Ryne's Coaching Blog

  Lactate Threshold Is Not the Hardest Pace You Can Hold Threshold might be the most misused word in CrossFit programming. I see four 3 minute AMRAPs labeled as threshold work, and on the podcast this week Kyle talked about athletes telling him they were at threshold for a whole workout with heart rates in the upper 180s. We only had time to scratch the surface there, so I wanted to dive into this topic in a bit more depth. If you want to listen to that conversation, it can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3pUjaSp7QPGPsBlUpfwM5k?si=Ub5vt-acT6WF0ILxWS20tw  The short version is that lactate threshold is a specific, targeted pace with a specific purpose. When it is trained well, it is one of the biggest reasons an athlete can keep racing deep into a workout. When it is trained poorly, it just another met-con. Threshold is a targeted pace, not your hardest one When I talk about threshold, I am referring to your second lactate threshold (LT2). It sits somewh...

 I see a lot of running coaches in the CrossFit space treating running as one skill that looks the same everywhere. Running inside of CrossFit carries a lot more nuance than that, and understanding those details can help athletes improve dramatically on the leaderboard.  My job as a coach is to simplify things so an athlete can succeed with as little friction as possible. A simple cue works best when it comes from a coach who knows the athlete and has earned the trust behind it, which is why I'm slower to hand out quick answers to athletes I haven't worked with. This post lays out the reasoning that sits underneath those cues. We run two different modalities in CrossFit In CrossFit we run in the open world on concrete, dirt, and trail, and we run on an air runner. They look like the same test on paper, and they reward different athletes and different mechanics. Even within the open world, we have a major change in terrain and technique that has a lot of changes, but for today ...

  One of the things I've been thinking about lately, as we get into competition season, is how athletes handle the stress of this time of year. Kyle and I spent a full episode of Coaching Conversations on the mental performance side of competing. If you want to listen to that conversation, it can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5UMwSH8KkrTuK6dO1qeupG?si=_QUKoSJxQ3GG3sX-IRQRFg   The short version is this: a lot of athletes spend the entire day in a heightened state of stress and then expect to turn it off the moment after the lights go out. That doesn't work very well in a normal training week, and it works even worse the night before a competition. The good news is that there are simple things you can do about it. The Night Before I have personally never had much of an issue sleeping, except for the night before a competition. Even at a multi day event, it's just the night before the first day, and after that I've always been fine. Coaching is a bit diff...