How to Build a HYROX Programme That Actually Works

Welcome back to the high rocks coaching podcast before we get into this week's episode. If you enjoy the show, make sure you like, subscribe and follow us wherever you're listening or watching. It generally helps more people find the podcast and means we can keep bringing on good guests, cover a useful topics and answering the questions that actually matter for high rocks training and racing. We also want this to be driven by the people listening so if there's a topic you want us to cover, something you disagree with, a question you want answered, or even something you want us to properly debate, send either of us a DM, we read them all and quite a lot of the episodes come directly from the conversation we're already having with you guys. You can also share this episode with someone you think who would get something from it. That probably helps us more than anything else. Right, that's enough housekeeping. Let's get into the episode. Morning Chris, how you doing? Good mate, self. Very good, just back from an extended tempo's last threshold run, so luckily I've just stopped sweating. So we soon just started asking me some questions and I get another sweat on. But we're going to do a question and answer session today. We put out, we said, we're going to power up some questions and we got loads. So this will, we put them into some sections, we've got some logical order. This will definitely be more than one episode, probably more like ten. But we'll go through them and we'll try and get through as many as we can and the sections that we can today and then we'll pick up the rest as we go along that we don't really miss anybody because we appreciate people taking the time to put the questions in a firearm. I replied to some people directly because we talked about it before and pointed them in directions whether they wanted to go down that rabbit hole a little bit further. But I think we'll still re-answer some of those questions because things change and get a fresh perspective and just a refresher of stuff so you can talk about it and it helps us and helps everybody else out. Yeah, I think just re-freshing and always covering the fundamentals is a good thing. It's not like, it's not like we have to talk about something new absolutely every week and yet different takes, different experiences obviously, like you said, we really appreciate the questions. Yeah, there's only, it's not like there's unlimited things to talk about. We've been high rocks but I think going back and talking about different experiences we've had with athletes and that sort of thing I think brings a bit of a fresh take. So yeah, we do appreciate you providing us with the content it says I was having to think about things all the time. All right, let's just get dive straight in then and I'll just start with it. So we'll start with we'll coach some principles of program design which is probably what most people would know if they're not on a program or even if they are on our programs it gives them more clarity about why we program things and how we think about stuff and how they should approach things a little bit differently if they're not always talking to us or whether they're not on one to one or on group programs. So we'll just I'll ask you what are the absolute staples and this actually goes well because you did a post on this kind of this week right and Mike and Michael and my lawyer asked me on Monday on their podcast so what are the staples of a well-designed high rocks program? I'd say we probably could just call these episodes it depends episode you could approach it. Even when I read that I was like well do you say the type of sessions. I think the first answer that comes to mind and we talk about a lot is some polarity in the days. So having some clearly marked days in which you are doing some easy work so I guess you could say you need a good amount of days and sessions in your program that are dedicated to building your aerobic capacity first and foremost I don't think there'd be ever really be a time where you would you would drop those sort of sessions out so easy run, easy bikes, stairs, geys, get in the pool like that to me it needs to basically underpin all programs and then you need some sort of threshold developments obviously if you can if you're not carrying an injury one two at most three quality running sessions and then your strength and strength insurance work I mean those are the three aerobic capacity threshold some sort of threshold development and then your station and strength development and then probably a very easy day like an active recovery day or a rest day I think if you've got if your program has those in it in one way or another and again depending how people coach and how people like to write programs that that will vary but I think fundamentally any good Haraq's program needs to have those things in it. Yeah if I think about like this kind of comes into some of the questions it's like the maximum tolerable volume that you can handle so like volume is what we need to drive a aerobic capacity right it just depends on how much you can squeeze into a week and how much time you've got so aerobic capacity underpin to all of this. It's the whole thing is an aerobic sport like we dip in and out of anaerobic requirements depending on the stations but that's fine but on a whole it's a aerobic capacity and durability right you need to be able to get from A to B as fast as possible is the name of the game. Use it as much aerobic energy as you can so you have to have a big aerobic base to do that and the only way you're going to do that is by as much volume as you can handle or fit into a week to create those adaptations and then let's say it's very close to being a full threshold race for some people depending on how long it takes it might be a bit under threshold because they have to take longer to do it because they don't have that aerobic capacity or that ceiling just due to genetics or life stressors and things that they can train as much as other people so do you need to work within the constraints of what you've got genetically and physiologically and being a fucking human and then turning up to work and family stuff so aerobic capacity like to say is definitely bit and we need to do that with volume and then working with threshold or just under threshold and then similar to the strength of endurance thing but you will call it movement quality and economy so but that's the same thing really it's going to be doing those reps at a lower cost so you use less of that aerobic capacity yeah seeding of that so I would both want the same page with that type of stuff and I think I don't I don't think that's anything new I think like if you look at any endurance sport that's pretty much what every single one needs to do if it's triathlon you need to get efficient and all the movements with a fucking huge aerobic base and then push your aerobic capacity and then push your threshold opposite as you can run in the same all of them like it's just slightly different ways skimming it and we throw in a few more obstacles with the stations to have to do it in slightly different ways but the premise and the underlying principles of endurance training are there and let me say the polarity of do it do apply a stimulus and recover from a stimulus to do it what why do you think that's probably two-part question yeah what do you think is the most common thing you see people getting wrong and why do you think that is I think people would start with intensity first and work backwards out of there so everybody sees intensity and I weirdly was thinking about this on the run this morning and I was going to push back later but I think about fitness as if we think about it as a whole at rather than a session and most people see a session I think that is fitness and that is what you need to do to get better but it's the whole body of work that makes you fit out whereas people think that the one session and that intensity of that session is what moves the needle and it really does it if we look if you looked it on the grand scheme of things one session a performance improvement might be 0.1% that's probably like overexaggerated as well it's probably less than that what you need to do is as much volume and as much work as you can to improve so for me people start with intensity and try and get as much intense into their weakest physically possible without doing the foundational stuff and the basics well fast so I don't think the especially even like people beginning need to earn the right to do that intensity because they don't even really need to do it to move the needle to get fit out what you need to do is turn up and do exercise and like almost the the minutia of that that session doesn't really matter for the beginners they just need to do some stuff and as we get closer to our ceiling then we need to start manipulating stuff but people are going on social media seeing people hammering stuff seeing all these intense workouts and thinking that's what moves the needle I need to run it three far at your pace that'll make me like that's not how it works and that the session is not the move the the move of the needle for me the whole whole program and the whole body of work is what make you fit out but people think it's the one session it is funny is that a while you were talking I was thinking about I suppose my answer to my own question and and I don't know from it you know I had a consult with someone yesterday as funny as said 330 because yeah he was basically told to run his thresholds at 330 and he was just he was nowhere near that in a race and then when we looked at his week it was the upper body strength Monday thresholds Tuesday lower body strength Wednesday thresholds Thursday high rocks sim fright no sorry probably just rest Friday high rocks sim Saturday and I just said like when are you doing your easy stuff things like I'm not really sure and then I sort of said well what's Saturday suppose to be is like, I'm not really sure, but I think it's supposed to be hard. I'm like, well, then I come back to the question like, when are you doing it? And he to be to be fair, he got to a reasonable level, having done that. And I was like, if we just build you an engine, we can get you like really good. But I don't know from a, if it comes from a little bit of insecurity around coaches thinking, if I just give them easy work, they'll get bored of or go, oh, sorry, maybe that's it. Like if every session is hard, they'll think, fuck it. It's hard, I must be improved, if I'm doing hard work, I must be. I mean, I think about it a fair bit, maybe it just takes a little bit of credibility and a little bit of reputation that I suppose you and I both have with. We can, we can program easy work and say, do it easy and people cross this. And maybe it's just a, you know, and any experience coaches, you know, dilemma they face like, if I don't give them hard sessions every day, they'll think I'm, I'm not going to make them better. I don't have an answer, that's what I speculate about. You see it all the time, every, every session, almost every session is really very hard. And then you sort of feel for an athlete that has the willpower and the dedication to go through that and then not get better, you know, you feel their frustration. Obviously, we get plenty of inquiries coming to you and I and you just see the same pattern over and over. They have really applied themselves to a really poorly written program, you know, not, not nailing the staples that we've mentioned and they haven't got better. Which is obviously disappointing. The last thing you want to do is feel that what you've done has been ineffective. You know, I think because this doesn't look like a conventional endurance sport, I can see where their mind is going to. But you have to imply that the general adaptations syndrome, like, yeah. If you can adapt to a stimulus, you can get away with it, right, for a few months. And you will, especially if you're new to it, you will get better if you can hang on. And the younger you are, the longer you can hang on. Like, but at some point, you're going to plateau and burn out, you're right. You burn out or you get injured and nickel start turning and stuff. Or you just mentally cannot face doing it. Like, or every session just turns into a grind. And you're not really, like, signaling an adaptation in the body, or you're doing a signaling fatigue. So you just got to have a clear signal to the body, right? Today, I'm doing this adaptation tomorrow. I'm recovering from that adaptation to absorb it the day after. I might be all right, that I can apply a new stimulus. I might need another recovery day. Like an easy day. The thing is people think of those recovery days as if they're not doing anything. Okay, it might be a 0.05 aerobic stimulus, like, or, you know, improving the coin in the pot compared to a 0.01 or whatever, right? So it might be half the stimulus, but it's still a aerobic gain, right? And it's still a step closer to getting better. It just takes longer and it takes time. But it's how that is how aerobic endurance, like bill is this. There are short cuts that they don't last. It's a, I'm obviously analogy. It's a little bit like the stock market. You don't have to, like, keep investing every day. You don't have to be a day trail like, you know, invest, obviously, you know, with training, you do all this, like, invest once a week. You know, every time you get paid once a week, you put five percent if you're in, you're in, come into the stock market. And then, and then you just let it compound. You don't have to, like, every day, we've got to make a new batter. I've got to, like, we'll do this. Let's pull that money out. Let's, like, take some risky bets. Just like, apply the stimulus and then let that, let that stimulus actually adapt to new fitness and I've always, like, I've always seen it. It's just like really obvious. Like, and people will repeat the cliche. Yeah, you get better from the training you recover from. Not the training you do, but so many people still just every session needs to be moving the needle forward. And if I'm not doing it, someone is going to progress faster than I am. And maybe it's just an age or experiencing. But it's just, it's always seemed quite obvious to me, like, do some hard training. Then let that hard training adapt. But, you know, if people can take one, one lesson from this, when we speak about all the time, like, have a plurion you're training. Make your hard days hard. Make your easy days easy enough that you actually recover from your hard days. So that you can then keep repeating the quality of those hard days. Otherwise, like you said, everything just becomes that gray zone training. It's moderately hard. You're already in a fatigue state. You're not really, you know, moving the needle on anything. And you feel like, and you are doing quite, quite hard work. But it's not work that is hard enough to actually drive an adaptation. And because you've done 48 hard days in a row, you actually haven't adapted to day one. You've just continued to dig that recovery dead. And if you're lucky, you're not injured. But, you know, you're just, you're going to be burnt out. You feel like crap. And yeah, you don't, like you said, you're fitness builds over time. You're accumulating units, like you haven't actually accumulating fitness. You've just accumulated work. Yeah, I think let's talk about it, it's perfect. If you look at like something like the FTSE all world over the last five years, like, it's probably doubled, right? But in that time, there's been ups and downs. And like, it hasn't been a perfectly straight line up. And that's the same with fitness. It climbs, then you'll have a, you might have a drop off. Where you might get, you know, like a, a recovery period and it will go down. And it will go back up. But at the end of the day, if you keep accumulating fitness, you'll cop around, like you say, and you will get better in the end. Sometimes you just got to be a little bit more patient than other people. And unfortunately, it takes some people longer than it takes others because they pick better parents and usually a mother. Their mum was probably the one that handed it down to them. So that, like, it's just what you can manage. I think that that comparison is the fee for joy. It is real true. And we just look around, all you have to do is open your phone for two seconds. And you see, you know, someone's highlight reel. And not actually what they're doing in front and grind out every day. Like, sound a bike for an hour or a stair master in zone one or zone two. Like, nobody's posting that shit. They're posting heroic stuff over you. Yeah. You know, sexy. This sort of ties into the first one. What do you think of the three, sort of, the three biggest needle movers in hierarchy training? Yeah, that's the state. Like, I suppose volume, a real big volume is like that's kind of what I said in the facts to them. Like, when I off the back of what you said, I honestly think that's the biggest one. Like, it has to be smart volume. You can't go from, you can, but it's not, I wouldn't recommend it. If you want a long-term development plan and success in sport, you can't go from five hours to 15 hours in a couple of weeks. You need to build it slowly, but it needs to be built around what you can do as a person, depending on what else in your life. So if you go to work eight hours a day, then you have to come home and you've got a wife and kids and other bits and pieces, you can't do the same as somebody that maybe does, so like two or three hours of work a day that's, and then they work in a gym as well. So they've got instant access to it. They can probably do 20 hours and they can have a nap at lunchtime. Those things are completely different. So trying to squash somebody else's mat like plan into your life is never going to work. So you need to find a balance for what works for you. And sometimes you have to miss stuff, and like sometimes you can hit all of the qualities, but as much volume as you can handle around your daily stress is what I would recommend. Like within your enjoyment as well, for most people we're talking to here, like doing this as age groupers and doing it as a hobby for fun. If it stops being fun and a hobbyist comes into a second job, you aren't going to enjoy it as much. And like people might be saying chasing goals and stuff, but like those things are fleeting and like if you waste two or three years of your life, not going anywhere, doing anything because all you do is train in, you're probably going to regret it and resent it at some point. So find it, find a balance to get that probably good. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say just on that point, and you've sort of set maximum recoverable volume. Like I said, anyone can find a way to do 24 hours a week, maybe three weeks, but then if it leaves you in a hole, which then brings me to my second point, it's consistency like the perp. Yeah, if you look at someone like wrong, I don't think wrong, except to my knowledge, sustained a significant injury. I think he's raised, you know, enthrased. If you start in 2019 and he puts his videos up, he was not, he was not a hugely talented athlete and it has just been a trition for him. So take, take a page out of that book. He was obviously kind of swinging back around. So there was some insurance, but yeah, he was not, he was not, he was not a gift, you know, the first time he ran a hierarchy, but he has, to my knowledge, hasn't been injured and he's just consistently put. And he doesn't even do super high volume, but he's probably never taken a significant time off. So yeah, like you said, you do have to do enough volume to keep getting better, but it needs to be consistent. You know, don't, you can't be having multiple weeks off because you try to force 20 hours and then you get sick and then you don't train for two weeks and then when you get back into training, you're training for 10, 10 hours a week like, yeah, commit yourself to sort of that maximum or recoverable volume based on your lifestyle and then commit to doing it for the next decade. You will get a lot better. Okay, that's what I said, I said, I think it took me six or seven years of consistent stuff. And I think I'm on 600 on it. I've wrapped it days this week of, I think of, of training, which I wouldn't recommend people should take rest days when they want it but I'm obviously not wired up right but I would rather go like some of my runs are like yesterday I went for a 15 minute run when the kid on the bike and it was like I think my heart rate was like 97 beats a minute so that kind of is like almost a day off it was basically like going for a walk you know but um so like you need to find the balance for what works for you um so consistency and volume maximum recover volume and then like just movement efficiency like just get an economy on the station it's like because once you stop wasting energy then you can use it on other things like later on embrace but if you if you were burning all your matches on the ski because you your technique is disgusting and it's costing you loads same as sled push like if you are pushing it and lifting it and pushing into the floor like you wasted unnecessary energy so just movement quality yeah it's probably the other thing that it's that's an easy win as well probably this is probably easy like you don't even need to do more training you just need to do better training so like don't waste that movement by doing it poorly and training and building a shitty movement pattern up build a decent one so don't rush it and like take your time and learn the movement pattern and like chill the best thing like record yourself because what you think you look like and what you you actually look like on a movement are completely different things like you like have wouldn't you believe it so if you don't have a culture you do have a coach and send them the film or even to look at yourself especially things where you think you're losing lots of time or you find it really really hard to do like this ski and this is an easy one and a lot of there are millions of crazy techniques but I think you know we had a gentle one yeah I think so on and he went through you know basic patterns that and rewatch that the same with all the rest of them like brackets we talked about that before do the kneel up and save yourself energy like you may lose 10 seconds and speed from doing the step up but do it really and you gain that back on the next one because you don't feel that you're gonna puke yeah back on the back of the road back on the race anyway so yeah volume maximal recoverable for what the recoverable get out maximum recoverable volume consistency and movement quality I think perfect right so this is more probably like that moves on to that what is the minimum effect if you know weekly dose for each major training modality you know arena aerobic volume strength capacity and threshold training risk that starts up depends yeah you need to bet if you're I mean like let's sort of caveat it with say if you're training like 10 hours a week say you can commit to say 90 minutes once a day then anything more obviously you can go I would say for your threshold you you'd probably want a minimum of like 30 to 40 minutes even if you could get one threshold running session a week I think that would be effective enough long-term to to move the kneel for for your strength work I mean we spoke about this last week didn't we like realistic needs it's one high quality working set per muscle group per movement pattern I would always encourage people to do slightly more but realistically if you could only get into the gym once a week and you could do you know your primary movement pattern and hit a very very high quality set that would be enough to maintain the strength you have and then you know and then for your efficiency stuff it this is a bit of a tricky one because it's really as much as you can do you know for your easy runs and your easy ball I can and then your movements as much as you can do and once the minimum effect is I said I probably couldn't answer it in terms of your easy stuff frequency is probably the most important driver so you said in your first answer you know like volume matters frequency I think is just important so if you could get say get if you can get 30 minutes seven times a week that's certainly going to be better than doing three and a half hours on a Sunday so let's say for your aerobic work minimums probably 35 minutes a day like an easy work and then anything more it's going to be beneficial then black with all your movements like I would try to touch each station you know every other day it doesn't obviously have to be high intensity but some sort of burpee where those burpee broads out burpee box jump lateral burpee over dumbbell some body weight walking lunges you know hit the sled hit each sled twice a week again not it doesn't always have to be hard I think that would be the sort of minimum effect in those in my mind but to your point the more you get of most things the better you get a better you know progress yeah I agree like it's just any fun in the right balance for you like it depends on what type of athlete you are as well right so if you've come come into it with a really big aerobic nose maybe you can just you can maintain that with slightly less aerobic volume and you work on your stations more your movement efficiency other way around if you've come in this from like a crossfit background then you can maintain all of that strength you've gained in all the movement efficiency with less and build your aerobic base probably starting off with less impactful stuff and then building more running in slightly and slowly but I like what you said about the frequency thing I say quite often I would rather add someone had you know six 30 minute runs throughout the week rather than three one hour runs I think I like I use my wife as a good example for this because she started off doing park run it took her 37 minutes all we did was built her up to six runs a week of 30 minutes and she and we're in a long run of about 60 minutes over two or three years and then she ended up running 21 minutes like that was very little speed work and that as well it was just in building up the amount of volume we'd get and frequency so yeah you don't need to be hammering it all the time and it's even counterproductive so just building up frequency to build up volume to build up your durability to build up your aerobic capacity so you can definitely to do that with running you definitely need to do it slower because of the impact and that that point really highlights that that point I made about efficiency that you know like you don't have to be so she did basic what you say she did no speed work for what two years and then she did everything now and then she would do a park run and that would be her speed work but we're talking like maybe once every six weeks or something if that and she just got faster and faster and faster and fact that's kind of 60 minutes so she went from it's basically couch to 5k to 21 minutes and then yeah so running it a pretty good clip like really like so and that that's to my point about like I'm big on programming like lots of movement of everything you know seven or eight hundred wall walls a week for most athletes you know seven to eight hundred meters of lunges but again this isn't like obviously the wall walls most of the time you do it race weight sometimes over every soft and might even do very high volume under race weight for someone lots of body weight lunges or backwards lunges lots of different burpees again to that point that if you're doing you know if you're doing 500 wall walls a week you've done 25,000 at the end of the year if you yeah like that that accumulates and I see there's all the time like people do yeah their lunges might be three sets of 10 lunges in their strength where it's like it's done 30 meters of lunges if you done 400 meters of lunges this week it's very intense he's like do you think you're going to get better at lunges like it blows my mind how little movement efficiency people seem to put in their program you know there's just too much like yeah evening yet you know easy days can just sometimes be just almost like a throw away just like 45 minute run 45 minutes by it's like puts some other stuff in there puts some more balls in there again you don't have to do them high intensity like the more volume you can accumulate all these skills or movement pens like the better you're going to be yeah I well I stopped putting extra stuff in in my recovery days because it was just carrying over I do put a lot of movement stuff in so like I think I said that it took me a hundred thousand more balls before I went unbroken at the end of the pro race um so like you've got to do them last week I think I did four 500 lunges in my Monday session like they weren't hard like they weren't fast and aggressive but it was like set to 25 I did like two blocks within the workout at the beginning I did 10 10 by what was it 10 by 20 I think reps and then I went into another movement came back and I did another 10 by 20 reps like there's it's true so that's a thought like 200 but like they just need to find ways to get them in that way actually you can recover from the still do this stuff um yeah of course I think you can you can what we can just get in a million different ways I just it's um do you have to just do the reps there's no get no way you have to do the reps you can do five different movements to get better at one movement by bother when you you've got another seven to do so I think it you like if you want if you can't do the movement properly you need to break it down like you would like any technical movement and work through those parts so if you can't spot a depth in a wall ball because you've got shitty ankle mobility or because you know your hip mobility is starting then you need to break that movement down and work through that before you start doing it there's no point in graining a crappy movement pattern and doing five six hundred shit wall balls a week because you don't have the mobility you need to make sure you've got the mobility and the the capacity to to do that fast same with lunges if you can't do them properly break down the movement and do it slower and build up like most people can most of these movements are not technical but uh so they're not that hard to break down and work make a burpee broad jump break it down and do the broad jumps separately so you can get quality in and if you he's burning you out and then break down the burpee if you have to do the barking and you just do a burpee to, you know, stand up and then just keep your art right down so you can get more in to get more quality rather than put in the jumping of this well after. Like it, there is multiple different ways to do it. Yeah, couldn't agree more. For an age group athlete, balancing work, family and limited availability, what is a realistic, weekly training volume? I couldn't start yet. It depends. And how would you get the most in four training days? Well, I kind of answer this right. So when we kind of answer that there is the maximum recoverable volume, what you can do from a mental point of view that you want to do and you want to commit to the week that around everything else should do in because we can't do that and can't maintain it. Like you said over a long time, it's pointless. There's no point doing a couple of weeks of 15 hours and then like it, hitting it and dropping down to five hours. What's the point? If seven or seven hours is your training budget and that's what you can work with, it's cool. I give it five hours. That's what it is. But just from you, it will take you longer to get improvements and you might not ever reach your ceiling. But that's all right because it's a hobby. It's not paying the bills. What you do during the day is probably paying the bills and you don't want your wife and kids to leave you out then, you know, find that balance. But if I only have four days a week, it's going to be so much aerobic capacity stuff like that you could hopefully you can get 90 minutes in those four days a week. And then I would do like one of the high rocks, like long capacity workouts. I do run station, you know, a moderate effort. One session would probably be, would be a threshold run, finishing with some station stuff probably. One, I probably commit one session a week to your weakest movements. So like, if you pick two or three stations and work through, pop, like those in some kind of strength, endurance capacity. So like it doesn't have to be full circuit. Like you could do it as a long e-mom if you wanted, or you could break it down and just do like I said, we're going to lunches and sets of 20 or whatever for big sets and get get more efficient at those. And then the other one would be a longer aerobic conditioning session as well. And then the more time you can, you're just going to have to make those sessions longer, probably so that you could, you could probably condense to them to 60 minutes, like the strength endurance, one of the threshold one, but you still want to try and get two longer ones in a thing like the, we build that capacity. Whether you have the weekend, warrior that and do it on Saturday morning, you do like a 90 minutes or two hour capacity one. And then on the Sunday, you have to do another two hours. That works. And there's actually some research out there where they looked at weekend warrior type stuff where they squeezed the shit load into Saturday and Sunday mornings and then maintained during the week with whatever they could do. And people didn't make games doing that. So if that's how you can get out of bed early on Saturday and Sunday and get it before the family get up. But then it's just fine. I don't know, I know who asked this question, but I don't know enough about their work week to know what they do Monday to Friday. But that's definitely a reality that you need to use that weekend. And you might just have to have two harder days on that weekend, but you've got plenty of other time for our time. So yeah, you just have to find what works for you in the in your family and your work balance. Yeah, I'd like. I'd probably approach it that setting up say, let's say three high pathetic athletes. So say you've got two athletes with a good training history. One has come from CrossFit, but they always avoided anything aerobic. In which case, yeah, I would say what you articulate as spotting you just spend as much time building a base. And let's take athlete B that has been a triathlete that has a very good aerobic base. Then I'll go for that person, you'd probably then just work primarily on on strength insurance. And like you said, find out what they're worst at. They're probably going to be have terrible hip mobility and ankle mobility. So you're getting them good at war walls and then depending what they're if they had a strength deficit. So yeah, if you say you had two athletes that had a decent training history, but it was sort of polar opposite one was very strong with that being a body builder. And then one was very fit, but they never picked up a weight in their life like you'd probably then you'd be more specifically their training. And then if it was just a like a gen pop person that had done a little bit of everything, it would be it would be sort of a bit more a bit more mix. But what I think what you said is really, really important. You've got to get people getting those long sessions in because I think and I see this as well, people sort of come to shredding. They get really, really found out because they've done they think they're sort of fit and they've done like a 45 or one of these group classes. All they've ever done is expand an energy for 45 minutes. Like you have to get yourself used to producing energy for however, like let's say, yeah, I think the average time's 90 minutes, like you've got to start consistently doing 90 minute sessions. Otherwise, you're just going to find it so incredibly difficult on the day. So that for that point, you may it's really good like you've got to find some sort of long, you know, some long sessions in there. If all you ever doing is squeezing training into 45 minute blocks, like you're just going to leave yourself like so under prepared for the duration of the event, much like running a marathon like you can't. You can't really realistically have a run a marathon on any of the running 30 minute short runs. Like you've got a build, you know, that that volume in your legs and and Hirox is sort of the same. Like you've got to get your body at least used to producing energy consistently for 90 minutes. If all you good at is like going like 30 on 30 off for 45 and it gives you some level of fitness but allows you to lose full sense of security. Yeah, it depends, but like it, yeah, like it's definitely a durability thing. Like it, the longer you can get those sessions, the more durable you'd be like that. I get asked all the time about like you said, F 45 type stuff or just Hirox classes. And like I absolutely think they're useful in a program. If you want to go out and enjoy it and have that community side and like you will get a good stimulus, you just need to realize you can only probably do one, two, then a week maximum because then you're not recovering and you're probably not going to get, depending on busy your program, that your training program is that you're not going to get the recovery of a side and sometimes you turn every week and if you go into the session, turn it into a race and push it against everybody else, it's probably not the best thing, but if you do it in a controlled manner where you know there's a correct stimulus or adaptation for that day. And I think that's where a group class in coaching can probably come a little bit, could get a little bit better from what I see is that it's just an excuse to hammer people so they feel tired. Like if you tell people right, this this session is to develop this, you need to do it like this and not make it a race. People would probably get better out. You can still push parts of it and you could like obviously have fun doing it and there can be like you could do 10 minutes of a little bit of a you know a competition or a little bit of something to get that, like you know a competition or race aspect going at the end, but like not when you go in and do an hour of near-death experience. So the quality of the session is fucked in the first 10 minutes. So that's it. So I think there's more questions. I think you know, I obviously do the programming in coaching of the class at Streder. So yeah, people get quiet, I think surprise, but yeah, when they've come from other gyms and they're used to that sort of circus style, like I do just program long, you know, 3, 4, 5-minute earth efforts and inevitably when someone comes from F45 they've just got no ability to manage their output. And I try to, you know, I try to use RPA and all those things like you just start out slow and like the inability for people to, you know, ski for three minutes at a controlled pace is like how the fucking gonna do a high rocks like you've got to do a four-minute ski, you have five minutes into a race. It's now going to take you 90's like you've got it, you've got to learn pacing controls. I get unfortunate, I guess people, you know, respect what I program in the class, but I'll do these sort of longer blocks of like the Roman principles work quite well where you sort of work at a, work at a pace for 40 seconds and then allow the person to continue to move like active recovery for 20 and get them at least repeating some sort of output for, you know, seven, eight minutes and then we, you know, then we might just go into like a 10-minute e-moment again, you're probably never going to say that in F45 and I like think people is a little bit fortunate if they come to my class to actually do get them really building at base and then there might be a little hard finish at the end and then on Saturdays we make the class long like 70, 80 minutes to get and to get people used to producing energy for that time. But you're right, I think there is, there's probably a big gap in the market. I think it would struggle to ever get through. I think, you know, nothing against group fitness people, I think they like the variety and the novelty and the circuit style where you know, 30 seconds is breath like these quick changes and I think you can write really good group programming and I think the uptake would be fairly low by a lot of gyms because I don't think you'd get a lot of buying. But, you know, we'll see, I think I don't really know much about the 365 model of wow, I do a little bit like even there is the too hard but from what I've seen so like even coming from the the top like an educating pyrox coaches on the courses - It's too intense to explain it to you. - Yeah, well, it is, it's not so, it's not so. I don't know who wrote those programs, but I've said as well, I've been asked to look at the level two and give some feedback, but yeah, everything's too short, too intense, too hard. - Yeah. - But look, maybe it's like, yeah, maybe it is one of these things, like are you better off just getting someone in and moving and exercising because, you know, attrition is more important than riding the best program, and if somebody's coming in and they like the group class and, you know, they're there four times a week, it's, they're certainly still going to get a better result than some of it comes into a really well-written program, but that broader their brain and, and lose interest. So you, I guess you've got to balance that, you know, engagement versus effectiveness. - It depends what they're doing around them. Like what, like what they're doing in between those sessions, I suppose, like depends on what their outcome's going to be, because there's no doubt you can get good stimulus off, smashing yourself for 45 minutes, but only if you recover from it to do something else. And look, that's, you're enjoying it. So, yeah, it's all a bigger picture thing again, like we said, starting at the beginning of this. So yeah. How should a complete hierarchy preparation be structured? This is yours, actually. If time is not constrained, and how long should each phase ideally last? - That's a good question, look, I don't really program it in phases. I tend to have sort of just rolling blocks, and maybe I'll change what I'm not, I'm certainly not against periodization, but I think, I think we spoke about this at other episodes, you know, compared to say triathlon or marathon doing these like big, you know, base phases where you're just doing easy work. Again, I think the problem is you lose, you lose the efficiency that you create in all those movements. And again, if you're a triathlete or a runner and all you're doing is easy runs, easy swims, you don't really lose the efficiency too much. Obviously, you lose that real race sharpness, but if you're still consistently running and swimming, even if it's very easy, you don't really lose that efficiency. If you just take away all the movements in hierarchy, I think my personal opinion is like, that is such a valuable thing to possess. So, I typically programming in three week blocks for every athlete and the block state pretty similar. And then, you know, if you work with me one on one, I'll be looking at your data, how are you progressing and subjectively, how are you feeling? And then just looking to add volume. That's how I've done it so far. And then depending when and where the race is, that will just dictate how long the D-load is. So, if it's a local race and you don't have to travel, I usually only D-load for like a week. If obviously there's a fair amount of travel on a change of time zone, you know, the D-load might start from two weeks out, but I'll be up just typically just, continue to roll in three week blocks. You know, for, you know, looking at an athlete, what are we working on? We might have like one or two things we're really targeting. In that block, we're being, you know, more intensity work on like it might be like sleds and burpees, but then it's just generally, it's pretty similar. Again, I try to touch all the movements as often as possible, three quality days, three capacity days, and then one active recovery days have done it, and you know, over time that may change, but that's typically how I've always done it. - Yeah, I'm like the, I work in four week times two, so like three weeks of building progressive overload. The progression isn't always the volume, usually the volume gets up and stays as high as they can manage, and then we increase the intensity, or density within those sessions over the week for three weeks, one week download, repeat again for another four weeks, and usually those eight week blocks, they are the whole, so that people ask me so the time you have these pathways that are aimed at different elements of high rocks, yes, but they're actually all aerobic capacity builders and high rock specific with an emphasis on a certain area. So you might, you definitely, so I over, probably over two week, no, definitely over two week period, you hit every single station at least once, like for some people, like farmers carry isn't a massive issue, so you might only do it once in two weeks, I think that's probably enough for them to keep on hold a bit, like everything else gets hit, you know, within that block, with an emphasis, if we're doing a beep about people broad jump block, you will be doing people broad jumps to probably three times a week in your quality sessions, or quality days, and then that you get better at that, and then we'll break it down as well, so your strength and conditioning session will be elements that I think make about people broad jumps better as well as everything else, so if we think about it, probably like some kind of chess and anterior doubt stuff, so like a chess press of some kind, or press up, it's part of that build up, and then, you know, some broad jumps or explosive stuff to get better at that, and the rest of it stays the same, it's only that one session that will protect you, you know, conditioning and strength enduring stuff for high rocks, and each one of those sessions will contain that element, but it contains everything else as well, it's not like I do it eight week block where you forget about seven stations, and just do one, because like you said, you need to be on top of those movements, and get that minimum effect that does each week to make sure that you maintain or improve, so, like, I don't think there is a, like a fake, ideal face, I don't have a, like you said, I don't have a base face, everything is base, like throughout the day, base, like, and build, let's not call it base, building capacity, like you're building capacity throughout the whole year, throughout, maybe not in your offices, and if you have a two week down, deal over whatever at the end of your season, then you're meaning, you can lose some fitness 'cause we'll build it back up again, but throughout most of the year, nothing really changes, apart from maybe four to five weeks out from an A race, where it will be just all about race specificity, but you still build a real big base. It's not like I just take it all out and drop it all over the body. - Yeah, there's sort of two points. I've started working with a pretty high level female, and we're trying to, like, get her burpees better, like that's the main focus, and then there's sleds, so, like, and we've broken down, like, basically, trying to, like, rebuild her burpees from the ground up, so, like, Monday, even though it's an easy day, we're just doing, like, down ups, where we're just getting it to do, like, high volumes of, like, getting to the forequickly, and then resting, and then getting up, and then, like, and then, part of our strength work, like you said, it was just, like, broad jumps, like, after a back squat, like, explosive broad jumps, because we're trying to get her jump longer, and then, two days a week, we're just doing, and then, one-e, other easy day, we're doing, like, burpee box jumps, like, getting her at a slow rate, like, jumping further onto a box to protect her knees, because you don't always want to be banging your knees up, and then, on two of her quality days, where they're running, we're just actually doing, running into, you know, we've progressed from doing, like, an e-mom, where, you know, a certain amount of reps on the minute, at a, at a faster than race pace, and then, implementing rest, and now, we've just progressed, we're doing, like, an e-mom into an extended set, so it's like, three minute e-mom, I think, 11 burpee broad jumps, and then, as, and then, after that third minute, 15 burpee broad jumps into a run, and then, we'll progress it from there. But, to your point, the second point, like, yeah, like, high rocks is always, like, the better your aerobic capacity, the better you're gonna be. I've, yeah, and I've, I've had some, never pushed back, but, you know, you see these, you know, like, it's like 12 weeks to race day, and it's like four week build, four week speed work, four week specific, it's like, you know, like, I can always building your base. Like, you, you can almost never stop building your capacity. You can almost never have two good aerobic capacity. So, like, yeah, and that's why I've always just done, three week rolling blocks on my group program. It's just, you know, three week blocks, and people can start at any time, because, you know, if you, if you start a, the second week of one of the blocks, like, the new block will be very, very similar. There'll be some different workouts, and I'm just at the moment, building some ways that people can individualize. So, there'll be the, the, the program, but then the ability for people to insert specific things, if they want to work on lunges and burpees, they can do so, if they want to work on sled and wall balls, they can do so. But, again, it's, it's just like, it's a lifelong pursuit of, like, continuing to build capacity, continuing to build efficiency, and continuing to build, you know, strength endurance, and that, like, that, to me, is quite repeatable. You don't have to do base phase, strength phase, specificity phase, just like, keep getting better at everything. All the time, obviously, you can't get, you can't massively improve everything. You can't, like, do threshold, ski, threshold row, hard burpee broad jumps, hard lunges, heavy sleds, like you'll burn out, but you can certainly, like, keep the fitness you've got by just ticking most things over, focusing on two or three things, and then, you know, you might do that for six weeks, you might do that, you might do that for an entire, you know, an entire quarter, if it's a, if it's a real lag and you're very strong, everything else, well, you might change every three weeks. But, yeah, to me, like, your programming should always look pretty similar, because, yeah, there's, there's almost, there's almost an infinite ceiling hell. how much capacity you could build and you could be doing this for the next 10 years and you'll always find these marginal improvements. Yeah, that's it. At the minute my group stuff has eight or five eight-week blocks in. Each one of those eight-week blocks has four different levels in it. You can start on the bottom one and we'll go through those four levels and that was like 160 weeks of programming where it's all very similar but slightly step-ups in volume and you would make improvements through that whole thing. It doesn't have to be you reinvent the wheel every Monday and like it has to be different variety and crazy shit. It's better to be in a routine where you just slowly add a little bit more and add a little bit more into what you do it or you get a little bit faster or a little bit, you know, more call it faster because that means sense but like a little bit faster. A little bit of an exchange I did post on, you know, why repetition I think is important and you know changing sessions every week has never made sense because like, you know, you obviously spend a lot of time programming and so do I. If you write a really good session for that week. Why do you then need to change it the following week? It's like hey, it was really good this Monday. It's still going to be a good session next Monday and if you've got some of it, really fit maybe you change one variable but for people who still building fitness like that session will remain an effective session for three, four weeks again. I think having some varieties important but there's no need to be doing because if again if you've written a good session like why do you have like even as coaches like we've got we still have finite times like why do I then have to write an entirely new session for the following week if that one is a good session that that to me sort of never made sense maybe again comes back to that insecurity around coaching you just don't have the ability to tell people no you need to do the same thing what if I get bored fucking don't don't don't do an endurance ball then go play tennis. I actually after we talked last time I went back and read that band up whole Bible you know the skater so and he so after that massive aerobic based light phase part his threshold block I think was it all right now about eight to ten weeks that he did that real big threshold block right okay all the sessions where I were were very very similar and he said they were very similar because he knew then like what they should feel like and how he how he should pace them and how he should feel at the end of them if he said if his numbers were like three percent off in the warm-up and the first set he'd just stop it and yeah right that that wasn't his day to push through and adapt or you know acquire that stimulus so he would just recovery day in carry on riding for the next six hours and then turn up the next day and then try again so like that whole time he made sure that his sessions were like then that's what I think was saying for high rocks because you need to learn what pacing feels like and what you can handle if you're constantly varied that's okay if you yeah you know if you're going to do the CrossFit games but like if you want to be better at high rocks you need to know what it feels like what you can handle when you can go faster when you need to slow down and how your body's adapting the things if you are doing one workout one week and then that the next week it's completely fat and different you don't know what you're supposed to feel like that's why I program these three and four minute blocks of a long stuff and then of threshold stuff so you do three minute run into three minute station or two minute station followed by another three minute run if you do that for three or four weeks you know what the second run should feel like they're therefore you know what high rocks should feel like so when you get into high rocks if it doesn't feel like that and you're over or you're undercut you know that you can go a little bit harder or you need to slow down if you don't practice that in training how are you fucking supposed to know that if you only race two times a year you are you're never going to learn that so you have to learn what training should fit what racing should feel like in training not every session needs to feel like racing but you need to learn your body and you can't do that if you're constantly changing or yeah exactly it's like if you've just got a yeah a session that you've you've done yeah the first week you've done it and maybe it's a little bit novel when you sort of you're figuring out the pastes then like the next week you go back and you know if you record what you've done and you've done say you've done four sets of like 15 minutes zone two and you went you know turn what's two hundred what's two hundred five two hundred five been like you can go back and just like then you've got the screen like this week I'm just going to try to do two hundred seven or two hundred eight like you can make progress but if you've done you know four by 15 one week and then it's like ten by three it's like it's a completely even though it might be the same volume so say you still do 45 minutes like volume like if every time it's different and it's a different rest it's like yet like you said you you just don't know you're pacing there's just the body likes familiar areas like if you could just go and like this is what it's last but yes this is how I feel and you know what I sort of got the first interval slightly I went slightly fast let's just put it back and then you can just nail a session and then third week you should be out executed slightly better and then maybe change it slightly maybe add a little bit more volume a little bit less rest but again you don't have to you know make it wildly different just like those slight tweaks every few weeks and you can really make like really consistent long term progress but if every week every session is a really novel thing like again that's cool for CrossFit because you know randomness is is the programming for endurance sports like repeatability and consistency is the name of the game yeah for a block a while ago I did the first four weeks were three minute reps with 60 seconds rest I think it was eight by more 10 by three minutes with 60 seconds rest the next week it was 50 seconds rest the next week it's 40 seconds rest and then the recovery week it was back to 60 seconds rest and then the next four weeks was four minute blocks with 60 seconds rest 50 seconds rest 40 seconds rest you know exactly how you feel you are progressively overloading like it's not like it's not rocket science and like it's not as being lazy that's how you should be programming like it doesn't always have to be those type of simple jumps but I'm giving an example of how simple it can be so that you can do that it doesn't have to it doesn't have to be more complex so yeah just go to five minutes and if you want to you know and just slow down a little bit on whatever make sure you get this right stimulus but yeah I think we people overcomplicated to make themselves look validated as I think they're smart and in your world but like actually that's not what really happens no no absolutely look if I get it you it's not that I'm lazy like I come with fucking hard like I spend big 12 hours a week programming if I thought having novel sessions every week was the best way to get results like I will put the time in to do it I don't I think the best way is to do very repeatable sessions that the athlete is familiar with and like you said make those those slight tweaks you know you know every other week at a minute take 10 seconds off of your athlete does it does not have to be more complex again it's not it's not because we're lazy it's like well I'm doing the same sessions as last week like yes you are then you do the same ones next week as well like well just keep it simple keep it simple stupid like Mark doesn't if you want to host so much easier to see progress that way as well like it's so much easier to go oh that I'm doing this session and I'm doing it you know I hate talk about things and stuff but it is easy and all like that that the aerobic efficiency thing that I think training people to use it EX or whatever like just you know that's the easy way to do it as well like so you can see your progress but you can only see comparing like for like and not you know crazy yeah yeah 100% I showed an athlete yesterday she's like a squat gone from 8 at 70 to 8 at 82 in in four weeks now maybe like the first week she didn't really take us over the place like she's from so fuck I didn't realize I've got that much stronger like again you can only do that if you've actually done the same yeah the same the same working sets if yeah the first week we did 10 by 10 and then we did 5 by 5 the next week and then 4 by 8 and then we did 6 by 6 like I've got stronger like again like how and I think it's I think it's really rewarding as an athlete too it's be like hey but this is what I was doing four weeks ago this is what I'm doing now like I'm a better athlete stronger faster fit up more efficient like that that matters because then you actually get by into what you're doing before you're doing just throwing out random sessions like yeah I guess I feel like I'm getting stupid but I don't really know yeah I like that like for those eight-week blocks I keep the compound movements the same and they do yeah and then you can they can see exactly what they're lifting on day one to whatever they're lifting on day four of week eight so yeah but yeah it's like the same and like the same if you're using sensors as well you can see the speed of the bar on day one versus day whatever eight week eight is what we're next during our sessions should easy aerobic volume increase yeah like if you have the capacity to do it then now is the perfect time right so and like I think I said earlier don't go out doubly new volume you can add an hour or two like a week is probably a good place to start for most people and see how you see how you adapt to that or adjust to that like see if you add like two hours a week and then four weeks later you're you're constantly fatigued or tired or in the bin maybe that's too much like you know you can probably do you need to drop the intensity a little bit if you're going to increase your volume you can't increase everything so I have a hold the intensity where it is or drop it a little bit and then add the volume so you can only really add them so that as well you only really change this one one of three things which is you know pretty prevalent don't And don't change everything it wants, but yeah, I think off season is a good point to put it in, but it doesn't need to be a massive increase, you know, if you put in an extra two hours a week, that's an extra 100 hours over the year 104, but, you know, it's still a decent increase in volume. You don't need to go smashing and shitload more. And if you're still improving with the volume you've got, it's not automatically like given that you need to start adding more volume. If you're still making really good improvements where you are, just keep going with what you do in like this, everyone's in a rush to get somewhere, just live where you're at in it, like if you're making improvements keep. Yeah, they're both good points. I've spoken with Cole about his season, how are we going to approach him? Obviously we've got the two majors coming up and ideally qualifying the first one, but if not the second, but then we sort of said, look, the off season will be for him. That's quite well, you know, over say Christmas, like, and that will be, you know, whether we do more total volume, but we'll definitely drop back to just two, two quality days a week rather than three. And then, you know, maybe we just match life for like, but then technically you are doing more, more easy volume, and that will be, you know, for say six to eight weeks before Bangkok. I think either that's probably a good thing that a lot of people would do obviously, depending where you live obviously, being an APAC where it's just like, we're already into the season, but I think, you know, over. Christmas is a good time where you can just do a little bit less high rock specific and don't, don't lose touch with the movements, but if you live in Australia, like I do, you know, maybe incorporate some swimming and, you know, obviously if you're in the UK, it's like a freezing, don't do that, but, you know, maybe some different modalities, like some, you know, some longer stuff, some longer easier runs. It's definitely better for you. Even psychologically, just having a little bit of a pullback from being too specific, it is a good thing for long term progress because then you go back to that, that new block, and if it turns out to be the new year, it's just a lot more invigorated, hopefully with slightly more wider country and a bit better over capacity, then you should be able to, then, you know, theoretically handle more intensity in that new block. We're in this kind of off season for Europe at the minute, although. Yeah, you guys are, because you really know, there's really not a lot of races for you guys, whereas APEC we sort of got, we got 72 weeks after Worlds, and then we're sort of, you know, we've had a little bit of a lot for a couple of weeks, but now the Asian races start, Perth is, you know, three weeks, like, we're sort of like, we didn't really get much of an off season. Yeah, Istanbul starts this week, but we haven't had anything since Worlds, which was, you know, so it's six this, this is, I don't know, five weeks, whatever. So, but like, not many people go into Istanbul, and well, we're aware of, so a lot of people, a lot of people that I coach on the program have been doing other fitness races, like just, you know, having a couple of weeks away from doing it, and I've started adding in other fitness races now to my programming, so they can do it. Like, and you have as well, due to just. Thank you, anything, mate. Yeah, and I don't know if you're minding. Put it, put it, put it, put it, put it, put it, start the finish line and try to be in jail to it. Yeah, I think I even, I've got tempted into entering a deck of there, I think it's probably, I don't know how that'll go. But like, there's, you know, it's not the same thing, there's trike of thing in the, I don't know if you've heard about this, trike here is now. Yeah, I think they've just gone to the port to go and listen to their interview, the off, off the, the, the fillers off the podcast there on Sunday. Yeah, and he's got another European country coming in and it's very similar, but, you know, it opens up over at the news, there's something a little bit different. And quite a few of mine done that, because Dublin was a couple of weeks gone, did well, and they enjoyed it apart from the sled port thing. And then there's a lot of things we've got, a real hybrid games, a lot of things we've got, and Deadly does, and it's, it's fucking growing. Now I think it's, it's actually coming to Australia soon, isn't it? If it's not already there. We've had Deadly doesn't for at least 12 months, there's been, there's been a few here, JK, JK one that Brisbane won at least a year ago. There's been, there's been a couple, there was one, there's one in New Zealand. Yeah, we've, we've had Deadly doesn't for a wee while. But I don't know about fitness racing's getting, you know, it's taking off, it's getting bigger. Yeah. Yeah. So just go and try these other things, it doesn't have to be all about high rocks. They don't are all really similar, but at least you get a little bit of a different stimulus, taking mind off saying, doing eight-week block of China, do some of it specific for just a few weeks, well, four weeks for something different. Your fitness you've got for what you've built in, they're all built on a real bit of capacity and stuff in some way. So you get, it's a pretty easy jump across. I put some of it every so I feel like I'll put some Deadly doesn't, like tight movements, like, every so it's a bare crawl, like not quite like, like a high volume, like plate to overhead. Obviously, I do a lot of push press. What else is in there? Those are the three that I've actually used in prior, and I think they're again, they are just capacity building. But they're obviously there, they're like a high master endurance. There's a lot of strength endurance to man in Deadly doesn't but, it looks like a fun race line. Yeah, I would always encourage people to, yeah. Right, like sort of race fitness and race experience, even if it's not horrors is a good thing, like going out and competing, as long as you're not overdoing it, is definitely a good thing. Yeah, like you might find that one of these things actually suits you better and you enjoy it more. Like, you know, it's not, like there's, so my name Dave is, it's completely gone away from high rocks now and moved over to Deadly doesn't and just breaks the world record every other week. So like, you know, he loves doing that now and I asked him on Sunday. So do you come back to high rocks? He was like, probably not. I'm sure it will come back. I feel like it will be well as you come back at some point. Even if you don't train for it like, you know, you'll get off of the ticket again. If you're a competitor and you're pretty fit like, why wouldn't you? We've been going for like an hour and five minutes of anyway. I'm going to finish section one or 12, so we're going to give you a couple more. Yeah, all right. No, this one, in fact, we've already kind of answered you just add to this. I'll ask it again. You can just say, yeah, is it acceptable to repeat the same weekly program for four consecutive weeks or should sessions change more frequently? Thank you for answering it, but you can. Not just the, I would say not just accept, I would say highly recommended, highly recommend. Yeah, why not? Like, if you if you can deal with a monotony and then all you do is add a little bit of progression into each one of those sessions, I'm all for it. Like, just do it. I push back even on monotony. You've got, say you've got seven training days. You've got nine modalities. You've got running and then your eight stations. There is so much variety inside of training week. Like, yeah, yeah, I feel I feel for ultra runners or long distance swears. Like, you've got one training medallion, a bit of gym work. There's fucking heaps you can do with inside of training week. It's not, it's not monotony. Yeah, absolutely repeat sessions. If you're someone that's writing your own program and I thought, yeah, obviously for a little bit for efficiency again. I can't change every person's program one variable. Like, if you want to add, like you said, like what you did with, you know, what was it, three minutes work, one rest. And then, yeah, if you want to change, eight, add 20 seconds or reduce 20 seconds of rest, that's fine. Again, that to me is still a very similar session with a little bit of progressive overload. But yeah, don't, don't feel the need to one week do Monday's three by 20 at 10. And the next week, it's, you know, 20 by 400s and then the next week, it's a 10 K time trial, which is just like embrace the repetition and like get really. I say to people get like, be like really proud of your data, like what did you do this week? What is the one thing I might try to improve is it going to be like, I'm going to try to go the same pace with a lower heart rate. I'm going to try to go maybe slightly bit faster, but still control if it's on the bike. At a cup of watts per per interval, just like find these like one or two things that you can try to improve to the smallest possible is like, you'll be such a better athlete in 12 months time. But if all you're doing is just like, oh, what did, what did rock do? Like, oh, that looks like a good session. Oh, that worked. He was sort of like five minutes of war was like, if all you're doing is just like picking sessions that look cool and throwing together away. Like there's so the chance of making any any progress is next to none. And I dare say you really run the risk of getting injured or over training because you're just going to be, it's not going to be a well constructed program. You can't manage the load, can you? Yeah. You can't you don't know what you're doing from day to day and you get to the end of the week and go all right, I've done 12 hours of training. What did that really mean? Well, how much of that was me going to the well? How much was that with me doing thresholds? Like, if it just changes every week, it's hard to manage, whereas if we sit down and go, right, there's eight hours of easier, real big work. And there's two hours of threshold tempo stuff, we know that and then next week you can add 10 minutes to each one. You don't even need to know if that's an extreme amount of numbers, but you don't mean if you're just constantly bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, all over the place, then you don't know what kind of load you have in when you're de-loading, what you're de-loading. It's not what gets measured gets managed, right? So that's, you know, if you don't measure it, you can't manage it. You can if you constantly change an effort. It takes me around about, to write a brand new program for an athlete, like without a temper, it takes me about four hours. I do it. I'm very, I'm very manual. I don't do it on a computer because a little bit are you there and I get distracted. So I'll sit, I can't see it. forgot five pen and paper and I'll write each day out and then once I've done that and then I'll type it out and then I go through and I'll look at it like I'll quite often make it say there's actually too much of that movement pattern so like again like an original program takes me about four hours. If I've then got to change everything in the next way like I don't have time to do it and it's also it's ineffective because then like again if I calculate yeah I want to do sort of this many burpees and okay that's that's about right and then I'm just if I use changing it for it to be different. If one week you know you've done like how many wallboards did you say it like say one week you do 500 and then the next week you do 50 and then the next week you do 700 like you've just got no control over the amount of volume you're doing like you said yeah maybe you did 12 hours of training but like like we're talking about efficiency comes through repetition and consistency so being in control of how many reps you're doing at the start of the program and like I said yeah then the next week you might add two burpees and and two box jumps and the next week you know you can build it that way like if you've got to create a whole new session you're just doing it to be different and in which case you've got you've got so little control over the variables or you literally just going yeah maybe oh I'm gonna make a difference so this week we'll do burpee broad jumps and the next week we'll do burpee over dumbbells like then you just changing it to be different and then I think that probably just comes from a bit of a confidence thing that you can't just tell an athlete now this is what you need to do if you don't want to do it that way you know probably don't don't embark on becoming a good endurance athlete because I've said to people I think Hirox is the most enjoyable endurance sport to train for you've got you know running and non-modalities you know go to any other endurance sport and the uh and the things you can train you know start to diminish pretty quickly so I think be be grateful for how much how much variety you can get in training and how many things you can be working on yeah I ran for a long time and did 12 to 14 runs a week with two by 20 minute strength sessions there you go but there's nothing but not enough about this for me yeah this is like a smorgasbord of fun yeah so like there's just loads of like even just simple manipulation of like one of those Hirox capacity sessions like changing to this is a different it's a different session to me but like I know how it should feel so like I can I do have to look at anything at my watch I'll go and I know that that stimulus is to be a four out of five effort I've done it 50 times so I know what it feels like the same even with a warball email I do know to film because I think it's one of the the easiest and most controllable things but like if you start with 15 more balls every minute on the minute and you don't finish it you end up getting a minute six and you do the ten and a five then and you end up going down 12 10 9 whatever like tangibly the next session you know like I got to five this time I'm going to six and I'm going to seven and then you do all ten and then you add another warball and you go back to 16 and you walk through that and that is so easy to see weekend we can progression people like we're doing a warball email again yeah have you completed it yet now because that's ten minutes of straight warballs like good luck so there's and it's such a and it's so race and by your time you get to rounds seven or eight you know it starts to feel kind of but you're getting up to however many warballs and the allowing you to do in the minute like I've got like one guy who does 23 in the minute like so she's doing 250 in ten minutes and sometimes sliding 12 or 15 minute email and then there's some tears but like the people can just see what they're improving and week to week without having to do anything crazy and it's so easy you've got a war one and set your watch to an email time and off you go that's it and you know you've done it without and you end up doing 200 reps maybe more without killing yourself like yeah exactly again it's not hard then to get 600 reps in a week is it no three sessions and you're done like three sessions exactly it might take four if you can only do 15 but sure we'll get that oh you add a couple extra minutes on you can easily spend like if you have the time you could do you could do a an easy warball meme email when you like spend 10 to 15 minutes just 10 to 12 reps like you could I mean you could you could always use it as you could almost use it as a war up with like a lot of warballs to say like yeah I actually got heavier for a warm-up and there you go it's because you're a savage yeah no I'm trying to knock my teeth out with a 15 but like do I do 10 reps five five minute email 10 reps with the 15 and that's a hundred reps oh sorry that's 50 reps with a 15 kilo of warball as a warm-up your students start sweating but I have to do anything else yeah it's good takes you through the movement pattern warves everything out there you go it's a heart rate up I actually I've got a I've got a run mate sorry let's say I think that works like cool we can add some of the other 60 questions in a few more episodes very good mate all right mate take it easy see you later always a pleasure bye before we finish I've started the high rocks coach in notes newsletters each week I'll take one of the main ideas from the podcast expand on it properly and turn it into something practical you can apply to your own training you can sign up at wdncoaching.com/newsletter or at the link in the show notes if you don't get an email verification please check your junk mail