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...

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). 

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!