Seven days out from TYR Wodapalooza and the plan was never for me to fly out to Miami, but after some unfortunate turn of events with Sam Kwant’s lead coach, Josh Godinez, I fortunately found myself boarding a plane for what was to be my first flight out of the year; Miami-bound to proudly represent the HWPO Training Coaching staff and to be on Samuel Kwant's coaches pass!

Previous to this week, I had only met Sam in person once — in the warm-up area at the 2023 Games. Harry Palley (HWPO Training COO) introduced us as I was mid-warm-up for the first event: max Olympic weightlifting total. It was brief and pretty low-key, which I liked, and I'm sure he did too. I figured at that point, we were pretty similar in personality.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks after the Games, I'd be on weekly calls with Sam, alongside his lead coach Josh, where we started planning out and working through his approach to the 2024 season. So by the time Miami came around, we'd spoken plenty of times, and I had a really good idea of his fitness. 

How we approached Event 1 (Cortadito)

We had a couple of prep calls for TYR Wodapalooza, talking events and general approaches, but the second time we met in person was the athlete briefing on day one of the competition. From that moment, I think we could sense we were in tune personality-wise, to the point that no fluff is probably the best way to put it. 

Right before starting the warm-up for Event 1 (Cortadito), I asked Sam, "What do you want from me in the warm-up area? I can either give you everything you need to do, including exercises, reps, sets, and times, or I can be more casual and work with you." 

His answer straight away was: "Tell me what to do, then I'll just do it". 

Perfect. I'd already written out a plan for each warm-up and given him access to it in his HWPO Training app so he could look through himself before the events. The plans were a general guide, and given we were then hit with multiple workout adjustments, they acted as vague guides at that. I ultimately decided on the flow based on his feedback on his movements, body language and perceived readiness. 

For an insight, this is what a warm-up looked like for the Cortadito event (before the event change came in):

We had provided all HWPO Training athletes with this warm-up and cool-down plan for all events in all categories. I just then used this as a flow guide to make it more specific to Sam's needs based on what we already knew about his movement patterns, strengths and weaknesses. 

Event 1 warm-up went really smooth

This is where I really learned that Sam likes to get to work, not beat around the bush too much, but also to really have a clear understanding of what he needs to do before he walks out on the floor. We went back and forth a few times on potential opening weights and increments. Based on the athlete briefing, we decided that the best way to overcome the 20:00 corral waiting time while hitting his best possible lift for the complex was to do a double lift in the first window. Open at 245lb (111kg), hit it and, go straight to 255lb (116kg), and hit that all in the first window. It was a risk, but Sam was confident he could hit that, and that's exactly what he did. 

However, after nailing the full snatch on 255lb, his judge told him to stop and drop the bar. She wasn't aware this was an option, and in fairness, I don't think many other athletes opted to do that in previous heats. There was a bit of confusion at this point between both Sam and the judge, and I saw he had a brief look up, which seemed like he was trying to look for me to get a second opinion on whether he should still go up to 265lb. He didn't end up seeing me but wasn't in the position to look around for too long. 

I was shouting "GO UP!" while also actioning it with my pointy finger. But he was already on it, told the judge 265lb, and with 5 seconds to spare, he had it loaded and ready to lift. 

Quite a lot of athletes took their time before starting their second attempt (to get that extra recovery, I presume). This is something that Sam could have easily done, given the confusion from the 255lb lift. But he didn't — he lifted it the second his window was open. We'd discussed prior how important the overhead squat tie-breaker would be on a 265lb lift. If he lifted at the start of his window, he'd potentially have 35 seconds to rep out his overhead squats.

That's exactly what he did, nailing the full snatch and just slipping under the hang snatch, too. There may have been another 5lb in there at the time, but it was close and not worth the risk. Sam locked it in overhead and repped out with 8 overhead squats. This was noticeably a lot more than anyone else. When the results came out, Sam took the highest place finish out of all nine athletes who snatched 265lb on that complex — nine very valuable places on a leaderboard and a lot of important points that we both knew at the time would make a big difference by the end of the competition. 

The weather on site saw some last-minute changes

The second event was the first time we encountered a workout with some last-minute changes (due to the weather on-site). Sam took well to the changes, albeit his favorite barbell exercise, hang power clean, being subbed out. The thought that everyone was hitting the same workout without previously practicing felt like it played into our favor, giving Sam the chance to utilize his experience of executing on the competition floor, like that of the Games. 

I'd run the workout through in my head a few times, and the more I did, the more apparent it became that it all came down to the sets of 30 and 20 burpees. In hindsight, that's quite an obvious takeaway — but given the rest of the information about the other workouts, new standards and flow and general competition distractions, it's not always that easy to see things like that before an event. 

I mentioned to Sam, potentially 4 or 5 times while we were in the early stages of the warm-up:

Every time I said it in a different way, Sam nodded and let me know that he understood, but I could sense that we both weren't 100% sure about where this workout might be won or lost. "It's a burpee workout," I overheard from one of the Elite females as they stepped off the floor, and then it was solidified when Sam ran through his final opener in the warm-up. It was obvious at that point how this was going to go. 

I sat and watched Sam from the top row of the stands most of the time so I didn't annoy anyone as I was shuffling around in my seat and chewing the skin off my knuckles with apprehension. 

The workout started, and everyone in Sam's heat went out HOT

Deadlifts and parallel bar dips began the workout, and few were strategically breaking the Dips. Sam was in the last 5 or so out of his heat of 20 while working through his last set of dips. I remember seeing this and thinking, fair play, Sam. You've stuck to your guns and not got dragged into the race here while at the same time thinking, "F%ck, I hope we've not undercooked this!". 

Sam dropped his final deadlift and went straight into his first set of front squats with a minimal break — he immediately jumped past a handful of athletes by doing that. Some other athletes were relegated to a moment of hands on their knees as the realization that they'd just gone fast for 3:00 before being faced with 60 bar-facing burpees and 30 front squats at 185lb just sunk in. As Sam was repping through his front squats, about half of his heat were already on the burpees. I was scanning the heat, trying to gauge the rep cadence of those leading the pack. Some (Colten Mertens) were clearly going to be able to continue, but many of the athletes had a sluggish/survival technique. Sam hit the deck for his first burpee and proceeded to hold a solid and disciplined pace throughout the 30 reps. It was pretty clear at this point that he was right back in with the top athletes in the heat and gradually picked one athlete off at a time, keeping a strict and methodical pace throughout. Sam grabbed himself a 5th place finish in the workout overall and was really happy with his execution — as was I!

I already knew this (and I'd known it for a while), but Sam is a PRO who is very fit and knows his capacity really well. I'd known ever since I watched Sam take 1st place in Double DT back at the 2016 CrossFit Games. I was a spectator that year, making the most of having sponsors cover a trip to the Games that I never qualified for! I sat and watched Sam pick off one person at a time on 10 rounds of DT, and I just watched him do it again. 

He was pretty calm in the cool-down area 

Flushing out his legs as we knew there was plenty more work to be put through them over the two days of competition. We had a quick debrief before reconvening for Event 3, where he spent the downtime in his car and chilling out with his family. 

Around 90-120 minutes before he was going again, I made sure I learned from my previous coaching experiences and refueled and aggressively rehydrated before I needed to function again. I always tell athletes about the importance of being on top of refueling and rehydration in the early stages of these events and how it plays a vital role in being able to perform in the final workouts of a competition — and that is no different for coaches. Too often, I have tried to survive off espressos and snacks and then put myself in a hole after the competition. So, I got a big portion of steak and potatoes and saw away 3x Liquid Death cans, and I was ready to rock for the final stint of the day!

The third event was the strict pull-up event

Both of us were a little apprehensive about this, but I'd worked a lot with Coach Josh on addressing Sam's strict pulling strength, so I was confident he'd had a lot of exposure. That said, there's exposure in more isolated settings (like we had Sam working on in training), and then there's exposure in metcon settings. We hadn't done a ton of strict pull-ups in metcons, so we had that in the back of our minds.

We ran through our warm-up flow. Again, Sam followed instructions step-by-step, and we had minimal small talk. We took a bit of time trying to figure out the best set-up and approach for his pull-ups: grips or no grips, riser or no riser, set of 5 or 3, towel the bar between sets or not (it was raining heavily at this point). We settled on a plan: open with 5 and then come down regardless. Try to stick to 5s or 4s and then drop to 2-3s if they start to become a grind. 

The overall strategy was to go out at a pace in the AMRAP 3 that he could repeat in the AMRAP 5 and 'for time' section. It had to be his best repeated pace across all 3 sections, but to be aware of where he was at in the heat in the last :20 or so of each section, pushing then if needed. Sam took 3rd in the AMRAP 3, and everyone was pretty close at this stage, so it was tough as a spectator to gauge the difference in reps. 

With a 1:00 reset, next was the AMRAP 5. I'd watched some previous heats and seen that this was the differentiator. Brent Fikowski was first off the row and wallballs and immediately went to singles on the Pull-ups. "F%ck, have we been outsmarted by the professor? Has he got some intel on the best approach for these pull-ups?!". Brent had hit 4-5 pull-ups by the time Sam got to the bar and cranked out 5 reps in the time it took Brent to do 1 more. After a brief rest, it was clear Sam's muscular endurance was doing pretty good; his rep speed continued to stay fast, and he left every set with 1-2 reps in reserve. It soon moved to a duel between Sam and Ricky Garard, and Sam pipped Ricky by a handful of reps in the AMRAP 5. I was adamant at this point that Sam finished the AMRAP 5 further ahead than Ricky finished in front of Sam on the AMRAP 3. So I was sure he'd taken the event win there, but evidently, I was wrong. Although, I'm still not convinced!

Sam beasted through the whole workout one more time, with the final section being 'for time'. There were seconds between Sam and Ricky as they moved through the pull-ups and onto the box jump-overs, and this is where Sam's discipline and methodical pace kicked in. We'd spoken in the warm-up area about when he finishes the pull-ups on the 'For Time' section and that he can put the hammer down on the box jump-overs. 25 reps with a 70lb dumbbell (32kg) is something Sam could rattle out unbroken at arguably any stage of a workout. I'd asked him if he was allowed to do them unbroken, would he keep hold of the dumbbell? He said yes, with confidence. So I said, "You have to make your move earlier then and know that no matter your level of fatigue. You will be able to move that dumbbell with speed."

That's exactly what Sam did, cranking out the reps over the box and giving himself a 5-rep lead on the dumbbell portion before anyone else joined. He could see his competitors in his peripheral vision, and I knew there was no chance he was letting up the lead. He managed to pull away further, finishing the day with an event win next to his name!

We always met back at the fan bikes to cool down

For the first two events, we had a casual bro handshake and awkward hug like the true dads we are. This event we both clearly had a bit more fire running through us, and there was a bit more 'Umph' behind our handshake and hug this time. We were both obviously really happy with both the result and the execution of this workout, but both were, even more, fired up that the work we had been doing on Sam's weaknesses in the off-season had clearly been working. Sam may have been leaving that workout with the physical pump. Still, Coach Josh and I were so mentally PUMPED with how that went after the work Sam had gone through to be able to get that result, texting each other back and forth at a very high cadence using a lot of capital letters and expletives!