In this episode, Dr. Dan sits down with Sam Burns, CrossFit Level 3 Trainer to discuss the concept of general physical preparedness or GPP and how training to be ready for anything can give you freedom in life.

Learn More about Sam's personal training business: https://www.getmotivateful.com/

Find Sam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachsamburns/

Episode Transcript:

all right Sam welcome to the exploring Fitness podcast thanks man I'm happy to be here pleasure to have you so why don't we just start out by uh first tell me what is Fitness to you in 30 seconds or less without spouting off crossfits definition of Fitness uh probably without spouting off okay

definition uh Fitness is freedom um I believe there's a direct correlation between how fit you are and how free you are to do the things that you would like to do um and I also believe there's an inverse relationship as well so the less fit you are the less free you are freedom to do things yeah for sure love it we'll get back to that in a little bit okay but why don't you go ahead now and uh tell everybody a little bit about yourself who you are what you do all that kind of stuff because similar to me I know that you always have a thousand things going on so go ahead and update everybody wonderful um so who am I well my name is Sam Burns I'm a professional CrossFit coach um I should I should say CrossFit trainer but because there is a distinction between coach and trainer but we can go down the rabbit hole later um I have been teaching training coaching CrossFit professionally for seven something years like that um I'm a certified CrossFit level three trainer so um spent a lot of time kind of gathering knowledge and trying to be the best version of a coach that I can and that's as high as I've ascended in that particular knowledge hierarchy um I'm also a member of CrossFit gymnastics seminar staff so I have the opportunity to travel the country and sometimes the world and teach people how to be better practitioners of gymnastics uh specifically aimed at CrossFit uh because there's a major education opportunity there for trainers and for practitioners of CrossFit to be better at gymnastics and therefore to get fitter um I am uh a husband and a father um I have a wonderful wife Katie I have two boys who are one and three years old God help me and I uh what else I have the Good Fortune to be able to um have my hands on a lot of Pies in CrossFit um and in the functional fitness world I own a small personal training business and I also work for an organization I counsel for them and I help coach guide Mentor other coaches and Crossfit affiliate owners to better success and therefore greater Financial Freedom as

well awesome um just for those who aren't familiar with um the CrossFit coaching hierarchy so you said that you're level three um you just kind of fill everybody in on the different levels and what you can kind of like max out at I yes for sure so to be um to be both ethically and legally able to practice CrossFit as a as an instructor as a trainer you have to at the very least undergo a level one certification so you go you attend a weekend certification and um you pass a test at the end and then great you're a level one certified CrossFit trainer um beyond that there is a more in-depth course that deepens your knowledge of teaching and seeing and correcting which are some of the elements of an effective trainer uh it's a very intense drill down on H probably how you do your training day-to-day inside of your CrossFit affilia and how that could be better which is as uncomfortable as you want to make it and uh if you pass the test at the end of that course then you're a certified level to CrossFit trainer then there is a much larger exam it is a big broad sweeping uh exam of strength and conditioning nutrition um you know safety uh Health and Wellness in general but also CrossFit that's the CrossFit level three trainer examination it is just a test it's not a an assessment of any kind and then above that you have the level four assessment so the level four assessment is a realtime in-person assessment of your ability to coach CrossFit to crossfit's standards highest standard I should say and you are being assessed by some of the best coaches in CrossFit um it is only once you achieve the level four that CrossFit gives you the distinction of Coach everything below that is trainer which is a little muddy for like most people's day-to-day nomenclature um there are I think it's something like 300,000 um minimum level one certified trainers probably 2% of that um of that number people have ascended to level three trainers so level three is a pretty small pool um and then now they have recently released the level four after many many many years and there are a handful of candidates who have have taken the assessment and passed many people have had to take it more than once um and those people now have the distinction of being called level four certified coaches great so you are one of 2% that holds a level three which means you essentially know you know a lot about CrossFit and the methodology and that kind of stuff yeah I mean it objectively if I've passed the level three I could be I could be considered a subject matter expert on uh crossfits you of strength and conditioning um I've also supplemented my education in other places so my my I consider myself a strength and conditioning coach with a speciality in CrossFit and

gymnastics wonderful so in my inaugural episode of this podcast I kind of went down the rabbit hole of yes um I love a good rabbit hole Yeah so the premise behind the episode was if the name of this podcast is going to be exploring Fitness we better have an idea of what it is we're trying to explore yep therefore we better have a definition of what Fitness is yep so went through a very superficial kind of run through of crossfit's definition of Fitness along with

um the supporting models behind the methodology and uh Fitness in 100 words those kinds of things yep um but again very superficial yep but with you being a CrossFit content expert I was hoping that we could dive into maybe one of those supporting models a little bit deeper yeah I'm here for it yeah so and this one supporting model in particular I think goes along with what you said your or what Fitness is to you at the beginning of this episode where you said fre freedom to do things I was thinking maybe we dive into the hopper model and uh the concept of General physical preparedness cool and uh kind of what that is and yeah beautiful okay so to so there's a bunch of places we could start here um since you called this a rabbit hole um let's start with the idea of the hopper and how it came about and then we can get into the hopper itself so um the hopper is one of four different theoretical models to explain Fitness um when CrossFit was first being started it was an open source model so Greg Glassman was the only coach he was practicing CrossFit he had great success with people and he started to Outsource this to other people and it it started at crossfit.com that was the only place anybody could do CrossFit Circa 20012 2002 and so everybody who did CrossFit got CrossFit straight from Greg's brain and Greg's idea was I'm going to get as much data back from people as possible and then use that to inform the model he was figuring things out in real time he did not burst onto the internet in 2001 with a fully formed methodology and like a level one manual ready to go like he made all that up not made it up he figured all that out on the back end so he was testing these workouts and figuring stuff out and he called it a blackbox concept where they would do a bunch of stuff and then see what happens on the backside and the doing a bunch of stuff is the black box it's the stuff happens that you you don't quite understand because it's inside of a black box and so by observing and quantifying the outcomes of these experiments of these Fitness tests they worked backwards to establish hypothesis using these models and then they would test again right and so it was through many many many many iterations like this that they figured out these models so that's where me measurable observable and repeatable absolutely and the goal was to find a definition for fitness that was that would stand up to academic rigor because prior to this I want to make this 100% clear there was no measurable definition for Fitness yeah I talked about um the Mariam Webster definition and what you can actually find on Wikipedia which is man slightly better but still provides us like zero information about what it is right the state or condition of Being Fit H so this is this this is what we were up against and it's it's better it's not fixed in terms of like what you see on social media and things like that but that was the goal that's where all of this came from so the hopper is a theoretical model that contends this idea if you have a first of all for those of you who don't know what Bingo is and are not old enough to have gone to a County Fair a like a peanut Hopper is a gigantic rotating barrel and so you put it over for a fire you stick a bunch of peanuts and oil in there you turn it and you get roast peanuts right also if you've ever been to a bingo hall they've got that big clear net and they rotate it like this and then they pluck the balls out and they call B6 and then somebody plays Bingo that's the hopper that's the idea that we're talking about here so imagine you have this big barrel and you fill it with little balls and on the little balls you write every movement you can think of you gymnastics stuff dips push-ups sit-ups presses holds handstands muscle ups whatever weightlifting bench press anything powerlifting um uh uh sandbag carries strongman stuff you put in Olympic lift snatch clean and jerk all that stuff you also put in endurance efforts row bike ski run Sprint um everything you can come up with and then on a bunch of other balls you put on numbers and they for the sake of Simplicity you have high volume work you have medium volume work you have low volume work and then you put on loads heavy heavy things medium things light things you put on distances long distance medium distance short distance time domains whatever you infinite number of um options and variations and then you throw them all into the hopper right and then you as you pull them out you use them to build workouts right you use the numbers the movements the distes the loadings all of those things to build and construct your workouts the hopper model contends that he or she is fittest who does best across the widest variation of varied tasks so regardless of what comes out he or she is fittest who doesn't have to win everything but collectively is going to do best across all of the tasks and it was actually the inspiration for the first CrossFit games that was held on the Rus Ranch in California they had a big peanut Hopper that's how they came up with the events so they actually tested this I think it was 2007 or 2008 that's the hopper model fantastic so reach into the hopper Marathon gets pulled out yep a marathoner is going to love that event for sure next event gets pulled out one rep max snatch yep and Olympic lifter is going to love that event and the marathoner not going to love that event correct and the Olympic lifter is probably not going to love the marathon probably

so you're hinting at something very important there I am hinting at something very important yeah yeah so I I'm gonna do you mind if I just like walk right into it might as well so the there's an implicit um there's an implicit consequence inside of that model right he or she is fittest that does best across the widest variation of tasks skills and drills whatever well there's going to be some stuff in there that you're bad at there's going to like if you're a sprinter you're not going to like heavy work if you're a powerlifter you're not going to like Marathon work right we're not talking about Specialists is the first thing a person who is a marathon Sprinter could be said to be incredibly aerobically capable however nobody would look at professional marathoners and say yes I am sure that person can squat triple their body weight and yet we would all say that strength is definitely a component to Fitness so if we're looking for the fittest person things have to be balanced so if there are things that come out of the hopper that you are bad at the implication is you will be best served by seeking headlong in your day-to-day training the things that you fear to come out of the hopper if you're bad at gymnastics and you hate gymnastics and so normally you don't do gymnastics the biggest hole in your Fitness will be gymnastics if you love lifting and you love gymnastics and physique work and calisthenics but you hate long distance or sprinting something like that should probably do that every once in a while maybe more than every once in a while because your greater overall Fitness is going to be more served served to a better degree let's say by doing the things you are bad at which Dove Tales very nicely into the other thing that you were talking about which is

gpp yeah I love that so believe one of the saying is that the specialty of crossfitters is not specializing yeah or something along those lines yeah if you there's a there's another way that that is said if you take um a person who gets uh a person who has the capability a single person who has the capability of a novice 800 meter track athlete a novice Olympic weightlifter and a novice gymnast that person will be fitter than any worldclass track athlete Olympic weightlifter or gymnast because they have a broader base of fitness and so that person who doesn't specialize who is capable across a broad set of tasks is tremendously physically capable wonderful

yeah so General physical

preparedness can we elaborate on that yeah specific phrase any more in depth I I think we can for sure and and to for it to make sense we have to kind of remember where we came from so prior to the concept of gpp uh people in large part did what is called segmented training so and for many many people this will sound very familiar Monday is back and buys Tuesday is chest and tries uh maybe Wednesday is leg day if you hate yourself and more likely than not you'll do some you'll do some cardio work like a whole day for just cardio um so that's a segmented training model and the idea again this is a blackbox concept the idea was Mother Nature doesn't give two figs what day you train on and so it doesn't give a day give a darn what day of the week it is it doesn't give a darn if you squatted yesterday and so your legs are a little sore so you probably shouldn't squat today like mother nature doesn't care and so part of the goal of CrossFit and specific was through this concept of General physical preparedness gpp you would be prepared for the unknown and the unknowable right so if you want to be prepared for the unknown and the unknowable you want to be greatest you want to be uh the greatest possible level of capability at any given point in time well segmented training yields segmented results and here's a here's a way to to kind of imagine this if you have a person a single person who can run a five minute mile it's a pretty good mile time right that same person can do a 500 pound deadlift that's a pretty good deadlift more likely than not the first time you ask them to do let's say five rounds for time of four 400 m runs and 10 deadlifts at 225 we would call that a moderate deadlift for for for the for the male that is being prescribed that load and a 400 meter run is a short distance it's not a long distance so aerobic work moderate to heavy lift aerobic work Moder TFT alternating back and forth for that person who's got that 5minute mile that 500 PB deadlift if don't mix their modalities their weightlifting and their endurance work or their aerobic work the first time you mix them the wheels are going to come off the bus they're gonna have a bad time and so that is almost everybody's Universal experience in crossfits they come from this background of segmented training and they come into this thing where it's like wait I'm gonna I'm gonna weightlift and I'm going to run and I'm going to do it back and forth I'm a like allinone workout yep and you're telling me I can do do this in like 20 minutes and that's going to be the whole workout yep and then at the end of 20 minutes they're laying on their back and they're gasping for air like their lungs have never worked before and you keep coming back you keep coming back and that feeling goes away and you become more capable and you get into this world of Fitness where now if you want to go back and you want to do 400 meter intervals it's a much easier time you want to go you want to just do deadlifts it's a much easier time but by mixing modalities you've increased your overall capacity your overall capability and this is the concept behind General physical preparedness the person who mixes modalities gymnastics weightlifting aerobic work regardless of how that is expressed whether it's powerlifting snatching or uh flip splits holds or running rowing biking skiing Etc the person who mixes these modalities is going to be more capable and more generally physically prepared than a person who segments their training so that's the concept behind gppp and it's one of the major drivers behind how CrossFit is

expressed how many rounds do you think you could get of 400 meter runs and 10 dead lifts at 225 in 20 minutes so amrap 20 400 meter run and 10 dead lifts at 225 five so for meter run for like I would probably approach that as a two-minute or slightly sub two-minute I would just hold a steady Pace after round number one my lungs are going to be on fire and so it's not the run it's going to be how much time I rest in between so you figure five rounds of two-minute runs at least is that's 10 minutes um I'm aiming for five plus rounds at 225 with only 10 reps my goal would be to reduce the rest as M as as much as possible 10 unbroken reps every single time um and then drop the bar head rate back out the door I'd love to get I don't think it'll happen but I I would tell myself my goal is seven rounds okay let's test

it hey you brought it on yourself I did you brought it on yourself I did actually today would be a good day for that too it would damn it okay well that's what I'm doing later ready ready for the unknown yep no warmup like a gazelle about to get chased by a lion well that makes me think of Kelly starett and and the Supple Leopard book um I I think we're generationally I think we're a little if you don't know what I'm talking about go Google Kelly starett and how to become a supp a leopard um or just buy the book and read the book and have that book it's amazing book um I I think we as humans are ill constructed for that right now I think I think I'm pretty I'm more capable than the average bear meaning male of a given age living in a first world country um and for that I'm very grateful um but I don't I don't relish the idea of going 0 to 60 like I sprinted my little kid up the hill the other day and I was like damn am I am I wearing the right shoes for this I got to make sure I don't pull a hammy or something like that ill ill constructed or ill

prepared a little bit of both certainly ill-prepared um ill constructed in that we have not constructed Our Lives to facilitate that kind of function and operation and as as human beings we're the only creatures on the earth that can do that you know we can construct we have one we have the cognition to be aware of that and then two we have the ability to construct the world around us to facilitate that kind of thing um in that particular sense we're ill constructed and very certainly ill prepared so good catch not not anatomically ill constructed no I I would think I mean you don't have to look much further than some of the tribes that live kind of pre-industrialized lives the hza um as an example who are you know very much hunter gatherer existence and and they will my understanding is one of the advantages to human beings constructed anatomically the way that they are is that they were able to outrun larger animals they could stay moving longer than say an elephant or some other large animal enough that they could Tire it out and then kill it Harvest it and then take that meat back to their community now for everyone who's listening to this I want you to imagine trying to outrun a large wild animal you know just stay moving for that long I think most people would bck at that concept nowadays but anatomically certainly we are built for that that's one of our Evol evolutionary advantages you mean we're built to run how dare you Kelly s at references dear God um yes yes we are 100% all right if you say so yeah I know feel like there was something else in that comment that uh I was going to touch on

but oh I know what it is yeah um you don't think that those tribes like get together and do a bunch of uh Dynamic warm-up exercises before they go out on the hunt I don't know I don't know and if they do it's probably something that's better than what we do in the gym um I there is a part of me that wants to believe no they just they get their stuff and they go they do their thing um but there's a consideration for that they're not living sedentary Lifestyles they don't they don't have a concept for that if they don't do things they die so there's always something to be done to Stave off starvation dehydration uh you know threat of some natural disaster you know wiping out their Village or something like that there's always work to be done so sedentary Lifestyles don't exist for them so I in that particular regard I have to imagine that they are just at a ready state that is that we don't can't imagine right now ready

State um yeah so essentially their lifestyle makes them generally physically prepared for what they have to do on a daily basis including including running down large animals over long distances it's it's not that their lifestyle makes them generally physically prepared their lifestyle necessitates that and

so I I don't think that most people certainly let's say in the Western World I don't think most people have an understanding of just how far removed they actually are [Music] from anything approaching uh the need for True survival skills so a a person living in a tribe um pre-industrialized Society it's not hyperbole to say that if they don't go out and gather water if they don't if they don't find that animal and take it and harvest it someone that they know maybe them is going to die that's a very real consequence it's not it's not oh my God I'm going to die no they will perish and not be there the next day and so their life necessitates it in our first world very privil you know I I'm standing at a desk standing at you know a flat screen monitor with like light pixels bouncing off of me with a microphone it like this not the lifestyle they're living I need to train in a way that provides me with General physical preparedness because that person living the pre-industrialized lifestyle is also living a life free of chronic disease free free of you know rampant obesity inside of their society free of the need for you know non-life-threatening medical intervention right no one over there is is is going to their doctor for OIC uh shots whereas over here I need to train in a very deliberate manner to live a life that gives me the outcomes that they have ideally without having to experience the threat of death

daily so true so

true so for those who might not be familiar but have seen maybe some videos of competitions and things like that what I guess what should more people know about CrossFit

it's not it's not what you think it is so um and and as a as another example nobody would watch the NFL and confuse what they see on the NFL with the flag football game that's going on down the street they're playing the same game but it's not the same and nobody is unclear about that right nobody's mother is looking at that person and being like you know well sure you know Little Johnny's going to be a playing for the Tigers next week you know what is seen on the Internet or on ESPN or whatever that is CrossFit is typically high level CrossFit competitions it's like our Olympics so you're looking at the highest possible level of the sport now when I say it's not what you think it is it is those things when I say those things I mean those movements one of the contentions of CrossFit is that our needs as human beings differ by degree not by kind and so if I want to dive in on that that would be every human with a baseline level of functional capacity needs to be able to hinge at the waist without pain needs to be able to squat and lift an object needs to be able to press an object over their head needs to be able to get their heart rate up and sustain an elevated heart rate without experiencing myocardial infar needs to be able to support their own body weight as they are hanging or pressing or insert movement here those are variations on movements gymnastics weightlifting endurance Etc getting themselves onto and off of the ground absolutely a burpee is a functional movement nobody wants to hear this and it's but it's the truth a burpee is a functional move movement Its Real World crossover is that human being who has a fear of falling and not getting up to the person who regularly does burpees in their training that is no longer a fear and therefore it's no longer a danger right so that's a that's an

example if our needs differ by degree and not kind then everybody should be training in a manner that includes hinging at the waist squatting pressing pulling includes both unloaded and loaded movements gymnastics and weightlifting includes some kind of aerobic or endurance work whether that's actually endurance work it's long distance or simply aerobic where it's shorter sprinty style efforts and there's benefits to both everybody should be doing those things now you do not need to be clean and jerking 300 lb to the shoulder and then into the overhead position however your body should have the capacity to move a load of some kind to the overhead position and we have found the jerk to be the most uh mechanically St uh mechanically safe and effective means of doing that so we don't teach people how to do a cleaning jerk because I want you to get better at the clean and jerk I teach you how to do a cleaning jerk because there's a real world carryover to getting an object to your shoulder and then being able to stabilize your core drive your body upward and then use that momentum to drive that object upward and get that object into the overhead position so you can put it on a shelf or put it on a rack or whatever that ends up being There's real world carryover for all of these things and so for the person who's looking at the CR games it would be very easy to say there's nothing that I do that looks like that I'm not interested in that and that what I'm seeing has no place in my life and so you're wrong what they are doing absolutely does have a place in your life maybe not at that load maybe not at that difficulty or that skill level or that time domain whatever it is but most I've seen this I don't know how many times in my entire career and I used to run the on-ramp program the new athlete program at at a couple gyms people are more capable than they give themselves credit for and they find it out in short short order but everybody has that same

um everybody has that same fear that what they see is not for them without understanding the relationship between their real life and then how to train for real

life whenever you say uh varies by degree not kind you're essentially saying that the needs of these Elite crossfitters their their goal is like functional dominance correct but the needs of maybe Grandma Doris who also does CrossFit is looking for functional competence yes and that's that's an extreme uh distinction that highlights your point very well um you know an elite level athlete needs to be able to deadlift yeah let's say Elite level male athlete at the CrossFit Games needs to be able to deadlift north of 500 pounds right at or north of 500 pounds a functional human being I would say the goal is being able to dlift some significant percentage of their body weight that is a functionally capable human being regardless of age and so for Grandma Doris my goal would be okay Grandma Doris do you understand that every single time you set your groceries down on the ground and then you have to go pick them back up you're effectively doing a deadlift first you understand the need for this movement cool I'm going to make it so that every time you set your groceries down you're not going to worry about what your back is going to do when you pick up that back of groceries and we're gonna get we're going to get you stronger and more capable those groceries better not be her one rep max deadlift right absolutely and what's what's funny about that is for a certain population there is a real world concern that that bag of groceries is the physical limitation that's how far some people in the population have uh how far deconditioned they have become there is also a group that is concerned that they are physically incapable of lifting anything greater than that while their actual capacity is three four 6 10 times what that very moderate load is and they've told themselves a story about how physically capable they are that is functionally a Lie No Doubt yeah our bodies are amazing Vehicles yeah we just have to build them up and prove to ourselves what they're capable of yeah and it's it doesn't it doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen by accident either you know you hope it doesn't happen by accident because unfortunately typically the way most people find out how capable they are is when they're placed in a life-threatening situation and I wouldn't wish that upon anybody agreed

Sam thank you so much for taking the

time it's my pleasure man I love talking about this stuff so you mean you keep asking questions I'm G to keep answering them perfect maybe we'll uh have to have you back again talk about a different supporting model yes I'd love to I'd love to be able to help thank you so much for having me wonderful thanks again yeah yeah