"If you’re an athlete who competes in an individual sport and you can’t train alone or struggle to train alone, you need to stop trying to compete. " A bold, powerful statement made by Coach Sam Smith after working with hundreds of competitive athletes. Check out his reflections on training for an individual sport and how understand if it's really what you want.

As a coach, it’s imperative to have metrics that allow you to track progress across a multitude of areas, otherwise what are you really doing? In my opinion, the key to progress in any program is a comprehensive selection of lead metrics. If we pigeonhole ourselves to just 1 or 2 metrics that could negatively impact our understanding of growth along with our athlete’s mindset around their own growth.

Ten repetitions of rope climbs vs ten repetitions of pull ups is vastly different when it comes to total time. Determining your rate of reps during any given workout can be extremely complex and strategic if you look closely. Dive into the breakdown of comparisons with Coach Sam Smith as he lays out his thoughts of determining how to be successful by mastering your rate of movements in the sport of CrossFit.

"Singled Out" 10 Min AMRAP 15 Single Arm DB Front Squats 50/3510 Alt Single Arm DB Devils Press5/side Single Arm DB S2OH **no restrictions on squats Now on WODProof- Join our Community to submit...

Skill Progression: Handstands The art of balancing on your hands. When you stand up on your feet, you don’t realize that you are going through thousands of small balance adjustments. Your toes, fee...

Quetzal on a 15 min running clock Quetzal 21.1 For time: 15-12-9 Bar Muscle-up Squat clean 135/95 Time cap 9min + Quetzal 21.2 With remaining of time find max snatch complex 1 squat snatch - floor ...

While there are a myriad of movements within the sport of CrossFit, there are sub-categories that encompass collections of movements. The 3 overarching categories within CrossFit are: gymnastics, m...

First off, training for the Open should have started the first week of December; and for some, even further back. But, we are here now so let’s identify where we are so we can implement sound struc...

Push / Pull  21 Chest to bar + 9 Thruster  15 Chest to bar + 15 Thruster  9 Chest to bar + 21 Thruster  Open Workout 12.3 AMRAP 18:  15 box jump step down  12 Push press 9 toe to bar ...

Event Announcements Elite Division On a 60 minute running clock... Event 1 0:00-10:00 For Time: 8 Clean to OH - Power or Squat 26 T2B 6 Clean to OH - Power or Squat 26 T2B 4 Clean to OH - P...

THUMPER For Time: 1 Power Clean 245/16521 Bar Over Burpee3 Power Clean 225 / 145 18 Bar Over Burpee 5 Power Clean 205/125 15 Bar Over Burpee7 Power Clean 185 / 105 12 Bar Over Burpee9 Power Clean 1...

Every Sport has its preferences, be that body type, motor patterns, even mindset. For example if you walked into an NBA locker room you would see a group of men who are much taller than the average...

The Gambler 7 Rounds for Time (10:00 time cap) 7 Power Snatch, 95/65#7 Bar-Facing Burpees7 Thrusters, 95/65# Submit Score  HOW IT WORKS: -Once a month, we will announce a workout on Thursday....

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...

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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...

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?

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...

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

Functional volume is the requisite amount of repetitions an athlete in the sport of fitness needs to build towards within their training design to match the relatively consistent amount of repetitions required to complete in online qualifiers, Sanctional events, and other various competitions.

The 5 Stages to Fitness Training Mastery is a model in which the five predominate stages of physical development are broken down. It is designed to allow you to find your starting point and then em...

Jim Crowell and Brian Foley sat down to discuss what GOOD means in CrossFit. So many people say that a CrossFitter is "good" but there aren't any qualifiers to that term. Jim asked Brian to qualify what Good means, so Brian discussed data - specific numbers good CrossFitters need to hit, mindset, history, and what good CrossFitters do outside of the gym! Enjoy!

In this blog, Jim Crowell spoke to both Big Dawgs Coaches, Henry Torano and Sam Smith. They discussed the 4 athletes they had compete in the 2019 CrossFit Games, Colleen Fotsch, Nick Bloch, Yuyi Aldano, and Corrin Lemieux. The 3 of them discussed their take on the CrossFit Games format in 2019, what went well and what went poorly for their athletes, and what they will focus hard with all of their athletes on for the upcoming 2020 CrossFit Games and Sanctional Season. Enjoy!

Jim Crowell and Will Trujillo suited up to discuss the 2019 CrossFit Games. Will had his athlete, Tommy Vinas, competing with Invictus' Team. They ended up taking 3rd place after a resilient and hard fought weekend in Madison. Will discussed what training and mental work helped Tommy step up and "race" all weekend to help Invictus make the podium, and then Will discussed what he'll do with all of his athletes to get them prepped for the 2019/2020 CrossFit and Sanctionals season. Enjoy!