’s like, Hey, qualify top 10% but I can’t handstand walk that far or I can’t front squat 2 25 from the floor or it had 15 bar muscle ups as the third movement in the last workout and I could only do singles or whatever.

(10:00):

I’m a little bit more like, Hey, after the open, it’s now a competition. It’s not for everyone, it’s not for the community. You qualified for this. And the argument with a lot of people is, well, I qualified for it and I paid to do it. I should be at least able to do the workouts. So now you have 25%, so are all the workouts going to be gated formats? Are all the workouts going to be progressions where they just get harder and harder as the workout goes? Will you have one or two workouts that are just like, Hey, seven minutes of burpees over the bar and that’s going to be one of the workouts. And then another workout is going to be the snatch ladder on 12.2 where it’s just going to be single modality type stuff where you’re just like, Hey, this is simple.

(10:51):

It doesn’t require a lot of setup. All of you can play, all of you can snatch 75 pounds, but then some of you may not be able to snatch over 1 35 and that’s how we’re going to filter. I mean I’m really interested to see how they run it and if it’s still five workouts, they gave an extra day for testing, does that mean we’re going to have more scored workouts or does that mean that you’re just going to have more days to redo because that’s probably going to be the case more days for people to redo

Taylor Self (11:14):

And think about this. They’re going to potentially. Last year we saw what I thought was a step up in the programming. I liked last year’s programming a ton Love score finals last year where there was a lot of strength element tested not on its own with the assumption that hey, there are some people here who are super strong that probably don’t deserve to show that strength because they’re not fit enough to now you’ve expanded the field, the 25% with Dave back. Are we going to go back to a strength test where that just held my tongue a little bit, where that athlete at your affiliate who is an

JR Howell (11:48):

Ex for an front squat thing?

Taylor Self (11:49):

Yeah, like right, are you going to have that athlete at your affiliate who can’t run a mile but somehow qualified in the top 25% and now they can just skew the leaderboard? And if that’s the case, then CrossFit’s showing a blatant disregard for the people that work really hard to be at semifinals or work really hard to make 10% in the open or they just simply don’t give a fuck about you. And the only six people they care about in competitive CrossFit are 1, 2, 3 on the men’s side and 1, 2, 3 on the women’s side, which if it’s going to be a professional sport, that can’t be the case. And I also hate this notion, I just want to bring this up before we move on. I disagree So wholeheartedly, we have a membership base at our gym. I wouldn’t even call it the base. We have an amazing variety of young people and old people, young people who don’t have any fucking clue about competing in CrossFit and old people who have watched Andy do it in the master’s division, Greg do it in the master’s division. Spencer qualify as an individual for eight years me, and they’re invested in that competitive atmosphere despite the open being a community event for them. I don’t think there is a competitive affiliate and an everyday affiliate. I think they are one and the same.

(13:12):

Yeah, it’s just the way CrossFit is making decisions right now. Anyone justifying that It’s for the betterment of affiliates and it’s for the betterment of the athletes and it’s for the betterment of the community. And quite frankly, that’s not at the top of their priority list anymore. Greg’s not the owner of the business. It’s private equity and that means the priority likely is financial, which sucks. So we can carry the torch though.

JR Howell (13:39):

So yeah, once again, what kind of implications it has. We’ve already kind of discussed, hey, it’s top 40 now. It was top 60. It’s going to be a lot harder for those fringe semifinalists money last year, sorry, last year, yesterday. I want to say that, and I’m sorry if I’m misquoting this. Bethany Flores and Yellow Hosta would not have made their semifinal had they been using the top 40. So I mean huge implications. Not only

Taylor Self (14:07):

It was 10th of the games, right?

JR Howell (14:11):

I think that’s right. Yeah. Or top

Taylor Self (14:12):

10, what

JR Howell (14:13):

The fuck? Fuck are they thinking? While the masters divisions are expanding greatly and they’re taking 40 and they’re taking 30 and 20 to the games, 40 for teams as well, which I think is awesome. It’s giving them their own competition. They’re going to be a full fields, they’re going to have a ton of participation. Great move. While a lot of people will argue, hey, the people who are 41st through 60th at their semifinal, they were just kind of happy to be there to compete. Yes, they were. And for a lot of them that’s a lifelong goal and for a lot of people that’s a huge accomplishment. But maybe the thought process behind it was, do we really need these 20 more spots, didn’t they? You miss out on some outliers For sure. And Chase brought up this point on their show yesterday, would those athletes that we aforementioned, would they have taken the quarterfinals process more seriously as far as redoing workouts, doing everything they could to make sure that they’re clearly above the cut line? Maybe we don’t know that, but chances are this year especially, there’ll be names that we all recognize that don’t even make semifinals. That’s tough. The top 40 is really tough.

Taylor Self (15:21):

And I can say this, I would bet my fucking life that yellow host day did not pull back in any sort of way during quarterfinals. I would bet a lot that every workout he was all fucking in on and he probably just really struggled with a workout like the front squat workout or a workout like the heavy, clean and jerk workout.

JR Howell (15:42):

Well, all I know is I know from a programming from having respect in the community and among other coaches and athletes, I think his coach Andre Day is about as good as you can ask for for sure. Absolutely. So I’m sure he’s taken all this information and if you have an athlete like him and I lump you and some other people into this group where it’s never going to be, if you get to the games, will you do well because you’re good at things that are only tested at the games. It’s just getting to the games every year is stressful and it’s like depending on what the programming is that comes out, you could go one way or the other. So someone like him, in a lot of ways, the quarters and the semis are a more stressful time than actually getting to the games. So when you get to the games, you can do things that a lot of other people can’t

Taylor Self (16:32):

Question. When they shrunk the North American and Europe semifinals to 40, was that to add space to other places?

JR Howell (16:40):

So they actually took some spots away from the three

Taylor Self (16:46):

You would call disqualifying spots,

JR Howell (16:48):

The strong No, no, no, just the semi-final spots. And then they actually moved them to the what some people would call less competitive regions,

Taylor Self (16:56):

Meaning like I’m confused.

JR Howell (16:58):

So more people are making it in the other regions and less are making it in the North Americas and in Europe.

Taylor Self (17:10):

So how many total will go in the other regions,

JR Howell (17:14):

The games allocation spots? I’m not sure, but semifinals if that change. But there’ll be bigger semifinal fields if that makes sense.

Taylor Self (17:22):

Yeah, but in which regions do you have that info or should I pull this up?

JR Howell (17:26):

I don’t have it on me, but you can look it up easily and see it. Okay,

Taylor Self (17:30):

Here we go.

JR Howell (17:31):

I don’t want to misspeak. I know it’s forties for those three.

Taylor Self (17:37):

I just want to be right when I shit on this part of the update season structure by division semifinals are the final qualifying stage for athletes hoping to compete at the CrossFit games. The top 40 men and 40 individual women from each women from each region will compete first

JR Howell (17:55):

Except for all the regions. There you go.

Taylor Self (17:57):

But wasn’t it already? I’m confused. Were the fields smaller before? Was it 30 in other regions?

JR Howell (18:06):

Were there 40 in Africa with Michelle? I don’t think there were 40. I thought maybe it was 20 there. 20 or 30.

Taylor Self (18:13):

Let me look it up. Leaderboard.

JR Howell (18:18):

So yeah, and then also too, we will get more information probably when the rule book comes out as far as how this affects

Taylor Self (18:27):

30

JR Howell (18:27):

Strength of field, how it affects worldwide ranking, all that kind of stuff. Because you have to still assume that they’re going to use that system to allocate games, qualifying spots, so like where North America, east may get 11 and North America West may get nine, maybe this year it flips and West is stronger after quarterfinals. Do they still use the top 100 worldwide in quarterfinals to decide to strength the field? All that information I’m sure will be tweaked a little bit and will probably come out.

Taylor Self (18:59):

It makes zero sense to me why they would shave North America, east, west and Europe to 40 spots to add 10 spots to Asia, Africa and South America. Noah,

JR Howell (19:15):

Is it just simply like the whole global representation thing, the whole trying to push it in areas that it’s still got that buzz more so than here. I don’t know,

Taylor Self (19:25):

DEI, that’s ADEI move. Do you care about the athletes that are the best or do you want to look like you’re being equal and representing everyone equally? It shouldn’t be about representing every country equally. It should be about representing the talent equally, representing the depth of field with equity. Wow, this is just a,

JR Howell (19:49):

Alright, we’re 20 minutes in, let’s get into boss parking. What

Taylor Self (19:50):

A fuck show. All right. Anyways, to reiterate, what a fuck show. Okay, and those are not jr’s opinions, those are mine. Just to clarify, alright, Oz’s programming you started on September 11th, that is

JR Howell (20:10):

Perfect, perfect day for a hero workout of

Taylor Self (20:11):

Choice, perfect day for a hero. And he said hero workout of your choice. So we can’t really analyze anything there. I think that’s cool. I like that.

JR Howell (20:19):

You know what I think is cool? This is very small, but typically on.com you’ll see hero work out of your choice. That’s what it’ll say. And you’ll say you can find the list here. Maybe this is Boz, maybe this is not, but I think it’s really cool that he wrote review a list of heroes and honor one with an all out effort.

(20:43):

And even that looks like Boz wrote it himself like, Hey, don’t just do the hero workout. Do it like you’re trying to honor this person. Don’t hold anything back. Do it as hard as you possibly can because that’s one thing when we do hero workouts at the gym this week is a big hero week for us. We’re doing McCluskey tomorrow, which I know is one of your favorites because Caroline, one of our members served with him who’s killed in action. We’re doing Chad on Sunday for Veteran’s Day on Saturday. On Saturday we’re doing a Marine Corps birthday workout. We’ve got a lot of former Marines and then Sunday we’ll do Chad. So this week is there’s a lot of hero workouts going on and something that I always tell him when we do hear our workouts is, Hey, here’s the deal. You don’t whine and complain about it and you go until you’re finished. There is no time cap. That’s it. Finish what you start. That’s it.

Taylor Self (21:35):

Cool. Love it. Next day, this is a classic strength format for.com and we’re not only going to see this in the form of a squat, but later on we’re going to see this in the form of going overhead. Typically, if I remember correctly, the format here is flip flopped, where usually it’s your most volume per set is for the back squat, the moderate volume for front squat, lowest volume for overhead squat so that the weights stay almost, there’s less disparity between weight, right? You can overhead squat for five, a whole lot less than what you can overhead squat or what you can back squat for one. Whereas if the overhead squat were five reps, or sorry if the back squat were five reps and the overhead squat were one rep, they’d be a lot closer.

JR Howell (22:16):

I like this format better. You

Taylor Self (22:18):

Do?

JR Howell (22:19):

Yeah. I like starting, I grooving the squat with the most technical one and then going for the really, really, really heavy single efforts on the one where you really don’t have to think and be technical at all. Do you remember if Rich was the one that they made a video on doing this or was he doing the flip-flop? It’s a really old school video, but it’s one of the ones I remember Rich doing. I’m pretty sure it’s front squat, back squat, overhead squat.

Taylor Self (22:48):

You mean back squat, front squat, overhead squat. Yes, I think so as well. Yeah, that’s what I believe. Cool. Love it.

JR Howell (22:55):

This is smart too. You don’t know what people are going to pick. Someone may have done Randy on Monday, someone may have done Murph, someone may have done Klepto, someone may have done Clovis. There’s so many different workouts that people could have picked. So doing a classic heavy day is a really good move from like, Hey, let’s be safe and let’s not program a million pull-ups after someone did 200 the day before. I think a strength day after a choose your own adventure type day is a really good move.

Taylor Self (23:29):

This is a question I want to bring up in general. In general to this point, I think three out of the four have been good programs to follow fitness-wise. I think the one we are currently on seems like there’s quite enough variance for me to be called.com CrossFit. I think to this point, Dave Boz and Ben have all given what they think is best for a general like AGPP fitness program, and I don’t think that what the guy programming now, I don’t think, it seems to me like he’s saying we’re going to do this because we’re leading up to Veterans Day. We’re going to do a hero every day. But is that the right call for a gpp.com program? I don’t know. I wouldn’t call that, Hey, this is a great program to follow. There are military programs out there or you can just fucking do a hero every day. So I think to a degree it probably is a little bit of a gimmick to get eyes on.com programming

JR Howell (24:29):

From an eyes on standpoint. I think it’s a great move. I have been more, I wouldn’t say I’ve been paying attention more. I look at.com every day. I make little notes when I see things that are kind of like, huh, like the hip extension toes to bar workout. I just made a note of that. I was like, that’s about as classic.com programming as it gets. And that’s an amazing stimulus that I never do and I should probably do that. I look at.com for knowledge for sure and guidance a lot of times. That being said, I have paid attention more to the workouts, but more so who’s programming them than I have the actual workouts. I’ve looked at the workouts more so as Dave Voz Ben than I have. Just looking at the programming for what it is. So maybe knowing it going into it. I thought about this, what if they would’ve done the two weeks and then told you on the last day, the last two weeks have been programmed by Adrian Bosman.

Taylor Self (25:29):

That would be cool. I think what we’re on now, you would be able to look at it and be like, what the fuck? Who’s programming this a hero every day.

JR Howell (25:37):

But you would wonder though, is it Dave doing it? It would give it a little bit more suspense and a little bit more like, you know what? I had this bias in my head. For instance, let’s just say Rich is one of the guest programmers. I remember Dave saying that they would definitely ask him and if he was interested, they would love for him to do it. What if you got richest programming for a couple weeks and you found out it was his and all the preconceived notions that people had about how rich programs were just like, whoa, I never would’ve thought this was richest. That would be pretty cool to learn after the fact.

Taylor Self (26:14):

Okay, next day rowing intervals. So we’ve got whatever you want as a hero. Heavy day mono structural. Typically with a hero, you’re getting a blend of movements. It’s not just like single modality. So we’ll say a blended CrossFit workout that’s probably a grinder, A heavy day, single modality intervals in the rower. I like the row intervals so far, so good thoughts there. And this is another big intensity day. This is a workout where it is really easy to just bury yourself in the dirt.

JR Howell (26:47):

Yeah, and once again, there’s so many unknowns with that first day of programming that if you picked one, is it manion that’s got the sets of 29 back squats in it? Yes.

Taylor Self (26:59):

Back squat, farmers carry is it?

JR Howell (27:01):

What if you pick that and your legs are just trashed and you come in and you got to go heavy,

Taylor Self (27:08):

You take a rest day, brother.

JR Howell (27:09):

The row is exactly, it’s probably one of the only things you would even think about wanting to do. And then also too, if you did Tommy V, right? If you did something

Taylor Self (27:19):

Shorter, rope climb thruster.

JR Howell (27:20):

Yep. Yeah, you did something shorter on the first day. Again, I think the way that the two single modality days are put back to back and after a day where you’re not really sure what people are going to get themselves into is a perfect call. Now after this rest day, anything goes, you shouldn’t have to worry about anything else. Two days ago you just sat on the rower, you went hard, you buried yourself, but there’s not a lot of repercussion, there’s not a lot of loading on the body. All that stuff you can recover from. So going into Friday, like I said, it’s almost like a new week in the same week.

Taylor Self (27:57):

Yep. Thursday rest, day three on one off. Then following that up with a twist on a CrossFit classic. This I think is cool. It’s a death by burpee, but you’re going every two minutes and you’re buying in with a 200 meter run and you’re adding two burpees every round. So I suspect a great score on this workout, like 33 maybe. You think that’s possible? 31.

JR Howell (28:27):

This is one of the ones that I feel like I would need to feel, and I think if I had to guess, I would either go way under or way over. I would either underestimate it

Taylor Self (28:37):

Or overestimate it really

JR Howell (28:39):

Overestimate it. Now, I think I watched the video of Baz talking about this, and this is also classic Baz. From what we’ve seen from him, from a programming standpoint, we know that he loves to govern your intensity by making you go harder than you want to go. And he said something about this, he was like, you know what? There’s a couple of different ways you can do this. And one of ’em I’m not as fond of, you can run the 200 slowly, you can do the burpees slowly and just kind of game it. He’s like, what I would recommend you do is you run hard and you go right to the five burpees and you do ’em fast, and then you rest and you run hard again. And then you go right into the seven, you run hard again. You go right into the nine and you see how long you can hold that intensity versus just gaming it. You see what I’m saying?

Taylor Self (29:25):

I think 33 is off. I think 23 to 27 would be nuts. Hey, fuck off tank. I’m going to go do this workout and I’ll do 33 tomorrow. I’ll video it.

JR Howell (29:39):

I like that. One thing about this workout, I need to be told, my members need to be told. You need to be told what kind of burpee to do. So if you are going to extend arms straight or.

The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.

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