Big Dawgs coaches and athletes take a natural approach to avoiding sickness and in the current client (with COVID-19 a.k.a. the coronavirus spreading). Besides for the standard, wash your hands, we...

Big Dawgs Coach, Henry Torano is really well known as a coach who is outstanding at helping his clients “get their mind right.” We discussed some wonderful questions surrounding how to understand i...

The reason why, we as coaches, use tempo is to specifically control the athlete. Tempo is an important tool, which can not only help the athlete learn the movement, but also develop appropriate mo...

"I know that I need an edge to win" I spoke to Big Dawgs Coach, Will Trujllo, on his birthday, and we got into a really interesting conversation about how he and his athletes find their personal...

Where did #chefsam start?

Sam Smith, for all of the notoriety he receives for working with big name CrossFit Athletes, is extremely introspective. He constantly investigates his thoughts, his actions, and the environment around him. He not only wants to grow, he wants to understand his coaching craft and the world at his fingertips.  It was this reason that struck up my curiosity. I wanted to better understand part of how Sam got to this mindful place in his life, so I asked him to talk about an experience in his formative – teen – years that both shaped his life as well as remains at the forefront of his coaching methodology today. What arose was a wonderful conversation about how Sam approaches the world.

There is no “perfect” model of fitness for everyone, but we believe that individual design is the most effective way to get people to their goals in a safe and sustainable way. We believe that having a professional coach is something that every person should experience. Will they need that coach for the rest of their lives? We hope not! Coaches should teach their clients the importance of a healthy lifestyle, great fitness practices and sustainable nutritional protocols. There are things that group training simply cannot offer.

Mizar Fuentes-Ortega (Mizar) has always fascinated me, his clients, and many other people who follow Big Dawgs and Mizar. He speaks 3 languages: English, Spanish (his native language), and French, he was a world-level gymnast + high level CrossFitter and Mixed Martial Artist, he’s an outstanding coach, and he is always 100% present with me and others when he speaks to us. I wanted to explore some of the genesis that helps Mizar be Mizar!

Improper preparation for training sessions and competition is a common mistake in fitness. While it’s important to challenge your limits, we want to maximize those opportunities through specific preparation pieces on the front end of our training sessions. You cannot maximize your potential if your body isn't warmed up. Additionally, not warming up (or warming up incorrectly) can not only lead to injury, but can also decrease your training output.

What is the distinction between athletes and participants? “The athlete in my definition is someone who goes for pleasure, pain, points and prizes with the sacrifice of maximum physical expression...

So many people are curious how Michael Bann is so capable of wrapping his head around so many complex topics while simultaneously being able to explain those complex topics in simple enough ways for his clients and coaching colleagues to understand. To dig into how Michael learned these skills, we needed to go way back in Michael’s story, so that’s what we did!

Michael Bann  and I often discuss the successes and challenges he’s seen with some of his clients because he often has complex client puzzles to solve. Michael often works with Military Special Forces clients as they want to prepare for, go through, and thrive after Selection, the Qualification Course, and then multiple deployments into hostile parts of the world.

Whitney Reese has been a competitor for her entire life. From multiple sports to CrossFit, to school, to coaching, she loves to test herself and compete. But what you may not know is that Whitney deeply cares about those around her, and no matter what happens she is the type of person who will make sacrifices to help those around her - perhaps it’s part of the reason she became a Physical Therapist.

In this Coaches Chat, Henry Torano is a master of helping people see what they are doing and then helping them sort out why they may be doing it. This chat with Henry about goals vs. fantasies is timely with the 2020 New Year, as many people want to understand the decisions they are making so that they can learn how to consistently improve.

In this Coaches Chat, Henry Torano discusses the difficulties he faced coming to terms with leaving the competitive CrossFit world.

Coach Sam Smith loves sharing what he reads on a regular basis, but with the year coming to a close we thought to consolidate his top 12 books from 2019. This year Sam focused on understand himself on a personal level so that he could give more of himself in his relationships.

A new year, a new you, right? I’ll do you one better. How about a new way to view your mind? I believe that could be a more productive way to look at this new year. An approach that will add lasting value and shift the way you look at your weekly activities.

In this Coaches Chat, Henry Torano talks about a new years goal of his from the past. A timely story as we head into the New Year, 2020. In this particular year, he set out to run an Ironman, however the challenges he fast would teach him major life lessons that would shape him as an athlete and a coach.

Big Dawgs coaches, Carl Hardwick and Sam Smith give you their 2019 Wodapalooza Team Qualifier notes.

Whitney Reese always impresses me with how much breadth and depth she has command over in our conversations. It doesn’t seem to matter what the topic is, she always has such intelligent words back....

It’s better to be a small fish in a large pond, than a big fish in a small pond. Big Dawgs Athlete, Rachael D’Angelo competed at Beetle Extravaganza in November 2019. Like many competitions, ...

Coach Sam Smith programs Open workout 17.5 for Big Dawgs Athlete, Colleen Fotsch.

THE CONVERGENCE OF FUNCTIONAL TRAINING AND BODYBUILDING Too many coaches and functional fitness athletes, the term “Functional Bodybuilding” may seem like an oxymoron. But since we’ve begun using b...

I worked with another well known company who assigned me a coach. I was with them for a year, but there were a few things that were not working for me. I felt that I was being put on the back burner because I am not "elite" or "competitive" yet. When I had the opportunity to attend an in person seminar and their attention was on the athletes that already had big numbers.  I actually didn’t even go back the second day, I felt like I was wasting my time and like I didn’t belong there. 

When you have created habits that are truly engrained inside of you, you can build on top of them. For macros, if you are sleeping well, eating/drinking well, training consistently, getting sun (when possible), enjoying rhythm and purpose, and you aren’t stressing out to do those things - ie automatic - you'd better be prepared to receive better success from adding macros, as a tool to your arsenal.

To improve movements, you must remove them from challenging workouts. You must bring them up front within a training day so that your CNS is fresh so that you can attack the weakness of the movement first. Only after you work a movement in a non-fatigued way can you begin to challenge it.

Big Dawgs Coaches Sam Smith and Brian Foley walk you through everything you'll need to be successful in the Open Workout 20.5

Will has so much experience with his athletes needing different things when they are run down or close to injury. He always thinks about what the most stressful, or intense, thing is for people, and he wants to remove that from training when they are close to collapse.

We always enjoy tossing around some ideas about what we anticipate from the CrossFit Open every year. So, we've decided to put out some legitimate and some not so legitimate guesses each week of the 2020 CrossFit Open. This is the last week of guesses. Enjoy!

When you are stressed, have gut issues, aren’t sleeping, etc...and then you tack on a workout that puts you just a bit over the line, you can set that forrest fire of inflammation off. When that inflammation goes, it harms your ability to create red blood cells, but it also harms your ability to absorb the micronutrients that help you be more oxidative (aerobic).