Dutch Lowy

As a trainer and likely an affiliate owner you are your clients authority on fitness and possibly nutrition. If your clients are anything like mine were, you will also be their orthopedist, physical therapist, and psychologist.
My question for you is who do you go to for expertise? Who is the person you go to as an authority in different subjects?

On another note: If you have questions for max, get them posted today or tomorrow morning. I will be on a plane tomorrow afternoon and not get back to the blog until next week. Hopefully i will get the interview posted early next week. I apologize in advance for the delay in posting.
My best Friend is graduating from Tufts this weekend so there should be some good partying!!

I will be interviewing Max Mormont soon so get me your questions. If you have already posted some (dave) post them again here so they are all in the same place.

I had an interesting conversation with Spencer Nix of Crossfit Dallas Central today. I went to his place to workout and as we were talking about possible workouts GHD situps came up. At Spencer’s request i will share with you my thoughts.

First, I want you to think back to the last time you did more than 30 GHD situps. Then try to remember how it felt to get out of bed the next day, and the next and the next. For me it may even take another day before i feel 100%. This is why i don’t do GHD situps. My reasons go past just being in pain although that is a huge factor in why i don’t do them. In my experience, doing them consistently has not improved my snatch, overhead squat, deadlift or fran time. They have however kept me from training for up to a week at a time. Now here is my question for you. Even if they are some kind of miracle midline strengthening movement the fact that i lost 4 good days of training negates that totally. Sometimes you have to think “is the athletic capacity gained from a movement or workout worth the time off you will have to take?”

Let me offer some additional things that go along the same line.
Bottom to bottom tabata squats – Last time i did them i pr’d with 22 but could barely walk for 4 days. The pain was deep and lasted well into the next week. I know for a fact that it kept me from training for at least 3 days.

Ripping your hands on pullups/muscle ups – In life and Crossfit, your hands are involved in just about everything you do. I solute the fact that you got 3 more pullups than you did last time or knocked 6 seconds off your fran time because you refused to let go of the bar but at what cost? It takes at least 2 weeks for your hands to fully recover and in that time do you ever get a good workout in? How long does it take to get back your confidence on the pullup bar? ( i have tons of thoughts on your hands and pullups that i will have to get into later)

1 pullup on the first minute, 2 pullups on the second minute, 3 pullups…- this workout not only has the potential of destroying your hands ( i am guilty for sure) but taking away the ability to to straighten your arms for at least 4 days usually more. Not to mention the difficulty you have holding a pen and writing your name.

JT- Push, Push, Push until complete muscle failure. Good luck doing anything with your arms for the next week.

High rep, Heavy deadlifts- for me this breaks me off for at least a week. I end up walking like an old man and complain everytime i have to bend over or stand up. I also think they are kind of dangerous and have hurt my back twice doing them.

Soreness is good. Don’t be afraid to work hard and maybe even occasionally do the movements or workouts above but understand that you will always get more out of 4 days of training than you ever will out of 1 hard day.

What are the movements/workouts that destroy you?

The longer you train people the more the bad parts of training come out. I don’t know if bad is the right word for this, maybe think of it as the less desireable side of training. I am talking about things like waking up at 5:30am everyday or staying up till midnight posting to your blog. We all love training but there are some negative parts that we shouldn’t ignore.
What do you hate about training people? Go ahead get it all off your chest! (no names please)

Dave Werner of Level 4 Crossfit Seattle is one of the original Crossfit affiliates (in fact the first). He is passionate and you can see it in his work. Whether he is teaching the basics or training a games contender (Nadia) you can see his excitement and feel his knowledge. It was a pleasure getting the chance to hang out with him and pick his brain. We could have talked all day so let me know if you have any further questions for him.

Enjoy,

Dutch

The first question came from Justin. The rest are my ramblings.

Subject: Athletic Skill Level Charts.
Their development and use as a tool to specify measurable progress toward GPP.
I have found the skill level chart extremely useful! There is one item on this chart giving me particular trouble – the 45 reps of .5 BW Thrusters on the intermediate skill level, wow!, that is a monster set for an intermediate.

Regarding the 45 .5 Bw thrusters in an unbroken set – maybe You and Dave could comment on if others find that one tough or if I have discovered a weak link in my GPP.

This is the first place where skill is important to accomplish the movement. Most people don’t do thrusters properly. They have a bad rack position and poor hip drive.
I could have done something similar with SDHP. It takes a little bit of work but once you devote time to it you should get it.
For most people that is less than what is required for fran.

What motivated the development of the Skill Chart?

The skill chart came from my experience with people not being ready for more complex movements. They didn’t realize they needed the skills to accomplish these movements.
It is a tool to help people identify their weaknesses and remind people to attack things they aren’t as good at.

It allows people to find weaknesses in correct order and a way to not get hung up in their comfort zone. Lastly it is a motivational tool.

I noticed a bit of strength work before todays WOD. What is up with that?

We noticed a long time ago that people that are stronger take to crossfit quicker than the weak. We have tried different programs such as dedicated strength for a couple months and found we moved back as far as we moved forward.
I also like heavy metcons especially in conjunction with gymnastics movement.

How do you program for the gym?

We allow each individual trainer to program and recently started having weekly meeting and plan weekly programming. It is a way to get organized with strength training. Now we have a regular 7 day rotation with 6 days of strength work. the 7th day is a longer metcon. We use the slow lifts (dead, press, squat, pullup, dips) If you are strong with these you are strong.

What does a typical class look like?

Typical will be warm up, skill, strength, workout vary between short medium and long but we favor shorter metcon with posibly some skill work afterwards.

What is the demographic of your clientele?

25-45 middle aged professionals. 60% women with no strength training background. The big majority had no exposure to hard workouts. It is not a young aggressive population.
We tend towards the less aggressive approach and err on the side of caution.
Its no accident that we have this crowd.

I hear you have some pretty cool programs going here. What are they?

rehab programs
Scott has gotten really good at helping people get past twisted muscles and i am good at rehabbing the back. We each have specialties. for example kb work or o lifting.
We use barbell warmups to teach skills.

It is interesting to see your new space. I never saw the old one but heard it was twice the size as your current box. What were you thinking?

The old building should have been condemmed and flooded frequently.
I moved to get away from the city and because of market value had to take a smaller space. I realized the commute was a big deal. We can reasonably handle up to 400 clients and plan on having that by the end of the year.
We never had drive by traffic and now we get 1-4 people wander in each week. It happened twice while i was in the gym.

Is it just you and Scott running everything?

We are apprenticing a third full timer and expect to have that by the end of the year.
I am planning on moving into a bigger warehouse and want to buy the next building. i want 8-10000 and want 5000 dedicated tumbling with kids classes and adult gymnastics. I am doing some kids camps but i am limited with space for the after school stuff.
I want 4-5000 sq ft of CF space with nothing attached to the floor with equal space for gymnastics.

How many classes a week do you run?

32 classes a week. we fill time where there is a demand. as people have more choice they spread out. We have a couple classes that are simultanious. The cancer survivor class by Fran is run at the same time as another one.
We have 40 classes with an average of 65 to 70 people per day.
6 am 14 people
7 am 13 people
9 am 9 people
noon 5 People
4 pm6
5 pm11
6 pm18
7 pm7

saturday is 5 classes in the am with some specialty classes.

Any comments on Pricing and what you do?

The value of what we do in general is teaching people how to move, anything straying from that puts us in competition with 24 hour fitness spin class.
We are very picky about proper movements that is a service that is not offered anywhere. and that is where we offer value. I think affiliates would do better if they focused on training the movements.
People need to be comfortable charging what they are worth. Good training is expensive and people need to realize that.
We used to charge $75 an hour for Personal training now Scott and I charge $85 and our newer trainers still charge $75. In seattle 85 is a good number for good training.
$150 a month for group training, but we will be reevaluating that soon.
It holds us accountably by charging 75-85.

Do you ever cut deals?

When you allow yourself to be talked down its like saying yea my services aren’t really worth it.

Where do you get all these people from?

Almost everyone has heard about Crossfit from friends and family.
A number of people have come from other affiliates because they haven’t been getting good training.

How do you ensure everyone gets great training?

We have developed an in house training of trainers and
originally (just like HQ used to do it) it involved a test with a discussion at the end to make sure everyone was in line.
Level two would be the training of participants.
level three would be the training of trainers.
Trainers should take responsibility for their own training.
I want to start inviting outside trainers to strengthen the regional community.
We like to invite local affiliates into the gym so we can learn from each other.

Thank You very much Dave.

Crossfit is very skill intensive. I have noticed many people posting pretty amazing Fran times which displays great capacity. The reality is that in order to be a good crossfittter you have to have great capacity but if you want to be a great crossfitter you have to master a miriad of skills ranging from o-lifting to gymnastics. Most of these movements are very technical with people spending their whole life trying to perfect them. The added difficulty of performing these movements while out of breath and exhausted just compounds the complexity. I see the difference between crossfitters becoming a skill issue rather than a capacity issue.
What skills do you need help with? What skills give you the most trouble? What skills do you hate coaching?

Who would you like to hear from, and what do you want to know about? Help me, Help you. haha.