As the 2021 CrossFit Open and subsequent Quarterfinals come to an end, only a very select few of the world’s top athletes advance to the next Semi Finals stage. This also marks the end of the season for everyone else. For this majority of athletes, the Monday following Quarterfinals is day 1 of preparation for the 2022 season. But what exactly does this mean?

Whitney Reese came to us from her physical therapy facility in Austin, TX. I always love to see what our coach’s spaces look like, and this one didn’t disappoint!  What are macros and micros - mac...

Henry Toraño is very mindful of what he tells his clients, and when it comes to sleep he knows that people are in vastly different starting points in terms of how well they sleep. If there is one p...

Mizar Fuentes-Ortega not only has a number of clients who were forced to train from home, he as a former CrossFit Games Regionals competitor, also had to train from home. And, like so many, Mizar i...

Whitney Reese competed at the CrossFit Games in Carson, California in 2010, but she was training at a high level prior to that when the Games were in Aromas, California. Fast forwarding to today, w...

Coaches Sam Smith and Henry Torano have worked with hundreds of clients in fitness and health 1:1. They have seen many patterns that have led their clients to success as well as failure. I wanted t...

Mike McElroy and Will Nobles, on the surface, may appear to be a bit odd couple’y - coach to client wise - but their differences have made them brilliant fits to work together to ensure Will is con...

“Every person should experience their own Mitch-tathlon” - Will Trujillo Will Trujllo and Mitch Davis have worked together as coach/client since 2017, and they’ve built an amazing level of tru...

Henry Toraño not only coaches people online, he also owns OPEX San Juan in Puerto Rico. He is very in tune with the challenges of clients, coaches, and gym owners, so I wanted to discuss with him w...

Sam Smith has worked with Colleen Fotsch in multiple capacities, but he’s been her head coach for the past year.  Colleen is a high profile CrossFit Games competitor, but she’s also become a wonder...

Michael Bann has worked with clients from all over the world throughout the past decade. Many of those clients have had to work around religious holidays. At the time of this article, some of Micha...

Whitney Reese is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, and she’s been working diligently to build out Telehealth and E-visits amid the Covid 19 pandemic. I was very curious about the service as well as the...

Big Dawgs Coach, Henry Toraño, and I had the pleasure of sitting down with Henry’s client, Laura Thompson. Laura is in the CrossFit Games Masters Division Age 45-49 division. She finished 37th in t...

Michael and I have wonderful conversations where he unloads really helpful information onto me, and when he chats about first responders it’s very clear that more people need to hear him.  One of t...

Big Dawgs Coach, Henry Toraño discussed some really helpful ideas for people of many makes and models to navigate their training, lifestyle, and daily habits to continue to move forward in this ver...

Michael is an expert when it comes to understanding how the human body connects with the mind, and he’s experienced a significant number of different clients and scenarios that have tested people’s...

Whitney Reese is a very principled and systematic thinker. She doesn’t just ask what 1+1 equals, she asks why it is that 1+1 = 2. It doesn’t matter the topic, if Whitney has thought about it, she’s...

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...

"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.

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!

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.

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.

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....

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.