André Houdet Talks Team Quarterfinals Workouts 1 and 2

[Music] [Applause] [Music] all right let's get into our uh interview now with Andre hudde Tommy spoke with him earlier today and the way this is going to work is is for this show they're going to go through Tommy and Andre are going to go through the first Windows the first two workouts we will also post the second window interview on our YouTube channel so you can go and you can watch that and dive into that if you want to and then the entire interview the entirety of everything they talked about will be available uh to our patrons and if you want to support us on patreon you can go to patreon.com Talking Elite Fitness and become a friend of the show so without further Ado here is Andre UD and his conversation with Tommy Marquez about quarterfinal programming for the teams welcome in our guest uh he is the head coach and the leader of the no show cruts training crew U he's a multi-year individual games athlete and he was also a member of the no shortcuts team last year that finished fifth at the games um his name is Andre HUD and he joins us now all the way from across the pond Andre how are you doing my friend I'm doing great thanks a lot for having me it's a big honor uh well we appreciate you coming on and uh we want to you know kind of dive right into it first things first we have Team quarterfinals programming um it is the first stage beyond the open where we now have some some programming and something a little bit more for the the higher level athletes to chew on it we want to get your Prof professional opinion and your eye on it so let's just get right to it um four workouts uh over the course of two windows three two three-day Windows each just big picture thoughts when you saw that there was four scored tests um and what dropped out what what immediately came to mind I mean the first thing that always comes to mind is that I never judge the test the test of the test and wondering if or pondering if it could be better or if it's it could worse it doesn't matter like it doesn't help me or the athletes that I work with um that being said my opinion on the test is that from a VIN diagram perspective like if you look at the the classic CrossFit you have gymnastics weightlifting mon structural and Crossfit right in the middle the four tests do get around all of the elements for gymnastics we have all the type contractions that we are looking for pulling pressing compression so we have rope climb for the pulling handstand push-ups and burpees and then we have toaster bars for the weightlifting which includes anything lifting external load we have front squats then we have the deadlifts and we have the shoulder to overhead and then we also have the wall ball so we have all the three main patterns squatting hinching and pressing and then for the monor structural I mean in the quarterfinals online um format we can only really see either rowing or Shuttle runs or if you want to categorize St blunders or burpees as a as a monostructural exercise as well so from the four test they have been very well around all of the all of these patterns and all of these uh kind of themes within the V diagram um I think from a like a critical standpoint it would be lovely to see a Part B on one of the workouts to test a little bit more absolute strength or uh some speed strength some something that really tests this more power element all of the the loads are still within a range that doesn't give great benefit to Stronger athletes and as they haven't had any of that in the open and the open and quarterfinals kind of being a test together I feel that maybe that could have been a great add-on uh to get also a fifth scored uh event um yeah I think a lot of people might criticize the workouts because they see de and dumble snatch and Rowing again but I think to be like The Devil's Advocate to the criticism of that I think it's key to keep in mind that a light dumble snatch versus a heavy dumble snatch or a light deadlift versus a heavy deadlift is is is very similar in in mechanics but very different in stimulus if you're good at low tension work versus high tension work it's it's not necessarily the same type of athlete that will excel in these two type tests just like you could say that uh Randy has only snatches and so does the Regionals 2016 ladder and even though both tests have snatches the athletes that can excel in one and the athletes that excel in another are two very different type of athletes so all in all um yeah pretty good it could be cool to get one more scor event but with the four tests given and only four tests to to get the people to the next stage I think the right teams will advance I appreciate the I love that the way you broke that down obviously between the classic monostructural weightlifting gymnastics but as well as the the different types and I think when the workouts first came out the initial Instinct from a lot of people was like Hey there isn't that that high power that maximal lift type test where do you think that fits into the realm of being necessary in these early stages to to have a more well-rounded test because I think people look at all right what the totality of the things I'm being tested from the open and the quarterfinals and is that enough to say that we're getting the right people to semi-finals is that needed is that something that's more of like a nice thing to have than a a requirement you know I think that all comes down to everybody's definition of what a good test looks like and what is necessary you know to to excel in CrossFit I think from my perspective if we didn't have so right now there is isn't that strength test so if I could adjust one workout I would have made the fourth test that has the deadlifts and shoulder to overhead just 10 kilos 25 pounds heavier because I think that exceeds that um so if you have an athlete that can deadlift you know 440 pounds and you have a athlete that can deadlift 520 at 315 pounds deadlifts the difference is not going to be significant in in in in the athletes ability to deadlift that weight for many repetitions because certain athletes just have great strength endurance and can despite not having very high top end strength still work a lot with these type loads but if it had been 25 pounds heavier I think that would have broken that threshold and there we would really see the separator just like we saw last year in the quarterfinals where we had the cleaning jerks at 275 like that was Heavy enough for even though it wasn't a 1 RM lift but it was Heavy enough to where you could really see the guys and girls with the big 1 RMS they were ripping This Bar Bar apart but if it had been 225 it might not have se you might not have seen that big of a difference so I think we would need to have a bit heavier in that fourth test in order to balance it out so I do think a more maximal test or power test is sort of missing in in in the grand scheme for sure for sure and and and so but let's dive into it let's uh I'll share my screen screen here for you um we'll take a quick look at the first of the quarterfinals test so here we're looking at workout number one uh and it is as male female pairs alternating every two minutes complete five rounds of 10 Synchro lateral burpees Over the Bar 10 Synchro front squats uh the barbell is 125 125 pounds for the women 185 pounds for the men um I think that's 8 5 kilos for the men um and I'm not sure the kilo conversion for the women but in the remaining time of that two-minute window Max Muscle ups and you'll alternate male female pairs until you complete five rounds so Andre just kind of given your initial um approach to this what stands out what are some maybe points of performance here and some things that you You' be focused on in helping your athletes prepare because I know you have quite a few athletes competing on various teams yeah so I think the first thing I always do is that I look at I I divide the strategies into like top teams middle of the pack teams bottom of the pack teams and then I then look at what I think is the available time for ring muscleups so we have like a chart of all exercises and how what the average rep speed will be for all of the exercises so if you look at the front Squad uh average rep speed will be two seconds if you look at the burp over the B it's going to be around 3 seconds making it Synchro depending on the the efficiency of the team of course that can vary a bit in speed as well as you had one athletes that fast than another but all in all without a transition between the 10 B lateral burbes over the bar and the 10 front squats we have about 50 seconds of work let's say there's a two second transition 52 seconds and then there's another 3se second transition to get to the Rings so in total we have 60 to 65 seconds left for ring muscleups and I think this is almost regardless of the level whether it's a top team or bottom level team because the front squads are not uh heavy enough to be a big separator like if you have a 200 Kil front Squad you're not going to be necessarily faster than somebody with a half the weight a front Squad kind of thing so I think every team will have about that 60c window on the Rings if you look at ring musop speed it takes 3 seconds for fast ring muscle app athletes to complete one rep and about 3.8 seconds for the slower so if you were to go on broken for 60 seconds you have a time for about 20 reps now it's very not likely that one athlete will jump up and spend the full 60 seconds but if we played with that F that gives an availability of 20 ring muscleups per round times 10 200 ring muscleups 100 per team um but I I think it's more likely that we're going to see teams with you're going to have so the reason why I calculate that first is because I always calculate what the potential volume is going to be so that the athletes can prepare for that okay do they know if they're going to be doing 10 muscleups or 50 muscleups it's quite relevant because it will tell them how fast they're going to come out of the gate and how much they're going to have to suffer from the beginning I think that uh in this case this is one minute we will have time for somewhere around like 15 to 17 Reps for the top teams in that time so a little bit under the 20 because we need to most likely transition because the top teams will have two athletes in each heat that will be good enough to be able to do you know probably 15 plus unbroken ring muscs so you want to use both players at the same in the same working window so I think we're going to see that 14 to 17 rep range um which is going to be somewhere around like 35 to 50 reps per athlete um and then for the lower level teams I think we're going to see more like um 20 to 35 reps per athlete so there we're calculating maybe something like 11 to 13 reps each round I think you should have your strongest muscle up athlete start first so as soon as you get off in the front squats the the athlete that is best at muscle up will jump up will bang out a fairly large set the person with less capacity than the muscle up will stand ready the first athlete that comes off the Rings will be aware of coming off the Rings in a manner where the Rings are not swinging excessively so that the second person can jump very quickly on because it doesn't matter if you do a big set and you come down the Rings are swinging and you're losing 10 seconds in that transition so that's that's going to be you know a key element to to maximize um the the work here I think it's key to like and then so you look at the total volume you look at what um the transitions are going to look like and then you look at what the limit going to be and there is not a lot of interference in this workout but there is some from the burby to the ring musop the the pressing will definitely the press the press out of the dip is for most people the limiter in the ring musop and I do think these very fast and dynamic burpees that are forced to be fast and dynamic will uh definitely create some fatigue leading into the ring muscleups for the elite teams again it will definitely get really hard towards round four and five but I definitely think with a oneto one work Rao work rest ratio it allows the athletes to put out a very high power output every single set and as the volume at least in our training program we usually have you know 40 to 50 ring muscleups in a session every single week so that type of volume is not going to be um out of out of the blue excessive so I think you know it so I think it's always EAS is to kind of strategize for the top and then you kind of just scale it down for for the rest and the limits will remain the same the Transitions and importance will remain the same but of course the the repetitions um will will differ I I'm yeah I'm I'm gonna say I love I love this breakdown I love the approach that you take in terms of looking at everything from the variability between movement speed for each movement and and almost kind of reverse engineering all right let's figure out what the total volume is and then let's build from there um one thing that I know people are always looking for in the quarterfinals increase Lo increase in loading increase in skill and uh I don't I don't know if necessarily the front squat qualifies for the increase in loading maybe because it's a heavier squat than we've seen uh so far but does this fit in terms of dialing up the skill factor for a test like this for teams compared to the open I mean the open we haven't seen any team specific workouts but I do think this takes you know the step up I think ring muscle ups despite that has become a common movement nowadays and that most people can do it it is still on the gymnastics sort of ladder or pyramid or whatever it will be one of the exercises that is on the top because because it requires a lot of coordination it has both a poll and a press and as it's placed in the end of every interval it's you come in with fatigue which you know sometimes a skill doesn't need to be high it just needs to be placed in a manner where it is challenged enough and I think this manner does challenge this skill a lot I think for the top teams like if you really wanted this be challenge been syro ring muscleups yeah then then we would have seen you know next level but I do think it's the step up uh in in in in skill that we are needing to see I don't think we need to spice it up even more than it is and you know I think we've been used to a lot of variation and introduction of a lot of new exercises and it's been great but it's it's not necessary to to test people's CrossFit and the the last bit I just wanted to say in terms of that workout is like if you're a new team that is struggling with the Synchro exercises the best recommendation is that the slowest athlete always dictates the pace and focus on their pace and then the fastest athlete that is in that pair always just focus on matching typically one of the things that challenges Synchro the most is when both athletes try to match each other rather just than one athlete tries to match the other one so you know instead of both people having to lay and look at each other on if they're both on the ground at the same time you just have the faster athlete just focus on matching the pace of the slower and it's the same for the front squats um and yeah that's just one one quick note um I I love it and I guarantee you there's going to be some people that you know when this comes out later today are gonna be like ah should have thought of that or they can they can utilize it going forward that's that's great Insight um let's move on to the second test now um quarterfinals team workout number two and we've got it here up on the screen as well this one is 50 302 Reps for oh is that say correct yeah yep 50 30 20 Reps for time of alternating dumbbell snatches with all teams synchronized and then toasta bar with the pairs synchronized now the dumbbell for the women is 50 pounds the dumbbell for the men is 70 pounds the time cap is 20 minutes and a couple of notes um we didn't mention the last one but there are starting positions in terms of where you're facing relative to your equip for this one all four athletes start with their backs to the dumbbell um yeah and uh this one seems relatively straightforward in terms of uh heavier dumbbell snatch synchronized toes to bar with the dumbbell snatch all being synchron synchronized um Andre what do you got well first of all I think it's nice to see again I'm synchronized workout I think that the synchronized element that we had in test one and test two it's it should be tested because it's a team workout and I think you know sometimes if there's a bit too much Demand on relays and stuff like that it's I think that has its place but I think the the team element the Synchro element is is super cool and and super necessary and it's what it separates it from being an individual test and it challenges the teams to to show they been training together and they can read other's body language and they can communicate and that they can synchronize the exercises from a volume perspective it's moderate volume 100 toter bars 100 fairly heavy dumble snatches all depending on on on the level I think I call I would call them heavy because they are very dense it's that's another thing like that's important to look at when you strategize for a workout it's like you have total volume but what is the density of it if this has been 10 rounds of you know 1010 it would have been a total different workout but because you start with 50 reps in one go that create that's a whole different demand it's it will challenge the athletes a lot more uh from like a muscle endurance perspective and and so I think that's I think that's pretty exciting to see that it it it has that element because that's another way the top teams can separate themselves from the rest and I think it in a workout in workouts when you only have four that is going to take you to the next stage of the season the semi-finals the workouts need to be designed in a wave that has bottlenecks that has things that separates people and even though we haven't seen a lot of like bottleneck exercises you know such as like 100 225 kilos pound snatch or something 50 reps in one go already after that round the top teams will have dropped you know the middle of the pack and the bottom of the pack teams um it's also exciting when there's a lot of density because also creates a lot more demand for strategy and that's of course the fun part and again doesn't just test people's Fitness but also test people's ability to you know know themselves and know how everyone in the team can respond and the fact that everyone in the team has to be working at all times is also really cool so um yeah so so the the strategy would be that for the elite teams I think we we can see teams go on broken the whole wave on the dumble snatch and have strategic breaks on the TOA bar I think you could break the dumble snatch in 3020 with a very short break simply because it's very quick to pick it up again for the toas to bars I would recommend the same breakup strategy for elite teams as I would for middle of the pack and bottom of the pack teams and the strategy for the breakup would be 12 11 10 98 and then the rest time between those working sents will just depend on the level so for the top teams we're looking like 3 to 5 Second rest so very short the middle of the pack teams maybe 8 to 12 8 to 10 seconds and then the lower even lower we're looking at maybe 15 seconds rest but and the reason why I haven't made the rep scheme lower for the lower tier teams is because when you have to do a singr TOA bar it's not just you know in you and your own world jumping up and down doing your reps you're going to do it with another person and that coordination of jumping up and hitting the first rep it is a little bit more challenging than you know doing a lateral burby Over the Bar where you can just wait on the floor for your partner like that jump initial jump timing is off it then you know you can really get in trouble so if you if you're only planning on doing fives you know you're gonna be jumping up and down 10 times which adds 10 times the amount of uh chances of you know messing that first rep and timing off and creating frustration and you have to reset and a lot of time can be lost like that so maybe for the top teams a better strategy is just to hit you know 20 10 10 something like that could also be an option but what in my experience like we see with a lot of top athletes like Brent fikowski you know when you look at him crushing chippers he never does big sets on the toaster bars and he's always one of the fastest completing the Reps because he's trained himself to hold such short rest he obviously also has trained that capacity um so yeah there's a lot of interference of this workout as well um you know grip is a big thing here and that of course needs to be managed and your Strate that's also why I've broken up the toaster bars in several segments and for the lower level teams also the dumbbell snatches in in several segments to avoid blowing up like that um and then there's lot of interference with like the sagittal plane where it's is like going back and forth of the hip flexion and extension which also will cause uh some interference and some fatigue that you might not have seen if it was a toas to bars and whatever push press or something like that yeah so it's just important to keep in mind the interference because it might change your ability to do what you're used to doing maybe you can do 50 unbroken toast the bar easy but not when it's when dumble snatches um and at 70 pounds too yeah 50 straight with the dumbbells um and one thing I I do like the note that you had about limiting the the amount of I don't want to say transitions but it is essentially a transition getting up under the bar getting that first rep I think a lot of people at home who are maybe Fringe quarterfinal athletes or people that are just starting to get into the team competition there's always that um that element of when you're stringing toes to bar together the first first rep looks different than the second rep and then by the third rep you're kind of in your Rhythm right especially under fatigue so I I love the idea of Trying to minimize how many opportunities that has to present itself um as a as a potential roadblock and um is there any other big picture notes about this as far as how this fits into the the system or um strategy or what what maybe some people can do to try and minimize the total damage of this because I think some people looking at 100 dumbell snatches or 100 toast to bar for the lead athletes the volume isn't High maybe if you're someone who just happens to be pretty fit um and made it on a team the volume might look a little different yeah I think uh the first thing what I said before with the better athletes just matching the pace with the slower athlete that also is very important in this in this scenario so if you have an athlete with lower capacity on the toaster bar and you're synchronizing with that person you're just focusing on what they're doing and they're just focusing on spending their focus on doing the repetitions because on a team what people forget is that it's very taxing to be in a team individual it's like Shadow Boxing you're doing your own thing you're in your own world you know it's just you versus you you're pacing you jump up when you feel good when you're team you're constantly it's like being a fight with someone else because you and and it's like people have done wrestling or something like that it's like in training you can push yourself really hard as soon as you get in the ring with someone or in the M with someone like your hard rate is just through the roof because you're constantly adapting to what the other person is doing and it's the same on a team so if you have one athletes a little bit better in toaster bar then you just let that person spend their energy on doing the the the changing of their rep speed where the other ones just just the dumble snatch if there's one person that will suffer or is suffering more than the others then the three others just tune into that one person and that one person is just doing his his or her thing um and then so the other other note I would have is that all exercises lay on the spectrum of low tension versus high tension it's like how much tension or how much contraction do you need to do to perform a rep efficiently a dumble snatch at 70 pounds requires quite a bit of tension because it's a little bit heavy compared to 50 pound but a toaster bar it's not an exercise that requires a lot of tension and so you look at the toaster bar like hey this is a good opportunity for me to really make sure I relax because in this exercise I don't need to work a lot to get my toes to the bar the only section of the toes to Bar where you need to like really contract and make the movement happen is when the feet are passing from the arch through to the hollow in the bottom like the power that's generated there is all that needs to be done and the rest of the movement you should be able to like breathe and relax and I think uh also in terms of breathing I would never recommend that someone tries to control their breathing in any exercises just do what feels natural so don't force briefing don't okay I'm GNA exhale when it's on my way up and exhale or inhale when it's on my way down just relax like the more you try to create constraints around like your rest respiratory system I think this the in my opinion the the worse it's going to be so relax on the toes of bar because you can make sure you do it this is typical like when it's when there's a clock on a camera on and you're nervous and you have other people that are relying on you you just tend to tense up so much more than necessary the problem is if the muscle every time the muscle is Contracting it's like if it's Contracting really hard there's no blood going in or out and if you can keep the contraction super light you just have constant blood flow and that's what keeps your heart rate also a bit lower because the minute it's doing this like these really hard contractions like when you do super heavy back squats yeah you can feel like you can feel super Gass when you let go of the bar yeah um and so I feel like from Good to Great crossfitter this is like what they Master they're like so good at applying the minimal contraction uh necessary to complete a safe and sound repetition uh so that's kind of like a takeaway on that one as well oh I love it Andre says relax I like I like it that's uh man uh we're getting we're getting the full anatomy and physiology lesson too with this one um and for everyone listening remember these are the first two workouts that are due in the first time window in the first section window so um you have until Saturday April 6th if you're listening to this and it's not Saturday you have until 5:00 p.m. specific time Saturday April 6 to get these two tests uh in um that is the first section of Team quarterfinals the second window will then open up on that Saturday and you'll have the next two tests big thanks to Andre UD for taking the time to do that and again the window two part of that interview is going to be up on our YouTube channel as well so if you want to check that out just you'll be able to find it uh and you can learn all about window number two but Tommy what can people expect to hear about window two for the teams from him yeah well you know obviously along with the very eloquent and intricate breakdowns that he provided that you saw in window one he will uh kind of tie everything together on the back end kind of give a tentative schedule based on you know what he thinks most people might be able to do and some options he provided a one schedule where you you do it in a more traditional format um and give yourself an opp opportunity to retest if you need and then another one where you maybe you want to do it in a more dense opport in a dense way way um density is definitely a theme of what he talks about for a lot of this stuff and then you know he gives some good strategy for some of the these movements you know for for those of us who might be tackling it and aren't you know an elite athlete out of out of the Europe region so um there's some good Insight from there in terms of scheduling from thought and how to uh to approach dissecting that from a from an entire weekend perspective cool looking forward to hearing that from Andre and again if you're one of our patrons you'll be able to hear the entire interview uh up on patreon and just the last thing I'll add about uh quarterfinal programming for teams if you're someone who is in that 25% and you made it to quarterfinals and you're a little nervous about what you're going to see if this is a sign to me that says you're going to be able to participate might it ain't gonna be easy you know there there's some weights on like that 185 in that team workout that that's a probably a clean and jerk single for me every time but you're going to be seriously you're G to be able to slog through it right you're going to be able it's nothing that did there is nothing in here for an athlete and I'm you know I'm mediocre at best that I would look at that and say well I'm just gonna sit there and stare at that yeah and and and one thing that I talked about with Andre in this part two portion kind Loosely pertains to the idea of like minimum effective dose right like if you can accomplish uh a certain task with with less and do it in a way that incorporates more people is that more effective than the alternative of just hammering people and getting the same result but in a way that turns a lot of people off um and so I think that's an important aspect of what this quarterfinal stage is evolving into um and especially as we've seen multiple iterations and adjustments over the last few years specifically but if we're thinking long-term maybe health of the sport in terms of participation getting people involved I think maybe that's what this turns into and that the the elite athletes have to be okay showcasing their separation and ability to separate in in ways other than just with these hard stops when it comes to a lift weight or a skill that might stop people in their tracks yeah Lauren wants a heavy barbell for quarterfinals yes I do and I want to get upside down so those are the only Christmas gifts I want quals to do that dang yeah I know but like on an online competition format that's what I want I don't know anyone who's been to the water Blues Afterparty knows Lauren doesn't need doesn't need quarterfinals to get upside down that is true out there for time Lauren gonna be making her way to semi that was a case yeah have you ever done a slip and slide keg sand no that sounds like busted tea like I'm spitting chick after that somebody actually did have to go to the hospital to get stitches but uh it wasn't me thank God for that brick how was your Celebrity Golf Tournament this year well too many people died so right well again two of that interview the window number two is going to be up on YouTube and the entirety of the interview available to our Pat on [Applause] [Music] [Applause] patreon