The Sevan Podcast - Kids Weightlifting & The CrossFit Games is Dangerous? w/ Dr. Sean Rockett | Souza's Show
Episode Date: July 17, 2024www.affiliatevideocontest.com For Affiliates, Coaches and CrossFitters: https://www.skool.com/medialaunch Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthews0uza/?hl=en Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...it megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Round two. Why is Twitter not working? I wonder what the deal is. What's up, gang? Oh, wait. Good thing I didn't go to that. That was a click mistake. Remove. How are Rocket coming in talking to us a little bit about some competitive sports side injury talk.
So we'll talk a little bit about like the difference.
We talked about it last time where we discussed kind of like
what coaches and affiliate owners should know
when it comes to like injuries in CrossFit, right?
And we touched base a little bit as we started to move towards the sports side.
Like Seth Page actually had a really great question
and he was asking about rebounding box jumps.
And essentially like, is it the risk worth it
or should you not do it?
Should you do it?
Is like, how bad is the injury there?
And, or how bad can you be exposed to injury
during that movement?
And basically he was like
yeah don't do it because whenever your foot is at like this like flexed angle and you like rebound
back off of it that's when like there's a rupture in the achilles and where it could just like split
off the bone and it was um it was crazy i learned that because there's been a couple of times when
i've done some box jumps like box like rebounding box jumps happen to be like a really good movement for me. And so I would do them all the time and like speed up in the workouts and stuff. And like, as the last couple times I did them, I started to get like, almost like this, like swelling back behind my Achilles where like, it would feel like super tender, not like sore, but almost like worse than sore.
Not like sore, but almost like worse than sore.
Like it had been inflamed, almost like hit by something.
And so ever since then, I was kind of always like weary, but I never had any issues with it.
I would like warm it up and it would be fine.
And then after the conversation about the rebounding box jumps with Dr. Sean Rocket,
I've decided that probably stepping down would be best for me.
There's no way I could.
I would go crazy trying to have to live in, uh, some sort of like crutches or immobile position for any length of time when it came to, uh, uh, an injury because of a
rebounding box jump. It just ain't worth it. I know some of you guys probably still rebound
your box jumps. I'm curious as to how this is going to go. Hi, Karin. See the last show.
I'm curious as to how this is going to go.
Hi, Karin.
See the last show?
Two of them back to back.
Like warmed up now.
Short break in between.
But I didn't really want to move either of these shows.
I had already had Dr. Sean Rockett scheduled from prior.
And the discussion that we had last time was really cool.
A lot of people seemed to get a lot out of that episode.
We took it and I clipped it into a few different clips.
And Dr. Sean Rocket threw it on his Instagram and stuff.
And one of them went nuts.
We ended up getting almost 400,000 views, like 350 something maybe, or maybe a little less than that, maybe like 325.
And then Dave took the clip and reposted it on his uh the tdc instagram and then
that ended up with like roughly right around the same amount and so it was crazy about how much
attention that that clip got and some of the comments and different things like on that i'm
curious as to you know it's funny too and we'll talk to uh dr rocket about that but one of the
things is like he like actually took the time and like
went through and like commented like back and like really wrote some of these thoughtful
um responses back to some of them like if you look at some of my response my responses they're
just like sarcastic kind of like not rude but but uh let's just say dr rock gave much more
thoughtful insightful answers than i did i basically was just like f off i don't care what
you think anyways um but whenever you get a clip that makes the rounds like that and just gets
obviously reach on people's explore page and what have you like there's gonna be a lot of people
that are gonna have their opinions on it and uh sometimes people just comment shit just because
um you know they just want to either write something that they think will catch attention,
or maybe they're just pissed off that day, or we're just whatever, had an opinion.
But I used to do this thing a lot with Jerry News. It was like a popular news account on Instagram.
And I would set notifications onto it. And it would alert me ahead of time that a post got made.
And I would go on there, I'd see it. And I was like, okay, can I make some sort of time that a post got made. And I would go on there, I'd see it.
And I was like, okay, can I make some sort of comment
that would either piss people off?
Some people might think it's funny.
If you read it, it's kind of sarcastic.
It's usually ambiguous.
So you can't really tell if I'm for or against
whatever the content is.
But you have to do it within the first two minutes.
And if you do it and you do a comment correctly,
you'll start to get some engagement.
And then typically, if you do it and you do a comment correctly you'll start to get some engagement and then typically if you get like a couple comments or replies back then
uh more and more people will get to see it and get like you know you'll get likes on it so it's
kind of like a game sebon and i used to play like a year ago or so because when he started realizing
that i was doing it he's like wait i want to do that so he would try to do the same and we'd like
compare how many likes we got and i had an opportunity to do it on this,
uh,
Andrew Schultz clip.
Um,
it's a pretty funny joke.
Actually,
I think I could probably,
uh,
Andrew Schultz.
Do you guys,
are you guys a fan of Andrew Schultz?
His,
um,
his ability to like riff with the crowd,
but not only riff with the crowd,
but riff with the,
uh,
a crowd like in different cultures and be able to connect with them is like his ability to like riff with the crowd, but not only riff with the crowd, but riff with the, uh,
a crowd like in different cultures and be able to connect with them is like
second to none.
This guy is just,
uh,
is a genius when it comes to that.
Um,
uh,
yeah.
Oh,
you know,
what's funny too.
Oh,
maybe it's cause the account doesn't follow me,
but my comment doesn't even show up on here,
even though it has the most likes.
That's crazy.
Okay, well, here's the clip.
This is the clip.
You guys can see it.
By the way, this has absolutely nothing to do with the show.
We'll talk about it in about four minutes.
But I just thought you guys might think it's funny.
With a beer, and there was a cop that was like, you got to go back inside.
And I was like, why?
He goes, you can't drink beer outside.
I'll have to give you a ticket.
I'm like, there's a guy shooting heroin in his eyeball.
Right next to you.
Like in San Francisco.
Even the heroin addict was like, no, you got a point.
Makes no sense.
We should fix that.
They're so flexible, them heroin addicts, bro.
I don't think I'm flexible enough to be on heroin.
Every one of them can touch the floor, right?
Like, this is as far as I go.
Even if I was on heroin, you wouldn't think, you bet.
I think he lost something.
You know what I mean?
But they are like, fuck.
They fold in half.
They're like a wallet.
Does heroin loosen up the hamstrings
what is
I don't need yoga I need heroin
apparently
so anyways I saw that and I thought
I was like oh that's funny and I caught it within the first like
minute so I put this comment here and I said
it's pronounced fentanyl now
and I got 2300 likes on it
it's funny too I had to go down to like
in 13 replies I had to go down
to like pretty far in these had to go down to like pretty
far in these comments to get that even though look it's like the closest one next to me is 673
665 that's still less 283 264 35 31 yeah 550 like none of these it put mine all the way down here but it has a massive more engagement
and likes than any other comment above it that's kind of that's kind of interesting right i bet i
wonder if it has to do because i i put the word fentanyl there so like it buried that comment but
you would think that instagram would populate the comments that are getting the most engagement
but apparently it's not which is that's kind of funny also dude this is on the
sebon podcast instagram account so their uh that account doesn't follow anybody but our sponsors
doesn't follow me or anything like that so i wonder if that had to do with it but that's just weird
that it would like bury it underneath all those comments what are the ones that that are popular? Oh, I know for a reason people are taking heroin.
Don't start fights and make a scene.
Am I right?
They'd be stretched out.
Vancouver is a land of yoga.
Okay,
whatever.
Anyhow,
I thought you guys would think that that is a,
that's pretty funny.
Like the Andrew Schultz bit,
not necessarily that my comment got some engagement,
but we got some cool topics that we're going to be discussing with Dr.
Sean rocket. He, um, he brought up some good points when we were kind
of like talking a little bit back and forth about just some of the, uh, some of the subject material
that we want to get into on the show. Obviously I want to dive into a ton of this stuff, like with
the games and different athletes that we've known have gotten hurt over the years. The main question
that I have for him is like, who makes the call, right? So we saw, um, Roman
and stuff like that in the past get hurt and still kind of continue on. There's obviously certain
injuries that happen where like people can no longer continue on due to the fact that like,
you know, you remember Brooke with her elbow, there's no way if she wanted to or not, like
the, she was no longer going to be in the competition from that point forward. Right.
So I'm curious as to like, you know, uh, kind of a peek back behind the curtain or so as to what that looks like.
How are those decisions made?
How much of the athlete's opinion is actually taken into consideration?
And as well as we'll get into a couple of things about weightlifting and young people
doing it, which I think is actually a great topic because you hear a lot of mixed
things about it all the time. Is it bad for you? Does it stunt their growth? Is it too early to
start? What should kids do and what kids shouldn't do? So with no further ado here, we'll bring Dr.
Sean Rocket into the show now. And we'll hit the little applause button because we bring on
applauses when we have our guests here. Hello, sir. how are you can you hear me i can you sound great how's your day
going so far uh great great have a full day of surgery and uh things are good i just have to
do one more little thing here let me tell you no problem i you know like we talked about a little
bit last time and i was like man that's just like such a crazy experience like i get up and i'm like oh i you know gotta coach my class
and stretch them out right and you're like i'm just gonna slice somebody open and sew together
their shoulders talk about different uh responsibilities um sorry about this. No, no problem. Something just got to me. There we go.
No problem.
All right, cool.
Zachary, what's up, man?
What's up, man?
What's up, Sean?
How we doing?
You doing all right?
Doing fantastic.
Feeling good here.
I was just riffing a little bit,
chatting with the crowd here,
and I was talking about how you completely changed
my box jump for forever.
What do you think about box jump?
I'm glad to do that.
Well, it was funny because, you know, the reason why I said,
so Seth Page had actually asked that question in our comments.
That's a buddy of mine, has his own show with Jump Ship.
And he had asked the box jump question about rebounding.
And like box jumps used to be like my and not used to be still still are technically
but like that was like my bread and butter if i knew that i had a box jump in the workout the
more the better i could rebound them quick i could make up a lot of 50 and get through 50 50
without thinking about it sure crush it yeah and at like lately over the last few months what i'd
done in my head had this really weird like um it was like my achilles almost felt like swollen to the touch like it had gotten hit or something afterwards and i was like that
doesn't quite feel right now but i'd warm it up and you know kind of just throw it to the wayside
like ah it's warming up it feels good and after one of the box jump workouts i did i was thinking
to myself like man maybe i should pay more attention to that. And maybe I should adjust my, my, my movement here a little
bit because you know, if that thing goes, I do so much that if I try to like be, you know,
sedentary for any period of time to let that injury heal, that'll really be a setback for me.
So anyway, Seth asked the question last time you were on and you answered it and you're like,
yeah, I mean, we're just risk worth reward. Don't like, why would you expose yourself to that risk that potentially injury that
would bring you out of work for a long period of time would have to make a ton of investments i had
one of my buddies actually got that injury playing a game of flag football on thanksgiving
randomly um and to watch him kind of go through and be out for a period of time i was like yeah
i think i'm gonna take a doc's advice here and just step down from now on.
It might slow my time down, but you know what?
I'll take that over any day over an injury.
Well, a lot of people on those comments, they were like, well, you know,
they're grilling me and asking questions.
It happens in other sports too.
I'm like, of course it does.
I'm not saying this is the
only way you could tear your achilles but like there's a higher risk that i have seen and i'm
again i'm just speaking from my personal opinion i have seen a higher risk of people rebounding
and tearing their achilles yeah yes other sports surely you can tear your achilles and other sports
too yeah i mean absolutely right it's just um but it's funny because when we go back and we talk Other sports, surely you can tear your Achilles in other sports too. Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
Right.
It's just, but it's funny because when we go back and we talk about, you know, and we
had, I was just talking with the audience at that clip that we had put up that was like,
you know, well, is CrossFit more dangerous than other exercise modalities or exercise
sports?
Right.
Caught a ton of attention.
I think between a little bit of attention, huh?
Yeah.
I think between like the one that we had and then Dave reposting ours on on his other account i think it was like up over you know more than half a
million views and collectively probably closer to like 750 000 and um i was like holy shit there
was so and you were so good and patient with people like some of my responses were like can
you define what you're saying and like just almost like combative and you were so you were so nice
you're like yeah here's the research okay i'll email it to you here's what i was referencing and i'm like
that's why you're the doctor and i'm just the the talking head on the internet
take take five seconds breathe deeply before you reply that's right you read it again read it again
do not push the enter button until he's until he was read it twice to make sure that's my my
philosophy up there well i another thing that i should take away from the show is your your
response your comment response philosophy read it twice take a breath set it down then maybe come
back and press send if you still feel like it's worth it um but yeah did you expect that clip to
kind of get that much i mean there's a lot of
people that interacted with it and had that attention right i just thought it was going to
be you know one of my regular reels from 321 go md and it it caught fire it was it's i'm still
getting like 40 to 50 likes a day on the on it and reposts or yeah it's crazy it's it's it's more than i've ever seen yeah
yeah and there were so many different mixed like uh response on there some people like oh this is
great oh this makes sense kind of like affirming some of the stuff other people went the full
other way and was like you know some comments were just like this is dumb this makes no sense
and then other people were a little bit more thoughtful and were like hey i want to dig a
little bit deeper what were you referencing here what were you talking about more thoughtful and were like, Hey, I want to dig a little bit deeper. What were you referencing here? What were you talking about? And so were you, did you actually take the time
to send over? I knew you put some really thoughtful responses to a few of those comments.
Yeah. I provided the, the article that, you know, some of the articles that I was referencing
in the literature on national pub med and, uh, you know, Journal of Kinesiology.
And I think it was Journal of Sports and Conditioning,
I think was the other one.
But yeah, there's research that backs it up.
Like, you know, people are like,
oh, and I remember in the line,
it said like through other people's research
and literature and studies in the literature
and people are like, yeah, bullshit.
I'm like, no,
really? No, really? There are other people's studies out there. I'm not just saying this
because I'm the CrossFit medical team doctor. I've been doing it for 17 years. I'm trying to
stay healthy, trying to stay avoidance of injury. And you just got to be reasonable about it.
Yeah. That's the thing. Not every Crossfit injury is catastrophic and not every running injury is catastrophic certainly you know running injuries usually
achilles tendonitis can be stress fractures of the tibia can be stress fractures of the hip
i've seen people break their hips running you know spontaneous hip fracture running so
i've never seen that with crossfit but anyway you know it's funny too a
while back i read something about the like the explosion of running becoming really popular in
china and it was one of these things like it was something with like they had like a handful of
marathons and half marathons that were done and within like a year's time it was like a five
thousand percent increase like they were popping up every weekend it seemed like a 5,000% increase. Like they were popping up every weekend, it seemed like somewhere.
And that would definitely be an interesting data set
to look at because I heard that
that kind of went this really big rise.
And then very quickly,
people just started dropping off and getting injured
because they went from zero to 60, 50 miles a week overnight.
And that accumulation of volume really does take a toll.
Sure. No, definitely. You get overused tendonitis and then into shin splints and then into stress
fractures. Sure. Yeah. And there was probably a really good explosion of running shoes. So
somebody probably made a killing out there on that from selling hardly any to a bunch.
probably made a killing out there on that from selling hardly any to a bunch. But I liked,
you know, we were kind of discussing prior and I think you brought up some really great stuff about in terms of weightlifting and when kids should get involved with it. And we've been,
for the last year or so here at the, at CrossFit Livemore, we've been running our youth program
called ACES. And basically what it is, is it's a super foundational level introduction to weightlifting, where typically
we'll just have them do some sort of back squat, some sort of deadlift and some sort of overhead
press. Once we have a couple of weeks of that, we end up moving them to like bench press, push press,
we'll want to do front squat. And then typically right at the end, we'll want to do like the hang
power clean or something. And a lot of the questions that we we get from some of the parents and now granted i want to make clear for the
audience so that way they know we have a lot of 10 pound barbells we have a lot of 15 pound barbells
um so sometimes when people hear often like deadlift squat and press they immediately imagine
all this weight on the bar and these kids like struggling to get it and unfortunately we kind
of see that a lot in some of our high school PE classes.
But the question we get often is like,
hey, you said this was available for kids at 12 years old.
Like, is it safe for my, you know,
son or daughter to start weightlifting at this age?
Yeah.
Yeah, the study always comes up.
People with open growth plates,
kids before age 14, 13, 12 have
open growth plates. And the question always comes up, is it safe? And through the literature out of
Boston Children's Hospital, Lyle McKaylee did a study looking at weightlifting in children and
growth plate issues. And there was no deleterious
effect to growth plates with children lifting with open growth plates the folklore just like
like a lot of things like you know if you if you look at a lot of things in medicine there
was folklore about not lifting early because they thought it stretched out your ligaments too much
not lifting early because they thought it stretched out your ligaments too much.
Just like squatting below 90. Is it safe to squat below 90 degrees? That used to be in the 50s.
There was a guy who put an article out there who thought it would stretch out your ligaments too much and tear your meniscus at the same time. And so that sort of became the way that people
thought of, like you shouldn't squat below
90 and that was just a it was one of these things that just got passed on there was an article on it
in sports illustrated and like the i think the 60s or the 70s or something like that and uh and
people just sort of said okay and uh and and then until we just sort of realize that it is not doing that and some of the science that was done out of Boston Children's is one article that I know of.
I'm sure there are other articles, but that's one that I remember in residency looking at and saying that, you know, open growth plates.
And again, like anything, you've got to be reasonable.
You can't expect kids to start PRing their deadlifts and, you know, crazy numbers like
moderate weightlifting, aerobic activity with weightlifting is a reasonable thing to do
for a young kid trying to get in shape for the summer sports and for life.
Yeah.
And one of the things that we always stress, like when the kid, when they bring their kids
into ACEs, they're like, Hey, is this going to help them with like, you know, SportX or Y? And I always just say yes. And they're like, well, you said it me a little insight on some information on your opinion on this, is in terms of when now...
Okay. So let's say we have a child, let's say they're age of 13. They've been lifting with
me for about four weeks and clearly they're getting competent in their mechanics. We see
a lot of consistency in their lift. It really looks good. At, um, if any, at that age, should we start to
allow them to test the limits of what they could actually lift? So meaning like if they could do
50 pounds and it looks great, I typically always keep them in sets of five because I'd rather see
them do consistency than a one rep max. So in that context of like, Hey, they've normally done 50
pounds. They could probably go up. They did 60. It looked great. Like, do we kind of let them see
the limit or do we want to
have some sort of governor on the amount of weight that's being lift assuming mechanics still look
okay um i guess it kind of depends on you know obviously just looking at numbers it depends on
where they start like you know i would i would expect a trajectory like this and of course at some point it's going to plateau um but you know a um to lift easily and
comfortably and not even think about it and then to get into your moderate you know uh stress level
i wouldn't i wouldn't take a young kid and put them at like a max level or a heavy level. But if they're every five, every set they've done is it looks boring and stupid and easy.
Then that is a reasonable thing to keep going.
I always say it's better to,
you know,
say,
Oh,
I wish I lifted more than,
Oh,
why did I lift that?
That was stupid.
You know?
So every day should be,
maybe I can lift more,
you know,
two days, three, two, two weeks from now or a week from now, the kids, so every day should be, maybe I can lift more, you know, two days, three, two,
two weeks from now, or a week from now, the kids are so young, they don't need to go up, you know,
with heavy weights to get the response to get the benefit of it, you know, they can get
cardiovascular, they can get muscular tone, tendon strength, bone, you know, strength,
you know, so so with with little kids, I certainly would shy
away from heavy, heavy weights and keep the weights. If the kids are like, wow, look what
I can do. You know, they start going in their great form and they got good technique. Yeah,
sure. Let them, let them lift more. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's good. And that's typically like
what we do with them. Right. So anytime we start to see mechanical breakdown and I always make the
joke because, you know, typically it's not an all, it's not all boys that are in the
class, but I would say it's majority of them. Right. And, um, all of them are competitive
and they get in their sports and then one person does, you know, one lift and then the other kid
comes over to their bar and like, they're trying to push each other a little bit and a little bit
of that is okay. Um, but I always make the joke. I walk around the, the, the weight room and, um,
they always know, I tell people all the time, I want to strip some weight off that bar.
And so like the running joke is, is if I see any breakdown in mechanics, let's say we're talking
about a deadlift and we start to see the hips rise too early. If I start to see any roundness
in the back, like I will tell them immediately, they got to drop the bar down and they got to
strip some weight off. And I, their whole entire goal is to never let me strip weight off their bar, meaning they've never pushed past the point of like mechanical breakdown.
And go ahead.
The other one, have you thought about the rocket shield?
No.
Do explain.
It's 1995 and it is a cover that covers your weights.
Really?
So you don't know what you're actually lifting?
You don't know.
Well, you know what you're lifting, but no one else can see what you're lifting.
Oh.
So then it keeps them all kind of blind to each other so we don't get this little competitiveness back and forth.
Yeah, because that's what happens.
One kid does whatever.
I'm kidding about the rocket shield. Cause that's what happens. One kid does.
I'm kidding about the rocket shield. I've thought about it.
Cause I know, I know like people like you,
you look and you see your best friend go over there and he picked up the 35 and you're like, Oh yeah, yeah, it happens. I know what happens,
but especially with young kids, young kids are competitive and they, you know,
that's when they, you really as a as a youth
coach you really have to be on top of these kids you can't let them chase somebody else no or start
chasing numbers and i tell them all the time too like the joke that i always make is i'm like what's
the rush because they're like oh you got plenty of time you got 90 years to do this that's right
so when they're like oh i want to get to like 300
i'm like what's the rush i'm like dude numbers are infinite and that that fight and that chase
never ends you're gonna get to 300 then you're gonna want to oh 405 because i got four plates
on each side oh you know so it's just continuous and i always tell them like though the one who
focuses on the mechanics and the consistency the most will end up the strongest at the end of the
day the one that rushes it and that's why i'm i'm
actually really against um one round maxes especially with the youth like 100 we don't
yeah we don't even do it but even with the adults because at the end of the day like if you really
wanted to build true strength you're gonna do it in a set of five you know what i mean and so if
you're like hey i started crossfit whatever a ago, and I could do 100 pounds for my set of five back squat.
And now I could do 150 pounds for my set of five.
Like you have gotten a lot stronger to be able to move that much more weight.
It's not about being able to be like, hey, I did my 100 for my five and I could do 150 for my single.
And we all know it looks like crap.
And, you know, everybody in the room is getting sweaty palms watching you lift it.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I agree.
And then along that same line with the weightlifting, I, I, you, I, we used to hear this way more
in the past and this came a lot from like the weightlifting community.
It's really calmed down now, but there was this kind of this, um, misnomer going around
that snatching or cleaning, doing snatch or cleaner jerk for like multiple
reps at a time was unsafe because at some point you have like breakdown in the mechanics in and
we started to see like issue or something like that um which doesn't seem to be true to me at
all is there like in your opinion is there anything that has to do more so with like volume number reps?
Like,
Hey,
we're going to do snatches.
Like 15 is good,
but 30 is,
you know,
30 is unsafe or anything like that.
Is it all go back to just the mechanics and the ability to lift it
cleanly?
Yeah,
I think,
uh,
and the problem is sometimes you don't feel it till afterwards.
Right.
So huge volume,
you got to be careful with,
because then the, the tendons can react two huge volume, you got to be careful with because then the tendons can
react two days later. You know, so an overuse, an overuse, like, so there's different, different
injuries we're talking about. One is overuse. So huge volume, you might not have an injury, right?
But huge volume, two days later, your biceps are all blown up because you did 100, you know,
you did Randy or, you you know you did 75 snatches
so you might not get the injury then but you might feel the soreness later then there's the
catastrophic thing like oh shoot i just you know i just dislocated my shoulder because the weight
was too heavy i was fatigued i wasn't getting under it i was throwing it back and you know
crossing my fingers that my shoulders would stay you know
attached yep pull and pray yep yep yeah so that so that's the catastrophic and avoiding the
catastrophic yeah if you're really fatigued then and you're doing too much then yeah that there's
a risk you could tear your elbow you could dislocate your shoulder. You could do something catastrophic. And that's, talk about losing fitness, right?
If you're trying to be fit and you get to the weights where you're like, I don't know
if I'm going to make this next rep, like, don't.
Just don't.
It's just, it's not working.
You are then out from a dislocated shoulder for nine months getting back to heavy weightlifting.
Yeah.
It's six to eight months for a dislocated shoulder to get back to heavy stuff.
Talk about losing fitness, right?
So that temptation, that little bird or that little angel or the devil, whichever one you want to have on the side of your shoulder, you got to control that voice.
Right. Because you're going to lose you got to control that voice right because that's that
you're going to lose a lot of fitness that way yeah and and i think that's a great point because
like at any time when you are starting to feel the mechanical breakdown you know it's looking
sketchy you really have to bring the main thing back to the main thing which is like why did you
show up here and what's the purpose and why why am I doing this? Yeah. Fit, healthy, make some friends along the way, have a good time doing it. Like
nowhere in that list of goals is like, go for that sketchy one rep max snatch and
throw a shoulder out for like... And then you're like sitting there, you're like,
why? And you know what's crazy is we've had people in the past, like nothing's been like
catastrophic like that for us, knock on wood. But, you know, we've had stuff
where I've walked by somebody
and I'm like, hey,
you should probably call it there.
Like you could tell the wheels
are kind of coming off the bus.
And I head my way down
the other side of the room
and I'm doing stuff.
And I look back and I'm like,
that dude's got 20 more pounds on his bar.
Like we just had this conversation, right?
And then you just see the like,
the catastrophic,
like failure in the lift.
And whenever something even
a metcon right even in a metcon if it's not just a not just a lift
there you go yeah like so that so the tougher part like yeah i mean if it's a weightlifting
day or weightlifting first half of the of the you know the the uh gym hour um you know that's that's
easy that's easy like it's oh you're gonna do three reps of five clean and jerks and you're
gonna build up you know whatever three way three different weights you know and but in the middle
of the metcon that's the tougher one where you're you took a heavy weight and you've got five reps of that heavy weight and
your third rep is you know flailing and you're going backwards like you're going to go up for
four and five like really are you sure about that like that's that's the tougher voice right in the
middle of a metcon saying i'm probably gonna stop at three reps. So that's, but guess what?
Like, who cares?
Like, you just did heavy, heavy weight.
You did three reps of it.
And you showed that you've achieved your maximum fatigue.
Don't do four and five if you're not going to do it.
I'm sorry.
Like, I'm an athlete, right?
I'm an athlete.
But like, I'm up for self-preservation too.
Yes, yes.
And I love what you had said when you were like,
and it's so funny because I actually use that same exact line,
which I tell people all the time when they're starting,
especially if they're new to the barbell and stuff.
I say, hey, if the first 10 sessions, 20 sessions,
you walk out the door and then you come back and you tell me like,
hey, I definitely could have done more weight last time.
I'm like, great, mission accomplished. Because guess what? You could come back in. tell me like, hey, I definitely could have done more weight last time. I'm like, great mission accomplished.
Because guess what?
You could come back in.
You've learned.
You felt it.
We could add a little bit more and we could just keep that going.
And I tell people all the time, our goal is to have you come in and say that for like
a lifetime.
Because then we built the mechanics, you built your confidence, and we built the strength
in that movement.
So that way you could do it competently and safely.
But oftentimes people come in and they're like, I'm just here to get fit and be happy and, you
know, healthy and get my friends and blah, blah, blah. And then like two months into it, they got
the wristbands, they got the headband. They're like, they've been watching the rich phoning
stuff, or I guess now it'd be like pleasure or, whoever. And they're coming in and they're like, I'm going to compete.
And so I'm curious to get your thoughts.
It's like, as far as the conversation piece goes, it's like, hey, I kind of remember what
you're coming here for, but is there a certain landmark of like, you should have confidence
in these movements or I don't want to keep anybody from some bucket list goal or something
like that.
But how do you have that conversation?
And then watching them, is there an appropriate coach stepping in
to say, hey, maybe we should wait a little bit longer
or find something that's more appropriate for you?
What's your thoughts on that?
Yeah, that's coaching.
That's all what coaching is, to assess somebody,
to see where they are, to know their mental mindset.
Like is this, you know, there's different personalities out there of athletes and clients.
And knowing is one guy. More, I would say, dangerous because he's like, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine until he's not.
And as another person, like,
come on, you can do that. Like, you know, the other person you're like, you got to give a little boost and some confidence and they look great and they're doing well. And, and they're
like, no, I'm going to stay here. Like, and the person is sort of flatlining who just sort of
isn't going to move because they don't want to get hurt. Like that's a, that's another person
you got to, you know, so some people you push and some people you
hold back but again the pushing should be you know only if they're really good the games that you
know the the two-month new athlete who who does the the slow motion walk with the sunglasses coming
into the box who's the uh who's the meme guy he's got the big belly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fit to serve, Evan.
Yeah, he's got that video of two months in the CrossFit
and he walks in slow motion with everything.
Yeah, those are the people you got to be careful of.
I would definitely be cautious.
But can you tell, like, you know, can you, is there,
I guess that's really what a good coach is, like seeing how they move, seeing how good they are with their movements and seeing what their improvements have been.
Like, you don't want, again, you don't want to take somebody from, you know, 20 pounds to 100 pounds.
You got to, it's this slow climb.
But again, that climb is going to plateau at some point, whether it's 225 clean
and jerk or whether it's a 105 clean and jerk, you know, some, you know, we're not, some people
are going to plateau and most people are going to plateau. The question is that's, that's the
dangerous curve. Like when are they going to plateau, you know, because people make great
gains. They love it. That's what brings them back. They love the gains they're making,
but at some point they're not going to keep making those gains.
And as a coach, you got to know when to, when that curve is.
Yeah.
Cause at some point you get the diminishing returns, right?
And then if you're not training smart and oftentimes too,
for those coaches out there,
when you typically start to see that plateau or you start to see this
backside, the first question I always go go to is like hey how's the diet looking because we get so
caught up in like volume or doing this and and chances are you could kind of bring it back to
the basics and they're like yeah well i could clean that up and i'm like i guarantee if you
clean that up for the next three days you're gonna come back in here and get better results in terms
of your or the overtraining the people that are doing it seven days a week, double session, seven days a week.
They came in, they were doing four days a week and loving it.
And then all of a sudden you see this little cultish look
coming in on their eyeballs and they're there seven days a week.
They don't take rest.
And every day is the games.
There are some days where you shouldn't be doing the games. You shouldn't be training is the games. You know, there are some days where you shouldn't be doing the games.
You shouldn't be training for the games, you know?
Yeah.
And, man, I try to tell people that so much.
It's like there's a difference between training and competing.
And the people that show up at the gym every day that are just competing.
I'm going to beat the guy next to me.
I'm going to get the best time in the class and stuff like that.
You're missing the envelope on actually training.
And if we were to get a lot of our, especially our seasoned CrossFit Games athletes in here, the best time in the class and stuff like that, you're missing the envelope on actually training. And, and, um,
if we were to get a lot of our,
especially our seasoned CrossFit games,
athletes in here,
like the Brent Bukowski,
the Pat founders,
like the Ben Smiths,
you know,
these guys that have been in it for a very long time,
they,
they would tell you right off the bat,
like they're not in there competing every single day.
There's periods to their training where there's more volume,
there's less volume. they're slowing things down, they're focusing on certain weaknesses or
tightening certain things up. And you can't just go in there and beat your head against the ball
every day and compete, compete, compete. And, you know, it's funny back to the kids thing.
And a little note when we were talking is like, a lot of times parents will come in and they get
worried about weightlifting. And I'm like, dude, you're worried about weightlifting for the two days a week to come
here and do it under a controlled environment. But you got Johnny in like 10 different sports.
I mean, the kid barely sleeps, right? He's up at five. He's out the swimming.
He's going over to his group baseball. He's got his traveling soccer. Like at some point,
especially when it comes to organized sports we see this a lot
is is there like would you recommend that like you know what what as far as you know your thought on
like when is it too much with uh kids kids sports yeah it's just it's it's tough it's tough and i
and i was there with my kids and i get it and uh, uh, but I told my kids, you got to pick and choose. You can't
be on, you can't be everything. You can't be on every team. You can't be on every position. You
got, you got to pick, you got to choose. You can't be on four sports in a season. That's just,
that's just crazy. It just gets nuts because they have like practice for this practice for that,
a game for this a tournament
this weekend and then at some point i'm just looking i'm like man like you would be better
off like varying all your stuff doing it once a week and and you know tightening up drills and
skills than you are just competing in every single sport you can there's the pressure there's the
push there's the aau there's the coaches who, there's the coaches who are, you know, trying to get recruited.
And, you know, I get it. I understand. I know what it's all about. But you got to, as a parent,
because the kid's not going to make the decision as a parent. Well, some kids wouldn't make the
decision. But as a parent, you got to step in and realize that the kid's going to say yes to
everything you sign them up for. You know, they're not going to say yes to everything you sign them up for.
They're not going to say no to you, and it depends on your relationship with your kid.
But, yeah, you as a parent can't let that kid do too much.
They need rest.
They need healing.
They need – imagine if you did that. Like you were on four sports and you practice Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
and then four to six games on Saturday, Sunday.
Like, come on.
Yeah.
It's at some point you're just like, what are we even doing here with them?
We see it.
We see it all the time.
We see it all the time.
You should see.
I had these kids in the Aces program when they're like,
oh, we're in between this. And I'm like, oh, what sport were they had these kids in the aces program when they're like, Oh, we're,
we're in between this.
And I'm like,
Oh,
what sport where they're playing?
And they give me this laundry list of stuff.
And then they tell me all their private practices and everything else.
And I'm like,
no,
no,
no,
hold on.
Can we just get them in one,
one sport?
Like we don't need the 30 of them there.
Um,
did you see what Karen just posted?
Yeah,
I know.
I just saw that.
I was like,
don't you think Dr.
Rocket looks like Derek Shepard from
Greg's Anatomy? That was hilarious.
Not super familiar with the show, but
I'm sure he's a good looking stud. I believe that's
McDreamy. Oh, okay.
Okay. I know who that one is.
Logan.
Dr. Rocket
is a man who helped me out so much when I broke my ankle
at Waterpalooza.
Logan, hey, buddy. How you doing? That's cool that's cool everything good yeah how's that ankle training um we got a kylie here i don't
imagine weightlifting uh would be any worse on kids than gymnastics would be with uh tumbling
yeah true i mean i i always say like a lot of the parents will ask like, hey, if you were going to kind of build up like a foundation for your kids, I always think like basic gymnastics is good because getting to be able to control their body and stuff through space and do that before they're controlling external objects really helps build and strengthen not only full range of motion, because typically if they're at gymnastics, they're hanging they're pushing they're you know doing all these things and that would translate over to a strong range of motion when
they do start moving towards like the external objects um a lot of running jumping landing a
lot of stress on the knees and the ankles um you know tendonitis patella tendonitis
ankle tendonitis achilles tendonitis from running and jumping a lot yeah
you see that yeah we got rambling here opinions on steroid uses uh users their muscles get stronger
than their tendons how does the tendons need to catch up to the muscles or how much does the
because they can't keep up with muscle growth if you're putting something in your body with
it for it right yeah there's the steroids have a high incidence of causing tendon ruptures yes
and that's just because the load that they're lifting because the steroids has helped them
get to that level much faster than anything else in their body can't support the loads that their
muscles can it can be it can be because they're you know just like anything there you need muscular
strength to make up for the to make up for tendon strength if your muscles become so strong and your
tendons are not caught up to the strength of your muscles yes that can happen um yeah yeah i've i
can't remember where i saw it but but I remember something happened where like,
maybe it was like West side barbell versus the world. Have you ever seen that documentary by
any chance with like Louie Simmons and the guys? Oh, you would, you would, you would get a kick
out of it because what they used to do is a power lifting thing. And they invented like West side
barbell method and stuff. And, um, one of the jokes that they had is they just welded on a
set of a hundred pound plates to a barbell. And that was the starting barbell so you had to do 245 in everything you did
as your starting weight otherwise you you'd like you kind of work out there and their goal
essentially for the new guy that was that came in was to injure them wow that was the primary thing and um yeah talk about a crazy rough group but they uh
what's building a big roster of athletes
you they had like five we had a hundred but we're down to two
and uh one of the things was like they had said one guy i think this was in bench press
um because they're all power lif, I think this was in bench press because there are power lifters.
And one guy was in bench press and essentially his like forearm broke.
And it was because everything else was like supporting so much weight.
But like the bone actually couldn't couldn't support the weight, whether that was due to like overuse.
You know, if you have weight on your whole forearm and that's it's got to break, you know, where the fulcrum is, where the stress point is.
Yeah, and that's what happened to quite a few of them.
Judy Reed. Judy's awesome.
My daughter, 15, has decided to opt out of sports from now and only CrossFit four to five times a week.
Oh, interesting.
That's neat.
crossfit four to five times a week oh interesting that's neat yeah i mean whatever there's i there are kids who you know don't like team sports or don't like you know and crossfit can be team
sports certainly but um yeah there's a lot of kids i know who love going to crossfit because it's just
you know they're in control of themselves no one's screaming at them no no coaches telling
them to go run a lap or you know it's it's um there are
kids who are really comfortable crossfitting and love it and it's great it's a great form of
building up balance agility you know those lists of 10 things oh yeah oh i forgot about those
yeah exactly and i uh the cool part about it is and I mean, Judy's daughter is like 15 here,
so she might be getting close to getting out of the high school sports within the next few years.
But when kids are starting with the ACEs program and they do, um, all the foundational exercises
that we do in CrossFit, I tell them it's great because they're building a foundation that they're
going to take with them for the rest of their lives. So if they go on to play a college sport,
or even if they don't, they just go on to continue to use the gym, um, on their own,
they'll have all the skills and the etiquette and knowing everything going into it so they'll be able
to take that with them wherever they go and something especially not everybody's going to
play college sports and and yeah that's great not everybody's going to play high school sports
yeah i think it's great and for us too if anybody like coaching or owning uh that owns a gym out there as well
like starting one of these um youth programs uh inside your gym is awesome because we ended up
getting a lot of people that didn't really do like they're like oh my kid was never interested
in sports and we just wanted to be physical so that we wanted to come and try try this out
and they ended up loving it and you get all the awesome side effects that normally come with kids in sports, meaning confidence level goes up.
Their their activeness, their attention, their mood, their focus, like everything improves from that.
Their sleep improves from that.
And you don't necessarily need to expose them directly to an organized sport to be able to get that great stuff out of it.
Like you could literally start them in some sort of CrossFit kids class
or some sort of youth weightlifting
or strength conditioning program
with inside the CrossFit gym.
And the cool thing is you're giving them the tools
and the foundation that they can apply to anything
if they do choose to go sports
or they just have it with them for the rest of their lives.
I mean, how many people do we get in the gym all the time?
That's like, oh, the only thing I regret about CrossFit
is I wish I found this in my 20s
or I wish I found this when I was playing sports or,
you know,
and you're like,
yeah.
Um,
let's see what else we got here.
Uh,
would soccer slash gymnastics be the best combo for kids?
I don't think there's any best kind.
It depends on your child.
Depends on everything.
It depends on a lot of things.
I don't think I would never say that there's a best combination for a child.
But I certainly would say.
Personally, the way I grew up and the way my kids grew up and the way I recommend is varying it up, shaking it up.
Don't do don't do one sport.
365 days a year.
Yeah.
365 days a year.
Yeah. I think sometimes people romanticize about the Michael Jordan
stories or the Tiger Woods stories
where they were like these anomalies at like four
years old. So they just went hardcore and
specialized into that sport. And
I would say that
the chances of your kid being Tiger Woods and
Michael Jordan, just the Bershka guys
both there is like close to zero.
So like just face the music in that. Right.
But the more range you give your kids,
like Savan's kids is a perfect example. Like they do jujitsu, they do Muay Thai,
they do tennis, they do piano.
They do weightlifting with some of their CrossFit stuff. They do swimming,
they do surfing, right?
Like there's all these different things that the kids are constantly.
And number one, by varying it,
you're going to start to reduce the risk of just repetitive use injuries because
you're not just throwing the same ball all the time um but number two is like you're just giving
them and exposing them to a range of stuff that allows them to kind of choose and find what really
they want to sink their teeth into and then as they get older like if you want to specialize
in something or make a run at like you know going to college for a sport or something through high school like great um but yeah that's i i agree um the range is the most
important piece rather than just the the combination um did two brain zachary did two
brain guide you on how to start your kids program uh no they did not um i have a member of my gym
good friend of mine been around for the last like 10 11 years who's heavily involved with a member of my gym, a good friend of mine, been around for the last 10, 11 years, who's heavily involved with a lot of the coaching of youth sports, kids' baseball leagues, works with the basketball at the high school level and the baseball and football programs at the high school level.
And he just saw the need for youth strength and conditioning that was done at a way that we were providing it and that he was experiencing it at the gym and wanted to move it outside of just the PE weight rooms that was being offered.
So that's kind of how our program ACEs came about.
I'm not sure if Two Brain has a – they might have a kids thing.
I'm not 100% sure on that.
So to talk a little bit more about the competition stuff,
are you going to the CrossFit Games this year, Doctor?
Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
Yes, I am.
Looking forward to it.
And this will be what number of games for you?
Oh, since 2011.
Oh, awesome.
Awesome.
I've seen a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
So give us a little bit of insight on that i so i'm curious as to
number one like when you're out there and you're and you're and you're watching the athletes
are they do any of them or do you have any prior knowledge to like hey doc i want to let you know
like there was kind of something up with this shoulder like i think it's going to be okay it's
been bugging me a little bit but can you check it before I go out there?
Do they, do they address you with anything like that as well too?
Or is it pretty much just like when the wheels fall off the bus, you jump in?
Yeah, no. Um, we get there early. We get there like four days, five days early to set up. Uh,
we got the x-ray machine coming in. We got to get that set up,
make sure that's in a good spot. Um, you know,
just walking the venue, like anything, like we are
preparing for, you know, sometimes we're preparing for a disaster, you know, and not just the medical
team, but, you know, preparing for where are the exits, where are people going to be, you know,
where are we going to position, we're going to be on the field in a certain spot, we're going to
have vision this way, we're going to have sight of sight of vision of the athletes this way at Madison and at Carson. You know, we were the
medical team was in four different spots at the same time. Right. So a lot of activities going on
all at once, which is why it was sort of like a military paramilitary fireman thing, like chain of command.
Like you had a command, you had, you know, different venues.
And we had a central area where it's a scoop and carry mentality as opposed to, oh, let's get, you know, everybody out to where that person is.
We bring the person to the central area.
So we have a we have a training area, we have tables, we have
the x-ray, we got, you know, a room, you know, a private room. But yeah, there are people who
come ahead of time and have something coming into it. And they want to be evaluated. Is it okay?
Am I safe to go?
You know, it's been however many weeks.
And I just want to get checked out.
So we have that.
People are getting checked out ahead of time.
And the one thing for games athletes out there that I've seen,
there are a lot of games athletes who come in overtrained.
They're banged up from doing too much. thinking, you know, I've been doing this
for a year. I just got to the games for the first time or the second time. I got to amp my training
up. And I've seen a lot of people coming into the games limping. And, you know, that's not the
position you want to be in if you're a games athlete so no so i would i would caution
people out there uh and there are you know there are veterans who know what they're doing who
sort of get the sense of it but there are some people who don't know what they're doing and they
think they have to now ramp up their they got to blow up their training to get to the games and to
be good at the games but um it's uh it's you got to be cautious like anything you got to
be careful you don't want to you certainly don't want to come to the games thinking
you know i'm hurt or i'm injured and i wish i didn't do that you know like you got to be
you got to come in feeling fresh feeling rested feeling great like because it's
it's a week of uh like nothing you've ever seen before yeah because the volume ramps up and some
of those some of those guys like end up just getting burnt out to a certain degree halfway
through that week too what's some of the most common things that you in the medical staff like
deal with at the games as far as like injuries or is it a heat stroke thing like what's yeah you
know so out in carson there was heat everybody knew that so anything like again anything i'm gonna say is is sort of been put out there i'm not gonna reveal any inner
secrets or anything like that but you know we saw in carson you know there were some hot days out
there and saw some heat issues in people um there's you know the typical sports type thing
there's some knee sprains there's some knee sprains. There's some ankle sprains.
People rolling their ankle just from running on an uneven surface
or coming down from a rope or anything, twisting a knee, turning a knee.
There's some tendon things from people going, increasing,
like some of the masters dudes.
You've got to be careful, masters out there.
Like the games, just because you did something in training doesn't mean the the crowd is going to get you 50 pounds more on your
weighted on your weighted pull-ups like please please be careful on your weighted pull-ups if
that ever comes up um you know we see some issues there um what else uh yeah and then there's then there's you know we've had some you
know so and again they've put it out there we've had Brooke and her elbow
we've had Roman and his foot and that was a whole you know an interesting
scenario and he detailed that you know well and on his blog and so he talked
about his fifth metatarsal fracture but he also talked he had a lisfranc type fracture which
is a a unique fracture of the foot they have to be careful with which is why we were talking about
doing you know one-legged double unders we didn't want him to do two-legged double unders just to
protect it and i think everything came out well with that i was very happy that he sort of listened to my advice and um and uh i didn't put
him in a position where he was going to do more damage to himself and uh you know it worked out
well with the the parallel bar the the seated sled pole and then the double unders so that
you know we were going through the,
through the list of, okay, what's the, it's always, it's always, what's the next workout?
Like what's the next workout. And, you know, if pull-ups were the next two events, he's,
he's home free, you know, but it's the next workout was walking parallel on the parallel bars
and then a seated sled pole. And I this i'm like check check great and you
know i'm rooting for him and then i hear double unders and my heart sank and you know yeah again
i'm rooting for him i want him to do well but the goal of sports medicine is to protect the athlete
from himself sometimes or herself and make sure they're not gonna either regret the decision or do more
damage to their body in the future. Yeah. And walk us through a little bit of that, um, process. So
like, let's start with Romans and we'll stick with those two because I think like those are two very
well documented injuries. Like Roman has talked about extensively, Brooke did wrote a book about
everything else. Yeah. There's everything they've put out everything on it right so sticking with those two and i like those two scenarios
because in the sense of so let's go let's stick with roman for a minute so when that occurred he
knew something was up so typically what happens from that does did you notice it as well and
you're kind of like i and him or does he kind of limp over to you and he's like no it happened at
the end it happened right at the end um there was a whole stream you know there's a whole layer of uh of you know people finishing and he he literally
picked up the next weight walked across the finish line and once that happens you know i check to
make sure everybody's getting up and moving and he wasn't saying much and then i over at the ice
ice baths uh r Rosa came over and said,
could you check them out? And I said, sure. And, um, and you know, and he, he showed me and I said,
okay, let's go get an x-ray. And you got the x-ray and the sort of confirm my suspicions. And,
and then the issue is, okay, what's the next workout? Like, what are we doing and uh you know uh the issue was to protect him from hurting it more and
uh and not you know doing more damage to it to himself but also you know hearing and i and i
it was tough too because it was through rosa so it was it wasn't it was a translation taking place
and um you know but obviously i know he would want to go no matter
what like unless the bone is sticking through the skin i know he wants to go yeah so my goal is to
try to create a first of all sense of trust i'd never met woman before we never had any issues
together um so like let him know i'm on his side. Like I want him to compete. I want him to be
there. But I want him to understand the implications of it and what could have, what could happen if he
does. And so we tried to come to a joint conclusion, a joint decision, a shared decision making where
we're working together. That's my goal is to, you know,
be on their side, be, you know, we're all, we're all pulling in the same direction.
There are times when I, or the medical team has to step in and say, you know, you're going to
really do significantly more damage to your body. And,'s you know we really cannot recommend that you
keep you know going whether it's yeah a heat injury like heat injury like you can't keep
going through that you can't push through a heat injury right or if it's a you know a torn a torn
acl you know you there are certain things that you it's just you're gonna do more damage i don't know
if you've ever seen some of the videos of people going back and trying to
do things and, and it turns out worse.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's, so I have to educate and show them or talk to them and say, there are certain
injuries that, you know, you really should not, and we're not recommending that you,
that you go through.
So it is, it does kind of come down to a joint discussion between, between you,
your recommendations, what you're seeing and giving them context as like, Hey, here's what's
going on with this injury. Here's where this could lead to. If you keep going, we do think
that it's going to cause catastrophic damage or like it could, you know, inhibit something that's
going to affect you way longer in your career. So once you kind of give them that information... Because most of those guys, like you said,
unless a freaking bone is sticking through them, they're like, I'm good.
One person that comes to mind was... This was 2016, maybe. It was Annie Thor's daughter during the
MRF when they did it during the middle of that day, during the heat that year.
And I remember she was like, guys, I'm fine And like when you watch the video back, she's like, clearly she's like not fine.
It's like, it reminded me almost of,
this is a poor comparison, Annie, I'm sorry.
But it reminds me of like when you find that drunk guy
and they're like leaving, you're like,
hey, you're not driving.
And they're like, I'm fine.
But you guys are taking this shit too seriously.
Like everybody around him is like,
they should not be driving, right?
Like that's what I remember her because,
I mean, this is their time this is their year and they need to be able to stay in it as much as possible and a lot of
them you have to like pry them away from it um has there like with that one coming into mind like
you said like there's no there's nothing you could do with the heat stroke so will you typically give
like a little bit of time for that and say okay okay, well, if you're not at these markers at these times or how does that process go? So say there's, you know, say there's
a muscle strain or a hamstring pull or a quad pull or something not as significant or severe,
uh, or a shoulder, you know, shoulder something, you know, tweak or partial,
something partial and not dislocated and not, you know,
nothing like that. Um, what I like to do is to, you know, nobody like I'll have my guess and I'll
have my sort of what's going to happen tomorrow. So sometimes, you know, when the, when the injury
is during the day, we got to, you got three hours, you got four hours, come back and let's check it out.
Like if it happens at 4 p.m. at night, you got a whole night of rest, a whole night of sleep, come see me tomorrow.
Like I'm never going to in that immediate instance say like you're done.
Like, you know, if it's a mild soreness kind of thing like that, I'll never say you're done. I'll say, let's see how you feel tomorrow. Let's see how you feel in four hours. But so, so, so they, you know, constantly are re I'm constantly reevaluating people backstage, which is why sometimes I'm not out on the field. Exactly. We're constantly reevaluating.
reevaluate it. So I will put them through the movements the next morning, say, knowing what the workout is. Okay. It's rope climbs and you tweaked your elbow or you tweaked your shoulder
or you tweaked your biceps. I want to see them actually perform the workout, the movements of
the workout. It's just like a competition. Show me that you can do this. Like as a judge, show me that what you can do,
show me you have full range of motion, show me that you're not going to hurt yourself.
So then the decision becomes evident. Like they can't do a rope climb. They can't do a rope.
There's nothing I can do. Yeah. It's not on you at that point.
Make them do the rope. Like, like, and, and that's good because I like it doing it that way Yeah, it's not on you at that point. you know, is able to sort of get a feel like, yeah, I feel great. I feel good. I'm good to go.
Thank you. Or yeah, no, that wasn't good. You know? Yeah. That's, that's the decision making
process that I use. And those calls are like, you know, I mean, they're always tough and they're
never, they're never easy when you do have to say like, okay, this clearly is it. And I think like,
I like the way that you're doing it. Cause it reminds me kind of like some of the stuff that I do in coaching where like,
you kind of already know the answer and you're like, I already know how this is going to play
out, but you're giving them the space and the information for them to still come to that
conclusion on their own. So even though you might see something that happens right away and you're
like, oh shit, this is, you're, you're probably going to be done here. But like, without just
coming out and saying that you're like, okay, well let's probably going to be done here. But without just coming out and saying
that, you're like, okay, well, let's do this protocol. Let's try this. And then you reevaluate,
tell me how this is going to feel. And typically, when we have seen withdrawal, it's people that
will go back and then during that night, you'll see it posted out, whether they do it on their
Instagram or whether CrossFit makes an announcement. They're like, yeah, as soon as I got back to the
hotel, I was hoping this would calm down. And in fact, flared up, it got way worse. And, you know,
we had to make that tough decision. And so I think that that's, that's really cool because
that gives us a lot of insight. Cause some of the stuff we've seen before where it's like,
so-and-so was forced to withdraw because of this, but then this person who seemed like they had the
same injury or the same thing happened to them, we're still allowed to
compete. And right away, people kind of go to, oh, this is CrossFit forcing the rules on this
person or that person. And now we know that it is a constant conversation. It's a reevaluation.
It's a joint discussion and decision between you and the athlete. And to me, that's the most
important part because that's exactly how it should be. It should be from the medical professional
who's going to help and guide you and give
you the information that you need to make the best decisions possible for your health.
And that's really cool.
And real quickly, let's touch base.
So we saw, and I think this is the first one that I know of.
In 2009, I remember they had this like rebar they had to hammer into the ground and like
somebody smashed their finger on it.
But outside of that, I think Brooke's injury with the snatch was the first one that it was like
oh shit someone is she is injured right it wasn't like you know we've seen pat velner fall off the
top of a cargo net and you're like ah then the dude just gets up and keeps charging like the
freaking shit brick house he is but you know that was the first one where it didn't i
didn't need a medical degree to know that that brooke was hurt like something was up with her
elbow so what typically does that protocol like look like yeah that is uh you know someone's down
in distress medical comes out uh evaluates, whatever, you know, and in Brooke's situation,
it was clearly obvious. And, you know, the other part was there were no lanes. So as a medical
team, if we have eight lanes going, we have to be careful because we don't want to go out, number
one, and hurt somebody else as we're running and someone's got an overhead front lunge and we run across four lanes of
traffic and they, you know,
Justin Medeiros drops a 300 pound bar on you as you're trying to evaluate
somebody next to you, you know? So, so we are in,
we literally stay in our lane.
We literally come down the lane to avoid getting hit by others or
interfering with somebody else's competition.
That's, you know, we definitely don't want to do that. Like, right. And then with Brooke,
it was obvious there was one person on a platform. You just run right out to her. But that's sort of
our other thing that we always have to tell the, you know, the people out there is that we have to stay in our lane exit
and exit in our lane too you can't just exit across five lanes of traffic yeah it's not it's
not frogger we know we're going up and down up and down our lanes yeah it's this crossfit is
different than a than a football game or a soccer game that I cover too. You know, football game, athlete goes down, ref blows the whistle,
all play stops, you run out in a beeline to the athlete, you know,
as fast as you can.
Like this is you got to, you know, pause, think about where the athlete is,
where everybody else is, where are you going, where are you, you know,
where is your pathway in there? Yeah. But yeah, Brooks was, was tough.
It was sometimes you get an elbow dislocation,
you can pop it back in without them even knowing it, you know,
as you're just looking at it and grabbing it.
She had a big thick band on her elbow that I think was, you know,
preventing some of the the reduction to get it back in place. And then in the other part is, you know, preventing some of the, uh, the reduction to get it back in
place. And then in the other part is, you know, her muscles are big. She's got, she's got a very
big muscle. So, um, you know, we got some assistance, uh, with my, my partner, Dr. Osich,
and we went into the, to the room and we did, you know, she wrote in her book, we, we injected her
elbow to numb it up to relax
the pain that she was in she was in a lot of pain and uh as you saw and the the lidocaine
instantly numbed up her her pain and we were able to get it back in easily after that so um
but again that's in her book she wrote about that so there's no secret to that yeah and she i because i remember for some reason there was
like when it first happened people like oh my gosh they saw it and crossfit stood there because
you see adrian like take a knee and like call it in and and i was like i they couldn't have moved
any faster like it happened adrian took a knee she was on the ground and you guys were boom you
were on top of it yeah i heard a. Yeah. I heard a lot of that.
I heard a lot of it took me time to get out there.
And the people,
the people forget there were 10 people that night who dumped in the same
exact dump.
So if,
if you want me running out for every athlete who dumps a bar,
you know,
I'm running out there for every athlete who's on their back
lying on the ground after they dump the bar like you know it just that's not a good look either but
yeah you would possibly be doing like the back and forth and the thing is too i gotta work on
my sprints i got my long distance now i gotta work on my sprints so the last thing you want
is you running out like having a hammy thing or something because you came too quick like ah another one's down look we told you crossfit was no good but um yeah i i
commend you guys because when we watched that back we did one of the podcasts and like all of us were
sitting there watching it we're like there is literally nothing else like unless you preemptively
knew that that was going to take place, I don't think that situation
could have been addressed any quicker
and handled any more professionally.
And she wrote about it in the book
and she talked about it extensively afterwards.
You were on top of it.
By the time she was even realizing
kind of, oh shit, this has happened
and this is an injury,
it was handled,
she was in the care she needed,
and I don't think you could ask for a
better a better response or a better response time than that and i think a lot of it too has to come
down to like typically athletes get scared when that happens i mean you see your whole like you
get that you're like oh crap this is a big pop i'm laying here in the middle of this competition
and like my whole weekend is over what is this gonna mean for me i mean you get that rush of like all those thoughts coming in right away
and how much is like with that being said like when you come in and you deal with an athlete
how much of it is kind of just that mental side of just letting them know like hey we got you
you know we're gonna take a look at this it's funny there are there are some athletes like
i've had some football games with like an open tibia fracture where tibia is
sticking through the skin and the guy is on his back and I go over and I,
I gently just take it and I line it up, you know, just nicely.
So it's no one's throwing up on the field. Some of the,
some of the players start throwing up and just sort of just line it up gently
and make sure it looks like the foot's pointing up and the leg's in a line.
But sometimes the shock doesn't set in.
The pain doesn't set in.
Literally, I've talked to athletes, and they're like,
so what do you think?
Is it going to be all right?
Am I going to be able to go back?
And I'm like, well, let's just give it some time here. And you just try to calm them down. And let's just, we're going to, we're going to get you off the field and we're going to get
the ambulance. And they're like, really ambulance? Why? What's going on? I'm like, oh, just keep your
just lie down. You'll be fine. Protocol. Don't worry. But literally I've been, I've been having
a conversation in the same
tone that you and i are having a conversation with where a guy has a open tibia fracture
yeah it's weird that they don't it takes maybe probably 10 minutes to to kick in i would say
sometimes and then like some people are screaming bloody murder but i've had others where it's just they're not reacting at all
for like 10 minutes it's it's it's interesting yeah that is an interesting um that awesome great
i i think uh i i love these little chats with you the last one we did was really cool and like the
coach the athletes and i know we want to touch a little bit on the competitive side for uh our
chat this time and um i would love to be able to uh snag you again for a little bit of time after the games
because i'm sure we'll have some cool points of discussion and and everything that's in there and
a lot of the stuff too that i got a bunch of q a questions as well that kind of came out of this so
i think um um yeah i mean like as far as does the one of the ones that was that came out
was like does sport belong inside the affiliate um which was an interesting question and i thought
that it was it was one of those like should should we be pushing people to compete at any level like
should we keep that to the open like what what is your i mean we talked a little
bit about it before but what was your opinion on on that the so the question was in in an affiliate
should you be asking people to get into the games and try to yeah or pushing them to do yeah or
pushing them to do a local comp or something like that or i wouldn't push anybody to do a local comp no that's that's sort
of that i would call that organic growth you know like if i would say that there's there's going to
be a certain percentage of people based on their personality or like yeah i want to i want to see
how i do against other people but not from our box like i'm i'm tired of competing against people in
our box i feel confident enough with a lot of the movements and that's got to be important too like you can't
you can't put somebody into an elite level and and if they're you know you got to guide them
you know are they elite are they rx are they scalers are they beginners you know like some
hopefully a lot of the competitions have that, you know, division.
So, but yeah, I, I certainly think it's, I wouldn't push anybody into competition. I would let them make that call on their own. Yeah. And then hopefully give them the right guidance with
their, with your coaching and everything else to make sure that they're not jumping too far ahead
of what they're actually capable of. When I was competing I was competing, it was just a great, fun, fun,
you know, fun weekends, fun days, great team building,
amazing camaraderie that you build with your friends who are competing
for the first time in a competition.
I will say those are some of my funnest weekends in CrossFit
was when I was competing.
Yeah, but also to just keeping the
main thing the main thing right even if you're in that competition still recognizing and then um
as far as like resting so uh the individual with this one is like i know a little bit of the
backstory but they've been having like a shoulder issue for a while mostly comes up in dynamic
gymnastic stuff like i could do a strict pull-up it doesn't bother me but if i start swinging and
go to do like total bar or like a kipping pull-up um now i start to feel the pain again um typically
what should a resting period be for that to actually say okay am i resting it and that is
making an improvement on my situation or is it do i need something else other than rest i would
give something without a trauma without a a, without something that went rip, tear, pop. If it was just over-training, I would say that in two to four
weeks of modifying, you know, doing other stuff, sit-ups, lower body stuff, two to four weeks of
modifying should help an overuse injury like a tendonitis a tendonitis, um, you know, and if you're still experiencing
things and pain after two to four weeks, then getting it evaluated seems reasonable.
Yeah. And then as far as getting back into the exercise, once they've done that, um, you know,
given it to two or four weeks and not feeling it. So should they start a little bit slower,
keep things strict, less dynamic at first or yeah definitely start
slower um lighter um stricter yeah you know don't so you know i'll tell people with the tendonitis
like wait and once you feel really really good like once you feel like i'm good to go
wait another week okay that's good good advice people sometimes come back and they re-irritate it
re-aggravate it and it's and it then you're not back to square one but you're back to modifying
again yeah yeah exactly and um the next one here was on like range of motion stuff so if you have
somebody who comes in that might not have like no pain, there's no pain anywhere,
but there's clearly like a restriction restriction in like, let's say the hips,
right. In this example. And so they go to squat. They can't necessarily reach full range of motion
yet mechanically other than, you know, like depth, everything seems to be okay. Should that
individual just work on slowing it down, getting the full range of motion in there prior to
increasing weight? Or, and I guess the question comes down to like, if I'm missing the range of
motion, I don't have full range of motion. I keep adding weight to my back squat. Let's say,
is that going to further inhibit range of motion in the future? And will that also lead to injury?
I guess the question is why do they not have full range of motion? Is it, you know, they're just a tight person and their ligaments are tight? Do they have arthritis in their hip? If someone, you know, has a diagnosis of arthritis in their hip, and it's a mechanical block, you know, the bone just literally cannot move, you know, there's going to be a limited motion and then yeah you
you try to find a happy area where you can lift weights still without putting drilling your bone
up against your bone like you keep drilling your bone up against your bone your bone's going to
react and get it get painful um you know there's going to be swelling in the bone it's like if i
took my elbow and i just banged it up and down against the wall,
my elbow is going to hurt after a while, right?
Same kind of thing.
So if someone has a diagnosis of arthritis and that's given them a loss of range of motion,
then yeah, keeping the weights reasonable, doing exercises, keep exercising,
keep it moving, but don't get to the point where you're pushing
through pain. You know, that's the important part. If you have like a labral tear of a hip,
sometimes just avoiding, and it's a new diagnosis of a labral tear of a hip, sometimes labral tears
of hips quiet down. They go, they don't, they sometimes they can heal if it's a real small one.
go, they don't, they, sometimes they can heal if it's a real small one. Um, but yeah, if you stop pinching that labrum and below 90 and you don't go below 90 with a labrum for sometimes two months
of seeing people come back without having surgery and feeling better and, and the, the, the labrum
pain stops, you know, stopped, excuse me, stops hurting. So's what Lincoln has.
Cool. Awesome.
Dr. Sean Rocket, thank you very much for
your time this afternoon.
Like I said, I'm excited
we'll get you back on after
the games here and discuss
some of that stuff as well.
Like I said, I get a lot out of these conversations just on
a personal thing and I know everybody else does too for some
of the feedback we get. I enjoy these quite a bit and I'll see you in a few weeks.
Sounds good.
We'll see you at the games.
Alrighty.
Thank you,
sir.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dr.
Sean rocket.
We'll get an applaud here on the layout.
You gotta do like a rocket.
Oh,
I'll get that sound effects.
The next one.
We just have the air horn now.
Thank you,
brother.
Appreciate it. Have a great day. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it.
Have a great day.
All righty, guys.
Mr. Dr. Sean Rocket.
Oh, man.
So many cool insights on that one as far as like the procedures and the conversations that go back and forth between the games and the athletes.
And it was really cool to be able to get that insight from him.
to get that insight from him.
So I hope you guys got something out of it just as much as I do in every one of these conversations
because all you coaches and gym owners,
it is our responsibility to make sure that we are...
Troy, who's that?
Laying the plane sound.
It is our responsibility to make sure
that we are doing everything we can do as affiliate owners and
coaches to dispel some of these myths that CrossFit injures you, blah, blah, blah, blah,
because if we come in and we set people up with the right foundation at the right start,
we know that this is the most effective exercise program that anybody could have and we'll keep
them injury free. And we'll end with this uh froggy will
susan just dropping in any advice for new members coming in for their first class when the class is
super full how do i make sure it doesn't run behind but still give everybody enough tension
here's what we did we put a second coach at those classes and we funneled everybody to that class
because the last thing you want to do is introduce somebody to a class that is super full because two things happen. Number one, you
have to make the choice to either slow down that whole entire class for that individual. They're
going to feel really weird about it because they could sense that happening. Or number two, you're
just doing fly by check-ins with them, which means that they're going to feel lost in that first
class and they're going to feel like everybody gets it but me. So my suggestion is first off, if you can try to see if we could have a second coach come to the busier classes
where you know you have new people coming in. And if you open up the whole entire thing to
anybody could come in and yada, yada, yada at any time, then you're bringing yourself to the risk of
having somebody come into a really busy class and making it really tough on you or the coach and making it tough on that new member.
So I would say just kind of look at the system in which you're bringing new people in.
And if you can, please put a second coach to that that can kind of do this hand-holding thing
and give that new member the extra attention that they not only need,
but they deserve as their new spot coming into CrossFit.
That is my advice. That's kind of the things that we've done that have worked well for us.
Alrighty, gang. I'm off to go coach a class now. I got my class here in about 15 minutes.
Fired up to coach it. Coached already four classes this morning.
Knocked out two podcasts. Keeping the good times rolling.
Alrighty, guys. Thank you so much for joining me again. I hope you guys got a lot out of this
with Dr. Sean Rocket,
and we'll be having him back shortly after the games.
Have a great day, y'all.
Bye-bye.