Most athletes think nutrition coaching means getting their macros dialed in and calling it a day.
But macros are just the starting point. Periodizing your nutrition across your training year, fueling around your sessions, gut health, hydration, supplementation: these are the levels most athletes never get to.
EP 052 of the MPC Podcast breaks down the full nutrition hierarchy for competitive CrossFit athletes. Find it linked in our bio 🔗
“As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
A lot of the coaches I mentor will ask me early on to send them a favorite strength cycle or a go-to progression for a particular movement. I am always happy to do that, and we can learn from methods.
But what I have observed is that coaches who collect methods without understanding the underlying principles are essentially borrowing someone else’s answers and hoping they are right for their athlete.
@drseanmcgovern would put it this way: good coaching is choosing the right method for the right person for the right reason at the right time. You cannot do any of those things without a grasp of the principles first.
You are also not just potentially choosing something ineffective. You are putting your credibility at risk with your athlete. If they ask you why they are doing something and you cannot give them a logical, reason-based answer, the coaching relationship begins to erode. The best program is the one the athlete believes in, and belief necessitates a reason.
“It depends” is one of the most common answers in coaching, and in a sport with this many variables and this much individual variation, it’s often true.
But it can also be a cop-out: a way to avoid complexity you don’t have the knowledge to work through, or simply don’t have the time to explain.
The difference between those two versions of that answer is what we built this mentorship around.
Our 5th cohort starts May 26, and we’re capping it at 10 spots.
DM us your email and we’ll send you the details.
Brady turns 4 today! I promise this is a birthday post - sort of.
This boy’s life has taught me to, as pastor David Gibson wrote, “Live in light of the end.”
As most of you already know, Madeline had emergency surgery when Brady was born, ending the possibility of carrying more children.
Before Brady was born, there were times when thoughts crept into my head about my oldest son, Brett, like, “I should probably slow down and spend more time with him, but there will be more times like this in the future.”
How foolish of me.
Since Brady was born, it’s the opposite. I think to myself regularly, “Slow down, Jake, you will never get another time like this.”
Looking at Brady is a daily reminder to live my life remembering only one thing is certain in this life: that it will one day end. For those without eternal hope, this is depressing.
But for those of us who have hope in Christ, as the book of Ecclesiastes reminds us, it’s liberating.
I will let pastor Gibson say it in a way that I could never on my own:
“Death can radically enable us to enjoy life. By relativizing all that we do in our days under the sun, death can change us from people who want to control life for gain into people who find deep joy in receiving life as a gift. This is the main message of Ecclesiastes in a nutshell: life in God’s world is gift, not gain.”
Just before the excitement of the Mayhem Classic, we spent two days in-person with our 4th mentorship cohort. During this time, we worked through a live case study together: an intermediate CrossFit athlete and a 20-week progression from start to finish so every coach in the room could see exactly how we think and why.
This is what we want coaching education to look like. Not a course you consume, but an interactive program with coaches that are just like you.
Enrollment for our next cohort is now open! Less than 10 spots are now available, and we kick things off May 26th.
DM us your email to get more information on how to sign up!
Serve people well, compete with integrity, and treat others the way you want to be treated. Those are a few examples of what glorifying God through fitness actually looks like in practice and what we discussed at our last camp. Our next camp is around the corner!
If this resonates with you, we would love to have you there. The link to sign up is in our bio!
Every episode of the Mayhem Performance Podcast starts with the same question: what problem are our athletes actually facing, and what does a real answer look like, not "it depends," but something practical and tangible you can actually do something with.
We're recording more this week, and we want the next round to be just as specific. Comment below with the training or nutrition problem you keep running into, because that shapes what we cover.
Find us on the Mayhem Athlete YouTube channel, or search Mayhem Performance Coaching on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
The longer you’ve been training, the harder it gets to improve at everything at the same time. That is not a motivation problem or a programming problem. It comes down to physiology.
For newer athletes, concurrent training is almost forgiving. Strength improves, aerobic capacity builds, and skills develop simultaneously because the body has not yet been pushed close to its ceiling in any one area.
For the intermediate-to-advanced athlete, it becomes a completely different conversation. You cannot keep pulling every quality up at once without something paying the price. The art is in knowing what to prioritize, what to maintain, and what to temporarily set aside so everything moves forward over time rather than all at once.
This clip is from a full camp lecture we recorded on concurrent training, which is the primary model we use to structure competitive CrossFit programming. If you want to understand why your training is designed the way it is, or why certain things feel stalled, the full talk is worth your time.
Comment TRAIN below and we will send you the link!
There is a critique that gets leveled at larger coaching organizations: that athletes are just numbers and that scale inevitably produces indifference. I understand why people say it, and I have seen it be true in some places.
But the reason it is not true here goes deeper than systems or brand promises, because the standard we hold ourselves to is not ultimately about athlete satisfaction. It is about faithfulness.
Our coaches operate with the understanding that coaching is a vocation, and we use that word intentionally. A vocation is God’s calling on our life. It is the understanding that He assigns individuals particular stations and roles within life and then calls us to live faithfully within them. For our coaches, that station is to serve athletes well as an act of obedience to Him.
What that means practically is that when an athlete is unhappy, or cancels, or doesn’t get what we promised, the questions we have to sit with are not about optics or revenue. Did we deliver what we promised? Did we maintain our integrity? Did we do good work? Did we respond faithfully to the duties and responsibilities we committed to this athlete?
Unfaithful coaching is ultimately about how you see the athlete in front of you. If you see them as expendable, it shows up everywhere: in the corners you cut on their programming, in the consults you skip, in the expectations you set but don’t honor, in the indifference to your own growth as a coach because their development stopped mattering enough to demand yours.
C.S. Lewis wrote that there are no mere mortals, that every person we encounter is an immortal being. The impact we get to have in an athlete’s life does not have to be dramatic to be significant; it just has to be faithful.
Happy Easter from the Foster fam ✝️🐣
This song popped in my head today & it's been replaying all day. A perfect reminder of the reason for celebrating today. Thank you Jesus!
The Open and Quarterfinals have wrapped. Now the real work begins. Most athletes will spend the offseason accumulating reps. That builds volume, not expertise, and there is a meaningful difference between the two. The offseason is the best window you have to close that gap.
Comment "EXPERT" for the full breakdown from Coach Jake, including his takeaways from his graduate research on sports expertise and skill development.
