S02E15 - David Syvertsen - The 2021 CrossFit Open is done. Now what? Part 1

April 24 2021 - This week's episode is with David Syvertsen, owner and coach at CrossFit Bison in Midland Park, New Jersey.

The 2021 CrossFit Open was unlike any previous Open competition. Now that the Open is done - what can we take away and where do we go from here? Dave discusses lessons learned and how the Open can guide our thinking regarding fitness and training starting today.

Thanks to @jfzphotography for the photograph - JFZ Photography is an amazing full service, fine art photography studio based in the NY / NJ Metropolitan area. Highly recommended.

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S02E15 - David Syvertsen - The 2021 CrossFit Open is done. Now what? Part 1

Full transcript (click here for PDF)

S02E15 - David Syvertsen - The 2021 CrossFit Open is done. Now what? Part 1
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. 
So this is actually going to be the last burpees, sorry, burpees and boat, hotspots, burpees, Botox, and burpees podcasts with coach and owner Dave Syvertsen CrossFit Bison and me Sam Rhee. I got traded. Yeah we got some bigger and better plans coming up in the future. But I think this is going to be one of the most important podcasts that we've had up to this time.
And it's really about lessons from the 2021 open and what to take away and learn from, for the future and where to go from here, where to go from here. So let's re let's recap the open, not break down every WOD in particular but let's talk about it in its entirety. And what did you think about it?
David Syvertsen: [00:01:09] So this year it was three weeks. Every year prior to this, it was five or six weeks, right? Or five or six tests, I should say a fitness and Dave Castro has been quoted as saying that it was three weeks partially because of COVID. So they don't know if they're going to keep it three weeks. I will say that for the gym, for the general public, I think three weeks is a better number than five because every year we've done this and we make the open, the big deal here.
At the end of three to four weeks, people are like, when is this thing over? Absolutely. So I think the three weeks is a good metric for everyone. As long as the tests are put together which you have to trust, CrossFit at this point that they can do that over the course of three weeks that you're looking at it being a three-week test from now on, in my opinion, I don't know that for fact, at all, and that's where the open's going to go from here.
And this year you had three tests that really found holes in everybody's fitness. 
Sam Rhee: [00:02:05] It seems like the universal feedback is three weeks was very positive. Yeah. Easier for affiliates. Yep. Easier for individuals. And also with the addition of quarter finals, you really have the extension of what used to be the open two weeks later for the next stage.
So it doesn't make sense for them to have five weeks and then another quarter finals right. For that. 
David Syvertsen: [00:02:27] And you can really find out a lot in three weeks, you don't need five workouts. Five weeks or maybe even six workouts in some years to find out like, all right, where you are, where are you fitness in relation to CrossFit.
I think three weeks is enough. And this year it was three weeks, but it had four tests. So you might see that in the future, it might always be something like a format like that. And the reason why I liked it, that is because it gives your general CrossFitter a three-week test and then you're done. But it gives your diehards, the people that really put a lot of thought effort, energy into training for the open. It gives them an opportunity to prolong this to the quarter finals, which we'll talk about next. And I really think that this format, it makes a next stage attainable for everybody. And I mean that now, when I say that might be attainable for you next year, or it might be attainable for you three years from now, 
Sam Rhee: [00:03:24] it means that the Open's orientation was a little different this year in terms of what they were testing for those four tests that they have.
David Syvertsen: [00:03:32] Yeah. And this year, the first one jump rope and a wall walk. Nobody saw that coming. Yep. And even the CR the best cross minds out there, nobody saw a wall walks coming.
And that's where you just, I feel like you have to sit back and trust the powers that be within the sport within this fitness program. That they're gonna, they're going to test you in ways that you really can't plan for, because cross it is all about the unknowable and, your general fitness should take over at some point.
And I think this year it was also COVID friendly. They were trying to, as much as they could make it, COVID friendly because there's a lot of people that could not do these workouts at gym still are around the globe. This is the thing that goes outside of America. So there's still countries out there, the locked down that didn't have access to a gym.
So do I think that you're going to see this much bodyweight movement in every single open from here on out? No, but I think you should be prepared for absolutely. 
Sam Rhee: [00:04:25] Okay. We finished the open. Yep. You're telling us that top 10% is attainable. 
David Syvertsen: [00:04:30] Yeah, absolutely. 
Sam Rhee: [00:04:32] Most athletes that are shooting for if they want to.
And if I'm an athlete that says, okay, I was reasonably close or I feel like I have the potential to be there. I agree with you. What do I have to do starting today? 
David Syvertsen: [00:04:45] So there's three things and we'll dive into them separately, more in depth, but there's three things. One of them is you have to be able to move your body.
And that's we're probably one of the most overlooked components of CrossFit that especially the further you get into it, especially if you start lighting, like the more, the higher skill work or the barbell work or the strength work. We'll dive into that a bit deeper later. Step two is conditioning pretty much every single test in the open centers around conditioning and capacity. 
And number three is strength. And we'll talk, and we'll talk about that deeper later, but it's also. No just make them make sure you don't make the mistake, that strength is only associated with the barbell moving exterior load. There's a lot of strength that occurs outside of that realm that we'll go into.
But those are the three things you have to move your body better. You need to be better conditioned or put more thought into your conditioning, and then you need to get stronger. 
Sam Rhee: [00:05:36] Now, when you're thinking about these three things, Do you trust your boxes programming to get you there? Do you have to start setting your own goals with this? Do you need some help? 
David Syvertsen: [00:05:45] Yeah, I would say this right if your gym like bison, but there's other gyms that do this well, if your gym puts a lot of credence into the open I really think one of the reasons I liked the open is it's really the only true objective test in CrossFit throughout the year.
Like your daily whiteboard I don't know if you're cheating or not, I don't know, locking out your elbows. I don't know if you're squatting below parallel. I don't know if you're doing things to standard and then you start going down the path of, not every gym is set up like ours.
Like how close were you to the door on the running workouts? Like how close is your pull-up bar to the wall? All those little things, they do make a lot, they can create false narratives when in relation to your fitness or your progress within fitness. I think that if your gym takes the open serious, which it should, if you're across the gym, you should take the open serious, right?
That is your lone objective barometer that you can use for our out year to year. Like right now I can say that I probably look at 60, 70 different members open score throughout the year. Like in the middle of July, I might look at your scores and be like, all right, where was he on this workout? That workout, this is this workout, test, his strength, this workout tested gymnastics capacity, this one tested conditioning, grunt work, all that good stuff.
And it's out there for everyone to see at all times you have judges or your gyms. You should have judges when you do the open that holds you to the standard. So yeah, I think that the gym's programming should center around that because not every single workout of every single day but, it should center around the open because it's really the loan objective test for someone.
And now, because the top 10%, the next stage after the open is attainable by thousands and thousands of people, you're going to have people striving for that in the past. It's just been regionals or Sanctionals or last year just the games, right? Like that's why the enrollment of the open went down.
For awhile, it was like, all right, I'm not going to go to the games. Why would I do the open right now? It's Hey, if I'm top 7,000 in North America, I'm going to make the next stage. Yeah. And that's a little bit more attainable. So yeah, I think that your gyms program should absolutely set around it.
And if it doesn't, you should probably seek some outside help. 
I love that chance to play the next stage. That means a lot for a lot of people. 
Absolutely. Yeah. And not, we had some people here. It's funny that I contacted them after the open. And I was like, Hey, by the way, it looks like you're going to make the top 10%.
They didn't even know. They were like, wait, what? I made it really. And that was probably like one of my favorite moments about the open was like letting someone else. I thought they knew, but like they. They had no idea that they were top 10% and that's that's a badge of honor in my opinion.
Yeah. That you work your butt off for honestly, for years, because that's what it takes now. There's just too many people doing this now. Like you're not going to do this for a year. And then all of a sudden be up there. And there's a lot of like times where you don't want to get out of bed, you still went to the gym.
You didn't feel great. Still went to the gym. You hated that day's workout. You still went to the gym and to see a fruit of your labor like that. I hope it inspires people that are on the outside looking in, but I also, it helps inspire the people that made it this year, that's going to be something to try to do every single year.
Sam Rhee: [00:08:58] I think the thing that is the best part is that it makes you fit without even realizing, that's what you're doing, you're shooting for these goals and what the process ends up making you a very fit person in a way that you would never have challenged yourself for. So that's really the end result is, yes, you want to shoot for these goals, but you know what?
You get super healthy because you're not able to screw around with your body so much if exactly your goals. 
David Syvertsen: [00:09:23] And I'll tell you what. I also think that it, a lot of times you're like, Hey, I want to be the fittest version of myself, but you're like, you know what? I have a job. I have a family. I can't spend more hours than I already do at the gym.
Almost all of our athletes that made top 10%. They work out an hour, a day, five to six days a week, 
Sam Rhee: [00:09:42] But you know what they do the eat, right? Yes. They just on their outside lifestyle. Yep. They do have fun. They all do, but they're really disciplined about how they measure out their lifestyle. 
David Syvertsen: [00:09:55] In the past if you want to make a sanctional regional there, you have to make major sacrifices outside the gym. Like you'd have to train twice a day. Like the sports has got so big and so competitive that, and what, if you still want to make the semifinals, which, we could bring about, or even the games, if that's a lofty goal of yours, then yeah.
You're going to have to change a lot about your life, but to make the top 10%, like you really can just come in, work your butt off, take care of your shit outside the gym. 
Sam Rhee: [00:10:20] So let's talk about this foundational improvements. So the first thing was moving your body which is basically what you mentioned, body weight movement.
David Syvertsen: [00:10:28] Yep. So I'll answer this look at all the CrossFit movements from this open. Let's just use this open as example. Yeah. The majority of them, you were not moving an exterior load, right? 
Sam Rhee: [00:10:39] Burpees box jumps, low 
David Syvertsen: [00:10:41] walks wall walks, jump rope burpee box jump overs, toe to bar pull-ups muscle-ups. All right. And the bar in the weight that you did move within the actual condition and components of the workouts were on the light side, right?
You have the 95 pound thruster in front squat, and you had a 50 pound dumbbell. That's not heavy. And then you had the shrink test at the end, but it was still after a workout, that's one thing that I think I watched this gym all the time and we have a very fit gym. We have a very classic cross of gym.
You can tell the people that did really well in the open this year. They do really well on bodyweight days. And it's not because they love gymnastics. It's not because they hit their weak. It's not because they're not capable. They pay attention to how well they're squatting in an air squat workout, because it impacts how they do wall balls and thrusters.
And that, and the wall walks, right? Moving your body weight. We have some strong dudes here, strong guys and girls that really struggle on that. All right. Why did they struggle? Has nothing to do with strength. It's not big as they're too heavy. If you overhead mobility. Wasn't great. So you start thinking about like, why isn't my overhead mobility.
Great. Like maybe I don't do good enough mobility work. Maybe I don't put any attention into my stretching pre-workout because I just want to watch and go home and check that box. Moving your body is not just about doing burpees, pushups, and sit-ups it's about mobilizing your body so that when you do air squat workouts, it looks perfect.
And when you're hanging from the rig and we talk about hollow and arch positions, and you're doing a Kip and a warmup, or we talk about scat pull-ups, it's not just because the book tells us that we should prepare athletes that way, the better you get at that stuff, it will translate to every movement that needs that position.
A lot of times, like if I say, if I want it to a common CrossFitter said Hey, let's get better at toes to bar. Like, all right, I'm just gonna do better. I'm just gonna do a Tovar email every week. It'll help, but it has a cap on it. If you don't have the other accessory components to it set up your latch, strength, your grip, strength, your hollow position, your arch position, your core strength, your body awareness.
When you're under fatigue, it doesn't translate to an open test, right? Because we all get to this point. I don't think everyone realizes this. You all get to a point in an open test where you're your body is at near failure. So what happens at that moment? Do you have the body awareness? The coordination, because you've been there before, because you've done it so many times over the course of the year.
That you pay attention to those little details that it translates to workout.
Sam Rhee: [00:13:09] So how do you best do these comments? The classic CrossFit saying is do these common things uncommonly well, right? So your air squats should translate into your front squat. That should look the same as a back squat. And it should be the same, whether you're body weight or you're lifting 300 pounds.
Yeah. So as you move through these and like a classic Wednesday workout, right? We show up, we're doing all of these body weight workouts. What is it that we should be thinking about in order to make sure that our movements are translating into improvement? 
David Syvertsen: [00:13:41] Put less thought into what your score is and more thought into how well you're moving.
Like I always say this all the time. If you were, if your score on the whiteboard was how well you move technique-wise would you, would it change the way you work out? Oh yeah. 
Sam Rhee: [00:13:52] If we got grades for our movements,
David Syvertsen: [00:13:55] if it did. And I, it's a little subjective with the coach, but if that was your evaluation, would you slow down a notch and move better?
If your answer is yes, I would slow down and move better than fix that right now. Okay. I don't want to see a good score on the board if you're doing stuff incorrectly. And again this goes back to I always have to check myself on this. It goes back to, if you care about. No, your fitness and the way we're talking about, right?
If you want to get better at this 10%, or you just want to perform better within the sport of CrossFit, right? 10, top 10%. This is who we're talking to. If that's you, if you want to get to this point where you want to see improvement in the open, if you want to someday get to that top 10%, that's what I'm talking about, is you need to slow yourself down a notch, prove you can do it over and over. And then you add the speed component. All right. Another thing I think you can do videotape yourself. Yes. Because sometimes you think you're moving a certain way and if you saw videotape yourself, you'd be like I've had this happen, we post a story of a class doing the workout, not zeroing in, on anybody just, and some are like, wow, I did not know I was doing that. Like, why do I look like that? Sometimes you really just need to. Honestly, video yourself and just be like, wow, why is my chest coming so far forward when I squat?
Oh, maybe that's why I struggle with wall balls so much 
Sam Rhee: [00:15:11] have mirrors all over New York sports. No, but you're right. I think once you, if there are so many times I lack the body awareness. Yeah. Oh, I'm squatting deep enough.
David Syvertsen: [00:15:22] I think that at its most basic level, and this is something that everybody can apply. Like I'm talking everybody, right? If you're banged up, you're not banged up.
You're new to cross or you're not like master the body weight movements as best you can and never stop focusing on them. I want you to be excited when you come to the gym and you see a body weight movement. All right, because it's been the majority of the open for years, you just don't see it because it's not sexy.
You don't have the barbell, it doesn't make Instagram, but I'm telling you right now, if you get better at push-ups sit-ups burpees, air squats, it will translate to your fitness. I can't say the same about heavy squat cleans and back squats and deadlifts and squats snatch. It just you need to get better, all that stuff.
And that thought process should never end. 
Sam Rhee: [00:16:04] I would say that if you're a newer athlete, you have an advantage. Yeah. Because it's like a golf swing. Once you think, you know what you're doing, it's very hard to change your movement patterns. And if, and I know we have athletes that have, they, I know how to do a burpee.
I know how to do an air squat. You know how to do these things. I'm not changing what I'm doing. And if you can, as a coach, tweak them just a little bit to improve, it's huge for some of these guys who've been doing it for years. If you're a new athlete, learn it. Perfect. The right time. 
David Syvertsen: [00:16:34] You write it out, dude, I've been coaching a decade now, are almost a decade I should say.
Yeah. I noticed people that move well, body weight a million times faster than moving weight with a barbell because it, because I know it translates. 
Sam Rhee: [00:16:46] I love watching people who move on it's really? Yeah. All right. So then let's so we got the foundational stuff about moving your body properly. Then the next aspect is conditioning, which was really important for this open, this whole word.
Yeah. So what is, what do you mean by conditioning? 
David Syvertsen: [00:17:04] Just say B the ability to maintain a pace throughout an entire workout. Like that, that, to me, when it comes across it, that's what it is. Because if you really break down what happens in an open workout, you did well, you didn't do well.
You, you were fast, you were slow, that's subjective, right? It's up to you to determine that. It always comes down to how much were you resting there in the workout? Really? That is true. How much did you rest during the workout? That is really the determining factor for what your time was, right? No, most people.
If I said, do 60 seconds of wall balls, unbroken. All right. I'm bringing that up because you just said wall balls, right? It's usually between 30 and 35 reps, you got a couple of tall, fast squatters that are a little bit higher, but let's say 30 to 35 reps. All right. If there's a workout that has a hundred wobbles.
Yeah. You should immediately know that. Okay. I'm going to be doing wall balls between three and four minutes in this workout. But my time was X. It was because the amount of rest that you went into it, right? So conditioning is not you just sitting on a rower or bike or going for a run. It's how well can you maintain a pace, a working pace throughout a workout.
So conditioning, obviously this right now, this Wednesday's workout. We have running rolling jump rope. It's going to be a quiet day. I'm telling you right now. It's going to be, Oh, that should be my rest day. Okay, that's fine. Rest day. Okay. When you get to the open next year, and if it's, again, we're talking to people that want to eat, take their games to the next level, top 10% or get closer to it.
Your conditioning is going to pop up whether you worked on it or you didn't, we're going to find out during the open every single year. So if you're the one that's always coming in on back squat day or Delyth day or squat clean day or squat snatch day, because you want to move weight and feel strong.
That's fine. All right. If you're doing that, but skipping the conditioning component for us, it's usually Wednesdays. You're screwed 
Sam Rhee: [00:18:57] that aerobic capacity takes time to build. And when you're grabbing your knees for, like you said, half the workout, it's really hard to over.
It's like eating your broccoli. How do you do that? Over a whole year? Yeah. 
David Syvertsen: [00:19:10] And just, yeah. So right now we're about 10 months out, 10 to 11 months from out from the next year is open, right? The 20, 22 open. Yeah, this that's how long it will probably take for about 90% of the athletes to get their conditioning to that level where they can sustain where for a long time.
It's not something this happens every year. January comes a roll rolls around, the opens coming up, like, all right, I'm going to start doing my conditioning work. Now it's too late. I don't think you need to do sprint intervals. Right now, but one thing I think you got to do, if you want to get scientific with this, everyone who has fast Twitch and slow Twitch muscle fibers, everyone does part of the job of your slow Twitch muscle fibers is to clear fatigue. All right. In most cases in CrossFit, it's the legs that get us, right? Your leg fatigue. So what should you do right now to help yourself clear fatigue next February, March, you need to run more.
Or if you can't run, these have joint issues, get on a rower, get on a bike and do low intensity, but long conditioned pieces. And yes, you can start throwing in some interval work in that Hey, 20 seconds, hard, a minute, 40 seconds soft, and just be able to clear fatigue so that you can maintain intensity and prove that you can maintain intensity for those 20 seconds.
But your minute 40 is not you sitting on the ground doing no work. You're minute 40 is I'm still working. I'm just saying a loader with lower capacity and that what that does, and this would happen to a lot of CrossFitters. A lot of our workouts are short, fast, intense. So you build up capacity within your fast Twitch fibers, right?
Yeah. Mo I would say eight out of 10 workouts are like that. Okay. But what we lack most of us. Is, we don't do a lot of slow conditioning work that we can't clear that fatigue fast enough. So you just get to these points where the workout, where you're just like, dude, I'm done, I got seven minutes left, but I'm done.
I can't recover because you didn't train that way all year. So this is why I know that it gets old. When we talk at the whiteboard about pacing, yourself, understanding what you can do, understanding what you can't do. And stop trying to hope, right? Hope's going to let you down all the time.
That's a line from Chris Hinshaw, right? Like maybe I'll just sprint the first two rounds and I hope I can get through the rest of the workout. It'll let you down every time. And I'll say this, if the more hopeful you are in the sport, right? The less prepared you are. 
Sam Rhee: [00:21:31] I do remember Matt Frazier recently was talking a lot about that zone.
Two conditioning. What a heart rate monitor. 
David Syvertsen: [00:21:37] Yeah. Hope man that, that goes really detailed. In my opinion and cross it, it doesn't, I think it helps to be aware if you're in zone two. If you have no idea what your heart rate is. Yeah. In the middle of a, if I told you, Hey, go do a 10 minute bike row back and forth woman did on here, woman did on there.
It does help to know if you're in that zone two area, 120 beats per minute. And but I don't think you should program off of heart rate, but I think you should have enough body awareness. So I wore one, a polar one for a long time, you got hooked up to your phone. It's got in that. And I was like, all right.
So that feeling I'm right now, that's 150 rates. Beats for a minute. That's like your  pace go for it. But so yes, I do think it can help, but I wouldn't program based off of it. I wouldn't try to go into a workout and be like, I need to stay under 160 beats per minute. That's a little too detailed.
I think the biggest thing that you get out of it is that you should be training those fast Twitch paces. But you should also be training the boring, slow Twitch paces, because the purpose of slow Twitch is to get lactate outta lactic acid out of your system, to absorb it so that your fast Twitch can take over again.
And if you watch really high level CrossFit athletes, that's what makes them good is in a cross it open type test. Like why is it that these elite CrossFitters that are so good at the games and sanctions they're also, they also dominate the open. And they can clear fatigue faster than most and up huge reason.
Why is that they do long, slower conditioning all year. That, that, that is, it never goes away. And I would say 19 out of 20 CrossFitters, they don't do any of it. They just don't. And it's because it's partially because Hey Hey man, my, my CrossFit gym is what dictates my workouts. They don't program that, because we don't have an hour to actually work.
We have an hour class that includes the talk, the warmup, the cool-down to get out of here. So if there's anyone out there that really wants to take that to, take their conditioning to that level. Yes. You can do it on your own. Get some track workouts, go to robot capacity.com.
They ha they put out free programming or find a coach that can help you out with that. And start putting yourself through these workouts where there's a lot of slow Twitch, slow pace, not as fun, boring, repetitive movements that build up your body's ability to clear fatigue, because w what's the first thing we said about conditioning.
You have to spend less time resting during the middle of your workout. What is resting in the middle of a workout? You're trying to clear fatigue, but you haven't trained that ever. It's just go hard, bro. And it just, it doesn't work. 
 
Sam Rhee: [00:24:07] You can get every episode of Botox and burpees, wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to botoxandburpees.com. thanks for listening