Mike Warkentin (00:02):
My favorite Jason Khalipa programming story is this: I’m doing the program for the CrossFit Games in 2009. It looks like that. We’re listing stats. I can’t find Jay’s Grace time anywhere. So, I email him, and I say, “Jay, what’s your grace PR?” His reply, “Give me a few minutes.” Within the hour, I got a reply: “I just did it. 143.” And that’s where that number comes from. Jay, do you remember that?
Jason Khalipa (00:28):
Do you know what’s funny about that? I have that book right now in my garage. My dad gave me this big box of books with all those catalogs, and I’ve been going through them, and I saw that exact one the other day. No, I remember getting emails from you back in the day, but I don’t remember—you know what? Now that you bring it up, yeah, I do.
Matt DellaValle (00:47):
What, did you just go out into the driveway and just get after it really quick?
Jason Khalipa (00:49):
Dude, that’s so funny. I mean, well, at that point in time, in 2008, 2009, I mean, I lived at the gym from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Mike Warkentin (00:59):
You were there. That’s where you got it. Yeah.
Jason Khalipa (01:00):
Yeah. All the time. And so, it wasn’t odd for me to go out there and just be like, “Oh, well give me a minute.” I’m going to go throw around a barbell.
Mike Warkentin (01:06):
And you only needed two, literally. So, that’s how it went. But that was, I thought that was hilarious. And I mean, that was the definition back then of unknown and unknowable, ready for anything, cost variation. Right. As functional fitness has evolved, so has the programming, and we’re going to geek out on it today, listeners, with two of the best from NCFIT. We’ve got founder, CEO, CrossFit Games Champ, Jason Khalipa, and then we’ve got MDV, he is NCFIT’s Chief Fitness Officer, MDV. Do you want to give away your real name?,
Matt DellaValle (01:31):
Yeah, Matt DellaValle. Those are just my initials. I wish it stood for something that was a little bit more exciting than that, but those are just my initials. And yeah, I’m Chief Fitness Officer here at NCFIT. Been with the company for about seven or eight years now, and Jason and I have a blast bringing a lot of this stuff to life. Excited to talk today.
Mike Warkentin (01:46):
Yeah. And we’ve had you guys out at the Two-Brain Summit for the last few years, and it’s been a blast as you talk to gym owners. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m Mike Warkentin. Please hit “subscribe” wherever you’re watching or listening. Let’s get on with the show. NCFIT has programming planned for affiliates across an entire year. It’s specifically designed for group classes to make your clients fitter. We’re going to dig into it to get today, and sneak peek: 2025 programming, they’ve already got things figured out. They’re going to give you a peek at that at the very end, so do not miss that. So, guys, here’s what we’re going to dig into first: results. A lot of people think their programming is great. They never evaluate results to confirm that. So how do you guys know that your client is getting, or your programming is getting the desired results, and how can gym owners do the same thing? What do you got?
Matt DellaValle (02:24):
Yeah, well, results are obviously something that in the fitness business that you have to deliver for your athletes, right? If your athletes aren’t getting results, if they’re not having fun, if they’re not learning something new, they’re going to go elsewhere, especially in the business that we are in here. So, it really comes down to what is your desired result for your athletes? What is your vision for fitness? What are you doing these workouts for? What are you putting them through all of these different styles of workouts to ultimately get to? And at NCFIT, one of the things that we are really big believers in is that we want our athletes to live freely and fully outside of the gym. Obviously coming into the gym and continuing to move the needle forward on all of their major lifts, continuing to see their PRs improve, continuing to feel and look the way that they want to look from doing all of this type of fitness is hugely important.
Matt DellaValle (03:13):
But ultimately, we want these individuals to be able to express their fitness outside of the gym, to live freely and fully and never feel restricted because they can’t do something because their fitness level didn’t allow them to. So, in terms of what we do for our programming, we are a CrossFit organization. We’re a CrossFit affiliate. NCFIT is a CrossFit affiliate, and we provide CrossFit programming. Now we have our own take on that. And then just like everybody out there who’s programming CrossFit has their own take on it, we do employ constantly varied functional movements at a high intensity to bring about the results that we want to see. We do so in a really intentional manner, and we do so through a planned approach where we’re
looking at the entire year, the entire year, planned out well in advance of what we’re doing that day, for sure.
Matt DellaValle (03:58):
And then as we’re breaking it down, we go month to month. We have our focuses each month, and then we bring that down on a weekly basis and then a daily basis. But it all starts with this vision of how we want our athletes to experience fitness, and we want them to improve physically, mentally, emotionally, and live freely and fully outside of the gym. Part of this means that the athletes are continuing to show up. So, we’re looking at athlete check-ins. We’re looking to make sure that they come into the gym, that they’re not just continuing to be saddled by nagging injuries and that when they’re performing the workouts, that their workouts are generally improving over time, and of course, can they go out and do the things that they want to do? So those are the main factors for us in terms of determining results. We have planned benchmarks that we see throughout the year that the athletes can test and retest, and all of those, or most of those should be moving in the right direction if our programming between the benchmarks is doing what it should be doing.
Mike Warkentin (04:56):
Oh, that’s important. That’s a big one. Because a lot of those benchmarks, people don’t necessarily check those. Like gym owners, we expect our clients to track them, but we might not check them to see if our programming is actually moving those benchmarks.
Jason Khalipa (05:06):
And Mike, I just want to add in here, I do think for a gym owner listening to this, I just want to make sure that we clarify—at least this is my position on it—is that programming is an incredible tool, and I think early on in CrossFit, it was very much so like a staple of your gym or your individual athletes’ performance. Meaning how are they setting PRs? How are they doing this? How are they doing that? I think that’s an important factor. Obviously, you want your athletes to get stronger, fitter, faster, et cetera, but I would say probably even more important than that is how often are they showing up, and are they enjoying the workouts? Because if they’re not enjoying, if they’re not having a great experience, then they’re never going to reach their potential physically because you’re not going to retain them as an athlete.
Jason Khalipa (05:48):
So, I’d say one of the other things that we think about as an NCFIT programming organization is how fun are these workouts, and are they keeping our members coming back? Because a good sign of good programming is also a thriving business that generates revenue. And I think that’s a really important characteristic that we need to discuss, is that they’re not mutually exclusive. You don’t want a business that has the best programming in the world, but nobody wants to show up because you’re never going to have a sustainable business model. And you also don’t want a model that doesn’t align with your core values of helping people improve their fitness. You need to bridge those gaps to a program that is effective but also fun and something they want to show up the next day. Because otherwise you won’t get consistency, and you sure as hell can’t run a business.
Mike Warkentin (06:29):
Coop said that. What’s the best workout? And the answer is the one the client will do. And yeah, maybe squats would’ve been better than deadlifts that day or whatever. But let’s be real, if a client doesn’t do any workouts and never shows up, you failed, and your programming ultimately is a failure, right? Because the client has to show up.
Jason Khalipa (06:44):
A good example of that is, if I’m not mistaken, the 5K is the number one program workout on .com, or at least it was is; I don’t know if that’s still true. But programming a 5K by itself for an affiliate, I don’t find that to be an effective tool because I just don’t think you’re going to have many people showing up those days.
Mike Warkentin (07:03):
No one came to my gym.
Jason Khalipa (07:04):
Although it’s a very effective tool from like a .com, pure fitness, it’s great, it may not have its place in the affiliate because we need people to come in to get check-ins to build a relationship. Now can I show up? I mean MDV, you could speak more on this from a program perspective. I’m just using that as an example of making sure our workouts are bridging the gap.
Matt DellaValle (07:23):
Sure. And I think that we have a specific programming philosophy, and others might have a programming philosophy that they subscribe to. And having an a 5K run show up once a quarter for somebody who wants to have that as a community building event or wants to have that as something that they want all their members to do and experience and have that as a major goal for them. It’s just not on our necessary—it’s not on our radar as something that shows up that regularly. But for example, we did just program a 5K row, and then on the three-minute we had the athletes perform a number of burpees that they could accomplish in about 40 to 45 seconds, either 10, 12 or 15. So across that 20-minute time domain for the 5K, we’re adding this burpee kind of assignment for them, which mixes it up a little bit, but you stay in that same kind of time domain in the 20 to 30 minute range. So just an example of how we brought that to life.
Mike Warkentin (08:13):
Yeah, we did the same thing. We often would break up because people wouldn’t come for 5Ks and I thought, “Oh, should I just post ‘deadlift’ and then switch it on people?” What I started doing was putting some stuff in exactly like that. Like, “Oh, run one kilometer, do 10 deadlifts, run one kilometer.” And people were way more excited about that than they were about the 5K, except for the few people who wanted to run the 5K. So, I think you guys are exactly right where you’ve got to make it fun, and you have to get the results. So, when you guys look at your benchmarks, do you look at the entire list of stuff that comes in from across your gyms and say, “OK, we’re all moving in the right direction here with this block of programming?” Do you check that stuff out?
Matt DellaValle (08:46):
It’s very hard to elicit that much information from the gyms that we program for. It would be incredibly difficult to get that much information. We do survey our affiliates. We do look at our own gym and our own reception to the programming, and I think one of the things that makes us really unique is the fact that we are doing these workouts and using these tools in real time along with everybody else. And when we’re programming, we’re programming about three or four weeks in advance, which gives us enough buffer to look to see, “Hey, this is what’s coming down the pipeline,” so we’re not just looking at one workout a day and then programming the next day on a piece of paper. We’re three or four weeks in advance here, but that’s still enough timeframe for us to respond to feedback.
Matt DellaValle (09:29):
If we do start to see trends or we notice things, we can make our necessary adjustments. So, our primary mechanism is looking at these workouts from our own use in our gyms, and how are we utilizing them? How are our coaches coaching them? Are the timelines and all the warmups and all the teaching sections that we’re including with all of our workouts, are all of those things leveling up to what we want to see? And then of course, obviously on the athlete side of the equation, what’s the athlete’s response to the workout? We take that feedback really seriously. We discuss that on a weekly basis with our programming team, and that’s how we kind of look at the effectiveness or the response to the program.
Mike Warkentin (10:03):
Are you—so at that gym, are you guys doing it in advance of the public getting the workouts or in sync?
Matt DellaValle (10:08):
No, in sync, in sync. We do everything in sync. All of our workouts though are tested in advance by our coaching team. So, we provide a super detailed class plan that goes along with every single one of our NCFIT workouts, and that’s our core CrossFit program, the NCFIT workout. With that program, like I said, comes a fully detailed class plan from a coach who has tested the workout and a coach who’s going to go and then coach that workout. So, they have hundreds, if not thousands, of classes, which they’ve already coached. They’re writing that class plan, which is their take on what would be the best way to bring this class to life. Obviously, you could look at it 5,000 different ways, but they’re looking at it, they’re looking at the days that surround their workout, and they’re saying, “Hey, this is the best way that we think you should approach this workout from a coaching perspective.” They give a description of the stimulus, they give a teaching outline, they give all of their suggested substitutions for injuries, reps, loading, volume, and then we have a coaching video that highlights one major aspect or two major aspects of a movement or a particular piece of that workout that day that goes along with that workout as well.
Mike Warkentin (11:09):
Yeah, the implementation is hugely important, right? Because if you can’t—like if you get this great workout but your coaches can’t implement it, and you guys haven’t tested it, it’s very difficult.
Jason Khalipa (11:18):
One of the things we were going to talk about is: Should gym owners do their own programming, or should they outsource? And I think this is a good place to talk. Think about what Matt just said. OK, he said, “We have a team of coaches who are testing all the different workouts, who are then curating a session plan, and then we’re filming a video on that.” So, imagine if a gym owner listening, sitting there, is like, “Hey, I’m debating about programming, right? As a business, we need to do a better job of getting ourselves out of in the weeds, so we can focus on building the business, right?” And there’s a few ways you could do that as a gym learn. Most of them are going to be giving up some of your coaching hours, but surely your programming. It’s just such like—look, I believe that ours is the best hands down; however, no matter who you use, you should not be doing your own because it just does not scale.
Jason Khalipa (12:03):
You could utilize your time in such a more effective manner. If a gym owner listing right now was like, “Dude, I want to do my own programming because I know my community better than anybody else.” OK, fair enough. How many hours a week do you want to spend on curating that product? And they’re going to say, “Well, I’m going to spend three hours a week.” Well, it’s like, well, what kind of product are you giving your coaches to go out there on the floor? Because for three to five hours a week, you just cannot curate an appropriate, not only workout itself, but how about the warmup? And then on top of that, how do you give them guardrails in a session plan, a program? And so that’s where scaling becomes a big factor. For us, we have full-time teams that are building these out because we get scaled across multiple gyms, which is how we have people test workouts, session plans, videos, and then programming. It just doesn’t scale for singular gym owner, and I don’t see it ever doing so for them.
Mike Warkentin (12:49):
Conversely, those three hours, if that gym owner took those three hours, offloaded the programming and invested those in sales and marketing and basic techniques there, that scales big time fast. In three hours a week, you can make a measurable dent in your revenue by adding stuff and selling more. So that’s a really interesting trade. Matt, what do you got?
Matt DellaValle (13:07):
Yeah, I mean I have a little bit of a different perspective on this. I obviously think what we do is the absolute best. I think that we put out an amazing product. Jason named a lot of the reasons why we have something that I think a lot of gym owners would find very attractive. We have a full-time staff of coaches who not only go out there and coach these workouts but create highly detailed lesson plans that are your coaching development system going forward. So, if you’re looking at your own business right here, if you’re an affiliate owner, you’re going, “Man, I really love programming, but my coaches are asking about coaching development, and I don’t really know how to start that conversation. I don’t really know what to give them. I’m giving them some feedback here and there, but I don’t feel like it’s enough.”
Matt DellaValle (13:46):
Giving them this tool is constant continued education. They are reading essentially a learned document every single day about coaching, about the craft that they’re going out there to bring to life. So they are necessarily, if they’re putting in the few minutes that it takes to read and study and go out there and run a well-prepared class, and they’re doing that every single day, over the course of weeks, months, they are going to level up 100%. But my take on this, like I said, is just a little bit different in terms of, if you’re a gym owner out there who really loves programming, if this is your favorite thing that you do and you’re dedicating the time to it and you feel really good about your program and you want to continue to go out there and do this for your athletes, by all means continue to do that.
Matt DellaValle (14:30):
But what we have seen a lot of—we have seen a lot of scribbling down workouts on the back of a napkin, and we have seen a lot of, “Hey, I’m not really passionate about this anymore. Hey, it’s the last thing that I do on a Friday night. Hey, I don’t feel really great about the tools and the resources that I’m giving my coaches to go out there and run great classes. I don’t feel like my coaches are super prepared.” Then I think it’s time to really take a deep look in the mirror and go: Are you doing your business a disservice by not having something that’s a little bit more refined, a little bit more involved? But people who are focusing on this full time—and in that case, I do think what we do is the absolute best. Our tools and our resources are really unmatched when it comes to coaching development, and our workouts, like Jason said, fun is the number one priority for us in making sure our athletes are showing up. But are they having a great workout? Are they having fun and are they learning something? We’re looking at that every single time we’re putting something down on paper.
Mike Warkentin (15:20):
Yeah, so you’ve got huge points of leverage there. You’ve got the time point of leverage, Jay, where you’re saying like, “Hey, let us do it, and use the time to build your business.” Then you’ve got the leverage of developing your staff because you guys are putting together these incredible briefs and demos and everything and saying, “Here’s how you should run this class, and why. Here’s the stimulus. Here’s what we’re trying to do.” You’re really helping out with that. And then just as a gym owner, you might decide like, “This is not something that I want to invest my time in,” and it might just be easier for you to offload it and do something that you enjoy. If you do enjoy it, you certainly can, but you may not be doing it at the same level because, I mean, how many people are involved in your staff to get this stuff out? Like, do you have—you’ve got video teams. You’ve got demo teams. You’ve got how many people?
Matt DellaValle (15:59):
So we have seven full-time coaches or seven people who are dedicated to testing their workouts and writing their briefs every week. We have two additional full-time employees who are coaching managers or coaching developers within our NCFIT locations in Northern California. We obviously have Jason, myself, we have a videographer who comes in and helps film every single week and edits the videos, and then we have a team that’s dedicated to uploading the workouts into all the different integration systems that we have. And then obviously, we have other support staff out there who are helping guide the direction of what we’re doing and looking at whether or not we are still on target with our goals for what we want this service to be.
Mike Warkentin (16:39):
This is like a 12- to 20-person production, and if you’re doing it as a gym owner by yourself, that’s like—
Jason Khalipa (16:44):
It’s definitely a production, Mike. But I definitely, I just want to make one note here: If you’re a gym owner listening to this and you love programming, if you have a thriving business and you have the ability to program, like keep doing you, like MDV was saying, right? But if your business isn’t where you want it to be and you’re starting to ask questions on how to take it to the next level, a thing you’ve got to ask yourself is, “Just because I like to do something doesn’t mean it’s driving the most value for my business.” I think that’s a really important key concept because you chose to be a gym owner, you’re not choosing to be a programmer, and with that, you have roles and responsibilities that are associated with that. And there are a lot of things I like to do, but the business needs me to do certain things, and I need to make sure that I take care of those, and then I can do the things I like to do.
Jason Khalipa (17:30):
And there’s a fine balance there. And of course, it’s not so cut and dry. I’m just sharing with you guys, like, if you’re a business owner out there and you’re right on that cusp, you’re like, “Dude, I’m about to take off. But we just can’t quite get there,” it might be a better use of your time in a variety of ways, including programming. But there’s other things you probably could be thinking about is, “Am I doing this because I like to do it or am I doing this because it’s driving the most value for the business, and I’m uniquely qualified to do so?”
Mike Warkentin (17:52):
I told myself I was uniquely qualified to do so, but in reality, I was dodging getting better at sales. I should have spent that time on other aspects of the business, right? So, when I made that trade and offloaded programming, I started building the business, started working with Chris at Two-Brain, things changed quite a bit for me. So, it was a huge trade that I lived exactly what you’re talking about. Let’s talk about this one: programming hard for the sake of hard. And a lot of people I think at gyms feel real pressure to do this because they want to make it intense. They want to feel like the client’s had a great workout. They want to leave them sweating and vomiting out the door—maybe not vomiting, but you know what I’m saying; they put in the full effort. What’s happening with hard for the sake of hard? How do you guys stay away from that, and what should affiliate owners do?
Matt DellaValle (18:28):
Oh, this is an interesting conversation. We could spend a whole podcast on this topic because I think that there is some value for having workouts that are hard for the sake of being hard. Now, do I think that this should be every single day? Do I think that this should be the mainstay of your programming? Do I think that this should be the experience that athletes have more often than not? Definitely not. But there’s value in having workouts sometimes where your athletes go, “Whoa, that’s a little bit more than we normally see. That’s a little bit heavier than we normally see. That’s a little bit more volume than we normally see. That’s a little bit of a movement selection that’s a little bit more involved than we normally see.” And I do think that there’s room for that in programming on occasion because if you’re just constantly programming for what you have, you’re never going to get what you want.
Matt DellaValle (19:16):
And you do want your athletes reaching at times or striving at times for that next level. So just for an example, if there’s a day that gets programmed with a deadlift that’s well beyond what you normally see, it’s not just hard or heavy for the sake of being heavy. You’re putting it in there, hopefully, very intentionally to let your athletes know that, “Hey, there are levels to this game,” and maybe we’re not looking at the level of what a Games athlete might go or want to go for, but we are putting this out there that’s kind of right above where our top athletes are right there for them. That even they have to struggle for it—because that’s an important aspect of having your athletes, like I said, reaching and growing. If you’re constantly programming below that threshold, maybe they’re itching for something that gives them a little bit more of that challenge.
Matt DellaValle (20:07):
But just putting—and this is kind of one of my main axioms is programming. Just putting something down on paper to put it down on paper makes no sense, whether or not it’s easy for the sake of being easy or hard for the sake of being hard. And one of the things that I’m really proud of with NCFIT is that every single workout that goes down on paper is very intentional for us. And we’ve looked at that, like I said before, from a year standpoint, a month standpoint, a week standpoint, and we provide tools that I don’t think anybody else in the space is really looking at in terms of providing. We’ve, over the past few years, developed a system where we’re giving a little bit more information about the stimulus to the coaches and to the athletes and guiding them on what type of workout is this for us today.
Matt DellaValle (20:47):
And we have different labels. We have grind, heavy, effort, quality and sprint. And of those five workouts, all of our workouts are labeled one of those five. So right away, the athlete and the coach have an understanding of, “This is that type of workout, and it’s programmed like this for a reason.” And then we also assign an RPE based on that workout. RPE ranges from one to 10, one being the least intense and 10 being the highest rate of perceived exertion. We’re assigning that number along with the workout type, and that in concert with the coaching tools that we’re providing gives a tremendous amount of detail into the stimulus. So, you’re understanding what and why this is programmed, and that’s the most important thing. So, whether it’s hard for the sake of hard or easy for the sake of easy, it doesn’t really matter. You just have to have the intention behind what you’re doing to make it meaningful.
Jason Khalipa (21:37):
Yeah, Mike, what I was going to say to that is you’re never going to have a workout that’s hard for the sake of being hard if you’re educating and you’re having the coaching development that we do. You see, so—and I wrote this down: You’ll never have a hard workout for the sake of being hard if you do a great job of explaining to your coaches and your members the why and the intention behind it. Because if you can’t have the why and the intention, then you shouldn’t be having that type of workout, right? You shouldn’t just be putting stuff out there just to do it. Like I remember back in the day, for me, I would do Filthy Fifty twice in a row just to warm up for the rest of my session, and the intention of that was to build up volume because I was trying to get ready for the CrossFit Games.
Jason Khalipa (22:19):
That was the intention. It wasn’t just doing this for the sake of doing this; it was doing this because I was getting my body prepared for this massive amount of volume that we’re coming to. Now, that’s an extreme example, but I think that the key is through our session plan, through our development for our coaches, we explain the why, and we have these tools so that in a very short period of time when a member walks in the door, like MDV was saying, you have the type of workout and the RPE goal; a member knows instantly what that expectation is for that day.
Mike Warkentin (22:44):
Yeah. So, it’s not just random; it’s not a beat down because we’ve all done a little bit of that by accident back in the day. It’s telling them, “This is hard because it’s supposed to be hard because I want you to taste a little bit of this, aspiration, right? You’re going to try and get a little further the next time. We’re going to challenge you. You might not finish.” Maybe that’s the intention. But if you explain this stuff, it’s not the daily beat down, and people start to understand. I’m going to flip the question back for you, Matt. What’s a lower RPE? Like what are some of the lower RPEs that you’ll program in NCFIT programming?
Matt DellaValle (23:11):
Yeah, sometimes you’ll see an RPE six or an RPE seven. And when we’re looking at that, we typically have a few days that are RPE eight, nine or in the 10 range prior to that. So, if we are looking at a week, if we’ve got a Monday and a Tuesday workout that really are throttling down the intensity—maybe we have an RPE 10 sprint type of workout, which shorter time domain, very high power output type of workout typically, and you’re dropping the gas pedal there; you’re pushing the level of intensity very, very high there—perhaps the next day we have an RPE nine workout, but RPE nine, because it’s heavy, super heavy, we’re pulling from the ground now, very heavy that day, and we’re seeing a dose of volume there higher than the day before and now heavier than the day before.
Matt DellaValle (23:56):
Now this third day that’s coming up here, perhaps on that day we’re looking at an RPE six or an RPE seven type of workout where the time domain is going to expand on out. We’re going to have volume in there, but maybe we’re taking loading completely out of the equation. Maybe we’re doing odd object work in that day. Maybe we’re resetting the system a little bit with some longer mono structural type of work, multiple maybe cardio running machine type of work in that workout. And that would be something that now we’re looking at a sustained pace over the course of 30 minutes in that workout. So that would be an example of how we’re bringing a lower RPE workout to life that day.
Mike Warkentin (24:31):
Now how do you get people to—so what are the coaching notes that you’ll put for a workout like that? Because we all know coaching like Fran or Helen is super easy. You kind of just stand there and scream, “Pick up the bar,” right? Like there’s a little bit of stuff that you can do, but when someone’s doing a two-minute Fran, not a lot of room for coaching; it’s a bunch of screaming and going. How do you tell someone in a slower workout? How do you get your coaches to really move people through? Because I think the challenges are much greater. It’s not just crowd control and cheerleading. You’ve got some time to really make some changes in this athlete’s movement. What do you tell coaches in those workouts?
Matt DellaValle (24:59):
Those are great workouts to coach. You have a lot of opportunities for your athletes typically to help them figure out how to pace something like that. And I think that’s something in the space that not everybody is really great at figuring out how to pace long workouts. How are you looking at your pacing on the different cardio machines? How are you figuring out? How are you managing your breathing? What are you looking at in terms of the next object that you’re picking up? So that’s something that really usually comes to life in those longer workouts where we’re looking at, “OK, we have something that may be a little bit less complicated today or maybe a little bit longer time domain,” so we are going to focus a little bit more on pacing and efficiency on some of those mono structural cardio machines. But there’s also always a lot of meat on the bone for other types of movements.
Matt DellaValle (25:39):
And I think things like odd object work when you have either holds or carries or you have things in there that you’re doing single arm or unilateral type of work, the athletes need exposure to that prior, and typically, you’re giving that to them in like a really low intensity or non-weighted environment, and then as you get into the workout, you’re hopefully cleaning up the athlete’s movement a little bit more to make them more efficient as they go, right? So that’s always going to be the goal, and even in things like if in that workout you had a higher number of burpee box jumps, just for an example there, there’s always things in that movement as well. If you’re talking about 15 to 20 reps, how is your athlete now pacing that? How are they figuring out the cycle cycling of that movement?
Matt DellaValle (26:19):
So there’s a lot of meat on the bone, and that’s really where the class plans come into play for us, because in that class plan, the coach is going to highlight, “Hey, these are the movements that we suggest that you focus on today, and these are the things that you’re bringing to life.” And maybe it’s not always just a, “Hey, we’re going to teach a progression like this,” but, “We’re going to break down the burpee box jump for today, and we’re going to look at: What does it look like to get a sprawl back or a crawl back, versus what does it look like to step up versus jump up? How are you going to be most efficient in that number of reps today?”
Mike Warkentin (26:46):
Jay, have you got any tips on that for coaching less intense workouts?
Jason Khalipa (26:49):
I mean, my thing, Mike, is when I hear people say, “Oh, Helen or Fran are going to be easier,” and by the way, I’m not disagreeing; that’s a common theme in the industry. It’s just frustrating because we have come a long way from, “3, 2, 1, go,” and then just not talk. But we’re still not where we need to be. We’re not—like, as an industry, we host these things called “Coach like a Pro,” and I think we’re doing a great, great job trying to raise the bar of coaching, but in general, there is always something you could do to enhance the experience for your member. And I think we need to get away with this idea that it’s not just about faster or cheering. You could identify so many ways to encourage your athletes: “Hey, today I want to see if you could hold a two-minute pace on the rower.”
Jason Khalipa (27:32):
Then you come back around, you check in on them, and you see if they’ve maintained that pace. “Hey, today on this score, I’d really love to see you try and hit 21 reps today. How can we get there?” And having more of a dialogue of being strategic in that workout and giving them an individualized micro-focus versus a macro-theme. You’re going to have these macro-themes like, “Hey guys, we’re trying to hit time to remain of 10, 20 minutes,” whatever it is. But you could then narrow that down to a micro sense and give people individualized goals, and I think that’s really how they feel like they’re getting a good touch point, they’re learning something new, and it gives you something you can come back on during the workout to check in on that athlete. I think that’s really important, especially for these types of workouts. At Two-Brain, was it, not this year, but last year at the Summit, we added in, if I’m not mistaken, it was like a tempo, tempo something. There was some type of tempo movement that we did, and a lot of people would say like, “Hey, tempo is not super exciting,” whatever, but you can make tempo, you can make EMOMS very exciting if you give very concrete specific goals for individuals throughout that time.
Mike Warkentin (28:33):
Yeah, and I think the stuff that you’re talking about is what takes a coach from that maybe C, C+ level to that B+, A level where you are able to get huge results in a super intense workout, like an RPE nine, 10 or in like a five, six, something like that. Because Chris Cooper has talked a lot about zone training, and so he uses like zone 2 training a lot of times with those athletes. In an aerobic situation like that, you’ve got maybe 30 minutes where you can really do some coaching in there, and you’re not yelling at them a whole lot, and you’ve got to find some ways to do it. I’ll ask you this, guys: Give me some ideas about the essentials of good programming at the gym level. So, we’ve got constant variation, these old teams of unknowable intensity and so forth, but what are the essentials now in 2024 of good programming at the gym level?
Matt DellaValle (29:17):
Well, I think that this comes back to: What are you looking to deliver to your athletes? Obviously, you have to have a really strong conviction about: What do you want your athletes to experience on an everyday basis? And I think that there can be a wide range of what is appropriate based on that, right? I think if you have a gym that you really want to expose your athletes to a constant dose of strength plus conditioning every day, I think that that’s a fantastic way that you could go. If you’re a CrossFit affiliate out there, if you’re running a functional training gym, obviously having those main tenets of constant variation, functional movements and high intensity is really important, but constant variation doesn’t mean random, and I think one of the things that oftentimes happens is that programming does become random when you’re just thinking about, “Oh, what should I do next?”
Matt DellaValle (30:05):
Or, “Oh, I feel like doing this today.” Having some sort of intention behind it or some sort of plan or knowing where you’re going is how you take something from random to varied, including functional movements, seeing patterns of the squat, the hinge, the pole, the press, jump, run row, all those types of things. Very, very important. But seeing them without necessarily biasing too heavily towards one or the other and giving the athletes a broad exposure to all of those things. And then the intensity element, like we’ve been talking about, it’s not just intensity for intensity’s sake, and intensity doesn’t mean just RPE 10 every day. We’re looking at different levels of intensity with intention behind the workout. So, we have those RPE 10 days where we’re going in that sub-10-minute time domain. We also have those RPE seven days where we’re teaching our athletes how we are now taking this out to 20, 30, 35 minutes in cases.
Matt DellaValle (31:02):
And I think that that’s really important, but making sure that you have a strong conviction about what you want your athletes to experience. And for us at NCFIT, we want our athletes, like I said to kick off this podcast, to live freely and fully outside of the gym, to have a hell of a lot of fun, to show up and not just be constantly nagged by injuries, and to do so in an environment that’s supportive and with great coaching, and the coaching tools help us do that. So, that really is what rounds out amazing programming for us in 2024. One of the things that we implemented recently in the past couple of years is this idea of having two paths that our athletes can follow in our program. So, we have the NCFIT workout, which is our main program.
Matt DellaValle (31:48):
Within that workout, we have two paths for our athletes. We have a Performance path, and then we have a Fitness path. And I think the beauty of this is now nobody really shows up to the gym and wonders, “What am I doing today?” Our Performance version is the version that allows for the higher levels of intensity, the higher levels of loading, the higher reps, the higher loading, the higher volume, and then the Fitness version is a more moderate expression of that that takes some of the complexity out of the equation, maybe takes some of the loading out of the equation. Perhaps on days where the volume is super high, it takes the volume down a little bit, but still a fantastic workout. It’s just a little bit more of a moderate expression of what’s on the other side of the equation. And you could come in and do Fitness workouts every day, and you could become an extremely fit individual.
Matt DellaValle (32:32):
You can come in and test yourself against Performance workouts every day. But the beauty is now your athletes can look at these two versions and along with the coach can make the best decision about: What is their workout for the day? What’s their best workout for that day? And I think that that’s one of the main things for us now at NCFIT that makes us amazing is that we have this ability to provide these experiences that are extremely customed to the athlete. And the coaches don’t have to do as much guesswork. We have the versions explained for you here, and these are the reasons why we have them. And now everybody standing in front of the whiteboard can look at them and get a fantastic workout for the day.
Mike Warkentin (33:08):
Jay, you got anything on that you want to add?
Jason Khalipa (33:10):
I would just say one of the biggest things I think has changed over the years is like—so when I first got into CrossFit in 2006, when I first opened the gym, actually; I’ll use that as an example. We followed .com for six months, and we realized that we had some difficulty because .com would schedule rest days, and they had equipment that we didn’t have on there, and it just became very difficult for me to program and follow that track. What we originally did—this is like back in the day—is you would do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday was a rest day. So, then people who came in on Thursday would pick one of the workouts from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday that they missed, and it was just a total mess because you had different people doing different workouts. It was so unstructured, but back then you were able to get away with some of that kind of stuff because it was so new and raw. Then over the years, right, you start evolving, and I started programming on my own.
Jason Khalipa (33:55):
And what I realized, a lot of times, I use my own biases in the program, and a lot of people listening to this can relate to this. Like if I had in my way, we would be doing EMOMs and AMRAPs every day. We would probably be doing burpees, thrusters and wall balls. That’s what we would do. Maybe cleaning jerks, and we would never be doing toes-to-bar or L-sits, whatever. And so then, over time, we started adjusting, adjusting, adjusting. When we opened up many locations, we realized the biggest problem we had wasn’t necessarily the programming. That was a part of it. It was all of the development that comes to this. So, I would say that how has the biggest thing changed from the beginning until now is that the programming is a very small sliver of what we’re talking about. It’s about the tools that we provide the coaches to A, provide the best product for that day, and B, develop them for the long term. That’s how things have changed is that this is more forward looking a decade from now; that was looking at it day by day.
Mike Warkentin (34:48):
Yeah, and I’ll tack onto that. One of the things that changes, back in the day when we were starting, like Jay, 2009, 2010, we assumed that everyone just wanted to come and do these workouts. Like that was the whole point. You’re showing up to do Fran, and we’re going to do this, and we’re going to have a great time. But in reality, as everything has evolved. People are showing up at your gym, they want to lose weight, they want to look better, they want to feel better—yeah, some to want to do competitions and so forth—but there’s a ton of people that want these other results. And I made a mistake of not asking my clients about that enough back in the day. What do you really want to accomplish? Is it a Fran PR, or is it losing some weight? And if I had asked that question, I would’ve held onto more clients, and I would’ve served them better, and that would’ve helped me program better to get the results that they wanted, and in some cases, it would’ve been Fran; in other cases, it would’ve been something different. So, I think that’s evolved quite a bit.
Matt DellaValle (35:30):
This is super important too. And then just a general tip for anybody out there who’s listening is you have to be talking to your athletes about their goals. You obviously are giving them an idea of what the long-term goal of being a member of your gym is, but within that span that they’re a member, they’re going to have short-term goals along the way, and those goals are going to change. Maybe somebody’s getting ready for an event that’s three or four months down the road, whether that’s a marathon, whether that’s some sort of Spartan race or a Tough Mudder, or whether that’s a wedding, and they want to have a different type of preparation leading up to that, and keeping in touch with them about their goals, not only is it obviously absolutely essential in terms of making sure that you and the athlete are on the same page as to what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, but also making the athlete feel known, letting them know that you care about these things that are upcoming is hugely, hugely important. And constantly checking in with the athletes about their goals, their micro goals.
Mike Warkentin (36:25):
Listeners, goal review sessions, we recommend them every 90 days with clients. Two-Brain data suggests that if you do goal reviews every 90 days, you will retain clients longer, and 30% of clients who do go reviews upgrade their service packages by 30%. That’s data that we have. They stay longer. They spend more money. They get better results—it’s a win for everybody. Guys, before I ask you the last question about your 2025 overview, where can people find out more about NCFIT if they’re interested in working with you guys?
Matt DellaValle (36:53):
The best place to find out more information about our programming services: nc.fit/programming, you’ll find all of our information there on the site. You have got sample weeks, we’ve got sample class plans, you have a description of all of our programming, you have an understanding of how and where you can download the programming, and all of our programming is available through software integrations, like Wodify, PushPress, BEYOND THE WHITEBOARD and SugarWOD. It’s automatically uploaded into your system every single week. You don’t have to do anything. That’s one of the amazing things about what we do. You get to see the programming show up in your system, and once it leaves our hands, you can make any sort of tweaks or changes that you’d like to that. And in addition, we’ve talked a lot about the NCFIT workout during this podcast, which is obviously our primary program and the tools that are associated with that, but we also have a number of other programs and tools and resources available to you.
Matt DellaValle (37:43):
We have a Flex program, which is our spin on functional strength and bodybuilding. We have a Compete program for any of the hard chargers out there who do want to be successful in things like local competitions and the Open. We program that around the NCFIT workout, so it’s additional work with two or three parts five days a week around the NCFIT workout. That will take those athletes who want a little bit extra and allow them to go and have that journey. And then we have a Go program which operates on a 27-week cycle, which all you really need is a pair of dumbbells and a jump rope. And that’s a fantastic program to provide your athletes when they’re on the road or provide it to them in things like open gym or things like bootcamp-style classes. It’s 27 weeks, dumbbell only, and it’s a fantastic well-rounded program.
Mike Warkentin (38:28):
And Two-Brain clients, headed to your dashboard, check out the marketplace. NCFIT has a special offer in there just for Two-Brain clients. Check that out if you are working with us right now. So, guys, here we go. 2025, give me a broad overview of your programming calendar. Like how far ahead are you thinking, and what are you planning here to make things perfect for all the gyms that are using your programming?
Matt DellaValle (38:48):
Yeah, so we just eclipsed the halfway point of 2024, right? So, July wraps up six months, and every year—we’ve been doing this now for five years or so—we put out a next year’s Outlook document. So, we have a 2024 Outlook document that if you go to our website, you can download, and you can see our entire plan for the year. We also put out, and we’ve emailed this out to all of our clients and prospective clients, we have a six-month review, which we just wrapped up and sent out to everybody. So, we take a look back at the first six months of the year, we look at the types of equipment that we’ve utilized, we look at the types of workouts that we’ve utilized, the different RPE levels, we make sure that, hey, we’re staying on track with our goals. And right now, in the August, September timeframe is where we start to plan and look forward to January 2025 and what’s to come down the road.
Matt DellaValle (39:40):
And what I can tell you right now is we’ve done things in 2024 that we’ve never done in the past. We implemented a Hero workout every single month, and that’s been a really great additional community rallying experience for us. In the past couple of years, we’ve implemented things like we have a partner version of the workout every single Saturday in addition to the solo version of the workout. And things have changed, like we said, over the years where we’ve evolved from having multiple types of programs to now, we have the Performance and the Fitness version of the NCFIT workout. And now we’re getting started with 2025 just now, and by November, December of this year, we’ll have our 2025 Outlook ready to rock and roll for anybody who’s looking to sign up for us.
Matt DellaValle (40:24):
But what I can say is that you’re going to see the Performance and the Fitness versions continue on in 2025. What we’re looking to do is bring the level of our warmups up a little bit, and this is something that everybody has their own opinion on warmups, but it’s something that we’ve reflected on over the years, and one of the things that I think we do really well, but is there an opportunity for us to get even better? And in 2024, we asked ourselves whether or not we could provide a daily cool down or a daily finisher every single day, and we did that. And now it’s time to take a look at our prep work leading into the workout. So, in 2025, we expect a more well-rounded look at what our warmups are going to be.
Matt DellaValle (41:01):
We are planning on implementing also perhaps a NCFIT standard warmup, an NCFIT standard mobility warmup also that you could implement with your athletes multiple times per week if you wanted that. But we’re going to focus there. We’re also going to take a look at new benchmarks in 2025, which we do every single year. So, at the beginning of the year, we laid out about 15 benchmarks this year for our athletes. Some of those have repeated; some of those will not repeat. And then we also took a look at the number of strength cycles that we implemented this year, and we implemented one strength cycle per quarter in 2024. And I believe that that’s going to continue in 2025 because we got really great reception to that. In previous years, we had done six strength cycles. There’s nothing wrong with that if that’s the approach that you want to take, but it felt just a little bit too much for us. It felt like you were in a strength cycle the entire year. We pulled it back a little bit. We gave a little bit more of a traditional functional training or CrossFit approach to GPP strength between the strength cycles, and that’s been really well received. So, I believe that’s going to continue, but expect to see a lot of upgrades in the warmup and the prep notes for 2025.
Mike Warkentin (42:05):
Jay, the prospectus, Chris said it’s amazing. How’d you come up with that, and what does it mean to you to just be able to tell people exactly what they’re going to see and how you’re operating the program every year?
Jason Khalipa (42:15):
You mean the Outlook document?
Matt DellaValle (42:16):
The Outlook document?
Jason Khalipa (42:17):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, well I think it’s great because like what MDV was saying earlier, if you don’t know where you want to go, how can you get there, right? Like if we don’t have a roadmap, we’re saying, “Hey, over the next year this is where we want to go,” then we program back from it. And I think that’s really helpful because we’re not programming in a day-by-day or a week-by-week basis. You’re thinking, “OK, this is our macro theme for the year. Now let’s break that down into quarterly. Let’s break that down into monthly. Let’s break that down into a weekly, and then let’s break that down into daily, and let’s break that into this per session.” And I think that’s where you really start to have excellence come out because you’re looking at it from a big picture perspective and narrowing down. So, for us, and then communicating that with our gyms, I think, is really important because then they could also then set up things that make sense for them. So, for example, we do like a “Fall Flex Off.” We do different—we schedule events throughout the year. We schedule big moments, and they can know what those moments are going to be earlier in advance, which I think is helpful for the gym owners as well.
Mike Warkentin (43:13):
MDV, one more time, where can they get this document, the 2024 one, and take a peek at it?
Matt DellaValle (43:17):
Nc.fit/programming. You’ll find all the information about our programs. You’ll also find that we have some free trials associated with some of our integration partners, so if you’re looking to get more than just the week sample that’s downloaded, you can contact one of those integration partners. But we do have weeks’ worth of sample programming, and you can also download a couple of sample class plans, so you can see what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
Mike Warkentin (43:38):
I love it. Guys, thanks so much for geeking out on programming here. I appreciate your time, and I can’t wait to see what comes out in 2025, that document. Chris Cooper is eagerly anticipating it. If you’re a gym owner, you should check it out too. Thanks guys.
Matt DellaValle (43:49):
Thank you, Mike.
Jason Khalipa (43:49):
Thank you.
Mike Warkentin (43:50):
This has been “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin, and those are the NCFIT guys, MDV and Jason Khalipa. If you have more questions about that, please leave a comment for us, and we’d be happy to chat with you about it, and thanks for listening. Please hit “subscribe” wherever you are on your way out the door, and now here’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (44:08):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you, have already joined. In the group, we share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.
