Programming For Affiliates ft. Andrew Hiller | Shut Up & Scribble Ep 4

Taylor Self (00:01):

Wow. All right, cool. Today, uh, we don’t have Will Branstetter kicking off the show for us, so we’re gonna kick it off. But we got Hiller here and JR. And, uh, today we’re gonna be doing the second episode in the series where we’re talking about programming. Uh, last week we talked about kind of competitive athletes to a degree, and today we are gonna be talking about programming for an affiliate, which both Hiller and Jr have quite an extensive repertoire

Andrew Hiller (00:29):

To fall back on. I was just on Reddit. I was just on Reddit, <laugh>, they opened it back up, <laugh> and I was reading something about how there isn’t enough of this, ironically

Taylor Self (00:41):

Enough of

Andrew Hiller (00:43):

Talking about the affiliates. Yeah, yeah. Everyone care. Yeah. It was like, what, what, what media is missing in the space? And it was something about needing more talk about the affiliates.

Taylor Self (00:53):

Yeah. It’s interesting. I feel like I don’t really ever hear how to program for an affiliate, aside from the programming online course on crossfit.com, which is, you know, you know, is pretty basic. But I don’t know, are there a lot of shows or a lot of people just kind of talking about how they, there’s like nothing out there, which is crazy.

Andrew Hiller (01:13):

What, what route do you guys wanna take with this, by the way? So, I, I got so many avenues. I

JR Howell (01:18):

Think what would be good to talk about first is what are the pros and cons of programming for your own gym for your people? Because it’s become a lot more popular for people to outsource that. And you still have some people that hold onto that responsibility. And I think above all, they really enjoy it. Yeah. I think if you don’t enjoy the programming side of it, if you’re not somewhat of an artist in that regard, it would be really easy and probably smarter for time spent to outsource it to someone else who you, who you trust to do it well. So like Hilary, you were programming for your gym, I guess before there was a ton of other training camps offering affiliate programming. Do you remember the ones that were available and did you ever consider doing something like that?

Andrew Hiller (02:08):

CompTrain was around and that was the one where people would have it shuttled to their inboxes email every day. And they’d go, Hey, did you see this? And they’d open up their Gmail account and then I remember people were doing, what’s, what’s the, uh, that hardcore dude

JR Howell (02:22):

Outlaw way?

Andrew Hiller (02:23):

That’s it. Yes. I don’t even know if it’s hardcore as much as the name is hardcore. Um, and outside of that, not very much. Is that what you were kind of alluding to? There wasn’t much to pick from.

JR Howell (02:35):

Yeah. And how many years ago was that, that you were responsible for?

Andrew Hiller (02:37):

2015 is when I took on programming at the affiliate.

JR Howell (02:41):

So in eight years you’ve seen like, I mean I, I can think of, you could probably name off 10 right off the bat of people that offer um, 60 minute class style structure, you know, including cap. Yeah. Um, workouts for their gym. So

Taylor Self (02:57):

Which started as like one of those 10 CAP started as like this

JR Howell (03:02):

Is hand plan, right?

Taylor Self (03:03):

Yeah. So when we talk about, when we talk about this, like when I started smtp, I was like, oh, I’ll do it for affiliates too. And it’s so much work to program for other affiliates. Uhhuh <affirmative>. Why, why, why? I think one, I like a really personal approach. Like I was talking to every affiliate once a week and like helping them out with one. If you write a general program for all gyms, it’s really hard to capitalize on what they have available at their specific facility. So like talking with a gym once a week to help adjust workouts to what they have available and what they’re capable of doing. Yeah. Massive but so much fucking work. Um, and I, long story short, it’s so much work and I started it cuz, or I wanted to do it, I was like, wow, hand plan killed it and like maybe we could turn into something like that and then hand plan got bought by Cap or CrossFit and turned into Cap and then they released that they’re going to offer it with the affiliate fee.

(04:00):

And I’m like, nah, fuck that. I’m not gonna try to compete with that. <laugh> they included in the affiliate fee and Cap gives you like the PDF document you get for a week of cap programming. You could probably read it for like four hours. Lesson plans, scaling modifications, videos for movements. It’s unbelievable and insanely valuable. But I think long story short, it’s just really hard to program for other gyms and be like, oh, I can be creative. I can do exactly what I want. I know how fit my members are and what they’re capable of. And really equipment, I think, I think more than anything it’s equipment in your space and how you can utilize it and be creative.

JR Howell (04:37):

Yeah, and I think the, the,

(04:40):

The biggest piece of advice I would give anyone that does program for their gym or that maybe is going to open up a new gym and wants to take on that responsibility is maybe the same thing that makes it so difficult to program for other people’s communities. You have to know the community you’re programming for. Yeah. You have to. That’s the number one thing. So if I get on and start rattling off all the principles that I try to include in a week’s programming, Hiller may say, well, you know what? Like that won’t fly at my gym. My average clientele is someone that works out two to three days a week and is the ages of, uh, 35 and 55 and don’t have competitive aspirations and don’t like to be in the gym six to seven days a week. So the way we program should be completely different. What we program should be different. The degree in which we program certain skills and intensities and volume and all that should vary. So when you’re giving that to someone else without knowing the bodies that are walking into their doors every day, it makes it tough. And then you’re wondering, I wonder if his, I wonder if their members are enjoying this. I wonder if they’re hitting the stimulus that I want them to hit because I wonder what kind of athletes are at that gym. It, it makes it really unknown.

Taylor Self (05:54):

I have a leading question for Hiller. So well starts with JR Jr how many times a month do you program muscle ups for your gym?

JR Howell (06:04):

A month? Yeah. Uh, well, you know, some months there, four weeks, some months there. Five. So at least, so once a week,

Taylor Self (06:12):

At least once a week. I, I would say we program Muscle ups, me and Andy program together for our gym once every two to three weeks. And there are maybe 10 to 15 out of our like 220 ish members that can do muscle ups reliably in a workout. How many in your gym JR? Uh,

JR Howell (06:33):

Ring?

Taylor Self (06:34):

Yeah.

JR Howell (06:37):

30 to 40.

Taylor Self (06:38):

Do you think that’s Hiller? Do you think that’s a bi I’m just so curious. Do you think that’s a byproduct of the programming or do you think his programming attracts that type of person to the gym versus like, like that’s a question I’ve thought about like, because Andy, before I programmed with Andy, he would, we would never see Mu Loves fucking, he loves Deadlift Heavy Day.

Andrew Hiller (06:57):

What percentage of your gym is that? Cause you said 10 to 20 Jr said 30. Is that equally about maybe 10 to 20% of your membership?

Taylor Self (07:06):

I have probably like, it’s probably like 5% of our membership can do Muscle Loves. I feel like in jr’s gym it’s probably like 20 to 30, maybe more.

Andrew Hiller (07:13):

That’s okay. That that’s, that’s important because you guys gave numbers, but I didn’t know like the relative number. Yeah, I would say it’s a byproduct of time. How long has Charlotte been open for?

Taylor Self (07:24):

Dude? 2006.

Andrew Hiller (07:26):

Oh, and how long have you been programming for and been at the helm?

Taylor Self (07:29):

Oh, not long. Like, like, uh, eight months maybe.

Andrew Hiller (07:36):

And JR maybe, maybe longer JR you and crash how long?

JR Howell (07:39):

Eight years.

Andrew Hiller (07:40):

And in eight years maybe your numbers will be approaching that 20%.

Taylor Self (07:44):

Okay. That’s that’s, that’s a good, that’s a good, okay. I like that. That’s a good way to put it.

Andrew Hiller (07:48):

Perhaps. And I don’t know if that’s maybe your intention, maybe that that’s not the way you set it up.

Taylor Self (07:53):

I definitely think like, hey, if there’s something you, you know, this is like a Glassman quote, but your difficulties describe your needs. Like if you can’t do something, that’s something you should be working on. I believe in that. I also know that we definitely have a bit of an older population and these people just have no interest in doing a mu you know what I mean? Like, they, they’re, they’re like, I start a CrossFit to get off the couch and get healthy and I’m 50 a 55 year old dude, I don’t have any interest in doing a muscle up or hey, fuck an 80, 80 year old woman in one of our classes named Brenda. She just has no interest in that, which is cool. But I, but yeah.

Andrew Hiller (08:27):

Well, jr tell me if I’m wrong, maybe there are some people in a similar position as Taylor, but spend enough time in the environment where every single day you strive for just a little bit more and you might accidentally end up doing muscle ups if you’re just kinda coached along the right path.

JR Howell (08:42):

Yeah, I think I, I think a lot of times what it takes is appeared. I appear that you see yourself, um, equal to like similar scores, similar weights, similar skills, and then one day that person’s just like, I think I can do one of those. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. And you give ’em a couple cues and they do it and then the person who watches them is like, oh no, well if if they can do it, then I know I can. They really had no intention of learning it, but because they saw someone that they saw as like a Oh yeah. You know, we always do rope climbs with legs together. We never do legless. It’s all good. But then one day they’re like, I think I could climb it legless cuz I can do a bunch of strict pull-ups and they do it and before you know it, three other people are trying to get a legless rope climb and that’s how it starts. Yeah. So I think a lot of times it can just be from coaches, right? It’s not always prompted by the coach. I don’t think

Taylor Self (09:34):

We’ve, we’ve drifted to that. We’ve just drifted in that direction, which I like. I I, to go back to the original programming for other gyms versus programming for yourself. I do not miss trying to program for other gyms. I love programming in general, but it’s just so difficult. It is so difficult when you’re not there and you’re like, feet aren’t on the ground. You’re not inside the affiliate. You don’t know the members. You don’t know how their gym is laid

Andrew Hiller (09:55):

On. You do not do that right now. You don’t? No. Okay. JR you do not either.

JR Howell (10:00):

No, I don’t program for other gyms.

Andrew Hiller (10:01):

And have you, have you ever, you’ve tried it Taylor?

Taylor Self (10:04):

I tried it, uh, yeah, I tried it and it went well for a while and then it was just like,

Andrew Hiller (10:10):

How does that end up being a final? You, you’re not doing it anymore.

Taylor Self (10:15):

Um, one gym left and I was like, man, wait. We weren’t getting a lot of like new interest in it. I didn’t have a like a big, I didn’t have a good system in place. Like I, I basically was programming on a Google doc and sharing that because the programming platform that I have doesn’t have a system in place to distribute for affiliates. It’s more like individual people. Um, I didn’t have a big enough base to go to sugar wide and be like, Hey, let, let me distribute my programming through you without them fuck in the ass. Pricewise probably, um, one person fell off and then CAP was like, Hey, this is gonna be included in your affiliate fee. And I’m like, fuck. All right Spencer, you take the dub here. Um, I’m out <laugh> Andy’s son who’s one of the, he runs CAP for CrossFit him. Got it. Hobar. Yeah.

Andrew Hiller (11:08):

I’ve always had this thing about, I’ve had people ask you, Hey, can you program for my affiliate? It’s the entire sentiment that you guys just pitched up, which was, I don’t know what you’ve got. I don’t know the vibe and the current status of your affiliate fitness level. I don’t know what each and every class looks like. Because when I would program for the affiliate, I would sit there and I would think, okay, I got this. I called, I mean people have used the term avatars in the past. Here’s an avatar, here’s an avatar, and just a subset of person that you imagine going through the workout as they’re doing it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and maybe there’s three of ’em in my affiliate, but the three in either of you two affiliate or anyone else over the course of however 15,000 many affiliates, they could look very different. And it takes a lot of energy to figure out who those three avatars could be while they’re going through these workouts. Yeah. And then I remember when I left my affiliate, they jumped on shock. And one of the last things that I did over there is I got 10 skiers and I had a member talk to me and they go, Hey, you’ve been gone eight months and we’ve used the skiers one time on a Saturday because it was a random workout and I’d go 10 skiers, they’re going into waste.

Taylor Self (12:12):

Yeah, that’s,

Andrew Hiller (12:14):

And that’s what happens when you don’t have somebody in house.

Taylor Self (12:16):

Yeah. Programming. Like we have, we have 12 gds now and uh, most like JR you have a shit type gds. Yeah. 12 and most affiliates don’t. They’ve got like one or two.

Andrew Hiller (12:28):

Oh see. And we have two. Yeah, you program sit ups for us and you program for your affiliate and we jump aboard like, how do we fit, uh, 15 people onto 12 2 2

Taylor Self (12:36):

G. Exactly. Exactly. But we do ’em man, we do gds once a week or, or definitely once every two weeks and all of our members could do ’em. So I think that’s a, you know, going back to the muscle up thing, like if you put it there and people see it often enough, they’re gonna be able to do it. But, and then we have this, this other thing we have like outside of our building, we have this grass hill that’s like maybe 50 feet long and it’s just fucking straight up. Oh, cool dude. Andy. Yeah, Andy love. We do like hill runs like every Saturday. People love them, but you can’t program that stuff. Other affiliates, I think that’s why people fall in love with CrossFit. They come to a place where like, holy shit, I never would’ve thought to do this. Yeah. Whereas you have this general program that’s programming the same stuff each week because they know everyone can do it and you lose that flavor.

JR Howell (13:20):

Yeah. It’s really cool. I think if you program for your own gym to take advantage of things that your gym has that you know, other people don’t like, you guys have that hill, you have that really big flat open parking lot in the back where you could do like prowler sprints within in the summer and you can do you have access to stuff like that? I have the turf where I can do as much sled work as I want. And it’s one of the like main principles, part of my affiliate programming is like we are going to push reverse drag for drag the sled every single week. Yeah. And just recently someone came up to me and they said, you know, I hear about some people saying their shoulders nag them occasionally. And some people will talk about maybe their low back every now and then, depending on what they’ve done extra for a lot of people that, that competitive train.

(14:05):

But you don’t hear many people gripe about their knees and you know, I think it’s all the sled work that we do. Yeah. And I’m like, yeah, I, I think that there is a lot to that. Obviously Ben Patrick’s a big proponent of doing that kind of stuff as like warmups and cool down. But something like using the sled, whether you reverse drag it heavy with eight plates or you push it or you, or you do whatever with it in a partner workouts or individual workouts is, there is no eccentric loading. So unlike really heavy squats or or heavy pulls from the floor, you’re not getting the opportunity to get really, really sore or injure yourself. Like some of those other things. Yeah. So where a lot of people hate the sled, if I don’t program it in a week for some reason they’re like, what’s up no sled this week?

(14:49):

Like, are we doing it Sunday for burn? What’s going on? Like same way with G H D, same thing. So your, your clients get used to what you give them and uh, at least mine, they’ll call me out if I’m not consistent. Like if, uh, we do strict pulling of some kind every single week. That’s one of the things I try to make sure we hit because CrossFit has so much pressing in so many different planes, burpees, pushups, dips, overhead, pressing handstand movements, uh, bench press, um, all that. And there’s not a ton of pulling. Right. You’ve got rope climbs, you’ve got pull-ups, you’ve got some other hanging movements, but they’re straight arm, right? Correct. You’ve got handover hand, which I can use. So strict pulling is a big, big thing that I try to do to keep the shoulders healthy and keep everyone a little bit balanced. And if I don’t program them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, all a lot of my members will mess with me and be like, so legless rope climbs tomorrow. Right. Strict pull-ups tomorrow. Right. Like they know it’s coming. And to me that’s not a bad thing. They, they expect a certain amount of balance and they expect a certain variety of movements and they’re doing that, which is, which is awesome.

Andrew Hiller (16:02):

Maybe that’s why a lot of your members can do muscle ups.

JR Howell (16:05):

All the strict pulling maybe

Taylor Self (16:06):

A lot of pulling. Yeah, for sure. Um, all right. I think what I wanted to talk about most on the show was like the process for programming for your gym. Like what, like what does that look like? Do you use a strength template? Do you go through cycles? How do you start with nothing and then end up with a week of program or two weeks or however and how far do you go out in advance or what does that look like? Like how do you sit down and do that? Either you can go, which one of you wants to go first?

JR Howell (16:31):

Hiller you go, you go Andrew.

Andrew Hiller (16:32):

I go Andrew. Okay. I’ve always had this extended view at some sort of a leg strength or into endurance cyclical pattern going. And there was a point in time where I had a little bit of kickback from some members who thought that they knew better about programming than me. And then I took every single, what would’ve been a Monday and I go, do you see the progression over the past 18 months? At any point in time you could’ve jumped in on this and you would’ve seen that. It’s like a six week block here and then there’s a six week block here and they do build off one another. And I think the term is autoregulation. You almost as you coach the class, as you’re in the fight, you’re watching everybody go through it. You can almost say, well the next couple of weeks I wanted to continue building on this progressively heavier sets of 10 every Monday.

(17:18):

But it seems as if everyone’s really getting hammered down. So maybe we’ll switch into a seven and everyone can continue on moving with speed positions on their squats through sevens. And then once you figure out that you’ve tapped out the back squat, we move into a squat or a front squat or a lunge and then you just kind of come back around into the squat. And it’s always the cyclical fashion. And I’ve never had any sort of a template as far as a, when they’re a 5 31 or a conjugate style where you’re using bands and chains. And that would be kind of an accessory slash if you wanted more work or if it was a, to any specific individual at that time, you could throw it at him and say, Hey, here’s some pieces you can throw in. Do this on a day, two or three days removed from Monday where you know the legs are gonna be overloaded. But the big piece there again, is having a sense of how everybody’s doing. Yeah. And then having some sort of an idea of where you were going, because there’s always like eight weeks, you always look at it, but you can always play with it as well. So I’d say eight weeks was about as far as I would ever look

Taylor Self (18:16):

As far as you would ever look. And you would, would you start with like a strength progression and then build off that for your workouts? Was it always like two pieces in a day or, or like two pieces in a class where you had some strength or some sort of lift or accessory and then a workout? Or

Andrew Hiller (18:28):

Did you follow CrossFit football at all turned into power Athlete?

Taylor Self (18:31):

Yeah. With uh, John Welborn. Mm-hmm. And techs, I actually, I did a camp with him. Uh,

Andrew Hiller (18:36):

Did you pick up and kind of hold onto at all the parts where it’s equal parts pushing the pressing, horizontal and vertical and squatting, hinging and lunging are kind of the planes of movement in the lower body? Yeah. I would look at it as hit it heavy, hit it light, maybe hit it light twice depending on the time of year depending on how many times you had pressed or pushed in the other fashion.

Taylor Self (18:56):

So you look at like move, you look at like movement patterns in terms of like upper body push pull.

Andrew Hiller (19:01):

Right. Okay. It’s like we hit the legs heavy twice this week. We did it here and here and then we did it four other times over the course of the week. Metcon strength accessory pieces

Taylor Self (19:13):

And then usually like two pieces in a class or

Andrew Hiller (19:16):

Two pieces. Oh really? Would follow the strength or Olympic lifting or steelwork followed by some sort of conditioning piece workout. And then there, there would be that ever so often double strength piece and the members would freak out, oh, double lift. We’re doing a double lift today guys. No breathing. Everyone would show up and they’d be all about it. <laugh>, it’s almost the opposite. The jrs jr’s like, we’re gonna do this massive cardio session and everyone’s into it. <laugh>. That was my double lift day for people. Ben what? Huh?

Taylor Self (19:45):

How does it look for you JR?

JR Howell (19:46):

Yeah, I think, um, to keep myself honest because I’m not biased to heavy, I will always pick two days a week, two lifts that will do a minimum of six week cycle, maximum of 10. We’re actually in the middle of a 10 week one right now with a pause squat. Yep. And it’s just one that I made up. So I said, all right, everyone pick one front or back squat. You’re gonna do a heavy three for the day of three down three in the bottom, explode up week two, two rep max, three down, three in the bottom and then one rep next three weeks, two down, two in the bottom two down, two in the bottom two down, two in the bottom. And then the last one, three rep, one second pause in the bottom, one second pause in the bottom. One second pause in the bottom. So the 10th week I’ll just tell them to work up to a one rep max with free tempo, no pause at all front or back. And I know most of them will pr

Andrew Hiller (20:40):

What week was that? Did you say 10th week?

JR Howell (20:43):

That’ll be the 10th, yeah. Okay. So 10th week. And then likewise I started deadlift just as like a deadlift emom every Tuesday, fives, fours, threes and then fives, fours, threes again. But you had to go heavier than the first wave of three weeks. Very simple. Getting in some volume but also pulling pretty heavy. They could choose touch and go or drop and go. I like to give a lot of freedom when it comes to stuff like that. Yeah. And then that same week they’ll pull to a heavy and they can do an emom style or they just work up to a heavy single for the day. Or I’ll give them like a 20 minute clock and just say, Hey, you can work up to a heavy single, as heavy as you want to go. Cuz there are some people that have been coming for 8, 9, 10 years that have no interest in wonder at maxing whether they don’t want to compare themselves to a stronger self or because they have no interest in doing it cuz they’ve hurt themselves doing it in the past when the music’s going and they’re looking around and they’re trying to compare.

(21:35):

So as far as strength goes, I usually will pick two, right. Two days minimum. And if there’s a third day, it usually is a gymnastic strength session. Okay. Whether it’s um, strict pull-ups, weighted strict pull-ups, weighted dips, um, something body weight base though. And then, so after the deadlift and squat is over, I’ll pick something complimentary. Right. So pulling squat heavy, so chances are I’ll either do like a push press, a strict press or a bench press one day and then on the other day I’ll do something dynamic like a snatch or a clean maybe from the hang, something like that. Um, so that’s kind of how I do my strength stuff. And then typically what I do is I don’t program very far out. I usually will only have two to three workouts that are set in stone for the week. Yeah. And everything else I do by feel because I do the workout myself.

(22:27):

Yeah. Based on how that day goes. I’m looking around, I’m seeing people, oh man. Like I, I didn’t think that was gonna fatigue my shoulders. My shoulders are shot. Oh, okay. Cool. Good to know. Maybe a bunch of overhead lunges isn’t the best thing for tomorrow then, so I’ll maybe change it to a front rack or something like that. But yeah, that’s, you know, partner workouts every Wednesday and Saturday, which for most gyms is like you do two a week that are partner. And just over the year I found that people really either enjoy it or they know a partner workout is a way to keep a lot of people honest. And what I mean by that is if me and you are going rep for rep and it’s a movement that you can hammer me on, I’m gonna rest far less with you staring at me than I would if I was doing it by myself.

(23:12):

Yeah. Likewise. If there’s a gymnastics movement that you can carry someone else on, Hey, I’m gonna do sets of 10, this person’s gonna do sets of six and we’re both pushing ourselves to our limits. It’s all relative. The intensity, the accumulated volume, all that stuff is relative to our abilities. So while some people occasionally have pushback and been like, I don’t really like the partner workouts, it’s usually a rest day that I take. Most of the people over the course of the eight years that I’ve been programming really have seemed to enjoy the Wednesday Saturday partner

Andrew Hiller (23:47):

Thing. Yeah.

Taylor Self (23:49):

We do when I, so on smtp and the way I like to program is also in kind of that like mid range of like strength block type of stuff. And I would do like a six week block where they have like three lifts each week. So like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday for example. And then each week is pretty like variable, kind of similar to the way both of you said like maybe week ones a tens with a pause here, week twos an eight week threes a six, et cetera. Um, maybe Mondays a squat, Wednesdays a hinge and Fridays like a power Olympic day or a strength. And I’ve done a lot of that on SF TV and I like that. And when we were doing, when I first started with Charlotte, like I did that initially and it just from going from the way Andy programmed, which is very like classic crossfit.com programming course, which is you

Andrew Hiller (24:42):

Talking about build do heavy five for the day and you’re done

Taylor Self (24:46):

Ish. Yeah. Almost like that. Pretty much. Um, you a two

Andrew Hiller (24:48):

K role and you’re done.

Taylor Self (24:50):

Yeah. Yeah. So people almost didn’t like it. Like they almost didn’t like how repetitive it was in terms of, okay, week, week one, day one or Monday’s gonna be a squat, Wednesday’s gonna be a pull, Friday’s gonna be a clean and jerk complex or something like that. Uh, or gymnastics strength pull or press whatever. And week two is the same thing. It might be a li like maybe it’s a wide grip bench on week one and a close grip with a pause on week two or something like that. But they, it was like too repetitive, um, for our jam or for whatever. Maybe they’re just so used to like that classic CrossFit, they didn’t like it. And so the way we do it now is we stay pretty true to like, there’s a heavy day, maybe once a week, um, if not every two weeks, where like, like this past week we had a five by one overhead squat, five by three, front squat, five by five back squat all in the same session similar to.com.

(25:43):

And then the CrossFit, me and Andy sit down and we write like two weeks out. Or we look at, we look at the previous two weeks. Okay, what’s everything we did? Uh, we did thrusters this week. Maybe we need to do wall balls this week. Um, and we write it out like that. In terms of, I, I always look at things like I have maybe a list of like 10 movements that I think like we should do every week. Like some sort of pull up some sort of press or overhead gymnastics, some sort of squat at least once a week, some sort of deadlift or pull from the floor at least once a week, stuff like that. Um, but we got away from doing the structured progressions. It just seemed like, I don’t know. Have you ever had any pushback on that?

Andrew Hiller (26:28):

Structured progressions and Yeah. Like

Taylor Self (26:30):

Through

Andrew Hiller (26:30):

Them and it being kind of boring? Yeah. Um, I actually think I had people who would look forward to the structure the certain days. Certain people of course. Always. And it never really became too long. Cuz as I said, as I sensed, people are getting tired of it. You just change it. Yeah. Yeah. Cause tired also means less intense for sure.

Taylor Self (26:51):

Right.

Andrew Hiller (26:52):

And if, if I have one member in mind in particular, and it would almost be to a t I could dictate the, the, the vibe of the gym based upon what this person would think about their squats on any particular Monday Yeah. Or their lunges on that Monday or their, uh, deadlifts on a Friday. Like, all right, it’s time to switch it up cuz this person’s had enough and this person is not, not too much. It’s, it’s like the three little pigs. This person’s just right in the middle. And I either side is probably feeling it too. Yeah. But again, it goes back to in-house programming. Yeah.

Taylor Self (27:24):

What are your people

Andrew Hiller (27:25):

Like? We, we moved away from that a little bit. And is there an ideal way, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s where you wanted to go with this, but

Taylor Self (27:31):

An ideal way to program

Andrew Hiller (27:34):

Either in-house or out of house, uh, outsourcing your programming.

Taylor Self (27:39):

Uh, you mean is one ideal over the other?

Andrew Hiller (27:41):

Because how many gyms have you been into that have a mayhem affiliate programming? Yeah. I I not like I’m talking crap about it.

Taylor Self (27:46):

No, no, no. For sure.

JR Howell (27:47):

I would, I would rather, I would rather for the athlete’s sake more so than the gym owner’s sake. If you know, you’re not passionate about it, if you know you’re not educated about it, if you know you’re really not prioritizing it, I would rather see someone outsource it to someone that doesn’t know their clientele with the understanding that maybe they can see a workout that’s programmed and slightly tweak it for the people in their gym versus them just haphazardly throwing workouts together and not caring and not giving their members a good product.

Taylor Self (28:23):

But I think I, go ahead.

Andrew Hiller (28:25):

I think, I think the answer there is a couple of layers to it. Yeah. If you are to do it in-house, you must have an understanding of how to do it to a degree and your members to a degree. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And if you’re going to outsource it there better damn well be some sort of communication about who they’re writing it for. And then also have people ready to push the, the, the people in the right direction. So if you’re gonna be doing this workout, why it, it can’t just be a workout, it can’t just be random crap. Yeah. There has to be some sort of direction. You said Cap does that? A giant pdf.

Taylor Self (28:58):

Oh dude. Yeah. Their lesson plans are unreal. I I feel like if you are in a <laugh> Yeah. If you’re an affiliate and you pay an affiliate fee, you should be looking at CAP every week. Even if you don’t use their workouts, you just learn so much. I feel like in my mind, it’s ideal programming wise to have someone in-house that wants to get good at it or is good at it and can get a good sense of their affiliate and programs in-house. I I just think that that’s better because then again, you can utilize like all of your equipment. Like we can utilize our gds. We have fucking 25 foot ropes, we have the hill out back and eight prowler sleds and all sorts of shit. Um, I think that’s better than us just saying, okay, we’re, we’re just gonna do cap. And we did cap for a while and Andy would just, or it was hand plan and Andy would just tweak it all the time or just change workouts all the time. He’s like, ah, fuck that. I don’t like that. I want us to use our GDS this week or whatever. Um, that’s my opinion. I think it’s better in-house, but if.

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

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