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Ruth Performance Lab

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Ruth Performance Lab: Training principles and systems for athletes and coaches to think clearly, perform better, and develop long-term mastery.

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68 contributions to Ruth Performance Lab
Anyone up for an experiment?
I have created an algorithm that can predict your "max sustainable pace" for sport-specific movements (like RMU, burpees, box jump overs, light TnG power snatches, etc). I'm really excited about the prospects of this... but I need to gather data. The tests are simple, Day-1 - 1min max rep of the movement Day-3 - 5min max rep of the movement For example Monday - 1min max reps RMU Wednesday - 5min max reps RMU These need to be done in a low-fatigue environment so before metcons / etc within training. All I need are those two data points and I can provide you with some really cool data that you can use inside training and competition. The movement selection doesn't matter as I am (fairly) confident that the formula I've come up with will predict sustainable rep-rates regardless of the movement. If anyone is interested in participating... let me know (1) what you're planning to test, and then (2) just upload your results directly here.
0 likes • Feb 12
@Kenneth Grosjean what this shows: cruise pace is “what is indefinitely sustainable” - think 30-60min AMRAP. Surge tank is “how many reps you can do in a minute ABOVE the cruise pace without blowing up”. Basically like a 1-time buy in type deal. The real value is at the bottom - predictions for how long it will take to accumulate specific rep targets UNDER FATIGUE (think 50 reps in the middle of a chipper type thing) Let me know if this meshes with your experience or if it’s off in some way.
0 likes • 4d
@Charles Chung Got everything we needed on this. The cool thing with the critical power formula we used is that it broadly captures "endurance" regardless of whether it was central or peripheral since we are testing the same movement against itself.
VBT and Remote Clients
Hey team, Is anyone currently regularly using VBT prescriptions with remote clients via an app such as METRICvbt or Qwik? I use enode in my gym regularly with clients and want to expand the systems to more remote clients and I am curious if anyone else has followed suit. Personally i'd most likely just take the hit for the subscription cost and allow clients access to the "team". My questions are: Does anyone here regularly use software only based VBT tools. (which one) If yes do your clients utilise them and do you feel they see it as a value add or pain in the ass What use cases do you use VBT regularly or irregularly with your clients
1 like • 27d
I’ve not used any formal VBT tools up to this point but I’m very interested learning if you dig into this - especially with software based tools (vs hardware which I think has too much barrier to entry for most athletes I coach)
0 likes • 25d
@Reed Wuttke really valuable info - I was just commenting on another post and mentioned that within the athlete population I work with that I didn’t think the precision of measuring was that important. However for weightlifting it can be incredibly valuable. Also I know Wil Flemming, he opened a training center in Bloomington while I was still there so we’ve crossed paths a few times. I’ll have to check out his book!
Dynamic Effort and Bar Speed
For those that are implementing conjugate like dynamic effort methods in training, how much attention do you pay to the accuracy of bar speed on dynamic effort day? I find it very hard for myself and some of my athletes to hit the 0.8 meters per second with 50% of 1RM without any accommodated resistance. Add bands or chains into the mix, and obviously, bar speed would slow down even more. Previously, I've used the accommodated resistance and dynamic effort work with success and never actually measured bar speed, but I would definitely be working a lot slower than 0.8 . My initial thoughts is paying that much attention to the velocity of the bar is likely majoring in the minors, and attention should probably be applied to velocity or speed loss over the course of the sets, or speed relative to the individual athlete's norm. But wondering if anyone has more experience with this and are we possibly missing the mark by not achieving a certain bar speed.
0 likes • 25d
This mirrors my own experience with actually measuring movement velocity. I’ve had great results with athletes by using speed methods without measuring velocity, what I’ve found to be important is ensuring they understand exactly what the intent is. Without that intent and the understanding that MAXIMAL concentric speed is what we are trying to develop they kind of go through the motions with it and report it’s too easy. Your majoring in the minors comment seems to be pretty spot on here, at least for our populations.
Density Progressions: The Missing Programming Variable
Density Progressions: The Programming Variable Coaches Often Miss Most coaches spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between volume and intensity. This makes sense because it is easy to quantify: - How much work is being done? - How heavy is it? - What paces are they holding?  But one variable that often gets overlooked is density. Density simply refers to how compressed the work is. It’s the relationship between how much work is being done and how quickly it’s being performed. Two workouts can have identical volume and similar intensity, but create completely different physiological responses depending on how dense the work is. Example: Same Volume, Very Different Density Let’s take a simple example. Workout A 200 wall balls for time Workout B 10 wall balls every minute on the minute for 20 minutes In both cases, the athlete is doing 200 wall balls. But the experience and the physiological response are completely different. In the “for time” version, the work is much more dense. Fatigue accumulates continuously. Metabolites build up. Intramuscular pressure increases. Perfusion drops. Tension under fatigue increases as the athlete tries to maintain movement speed. All of this creates a much more stressful internal physiological environment. You get: • More accumulated fatigue • Less metabolite clearance • More ischemia inside the working muscles • More tension being produced while the muscle is already fatigued That combination dramatically increases the amount of muscular damage and soreness that athletes experience. In the EMOM version, every minute includes a built-in rest period. That rest allows partial clearance of metabolites, restoration of blood flow, and recovery of force production. The volume is the same, but the density is much lower, so the physiological cost is very different. Why Density Matters in CrossFit Density becomes even more important when we consider the nature of the sport. CrossFit workouts tend to be very dense especially formats like:
Density Progressions: The Missing Programming Variable
2 likes • 27d
I tend to think of density less as muscle group and more in pattern buckets Squat / lunge Hinge Pull Push / press I see no reason you couldn’t do something like: M - hinge Metcon Tu - push-pull density W - squat densirt Th - off F - squat metcon Sa - push-pull density Su - off Just as an example
0 likes • 27d
@Robert Oswald of course!
Methods and intentions for improving machine paces in metcons
I'm curious as to what methods or intentions people have used to help athletes improve their machine paces in metcons. Assuming the athlete can go long and sustain on a machine, and can sprint on a machine, and can do intervals on a machine, how do you then help them translate those paces to mixed fatigue work? My idea is that the required machine paces to be competitive in the sport are not unknown variables. We can watch back footage of echo bike repeat workouts, row cal workouts etc and see the speeds of athletes getting on and off the machine. If a workout has hang power snatch, toes to bar, echo bike, and the athlete is wonderful with their transitions and sets for the hang power snatch and toes to bar, shouldn't you just prescribe the bike pace? So in your notes you would dictate bike pace to be 75rpm minimum, get to pace within 6 seconds of starting the bike. What about for someone that can handle the pace, but not for the full volume? I did a workout the other day that involved intervals of row calorie, handstand walk, and power cleans. I need to improve my row speed in metcon style like that, so I dropped the calories from 20 to 15, but I my intention was that I had to row those 15 calories above 1400 cal/hr. I will plan to be able to eat more and more volume at a higher pace like this over time, which will be how I know that I am improving my fitness here. What do you all think?
2 likes • Apr 10
I've actually done some progression very similar to what you laid out here. The one difference was that I had a built-in BREAK whenever paces dropped below the target output. For example it might be 7 Rounds 500m Row 15 BF Burpees 10 Thrusters @ 115# *Row floor @ 1500c/h *if output drops below 1500, rest 2min then continue until finish So it's basically a form of "broken" training that allows you to isolate the row pace as the control point. That worked pretty well to be honest. One other point that I'll add here - I've found that for most athletes something between 5k and 30min pace seems to be the "sustainable" metcon pace for rowing -- there are exceptions in shorter (sub 7min) metcons... but for the majority of workouts, this seems to be the sweet spot.
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Kyle Ruth
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CrossFit Games athlete and coach helping athletes and coaches think clearly, train smarter, and master the principles that drive real performance.

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Joined Nov 19, 2025
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