Paul B. Weber

Protein 1.6g/kg minimum
Fat .7g/kg minimum

There’s lots of freedom above the minimums.

Just remember it’s much more difficult (for digestion and motility) to eat 4,000 calories a day on very high fat or very high protein diets.

It’s much easier to fuel high training loads when you’re getting the majority of your calories from carbs.

Carbs
3-4g/kg minimum
4-6g/kg moderate
6-10g/kg daily conditioning/double sessions

These are the first things I look at when I assess whether or not someone’s depleted.

There will always be some interference when you train for hybrid fitness sports.

The goal isn’t to eliminate it but to minimize it.

One best practice is to take a low day after an intense conditioning session.

The 24-48 hours after is when you’re depleted. While it’s ok to train somewhat depleted, ideally the legs are full before you train them again with intensity (whether it’s a strength session or another intense conditioning session).

This is one of the reasons a high-low model is a best practice in endurance sport.

You can train the upper body in the day or two after intense conditioning with less interference than if you were to train depleted legs.

The 24-48 hour timeline also assumes adequate carbohydrate intake (often 6-10 g/kg in hybrid fitness competitors).

Performances in fitness sport, like all sports, seem to continually improve due to professionalization and specialization.

The ecosystem of fitness sport has matured. Not only has it attracted international talent, but the class of pros has expanded.

There is still a chasm between the professional class and the challengers, and all the resources get consolidated at the very top, but all professional sports work this way.

More financial resources for the pros means more time, more focus on training, eating and sleeping, freedom from some of the financial and work stress outside of training, and opportunities to hire specialists (coach, nutritionist, body worker, etc.).

Here’s how specialization has improved performance.

The early 2010s felt like a new frontier. CrossFit felt like the cutting edge of fitness and human performance. The Games featured long endurance events and a softball throw.

Since then, the demands of the sport have narrowed. Competition revolves around three disciplines: weightlifting, gymnastics and traditional endurance modalities. The length of the events and the workload found its peak (with the CrossFit Games in 2020) and since then has condensed.

While there’s an occasional curveball, the community has come to more of an agreement on our understanding of the sport.

As our understanding of the sport gets more clear, coaching and training evolves to implement that understanding.

15 years ago, training was local, driven by affiliates. Remote coaching and training camps existed but they were still getting traction.

Now, virtually all competitors work with either a camp or a coach.

Then there’s the young talent. With the introduction of the Teen Games in 2015, athletes start fitness sport younger.

While it has its pros and cons (about 34% of past teen athletes continued to compete in the Open five years later) early specialization can benefit the few who survive.

As far as the future goes, I think performance gains will inevitably slow like they do in all sports, but we certainly haven’t exhausted all possibilities.

I used to think some athletes could completely eliminate aerobic training in the off-season.

Now I think in most cases that’s a mistake.

If you go full bodybuilding, powerbuilding, strongman, supertotal, etc then your training load is too low.

The gap between that training load and the training load you need to excel at a multiday comp gets too wide.

Multiday comps are a lot of work - now I keep that workload in mind at all times of the year.

Usually for athletes who need to get a lot stronger in the off-season, I’ll encourage them toward a separate session of Zone 2 most days of the week.

This preserves some cardiorespiratory fitness, keeps you in the habit of multiple bouts of work in a day, keeps your meal frequency up, all of which you need in-season.

10-15% for males
13.5-18% for females

These are adapted from a profiling study “Physical and Physiological Characteristics of Elite CrossFit Athletes” by and colleagues. They also line up with what I see clinically.

Think of these ranges like a landmark. There will be more people in the ranges than outliers.

If you notice persistent hormonal imbalance, slow recovery, frequent injuries or infections, or reduced performance AND you’ve been leaner than this for months with a high training load - look at your energy balance. You probably need more food.

Above these ranges, the gymnastics is tougher than it needs to be.

These ranges allow most people to stay healthy while training a lot. And you’re prepared to perform across the demands of the sport.

My framework for deciding training priorities:

1. Train what you’ve trained the least.

2. Train what you’re naturally the worst at.

3. Train what you respond the least to.

Frequency is a bottleneck for training load.

I’ve walked many competitors through this.

At first, when I ask a competitor what they’ve tried to address their weakness, they tell me how much volume they do - in one session.

But when I ask how often they train it, I get similar answers.

Usually the athlete who trains more frequently, trains more.

Anyone can go hard or do a lot in one session.

I’m more interested in how much you train it over a week than what you can do in a couple hours.

Stress inhibits recovery.

“Am I overtraining?”

The question I ask my clients: “Can you tolerate it?”

Can you tolerate some disrupted sleep? Can you tolerate some GI distress? Some joint pain? Are you still getting your calories in? Are you still getting your training done?

This is not to say that if you aren’t experiencing these things, you’re not prepping appropriately.

But I think it’s helpful for athletes to experience some health degradation during prep at least once.

Once you’ve experienced it, you know what it feels like just before it affects your training - you learn when it’s time to pull out (reduce training, restore the load-recovery balance, then continue prep).

Meeting your energy needs is essential to staying healthy when training load is high.

I was having a conversation with a client who has a Hyrox in six weeks, his training load and calories are high.

Especially when food is high, keeping food volume and food residue low helps preserve digestion and motility.

Here are some practical ways to do that:

Grains - lean into hot cereals.

Protein - count trace proteins, lean into fish and protein powder, which break down quicker.

Fruit - use fruit juices, smoothies and purees.

Vegetables - cook them down, puree/smoothie or they can be minimal for a time.

I told him it’s ok if health degrades a bit until the race as long as you can tolerate symptoms and stay consistent with training.

We also plan to take downtime on training and calories after the race. It helps to know you have a plan and won’t be in prep forever.

When your training load is high, you need the carbs in order to stay healthy. So you’re supporting your health both in prep and in the reset afterward.