Yes, exactly. The team took second. I think that was a little bit of an eye-opener for him. It’s like is he kind of getting up there in age? From a competitive standpoint of course, not overall. I just want to clarify there because I’m about the same age as he is.
That was an eye-opener. He said, “Well, I probably need to take diet a little more serious. Get my nutrition on track,” so he reached out to Trifecta which [indecipherable 18:49] meal prep, things like that. Greg from the Trifecta was like, “Hey, you need to talk to Nick with RP,” and that kicked it off.
I’m super happy that happened. Rich is a really great guy. Super nice, super genuine, all that stuff. I’ve been up to [indecipherable 19:05] a handful of times. He’s always super, super cool guy, very easy to work with. I only have really good things to say about him. His whole family, everyone’s super genuine, all that good stuff.
He knew that he probably can get away with eating his diet that he had been before, which is pretty comical, looking back. I did my research and read all sorts of stuff and he just kind of ate whatever.
That’s a really interesting thing too because I would say the one thing that I’ve seen a little bit over the years of working with some of the very, very, very top level people — and this is probably more so on the meal side of things — the amount of attention that they pay to their diets isn’t as high as a lot of people think.
What is that? Well, I don’t know. They’re males. Maybe they’re used to getting by with just genetics. A lot of these guys are all [indecipherable 20:01] athletes, so very genetically blessed, all that good stuff. That’s been my take on it.
I think that is changing a little bit now. I think they’re starting to see is how competitive sport is nowadays; that people are looking for the little edge and they’re doing whatever they can take to get a percent better, or something like that. As the competition rises, everyone’s looking for the new edge.
I think it’s gotten a little bit better but that’s something that I’ve seen over the years, which was it was a really big eye-opener for me because I’m not very genetically gifted on the athletic side, let’s just be honest here. Nick’s five-nine, two-ten, or whatever. I was never super fast, all that stuff.
I knew that I had to be really on point with diet and training. I had to if I even wanted to stand a chance. Not that I was really ever good competitively, anyways.
I think a lot of these guys just take it for granted a little bit and then as they start to get up there a bit more on the age front, they say, “It’s probably good time to start taking this a little bit more seriously,” and they do, which is rather great.
That’s a long story to say that we started working with Rich and he’s been a great…I will say too, because this is in the interview with the other Nick from BarBend. I think that article just came out about Rich.
Rich is trying to do everything that he could to help fix up his knee that he had some issues with the year that they lost. That’s how he got on to the fasting kick as well. A lot of people say, “RP is all about nutrient timing. You must eat at 3:00 p.m.” We want to take a little bit step back and say that’s not necessarily the case.
The big point that I wanted to make in the article with Nick — we did a video interview, which was great, by the way, and again he just followed up this week about it — was I was trying to blend the science of nutrition and — I’ll make a little air quotes here — the art of coaching.
There is a theoretical optimal standpoint that you can do things from a timing standpoint, from calories, macros, timing, all that. At the same time, you also have to be able to be somewhat flexible in that approach to meet the athletes, I don’t want to say in the middle because that’s probably not a true…it’s not 50/50 in the middle, but there’s got to be some give-and-take with the athlete.
If you throw out this — and I’ve done this before and I learned the hard way — [indecipherable 22:33] and I’d get super excited, the very best CrossFit athletes, first couple of times I got my shot to work with them, I was like, “Oh, yes, it’s awesome. They’re training three times a day. I’m going to time things so perfectly, their mind is going to be blown. It’s going to be amazing.”
Then what happens a month later? “I can’t follow this. It’s too advanced. It’s too complex for me.” That was a pretty big eye-opener for me.
I’m like OK, it’s not time to go back to the drawing board, that’s too strong of a statement, but it’s time to sit back, tweak things a little bit and go, “You know what? If I throw calculus at these people, or whatever, it might go over their heads.”
I’ve got to scale it down and present it in a way that’s going to be a little bit easier for them and sort of match, not perfectly where they want to be, but do some give and take. Does that make sense?