- What's up guys, and welcome to an episode
of Dark Horse Rowing.
Today we're gonna talk about the fact
that the CrossFit Games just announced
a fricking marathon for CrossFit athletes.
(imitates exploding) I have no idea how
(laughing) this is gonna go
or how athletes are gonna respond.
The longest thing that we have ever seen
in CrossFit Games competition,
has been a 2K into a half marathon.
Nobody ever thought that it would go over that,
let alone double that.
And just go full on marathon.
I mean we are talking like two to three plus hours
with a time cap of four.
This is gonna have some serious consequences,
and it's gonna be a real interesting workout,
not interesting to watch,
interesting simply from a like a grand perspective.
But let's get inside and let's check out
what is gonna happen in this workout,
and how these athletes should be handling it.
(electronic music)
So today's video is actually brought to you
very, like perfectly timed,
by my friends over at Extreme Endurance,
and their product Fuel-5.
Normally I don't do sponsorships and endorsements.
However, this product just kinda lines up perfectly
with the component of this where
we need to talk about nutrition.
Because one of the three main pillars
that we really, that athletes should be thinking about,
is really solid nutrition,
and I've broken that down in this video
for a caloric burn based off of general body weight
and pacing so that athletes will know
what kind of caloric burn they're going to experience,
as well as how to supplement that.
So this post, again brought to you by Extreme Endurance,
they're an amazing group, I've been around them forever.
I've used their products forever.
And I think that the Fuel-5 product
is a perfectly timed for this.
It has both fast and slow burning carbohydrates.
It's meant to be drank during a workout,
and when we get to the nutrition piece,
you're gonna see why that's really critical
and important.
So thank you to Extreme Endurance.
Go check 'em out, xendurance.com
and check out that product Fuel-5,
because I think it is going to be perfect
for something like a marathon or a half marathon row.
Now, let's get into the analysis
of (groaning) what this is gonna be.
Let's unpack it.
(happy music)
I have three main tips for surviving a marathon row.
Whether you're a CrossFit Games athlete,
or whether you have an erg in your basement,
and you erg before your kids wake up.
I'm not sure you're gonna get an erg marathon in
before your kids wake up unless you start
at like two in the morning.
But, the point being, I've got three primary tips
that you need to focus on in order to be able to survive
a marathon row, especially if it's not something
that you've been training a whole long time for.
So, let's get into what that is.
And number one, number one, the single most...
Well, I'm basing this off of a poll I just ran on Twitter,
asking people, by the way if you don't follow us on Twitter,
@darkhorserowing, @shanefarmer,
the poll that I ran was asking what people thought
was the most prevalent thing to pay attention to.
Number one that came out for everybody,
and so this is what I wanted to address first,
butt comfort, bet you didn't see that one coming.
Butt comfort.
There are a number of ways that you can address this.
However if you are not thinking about protecting your behind
when it comes to this working,
I think you're seriously missing out on an opportunity here.
Think of this as roughly a thousand strokes
per 10,000 meters, give or take, you know
and extra hundred to 200,
depending on the length of your stroke,
your effectiveness, your efficiency, so on so forth.
So, I'm gonna use a general number of 5000 strokes
to complete a marathon.
5000 strokes, guys.
If you have not been spending saddle time,
meaning your butt is in the erg seat
or the rowing machine seat, hinging back and forth,
your hamstrings and your gluts are just gonna be destroyed.
So when it comes to butt comfort,
there are a number of routes you can go.
Number one, you can get a foam pad, right.
There are like gel and foam pads made for erg seats.
I'm gonna assume that you don't have the ability
to just like run out to the store
and pick one of these up, 'cause it's a very specific item.
You're probably gonna have to order that online,
or out of some catalog somewhere, back 20 years ago.
The other option, and this one is always,
people look at it like, nah, there's not way,
that sounds stupid, but it wins out every single time.
And that is large bubble bubble wrap.
Go pick up a couple sheets,
you can pick 'em up at any shipping store,
or maybe a Home Depot or a Lowe's,
and just fold it.
Get like two sheets, sit on top of it,
maybe one, just depends on how you feel,
but bubble wrap.
Air won't compress.
The problem with gel and foam is that over time
they're gonna compress so that 20000 meters,
or even 10000 meters into this,
you're still gonna, you're just gonna be sitting on the seat
but now you have like a thin layer of gel or foam
in between you and the seat.
That's really ineffective.
Air, however, is not going to give up on that,
so I love bubble wrap.
(laughing) It's ridiculous, but it's super efficient.
And it's not expensive.
And you can go pick it up (finger snapping) like that,
if you have to.
So, that is my suggestion, for butt comfort.
Prioritize the butt, please.
Number two, and this is the nutrition piece.
There's a lot to unpack here.
I have built up these charts that you're looking at,
that break down basically the caloric needs
based off of pacing for lightweight, and heavyweight
male and female CrossFit Games athletes in a marathon.
So you don't have to.
Let's just take a quick look
at what those caloric demands are,
and what athletes should be thinking about
and how to replenish as they go.
Generally, we are looking at a caloric load
from a lightweight female at a 230 pace,
so 135 pound female, that rowed a 230 pace
for an entire marathon, their caloric demands
are gonna be down around 2000 calories.
Whereas a heavyweight male, 220 pounds,
in my book for this demonstration purpose,
that was rowing a 150 pace,
that would be aggressively fast for a CrossFitter,
I'm assuming we're not gonna find that,
would be up in the 3300 range.
So ranging from 2000 to 3300 calories burned
during this marathon.
That's an epic amount of energy burned
that you're gonna have to replace and pay attention to.
So how do we do that, that's the ultimate question.
So to address nutrition, we really need to look at
two primary components.
Number one is hydration,
number two is your caloric replenishment,
making sure that you have enough calories
to sustain energy levels throughout the piece.
And then the hydration is so that you don't get dehydrated
by the time the piece is done.
So let's take a quick look
at the charts that I drew up here.
If you're a lightweight male,
I'm calling that 190 pound male CrossFitter,
doing a marathon,
your caloric burn total for this marathon piece
is gonna range somewhere from 2402 to 3174 calories.
Now of course these are rough calculations.
But let's understand, that is a massive amount of calories.
We're talking 683 to 1231, almost double,
calories per hour burned.
And that's for a lightweight.
If we were to move to a heavyweight male,
we're talking 2581 to 3305 calories.
For a lightweight female, we're talking 2000
up to almost 2800,
and if it's a heavyweight female,
we're talking 2250 up to 2898, almost 2900 calories.
That's a ton of calories burned
over a short period of time.
Now to replace that many calories
requires quite a bit of nutrition,
and that's where it's important
that athletes stay on the front and leading edge
of their hydration nutrition.
Ways that you can do that,
number one, making sure that you have
easily accessible and handy hydration close to you.
Water, perhaps in a camel back,
or bottles sitting on, on like stands nearby
so you don't have to reach or do any crazy movement,
and that you can keep a constant supply going.
On the nutrition side, this is the interesting part.
There are a number of ways that you can replenish nutrition.
Now, number one, powdered drinks.
This is where the Extreme Endurance Fuel-5
is an exceptional resource, is because it has
so many of the carbohydrates that you need
inside of this product that it is going to
give you a lot of what you're looking for,
and a lot of what your body is looking for,
over the length of time that you need it.
Now, it's about 200 calories, per serving,
and that's two scoops.
If my math is correct, you're gonna need about 6 scoops
every hour to stay on top of your nutritional needs.
Now that's a lot of powder to take in,
but you can do that in different ways.
Perhaps making it as like a shot form,
so that you can shoot it really quickly,
or if you do have a hydration system,
making sure that you feed it in there,
so that is on constant drip supply for you.
It was designed for the very purpose
of intra-workout consumption.
And so that is why they are the sponsor of this video,
is because that is a huge opportunity
and a great product to take
when you're gonna need this caloric load.
This is a great opportunity to do that.
Other ways of going, you've got your GU Packs,
and then you have straight up old school
eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
and bananas as you go, keeping nutrition nearby, real food.
Is that super feasible, it really depends.
A it depends on how much you sweat as you're working out,
like how often you need to replenish.
If you can handle flavors while you're working out,
and if you plan on taking breaks.
In my opinion, for this workout, take breaks.
There is no glory in trying to push through.
Because of everything that precedes it at the games,
that's day one and it's the fourth workout.
There are three workouts before that,
that have a huge demand on the body.
And then you hit a marathon.
Some people may wanna push,
but for the majority of athletes,
I am thinking that they need to
just stay lightly competitive, stay in the mix,
so that they just don't bonk, and also because
there are a lotta ramifications
that are going to come from that marathon row.
So it's really important that they're paying attention
to the way that their bodies put out
over the entirety of that piece,
and I think the name of the game is gonna be
who can get away with the least amount of effort
over the piece so that they can just stay
in fighting position and also survive
for Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
when even more stuff is coming their way.
Number three, and this one is, like it seems kind of,
I don't know, like I don't think a lot of people
are gonna think about this,
but your hands, especially for CrossFitters,
they're not gonna have rowing callouses built up.
Nor should they.
They're gonna have great callouses on their hands,
however, rowing is gonna create a whole different type
of blister and callous and it's going to
spiral once your hands get damp.
So number one for your hands, sweat control.
Think about long wristband, perhaps, like a sweat band
on your forearm, to eat up some of the sweat
that rolling down from your arms.
I'm suggesting that people wear shirts.
Do wear shirts, don't do this shirtless.
Because it's gonna help capture some of that sweat
that's gonna wanna roll down your arms from your armpits.
And then tape your fingers.
Tape around the joints,
like basically don't hit it on a joint,
but tape around those joints
and really have those hands covered in tape,
to avoid a, the skin being on that, like skin rubbing,
as well as helping with that dampness factor.
Save your hands, because if a games athlete
tears open their hands, I mean we're talking
a potential for bloody blisters here,
because it's 5000 strokes, 5000 times of your hands
doing this as they get damp.
If you open up a blister,
it is not going to heal in one day,
and it's going to set an athlete seriously back
for the rest of competition.
It's really critical that you make sure
to hit that sweat management, hand management, if you will.
Stay on top of that because you need your hands
the rest of competition.
So that's number three.
Okay, I cheated, I said there were my top three tips.
But I also have two little bonus points.
Number one is the mental.
This is going to be a massive mental game.
And I think athletes need to come into this
with a really steady perspective.
You do not want to go into this
just thinking that you're gonna crush it,
and compete and head off of the head of the peloton,
and try to just crush everyone.
I don't think that that is the best method.
Maybe somebody who's been practicing this,
and on the machine and they're like you know what,
I've been hitting half marathons, I've hit a few of them,
I'm super confident doing this.
Okay maybe, but you're the exception.
Otherwise, you should be looking at this
as how do I mentally stay engaged
which is gonna be a huge challenge,
and how do I play a strong mental game,
as in I am constantly checking in with my body
to know what it needs, when it needs breaks
and that I'm listening,
and not trying to push that voice aside.
Pushing that voice aside can be useful
in shorter workouts, but over a workout like this,
ignoring that, I think is gonna be a bigger detriment
than it is a help, in this workout.
Bonus number two, is that this is really going to be
a game of who can create the least inefficiencies.
Who can be the most efficient mover on the machine
and not from a perspective of the most efficient is...
Well the most efficient will move faster,
but over time, your body's gonna start to deteriorate.
Your posture's gonna go, your hamstrings and your gluts
are gonna start to get weak, and lose blood flow.
And so with that, your goal is to create
as much efficiency on the machine as you can
or eliminate inefficiencies.
And then finally, as I've said before,
plan your breaks ahead of time.
You've gotta do that, if you don't,
you're just gonna be running and hoping and praying
that you can last over this piece.
As opposed to coming to this with a strong game plan,
being conservative on the front end,
and if you've got some left in the tank,
guess what, you can make a move with 10000 meters to go.
You'd be surprised how much you can do in 10000 meters,
'cause it's still 40 minutes of rowing left.
Ugh, but think about that.
If you prep for the first 30, and you're smart
and you come in strong to the final 10,
you will at least weed out some people
who are not taking a strong approach to it,
and you're gonna just further your position
by being smart.
So be smart.
So, let's review the three tips and two bonuses
to helping you survive a marathon row.
Number one is butt safety, comfort,
whatever you wanna call it,
make sure that your butt's in a good position.
Number two is your nutrition.
Huge priority here, take advantage of the planning
and know your caloric loads.
Follow the sheets that we've got here for guidance.
I'm gonna link to them below in the description,
so that you can see those and that you can
hopefully use it to help you plan.
Number three is hand management.
Make sure that you're controlling sweat.
Tape ahead of time, be smart about your hands.
And finally the two bonuses,
strong mental game, go into it knowing what's coming,
right, stay engaged,
and finally cut down on inefficiencies.
So hopefully you've been practicing your mechanics,
following our videos,
maybe you've used our program.
If you haven't, check out darkhorserowing.com
where you can find our programs,
which teach you to move, and give you workouts
to help you practice at the same time as getting more fit.
Hopefully you've been using something like that
to prepare you for really what is the longest workout
in CrossFit Games history.
We'll see how it goes.
We'll probably come to you with a video after it's done,
and we'll debrief it and we'll see how that goes.
But, if you're planning on doing your own workout,
try to use these tips, they will be effective for you,
I promise, regardless of your skill level.
So guys, as always, if you enjoyed this video,
and you wanna help us out, we'd really appreciate it
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And as always guys, thank you for tuning in.
We will see you on the other side.
(happy electronic music)