Luke, Denny, and Steve break down international certs, world domination, and help a misguided soul. Its people helping people on this episode of Power Athlete Radio.
Show Timeline
- 0:00 Intro and opening
- 2:22 How was the UK
- 7:37 The Nebraska Circuit
- 11:21 Update on ideal duration of CFFB Amateur Progression
- 21:55 What exactly does world domination look like?
- 34:30 EJ Asks: What’s the best way to get bigger stronger and faster?
- 45:59 Fantasy Football chatter and closing
Show Notes
EJ Watson asks:
Good afternoon,
First, let me tell you how much I appreciate the Power Athlete Radio series. I can’t tell you how much more entertaining the ride to work is. I’m looking for some advice and I’m hoping you can point me in the right direction. I’m 30, 197 lbs, 20% body fat, no serious history of injuries. I started lifting my junior year of college, played Rugby and boxed. I continued to play Rugby after college and became more proficient at my lifts. Here I am now with two kids and I’ve sort of hit an impasse– I’m looking to increase my level of fitness. I am reading both K-Star and BMack’s new books and I may have information overload. If I were to ask what I’m training for, I guess I want to get back into shape for Rugby. I want to increase my lifts, cut my times, and jump my lung. I know there is no secret squirrel, but what should I do? Follow CFFB? CFE? Mainsite? Is there some odd combo there that I can pull? Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.
Thanks Guys. Keep up the good work,
EJ
SOURCES
AUTHOR
John
John Welbourn is CEO of Power Athlete and host of Power Athlete Radio. He is a 9 year starter and veteran of the NFL. John was drafted with the 97th pick in 1999 NFL Draft and went on to be a starter for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1999-2003, appearing in 3 NFC Championship games, and for starter for the Kansas City Chiefs from 2004-2007. In 2008, he played with the New England Patriots until an injury ended his season early with him retiring in 2009. Over the course of his career, John has started over 100 games and has 10 play-off appearances. He was a four year lettermen while playing football at the University of California at Berkeley. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Rhetoric in 1998. John has worked with the MLB, NFL, NHL, Olympic athletes and Military. He travels the world lecturing on performance and nutrition and records his podcast, Power Athlete Radio, every week with over 800 episodes spanning 13 years. You can catch up with John as his personal blog, Talk To Me Johnnie, on social media @johnwelbourn or at Power Athlete Radio.
RECOMMENDED READING
9 Comments
Leave a Comment
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
Never miss out on an epic blog post or podcast, drop your email below and we’ll stay in-touch.
Weight numbers vs. performance – this may be an ongoing uphill struggle. Seems like the majority of the folks who use the program are converted Crossfitters, whose performance IS measured by weight numbers. In other words, unless they actually play a sport, the program is their end goal. This was wildly obvious at the cert I attended.
Also, I am one of those formerly untrained folks. Prior to Crossfit, all I did were plyos, bodyweight stuff, and yes, cable pulldowns. I’ve been diligent about tracking my progress via Behind the Whiteboard, so I can dig up stats if it helps your guys’ quest. Just let me know what you need.
Thanks for the podcast guys. I have been following the site and listening to the podcasts and discussions for a while. I attended the cert in Northampton last week and I found all the talks fascinating. There was a huge range of people and they had travelled from all over.
One thing I noticed was that you could tell the people who had prior background or knowledge of strength and conditioning from those who had no sporting background except that of cross fit. I remember at one point in particular that John said that an athlete shouldn’t squat below parallel if they didn’t have sufficient range of motion and weren’t able to maintain correct posture/spinal stability. I could see looking across the room that this absolutely blew some people’s minds. It contradicted everything they had learned about squatting from Crossfit and seemed to go against everything they understood to be true. I just thought this chimed in with Luke’s comment that the guys still had lots of explaining to do at the end of the seminar.
I personally found it hugely informative and I’m sure I missed loads of great stuff. I’ll have to sit down and go through all the notes from the weekend to try and remember everything.
Thanks for the podcast and the whole programme.
Brian
Just filled up the last page of my notebook the other day. Nothing beats the black-and-white spotted ones from CVS, don’t have to worry about getting it dirty, and just enough space to get all the info in.
Luke: Don’t have it digitized, but I’ve been on and off CFFB for a while now and have a notebook full of info. If it can help you guys at all let me know and I’ll throw it into a more usable format for you guys.
Awesome show, gentlemen. Couple notes for the audience:
1. The Nebraska Circuit they are referring to can be found here!
2. Van Halen came out with ‘Van Halen Best Of, Volume 1’, and never came out with a Volume 2…
Re: the duration of the Amateur progression, you note that you don’t run across many untrained athletes in your gym. Presume the same would hold true for the substantial majority of folks who come to CFFB. The question then is why program for that untrained individual that rarely accesses the site? I’m not suggesting dumping the linear progression at all. New to CFFB? Good. Do the LP for 20 weeks (or whatever) to get acquainted with the program and the basic lifts and don’t worry so much about “adaptation.” At that point, CFFB suggests moving on to the Collegiate template. If an athlete chooses to stay at Amateur, it’s going to be his/her call when to move up. Save yourselves some brain damage trying to design the perfect program for 1000s of different snowflakes that come to the program.
TRuss,
Untrained = untrained in our method. Don’t confuse “CrossFitting for 3 years” or “Body building for 18 months” as trained. In the global vernacular, yeah I guess you could say they’ve been exercising which people confuse for training, but they are not “trained” in our eyes.
A majority of the folks who jump on CFFB and decide to start following the program have never consistently attacked a linear progression, and rode it out to completion. Thus, they start on a linear progression.
The athletes we currently work with and test on have all exhausted a linear progression, so we can’t “go back” and test.
Hope that makes sense.
Yep. Tough mission…
I have some data from myself and my training partner who I got to start following CFFB with me when I started playing rugby again. Both former collegiate athletes (rugby for myself, and football for my buddy). Both experienced some serious “de-training” through our military endeavors and life in general. We both keep a pretty decent log of our training and can show the change in lifts over time. Anything to improve the process in the long run…