 Want to improve your performance for CrossFit competitions? Watch this. Our next caller is Michael from Maryland. What's up Michael? How can we help you? How's it going guys? So I feel like I'm behind enemy lines right now because my question is about CrossFit. I'm an avid CrossFitter but I do it more for the sport and the enjoyment of it. I like to do local competitions and listening to you guys I realize that it's not always the best if your goal is you know building strength or aesthetics and I've been trying to implement some of that with resistance training but I find myself like when I focus just on resistance training I usually end up lacking in power. I'll get stronger but my overall power will be lower. I also have like FOMO like I'll see a workout really want to do it and then that'll kind of accumulate. So I'm trying to find like a good way to blend the two and so my question to you guys is if you guys had a client come in and want to do training but for the purposes of getting better at the sport of CrossFit how would you guys do it? I would send them to another trainer. No I'm just kidding. I feel like we need counseling. How did you get through? This is weird. Okay so here's a deal. You want to get better at CrossFit you know what you got to do more of? CrossFit. CrossFit. Yeah it's a very specific type of sport. Now you want to increase power I would practice Olympic lifting. I would train and practice Olympic lifting and depending on how much CrossFit you do that'll determine how much Olympic lifting specific type training could do. You could always try plyos and explosive movements but I would focus on the Olympic lifts because that's usually where you need to express the power in CrossFit competitions is those types of lifts so really nothing's going to get you better at competing at CrossFit like CrossFit. The only thing I would add that would benefit your ability to compete in CrossFit would be mobility work. I would be you know correctional exercise and mobility work. That would be like the majority of what I would recommend and actually we were talking with CrossFit gyms about you know incorporating maps prime you know beforehand before doing even any of the wads that they had scheduled out and I think it would be very beneficial to you know incorporate that but you know for the most part like what you're describing if you really focus on this as a sport which I actually appreciate the fact that you recognize that and that's your mentality towards it. You got to you got to benefit your body and build your body and train your body for the sport so it's it's different than these workouts that you're doing CrossFit wise in the gym with everybody so to slow down and really you know take those rest periods and allow your body to you know really generate more force and really focus on that specifically and then and then add all these mobility movements in there to benefit your joints while you're putting this extreme stress on your joints is going to be paramount. I mean this is I'm glad we got a question like this been a minute since we've done a CrossFit question and I feel like we always have to start this this anytime we have a question related to CrossFit we have to start with this we're not against CrossFit like if I have a client who's young and healthy and they they like to CrossFit train they love to CrossFit train then I'm so for it and if they came to me as a client and said Adam I want to get better at it then I'm going to encourage them to do more CrossFit to get better at it but what ends up happening and I and Mike you do sound a little bit like this where my client isn't sure exactly what they want they say like oh I love doing CrossFit but I want to be strong and I want to be ripped and I want to jump higher and they have they have all these other specific goals yet and yet then they also like CrossFit and it's they are they are not one in themselves it's like CrossFit is a sport in itself and so if you really love that let's fucking get good at it and let's focus on being good at it and do things like mobility to compliment it focus on eating correctly and recovering and practicing the different wads and it let's let's get good at that stuff but if you come to me and you're like oh my number one concern is like you know I'm losing my strength or I'm not strong or I want to look a certain way that I'm going to challenge the way that we're going at it so I think the answer to this is within yourself I think you know better than anybody or you should know better than anybody what you should do here and you but you first have to decide what is it that you really want from all this I think we get we get caught up in this idea that you we love CrossFit but then we're doing all these things that don't don't necessarily benefit it the most you said power where specifically do you want more power so I find myself like in like the Metcons if it's like a bunch of power cleans for time it'll be something that's like maybe 50% of my one rep max but I just can't seem to cycle it I'll get winded pretty quickly that's not power you're talking about then that's strength stamina so your your your work capacity yeah that's work capacity you just gonna have to practice doing that yeah more CrossFit yeah I mean and if you wanted better power I would like point you in the direction of someone like Sunny Webster's programming which is around Olympic lifts and go follow his programming because it's incredible if you want to get incredible power and get good at the specific Olympic lifts but what you're explaining is CrossFit programming can I do a complex movement a bunch of times over and over and over and I'm not very good at it well the best thing that's gonna make you good at it is doing well first of all you gotta be very proficient in that movement so that way it doesn't feel like your body's wasting energy doing it right so as you go through that and you're cycling that you know being being the best at the technique wise and being able to master that is gonna help you tremendously but then you have to then you have to really get through all those reps and just keep cycling it through those types of workouts to build the endurance so it's kind of like you know a combination of the both yeah you know Justin makes a good point um if it's if I would do an Olympic lifting course where you're really perfecting the technique yeah Sunny Webster stuff because better technique is going to make you waste less energy and then do the more do the CrossFit workouts for the stamina aspect of it that's a great that's a great way to go there you go the only caution about that is the volume of training I know you know I don't mean I don't mean we're not gonna yeah we're not gonna talk about yeah I don't mean work out cross uh you know Olympic lifting but if that's good for you or not practice it like the technique in the skill right because it's so technical I actually did something like similar to that um for the last couple years where like um two days a week one day I'd focus just on the snatch and then one day a week I would focus just on the clean and jerk and then I would do a couple net cons throughout the week how'd you feel um I felt pretty good um but then I I also thought I was spending too much time focusing on uh the Olympic lifts to where like I didn't feel like I was progressing with the performance side of on CrossFit as a sport and that's why I like scaled that back you know what the challenge is with the CrossFit as a sport is there's so much in it that if you do more specific training for one aspect you're probably going to see something else that's why that's why the greats in the sport you ever see how they train rich froning and so I mean they're training three times a day yeah well if you could if your body can handle well I know well let's we're not having a conversation around handling stress listen exactly we're not having a conversation right now about what is the best way of training for being healthy in shape or power or strength we're talking to somebody who wants to be good at CrossFit you want to be good at CrossFit do more of it yeah I mean that's expect the unexpected almost yeah 100% I mean that it's just like if someone came to me and said they want to be good at basketball and what can they do well you know we play basketball more that is the best thing yes there's some things we can do within our weight training and stuff like that to but it ain't going to be as good as playing basketball absolutely yeah Michael do you have uh maps prime pro because I think there'll be some good mobility stuff in there for you um no I don't all right we'll send that over to you okay all right thank you no problem thanks guys so much I really appreciate it no you got it brother yeah um yeah it's it's one of those like I want everything you know questions it's also one of those things where I just this is the part I think that I get you know riled up about CrossFit stuff or CrossFit people is they've drank the Kool-Aid so much that they they think it's what they want and it's like but everything they're saying is not that it's like you know they start off with like I love CrossFit and I want to get good across it they're like but then I really want to work on my abs and then I really want you know I want to get better at this movement and I really want and it's like okay well then it's the next shiny thing all always and that's what that's what drives me crazy because like if if you were to identify something like very specific like he had mentioned uh with uh you know doing that lift and doing it in cycles like you got to focus hyper focus on that yeah but now it's like you're taking all your focus away from the you know tens of hundreds of other lifts that they just randomly throw in there so it's it's hard to really prescribe other than to say like they've created wads you need to keep running through those wads as best you can if you want to get up just yeah yeah and and you know what replay you did you did this earlier replace the word CrossFit with any other sport I want to get really good at soccer but I want to have big lats yeah or I want to get really good at basketball but want to be I want to be 4% body fat like okay there's gonna be some give and take that's right but if you really want to get good at basketball forget the other stuff and just get good at basketball and that's why I feel like the the answer for a lot of these people that are that fall in a category like this is it has more to do with you digging inside and really asking yourself what is it that you truly want and and to get away from all the Kool-Aid you drink because you've been they've been sold on this idea that it's so amazing and it's like listen and I'm not against it if I got a client who's healthy in shape they love doing CrossFit every week I'm not going to discourage them from doing that especially if they enjoy it but if you come to me as a professional and say Adam I'm looking for x y and z and if x y and z if I don't think that doing CrossFit is the best way or you want to know the best way to get to x y or z I'm going to tell you that and CrossFit is not that CrossFit is great at getting good at CrossFit and if you love doing it and it keeps you in shape and healthy and mobile and strong and powerful fucking do it do it and stay doing it and I'm all for it but don't come to me and say you got these different these all these specific goals and then you're like oh but I also want to want to do CrossFit it's like well okay well that's fine and you can get good at it but you're probably going to sacrifice a little bit some of these things that you want or understand that's not the best way to get there totally hey if you enjoyed that clip you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe