“Out of difficulties grow miracles.”- Jean de la Bruyere
INDUSTRY
The Magic Behind Mayhem Athlete According to Director Jake Lockert: “We Have an Incredible Team”
Mayhem is one of the most prominent camps in the industry; as we noted in our in-depth article in July, the Cookville-based global goliath had over 175 athletes competing in Semifinals in 2022. What originally started with “What’s Rich Doing?” years ago, has grown to more than a dozen different tracks to support individuals and affiliates around the world. What contributes to the program’s success? We caught up with Director of Mayhem Athlete, Jake Lockert, to find out.
“What we’ve done is we’ve just tried to make it as good as possible, and we’ll work until we’re beyond our bandwidth. (Then) it’s like, alright, we got to bring someone to help do this,” Lockert said. “The biggest thing recently is we’ve had another auditor come on to check for errors.”
Thoughtfully expanding the team not only helps catch and prevent mistakes, but also can add tremendous value. Bringing thought leaders on to the team is a strategy being utilized by many training camps, and at Mayhem, they have subject matter experts Chris Hinshaw leading Aerobic Capacity and Sage Burgener running weightlifting (Burgener Strength). And, of course, Rich Froning overseeing the complete track as a whole.
As they’ve continued to grow the team, providing each contributor with autonomy has allowed Lockert to focus more on the big picture.
“I would say empower people — I’m not a micromanager. I’ll make sure the products are really good, but once I’ve trained someone or we’re training someone, we’ll support them, we’ll check their work, make sure it’s that level, but we give them freedom within that to create (and) make it better. I really want them to make it their own,” Lockert said. “Our team is…I can’t speak highly enough. They kill it…we have an incredible team.”
While the people behind the scenes are a key component to Mayhem’s upward trajectory, a reliable leaderboard and great workouts are important ingredients of any remote program. Last week, Froning poked fun on his Instagram at the problem of athletes occasionally submitting a dishonest score on a workout. Despite the friendly reminder, Lockert says leaderboard policing isn’t something their squad generally engages in.
“I don’t worry about too much just because it’d be so much work…we have ten tracks, and then within that, there’s multiple leaderboards every day. So you’re at over a dozen leaderboards every day, if not over 20. Some days it’s not worth the manpower,” Lockert said.
“People get so frustrated because they know that person is not as good as they say they are on the leaderboard. And then sometimes I think some people just have a home run and they just went for it, and maybe they’re not that sick, but they just had a great day. So really, we don’t police it just because we can’t do it. When someone signs on, they get ‘frequently asked questions’ and (we) talk about the leaderboard. If you didn’t do exactly as written, then it’s scaled. We say, just remember who you are. It’s not that big a deal. I love the leaderboard; it gives me something to push forward, but don’t put your self-worth in it.”
In this same conversation, we talked in-depth about how to write workouts for multiple skill levels, nuances of online programming, where the inspiration comes from when naming their workouts and more. Watch or listen to the full interview. Coffee Break Conversations are exclusive to our RX members, which gives you access to interviews like this every single week, and you can join for just $1 here.
SPONSORED
Spacer Mobility Takes Over Austin
Whether you’re training for everyday life, or for the podium at Rogue like Spacer Mobility athletes Emma Lawson, Danielle Brandon, BKG, Jeff Adler or Emma McQuaid are, recovery and mobility are essential to every athlete’s training.
They have the tools to support you so you can be better than yesterday. Try their:
Mobility Wedge to help with squat depth
Massage tools to roll out your calves and feet
Stability Board to help with balance
Spacer Mobility is more than just toe spacers, so take a look at their full range of products, or pop by their booth in person at the Rogue Invitational.
In case you missed it: Lauren Kalil, the host of The Bottom Line, talks to Dex Hopkins and Adrian Conway about if they think standardized programming will help get more fans to CrossFit competitions.
He’s in: One of everyone’s favorite Canadian CrossFit athletes, the one and only Patrick Vellner, is busting out the sunscreen again for the TYR Wodapalooza. 🏖
High five: Shout out to Babylon CrossFit on Long Island, NY who absolutely crushed it over the weekend, raising $30,000 for Barbells for Boobs.
Why Did CrossFit Boxes More Than Double in South Korea During Covid?
CrossFit affiliates have more than doubled in South Korea since 2020, partly due to COVID making people take their health more seriously.
“They need to be strong to get over COVID-19,” said country manager WeonWoo Lee. “The government advertised a healthy lifestyle and people figured out that looking after yourself is important and started coming to the gym.”
“It’s just a small thing to advertise in the public but it made a huge difference.”
In 2020, there were around 110 affiliates, now there are over 250. The next most in Asia is around 100 in China and about 50 in Japan.
Lee has noticed in particular a lot of people joining in their 20s.
We’re just a few days away from the Rogue Invitational in the greater Austin, Texas area, and Morning Chalk Up’s Lauren Kalil, Chyna Cho and Jamie Hagiya reveal their podium picks for the elite men’s field.
Masters Fitness Collective Championship: Grasis Gets First Live Event Win, Muhammad’s Comeback Continues
For the third consecutive year, the Masters Fitness Collective (MFC) Championship took place in Fort Wayne, IN this past weekend. Two competition floors (100,000 square feet of space), a 23-lane pool and full outdoor parking lot housed the 400 plus individuals and 70 two-person teams over three days of competition.
As the adage goes, “a rising tide lifts all ships”, and MFC partnered with other CrossFit licensed events as a means of qualifying for their championship competition. The 2022 winner of each age group division at Wodapalooza, Masters HQ, Granite Games, CanEast, and the Madrid Championship automatically received an invite for the competition.
Results: Fourteen different age groups in two individual divisions (Elite and RX), and 10 teams of two in each age group threw down at Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, and you can view the full leaderboard here. Your elite individual top podium winners (female/male):
30-34: Lindsey Grasis / Elijah Muhammad
35-39: Jamie Latimer / Bryan Wong
40-44: Anna Tobias / Paul Delanoy
45-49: Stephanie China / Ryan Rettke
50-54: Cindy Hinkle / Joe Consolini
55-59: Ann Marie Hubbard / Jody Hendrix
60-64: Denise Moore / Tony Turski
65+: Susan Wallis / Jim Peeper
For the elite individual men, Elijah Muhammad makes a strong second appearance back into the swing of things, finishing on top of the podium in his second major individual competition since 2017. We caught up with him at the Madrid Championship in September where he was kicking the dust off after primarily focusing on family in the few years prior.
On the women’s side, Lindsey Grasis, owner of CrossFit 1977 in Massachusetts, was delighted to compete after finding out that there was a 30-34 division. Grasis is also a firefighter and has been competing in the Open since 2014.
“I honestly didn’t know the MFC had a division for 30-34 year-olds, as CrossFit usually doesn’t title anything ‘Masters’ until 34+. It was actually one of the coaches at my CrossFit 1977 affiliate, Justin Rodger, who urged me to do it with him. He had done it in years past and spoke very highly of the competition,” Grasis said. “I’m very glad I listened!”
And to add to the good news, Grasis achieved her first ever live event win with “Speed Kills” (part A) on Saturday.
“I think I had the most fun during the bike/bar muscle up workout! It was my first ever live event win in all the years I’ve competed. Since it was an interval workout I had a pretty good feeling I was going to win the event around round three, so it was a bonus to get to soak it all in for two more rounds,” she said. “It went better than expected, but that’s because when I practiced it I was on day five of Covid and it felt much different on my lungs then.”
She went on to get another first place, this time in “Jack Ketch”, later that same day in a workout that contained six legless rope climbs.
“Legless (rope) climbs have always been one of my weaker movements, so I’ve been working really hard on getting better at them,” she said. “Taking an event win on that workout completely shocked me, and having it be a head to head sprint finish and going back and forth on reps with Shelby (Forney) the entire workout made it that much more rewarding and fun.”
Catch up: You can watch the live stream from any of the three days on our YouTube channel. And, you can view all the workouts (maybe take one for a spin yourself!) on our MFC competition page.
THINGS TO...
...DO
Use the Burgener Warmup for Cleans
“Practice makes perfect” is a saying that rings true to all athletes. But sometimes we skip the fundamentals and simple drills so that we can maximize workout time, when in actuality our lifts suffer because of the lack of preparation. To practice repetition and technique, the Burgener warmup is a tried and true method.
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Tight glutes can be a literal pain in your butt. Having those tender points in the glutes/side of the glutes is very common. Use these six exercises to reduce pain in your butt while also strengthening the muscles to avoid pain in the future.
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Split squats are a spicy movement that help build lower body strength. If regular split squats on the floor are too easy, but bulgarian split squats (raised back leg on a bench) are too hard, then try these three versions that are in between. You’ll have Dani Speegle level quads in no time!
Congratulations to Grant Michaels from Broad Street CrossFit on the 245 pound/111kg cluster in CrossFit Generation’s Summer Slam Fitness Festival in Horsham, PA.
😱 Brynn Kurlan from Training Think Tank logs a 1:54 Fran time.
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