 You want to find out why we don't like CrossFit? Listen to this. Our next caller is Sarah from Idaho. Hey Sarah, how can we help you? Hey, I love your podcast. Thank you. I've been a frequent listener for over a year now. Just a little history about me. I'm 48. I've been doing CrossFit for a couple of years now. But working out probably steadily for 15 years, just I love weights. It's probably my favorite thing. But after doing CrossFit for two years, I feel like I'm not getting stronger doing the CrossFit workouts Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Each workout does have a strength portion, but you are only doing one thing, such as a deadlift or a bench press or a hand clean, etc. And then the workout of the day usually uses that strength in part of that with a much decreased weight. But I want to throw in some weight days, maybe on the days that I'm not doing CrossFit, but I'm not sure about the programming because some CrossFit days we're using multiple muscle sets. I don't want to over train, but I want to get stronger. I enjoy CrossFit. I know you guys sometimes talk badly about it, but I like it for the endurance it gives me. What would you suggest? I want to be clear on the CrossFit thing because we do tend to tease a lot about it. There's a lot of very positive things that CrossFit has brought to the fitness community, but your question is the reason why we don't like it, because most people have goals just like you have or have specific things that they want to focus on. And that programming is a better way to do it. Yeah, there's a much better approach to achieve what you're looking for than following a group class that's very intensity based. CrossFit gets you good at competing in CrossFit. Is that what you're trying to do? No, no, I've been just competing in the game of life here. This is the challenge, and I get it by the way, Sarah. I understand this, but when I meet people who do CrossFit in your situation, not people who are trying to compete in the sport, but rather they're trying to improve their health and fitness and their strength and they come to me. And it's almost like I'm talking to somebody that is in a dysfunctional relationship with a partner. It's like they come to me and they're like, hey, you know, my husband throws dishes at me and calls me names, but you know, but yeah, we got, you know, I want to stay with him. So like, it's like, okay, I don't know what to tell you. You like my CDs. I don't want to leave those. I don't think, and I'm going to, I hope I don't make you uncomfortable, Sarah, but I'm going to call you out a little bit. I don't think you like the endurance of CrossFit. I think you like the fact that you get beat up in your workouts. I think you like the sweat and the pain. Is that the, be honest, is that the deal? I mean, I do like that. I like, I like, I call myself kind of an endurance ADD person. I don't like to just go out and run. I don't like to just go out and bike. I like to do something different every time. Yeah. So, and because here's why you're probably not gaining any more endurance or strength at this point, the CrossFit program, that's different from place to place and different with different coaches. Some coaches are good, but generally speaking, unless you're going to compete in an event that is CrossFit, there's not a lot of value in comparison to better programmed workouts. So if you like endurance, I can give you a program that'll give you better endurance. If you like strength, I can give you a program that's going to give you better strength. If you like to beat the crap out of yourself, I think you should stick to CrossFit. These are the things that you want to ask yourself. If you're looking for better stamina and strength and you like that athletic functional aspect and you said you have that endurance ADD, which I get that as well, we're going to go Maps Performance or Maps Strong. Maps Strong or Maps Performance, you're going to have fun. It's different. It gives you some of those components, but you're going to improve. You're going to get, you're not just going to have hard workouts. You're going to see your strength go up. You're going to see your endurance and stamina improve. You're going to feel good. It's not going to feel like you're teetering on the edge of overtraining. You may be feeling right now. Yeah. Honestly, Maps Performance was our answer to a lot of, it was actually a good transition for me with a lot of CrossFit clients that I used to have where we would take them through actual functional strength type exercises. And I know that's a lot of the appeal of it is that you're moving in a lot of different directions. It's fun because it's almost like you don't really know what to challenge. Yeah. And you're in a group environment. You kind of feed off of everybody. So I totally get what they're trying to do with that. And they did a masterful job of making it like a community experience. But in terms of like you progressing forward and getting strong, we have to be specific. And this is where good programming actually changes all that up for you. So it really is just going to revolve around whether or not you're comfortable enough to step outside and do something that's maybe outside of that environment. Yeah. Sarah, I'm going to make a deal with you. Okay. You can say no. All right. Okay. You don't have to say yes. You can say no. If you promise to do what I'm about to tell you to do for at least five weeks, what I will give you is I'm going to give you maps performance, maps strong. And I'm going to give you maps prime because I want to make sure that you prime properly so that you don't get injuries and maybe correct some imbalances you might have developed following the CrossFit programming. Is that a deal? Would you take that deal? I would take that deal. All right. Done. Yeah. Done. I'm going to give you all three of those. Okay. So I never give away three programs. I always give away just one. So I'm going to give you all three. Just start with maps performance. Okay. Do the first five weeks. If you don't like it, go back to what you were doing before. But if you like it, stick with maps performance, then follow maps strong after that. The entire time you're following both, make sure you prime properly. You'll get that out of maps prime. It'll teach you how to do that. And I bet you're going to be blown away. I bet you're going to be like, wow, I didn't know what I was missing. The one tiny thing I want- I think that's great. The one tiny thing I want to add, because I've also trained a lot of clients that loved CrossFit and then I ended up coaching, is because it creates this competitive environment and this kind of go-go mentality, make sure you're following the program as laid out, right? So you'll notice that we have tempo in there. We have rest periods built in there. And so follow the rest periods as we've programmed them because that's just as important to the exercise selection. It's a part of the programming. And CrossFit clients of mine have this tendency to kind of go-go-go. And they just want to see how much they can do, how fast they can do it, and how much they can get out in that time. And because I know a lot of it's designed that way, where that's not how I want you to train. I want you to get adequate rest in certain phases. You have shorter rest periods. Certain phases in our programs, you have longer rest periods. And the idea is that when you're in that phase, you stick to it. There's science behind why we programmed it that way. And you will benefit from it. If you stay true to it. And there'll come a time when you'll be standing there between sets and you'll be like, I'm bored, or this is easy. Or you'll be doing like five things. Yeah, I could do this now. Or you could do that. And you need to fight that urge. Fight that urge to want to go right back at it, just because you feel like you can. You need to follow the programming, give your body that adequate rest, and then go out again. That's my one thing that I want to add to this. Great advice. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much, Sarah. Is there anything else? Um, you know, that's it. I will definitely try this for five weeks, and we'll see where we get. Hell yeah, please check in with us. Check back with us. Let us know what happens. I think I know what you're going to say, but do it anyway. All right, thanks. Thanks, Sarah. Yeah, the dysfunctional relationship people have, sometimes the CrossFit is so funny. You called her out on that. Well, how many times have you heard that? Oh, it's every time. Yeah, I want to get stronger, but I like the, you know, I like the performance aspects. I'm like, was your performance improving? Well, no. Okay, what you actually like is the beat-up part of the workout. You know, the other thing that we call someone like that is cortisol junkies. Of course. Yeah, they just, they just love that adrenaline rush, and she are kind of alluded to being somebody like this. Totally. She probably needs to kind of get after like that, to feel the same thing, which is why I gave the advice I did, because I know that same person Totally. Has a real fucking hard time Sitting for 90 seconds before the next set. It just feels like an eternity for that person. And if she disregards that and goes right into it, then she's going to lose a lot of the benefits of the program. Otherwise, we're just completely going into like cardio with weights. Yeah, and we got to eliminate that. What I've even told people who had a really hard challenge with this is I would say, okay, fine, here's what we're going to do then. We're going to follow good programming for resistance training. And then on these other days, you like that competitive, whatever. Let's find something, rock climbing, or, you know, parkour, or, you know, like do something that Just start a rec league and go speed. Yeah, like that's a part of what you're doing. But don't apply it to your exercise programming because then it just becomes all about the pain. And you'll get away with that for a certain period of time. But at some point, your body's going to rebel. Yeah, I do want to add something, too, that if she's listening to this, hopefully she goes back and listens to our response after the call. You gave her performance and strong, which I think is a very smart transition because it's going to appeal to her the most. And that's hopefully we win her over. But I would follow that up with Maps Anabolic, right? So I would like to see her go performance, strong, and then I would want to take her. And hopefully I have in performance. I'm trying to get her. I know, I know what you're doing. And so I'm hoping that I win her over in performance and strong like you did. Like now she trusts us. Oh my God, I got stronger. I feel amazing. She's going to see all these great results. Then now, now that she has our trust, I say, okay, now you're going to follow Anabolic. And you're going to have way less volume. You're only going to train three days a week. Like you're going to rest a lot more. Or just focus on strength. Or power lift even, right? So I'd like her to go to power lift or Anabolic. So if you're listening and you trust the process and you see the great results that you should see if you follow it, go performance, go strong, and then jump back to Anabolic and or power lift direction. That's where I'd go.