I was born to kill it, I was meant to win I am down and willing so I will find a way It took a minute now it didn't have to ride away When it get hot in the kitchen you decide to stay That's how it went what is going on everybody welcome to chopping it up with coach crispy cream my name is scott switzer I will have by next week I promise new bumpers new backdrops um we'll get something appropriate for this show but I do like that song it's fine by me I always want to like groove
a little bit when it's going but yeah so how's your week been Good. Yeah, what, it's Thursday? Time just flies right now with quarters ending. We have a lot of athletes who are prepping. The semis prep is always odd, especially with the calendar this year, because some teams have been prepping.
they have longer some indies don't have as long now that their quarters is done depending on when their semis is so it's a lot of a lot of athletes are starting to get back in the gym after taking some time off quarters just a lot of moving parts plus logistics for semis and things like that but it's been good uh lex says you must be off today scott you're knocking out like 40 interviews Uh, I think it's 39, but close, close enough.
Yeah. And I actually, I took yesterday, today and tomorrow off, uh, for mental health. Um, just one stressor I didn't need was my job. And so I took a couple of days off and then tomorrow we're heading to Pennsylvania for my mom's birthday. She turned 79 years old yesterday, 79 years old. And, uh, go and check, see what she's doing and hang out with her for a weekend. So yeah. That's awesome. So yeah, got a lot done today. You've been busy. It was a productive day.
Even got a workout squeezed in between the last two. Very nice. What'd you do? It's Cardio Thursday at Polaris. Love it. So every Thursday is just like super long, super cardio machines. So it started with a salt bike and four rounds of a salt bike and pushups. Okay. Then I went into like three rounds of double unders and pushups. Pull-ups like very like Murph testy kind of stuff. Um, and then it finished with farmer's carries and squats, air squats. I like it.
So, yeah, what I like about those is it's an in and out workout in out, not a lot of warmup, not a lot of cool down. Yep. So yeah, you don't have to prep too much. Yeah. So Hattie's in the comments. Oh, hey, Hattie. And we'll see her in an hour and a half. Hour and a half. Two hours or so. So a lot of things have happened this week. We had an agenda. It's the same agenda we had last week that we never got to. Yeah. But I want to talk quickly about... I was on Coffee Pods and Wads yesterday.
And... While I had a blast, right, and I knew kind of what Peter looks for in those games and I tried to pick the pieces of my argument that would get me the most points, I left feeling like there was more I wanted to say about each topic because you only have 60 seconds. So you got to figure out like what haymaker I'm going to throw for the 60 seconds and then the rest of it's just kind of out there. And don't get me wrong, I had a blast. You looked like it. Had a blast, and I won.
So, yeah, you got to love that. I don't think Harriet Roberts knew what she was in for on that show. Nope. Waking up at 5 a.m. and jumping on in Australia. Yeah. And Adam, I thought, came pretty hard, but he did not prepare properly. Yeah, it seemed like he just showed up and sent it. So the big thing I just wanted... I really do believe that... Because the first question was, how do we improve the quarterfinals for 2025? And my opinion is,
it doesn't... We need to keep strict video review in the process. And I truly believe that too many people with bad movements have gotten through in years past. And we just keep forgetting about that when stuff like this happens. And the one thing I didn't get to say on the show is, if you feel wronged, why haven't you posted proof that you were wronged? I mean, that's something that has I mean, what an athlete that I know, who's good friends with my fiance brought up early in this whole thing.
Where's the only one we saw drop a video pretty quickly was Velma. Right? And he just threw it out there like whatever. Yeah. I think it's a valid point. And It's really funny because in my Emily Rolfe interview today, she talked about how someone messed up her clock during that workout. So it actually happened twice. Her clock got messed up mid-workout. She had to redo it a couple times. She is normally a do the workout, get it posted, and be done. She does not review the video.
But because that happened, she's like, well, I've got the video of the first half. I might as well take a look. And she didn't like her reps. So she made sure she came to full extension on the next rep. So thankfully someone stopped her clock midway through because, yeah, it may have cost her. I mean, we had a slightly similar thing with Jacob. I just wasn't paying enough attention. And the first time he did that, he only started with his back to the barbell on the first round.
So then we had this huge discussion about, you know, are they going to watch that one? Are they going to penalize that one? This whole thing. And then I also really started, you know, we'd seen him do it. We had seen a couple other athletes on site do it. We were starting to get some scores from some people. So then the conversation also turned into, okay, we need a cleaner run and we, we can probably put up a significantly better score. So, yeah. Yeah. But again, super fun.
Super glad I got invited on. And I get to do it again in a couple weeks. Nice. Heck yeah, man. As we move through the process. It is a fun show to watch. I try to catch it when I can. It is. I... To be fair, I catch that in Death By every week just to hear where people's thoughts and feelings are for our shows. Just so I can kind of hear a smattering of different topic thoughts. Yeah. And those are kind of the two hot topic shows. Right. I do like Peter's because it is so succinct.
it's done in 30 minutes and, you know, so you can get in and out pretty good. Um, or death by, they can kind of go on for a while. Yeah. I also thoroughly enjoy Peter's sense of humor. He's hilarious. And I love it. So another thing happened on the way to this show is, um, Andrew Hiller, Broke news just about an hour and a half ago. Maybe a little longer. Yeah. I've been in interviews, so it's hard to like your time. That some of the semifinal workouts have been released. We have a leak.
There's a leak in the boat. And it was confirmed by John Young that some coaches already had it. Oh. By the time Hiller posted it. So if you watch the Savant show from this afternoon, I listened to it on the way to the gym and on the way home. Yeah, John Young says that some of the coaches he knew have it. Dang, I need to get on that list. Well, and so that brings up a lot of questions. So first, I'm going to put up the... their workouts that were leaked. Um, there it is.
Carolyn already is jumping in. Yeah. I'm not surprised either. Carolyn, uh, not surprised at all by the fact that some coaches had it. Not at all. That's a problem. Yeah. That's a major problem. One thing that was brought up by Brian spin on that show is that the circle has to be bigger than it used to be. Right.
For semifinals, you've got people in Africa, got people in China, you got people in South America that have to know what the workouts are and the layouts to be able to get equipment, get floors ready, get venues ready. Yup. So that circle is way bigger. And we don't know if this leak came from HQ or from just some random guy putting a rig together in South America. Yeah. Friends of athletes test things can leak there. So, Carolyn, we are in a sport where friends of athletes test workouts.
Things can leak there. Then all the regions know the workouts, so stuff can get leaked there too. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a... I mean, I'm not surprised given the logistics of the semifinals this year at all that it got leaked. There's so many more people in the circle, so many more opportunities for wandering eyes. You know, HQ doesn't have that tight locus of control that they usually do on the events and the workouts.
So... I mean, as a coach, I guess, if I'm not on the list of coaches to get it sent to them, then I'm glad that Hillard posted it publicly. But I also... I mean, you've known me a good while now. I get pretty fired up when I coach, and I do have a certain level of aggression when it's game time. So my inner coach thought, not looking at it from the nuts and bolts of the sport, is I don't give a shit. We're going to go do what we need to do anyways. So I want to throw this at you.
And we're always talking about the sport and the methodology, right? Yeah. The methodology to train general physical preparedness has the term unknown and unknowable. And it is so that you coming into the gym as average Joe are going to do something different every day. It's constantly varied. You don't know what that is going to be. You can't prepare for that. It just is what it is. Somehow that term has flipped over to the sport. But I ask you this.
We know what the events of the Olympics are, and it doesn't make it less dramatic. Yeah. So why do we need to hide what these workouts are until last minute? I don't. Especially if some are getting it leaked to them and some are not. Right. I don't personally see an issue if the workouts were released, say, the end of quarterfinals or when the leaderboard was finalized. it's hard because some people will have longer time to prepare.
Some people won't, but we had that in the regional system and everybody just kind of understood that the last people to go, we're going to probably put up the fastest times because they had the most time to prepare. They could watch other high level athletes do it and strategize and things like that. I don't necessarily fall in the camp where I want a set, you know, event list year to year.
I do like that it changes, but I also, uh, do think it would be nice if we had, especially for the prior stages of the season quarters and the open, we had, you know, kind of like a list, like people have talked about of 50, 40, 60, however many movements like, Hey, these are the things.
And then for quarterfinals, it's all those things from the open plus these for semifinals, it could be a little more elusive, but perhaps we get the workouts a little bit earlier and, there's a lot of things that play into this because from a coaching standpoint, knowing the workouts early is a nightmare.
It's like, how many times can I make them do this or a version of this to perfect it on game day without making them sick and tired of doing this workout, getting an overuse injury from doing the same fricking movement patterns over and over, you know, still trying to preserve general fitness, like not actually letting people get detrained because you're only focusing on these things. So your variance goes down. So it's like, it has a lot of play to it.
I don't, I would prefer, of course, that if they were leaked or released, they were done at the same time so that everybody just knows it. But yeah, it's, I don't have... I don't have super strong feelings about the workouts changing and that part of it being unknown and unknowable. I do think though, when we start to use that as an excuse for off the wall movements, it can potentially be an issue and things like that.
Also, I think Sometimes that gets brought into the conversation of the way we test movements. So personal bias here, a back loaded ring muscle up is asking for a torn labrum. Like that's a terrible movement. You should never load that dynamic of a movement with a weight behind you. It's a terrible idea. So if that's the justification for something like that, then I would have some arguing points against that.
So it's such a nuanced conversation that I think it's hard to have a, a hard stance one way or the other. And there's so many different ways it can apply to different stages in the season. With like these two being known, if they are in fact the real workouts, which there's no reason to believe they're not other than I think Carolyn pointed out in the comments that why two echo bikes. They had two echo bikes last year and they had two assault runner workouts last year.
There's no reason it couldn't be. I would be more surprised than the fact that they have echo bikes at every one of these venues, but you can also make the argument. It doesn't matter. If somebody is on an assault fitness bike and somebody is on an assault bike and somebody is on an echo bike, as long as everybody at that regional is the same. Yeah. Right.
So with these being known, is there a fear as a coach that you have that athlete that wants to keep drilling this down to perfection that they overuse the muscle and then overtrain it and it creates injury? Yes, exactly. Yeah. You start to hit the same movement pattern, the same exact in the same exact way. So many times with the same loading, right? You're not getting, With the dumbbell, I think the safest assumption with that is it's a 100-pound dumbbell overhead lunge.
That would make the most sense. I can't have them do that 16 times before then and not start to have shoulder, tricep, elbow, whatever.
right start to flare up with people so it's this that's why I almost don't like having them super early because it's this fine balance of okay how many times are we going to do this what other things can I program that simulate this plus perfecting our race day strategy and pacings um it's also mentally hard for the athletes like to do intervals or even the testing of the workout so many times prior.
Like, I mean, I know there are athletes who, by the time they get to semifinals, you have to be careful with the workout. If a workout super painful, you don't want to be gun shy going into semifinals of what you're going to experience. Right. Right. It's, it's just this kind of annoying balance. Um, My last question before we just look at the workouts themselves is Europe goes in two weeks. This stuff was going to have to be announced soon anyway. I think the date was the 10th in the rulebook.
So we're a week away. We're a week early with the league. So the East was going to have three weeks with them anyway.
yeah so it's like does it matter yeah I don't know I mean it's a little more time yeah it's just I just think man the crossfit we just love drama we just love drama um before I pull up the workouts here I don't carolyn says I don't think two echo bikes are necessary if you're going to do two of the same thing it should be running I don't disagree, but I would caveat that with the fact that we had the lane eight issue last year at the European semifinal where everybody who ran on lane eight's
runner got dead last in the workout. And I would also say I hate shuttle runs. So... don't disagree I don't love the echo bike a whole bunch of times but I at this point don't trust the efficacy of a fair semi-final on assault runners because it was proven last year that they don't have a testable repeatable way to calibrate those so I have a lot of thoughts on that because As a volunteer, starting my life in CrossFit as a volunteer, I saw them calibrate those. Oh, really?
I would argue that maybe the person in Europe didn't do their job. Potentially. Or it was just all a coincidence. We believe in those. Yeah. Um, so here are the workouts. Do these make sense to you as a, as a semifinal workout? Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Uh, obviously it would be interesting to see if there, you know, we don't know anything with this, if there's a different echo bike calorie prescription for the ladies on these, or if, you know, it's just expected, they're going to be a little bit longer on those bikes. Um, 72 foot is a really particular number. I imagine that's based off of some sort of average length of field of play for most of the regions. 15 ring rustle ups isn't anything out of pocket.
Tall box jump overs, nothing super crazy there either. I mean, the first workout, 70 echo bite calories, 14 legless rope climbs, 10 box jump overs. you're going to have a little bit of a break between the legless. So it's a healthy number of legless rope climbs. That's for sure. But I don't think it's anything outlandish. Um, If this is truly one of the workouts, I'm a little surprised that we don't see the return of the seated.
I thought those were a very good thing to test last year, personally. So it's funny you say that because if you remember, one of the big complaints coming out of semis last year were that people were resting sitting down and it was a bad look for a fitness competition. But here they're split up.
Okay. People are going to say resting, sitting down is a bad look, but then I want everybody to remember that when they watch the first two heats of people at semifinals, put the dumbbell down four times. Okay, cool. They'll just be resting, standing up. So that looks better, I guess. Those were comments that were made. Yeah, I mean, it is odd to watch. You're not moving quickly, right? It takes maybe away a little bit of the speed of the race with a seated legless.
But I wouldn't have been surprised if those made a return this year. That's for sure. Those wrecked people, both at semis and the games. Well, in the games, they were tall, brother. And I know Kelly had mentioned... And the Einhorn team, when you sat on the mat, you almost sunk. So you were starting even a little bit lower than you would have expected. Yeah. That alpaca workout was gross. Yeah. Hands took some damage. Oh, yeah. So we're good with this. We're going to move on to our podcast.
yeah yeah I don't think there's too much to say on this other it's the one thing I would leave with the whole leak thing is it's interesting from a coach's perspective because now it's you almost don't have a choice but to act under the assumption that these are the workouts because then if you if you don't and they are then you're kind of caught with your pants down and right yeah so it's it's and then if they aren't but you did them a whole bunch it's kind of annoying you're
like well that was a waste of time so at least hopefully the movements show up if these aren't the exact workouts at this point there's nothing here that wouldn't help you in preparing for semis though correct like it's just that fine line and a fine line of overusing right yeah All right, so we're going to go back to quarters and just talk about those workouts for a second because you made a statement on one of our shows that the most important programming that CrossFit will ever do is
this year's quarterfinals because the window to make semis was reduced from 60 to 40. Yep. So it needed to be the most well-rounded test possible. So we're going to go through this, and I want you to explain to me, did CrossFit meet that goal or not? All right. So here is workout one, the famous penalty workout. The penalty workout, the slaughterhouse.
Yes. It was four rounds for max reps of one minute of snatches, one minute of rowing for calories, one minute of dumbbell box step-ups, one minute of rest. I liked this workout in the sense, I like this workout more in how it fit in with the totality of the other workouts than as a standalone test for a quarterfinals workout. Especially when on the men's side, we take into account the snatches really didn't matter. It didn't behoove the men to snatch very much.
It was get some reps here to help yourself, and then what can you do on the rower and still hammer the step-ups, right? I did like the 20-inch box for both genders, I think, with... just a lot of height discrepancy from human being to human being. I think that is a fair thing. You know, I'm nowhere close to most of my athletes, but if I do box step overs on a 24 against some athletes that are, that I coached that are shorter than me, I can hold my own just cause I'm tall. Right.
Um, I liked the fact that it was an interval test. I think it fit the bill of a power output-y-ish workout well. As a general rule of thumb, I don't love AMRAPs in competition, but I also understand those are probably not ever going to disappear completely. But overall, as a standalone workout, I wouldn't have loved it. When you look at the other three, I think it fit very well. My argument for your AMRAP is that this was a long time to get four workouts in.
So if ever you're going to do an AMRAP, this is probably the weekend to do it. Yeah, I would agree with that. In my observations watching Jamie, Haley, Jim, and some of the general population of Jamie's gym do this workout is a lot of people underestimated it. Yeah. Really underestimated it. This is the only one I didn't do. Let's put it like that. I had no desire for that smoke.
Yeah, Haley... I mean, Haley got into the second round and realized she had jacked her heart rate to a point it was not going to recover. Yep. Put the dumbbells down, called it a day, came back and did it the next day. Lived to fight another day. That's good. I did like... that there was a certain amount of strategy to it. I just don't like when that bleeds in from you can strategize it to, well, really you strategizing it is just the same way that everybody's going to do it. Right.
Like putting your eggs in those baskets, so to speak. Yeah. I, you can probably convince me I'm wrong, but I thought for some athletes, their best bet was to snatch like crazy. And forget about this box step-ups. For general population people, just doing quarterfinals to do them, yes. But everybody who is trying to be in the top 40, those step-ups were it. Okay. You got to think, a good score on those step-ups, we're talking 20-plus a round, that's a large ask.
Even if you're holding... say somebody could do 13 snatches, those seven more snatches in that minute, that's a tall ask. Okay. Right. That's why you're the coach and I'm the media guy. I also watched a lot of people do this and thought about it a lot. All right. So let's go to workout two. The grinder. The grinder. This was three rounds for time, 50 wall ball shots, 50 lateral burpee box jump overs.
Not really, didn't have to be burpee lateral, but those that were doing it fast kind of went lateral. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think the decision to call it lateral but then not mandate the lateral was from kind of the lack – not wanting to do floor plans, measuring tape under the box, that kind of stuff. So I think it would have just been – if they didn't want the scrutiny of it, they should have just said burpee box jump overs. Orient yourself however you would like, right?
My media observation of this workout was – Find your pace. Very correct. And hold that pace to the bitter end. Yep. Come hell or high water. That is... So this was... This is actually a really interesting workout, I think, from a coaching perspective. So this was our 5K run. This was our 5K row of quarterfinals.
But... crossfit did it in a way where from a crossfit methodology programming perspective it was a weight lifting and gymnastics movement we have a loaded movement in the wall ball and then we have a body weight movement in the burpee box jump overs right but the stimulus was long aerobic capacity right muscle endurance that kind of stuff so it was it was good in a sense to see something like this again, I think as a community, we've gotten away from testing engine without
leveraging machines a lot of the time. And you know, the older CrossFit programming, large chippers with a ton of reps with lighter weight kind of movements that you can still be cyclical with were a staple. Um, You're absolutely right, though. This was how well can you pace yourself? Can you sustain it? And there was absolutely nowhere to hide.
If you didn't have the ability to sustain, be aerobic throughout this whole piece, keep moving on those burpees, keep moving through those wall balls, then you were just going to have a bad day. And I saw two types of athletes.
The athletes that died on the last set the athletes who could pick up the pace just one gear higher just a smidge yep yeah yeah I mean speaking from like a you know an actual practical perspective when jacob and I game planned his pacing for this we basically game planned a 19-minute finish and he finished his first round exactly on pace And then he finished his second round exactly on pace. His score ended up being just over 19 minutes.
And that's because when he started to pick it up, he jumped off the box. So he had to run around, do another burpee box up over and ended up, he would have been, you know, sub 19, but that to your point, that is how that workout should go, right? You should be on pace, perfectly holding steady, very uncomfortable from minute eight through, but not going to fall apart. And then somewhere in those last 50 burpees, depending on your level of fitness, you, you kind of bite down on the mouthpiece.
As an athlete, what is the fear going through your head that you're going to notch up that gear just a hair too early? You can't come back. Right. You can't come back. I mean, so I got roped into doing this with some other Ascend athletes. And I finished my first round at 640, which is exactly on pace to finish. Looked at the clock and was like, well, that's not happening again. So just kind of muddled through the middle round.
I was with another one of our athletes, Dion, going into the last wall balls. He got a little bit ahead of me. We had about a minute 15, a minute 30 on the burpees. And I said, I'm going to go get him. And I just started pushing my burpees. Did eight or nine, looked up the clock, and we had 45 seconds left. And I was like, crap. Because even that, for me, where I was at, I tipped over that red line. And then those last 45 seconds, I just had to go to moving and surviving pace.
And then I tried to pick it up for a couple more at the end. So if you do that... you know, if you're on a pace to finish that workout and you're fit enough to finish that workout, but you do that on burpee box, jump over 10 of the last 50, that's a bad day. Yeah. All right. So we got to go here. Number three, my favorite one. Four time, three rounds, 10 handstand push-ups, 20 toes to bar. Two rounds, 10 strict handstand push-ups, five rope climbs.
One round, 10 chest to wall handstand push-ups, 20 muscle-ups. Time cap, 15 minutes. So this one was all gymnastics, right? So, and this is where I think it's good to start talking about how this all fits together. So we have a pure gymnastics workout. We had technically a weightlifting and gymnastics workout, but the stimulus was very aerobic and long. The time cap on this is long, but the competitive times is not long, right?
And then we had that, what was it, 15 minutes of work, but it was more power-based on the first one. You kind of had to really hustle for about three minutes, and then you could have your minute of recovery. I liked the progressive nature of the handstand pushup as a separator.
in this workout I also liked the rope climb volume I thought it was appropriate for semi or for quarter final stage not something that you know is going to completely like you can't win this workout on the rope climbs but you can lose your score on the rope climbs if you're not proficient um and then finishing with 20 ring muscle ups I think This is something that we've seen over the last couple years of quarterfinals tests.
We had the 21 wall facing last year on the first one, we had the nine rope climbs. So having some sort of a very taxing dense set of gymnastics to finish might be a trend that we continue to see rather than dispersing the volume throughout the workouts or a workout into more manageable sets. This was my favorite workout of quarterfinals as a test. I really liked this. I liked that athletes could play to their strengths a little bit on this one and still get competitive times for their regions.
You didn't have to necessarily go unbroken on the toes to bar and the kipping or the strict, right? You didn't have to go as fast as you could on the rope climbs. It was more, how do you move through these first five rounds and set yourself up for success on those 20 muscle ups? And that strategy would be different for different athletes for, as an example for Jamie, right? We knew, okay, we got to get ahead, right?
For Jacob, who ended up redoing this and did a lot better his second time, it was more, how do we have you better when you get to the rings, even if it's just around the same time, so that we can hold potentially better sets, right? I think, too, if you're the elite of the elite, this was a pure muscle-up workout and how you manage yourself to get there. If you... are a fringe semifinal athlete, it could be a couple things.
There are two stoppers in this workout that if you're not proficient at, could stop you from being successful. And that is the handstand pushups or the rope climb. So I watched Jamie and Haley do this. They are very different athletes. Very different athletes. For Haley, it wasn't that the handstand push-ups stopped her. It just slowed her down. Yep. To where she gets to the ring muscle-ups and she just doesn't have a lot of time. Right. Right. She was proficient at the rope climbs,
but side-by-side, her and Jamie... Like, Jamie is proficient at everything leading up to those muscle-ups. Mm-hmm. And it was about... could she string them together? Right. When she got there. Right. Yeah. I, I'm a big fan of rope climbs personally. I'm really glad they were in quarterfinals. I think it's a good thing to test. I don't think, I know there was some pushback on some other shows. Maybe it was barbell spin.
And I thought I saw something else on another channel about rope climbs being a, um, uncommon movement or this that and the other and I thought it was perfect two weeks ish before quarterfinals the main site workout of the day was 30 rope climbs for time so I I'm a big fan of rope climbs I program you can ask any of the any of the athletes I coach or a lot of our ascend athletes I program a lot of rope climbs uh I have a running joke if you're trying to be competitive rope climbs are
a monostructural movement not a gymnastics movement you should just if you can get to a place on those rope climbs where you just breathe and move uh it's a game changer I'll tell you what I've seen a lot of crossfit in my days my co-host and my friend she can kick ass on rope climbs she's a monster at rope climbs dude oh my gosh I love it it is first as small as she is to be a two pool Rope climber is just insane. It's amazing. It makes me so happy every time I watch her do rope climbs.
I get chills right now. Yeah. She's great at them. Yeah. So then we finish up with a workout four. And that is the ladder. Yep. So you talked, we had power output. We had the engine workout mixed modal engine test. Yeah. Yeah. We have the pure gymnastics and now we have pure barbell, pure barbell, single modality. So I actually had a conversation with one of our other coaches two days ago about this workout. Cause he, he's an Olympic lifter by trade.
Um, done CrossFit for many years, um, been on some teams that have been to the games and stuff like that, but he is a very purist when it comes to weightlifting. And he was making the argument to me that this isn't a strength workout. Um, and I disagree. I think, especially at the quarterfinal level, this very much was a strength test. It did the job of testing strength. Um, Jacob finished this. He went in with a really, really good plan, executed really well.
Hattie had a similar plan, a little bit more variance in her strategy. But the first thing Jacob said to me after he got up off the floor was, you can't do well at that and not be strong. And he's 100% correct. So this tested strength in a CrossFit manner, you had a buy-in of grace at ascending load. And then you had to AMRAP 245 as many times as you could, or 165 for the ladies as many times you could in the remaining time.
So it was a very cross-fitting way to test strength, but I think it was an appropriate way to test strength at this corner final stage, especially with a bigger pool of athletes relative to a one rep max or something like that. Cause you could have had people, if they would have programmed a pure one RM that didn't have any kind of fitness requirement, you could have had people who maybe barely did four rounds on the previous workout and then could have just smoked a 370-pound clean and jerk.
I know athletes at local gyms in Houston who have that potential. So I think this balanced things well for the leaderboard needing to the people who are strong enough and fit enough, we're going to place very well in this test. Right. And I actually, I did this one as well. And Jacob and I had a good conversation about it. Cause he like watched me slash judged me. And so Jacob got 28 reps. I got six. That's the difference.
But that, that perfectly highlights the difference between it being a strength test and a fitness test. right? For him, he had to be fit enough to keep moving that bar. I just not strong enough. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Right. So I actually really liked how they did this. I did think it was interesting. And I guess this bleeds into probably one of my biggest takeaways from the test. I thought it was interesting that it was single modality, even though it had some volume to it.
So when we zoom out, so let me, Reset this conversation. Coming into this, you made the claim that this was the most important programming that CrossFit was going to do because of the short window for people to qualify for semifinals and how many people were going to be competing. It had to be perfectly programmed. Did CrossFit meet that expectation? Go. I would say yes with an asterisk just because of all of the shenanigans surrounding the step-ups.
From an energy system, loading, skill, testing, balance testing, yes. I think they did a very good job. I think from testing the fitness perspective, the right people are moving on. right? Even those people who got bonked out because of a penalty, if they were in, I think they fit that bill, right? I was very pleased with the workouts overall, especially after things have actually kind of calmed down and I could sit and kind of think about them a lot more.
Something that I thought was interesting that is a little bit different from what we've seen in the past is To me, when you look at these four workouts on a piece of paper, it is almost like a CrossFit combine. So you have an interval test that requires high power output. You have a long aerobic test that requires muscle endurance, right? And bounding. Then you have a pure gymnastics test. with varied skill and things like that.
And then you have a pure single modality weightlifting test that requires both strength and fitness. A lot of times in quarterfinals of the past, we've seen loading and skill much more evenly distributed throughout the workouts. Last year, we had crossovers and 70 pound dumbbell snatch for the men, 50 pounds for the ladies. We had heavy front squats with gymnastics. We had moderate to moderate to kind of heavy deadlifts with gymnastics. And then we had the row GHD is kind of this longer test.
When we look at this year and last year, it's kind of pretty different in how they structured these pieces in the testing, but it's still, I think did a very good job. Obviously your athletes that are on the bubble and fighting for those bubble spots, the programming structure matters a lot more than, for them to perform and, you know, possibly punch a ticket.
But I just thought it was an interesting observation that it kind of seemed to me like they were testing specific different modality or different themes of CrossFit, so to speak, in each, you know, each of these tests. But then when you put it all together, it's relatively well-rounded, I think. Kenneth says, that was an awesome analogy, CrossFit Combine. Thank you. It kind of is right. Like that's what they're trying to do anyway.
They're trying to show the talent of these athletes to make sure they get the right people onto the next round. Yeah. And I mean, if we're going to continue with this kind of combine thought process, combine analogy to me, if there's a stage where you want that, it is quarterfinals. What's your bench test? What's your 40, right? Let me see you run a route. Let me see that stuff before you go off to the big leagues. What do the athletes at the NFL Combine call it? A cattle call. Right.
25% of the people in the open, a huge amount of people that you need to funnel down to the people that are going to be drafted in the NFL. Right. I love that analogy. Yeah. I like, I love the tests as a fan. What always, they always seem to do a pretty good job at this level. And it's the level that we don't get to see as a fan. And it's the one I want to see the most.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I love every athlete that I coach, but I will always have a special place in my heart for the athlete who is clawing with everything they have to go to semifinals. And they just get no love. And it's the most stressful because you're waiting a week for everything to shuffle. They're still waiting to see who's accepting and who's declining. Have you seen Halpin's thing about the team alternates?
Yeah, it's like, I guess there's some issue with people who are on a team, but like roster, but listed as the alternate, not being able to sign up and accept their individual invite. I have no idea. That was the gist of his story that I briefly read. I think it's by tomorrow. They have to, they have to declare team or individual. Also, I have no idea what's happening, but Madison just called me. One of my team athletes just text me and one of my team group chats went off.
So I bet the team workouts just got released. Okay. Oh, I love it. Um, fun. I do think one thing I will say about quarterfinals before, you know, we, we move on or do whatnot.
I think it's really unfortunate that whether it's just because of the shock value of people getting penalties this year relative to years in the past or whatever we want to put the onus on for what happened with, with that, um, I think because of that, no one is talking about the programming other than in a bad light with one workout. And really, there's a lot of bitching going on. But if Paige Powers isn't one of the people penalized, it doesn't even make the front page.
I said this, and I mean this with no disrespect. I would feel the same way if it was one of my athletes. CrossFit got along just fine before Paige Powers was doing CrossFit. We will be okay. It sucks. I get it. But people really just kind of went crazy with some of this stuff. I love Paige Powers. She is one of my favorite athletes. She came on the show early in her career. She's a monster, dude.
But if... just uh chase and bill gave the programming praise too I'm glad I didn't get to watch their show I do obviously being a super nerd usually try to tune into their programming shows and stuff but uh I didn't get to catch that one so I use that as a here they are oh boy all right These are the semifinal team athletes or team workouts. So I guess we'll go, we'll go through these real quick and get your first impression. Okay. I do have to go at the top of the hour.
So we have about 10 minutes. All right. Um, so team event one, 30 rope climbs, 120 wall facing handstand pushups, 150 calorie echo bike, 48 foot handstand walk accumulated. Anyhow, non-working athletes must hold the worm. So I'm imagining that's one athlete working at a time. Or two. No one? Two might be a tall ask at semifinals. Holding the worm with two people is really hard. Team event two. Three cleans. Two front squats, one jerk. So barbell complex. So it's a clean and jerk. Basically.
Okay. Yeah. uh team event three five rounds for time 800 meter run 15 worm thrusters so we'll have runners there's that two and a half mile run and team event four four time male female pair one three rounds 30 calorie row 30 overhead squats Male-female pair, 290-calorie row, 90 overhead squats. What's the load? 125, 185. Shoo! 90 at 185? Well, I imagine that's split. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't say synchro, so...
Event five, four rounds for time, five synchro muscle-ups pair one, five synchro muscle-ups pair two, 10 worm clean and jerks, 15 synchro burpees over the worm, one section worm walking lunge. I like that. And that is it. Okay. Interesting. Only five events instead of six. Called that. They're only competing two days. Is that enough to get the best of the games? Yes. Yeah, I think so. I think the difference between the top tier teams and the bottom is there's a pretty big gap.
Yeah, I think just briefly thinking about these workouts, your top tier teams, you're going to have significantly different scores for sure on this workout, the run workout. Carolyn, do we like the next lift for five events? So full disclosure, myself as a coach, I'm kind of tired of testing max lifts. I would much rather see moderate to heavy barbells paired with high skill or something like that. At this point, I just think we could use a change for a couple of years.
That being said, I think there's a strong argument to make that it's going to impact the leaderboard, but they haven't really rewarded the teams for being strong at any point in the season so far. And again, with there only being four stages of the season, open quarter semis games, how long can we make the argument that you're not allowed to have a max lift yet? So I kind of see both sides of that, but. Lex, that's the same complex Indy had before. I do believe it is. I think so.
Yeah. In, Interesting that they're doing clean and jerk after the teams did deadlifts and shoulder to overhead in quarterfinals, which is relatively similar movement patterns. Full disclosure, I was kind of expecting a snatch. It's the year of the clean and jerk. Max lifts do get the crowd going for sure. Maybe the Indies will have a snatch variation.
I think that would be, to me, a wee bit too repetitive if we had clean and jerk in quarterfinals for max reps at a moderately heavy load and then a clean and jerk 1RM. So this is my argument to Wad Zombie, right? So I've been in the Coliseum for some max lift. I was there for the sandbag. I was there for... A lot. And the, and the roof comes off the building in the Coliseum.
I would argue that the 400 meter, not really run into the clean and jerk ladder or the clean ladder got the fans just as hyped as a max lift. Yeah. And it had a fitness component to it. Yeah. I'm okay. The worm thruster and worm clean and jerk is fitness, not strength. I have athletes I coach who do not have the largest clean and jerk in the world, and they can absolutely hold it together with their team doing worm clean and jerks. So, yes.
But I think for most teams who are competitive at this point, the worm is a test of synchronicity, fitness, and muscle endurance rather than strength. Unless they... bring out that crazy thing that was sectioned out and we watch everybody get their ass kicked. Now that brought the crowd to their feet. Yeah. People were scared. Someone's going to die. Yeah. Um, as I said yesterday on coffee pods, nobody watches sports for safety. This is true.
Just, just remember the people like me who are in the back, like, Carolyn is not happy. She's not happy. I don't disagree. And I, I haven't, I haven't looked at it more than what we just saw, but it does. I mean, you have muscle up handstand, push up, clean and jerk thruster worm. Yeah. So a good bit of overhead work, which I mean, they did dumbbell snatch, shouldered overhead.
ring muscle up premium on ring muscle ups at this point um handstand push-ups in quarterfinals so yeah I would say that she's on to something there with potentially some redundant overhead work um Carolyn says I'm not saying I'm not happy I'm just looking at movement patterns Carolyn I'm still salty that you got way more votes than I did on our drafted teams I like two and a half mile run. I'll be interested to dive into the, the flow of that workout. No way they have two runner or four runners.
Yeah. It's so this is like, it's nice, but you don't have the flow of the workouts here. Right. I mean, I'm going to make my teams just probably run together because now we'll do some different variations of it. I'm sure if you go to the website, they probably have the full descriptions. Or they'll be up tonight or tomorrow. I guess CrossFit just said, screw it. The Indies got linked, so we'll just drop the team workouts to get everybody's attention on something else. Hey, look over there.
Yeah, literally. All right. Well, awesome. We did all that and still got it under an hour. I think this is the best we've ever done right there. Well, thank you everybody for joining in. Um, that looks like this thing may become a weekly thing. Um, I just got to get the bumpers for it and the backdrop. So we represent what we're really doing here. Yeah. With that being said, I'm going to go ahead, shut her down and, uh, had a Kenya in an hour for my last Canadian interview of the day.
Um, this is Canada day on Clydesdale media. So we are representing Canada on this one too, even though he's a Texas guy. I am a Texas guy now. Yeah. So, all right. With that, thank you everybody in the chat for being here. Thank you, Carolyn, for all your input. We love it as always. And we'll see everybody next time on chopping it up with the, with coach crispy cream. Bye guys.