Transitioning from Elite Athlete to Coach with André Houdet // Ep. 5

Intro hi everyone I'm gar from what science and today I had the pleasure to talk to Andre HUD Andre is an elite CrossFit athlete who went through the games three times he recently shifted gears to become a full-time coach and we talk about the physiology of elite coaching as well as uh programming and using variables into your programming I hope you enjoyed the the conversation as much as I do and without further Ado let's go straight into it [Music] so hi Andre uh thanks thanks for for coming on the podcast uh how have you been doing the last couple months yeah well thanks for having me I've been A different life as a coach doing really good um it's different life now full-time coach and uh of course dad and fiance and and and those other roles as well but um from my professional standpoint just busy days yeah it actually is a lot busy I don't know how I managed to to train so much prior prior to this but uh I think just when you imerge yourself fully in in the new role then there's also so much to do and so much to learn and uh yeah it's it's kind of been busy busy and hectic in a good way that that's it's always fun it's it's a it's boring when it's not busy I always say exactly exactly uh tell me a little bit I was I was looking into some old articles of you it's quite funny in the barles spin I found a funny quote of you that said that you uh in like for Andrés background your background you moved to Paris when you were young right and um you you said that you actually joined CrossFit Lou as your first Crossfit because you were searching for a shower because you didn't have that in your apartment is this true or that's a quite a funny funny story I it's it's pretty much true like I I moved to Paris because I'm half French and my dad he sends all of the kids to France for one year so when I finished what we call gymnasium which is kind of like a a thing right in between college and high school uh that's sort of mandatory he he sent me there and um and the apartment that I got didn't have a didn't have a bathroom didn't have a shower it had a toilet in the hallway but uh that's crazy but no shower and so I I asked the landlord I'm like where where am I supposed to shower he's like get a gym membership or something and um that's funny and but but at this point i' already discovered CrossFit I have I had just done like for a little bit I taken my L1 so I had I'd been down to Paris before to take my my level one and seeing the gym and and so I was like okay well I'm gonna have to train every day if I'm gonna shower every day so and that that I like to do so that's that's awesome so every day after work I I went to the gym and trained and showered and so so that was kind of like that was definitely the early beginning of of my crossby career that's how it should be right like the early Grassroots uh ideas about CrossFit that's nicely exemplified there um we have done a video and also I've I've done looked at some of the data on um Elite CrossFit athletes and it seems that many of the elite CrossFit athic like Fraser Froning Khalifa and others when they started or when they got onto Talent in CrossFit the scene scene as a games athlete um they almost immediately uh finished their on on the podium as um as a rookie so that's that's quite interesting so it seems that although the sport is super young obviously that Talent should be very early on there clearly because I mean you don't make it to the podium if you just start at the games right so also for you um I mean obviously as a three times games athlete also of course uh High highly skilled highly Elite did you recognize that Talent almost immediately at CrossFit Lou or did you beat immediately all the other guys in in the the normal classes or how did that go actually um I mean first of all I think that Talent genetics definitely plays a very big factor and I I see it more and more the more I I design programming and I see how different people respond to different things not only from a of course um not just genetic standpoint but also just some people just have a much larger Talent so they also there's like the genetics standpoint from a physiological standpoint and then I think there's the the the other standpoint is like the trainability the coachability aspect and uh and yes adaptability to train exactly and I I don't know if that's genetics or if that's just you've done a lot of sports as a kid and you're good at picking up cues you're good at picking up things quickly um but those are kind of the two things and I think uh for me I was definitely low in the genetic talent pool and maybe high in the adaptability talent pool so all of the skills came came very quickly like I learned all the gymnastics skills by just having my my computer with me down in the CrossFit gym and putting up like ring Muscle Up videos and then just learning it like that or learning it mid workouts like I I would pick up butterfly Chester bars without having ever practiced it um and I think just so from that standpoint I picked up things really quickly I also had good Mobility which helped a lot with the lifting and I think it helps yeah and then I think from a genetic standpoint I have never been a very aerobically um prone so I think I had a lot more type 2x muscle fibers and therefore a lot more explosive so the weightlifting came very quickly at the first time I did clean a jerks in a global gym I clean a Jer 110 and I had never ever tried it before the first time I snatched a snatched 75 in in running shoes um so so I think like all of those things came especially the lifting became came very rapidly I think within one one and a half years I was snatching 130 and clean and draging 150 um but I could barely front Squad 150 yeah but um but as soon as I could put it in a in a very Dynamic momentum um based kind of setup uh I could definitely fire a lot more um muscle fibers and and so I think from a from that type of standpoint maybe that I was lucky in that sense um but I definitely wasn't like I don't think anybody had me in their cards when I when I started CrossFit and it wasn't like oh this guy is just amazing um from a lifting standpoint like Eric from weight 101 he like found me just when I started CrossFit and I was put in contact with him and um he helped me massively he also helped me which I also think is a different another aspect of like the genetic the adaptability and then there's this third aspect which is finding a person that can um elicit some sort of confidence in yourself and believe in yourself and he just did that really early on he was like you can become really good if you take it serious and this has nothing to do with genetics or talent but it just has something to do with this sort of belief than a coach or a parent or a friend can create in you which makes you I would almost say like override some of the other things if somebody says you can do it and you trust that person you probably can do it so I remember in the beginning there was like a very rapid progress especially in the lifting because Eric well basically Eric is said I didn't have a lot of money and the sessions there was like small group sessions with four people and uh he would always set like a Target he's like if you hit this weight you can join the next class for free and it kept going like this I was like well I can't afford the classes so I'm I just need to I need to keep keep hitting the targets um and so yeah so so in regards to the conversation with that's how it with genetics and talent um I don't think I had much talent and much genetics but definitely very coachable which which made the progress uh steady I mean that's yeah it's is obviously difficult to to to to separate those two it's clearly also a form of talent to pick up motor skills and to be able to to lift heavy weights obviously but what you maybe are referring to if you would would have been put on a threadmill and said okay Andre um we're gonna do a V2 Max test or test 5K run test the coach wouldn't have picked you as being the top athlete that you later became no right so rather strength biased and and and less endurance that's that's super interesting because we talked about this with with John Singleton from the program as well he said that um I mean it's quite clear uh that that CrossFit is quite strength ba biased still right if you cannot snatch 275 as a male um one 190 185 as a as a woman um you are not going to make it to the semis or or maybe the semos but not the games right even though you could have the best engine in the world and be an amazing Tri leet so which is different for examp example than than than high rocks which are all also these hybrid uh sports are that are popping up CrossFit if you look at crossed per se it seems to be a bit more strength biased which is fine I mean no commentary on that it's just how how it is and I think as a coach uh which which you are now you definitely have to think about this and and and and Dial Dial the training towards this because if you don't make the bell curve you're not going to make it as an elite no exactly so exactly that's that's definitely interesting so uh maybe maybe we can talk about this so you were obviously a very uh yeah coming up athlete doing really well at the games also your The shift to coaching lifting has uh been been been praised by many people clearly also your Technique obviously and then you quite suddenly you made a shift to towards coaching maybe you can tell us the viewers a little bit about this and also tell about your um idea about coaching on your platform yeah um yeah I've actually been coaching since almost since I started CrossFit so I I started my first coaching Company online programming specifically in 2015 called Trinity together with my fiance and another friend where we also did oneon-one individualized programming for crossfitters obviously at this point I only had one year of experience so it was uh and like every year it it keeps getting better and I didn't have that much knowledge back then but effort was 10 out of 10 and maybe delivery wasn't wasn't the best or the methods weren't the best uh because I didn't understand all the principles to the extent that I maybe understand them now but um so that's actually been going on since then so that's nine years in the making of of programming and coaching athletes it has with time I think the the further I got into coaching and also athletically the more I understood what it takes uh to continue taking the next step and just like being an athlete you know you if you want to go further you then need to dial in your nutrition you need to slow down on work you need to lower stress in in other aspects of life you need to train more you need to train twice a day um and just like that the same was going on simultaneously as a coach it was like the more I got into it the more I understood what I didn't understand and and how difficult it was to and at this point there's not a lot of and still not a lot of knowledge in regards to coaching for CrossFit you know you can take deep dives into endurance coaching with triathletes and you can look into uh strength protocols uh from different powerlifters or weight lifting protocols gymnastics protocols and try to put together your own so I think I spent a lot of time trying to uh get more information from all of these expert areas and learn more and more how to implemented in a in a CrossFit setting in a in a setting where you need to be good at all of it and I with time understood that it wasn't just something that you could learn part-time and I think that had been a a constant frustration for quite a few years also because I've been coaching myself because I I've had a lot of great coaches in the past um but I think the coach that I was searching for um I couldn't find and I also was motivated to create that coach in myself for someone else and I I think with time I had a lot of frustration terms it a pull push relationship I wanted to more to get but I also needed to learn more in to myself to get better and there's only so many hours in the day and also if you're a parent and you want to be good at that and you want to be a good spouse and you want to be a good brother and son and all of these other things then time is very limited and i' the last few years I've been pushing myself to 10 out of 10 with trying to manage all the things and try to become really good at all all the things but you just can't become great at any of them if you don't commit yourself more to one than another and as I was my own coach it wasn't an option that I could just say all right I'm Outsourcing this to this guy he's gonna take care of it um because that guy was myself and um and I've enjoyed coaching myself for for four years but to take it to the next level and there's always a next level new level of understanding energy systems or strength and and all of these things understanding how to put it together understanding the psychological part understanding the environment how that affects you and I think I just reached a point um halfway through the season last year where I was like I don't we just won the semi-finals on the team we just qualified all our rookies to the Cross like three rookies to the CrossFit Games and I was very proud of it but I was also not very happy with it because I didn't feel that I was 100% committed to being the best athlete I could be even though I had like I finished 23rd in the open which was my best open ever um and I have done some some my numbers were as good as they' ever been I just were feeling that I was leaving a lot of gains on the table but I couldn't pick them because I had these other responsibilities which I also love so that's that's the challenging aspect I love the athletic part but I also love the coaching part and uh balancing them both for a long time just I felt like I was out of stage also now I'm fortunate to coach a lot of really high level athletes and my commitment to them um is bigger than it was to myself and that's also how who I am I I prefer to I find more motivation in trying to serve others and serving myself I think that's a common theme amongst human beings like you doing something bigger than yourself always feels more rewarding and so working with these guys it's very true yeah I just I wanted to go all in to to help them and also help our whole cross community with the no shut training that we have and I was just realizing more and more that I was okay at my job but I wasn't great at my job and I wanted to be great at it and that required yeah that requires a lot of studying a lot of understanding a lot of implementing luckily I had a lot of I would say my strength was that I've been through it all so I have a really good feel and touch for training volume uh fatigue interference a lot of the challenges that maybe a coach that haven't trained twice a day at that level for this long or competing at that stage would have a difficulty understanding how to put that puzzle together and I think in the end of the day putting the puzzle together is the biggest challenge understanding Energy Systems understanding training adaptations from X Y and Z is it's not simple because we still don't understand uh all about it but I did I did feel I had a I was getting a very good understanding and how to putting together but I needed more time to understand the physiology behind it because if I I can't continue designing new methods if I don't understand the principles to a very deep level um I and I didn't you know do you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah I I I fully fully understand what you mean I'm actually a little bit in a similar situation in my own life now so that's that's funny that you say this I'm I'm absolutely agreeing there seems to be I mean maybe that's that's a um something that many Elite athletes have but there seem to be some kind of a perfectionist in you which obviously I don't mean that but uh that that is also how you how you excel at a certain skill being it CrossFit or even The interference in CrossFit and Programming some some other skills obviously um maybe just to to to touch upon that um CrossFit is a is an interesting sport or hybrid sports are interesting Sports because you have this endurance parameter and the strength parameter and there's other sports where you have this but in CrossFit it's the goal to do them both right you do the 5K run on in the games and two day sorry five hours later you do uh the CrossFit total which is of course one RM strength literally that is the goal of the the sport which before CrossFit existed this didn't really happen in sports um do you in your programming take this into account meaning do you do you think about the interference effect uh where strength interferes with endurance and vice versa in your designing of training plans um do you separate them or do you just keep it CrossFit where you do it let's say at the same session um I'll start by saying it depends uh I think it a depends on if it's a generic program that you're trying to deliver or if it's individualized and then also how the individualized person responds to it um like and you learn for example with with yellow hosty um we have yeah one approach we could use would be to try to separated far from each other because he's very aerobically fit um but is not very neurologically um effective is not very good at um firing all his muscle fibers he's not very prone to being strong and so with him it he could definitely be the type of athlete where we try to separate it further um and that could be something we try to do at a certain time of the year and then as the season gets closer that's something we we put more and more together with the generic programming that we designed there is three seasons there's the offseason the preseason and the inseason and depending on where we are in the season we will fluctuate the week design in terms of if it's a more strength bias session conditioning bias session or sometimes we bias it in like heavy days moderate days and light days and we try to fluctuate it between like Monday being more heavy day more neurologically um taxing day next day and when I say heavy light moderate it's in terms of um external loading and not so much in terms of uh not in terms of like Energy Systems um so it could be a heavy day yeah I see what you mean followed by a light day so that would be more conditioning gymnastics bias and then we have again we would have a moderate day where we work more on sub maximum loading and then there would be an active rest day or easy day and then heavy day and then moderate day so that's one way to like fluctuate the period per size or ulate the the interference a bit so you don't have um 5x5 heavy back squads and then 60 Minutes zone two biking that we would never design in one session yeah yeah um so we never design things that are okay that o opposites of each other it always has to be something that is kind of in a followup or has no interference so there could be one orm back squats together with gymnastics uh and even if the gymnastics was a volume biased because of the the low interference between the two um we wouldn't we we we would still be able to put them in the same session however when the season gets very close even though we still try to separate it there is of course a lot more interference um it's it's a lot more put together because you need to be able to put it together uh which means that maybe the snatching is very Progressive in the off season it it uses a lot of snatch pulls and overhead squats and very simple and then towards the season we're we're having to also build your snatch under fatigue prefatigue post fatigue um so yes we we do think a lot about it and we do try to periodize it weekly and monthly um and also depending on where we are in this season the program will be biased more towards certain aspects um of of the training whether it's more strength bias more conditioning bias um that all depends I also want to touch on that super interesting because I just reading to some extent that you can move a lot of the parameters simultaneously it's just a question of how much you can move them so if you Uno at it a lot you can you can move one aspect very fast and the others don't move or you can choose to try to move all of them or most of them and I think you can you it just it's a slow it's more like a Break by break process and we use a lot of this so we don't do uh an offseason where you don't do any conditioning and just focus on strength um we will never period deze to that extent yeah yeah periodization it's basically just managing the load right like there there will be some some offseason potentially for elite athletes or for even normal athletes where they could keep on doing everything but just potentially at a lower intensity or just lower weight or lower volume something like this but pure periodization there's actually also not so much evidence that this is uh that this is so beneficial uh for for an athlete so I think that's that's a very cool approach um if you look at for example I was looking this morning at at a study on the interference effect in rugby players because rugby is one of the sports that could be some kind of hybrid uh sport right they have to run a lot and also have must need a lot of muscle M and and and strength and what they did um super interesting actually they had a they had a group three concurrent groups or hybrid groups right and they did um strength training half squats and typical uh High Velocity high strength uh Parts where they did half squats and bench press what what rugby players do and then um they did conditioning after that like 15 seconds of sprinting rest 15 seconds of sprinting rest this for 20 times so for them this is uh endurance conditioning for rugby players and they did this right after the strength six hours after the strength or 24 hours after the strength repeated twice for seven weeks and then they want to know if V2 Max was affected or uh strength parameters were affected and actually quite interestingly when you did the conditioning straight after the strength there there was an interference effect meaning they did exactly the same type of of of of and volume of of uh exercise they did actually um have a reduction more reduction in V2 Max and most importantly more reduction in strength okay interesting so um that is why I think yeah yeah that's definitely interesting uh well I will link the study also below because this is very relate this this uh relatable to to what you would think about as CrossFit is if you are a coach and you have the the possibility to work with with Elite athletes who have the time obviously if there is an an an an opposite training um Paradigm try to do this as much separated as possible um and there you will have the least effects say mostly on strengths actually the the effects are the the strongest so that's also molecularly affected uh endurance affects molecular distraint and vice versa obviously so so that's a yeah something that I'm thinking about a lot in CrossFit and it's very difficult to manage some coaches don't care at all they just do typical CrossFit back squats and then what some coaches like you are thinking a bit more about this um yeah it depends uh it depends a little bit and also on the athlete for but it is definitely like to say like sorry sorry I it is definitely yeah go ahead go ahead very difficult um to separate it that much because of the many um yeah themes that you need to touch within gymnastics within strength within weight of thing within um engine or endurance and I think that's really that's really the biggest challenge and that's why I also think tracking the data and looking at at at how the athletes are responding is is what's most important because I mean all science we we can dive into and learn about it it it's it's fantastic and and it's essential to to try to get closer to understanding what works and what doesn't work but in the end of the day the only thing that matters is velocity and and and weights like or placements on the leaderboard so if your athletes are are lifting heavier and moving faster in workouts and scoring more reps that is the main parameter that that we want to have uh that we want to look for and if the programming is taking you in that direction then we're winning and and we love to be very we try to be very data driven and and try to use as many um as many tools as we can as much knowledge we can to design programming to to get you to that stage and but in the end of the day the only thing that does matter for us is you're placing higher in the quarterfinals or in the semifinals or at the crossy games and and if we're not getting you to that stage then it doesn't matter if if you have Hardware monitors and near devices and and if you know like it's we need to take you there U but of course we if we we want to try to use all the tools in the toolbox to try to specify the training to get you higher on that leader board yeah yeah as a as a slight counter argument to that obviously I I believe but but Playing devil's advocate obviously if you if you work with very good athletes if you tra if you throw anything at them literally any type of crossed training they will get better and they will improve their placing in the leaderboard I think one of the major difficulties and the challenges as a coach is to find the most optimal and most efficient plan exactly you see and that is very difficult because obviously you you you cannot do a scientific study with an elite athlete you cannot program a certain programming for uh year 2022 and then completely changeed it in 2023 maybe when the results were really bad you could think about this but uh um this is the art of of of coaching and I think science is only a small part of it I think most of it is experience understanding the athlete and now maybe we can talk about this uh there is some advancement in in technology mostly wearable technology that could potentially help you are you are you aware of that are you working with some some some I'm say n measurement devices uh heart rate monitors training loads RP do you use this or yeah how do you see this so actually five years ago I I used the one of the first near devices on a market called humon they went bankrupt so couldn't use that further yeah um that was when I I was working one of one of the training Think Tank coaches Kyle rof was a fantastic coach and was a great mentor of mine yes and um I think at that point we still didn't know enough maybe I wasn't also at the level where those that amount of detail was gonna be a big difference maker um but I think at that point we also weren't too sure how much how can we use it and I think even today um we're using we're partnering up with train red uh which is a a device actually recommended by youth and we're using that on our top athletes on their day-to-day training so we've been looking a lot into um all the stuff from Evan pikin uh I've also had some help from one guy named Jeffrey from France uh who's been helping me and understanding how to understand basically the the the limiters from an energy system standpoint whether so we can use this we can use these devices to better understand whether the athlete has the respiratory limitation so if they're limited by their their ability to pull in oxygen and and get rid of carbon di dioxide or if they have a a cardiac limiter like the the heart's ability to deliver um the blood with the oxygen that we have taken from the lungs out to the working tissues or whether it's a a muscle limitation where the muscle is not effective enough in utilizing the the the the o yeah extracting the oxygen from the hemoglobin and putting it into the cont so we can get energy or produce energy and um there's still not a lot of like information I would say uh about this I mean I'm trying to consume everything from Evan and trying to also design my own protocols um using it to to get a better understanding of not just using it for test retest but using on a day-to-day basis I think that's that's what's really interesting if we can make sure okay even regardless if you're athlete is more prone to be limited if we discover they're more prone to be limited by respiratory or delivery or utilization with Energy Systems I have learned that it's it's not a light switch you you don't just turn on your anerobic system and then complete blend exactly it's like a dilator and um so and it's the same with whether you have one of those three limitations and it's always maybe one more than the other but it doesn't mean that you're not touching on that thing and that's the same with like why I think actually I've been The more I've been doing also generic programming I realized actually how good that a generic program can be because even if your athlete is extremely limited by one thing or really prone in one way there's only so much you can do so even if your athlete is extremely limited by strength well you can do strength six days a week you can't squat six days a week because the the the tissue cannot handle it or the the the joint cannot handle it so and the same with if your athlete is uh utilization limited I mean you can't just hit them with you know Sprints repeat uh repeat Sprints every single day even if that is maybe the most optim optimal training type to uh fix that limiter so no matter what you're basically you're you're you're giving them everything they need to and then you can specify it more and I also think that's how we designed a year it's some parts of the year there's more things to towards this type of limitation and more things towards this and then more things towards this and um and so yeah we try to use train red and heart rate um to help us navigate that better even if we know that the data that we get from it it's is not 100% accurate well nothing is 100% accurate other than maybe not even placements because the placements are also affected by a thousand things such as uh judging or sickness or um event details most importantly like one athlete can be number one in the world one year and maybe number 15 the next year because the events were less in their favor or maybe some of the main competitors were injured or absolutely there there's there's a million things so I think it's just another tool that we can try to utilize in order to I think you know when you design programming it's like you have X amount of money to spend and the money represents um the the Reps that an athlete can handle throughout the week and and as a your job as a coach is to make sure you spend every rep as effective as possible and and that's a very big challenge um and and that's why using devices or um yeah navigating the program in a certain way is just key because like you said you can throw something at someone and they most likely get better but it's not a p I think the miscon misunderstanding is that training is not about getting better it's about getting better faster than the others it's about than the other it's not just about getting better it's about that curve being more steep than your competitors so if like if you go watch if you go to a competition and you want to be in the floor one day well those guys are most likely not going to retire the next five years so if you want to be in that floor and they're there and you're here and they're going to keep getting better your curve needs to be way more more aggressive than theirs and that's exactly what the illustration I always had in my head in like since 2015 it's like if I'm going to catch any of those guys they're same age as me I'm gonna have to not start dialing in my nutrition in two years I need to dial in it in today because that's the only chance I have of making my curve maybe a bit steeper than somebody else's and eventually out edged them and I think um that's just so important to remember uh being better is is it's not that difficult to get better if you train consistently and you don't get injured you're most likely to get better but it's about how much better you can be and that's why programming detail does matter I think there's been I've just listened to a lot of podcasts where it's about that the programming doesn't matter and all the programs are the same and I just don't really agree with that I think the programming matters like crazy um and of course environment matters to terms of training partners and sleep and all those things but the the programming is I would almost say 50% of the job if if the program is not good well then you either get overtrained and injured you get undertrained and not progress or you find a sweet spot in the middle and you blast through it exactly yeah I couldn't agree more and and obviously this is the art again this is the art of of programming and it's not easy it's definitely not uh yeah Wearables - NIRS super straightforward to to to put all the pieces together uh related to related to n so so why why I ask you because I'm very interested in in in N because what actually one key factor here is important and out of all the wearables that we have now on the market n is one of the fuse together with a heart rate monitor around the the chest that actually can accurately measure uh can actually accurately measure what it has to measure okay so oxygenation by n if you put it obviously on the on the same spot and you have a a person that doesn't have too much adipose tissue which atlet don't have it actually measures it quite accurately and that's why I always tell guys like you and other people try n see if it works for you but at least it's accurate right if you have like another W wristband heart monitor we get this with what signs all the time hey my heart rate is lower during a crossfit workout than when I'm going for a commute with my bike yeah dude that's because this this these risk monitors are not measuring your real heart rate because of all all kind of problems and that's something that annoys me and with n at least um data has shown that that it's quite reliable I mean it's it's reliable enough to to work with as a coach and it could actually uh help you uh in some ways because for example one of the things that I always interested in maybe you can can help me maybe you have done some of those uh experiments is what is the effect of of blood flow distribution so what I mean with that what you see a lot in CrossFit is that that you have um a bike Sprint 30 calories on the bike or even not a spring but just a a lower body cyclic movement and then you jump up uh to the wall and you do handstand push-ups for example right obviously most of the blood will be pulled in your in your thighs in your lower body and you always feel more fatigued after such a movement um compared to when you did not do the lower body cycling I think that's everyone that has done some CrossFit or hybrid training has felt that and U can we pick this up and can we train this uh or or at least monitor this with n and and see if there are differences between athletes because yeah that's the whole point about CrossFit right you have to be able to keep moving under high high fatigue and actually when there is maybe insufficient oxygen delivery because of previous movements um I'm not sure if you if you it's it's obviously a very detailed question but I don't know if you you have similar experiences or or used n in that way we haven't used it in that way but I think it's interesting I mean it CrossFit is about being able to distribute blood flow between upper and lower body and some of the some of the near um monitored sessions that we're using with some of the top athletes right now from Evan um and I think these are the delivery limited um working sets we're using these um intervals where you you fluctuate between upper and lower body movements so it could be um front squats into ski into um Step UPS into or box jums into uh handstand push-ups and uh and training that that ability too so I think we haven't like been been looking exactly at how effective the athletes are compared to each other or if they have improved I think that could be interesting thing to to run the exact same workout and see if their if the delivery has improved so having one one uh monitor on on the leg and could of course um but it's not something we have looked into that much I think like the past couple of months I've really just been trying to to learn a lot more about the the energy systems and respiratory system we've also had some conversation with Luke from isocapnic and we have all the athletes use uh a respiratory trainer from the brief way the brief way better um this product it's a really cool product and all the athletes are really liking that a lot in order to to isolate the the respiratory system just like you could isolate your quad in a in a leg extension you can sort of train your coordination and your efficiency of your of your your briefing mechanics and um and and so that and then as well as the the near devices and yeah I it's um I feel there's and this is what is exci exciting is that there's still so much information that feels like it's left on the table and that I mean even speaking to to a lot of experts with or listening or speaking to a lot of experts within the field it is not a very clear there's nobody who has like very clear protocols on uh on this and especially not in CrossFit where it's it's such a difficult sport to understand because the athletes carry so much muscle mass so their limitations are a very very different compared to the endurance athletes and and that's why heart it would be it's interesting to look at heart rate and oxygenation of the muscle because it's two very different uh limitations and one can be looking very fine and then another one is is not very good um and I think it's just really interesting to exactly to to look at that data and try to try to understand it and comprehend it and make the programming help those things and even just like we we wanted to set up like a testing protocol every six month we also talked about that in order like a step test for example and then have some maximal strength test and then have a CrossFit test and we could use nearest devices on all of the test and uh maybe the nearest device is not very effective on the strength test because it's primarily neurologically and you can't you actually have devices now that can move that can um check the their neurological recruitment I'm not sure how effective they are but that could be also something that's interesting to look into um yeah yeah and then you then you see the the importance of these things right like I've been doing also CrossFit for maybe longer than you and uh uh I always found that I had the same similar uh not not s similar IDE as you I was very good at neuromuscular and and strength explosive stuff but once there was a workout I was very mediocre oh way and still am and I was always thinking like how is this possible like I'm I'm actually back squatting these guys 30% more but then there's an easy workout and they beat me easy and um I had no obviously no ID but then I did some kind of test where it's a 51 uh five5 uh 515 test I'm sorry 515 it's kind of a step test where you can in some way or another at least in in on on a grand scheme of things you can uh assess your um your if you're a delivery um yeah yeah if you're a delivery constrainted athlete and so on and I was very very very very clearly a delivery constraint athlete like my limiter was clearly my cardiovascular output and so on so if I would have known that five years earlier I could have done instead of all these workouts like this what s of CrossFit was I should have done interval training 4 by4 3 by3 and so on to improve my just my cardiovascular capacity you know and that's I think you see this a lot in in people in the regular gyms as well like with with normal affiliate uh programming they just do five workouts a day and they don't improve anymore and many of those are pretty muscular and probably have a delivery limitation and so that's why I think if if the sports progresses and and people like you stand up and and also Affiliates that know a little bit about programming and even about sport signs you can actually help your your regular people as well and not only the elite athletes that's that's I think a certain fact uh by integrating n for example into a testing session once a month or something like this I mean it's not that difficult it's also not that expensive and you can yeah hook people you can let them understand what is actually physiology it's not only just doing five rounds for time every day you know like there's more to it to become the better version of yourself to to become a good let's say hybrid athlete and it's not yeah it's not that straightforward because we we don't really know how it all works and and even scientists are sometimes um I would say flabbergasted by how crazy the weights that these guys put up and also the the running times and so on I think 20 years ago sport scientist would have said yeah this is impossible like what are you even doing but yeah there is a there is a way to train them both that's that's for sure I think and that's what the last 20 years have have shown very clearly that's that's only the psychological side that's why I think your job is quite that sorry that's only the physiological side so and that's just you know one onethird of the onethird of the the picture the other parts are the psychological part and the environment and you know we we always talk about like you know it's like there's a car there's a driver and there's a road and the car is the physiological part it's the energy systems it's your strength it's it's how you adapt to all these things it's uh and then there's the driver which is the psychological part it's like how do you handle pressure can you make it hurt can you go to the the dark place like all of these things how do you yeah how do you compete how do you handle when other people are next to you how do you handle somebody smack talk you how do you handle when you bomb a workout and there's six more events to go like there's so many things and I would say that one is equally as big as your Fitness especially at the highest level where where where strength and conditioning levels are are very similar but the the psychological aspect plays a huge factor and then there's there's the road where the car drives on and that's kind of the environment that's how you eat sleep and you know stress levels and private life and uh stress levels like so many things uh such a big and that that's honestly also one of the reasons why I knew that I I didn't want to continue because I couldn't remove my work and a lot of other things and that that were causing even if it's positive stress it was just draining the B like you have a battery and if what we try to do with the top athletes is that to make sure that there's 90% of the battery is just for training and and and adapting and then there's 10% that only get used on you know private stuff or whatever but if you have a job and it takes 50% of the battery it's uh there's only 50% left for training and adaptation so even if you train the same amount of hours as somebody else it it doesn't matter like I I we see this a thousand times people think that games athletes they train eight hours a day in reality they train the exact same hours as you know everybody else who can make make it to you know maybe top 10% in the world but Muscle memory the difference is that they have everything else around it dialed in they're way more you know focused on the details in training they're much more effective and then they're also just more gifted and that whole combination is is what makes their four hours of training way more effective than somebody else's four hours and um yeah and yeah the the so one of the the the interest of my also my also scientifically is um muscle memory so it's kind of what what you just explained is you for example W fard famous cyclist Belgian cyclist hero of mine obviously he he crashed in the 2019 in the in the last time trial of the T frogs right and he crashed opened this his complete lag and five months later five months so it was completely open like gaping Mound um five months later he won a psycho cross again so he there was some way of muscle memory after a period of inactivity he could come back quicker than a average human being and I think there's not that much known which genes and which uh molecular mechanisms are related to that so why are some people when you give them a certain stimulus which is potentially the same as an other uh as for another person they just respond much better being IT muscle memory after a period of inac or an elite athlete as you just described and this is not only important for uh top physical performances but if we can understand this better on a let's say normal level like sedentary people we can get the benefits of sports or even activity to a higher level if we can actually Target those Pathways to improve them faster that's a little bit my thought process and we're very far from this obviously H but there are certain genes and Gene clusters that are actually yeah just EP epigenetically differently regulated by those people so there is a reason why an elite athlete actually improves better it's not obviously psychologically and so on but I mean biochem biochemical Reon but do you think and yeah science is not there yet go do you think that um so obviously the genes play a huge role there but like I was this is my own experience I was never very strong always always pretty powerful I couldn't back squad over one 185 and I couldn't break through this Plateau I was doing Russian Squad cycle all this kind of stuff and um and then I you mean before it cross this is like until 2020 just it's only like 2020 I unlock a new level it's because I meet this one strength coach named Casper vinda from Denmark he's he's brilliant guy if you need to talk strength you need to have this guy in the podcast but outside of learning a thousand things one of the main things we changed was that we having me understand that to to be effective neurologically you also need this is when you are under heavy load of course there's something that naturally happens and you you you you know that it's heavy so your body is ready to push hard but it's voluntarily how hard you are going to push and the minute I understood how much is voluntarily and how much adaptation that lies in that so like when you back squ if I back s 140 and it's a low percentage I can just back squat it and it's it's one rep and it gives one stimulus now if I back Squad it as fast as I possibly can and contract as hard as I possibly can it's a different adaptation and the minute I start doing that I put 20 kilos on my back squat in like three months and 15 kilos on my clean and I was like oh my god I've been doing all this training for all these years and I haven't been I been thinking about it in gymnastics you know like okay pop my hips and be really effective here and whip back on the Rings and that little whip is going to save me in that transition but when I picked up a barble from the floor I never thought you know rip it off the floor as fast as you can as hard as you can and the minute I started doing that all my numbers and all my lifting it just changed I I I became so much more neurological effective and I think what you're referring to now with the cyclist and being backed like once you've built those neurological Pathways you still have them like I have been like bit irregular with my training because since the CrossFit Games du to a lot of things but if I go into the gym right now I can still power clean 160 and that's like five kilos off my heaviest power clean but because the pathways is still there and I can still power snatch 120 and it it's just crazy and um it's the same when you learn like crossover Dublin ERS if youve practiced it deliberately and I mean like deliberately your brain is thinking about what it needs to do and it reaches a stage of unconsciousness where it just sits like if I go in and do it now I can still do the same amount that I could do maybe six months ago eight months ago and I think that's just such a easy win for all crossfitters that might be listening to this it's like just make sure anything strength related particularly weightlifting is if you're effective in your in your mechanics already like that's why we use the hack Squad because it allows me even if I'm not I don't need to focus on the mechanics I just need to focus on their neurological output on if an exercise because like in strength there's you know their neurological part which has like two segments which is like coordination like how how well you can coordinate an exercise and there the output and if you don't coordinate the exercise very well you can't put a very high output but if you're in a hack Squad you can have a maximal output without having to worry about the coordination and when you combine the two then you know you will smash through any strength plateau and uh and then of course there's like the peripher peripheral which is out in them in the tissue like the actual adaptations but um but I just definitely think that just in terms of what you were saying with him coming back so fast that's why we can also see tiar Clare Tumi when people like oh that's unbelievable she of course incredibly talented and gifted but it's also because she she has reached a certain level where like even if she's out for one year because the neurological pathways are still there and I think that's the problem with steroids if I un standing right it's like you build those if you build those Pathways to lift a certain load then even if you're if you if you don't take it anymore you you're still capable even if you lose some of the muscle mass because the neurological pathways are are equally efficient as they were right or am I wrong you tell me uh yeah that's that's so so it's very interesting so what what you're referring to you're referring to always about muscle memory right but you have neurological muscle memory exactly what you say you never forget how to learn or how to ride a bike and um you also have cellular muscle memory so that's actually in the muscle you have certain cells called satellite cells that could potentially remember previous exercise by uh epidemological uh modifications so really genetic modifications because of the exercise so the the from the 70s onwards we knew that there are some neurological adaptations to exercise if you then do don't do it or you have a long period of inactivity you clearly still have it so just to to refer to this as a as a CrossFit atlete or a person who's listen listening to this indeed move movement efficiency in my opinion in CrossFit is extremely important at any level but certainly at like middle to advanced level if you can move better you will expend so much less energy for the same amount of work so um or the same amount of yeah reps let's keep it like that so indeed neurological effects of this deliberate training are hugely important and completely neglected by many people they just go for a workout but they don't really know how to do double unders or correct movement so one thing you can definitely improve indeed your your training or your movement efficiency but then the seller um muscle memory there's actually a study from 2013 Super interesting where they gave steroids to mice all right and um they the mice they grew their musles in two weeks I think 15% larger pure steroids like fire a pellet in their back they got a they get an increased um um yeah muscle malls and then what they did they de detrained them or they put them in a cage without any steroids for four weeks right and then what they then did they overloaded the muscle so it's a bit of a a brutal thing what they do they cut a part of the aillis tendon so you know you have three muscles or at the cul um and they cut the two biggest muscles the gastrus and the plantaris so one little muscle the Solus takes up all the weight good and um that obviously because of that overload they they grow as well like the hypertrophy and the the muscles that had been on steroids or the the that had been on steroids before they grew faster so even though after four weeks their muscle mass was back to normal there was some form of cellular um muscle memory and that could yeah that that there's there's many reasons why this happens but one of the things is that these satellite cells they can remember previous exercise or steroids by the way or steroids and then they can grow uh back faster um so there's always a difference between Cellar muscle memory and and and neural muscle memory but there's always an interference obviously um so yeah if we can understand that better we can maybe improve training or improve physical inactivity by by by the average population which I think is very important uh clearly so yeah so I think steroids mostly have an effect on on Sellar muscle memory and changing the way the satellite cells uh understand previous exercise and yeah there's much to learn and uh there's again not that much known about all this stuff but we know it happens and you see it all the time in the sporting as you said uh women certainly very interesting maybe for the women who are listening I mean the the the speed these women come back after pregnancy I mean I I'm getting my third kit in sorry third kit in uh in two months so I know what I mean I don't know myself but I know what a pregnancy entails and I mean it's a yeah thanks pretty hardcore I mean it's it's pretty large effect harsh court right and then five months later they almost win the open which is just insane and that there's a lot of muscle memory involved there as well I I'm sure and again we don't know that much about it and also Physicians are uh scratching their head like what the hell is happening here but it's very cool to see maybe uh maybe the Team events in CrossFit the the the last question to to kind of wrap this up uh super interesting conversation obviously is uh so the team events it's it's yeah you you've experienced a obviously the team events you you won the team division as you said in Europe semi-final 2023 um what what do you think is or or what what do you think is a key element to to do well in a team event or in a team event in CrossFit uh how how did you perform so well um if I had to rank it in like most important to maybe least important I think the most important is that you have four individuals at the same level and at as high level as possible that's number one because if one is less fit than the rest of the group then in a lot of cases unless it's a relay you you you're you just can't benefit from having someone who is Way Beyond uh someone else or or vice versa so the more balanced team the better and the higher the level of each of the individuals the better that's number one thing that's more important than how good you are at the worm like I think definitely I've learned that I mean if you're if you're deliberate you can wearn the worm and all the Synchro very fast of course if you have four four athletes on the team that can do 20 plus ring muscleups and sorry 50 plus Chester bars unbroken and then it's very easy to do sets of 25 Chester bars synchronized because everyone is at a level where Chester bars is an unconscious exercise and they have a certain amount of capacity so if everyone needs to adapt their rep speed then it's easy and and so it that's why really the level of the group is very important um it also makes everybody more adaptable you you you you work as a unit exactly um the second thing is of course it needs to be good team chemistry which means that that that's like not the physiological thing but maybe the more psychological or environment things you need to make sure that you you want to do the best for each other because when there is that there's then there's that extra incentive to push extra hard which unlocks that next potential and team workouts can be brutal like some of the hardest workouts I've ever done is with the worm because the it it puts a way different I heard that before it's like imagine it's like comparing uh Shadow Boxing with actual boxing with Shadow Boxing you have your own rhythm and uh you know you have your systems and you do your thing with actual boxing you're constantly um reacting to someone else so when you're in the worm and somebody else starts slowing down behind you you might be lifting you know one4 of the worm all of a sudden you're lifting 40% of the worm and uh or if the rhythm is off or you you you know you're not just doing ring muscleups in your own pace like alone you can maybe do 30 on broken but when you have to do synchron and you have to change your whole Rhythm and maybe pause on the top maybe that room takes 10 reps from your max so so so there's so so the the third aspect is like the the team's ability to coordinate um the exercises and the actual teamwork but as I said if you have four athletes that are very high level all of these things are easy the even the chemistry even if you're not the same type of person that like the same type of things you all like one thing and it's winning and and for elite athletes winning is most of the time above anything else it's above having a good time it's above having fun we're lucky we had a lot of fun as well but it was never gonna be a problem if we didn't because we all wanted the same thing which was try to win the crossby games so that eliminates a whole like section of potential drama issues when everybody wants to win everybody's gathered around one Target so like number one having four really good athletes number two you know being set on the same goal and number three then making sure that we're practicing all the aspects and being adaptable and um and yeah so I I think um you know we failed in in achieving winning the CrossFit Games I was very proud of what what we did still I think we we maximized every ounce of Potential from that team and we did everything we could and um and so there was no regrets in the end of the season and that was like the main goal it's like hey if we're going to do it we're going to do properly we're going to go all in and we don't want to have any regrets so win or lose and the end of the year we're just kind to know we exhausted every ounce of Potential from the team so they also lived here almost whole time we trained like 50% of all more than 50% of all our sessions yeah it was like it was pretty pretty intense um amaz so yeah so I would definitely say that I'm sure uh if you're a team out there and um and by the way on no shortcut we do have team programming every single day so we try to make it easy for teams that want to form by having a program where the engine piece every day also has a team version that is designed in a specific way to improve your ability to coordinate the worm coordinate gymnastics coordinate relays mixed uh mixed Synchro work um same sex Synchro work etc um which makes that a lot easy we actually have a lot of teams going to to season which is which is exciting but um but yeah the main thing is just uh make sure each of you work on your individual weaknesses that's number one priority like the worm Synchro work doesn't take a lot of a lot of um lot of learning especially not if you're deliberate just like being strong doesn't need to take 10 by 10 it could also take 10 by one rep if you make sure that one rep is as effective as possible if that makes sense that's maybe butchering it a little bit but um we had watched every CrossFit Games event every semi-final event and watched every winning team and exactly how they picked out the worm what their Cadence was per rep uh in different scenarios if it was larger sets or smaller sets and um and from there you can I mean you basically have it on right in front of you just copy paste if you have four athletes that are good enough then it's just copy paste and then you got it yeah yeah yeah cool cool any uh future goals my goal is just to get my athletes to to achieve their goals like that's that's my number one goal honestly like I um and that's that's that's all the athletes that we work with and and especially of course the ones I work oneto one with that I have daily daily contact with them like I want to take the ones that haven't made to the games to the games and I want to take the ones that have been to the games higher up the leaderboard at the games and I don't want to have any regrets at the end of the year and I want to make sure that they don't have any regrets and so we try to do everything we can to make that happen and that's the number one goal and the other goal is just to build a build a good business with a good team um most important just a good team just because I know that that's that that's the that's the way for forward if everybody's happy with the opportunity and their salaries and their work environment then I know we can we can grow and we can improve our service and we can improve our products and and so that's just uh that's two main goals and then private goals is just being a good dad and good good husband and now I'll spend a bit more time with my friends that I haven't seen for the past nine years that's also important that was awesome Andre uh thanks for doing this so where can can people find you on the internet maybe you can have a little shout out uh so I can also put it in the description but you can tell yeah just uh my Instagram handle uh Andre hudde or at no shortcuts train no shortcuts uncore training uh Instagram so on that one you'll find a little bit more programming and coaching related content and on mine you'll find a bit of a mix when uh when I have time awesome yeah cool good no you're doing an excellent job it was uh super cool to to see you as an athlete but I'm sure you you you have a brighter future even as a coach and uh we're all looking forward to to see this I hope so I definitely hope so thanks all for having [Music] me [Music]