S02E05 - Terri Wiatrak & David Syvertsen - What Movements should we NOT do?

February 6, 2021 - Today's episode is with special guest coach Terri Wiatrak, and David Syvertsen, owner and coach at my box, CrossFit Bison, in Midland Park New Jersey.

For most of us regular athletes, are there certain movements in CrossFit that are not necessary for increasing our fitness, and maybe that we should even avoid? We discuss what the controversy is and whether we should or should not be doing these movements.

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Episode: S02E05 - Terri Wiatrak & David Syvertsen - What Movements should we NOT do?

Full transcript (click here for PDF)

Sam Rhee: [00:00:00]   Welcome to another episode of Botox and burpees. I'm Dr. Sam Rhee plastic surgeon and CrossFit coach host of this podcast where we talk about plastic surgery, CrossFit, and everything in between. You can find more information at our website, botoxandburpees.com. And make sure to like, and subscribe wherever you listen to our podcast. 
This week's episode is with special guest coach. Terry Wiatrak and David Syvertsen, owner and coach at my box, CrossFit, bison in Midland park, New Jersey. For most of us, regular athletes. Are there certain movements in CrossFit that are not necessary for increasing our fitness and maybe that we should even avoid. We discuss what the controversy is and whether we should or should not be doing these movements . 
All right. So the next topic is one that was it started when I listened to a podcast with Ben Bergeron. And it's about whether regular athletes should or should not do certain movements in CrossFit and Ben Bergeron, who has a great podcast. I like it chasing excellence says he does not do these movements personally, nor does he as far as I understand it, I hope I'm getting him right. Nor does he program them for non competitive athletes. If you're on a competitive track, of course you have to because they're in your competitions, but he doesn't program and he lists a couple of handstand walks, kipping, handstand, pushups, muscle ups, pistols.
And the reason being is it's not about the ability or inability to do them, but he wants to focus on fitness things that people can do at any age, whether you're 15 or 500 years old. And these movements are associated with increased injury rates. And they're also things he said, personally, he doesn't like to do as well.
But why do these things, if they're not necessarily. In his mind, things you might do when you're 90 and if they might lead to an increased risk of injury, 
Dave Syvertsen: [00:02:06] Hate, hate in general blanket statements. I just hate them because you're dealing with so many different walks of life, experience, levels, goals.
And I think this has more to do with a course I just got on taking and I'm working on my final project for it. Now the OPEX course with James Fitzgerald, who does not like Ben Bergeron. And I think the two of them have some drama between them. But they're actually very similar from this perspective is for general fitness, of course you don't need to snatch.
You don't need to handstand pushup. You don't need to handstand walk. You don't need to muscle up. Absolutely. If the goal is only fitness, you don't need to do any of that stuff. All right. But you could say that about every single movement that you do in fitness, right? Like my worst injuries. I've said this before with you, like I have come from running, should I never run again?
Or should I become better at running? Should I pay attention more to recovery tech, like tactics and my running technique? Should I get a little lighter when I want to, when I want to run, yeah. That it is not the movement's fault that is causing injuries. Unless you have a room full of people that get hurt every single time you do the movement, then yeah.
Let's use the kipping handstand pushup, because I've seen this happen. I've had it happen. I know you guys have had this happen too. You jam your neck, and the fourth, like a lot of people think it's because of what's happens on the way down. Like you land on the head. I think it's less that and more the power that you're producing with your kip.
And that drives, it's an art it's physics, right? The you're kicking so hard up your head is going down. And if you don't time it correctly, you jam that neck into the ground before you press up. Is that the movement's fault? Or can we be honest about this? And maybe your timing was off by a quarter of, it's not even a quarter of a second, a 10th of a second.
And that's usually the case and it also could just be, the volume was too high. Maybe it was programmed incorrectly. Maybe you went into that workout with really tired triceps and shoulders, and you just couldn't have the fast Twitch to get up there in time. So to, to make a blanket statement that the kipping handstand pushup hurt, it could just be that it was programmed incorrectly or is executed incorrectly.
Because I can say that most of the people here that have done kipping, handstand, pushups have not dealt with that, but I've dealt with it. And I know you guys have. So like you go down this hole of was it the movement's fault? Okay. Let's take the kipping, handstand, pushups out of it. When we run box, jump and double on there on the same day, there's people that come in the next day, do my Achilles.
Like we could talk about myself, we've talked about Elena. We talked her and I talk about all the time. Terry now Achilles issues, like double under days. I hate them. It's not because of the workouts because of how I feel the day after. So maybe we should take double unders out. The kipping hand stamp, the kipping pull-up Oh man.
If I don't have a good laugh flexibility, my elbow turns out and my internally rotating my shoulder and my shoulder hurts the next two days. Maybe we should take kipping pull-ups out snatching, you catch it with the inter the elbow pointing back. Maybe we take the elbow cleans, like Rob share with his wrist.
There are certain things that you have to take out for certain people that does not mean they can't be a part of the program. No, you're making general statements because of a few of examples. 
Sam Rhee: [00:05:20] I do notice that you program some movements less than others. Yep. And is that because of injury rate or potential injury rate?
Dave Syvertsen: [00:05:29] One of them, like right now we're in the middle of a snatch cycle and cycle hazy. Isn't that? Where we're snatching a lot right now. Once a week. And. Part of the reason why I don't like doing snatches every year is because it's a really technical movement that if a couple things are off, it's the truest test of stability, flexibility, mobility.
If one of them is off by a little bit you're you are in a danger zone and then you have to start asking yourself, is it really worth it for me to do that? Like I'm just trying to fitness, right? The reason I do program them throughout the year comes back to our open discussion. They're involved in CrossFit.
If I don't program them at all, we don't practice the skills of them at all, progress them with 60%, 70%, 80%. And then all of a sudden they come into the open and we're like, guys, do the open. Oh 21.1 has 85 snatches. So we haven't done them. But I'm going to have you do them at a high intensity, like I think if, I don't know if Ben Bergeron tells us athletes from CrossFit new England to do the open, but if he doesn't program that stuff.
And that tells people to do the open he's in deep crap. That's his fault. Like you, you can't tell people to not do something and then say, Hey, we're doing the open it. I have this. I wouldn't imagine he does that. But yeah. 
Sam Rhee: [00:06:45] Are there movements that you won't do Terri because of potential injuries? 
Terri Wiatrak: [00:06:51] At this point, There's moments I'm not doing it. I like I've never not tried movements. There were months that I worked on ring muscle ups. And I was not good at them. I'm not a gymnast. I was a soccer player. So I have good like lower half, like either strength or just mind, body connection with the lower half of my body.
Anytime you tell me to do something with my arms where like I have to swing and whatever, I'm like, I can't, I it's such a mental thing for me, but I trained it. I trained it. I did, I was able to get a few and then I never did any more again, but it doesn't mean that I wouldn't ever try it again, unless I had a reason not to like my, if my physician were to say, you can't do those because it will put you in a compromising position and you could get injured, then I want it.
But. I think for all of these things, like in terms of what he's saying, like you shouldn't do muscle ups or kipping, handstand pushups or kipping pull-ups. Is that what you said? Pistols? I think all of these things always, it's and I think Dave does a great job of doing this as a programmer.
You have to be able to crawl before you can walk before you can run. All of those things strength-based we were getting upside down and we were doing handstand holds. They were getting upstander upside down and we're doing strict handstand pushups, regardless of if you're doing it too. Three plates on a mat, you learn the range of motion, right?
You build up those stabilizer muscles, which has all of the things that you need in order to do the movements correctly. And then you work on the technical part of those skills because they are skills. They're not necessarily Oh, I can lift up a deck. I can pull, bring up a dumbbell and just do some shoulder presses.
Like you need to learn the skill from the beginning to the end, from crawling to walking to. Running. And I think that's part of, there's no reason you shouldn't program it. But I think if he's going to put ring muscle ups into a workout this week, somebody who started last month, isn't necessarily going to do the ring muscle ups.
Dave Syvertsen: [00:08:45] So example this week wait. Yeah, I haven't posted the program this week. Wednesday there's Hanson walks in the workout on Wednesday option bear crawl, option, shoulder taps, right on Tuesday there's bar muscle-ups. Options strict pull up option, ring, row option banded. Muscle-ups right. If I just said programmed muscle-ups and told people to try them, if I told handstand walks, just try and just try them.
See what happens then. Yeah, you can Google. You can go down the path that this is irresponsible, but no, like here's the program. And then it's on us as coaches and me, especially to help guide everyone towards coaching this that you should be able to prove X, Y, and Z. Before you try this. And that's where we've grown.
Like maybe I didn't do that in 2015. Like I've said this in the past, like I'm still learning and I'm not going to come across as a note. All I'm making mistakes right now that I probably won't realize for another two years fact. I'll say that right now. Oh, we all are. Yes. All right. So yeah, to say that you're just going to cross these things off.
You're actually inhibiting someone from actually seeing what they can do with their body. If I was under that mindset, like how much stuff here can you do right now safely hitting a stimulus that you would not have ever been able to do. Part of this to me is what CrossFit is that you don't get from a lot of other programs.
You can actually find out what you're capable of doing body wise. If you just have some no at all at the top saying, Nope I'm not even, I'm going to neglect you from the opportunity to try this unless you're trying to compete, because this is only for people that compete. That's such a short-sighted approach.
And honestly, I think it's more about someone that says that a coach that says that is trying to just make life easier for themselves. And I've listened to his podcast too, a few times. And one of his thoughts, his life advice or thoughts is may things simple. And I agree with it make as much simple as possible as you can in a world that's not simple.
So he crosses some things out often. Like he used to run the East coast championships, huge competition, but that in addition to everything else, he goes man, I was just, I was spreading myself too thin. I wasn't putting out quality product. I was just trying to do too much. So I think that's part of what he might be saying is here Hey.
Instead of us trying to get better at Hanson pushups, pistols, ring, muscle ups, snatching squats, hatching, overhead squats. Let's cross all that out and just try to get better at everything. Like at the simple, simpler stuff, like to each their own go for it. But now I actually think there's going to be people out there that can do all that stuff that no longer get the opportunity to do it because you made the decision is you don't want to teach them.
And I actually think it's a shortcoming of coaching that if you can't come up with a scaling option for everybody in your gym to do something that's a bad job by you. It's almost like you're taking the easy way out to just say cross things off the list simply because you don't feel like it's something that other people should do.
Sam Rhee: [00:11:36] I mean, I understand what you're saying and I agree with you. Yeah. I will say that he does have a point in the sense that there are some movements that if people are not aware of, they can. Hurt themselves to themselves. Yeah. And I think some of it resonates in the sense for example, you said keeping, yeah.
We've all jammed our necks. Yep. I don't, I would much rather do strict versus kipping. And I think for me, it's just time spent loading my neck. On the ground restless risk. Yeah. Yeah. The longer I L I rest in that head on the ground position, the more I'm axial loading my neck and it's not feeling great, but yeah.
At this point, I have figured out, listen, if I don't feel, and I don't like doing them because most days I, and it's probably my tech technique in terms of how much I'm resting, how much I'm kipping. My kip is not as good as it really should be, but I know if I'm going to do a kipping, handstand, pushup workout, I'm going to have to first work my neck for a couple of days after I'm not going to do any handstand kipping hand stands for the rest of the week. They were programmed twice, one week and I just did strict, 
Dave Syvertsen: [00:12:43] And  something that like, again, I've years ago, I didn't do  this was a mistake. But when do, when we have pull ups, those are pull ups, those bars enhancing pushups. We now say that if you want to scale, this district do half the reps, and that's for across the board and any day. And. I didn't do that three years ago, four years ago. I really didn't know. So maybe I should have done that three or four years ago, and I got to take that as my responsibility. And then you have to tie this into the athlete's responsibility when they show up on if you showed up on a handstand pushup, like we're going to have, we have, we do have Diane coming up.
All right. So that's 21 handstand pushups in the first set it's kipping though. If you're like, nah, dude, like I'm not doing that. It's going to have to be on you to come in and be like, I'm just doing sure if I'm going to do 10 or 11. Yes. I got the SC next, my name, like who cares? That goes back to something we've already talked about.
And this is where I think you can grow as an athlete here is make better decisions and then the coach should be trying to get better themselves as well. But the cross it off completely. I agree. I just don't, I don't see that 
Sam Rhee: [00:13:45] because I've seen the flip side, for example, with bar muscle ups, my volume tolerance has gotten much higher than that and it's because my technique has gotten better.
So before I would just almost strict it, but now I'm more efficient and I'm not killing myself on that. And you're right. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I wasn't ever doing them, 
Dave Syvertsen: [00:14:06] Taking the emotional. Like human aspect too. Like some of my favorite videos that we have are someone getting their first bar muscle up.
And I remember Terry getting hers. I remember her like taking her legs at the top and like being proud of it.  Think that's something, this is something James Fitzgerald hates when people say it, but he goes  he'll say that people are lied to that. That it makes you happy that I'm like, no, they were F happy.
They smiled. There's something that they never would have accomplished if they didn't go after it now. Then you go down the rabbit hole of did it really do something for them or was it a very short term gratification? But I remember when I couldn't do them and now I can, and like it's improved my capacity and it's actually opened my eyes to strengthen my lats, strengthen my stability, strengthen my core when I'm doing pole weight core.
When you're doing pull ups. Yeah. Core when you're doing pull-ups. Strict pull-ups right. Keeping your feet front of you together, touching like that. It opens up so many other windows of fitness and protection and safety that. No, you just don't get, I just think crossing them off is the easy way out.
Sam Rhee: [00:15:06] That's all. I do think there are some movements, so that really scare people. For example, for me, if you make me do more than one or two rope climbs in a row, I'm going to be really afraid of getting tired and falling from the top. Yep. 
Dave Syvertsen: [00:15:20] Is fear a bad thing. 
Sam Rhee: [00:15:21] Yeah no. If I had to do it a lot, I would force myself to learn how to be better at right.
Yeah. Or  even just box jumps with a hard box. Yeah.  Usually use a soft, I will occasionally force myself to use a hard, but I'm not going to do it for a lot of reps. But, I have seen, I've seen you bite it. Yep. Really badly. Yeah. And those are the kinds of things that 
Dave Syvertsen: [00:15:41] Do I still hate box on here, coaching? I can't watch some people's deadlifts and box jumps. 
Sam Rhee: [00:15:48] So certain things that I think we should be mindful of, maybe not completely exclude, but we should certainly be 
Dave Syvertsen: [00:15:57] mindful of that. Yeah. And I think you monitor volume and honestly, listen to people. I'm not going to sit here and be like, Oh, I took this course and I've been doing the cross it this long.
It's my way. Or the highway. If I ever do that I shouldn't be here anymore because you have to listen to people. Like I actually take in what you to say, like if I had to pick 10 people in the gym, like I listened to you, you two are on that list of Hey, this is too much. This is too little. We're not doing this enough.
And I don't want to ever come across. Like I'm talking down. Like I hate pistols because I hurt my knees and hips. I hate them. And yes, you can bring up the moat there, not everything we teach about squatting and lower body movement. It goes out the window on a pistol. Like we're literally telling people on a pistol to do what we tell them.
And so there are things that you just do them throughout the year. You sprinkle them in, you work on progressions and stuff. Come up with I scale pistol workouts, nine out of 10 times, nothing wrong with that. But, it's, I think that you just have to keep things in moderation, and be very mindful and listen to people that have issues with them.
Terri Wiatrak: [00:17:00] I think as adults in here too, we're all adults, right? So we have to play a role as athletes. When you come in here and know what you can and cannot do that day. Everybody's coming in here with something different, like maybe the baby kept you up all night or like you had a really shitty day at work and you come in here and there's stuff that's just there.
So maybe you're not going to perform at 100%. So maybe you do have to realize, okay, today I'm not going to do ring muscle ups because there's a. There's the potential for injury today because I am not where I've worked out for the last 14 days. And I haven't given myself a break. So doing a high volume workout with ring muscle ups.
And it probably is not smart today, but I think that as adults, we all have to do that and realize that. But I think sometimes like the ego and all of that gets in the way when we're here. But I think that's really important as an athlete to know what. You can and can not do in certain workouts or on certain days.
Dave Syvertsen: [00:17:52] So you've heard Terry say this in classes sometimes like someone will come up and be like, Hey, I want to get a muscle up. I'll do the muscle up. Can you do a strict pull up? No. Okay. Like that, there are things that you need to responsibly make a decision on because maybe there are people that can do a muscle up that can't do a strict pull-up, but I can almost guarantee.
I don't like blanket statements. Those all say almost guarantee it's going to be done incorrectly. Your injury risk is heightened. And then if you do get it, you're just going to start thinking, that's the way I should do muscle ups. And I think the adult being the adult says listen to a coach and says like I'm thinking about telling people now, if you want to try to go for a bar muscle up, you should be able to touch something beneath your chest, to the bar.
Sam Rhee: [00:18:32] I think what Terry said is so true about high-skill movements, because it's the equivalent of an RX that is like a heavier X for a barbell. You, it took me a long time to get to that point where I could come in and while Dave wrote RX is going to be this and so I might as well just try it.
It's programmed it, so I'm going to try it. There have to be days where you, as an athlete have to say. I'm not going to do one 35. I'm going to do one 15 because that's what my day gave me today. 
Dave Syvertsen: [00:19:04] Yeah. 
Terri Wiatrak: [00:19:05] I love as a coach. Like when you're sitting here and you watch somebody and they're like, no, I'm not, I'm just not going to our X today.
It's it's a clean workout and one 35 prescribed for the guys and they put one 15 on and they're still getting. An amazing workout that day. They just don't have our X next to their name, but they knew what their capability was for that workout 
Dave Syvertsen: [00:19:22] It's so respectable. Yeah. 
Sam Rhee: [00:19:24] And I still do the fact that high skill work movements are something that people should work on.
I, it took me four years. But to get a ring muscle up, but it. It didn't it wasn't one of those things where I worked on it constantly. I worked on it. Did other stuff strengthened up and moved up, built up other skills. Like I think high skill movements are one of those things and don't ask I can do it, but don't ask me to do them now, like this very second.
Yeah. These are the, that's why I think people should be working on high school movements. I think your brain even. At 20, 40, 60 should be learning new movement patterns. And it may not be as quick at it's like learning a language. It's not as quick at 55 as it is as 15, but should you not be trying to learn a new language?
You should, if you want to and to tell someone that they can, I think is a little yeah, too strong, too. You can get every episode of Botox and burpees, wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to botoxandburpees.com. thanks for listening