Taylor Self (00:07):
Just kidding, ladies and gentlemen up this.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
So keep the political commentary to yourself or as someone once said,
JR Howell (00:20):
Shut up and gribble, why didn’t you want to do the 32nd countdown?
Taylor Self (00:39):
What is that? Dude that just,
JR Howell (00:42):
I dunno. That was awesome. Oh,
Taylor Self (00:43):
Is that just for me not to swear for 30 seconds? Put that up there so I can’t talk for 30 seconds. Sick. So how excited are you about these rogue workouts, one to 10, rogue invitational, one to 10 programming wise? Where does it fall on that metric? Measurement scale of favorite events, favorite programming, favorite workouts, how much do you like it?
JR Howell (01:11):
If I knew the two that hadn’t been announced, whether I really liked the workouts or not, I would easily say it’s a nine. But just because I don’t know what those two are. I’ll give it like a 8.7
Taylor Self (01:24):
For what it is now. It’s a nine
JR Howell (01:26):
Over a nine. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Over a nine. I would say this is my most favorite road programming to date for sure.
Taylor Self (01:35):
How many of the CrossFit games is it better than all but one or two
JR Howell (01:39):
Don’t even Last year was 10 events at Rogue, and that’s the most, I mean, Dubai probably has had 10 before. I don’t think you can really compare anything.
Taylor Self (01:49):
Oh, you can’t.
JR Howell (01:51):
Unless there are 12 or more. I don’t think you can compare.
Taylor Self (01:54):
I like this better. This is the first man maybe since 2017 where I’ve just looked at the workouts as a whole and been like, holy shit, I love them and I haven’t dug deep enough into is it really balanced, et cetera, et cetera. Haven’t dug super deep into that yet. We know 2017 games is not super balanced. If you’re good at running and squatting, you’re going to podium. But dude, the workouts are fricking sick and so pumped to watch the races on some of these.
JR Howell (02:28):
Well, you know how biased I am to strongman implements to odd objects,
Taylor Self (02:34):
Right? Right.
JR Howell (02:35):
Rarely do I even have more than one barbell in a competition. So just that alone, rogue is always something that I’m really excited about seeing because unlike me who’s hamstrung by the amount of money that I can spend on new implements they have,
Taylor Self (02:54):
Are you though
JR Howell (02:55):
You they have none of that. So they can literally do they want and that freedom and knowing that they are the equipment for the whole sport is like one day I want to know what that really feels like,
Taylor Self (03:10):
Which is God, the freedom that they have is fuck sucks. Something for that kind of freedom. But I’m not sure what,
JR Howell (03:22):
And I think it’s not done yet. I think in the last two workouts, I think there’s potential to see something we’ve never seen in a competition before.
Taylor Self (03:30):
Dude, I’m so pumped. Ah, can’t wait. Can’t freaking wait. I mean, look, there’s also the potential for them to let us down in those last two announced events, but the way everything else around it looks, man, it just looks like as a team, Katie, Josh, Chris, are getting better and better, which is what you want to see. You want to see things evolve and get cooler and better. So before we talk anymore about that, we’re going to talk a little bit about the elite workouts for my competition. So I just have to see over the top of my laptop so I can see the bottom of the screen of my monitor so I can click present so we can pull these workouts up. Share screen. No, not that one. Here we go. Boom. All right, so the CrossFit Charlotte classic. The Charlotte Classic year three competition. I started in Charlotte. Pretty cool. A little different than Crucible. Not quite the star power, but it’s a semifinal regional level esque programmed competition with an elite division and RX division, community division and a master’s 40 plus division for individual individual competition. No team this
JR Howell (04:55):
Year. And for anyone out here who is wondering why Taylor likes event one from Rogue, so much exhibit A
Taylor Self (05:04):
Dude, what do you think of? I love this workout.
JR Howell (05:08):
This is like if I was given a hundred workouts and someone told me that you only wrote one of them of the a hundred and I saw this, I would immediately say that’s the one Taylor wrote. Yeah, I mean everyone has a style. Everyone has, I think the mindset that you program with and thinking about the mindset of the athlete while doing the workout really shows in programming like this because you’re not only testing fitness and testing long capacity, you’re testing mindset. Do you want to hold on to the a hundred squats? If there was a million dollars on the line, everyone
Taylor Self (05:48):
You could. Yeah, you could.
JR Howell (05:50):
But are people going to want to Probably not. Are people going to want to run hard with the dumbbell on their back or are they just going to slowly jog?
Taylor Self (05:59):
And that’s the thing that’s not really stated here is that 0.5 mile run on either side of the squats is with the dumbbell. So truly it’s do you want to hold on to the dumbbell for 50 snatches, half a mile run, a hundred squats, half a mile run and 50 snatches. So for 20 ish minutes, maybe more, do you want to hold onto that dumbbell? I initially, how often do you run with a dumbbell? Do you ever have you ever?
JR Howell (06:29):
I have, but maybe once with a kettlebell on my shoulder once with a dumbbell on my shoulder. Not often. The only thing I really do in the position that you’re showing on the picture or with it on a single side is when I’m doing step ups.
Taylor Self (06:41):
That’s it. So I started doing this running with the dumbbell or using stuff like that in workouts. Maybe it was 2017. I was brand new to CrossFit and Street Horner posted a workout that was just a hundred mile dumbbell carry with a hundred and you couldn’t put it down. I remember seeing that and thinking, holy fuck, I was a newbie. A hundred pound dumbbell was like a fucking 500 pound snatch for me at the time. It just was like this insane dumbbell that I couldn’t even pick up. So that’s where the idea entered my mind long ago. And I just love that style of, yeah, there’s a lot of fitness tested here, but there’s also an element of psychological tolerance and that’s why I love that first event from Rogue. It’s just like, look, you have to be fit to win the workout, but you also have to be able to hurt and
JR Howell (07:37):
Yeah, you can’t be soft, you can’t be a coward.
Taylor Self (07:39):
That’s near and dear to my heart, but
JR Howell (07:45):
So was that the inspiration that Street Horner workout? Because a lot of people would look at this and say you could have just used the GORUCK bags, feed bags that you have. Why did you decide not to?
Taylor Self (07:56):
Because I wanted something different than just a squat. So I wanted that dumbbell movement. I wanted a dumbbell movement, a snatch or a hang snatch. I really wanted one for high volume. I wanted them to squat with weight and I wanted them to run with weight. And I just thought, yes, I could have taken the GORUCK bags out there, but I thought, how many people run with a dumbbell?
JR Howell (08:22):
Yep.
Taylor Self (08:23):
No,
JR Howell (08:24):
I love it. You don’t do a lot. It’s just like using the Jerry cans last year’s, not a lot of
Taylor Self (08:28):
People do it and it’s such an easy, it highlights the simplicity of CrossFit and the simplicity of fitness where all you need is one fucking dumbbell and you can mangle yourself as much as you want to, but it really falls, comes down to how much do you want to, and the course that they’re going to be running it on is so freaking cool. It’s literally a three minute walk from the gym. It’s one of the state’s premier cross country courses. Five K cross country courses. There is a hill on this course that is probably worse than the Rogue Hill. It’s like you can’t bike up it. That’s how steep it is.
JR Howell (09:14):
How long is it?
Taylor Self (09:15):
The hill? I would say it’s like 40 yards. So maybe 120 feet, maybe a
JR Howell (09:23):
Little longer. So the steepest hill behind the barn, is it about that one?
Taylor Self (09:28):
It’s steeper.
JR Howell (09:29):
Wow. Yeah,
Taylor Self (09:30):
It’s quite a bit steeper and a little bit longer. Yeah, it’s brutal. I feel like I could bike up that hill. This one it’s like, yeah, it’s brutal. So love it. I don’t know people in the chat. 32 minutes for this workout. It took me a little longer than 32 minutes.
JR Howell (09:53):
That’s funny you say that. The people from Crash that are signed up, I’m going to have ’em all over to test this workout at the barn. I know what’s a mile on the trail loops. I know what half a mile is and we’re just going to do it.
Taylor Self (10:09):
Nice. Are you
JR Howell (10:10):
Going to do it? Yeah, I’ll do it with him.
Taylor Self (10:12):
Hell yeah. Well lemme know how it goes with ya Queen Next workout. I think we talked about this one already. Yeah,
JR Howell (10:20):
Yeah. So is this also on Friday or is this
Taylor Self (10:23):
The next day? Yeah, this is Friday. Friday morning, mid-morning, Friday afternoon. So you get look, get a hundred squats with all that running nice dose on the legs and then finishing Friday off with the last bit of squatting, just a mere 45 reps. But to me a very important and dense 45 reps, you have to hit them with a purpose. Likely if you want to win the workout, you need to go on broken on all of the squats. So just a level of intensity, but also execution here that really matters like on the rings, pushing to your threshold while avoiding failure. Same thing on the L set and still being able to front squat and overhead squat quickly is
JR Howell (11:06):
Yeah, and there’s some really cool comparison between event one and here you have all those light squats with a very low skill dumbbell cycling movement and then you go from that to much lower rep count of squats heavier with some higher skill stuff in between. And it’s dude, I mean very similarly to the bar muscle up back squat workout at Rogue. For the people that can do that lsit in maybe three chunks or even two chunks, that’s a quick turnaround on those squats. And while the numbers may not stand out as super heavy, I think they’re going to feel a lot heavier than people think.
Taylor Self (11:50):
Oh yeah. Especially with all that tack in the trunk hip flexor. So really long then pretty short, I think shorter than it reads, this workout is likely
JR Howell (12:02):
The fastest time. Like Emily Bero, what is she going to do this in?
Taylor Self (12:06):
I think people do this workout in five minutes.
JR Howell (12:10):
I was thinking five. Yeah, I think that’s for sure. Five minutes
Taylor Self (12:13):
Moving. Well the thing is dude, she’s great at dips. We have no idea how she’s at L sits. That’s such an unknown. Again, people should be training L sits. I think over the past year or two they have made a resurgence in terms of importance, but we will come to see how many people actually train them.
JR Howell (12:34):
I’m really interested to see how many people are fluid in cycling. Kipping ring dips,
Taylor Self (12:41):
I love that. And they’re on the high ring, so it’s like a break is expensive
JR Howell (12:47):
Because I mean that’s just one of those things, even with the ring complex, you could just tell some people were really comfortable cycling ring dips with a ruck while some people just were not. And obviously this isn’t loaded, but it’s not something that comes up a lot in competition. So I mean you’ve got two really, really big unknowns here
Taylor Self (13:12):
With
JR Howell (13:12):
The lsnt and the ring dip, especially in the female field because they’re doing the exact same. And just in general, I would say the capacity on something, even when it’s kipping like a ring dip is just like the range is so much more broad with the female field
Taylor Self (13:27):
And then you’ve got 15 overhead squats after it, which aren’t heavy, but they’re not light either.
JR Howell (13:31):
Yeah, but dude, yeah, I mean you’re getting closed up like this, you’re getting closed up, you’re getting rolled forward and then you have
Taylor Self (13:36):
To, it’s a risky weight.
JR Howell (13:37):
Yeah, I mean a break on the overhead squat is not a ten second break.
Taylor Self (13:43):
No,
JR Howell (13:43):
That’s not happening. So yeah, a lot of strategy for people that know they can’t go in broken for sure.
Taylor Self (13:51):
Wow. Hold on, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. I got to just pull this comment up a little bit.
JR Howell (14:01):
Self-made training program
Taylor Self (14:06):
And then thank you Christian. Thank you. And I will say Rogue as well based off of what we have so far this year, man. It is. Cool. So event three for Elite, they go Friday, they have playing the Mono that long workout. The other thing I wanted to mention is all of these workouts are the names and kind of the theme behind them come from elements of Stephen King’s, the Dark Tower series,
JR Howell (14:36):
Which
Taylor Self (14:36):
Is super cool, really niche, not a lot of people. Well that’s not true in terms of people who read. It’s a very popular series, but half people will understand it and see it if you’ve read any of it. Other people will have no fucking idea what the names mean, but they’re really cool. If you’ve read the series, you’ll see how each of these names fits the workout beautifully. Event three will be Saturday morning. They’ll have this 3, 3, 5 minute interval with a minute of rest between which adds up to 13 minutes of 13 bar muscle up, buy-in 13 burpee sandbag, get over a log and then max bike in the remaining time. And this workout is just unbelievably painful.
JR Howell (15:23):
It is. And I did the first iteration that you did with the rounds.
Taylor Self (15:27):
Yeah, I think this’ll be nastier. I think it’ll be smoother. In the first two rounds we talked about, so initially it was two rounds of eight bar muscle ups, five burpee get overs and I felt like the transitions just added too much wasted time and I could get what I wanted out of it. With 13 bar muscle-ups and 13 get overs, so three less bar muscle-ups, three more get overs and there’s not a whole lot of room to get a lot of calories in the first two intervals doing it on jerk blocks, which is just so time consuming. But the implement that they’ll be using in the competition will allow for quite a bit faster reps on the perpe get overs, but to get through the 13 and 13 and have any chance of a decent score, you have to push harder than you want to. And the fact that it’s three on one off is just such a, how often do people test intervals like that at a hard capacity where it’s really not that much time to recover at all when working three minutes at that intensity
JR Howell (16:32):
And you’re not allowed to game it, right? There’s a penalty if you don’t get through those 26 reps. Correct?
Taylor Self (16:37):
Yeah. Every rep of the buy-in not completed is a calorie subtracted from your total score.
JR Howell (16:44):
And that’s awesome because a lot of people would see this and say, okay, if it’s like Amrap and I get 26, 26, 26, I would rather just do a few less burpees every time and hammer the bike on the five minute round
Taylor Self (16:56):
And
JR Howell (16:57):
Try to make up for it. So I think that’s great that you’re forcing the intensity in that way, 1339 by the end of this at such a high heart rate. Do you think the play on, let’s just talk about the guy’s field. Is everyone just going to be saying even though it’s only a one minute break, I got to do the 13 unbroken?
Taylor Self (17:19):
I don’t think you have to. I think when it was the two rounder, you had to do the eight unbroken, but I don’t think here a really quick break on the bar muscle up of eight and five. As long as the break is five seconds or less. I think this is okay. Are you texting
JR Howell (17:38):
Nobody? I was actually thinking about how long it would take, how much longer it would take because you sent me your scores when you did it and then I did it using a yolk, which is faster
Taylor Self (17:52):
For
JR Howell (17:52):
Sure, but it’s more like that log. It’s probably not as
Taylor Self (17:58):
Wide. It’s a little slower than the log. The yolk is, I think the log of the three is the fastest. This was the first workout I programmed for the competition iteration of this
JR Howell (18:11):
Best scores.
Taylor Self (18:14):
I don’t even remember what I got off the top of my head to you. You get don’t say it out loud. I don’t know. I think best scores will probably be for the men around 10 to maybe 12 to 15 calories on the first two intervals, the first two and then on the fifth or the third interval of five minutes, I would expect 50. I
JR Howell (18:42):
Was thinking 80 would be a really good score.
Taylor Self (18:44):
Yeah, so that adds up like 50 to 55 plus 12 to 15. Yeah, that’s
JR Howell (18:53):
Cool. That’s a cool workout. And you’re ending on a machine which is about as painful as you can get and you can’t game it because you can’t look around and know where anyone is at.
Taylor Self (19:02):
Yeah, you’ve got to go four and five Saturday evening back to backs. It kind of just annoyed me that Ben Smith came out with that complex for.com. I don’t know if this was announced prior to or not, but people have been doing it. But this is cool and way harder than I initially thought it would be when I was writing it up. The first part especially, I had initially had written it for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and it was just too much. And I’m really good at wall facing and really good at wall walks. And I think the combination with the drag rope is just brutal. It’s the way the workout flows is 3, 2, 1, go. You do four wall walks after your fourth wall walk, you go into four wall facing, shook, handstand pushup. After your fourth wall facing handstand pushup, you walk back down and then you begin your set of three wall walks, 1, 2, 3, then three wall facing walk back down one, two wall walks, then two wall facing, et cetera. I like this because it is such a low volume. It’s bossy in the sense that it’s such a low volume, but they are so important and such expensive reps.
JR Howell (20:20):
And if you’re one of those people that can race this, a trip up on the drag rope is going to cost you. And not a lot of people are going to go into this thinking, I can do everything, unbroken
Taylor Self (20:32):
Everything,
JR Howell (20:34):
Not a lot of people
Taylor Self (20:35):
And race it at the same time.
JR Howell (20:36):
But the fact that it’s descending will help
Taylor Self (20:39):
That
JR Howell (20:40):
Versus if it was, and we talked about this too, about having it ascending and then descending on the second, but I think starting with the big chunk is definitely the way to go.
Taylor Self (20:51):
Yeah, the ascending was just a little too slow for what I wanted. I wanted two workouts that were higher skilled or heavier weight that still stung a little bit, but that people could hit really fast for the good people could hit really fast. And this accomplishes that I was 4 57 for the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 version. So the five minute cap for the 4, 3, 2, 1 version is more than appropriate. And then I think for the clean handstand walk, workout power or squat, that’s a cool one too. 10 cleans at 2 75, 200 foot handstand walk. Yeah, I’m pumped about these too. It’ll be good. The strongest person’s going to win that second one as long as they’re good at handstand walking and
JR Howell (21:41):
Yeah, if they’re strong enough then they can race on the handstand walks. If they’re not strong enough, then they already are exposed, which is good because when you’re trying to move that fast, the 2 75 fast, just resting another three to four seconds in between reps is going to be the difference in
Taylor Self (21:59):
4, 5, 6
JR Howell (22:00):
Places
Taylor Self (22:04):
Defense six,
JR Howell (22:06):
And this will be the first one for Sunday or the Sunday,
Taylor Self (22:08):
Yeah, first one on Sunday. This was another workout that started harder or longer and I had to shorten was initially six rounds and that was just too, it was too much to get the intensity that we wanted in the time domain that we wanted, which was like 15 to 20 minutes max and it won’t be a 20 minute cap. That’s a bit generous. It’ll likely be, I’m not going to talk about the caps, but I think the best athletes will be around 14 and a half minutes on this workout and it’s going to hurt to do it, which again, I like. There’s a theme obviously through a lot of this with the exception of four and five and two, you’re going to have to hurt for it to win a workout.
JR Howell (22:56):
And with five rounds on a workout like this starting out with a chunk that big on the rower, you’re giving a lot of people the opportunity to make a poor decision in the early rounds by rowing at a capacity that’s nowhere close to what’s appropriate for them.
Taylor Self (23:10):
And
JR Howell (23:11):
You’ll see a lot of people close gaps on rounds four and five just because of that. The people who are a little bit more experienced know that, hey, either my plan is to break from the beginning on the gymnastics and to try to hold onto the barbell. Or if you’re just someone that has crazy grip capacity, maybe that shoulder to overhead after what you did the day before on the handstand walk, wall walk workout, maybe your shoulders aren’t feeling great, but that load, I can’t imagine many people planning a break on the barbell.
Taylor Self (23:42):
No, you shouldn’t. It’s not the smart to break. I would say if there’s any place there is a place to break, I don’t even think going unbroken on the chest of bar and toaster bar is necessary to win the workout. I think you’re probably better off not doing that and rowing at a harder pace, but we’ll see what people choose to try to do. It’s a trap. It’s like, oh, unbroken is the best score. But that’s not the case here because unbroken on the chest bar and toaster bar and the barbell leaves you rowing at a 1000 cal per hour, you’re not wearing the workout.
JR Howell (24:07):
Yeah, there’s some cool creativity here, switching back and forth round for round on the hanging movement. I mean, it’s not something I remember seeing ever in a competition. Did you give any thought at all, and this is not something that we’ve talked about previously of doing 22, but doing 11 plus 11 every round.
Taylor Self (24:25):
Oh no, I didn’t give any thought to that and I can’t change it now. No,
JR Howell (24:32):
No, but also too, if you do that, that’s
Taylor Self (24:34):
Interesting. Yeah,
JR Howell (24:35):
If you do that though, I think doing those chunks unbroken is like, oh yeah, I’m just going to do that. Then I’m going to go 11, break for a second, 11 and then go right to the barbell. But I think having the 22 of the same movement is a lot more daunting and is going to allow for some more separation. So no, I think the way you have it, I was just curious when I saw it, I was like, I wonder if you ever thought about doing 22 reps but split between the two movements.
Taylor Self (25:00):
No, I didn’t. And I liked the 2222 better because I want them to start and finish on toast to bar. I think it’s, for me at least, and this is why I had it starting finishing on Toast to bar along with there was already a lot of pulling and the competition was that I feel like when you are smacked around and hurting, for me it’s easier to get up and knock toes to bar out than it is to wrap my mind around how elevated my heart rate’s going to get from doing chest to bar the toes to bar you can breathe and almost recover on toes to bar. So it’s like it doesn’t matter how hard you’re hurting and that last round after that fifth row, you should be getting right to the fucking bar and going to produce a bit of a race. Ideally.
JR Howell (25:46):
It is cool. I mean, not often do we see longer and I think just 15 minute plus time domain workouts that are muscle stamina limiting. Usually when you get into that time domain, they’re becoming more of an aerobic limitation. And here it’s not. It’s like you’re going longer like that 10 round rogue workout, you’re going longer and it really is going to, still going to come down to probably not your heart rate, but it’s going to come down to your That’s a good question. Yes. Is the answer.
Taylor Self (26:25):
Come on, dude. Yes, yes and yes and kind of no. There are things that allow me to rationalize making a 22 so that it looks good on paper and that is with so much upper body pulling and then upper body pressing and the fact that men generally speaking have a much easier time on the machines. I’m certain like 100% certain we’ve tested it that the times will shake out almost perfectly, even similarly to the community division workout, which people initially were like, oh, I can’t believe it’s 22 cals for the men and 11 for the women. That’s stupid. And then people did the workout and were like, oh, it’s actually appropriate. But yes, I just can’t fucking stand, okay, if the men are doing 30 calories, I’m going to multiply by 0.7 and that’s what the women are doing. I like to have a little more flexibility depending on which workout it is, what’s paired with it, how it looks on paper.
(27:32):
Because for me, well also it is different from workout to workout. If it’s a workout like this where it’s really machine heavy and upper body heavy, females are probably going to have a little bit of a harder time than the men. If it’s a workout that’s machines and double unders for instance or something that’s not harder at all for women to complete or air squats, the calories can probably be a little closer to men. If it’s a group of really fit women, again, the calories can be quite a bit closer to men. So there’s just a lot of gray area that goes into it. Right back of the napkin math,
JR Howell (28:13):
It seems like a lot of people are getting better about adjusting
Taylor Self (28:19):
Reps
JR Howell (28:20):
Loads, machine output based on the workout itself, not just based on what’s always used. I mean, 2007 reload is the perfect example of this.
(28:35):
Everybody thought, I thought you thought, everyone thought, why is he giving the women so much an easier load compared to the men on the shoulder to overhead after the bar muscle up in the row? And it ended up being the perfect call. You saw the best two ever to do it fail on the same rep on the same round. You can’t get more spot on than that. So I just think that when you see a 3 15, 2 0 5, well that just depends on what the workout is. Does the workout a ton of ring muscle ups then? Yeah, 3 15, 2 0 5 on a deadlift or a clean might be appropriate if you have the workout and it’s like box jump overs and deadlifts. No, it should probably be 2 25 or maybe even 2 35, especially if the women are using a shorter box. So yeah, it just should depend on the workout, not just on, well, this is the percentage or this is the loading that we always use, like the chipper at Crucible. I know a lot of people were questioning not only the box being the same height, but the fact that it was a games box, so it was a longer jump and the females handled it just fine and it really, really balanced it out
Taylor Self (29:37):
Because
JR Howell (29:37):
They were able to move the kettlebells so
Taylor Self (29:39):
Much better
JR Howell (29:40):
A little bit than the guys.
Taylor Self (29:42):
And this is the other thing that I believe because of how I personally am, and that is the way a workout looks on paper and reads has a very large role, plays a very large role into how likely I am to want to do it
Taylor Self (29:57):
And be excited to do it.
Taylor Self (29:58):
I’m not going to get.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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