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Common Conditioning Mistake:

1. Too frequent high intensity training
2. Intensity limiting total training load
3. Only practicing race pace at high RPEs
4. All-out effort in hard sessions
5. Excessive training variety
6. Starting workouts too hot
7. "Always ready" approach to training

Best Practice:

1. High-low model
2. Large training loads with more low intensity training
3. Practice race pace at submaximal RPEs often to lower perception of effort
4. Controlled effort in hard sessions, save all-out efforts for race
5. Week to week control
6. Incremental effort
7. Peak for race day

Join us for the live training "Conditioning for Fitness Athletes"

This Thursday, October 23rd, 3pm MT

If you sign up today, you'll get permanent access to the recording.

Tap to save your spot: https://www.paulbweber.com/conditioning-for-fitness-athletes

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In this episode, I discuss:

• The confusion among health and wellness leaders and coaches about the utility of Zone 2
• Zone 2 for living long and healthy
• Zone 2 for performance
• Why your time is the most important factor in how much Zone 2 you should do
• The energy intake-training load relationship
• Comparing low intensity training to high intensity training
• Exceptions for people at physiological extremes

For those who want to dive deeper, join us for the live training Conditioning for Fitness Athletes.

Thursday, October 23rd, 3pm MT

Tap here to save your spot.

If you sign up now, even if you can't make it live, you'll get permanent access to the recording.

I hope to see you there.

Send us a text

Join us for the live training: Conditioning for Fitness Athletes.

Thursday, October 23rd, 3pm MT

Tap the link to save your spot: https://www.paulbweber.com/conditioning-for-fitness-athletes

If you can't make it live, all good, you'll get permanent access to the recording.

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When I start working with a new athlete, the first question we ask is:

"What are our training priorities?"

To help decide, we look at their:

1. Competition results
2. Training metrics
3. Physical characteristics

Elite fitness athletes often have exceptional strength and muscle mass talent.

As a result, the majority of people who want to compete in fitness sport spend their entire career chasing strength.

They may condition, but in amounts that still let them make meaningful gains in their strength and muscle mass.

But a few athletes who have exceptional strength and muscle mass talent must focus on their conditioning.

How do conditioning-biased athletes train?

Most of my conditioning-biased athletes condition 6 days a week, with their quality sessions confined to 3 of those days.

A quality session is any session that includes medium or high intensity exercise. All other conditioning is done at a low intensity.

The goal, in the long term, is to chronically increase training load.

This can come in one of two ways:

1. Improved fitness - as you become more conditioned, you can sustain higher relative intensities, so you can achieve larger training loads in the same amount of time
2. Adding hours - usually in the form of more low intensity training. For context, Olympic endurance athletes condition for ~15-25 hours per week, the vast majority of it at a low intensity.

All else being equal, if you become more aerobically fit, you can recover faster from all types of exercise.

A Note on Nutrition

Depletion is extremely common among fitness athletes.

I know it was for me when I was competing.

I had a whole food bias, so I thought that the only carbs I could eat were from rice, oats or fruit.

I simply couldn't eat enough whole food to meet my energy needs.

As a result, by the third event of a multiday competition, I was wiped out.

If you're training with a conditioning-bias, preparing for a multiday competition, or competing in one, your carbohydrate needs range from 6-12 g/kg per day.

In most cases, this will include some processed foods.

This is because processing usually makes food more condensed. So the food takes up less volume in your GI system.

Here are a couple examples:

50g Carbs = 200g White Rice vs. 60g Rice Chex Cereal

50g Protein = 200g Sirloin Steak vs. 75g Whey Protein

Here are condensed foods I use myself and with my athletes to help them meet their energy needs:

• Baby food (fruit and vegetable puree)
• Energy waffles
• Cereal
• Gummies
• Karbolyn
• Cyclic Dextrin
• Egg White Protein
• Whey Protein

As you get more fit and your training load increases, so will your energy expenditure. Use these guidelines to help you fuel your training.

Resources

[1] Physical and Physiological Characteristics of Elite CrossFit Athletes

​https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4663/12/6/162​

[2] FFMI Calculator: calculate your genetic muscular potential

​https://mennohenselmans.com/ffmi-calculator/

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In this episode, we cover:

• Evaluation of the Sport
  • Movement Analysis - which parts of the race create the most separation?
  • Physiological Analysis - what does Hyrox ask of the body?
• Assessment of the Athlete
  • Physical Characteristics of Elite 15 Hyrox Athletes
    • Height
    • Weight
  • Performance Characteristics of Elite 15 Hyrox Athletes
    • 5k Run
    • 10k Run
    • Half Marathon
    • 2k Row
    • 2k Ski
    • 3RM Squat
    • 3RM Deadlift
    • 3RM Military Press
    • 3RM Bench Press
• Training for Hyrox
  • 10k Run Progression
  • Stations
  • Lifting

Resources

[1] HYROX: From Average to Elite

​https://roxlyfe.com/hyrox-from-average-to-elite/​

[2] How Fast and Strong are the HYROX Elite 15?

​https://roxlyfe.com/how-fast-and-strong-are-the-hyrox-elite-15/​

[3] ​Daniels' Running Formula

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Thank you for sending questions!

In this week's podcast, I cover:

• How much can I condition and still get stronger/build muscle/maintain muscle?
• How much Zone 2 should I do?
• When should I do "classic CrossFit"?

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In the early 2000s, perhaps similar to today, there was plenty of gatekeeping in an attempt to professionalize the fitness industry.

The gym culture in many places lacked effort and was full of unnecessary complexity.

Greg Glassman (founder of CrossFit®) came in and said, "get rid of all the equipment."

Just keep the rower, box, barbell, pull up bar. That’s all you need.

And challenge yourself. Go as hard as you can.

Greg understood that effort is the currency for results.

There’s a lot of truth in that.

For the average person exercising a few hours a week, they would benefit if their workouts were harder.

But for athletes training 8-15 hours a week, emphasizing intensity becomes problematic.

More and more fitness athletes are realizing that if they do more sub-maximal training, they can actually do more training in the long run.

A partial truth

"Intensity gets results" is partially true.

But a more complete thing to say is:

"Intensity gets results quickly, at the expense of total training load."

If you only train with intensity, you can't train enough.

In the rest of the episode, we discuss:

• training intensity distribution
• how intensity limits total training load
• perceived limitations when racing
• how training affects not just physiological but also perceived limitations
• the best practice of leaving reps in reserve, even during hard sessions

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The goal for the conditioning-biased athlete is to chronically increase training load while maintaining the load-recovery balance.

More simply, conditioning is about learning to do more work.

Fitness athletes have no problem with more training.

We are often eager to prove we can work the hardest.

As a result, we increase training load on too short of a timeline.

I remember compressing a week of training into a single day. And wondering why I constantly felt fatigued, irritable, and in pain.

There's no shortage of effort or willpower. Fitness athletes have no problem with "increase training load."

It's this word "chronically" that gives us issues.

It isn't about training the most today, or even this week.

It's about increasing your training load over months and years.

In a perfect world, we could just increase our training load by 5-10% every week for our entire career. Simple.

As much as I wish it were that way, I have found that reality is more complex.

For those who want to chronically increase their training load, I recommend hiring a coach to design individualized, periodized, and progressive programs.

An individualized program respects your current ability, time, and recovery resources.

A periodized program has fluctuations in volume and intensity that make training more engaging and ensure adequate recovery after competitions.

A progressive program gives you more challenge as you improve.

While the coach manages the training load, the athlete also has agency in maintaining the load-recovery balance.

Over a career, the athlete must learn to recognize the signs of overtraining, minimize non-training stress, and maximize support.

Recognize the signs of overtraining

Stress imbalance leads to health degradation. Watch for these signs:

• Joint pain
• Weakened immunity
• GI distress
• Low libido
• Disrupted sleep
• Impaired blood sugar regulation
• Fatigue and irritability
• Severely depressed cortisol curve

If these start to interfere with your training, then communicate with your coach who can reduce your load, help you increase your recovery or both.

Minimize non-training stress

Imagine a hot air balloon.

As hot air fills the balloon, it expands, just like our ability to contain and adapt to stress.

However, the balloon's capacity is finite.

A controlled level of hot air lifts the balloon - similar to how stress enables us to perform.

While too little hot air keeps us grounded and stagnant, too much sends us out of control.

Beyond training stress, all types of stress are "hot air," meaning they contribute to our total load:

• Mental fatigue
• Career and financial insecurity
• Relational tension
• Social scrutiny
• Performance anxiety

When you learn to minimize these, you have more room in the balloon for training.

Maximize support

A hot air balloon is always open to releasing pressure - similar to our ability to recover.

Just as important as minimizing non-training stress, is maximizing support:

• Prioritize sleep and circadian rhythm
• Ensure adequate nutrition and hydration
• Practice food and sleep hygiene
• Get sun exposure daily when possible
• Use downregulation techniques (breathing, stretching, reading)
• Cultivate hobbies
• Connect with nature

Think of these like the rate at which you release pressure from the balloon.

When you maximize these, you can handle more hot air coming in.

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In this episode, we discuss how metcons are characterized by severe and extreme intensity exercise that is often intermittent in the context of each task, but continuous in the context of the workout.

We cover:

• the fatigue mechanisms of severe intensity exercise
• the fatigue mechanisms of extreme intensity exercise
• why severe vs. extreme intensity matters
• which movements are severe intensity and which ones are extreme
  • Weightlifting and % of 1RM
  • Gymnastics and movement selection
  • Monostructural modalities and pace
• a discussion of continuous vs. intermittent exercise and how metcons defy these labels

Resources:

[1] Exercise intensity domains and phase transitions: the power-duration relationship

​https://drmarkburnley.wordpress.com/2020/08/31/exercise-intensity-domains-and-phase-transitions-the-power-duration-relationship/​​​

[2] Exercise tolerance through severe and extreme intensity domains

​https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6397101/​

[3] Prediction of Exercise Tolerance in the Severe and Extreme Intensity Domains by a Critical Power Model

​https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10694707/​

[4] Assessment of Cardiorespiratory and Metabolic Contributions in an Extreme Intensity CrossFit® Benchmark Workout

​https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10819656/​

[5] Effect of the Fran CrossFit Workout on Oxygen Uptake Kinetics, Energetics, and Postexercise Muscle Function in Trained CrossFitters

​https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38194958/​

[6] 2025 CrossFit Games Leaderboard

​https://games.crossfit.com/leaderboard/finals/2025?final=245&division=1&sort=3