In fact, I think they won that event because they have better gymnastics. The fact that Murph is a running workout and bodyweight exercises, with a vest, but gymnastics at the end of the day, I think they won by having a better weight-control relationship and body balance.
direct sunlight even afternoon feels HOT vs shade and I agree would have definitely affected Matt I bet especially with a shirt and vest on @@hillerfit. Maybe would have made for a close race if both had shade or vice versa
Positions in the shade were chosen by those who arrived before the first 1-mile run. Mat was on the shade in the first few rounds, if I'm not mistaken On 2015, BKG won the same event and he is tall, so your argument is not correct.
I trained so many days in the garage in the Phoenix heat and did hundreds of 400m runs and 800m runs in the direct sunlight in temperatures up to 116+. I cannot tell you how easy these workouts in 60-70 degrees feel.
Outside conditions absolutely impact performance, and it varies from athlete to athlete. I asked J Grubb this question before the Games season because he prefers to train outdoors in the elements. I had a similar experience in 2020 while competing at WZA. Coming from a freezing environment (single-digit temp) to a hot 90-degree climate crushed my performance. I should have traveled down two weeks early to help my body acclimate to the difference in temperature.
I’m gonna watch the rest of this video but I made it to five minutes and 12 seconds in and I’ve already found the glaring mistake in your hypothesis. The purpose of Crossfit , especially the Glassman form, is to be ready for the unknown and the unknowable so the fact that this one variable heat has been consistently known and athletes come unprepared reminds me of when I ran a half marathon, and there were people sucking oxygen from the paramedic because they didn’t prepare to run 13.1 miles . Also, the correlation you’re making between sitting and standing at apparently room temperature, and in a sauna, do not line up either because they are not opposites they are just different. You need to have one in a freezer to make a comparable observation. Otherwise you’re just illustrating how a body cools down by raising the heart rate to carry the heat away in the blood and bring it to the surface of the skin to be evaporated off as sweat. And this is much more like a benchmark workout like Fran, where some variables remain constant so you can see who will rise above in spite of the elevated temperature. Also, adding in that because the CrossFit games like all sports are for entertainment, they could pre-pick the winner, and that would still be legal.
Nice, I had no idea heat could have such an impact on heart rate! It would be really cool to see how much a hot outdoor temperature affects the heart rate too (because while Madison was hot this year, I don’t think it was 175 degrees). I’m going to have to go googling now and see if anybody has done a study like this before… anyways nice video, this was interesting for sure!
I think per the methodology, this make sense... If we are looking for "constantly varied" then it would be interesting for this to be applied to things like the environment, the programming, etc.. I remember Boston was in the running at one point as a potential venue location, and I was thinking how cool it would be to have "winter" or just events in a cold environment. I've always also wondered why there wasn't a programming "board" or committee for the Games - with specialists from our industry (CrossFit) helping to balance programming... instead of having one person program a majority of events...
Go back and watch the old programming lectures with Dave Castro. He talks about varying training environment, including temperature, altitude, precipitation, etc. It certainly doesn’t have as great of an impact as load, reps, complexity of movement, but it’s not a completely new idea.
I like this Hiller, I would definitely watch more experiment videos. There's so much bullshit in this fitness realm and there is also so much obvious stuff that people refuse to look at or talk about. Even if you aren't 100% right, lets get people talking about more of these things! 🦇
With this same logic, all professional sporting events are rigged to some capacity. Not just Crossfit. When swimming competitively, it has been shown that the fastest lanes are in the middle of the pool. They place the fastest seeds in the middle and the slower on the outside. This doesn't mean it's rigged. It requires strategy. Diggin' real deep on this. Home field advantage is within all modalities. If you are a professional athlete and the championships are in hot environments... go train in that environment.
We're going to find out real quick for the 2024 games. Texas heat is not Wisconsin or even California heat.. even Tennessee summer is not quite the same. If they don't come down here and acclimate beforehand it's going to be Kara -Murph times..a bunch. Arielle will do great though.
I'm a runner and there is actually a mathematic formula to calculate your pace for each degree over 20 degrees, so yes it's normal to run a couple of second ''slower'' hotter the weather
Except that Canadian athletes such as Medeiros, Vellner, and Fikowski have all done very well at the Games, and if you’re going to argue they would have won if the temperature was lower, then how do you explain Froning and Fraser dominating competitions local to their area, such as the Open or Regionals when they still existed?
They also have stated coming to the US a month before the Games after the year Annie got sick from the heat (she said that she had no control of herb body)
I think TTT had a great podcast on training in heat this past summer, if I remember it’s hard to recover in the heat because you can’t get rid of CO2 efficiently. I train at home exclusively now and this summer was so hard, it felt like my fitness was suffering but as soon as it cooled off a bit and humidity dropped I felt fitter. Anyways, it would be so interesting to test athletes in a similar way, would the leaderboard be the same if games were held in cold weather.
One point that stood out to me from TTT was that heat also redirects blood flow away from the muscles into the skin to try and release that heat, meaning that your muscles physically don’t get as much oxygen in hot workouts
competing as a master this year at the games - the temperature clocked from that turf was a blistering 140 degrees in the afternoon, doing burpees on the turf - your hands literally almost burned - then rowing that close to the ground - it takes everything thing out of you - Not to mention that the Wall ball is just sitting there in direct sun light- on the hot turff - by the time you pick the Ball up it burns your hand :-) early monring heats the turf was around 98 degrees
Great video. Totally correct about what heat and humidity can do to some athletes. I've competed in power lifting 30 times internationally. In many countries they had no air conditioning and the humidity was alway WAAAY higher than what I have in Colorado. In addition, going from living at altitude to compete at sea level can also wreck havoc with the bodies heating and cooling system. I could never compete as well in n on-air conditioned venues in hot and humid countries as I did in air conditioning. There are plenty of studies out there to support you.
This is badass Hiller, I want to do something similar with the "CoolMit" and do let's say 5 rounds of Cindy then 2min break and repeat for 3 rounds and then repeat a week later same day without.
Wait until they get to Ft. Worth in August! I love that town, but doing an outdoor event there after 9am in early August is total madness. 1 out of 5 years you might get lucky and get a cloudy/rainy week and have temps in the mid-high 90’s. Its gonna be WILD.
The 2 highest placing male competitors at the last game were Canadians. The top female competitor at the Games and at the Rogue invitational is from Hungary. Doesn't that just blow your theory out of the water?
Great points Andrew! 🙌🏻 I’m pretty sure there are many cyclists who do training sessions in a sauna (or sauna like environment) to train for certain races like Kona. However, I’ve never heard of CrossFitters doing the same (unless they live in a place that gets extremely hot during the summers).
I dont know. I dont see this as a problem. In football, the weather is another element that must be taken into consideration when competing. It is interesting to see the strategies and the preparation. In Brazil´s 2014 World Cup, Germany won 7 1 against Brazil. They also won the Cup. How did they prepare themselves?
Nobody will ever win without speculation to if the workouts were done differently... short, long, hot, cold, cardio, strength....the paradox of crossfit....
I agree with you that heat tolerance plays a part in this but you are talking about people who are essentially pro athletes for their sport. J. Medieros is relatively new to the games as compared to say R. Froning. With that being said you would think Justin would have learned from looking at past games that doing some of his training in the heat might help. From a former distance runners standpoint(haven't been able to run in over 30 years), many elite runners will go to Colorado to train in an atmosphere where there is less oxygen. If you're a pro there is no excuse for not being physically prepared unless you are coming back from a major injury. Interesting topic though.
In your clip of Maderos doing the pig flip just in front of him is Sam Kwant who lives 3 hours north of Justin and it is consistently 10 degrees cooler than Vancouver. Sam also has struggled with the heat of the games, and has done a lot of heat training to combat it.
Wouldn't say it's "rigged," I would just say not enough thought has been put into testing fitness throughout various temperatures/environments. Although Andrew's points are all valid and scientifically sound, the overarching narrative of it being "rigged" is the only flaw imo.
It's no coincidence that the most dominant region that shows up to the games has always been the ones that train in the central east where it rarely gets below 40 degrees. I'm sure their natural climate acclamation helped the Argentinian team at the World Cup in Qatar.
You are right that heat can be an enormous factor. But for some strange reason, being able to handle the heat can be largely genetic...and not based on where a person lives. It's weird. I guess the 1984 Men's Olympic marathon...which was in Los Angeles and very hot...was a good example when an Irish fellow (John Treacy) was 2nd and an English man (Charles Spedding) was 3rd. They were both very fair skinned and native to cool climates. It seems you can train to adapt heat but it still can't overcome your genetic talents or limits.
I used to live in South Carolina and the summer sun definitely impacts performance. I would try running in the afternoon when it was 90+ degrees and could barely make it a mile before wanting to go home. At the same time I could run over 6 miles no problem at night or a cooler time of year.
I won't argue that heat affects performance just to be clear, however I completely disagree that because of that the games "have been rigged", athletes know what to expect and prepare as best as they can for it. It's not like Medeiros participated for the first time in Madison this year, what about the previous years that he won? Also I remember Mertens in the Sevan Podcast a few days before the games saying that he had been preparing/training in the heat because he knew Madison was hot and he was getting ready for it. But again, it'd be better if the competition wasn't under so much heat, for sure, but it doesn't mean it's rigged just because the competition happens in a place that is hot.
I think there is a point to this to an extent, but I would also say an exception is Annie Thorsdottir who lives in Iceland. Brent Fikowski and Patt Velner who both live in Canada and it ain’t a balmy vacation spot year round.
Good Video. Yes heat adaptive athletes would indeed have an advantage. Seeing the field half sunlight and half shade would definitely have an impact on competitors.
Do you think CrossFitters would need a longer acclimatization period for some reason than say a football player? I have not read the acclimatization research in a few years but heat differences should be negated within an acclimatization process. Perhaps in this individual sport of fitness where every second and every rep matters we would see greater differences in performance because there are so many more data points than maybe a standard football game where we’d be analyzing rushing yards or similar. It’s an interesting thought. Is the week to two weeks athletes arrive at the Games prior to the Games enough to acclimatize them? Still doesn’t make up for the Sun vs shade thing of course!
Fraser is from Vermont (cold) Josh bridges San Diego (mild). And they did well at the games. Kara Saunders is from Brisbane Australia and had to get IV fluids. Fraser is quoted that competitions are about who can hold their heart rate at 180 the longest.
Devils advocate comment, before Tia, the most dominant women were from Iceland. I know they did not always train there, Annie mostly did, but Katrin trained in New England where it is butt-ass cold. I
Re the clock - I remember during the covid lockdown we did classes during zoom and never once did the online clock our coach used match up with my Apple Watch. Maybe 20-30seconds on a longer chipper workout
I’ll overlook the n=1 (“I’m an exercise scientist” 😂) but I have to point out a vital factor you completely ignore, one that plays a huge role in a body’s ability to cool itself: humidity. Ask yourself, how closely does a sauna approximate the ambient conditions of temp and humidity of the competitions you’re referring to?
I think that the claim that athletes have an advantage because of where they are located is not a solid claim. Using Froning as an example in Tennessee might support your claim. However, Mat Fraser is from the North East (where its freakin cold), Medeiros is from the North West (where its freakin cold), and Jeffrey Adler is from Canada (where its freakin cold). If anything, it seems like being from a cold climate would help using your argument.
I don't know the answer to this question ahead of time. Can you point to any studies that show people who live in hotter environments will have an advantage when competing in a hotter climate? If people train in a hot environment all the time could it be a disadvantage for day to day training because they can't push as hard in the summer? Perhaps when people train in a cooler environment they can train harder in day to day activities.
This is very true. Great example of how weather affects performance, look at the 2018 Boston marathon. A japonese dude that was obviously used to cold weather beat a bunch of guys from kenya (the people that always win marathons) because it was very cold. In a warmer day it would have been different
It would be cool if you used your knowledge and technology to explore the body’s effect to other movements, exercises and workout environments (similar to this video)
I think a better example, which still doesn’t prove your point is either the games or one of the regionals where Lucas, Parker, that huge lumberjack dude from Canada was there and there was a swimming event where you had to go across the pool do three muscle ups, and swim back And a bunch of the other dudes were like navy seals and surfers and lifeguards and even though Lucas is a very well-trained athlete, he was doggy paddling across the pool while these other people look like dolphins in the water. And the games have been so uninteresting for a lot of years. One thing that I always wish they did was have a highly weight based open and then have a completely lightweight, gymnastics, skill based games. Or vice versa. So you quickly weeded out all the people who cannot lift above a certain weight threshold then instantly flipped the script in the big show, and expect the strong men and Powerlifter like competitors to do highly skilled muscle ups and handstand walks. Because that would really show who was best at going from one extreme to the other. I also think of the event with Fisher where he was like a mile ahead of everybody else in the run and then, as soon as they got in the stadium and had to flip the pig or the log, he couldn’t even get the thing off the ground and the athlete caught up to him Flipped the log over end without issue.
Have you ever done a deep dive into methods to drive down lactic acid? Mat said he just gobbled beta alanine, but if it works as well as he claims then it’s the most underutilized supplement in all of sports. Edit: as a competitive swimmer, this is of supreme interest to me.
I have always considered that it is part of the sport of CrossFit that some have advantages over others due to the intrinsic differences, whether anatomical or adaptive. That is why I believe that although it is OBVIOUS that the heat will affect the athletes' performance because they are from warm places, it is a defect of the competition format where the games are held. That is why it is more than proven that the Crossfit Games headquarters must change location every year, to avoid there being advantages and disadvantages in these cases.
@@hillerfit The problem with moving the Crossfit Games headquarters to a cold place is the altitude, since a cold climate is usually more related to considerable or high altitudes, so it would ALSO represent a disadvantage but now GENERAL for all athletes who are used to it. to train at sea level or at very low altitude. A cold climate can benefit the control of body temperature but could also affect the amount of oxygen in the environment. Even so, I have my doubts. You can analyze what happens with other sports where the venue of the most important event changes in each edition. For example, in soccer, the most recent year was played in Qatar, a country with high temperatures and However, Argentina won, since the vast majority of its players play in Europe, so they are used to a cold climate and even snow, and that did not affect them being the world champions, in that case the advantage would be the countries where the players are used to hotweather and it was not like that. So although it plays an important role, I don't think it plays a DETERMINING role in the competition in general, because the entire event varies between scenarios, sometimes it is held in indoor environments and sometimes at night, where temperature stops playing a role. determining factor, so I don't think the temperature of the headquarters is as relevant as we think.
My work capacity is close to zero in the summer Texas heat. I redline during the freaking warmup. I try to adapt myself as much as possible, but I’m half Neanderthal…so 😂😂😂.
StrongFit has a lot of deep/wide knowledge regarding “flow state” with regards to heat and cold. Julien Pineau is a brilliant scientist and great human. Hope you can check out some of his work.
I would argue that not allowing yourself to strip down clothing and having the heat blasting in your gym/garage crushing yourself is just as mentally hard as cold therapy while being more difficult physically. If you're an athlete going to the games and not doing this you're an idiot. There's a reason why wrestlers are crazy fit physically and mentally, they spend a ton of time in the heat
I know it's been said already in the comments, but Adler's from MTL. I'm from MTL, trust me, it ain't hot from September through to late June. Fair point about Mat being in the sun though. I think there are specific cases where this kind of shit could come into play, like if some people get in a later heat and the temp goes up. I remember doing a marathon in Utah and if you didn't finish within the 3:30 range, after that, the late morning to mid day started COOKING everyone. Some very slow last few miles.
Heat has a massive impact on performance. In triathlons (specifically Kona) it has been dominated by smaller athletes. In the European championship (colder) larger athletes perform much better.
Sam Brigss, BJK....one comes from a cool, damp country. The other, lives literally on ice. Both nailed the Games, BJK is arguably the most consistent Games athlete?
100% climate impacts performance and love videos like this. Is that a C4 energy drink you have in the sauna at 1:30? Would that also be spiking your heart rate…
Andrew. Do you notice or ever thought of when you switch from nose breathing to mouth breathing in the heat? I find that around 125-130 is when I have to switch and then the heat hurts my throat when I’m mouth breathing and that’s when I leave the sauna. Haahaa.
Heat 100 percent changes the game for all athletes . Sure some are able to handle it but it can take the best athlete and humble him ! A great example is kona for ironman .. you can do an ironman pretty much anywhere else and get to Hawaii and maybe not even finish .. just because it’s sooo hot ! Heat also kills
1 variable. Debunked easily by champs and top 10s who don’t train in high heat areas. Also….Madison is not hot lol. Now test 20 more other variables. Good stuff Hiller
Didn't you drank something at the beginning of your Sauna session? see 1:24. if that has any sort of caffeine content, I'm sorry to say but you will have to repeat your test in order to make the exact comparison you were trying to make. Don't get me wrong, I believe the point you are trying to make will most probably still be there but..... apples to apples my friend!
Thank goodness for the Icelandic women. If not for them, pasty Brits would be whinging incessantly about the Games being rigged. C4, Schmee4. Someone's gonna notice you set the sauna to 175! Why not try this experiment at 110, the actual hot temps that Games athletes might compete in? How do you know that a big difference in HR at 175 degrees entails a smaller but performance-significant-difference at 110?
It’s rigged because they don’t know how to prepare nutritionally for the heat but you know this. Summers are brutal in SC and I prepare for Sept and Oct Ironman Race dates. I have still bonked before in heat even though I trained exclusively in heat. The last two where I had correct nutrition the week before the race and during the race that was customized to my fluid and salt loss I did not bonk. I would say a majority of these people train in the heat enough but don’t prepare correctly with what they are putting in their bodies. There are too many winners that poke holes in just one theory or the other. You have to do both and you have to do them well. Oh and you also have to be really fit…
Развлечения
Josh and Mat finished 1-2 at Murph because they are wee short men, not because of the shade.
100%
It wasn't them being up there, its that Mat was punished by the sun
In fact, I think they won that event because they have better gymnastics. The fact that Murph is a running workout and bodyweight exercises, with a vest, but gymnastics at the end of the day, I think they won by having a better weight-control relationship and body balance.
direct sunlight even afternoon feels HOT vs shade and I agree would have definitely affected Matt I bet especially with a shirt and vest on
@@hillerfit. Maybe would have made for a close race if both had shade or vice versa
Positions in the shade were chosen by those who arrived before the first 1-mile run. Mat was on the shade in the first few rounds, if I'm not mistaken
On 2015, BKG won the same event and he is tall, so your argument is not correct.
I trained so many days in the garage in the Phoenix heat and did hundreds of 400m runs and 800m runs in the direct sunlight in temperatures up to 116+. I cannot tell you how easy these workouts in 60-70 degrees feel.
All 5 AM’ers have the bro science to know this is absolute truth. All those community days when the sun is up kill me, Murph is the worst.
This is all bro science. Amen
Outside conditions absolutely impact performance, and it varies from athlete to athlete. I asked J Grubb this question before the Games season because he prefers to train outdoors in the elements. I had a similar experience in 2020 while competing at WZA. Coming from a freezing environment (single-digit temp) to a hot 90-degree climate crushed my performance. I should have traveled down two weeks early to help my body acclimate to the difference in temperature.
The last crossfit fit games had 2 Canadians and a Russian on the men's side and a Hurgerian and Canadian on the women's side. Not the warmest places.
The Russian has been in Mayhem for the past year+
The others? End to a means. Still a proper point
I’m gonna watch the rest of this video but I made it to five minutes and 12 seconds in and I’ve already found the glaring mistake in your hypothesis.
The purpose of Crossfit , especially the Glassman form, is to be ready for the unknown and the unknowable so the fact that this one variable heat has been consistently known and athletes come unprepared reminds me of when I ran a half marathon, and there were people sucking oxygen from the paramedic because they didn’t prepare to run 13.1 miles .
Also, the correlation you’re making between sitting and standing at apparently room temperature, and in a sauna, do not line up either because they are not opposites they are just different. You need to have one in a freezer to make a comparable observation. Otherwise you’re just illustrating how a body cools down by raising the heart rate to carry the heat away in the blood and bring it to the surface of the skin to be evaporated off as sweat.
And this is much more like a benchmark workout like Fran, where some variables remain constant so you can see who will rise above in spite of the elevated temperature.
Also, adding in that because the CrossFit games like all sports are for entertainment, they could pre-pick the winner, and that would still be legal.
Nice, I had no idea heat could have such an impact on heart rate! It would be really cool to see how much a hot outdoor temperature affects the heart rate too (because while Madison was hot this year, I don’t think it was 175 degrees). I’m going to have to go googling now and see if anybody has done a study like this before… anyways nice video, this was interesting for sure!
I aim for interesting! Thanks homie
Lol, it's why old people die in winter
I think per the methodology, this make sense... If we are looking for "constantly varied" then it would be interesting for this to be applied to things like the environment, the programming, etc.. I remember Boston was in the running at one point as a potential venue location, and I was thinking how cool it would be to have "winter" or just events in a cold environment.
I've always also wondered why there wasn't a programming "board" or committee for the Games - with specialists from our industry (CrossFit) helping to balance programming... instead of having one person program a majority of events...
Go back and watch the old programming lectures with Dave Castro. He talks about varying training environment, including temperature, altitude, precipitation, etc. It certainly doesn’t have as great of an impact as load, reps, complexity of movement, but it’s not a completely new idea.
I like this Hiller, I would definitely watch more experiment videos. There's so much bullshit in this fitness realm and there is also so much obvious stuff that people refuse to look at or talk about. Even if you aren't 100% right, lets get people talking about more of these things! 🦇
With this same logic, all professional sporting events are rigged to some capacity. Not just Crossfit. When swimming competitively, it has been shown that the fastest lanes are in the middle of the pool. They place the fastest seeds in the middle and the slower on the outside. This doesn't mean it's rigged. It requires strategy. Diggin' real deep on this. Home field advantage is within all modalities. If you are a professional athlete and the championships are in hot environments... go train in that environment.
Common sense tells why you the middle lanes are fastest……
then you need to go troll every single athletic sport and cry wolf for unfairness@@jakefelten
We're going to find out real quick for the 2024 games. Texas heat is not Wisconsin or even California heat.. even Tennessee summer is not quite the same. If they don't come down here and acclimate beforehand it's going to be Kara -Murph times..a bunch. Arielle will do great though.
Except they’ve said a majority of events will be indoors.
@elvis6190 yeah I should've finished watching before I commented 🙃 working, watching on one screen and commenting on my phone 🤣
I'm a runner and there is actually a mathematic formula to calculate your pace for each degree over 20 degrees, so yes it's normal to run a couple of second ''slower'' hotter the weather
Yep ! That’s why certain races are that much harder , well one of the elements . Heat can set up back a lot in a marathon .
Except that Canadian athletes such as Medeiros, Vellner, and Fikowski have all done very well at the Games, and if you’re going to argue they would have won if the temperature was lower, then how do you explain Froning and Fraser dominating competitions local to their area, such as the Open or Regionals when they still existed?
As for Justin. Idaho gets pretty hot.
The Iceland crew do heat training/acclimation in a sauna for this reason
Is there video on this?
They also have stated coming to the US a month before the Games after the year Annie got sick from the heat (she said that she had no control of herb body)
@@hillerfit I've seen it on Annie's IG in advance of the games - her, BK and Fredrik for sure.
The footage of Josh is epic, I bet he drew more people to CrossFit with those pictures than Mat did in his whole carrer 😂
Is mat a douche bag?
What about Katrin and Annie winning 4 titles from Iceland? Hard to get more cold then that
I'd be curious where they spent their time leading up to the games.
Boston and Tennessee if memory serves
I’m pretty sure they trained a lot in America
Katrin in America. Annie was still in Iceland. But BGK won Murph in 2015 and he trains almost exclusively in Iceland.
Didn't Annie end up in the hospital the year they did Murph in the middle of the day?
why do Canadians do so well??
I think TTT had a great podcast on training in heat this past summer, if I remember it’s hard to recover in the heat because you can’t get rid of CO2 efficiently. I train at home exclusively now and this summer was so hard, it felt like my fitness was suffering but as soon as it cooled off a bit and humidity dropped I felt fitter. Anyways, it would be so interesting to test athletes in a similar way, would the leaderboard be the same if games were held in cold weather.
One point that stood out to me from TTT was that heat also redirects blood flow away from the muscles into the skin to try and release that heat, meaning that your muscles physically don’t get as much oxygen in hot workouts
It’s hard to recover because you’re overheating.
competing as a master this year at the games - the temperature clocked from that turf was a blistering 140 degrees in the afternoon, doing burpees on the turf - your hands literally almost burned - then rowing that close to the ground - it takes everything thing out of you - Not to mention that the Wall ball is just sitting there in direct sun light- on the hot turff - by the time you pick the Ball up it burns your hand :-) early monring heats the turf was around 98 degrees
Great video. Totally correct about what heat and humidity can do to some athletes. I've competed in power lifting 30 times internationally. In many countries they had no air conditioning and the humidity was alway WAAAY higher than what I have in Colorado. In addition, going from living at altitude to compete at sea level can also wreck havoc with the bodies heating and cooling system. I could never compete as well in n on-air conditioned venues in hot and humid countries as I did in air conditioning. There are plenty of studies out there to support you.
The Aussies are definitely at a disadvantage coming from Winter.
This is badass Hiller, I want to do something similar with the "CoolMit" and do let's say 5 rounds of Cindy then 2min break and repeat for 3 rounds and then repeat a week later same day without.
Justin is from Boise. 100+ degree summers, 20 and below winters. Bad example
Wait until they get to Ft. Worth in August! I love that town, but doing an outdoor event there after 9am in early August is total madness. 1 out of 5 years you might get lucky and get a cloudy/rainy week and have temps in the mid-high 90’s. Its gonna be WILD.
The 2 highest placing male competitors at the last game were Canadians. The top female competitor at the Games and at the Rogue invitational is from Hungary.
Doesn't that just blow your theory out of the water?
Great points Andrew! 🙌🏻 I’m pretty sure there are many cyclists who do training sessions in a sauna (or sauna like environment) to train for certain races like Kona. However, I’ve never heard of CrossFitters doing the same (unless they live in a place that gets extremely hot during the summers).
I dont know. I dont see this as a problem. In football, the weather is another element that must be taken into consideration when competing. It is interesting to see the strategies and the preparation. In Brazil´s 2014 World Cup, Germany won 7 1 against Brazil. They also won the Cup. How did they prepare themselves?
CrossFit needs more videos like this
I can fix that
Nobody will ever win without speculation to if the workouts were done differently... short, long, hot, cold, cardio, strength....the paradox of crossfit....
I agree with you that heat tolerance plays a part in this but you are talking about people who are essentially pro athletes for their sport. J. Medieros is relatively new to the games as compared to say R. Froning. With that being said you would think Justin would have learned from looking at past games that doing some of his training in the heat might help. From a former distance runners standpoint(haven't been able to run in over 30 years), many elite runners will go to Colorado to train in an atmosphere where there is less oxygen. If you're a pro there is no excuse for not being physically prepared unless you are coming back from a major injury. Interesting topic though.
In your clip of Maderos doing the pig flip just in front of him is Sam Kwant who lives 3 hours north of Justin and it is consistently 10 degrees cooler than Vancouver. Sam also has struggled with the heat of the games, and has done a lot of heat training to combat it.
Wouldn't say it's "rigged," I would just say not enough thought has been put into testing fitness throughout various temperatures/environments. Although Andrew's points are all valid and scientifically sound, the overarching narrative of it being "rigged" is the only flaw imo.
It's no coincidence that the most dominant region that shows up to the games has always been the ones that train in the central east where it rarely gets below 40 degrees. I'm sure their natural climate acclamation helped the Argentinian team at the World Cup in Qatar.
Arielle commented that the heat didn’t affect her as much as others appear to have been cause she lives in Texas on the surface of the sun.
You are right that heat can be an enormous factor. But for some strange reason, being able to handle the heat can be largely genetic...and not based on where a person lives. It's weird. I guess the 1984 Men's Olympic marathon...which was in Los Angeles and very hot...was a good example when an Irish fellow (John Treacy) was 2nd and an English man (Charles Spedding) was 3rd. They were both very fair skinned and native to cool climates. It seems you can train to adapt heat but it still can't overcome your genetic talents or limits.
I used to live in South Carolina and the summer sun definitely impacts performance. I would try running in the afternoon when it was 90+ degrees and could barely make it a mile before wanting to go home. At the same time I could run over 6 miles no problem at night or a cooler time of year.
I won't argue that heat affects performance just to be clear, however I completely disagree that because of that the games "have been rigged", athletes know what to expect and prepare as best as they can for it. It's not like Medeiros participated for the first time in Madison this year, what about the previous years that he won?
Also I remember Mertens in the Sevan Podcast a few days before the games saying that he had been preparing/training in the heat because he knew Madison was hot and he was getting ready for it.
But again, it'd be better if the competition wasn't under so much heat, for sure, but it doesn't mean it's rigged just because the competition happens in a place that is hot.
I think there is a point to this to an extent, but I would also say an exception is Annie Thorsdottir who lives in Iceland. Brent Fikowski and Patt Velner who both live in Canada and it ain’t a balmy vacation spot year round.
Annie was torn up one year in the heat during murph so maybe she got lucky other times but the heat decimated her
Great content Andrew thinking out of the box, I wonder what Justin’s reaction will be to this scientific insight good work 💥
Paul🏴
I just wonder if it played into it, or if he had thought of it
@@hillerfit I sent him a message to look at it let’s see if he responds 😊👍🏽
So, you're saying my affiliate should turn on the heating this winter?
Just in case
what kind of sauna did you get and do you like it?
I’ve always argued that northern hemisphere athletes have an advantage over southern hemisphere / equatorial atheletes during the Open…..
Good Video. Yes heat adaptive athletes would indeed have an advantage. Seeing the field half sunlight and half shade would definitely have an impact on competitors.
Do you think CrossFitters would need a longer acclimatization period for some reason than say a football player? I have not read the acclimatization research in a few years but heat differences should be negated within an acclimatization process. Perhaps in this individual sport of fitness where every second and every rep matters we would see greater differences in performance because there are so many more data points than maybe a standard football game where we’d be analyzing rushing yards or similar. It’s an interesting thought. Is the week to two weeks athletes arrive at the Games prior to the Games enough to acclimatize them? Still doesn’t make up for the Sun vs shade thing of course!
Fraser is from Vermont (cold) Josh bridges San Diego (mild). And they did well at the games. Kara Saunders is from Brisbane Australia and had to get IV fluids.
Fraser is quoted that competitions are about who can hold their heart rate at 180 the longest.
Devils advocate comment, before Tia, the most dominant women were from Iceland. I know they did not always train there, Annie mostly did, but Katrin trained in New England where it is butt-ass cold. I
Yeah Katrin trained in Boston and then Vermont with Mat Fraser most recently. 🤷🏽♀️
What about when in Madison, it was cold and rainy. 2018? Obstacle course? 3:48
Vancouver, WA is across the river from Portland, OR and is essential a suburb.
They had equal opportunity to pick their own spot on the rig. Just had to run fast to get there. Not rigged
Also kinda bummed out that you didn't hit us with IT DOESN'T MATTER!!! @14min mark 😭
I couldn't put clips in! It would mess with the time lol
Justin is from California but hasn’t trained in our crazy California heat in years.
Re the clock - I remember during the covid lockdown we did classes during zoom and never once did the online clock our coach used match up with my Apple Watch. Maybe 20-30seconds on a longer chipper workout
I've seen interesting comments about the NBA timing where they go from 1:00 to 00:60 to 00:59... They added a 1s to the clock...
I’ll overlook the n=1 (“I’m an exercise scientist” 😂) but I have to point out a vital factor you completely ignore, one that plays a huge role in a body’s ability to cool itself: humidity. Ask yourself, how closely does a sauna approximate the ambient conditions of temp and humidity of the competitions you’re referring to?
I think that the claim that athletes have an advantage because of where they are located is not a solid claim. Using Froning as an example in Tennessee might support your claim. However, Mat Fraser is from the North East (where its freakin cold), Medeiros is from the North West (where its freakin cold), and Jeffrey Adler is from Canada (where its freakin cold). If anything, it seems like being from a cold climate would help using your argument.
I don't know the answer to this question ahead of time. Can you point to any studies that show people who live in hotter environments will have an advantage when competing in a hotter climate? If people train in a hot environment all the time could it be a disadvantage for day to day training because they can't push as hard in the summer? Perhaps when people train in a cooler environment they can train harder in day to day activities.
This is very true. Great example of how weather affects performance, look at the 2018 Boston marathon. A japonese dude that was obviously used to cold weather beat a bunch of guys from kenya (the people that always win marathons) because it was very cold. In a warmer day it would have been different
My zone is the best HR monitor out!! Trying to get Sevan and his boys on board with it!!
They would love it!!
Heat training for ultra running is extremely common same with triathletes….cf should follow suit
Yeah, but 175 degrees is a whole lot more stressful than 90 or even 105.
It would be cool if you used your knowledge and technology to explore the body’s effect to other movements, exercises and workout environments (similar to this video)
So point is i need to start doing my workouts in a sauna to get more fitter!
I think a better example, which still doesn’t prove your point is either the games or one of the regionals where Lucas, Parker, that huge lumberjack dude from Canada was there and there was a swimming event where you had to go across the pool do three muscle ups, and swim back And a bunch of the other dudes were like navy seals and surfers and lifeguards and even though Lucas is a very well-trained athlete, he was doggy paddling across the pool while these other people look like dolphins in the water.
And the games have been so uninteresting for a lot of years. One thing that I always wish they did was have a highly weight based open and then have a completely lightweight, gymnastics, skill based games. Or vice versa.
So you quickly weeded out all the people who cannot lift above a certain weight threshold then instantly flipped the script in the big show, and expect the strong men and Powerlifter like competitors to do highly skilled muscle ups and handstand walks.
Because that would really show who was best at going from one extreme to the other.
I also think of the event with Fisher where he was like a mile ahead of everybody else in the run and then, as soon as they got in the stadium and had to flip the pig or the log, he couldn’t even get the thing off the ground and the athlete caught up to him Flipped the log over end without issue.
I feel like you re coaching me Hiller 😂. I need more CF.
All about the clock… right @clock? 😂
Have you ever done a deep dive into methods to drive down lactic acid? Mat said he just gobbled beta alanine, but if it works as well as he claims then it’s the most underutilized supplement in all of sports.
Edit: as a competitive swimmer, this is of supreme interest to me.
I have always considered that it is part of the sport of CrossFit that some have advantages over others due to the intrinsic differences, whether anatomical or adaptive.
That is why I believe that although it is OBVIOUS that the heat will affect the athletes' performance because they are from warm places, it is a defect of the competition format where the games are held.
That is why it is more than proven that the Crossfit Games headquarters must change location every year, to avoid there being advantages and disadvantages in these cases.
AND! Change it to a cold location
@@hillerfit The problem with moving the Crossfit Games headquarters to a cold place is the altitude, since a cold climate is usually more related to considerable or high altitudes, so it would ALSO represent a disadvantage but now GENERAL for all athletes who are used to it. to train at sea level or at very low altitude. A cold climate can benefit the control of body temperature but could also affect the amount of oxygen in the environment.
Even so, I have my doubts. You can analyze what happens with other sports where the venue of the most important event changes in each edition. For example, in soccer, the most recent year was played in Qatar, a country with high temperatures and However, Argentina won, since the vast majority of its players play in Europe, so they are used to a cold climate and even snow, and that did not affect them being the world champions, in that case the advantage would be the countries where the players are used to hotweather and it was not like that.
So although it plays an important role, I don't think it plays a DETERMINING role in the competition in general, because the entire event varies between scenarios, sometimes it is held in indoor environments and sometimes at night, where temperature stops playing a role. determining factor, so I don't think the temperature of the headquarters is as relevant as we think.
The 6 time champ is from where now? Oh, that's right, Australia
My work capacity is close to zero in the summer Texas heat. I redline during the freaking warmup. I try to adapt myself as much as possible, but I’m half Neanderthal…so 😂😂😂.
StrongFit has a lot of deep/wide knowledge regarding “flow state” with regards to heat and cold. Julien Pineau is a brilliant scientist and great human. Hope you can check out some of his work.
I would argue that not allowing yourself to strip down clothing and having the heat blasting in your gym/garage crushing yourself is just as mentally hard as cold therapy while being more difficult physically. If you're an athlete going to the games and not doing this you're an idiot. There's a reason why wrestlers are crazy fit physically and mentally, they spend a ton of time in the heat
I know it's been said already in the comments, but Adler's from MTL. I'm from MTL, trust me, it ain't hot from September through to late June. Fair point about Mat being in the sun though. I think there are specific cases where this kind of shit could come into play, like if some people get in a later heat and the temp goes up. I remember doing a marathon in Utah and if you didn't finish within the 3:30 range, after that, the late morning to mid day started COOKING everyone. Some very slow last few miles.
Heat has a massive impact on performance. In triathlons (specifically Kona) it has been dominated by smaller athletes. In the European championship (colder) larger athletes perform much better.
Sam Brigss, BJK....one comes from a cool, damp country. The other, lives literally on ice. Both nailed the Games, BJK is arguably the most consistent Games athlete?
Annie's team came to our gym in Michigan to train n get acclimated before the 2022 games.
100% climate impacts performance and love videos like this. Is that a C4 energy drink you have in the sauna at 1:30? Would that also be spiking your heart rate…
Yeah, definitely don’t have any events when it’s 175 degrees.
Wait until he learns about impact of performance at different elevations!
Andrew. Do you notice or ever thought of when you switch from nose breathing to mouth breathing in the heat? I find that around 125-130 is when I have to switch and then the heat hurts my throat when I’m mouth breathing and that’s when I leave the sauna. Haahaa.
wait for Texas in August baby!
Dave has said it's mostly indoors!
12:06 Josh was in the shade Mat was in the sun.
That Dave Castro hat…what a troll 😅
I like glassmans def of fitness. I watched alot of zombie movies. Fitness is key
Dumb question here... did Justin train in the heat leading up to the 2 CF Games where he won and not train in the heat this past Games??
Heat 100 percent changes the game for all athletes . Sure some are able to handle it but it can take the best athlete and humble him ! A great example is kona for ironman .. you can do an ironman pretty much anywhere else and get to Hawaii and maybe not even finish .. just because it’s sooo hot ! Heat also kills
Is the TDC hat on purpose?!🤔
You need a apple watch Hiller, its pretty accurate
1 variable. Debunked easily by champs and top 10s who don’t train in high heat areas. Also….Madison is not hot lol. Now test 20 more other variables. Good stuff Hiller
Well that was quick! 🦇
🦇
Didn't you drank something at the beginning of your Sauna session? see 1:24. if that has any sort of caffeine content, I'm sorry to say but you will have to repeat your test in order to make the exact comparison you were trying to make. Don't get me wrong, I believe the point you are trying to make will most probably still be there but..... apples to apples my friend!
Damn. Not even 2,000 views so far. 11,000 shouldn't take that long to get
Interesting topic, thanks for more great content, oh and the click bait is 🔥
Love your take down vids dude but what’s wrong with wearing a T-shirt occasionally, could you be more CrossFit while you diss CrossFit
Thank goodness for the Icelandic women. If not for them, pasty Brits would be whinging incessantly about the Games being rigged.
C4, Schmee4. Someone's gonna notice you set the sauna to 175! Why not try this experiment at 110, the actual hot temps that Games athletes might compete in? How do you know that a big difference in HR at 175 degrees entails a smaller but performance-significant-difference at 110?
TDC hat a nice touch
I thought so too lol
Love the TDC hat...touche
So we are now out to prove the blindingly obvious
she blinded me with science and hit me with technology! -thomas dolby
It’s rigged because they don’t know how to prepare nutritionally for the heat but you know this. Summers are brutal in SC and I prepare for Sept and Oct Ironman Race dates. I have still bonked before in heat even though I trained exclusively in heat. The last two where I had correct nutrition the week before the race and during the race that was customized to my fluid and salt loss I did not bonk. I would say a majority of these people train in the heat enough but don’t prepare correctly with what they are putting in their bodies. There are too many winners that poke holes in just one theory or the other. You have to do both and you have to do them well. Oh and you also have to be really fit…
How is Madison Wisconsin a hot environment?
Have you been?