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). 

If your intent on a 2k row is “go all out and ‘die,’ that will put somebody into an anaerobic state because it’s not sustainable. However, if you go into a workout with the intent of sustainability and consistency - Michael mentioned a historic Rich Froning interval workout where he rowed 4 1k rows at 3:25 with 60 sec breaks in between - that much more likely allows you to complete the workout at a pace that you can do over and over which yields an aerobic outcome.

I am always impressed by how much Henry Torano understands about fitness, health, and his clients. He has great breadth of knowledge in so many areas. That is why I wanted to extract his thoughts and experiences with fitness and health tracking devices

Big Dawgs Coaches Sam Smith and Brian Foley walk you through everything you'll need to be successful in the Open Workout 20.4

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 week 4 of 5's guesses. Enjoy! CEO, Jim Crowell, recaps the 2020 CrossFit Open so far going into some detail on CrossFit Open Workout 20.3 top scores, BD athlete's performances and gives a nod to Coach Mizar guessing correctly. Then he shares Big Dawgs coaches' predictions for 20.4, most of which predict some kind of muscle up, wall-ball or heavy clean.

Big Dawgs Coaches Sam Smith and Brian Foley walk you through everything you'll need to be successful in the 2020 CrossFit Open. Download and Watch the Open Strategy Guide for CrossFit Open Workout 20.3.

CEO Jim Crowell sits down with Big Dawgs Coach Michael Bann to discuss building resilience. In this chat, Michael first helped me to see his definition of resiliency because so many people have such abstract views on what it means in the first place. He went on to make a very interesting comment surrounding the difference between resiliency in higher level performers vs more of everyday competitors. Jim and Michael had a great conversation. Enjoy it!

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 week 3 of 5's guesses. Enjoy!

Big Dawgs Coaches Sam Smith and Brian Foley walk you through everything you'll need to be successful in the 2020 CrossFit Open. In this article, Sam and Brian walk through CrossFit Open 20.2 which is a 20 min AMRAP of - 4 DB Thrusters - 35#/50# 6 Toes To Bar 24 Double Unders Enjoy!

After the 2019 CF Open and Masters Qualifier, I was mentally and physically exhausted due in part to the inability to recover. My Coach and I agreed that it was too short of time required to allow the body the time it needed to heal. Therefore, we decided to forgo the 2020 CF Open and focus on the physical opportunities that were present and numerous other goals. 

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 week 2 of 5's guesses. Enjoy!

Big Dawgs Coaches Sam Smith and Brian Foley walk you through everything you'll need to be successful in the 2020 CrossFit Open. In this article, Sam and Brian walk through CrossFit Open 20.2 which is a 10 rounds for time - 8 Ground to Overhead - 95#/65# 10 Bar Facing Burpees Enjoy!

So many people ask us “how do I get better for a competition,” so I decided to ask coach Sam Smith to help me better understand how athletes can spend a year building the important movements for a competition. More specifically, I asked him how to improve from one year’s CrossFit Open to next year’s CrossFit Open.

We have been discussing the CrossFit Open with everybody inside of Big Dawgs, so I decided to ask coach Sam Smith to help me better understand how athletes can view the Open for themselves to get their best performance inside of it. Something important to note, though, is that this isn’t an article about how to train for a year - or 5 years - to peak physically for it. No, this article and video are about how to take wherever you sit, right now, and put your best result forward.

  I GOT A REALLY BIG TEAM Man am I lucky. When I had three strokes in March during a routine surgery, my life was literally on the line. Support came from everyone, everywhere and it was overwhel...

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 week 1 of 5's predictions. Enjoy!

These are a list of habits and points that we try to emphasize every day to our athletes. If we try and focus and develop these this will lead to a significant improvement in energy, digestion an...

As you prove that you can control something such as your shoulders/scapulas in a closed chain environment, you would then graduate to an open chain environment, but you can always continue to include closed chain movements because they may be beneficial for ongoing strength, stability, and endurance.

Colleen Fotsch and Coach Sam Smith Sept. 24, 2019 Behind The Scene Training On this episode of Behind the Scenes Training, Coach Brian Foley dives into the why behind Colleen Fotsch's programmin...

In the video, we hit on these big topics: What is a ring muscle up? - a definition and explanation to give context to the conversation Why are muscle ups challenging for people? - be it technique, strength, or muscle endurance, there are some barriers that people need to overcome. What technique and drills help improve the skill of the ring muscle up? What type of training or programming helps to improve your max muscle ups set? What helps you improve muscle ups in workouts when you're tired?

We had a great conversation about organizing somebody’s season in the best way for them to succeed in their competitions while continuing to improve throughout the year.  Throughout this conversation, Henry and I discussed: -What to do with athletes with the shortened March 2019 CrossFit Open vs the October 2019 and 2020 Opens -How has the 2019 CrossFit Games season been different -How are you laying out competitive seasons for your athletes now

Whitney Reese sat down with me today to break down movement. Movement is near and dear to all fitness athletes because they want to move faster, for longer, with less chance of risk - injury.  Move...

Athletics, winning titles, and D1 sports were the first half of my life up until 25 years of age. I tell you all this not to boast, but so you can hear I came out on the other side & this is ...

So your training has started for the Open. Whether you’re working with a coach who is individually programming your training sessions or following a blog, there’s no such thing as being “too prepared”. Big Dawgs coaches give you 5 tips for success during the CrossFit Open: 1. Lifestyle, 2. Prepare appropriately, 3. Follow the open prep guide, 4. Mindset, 5. Allow your body to recover