https://academic.oup.com/edrv/advance-article/doi/10.1210/endrev/bnaf038/8432248?searchresult=1 Big paper from some big names challenging that more carbs is always the ideal strategy. Points out that exercise-induced hypoglycemia correlates strongly with exercise fatigue, much higher than glycogen stores. Also, good podcast discussing the paper in-depth below: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3PR2jkrj0NOnQzlYOJ5LSQ

ALSO - reminder for all 1-on-1 clients, my mental performance coach @Julia Zoukhri will be joining us for Office Hours this Thursday @ 11am EST to talk all things performance. I STRONGLY recommend you make time for this one! ------------------------------------------- This Office Hours touched on competition-week readiness, then zoomed out to recovery, hydration, and performance fundamentals that directly affect training quality and execution. We also covered heat and humidity effects, movement efficiency, and practical gear decisions that matter more as competition level rises. Topics covered: - Competition-week readiness and travel logistics - Fish oil timing, inflammation, and training adaptation - Recovery priorities vs supplements - Hydration targets, electrolytes, and caffeine context - Heat and humidity performance impacts - Rep speed vs set size vs rest cost in movement training - Lifters vs trainers and hidden heel lifts Big take away from the call: Most athletes underperform not because they’re “under-fueled,” but because they’re chronically under-hydrated early in the day. Front-loading fluids (≈20–25% of daily intake within the first 1–2 hours after waking) with added sodium sets up better warm-ups, higher-quality sessions, and less need to play catch-up later, especially for heavy sweaters. Link for all my 1-on-1 clients: https://www.skool.com/ruth-performance-lab-1681/classroom/e28b5e16?md=cfaedfeba4354ebbb1bf3eb7a30cee19

Is anyone playing around with the new WurQ tracking stuff? I've been using it for 3 weeks and I think this COULD be a game changer for competitors training in the sport. I've been doing this for 15 years at this point have have learned from every session I've done so far about my rep speed, where I rest, which movements are actually driving HR metrics... this is really really cool. Also working on a database of movement speeds across every movement I've done so far -- at some point we'll be able to do athlete profiling to take assessments a step further than just knowing splits to knowing actual movement speeds, which movements we need to develop speed vs endurance, etc. If you're using this, let me know and I'd love to know what you're learning from it.

Hello everyone!| Was curious to know your opinion on conditioning benchmarks for CrossFit athletes. I've had a hard time finding reliable and relevant benchmarks, other than the classic 2k row, 10:00 max cal Echo bike, 5k run, 1 mile run, maybe the occasional Fran, etc. (which I don't know if it's relevant anylonger, for instance). Does anyone have a good set of conditioning benchmarks (mixed-modal included) that they like to use for atheltes' assessment and have decent data to compare to? (I'm thinking Open workouts)