From CrossFit Gym to Hyrox Powerhouse - Talon Smith's Training Philosophy

DFW Running Talk: Talon Smith - Hyrox
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Chris Detzel: [00:00:00] Welcome to DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel, so let's get started.

Welcome to another DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel, and today's special guest is Talon Smith. Talen, how are you?

Talon Smith: I'm good. How are you doing today?

Chris Detzel: Doing good. So it's gonna be a little bit different today and I'll just explain it real quick. It's funny because five months ago, four months ago, we did a podcast and.

One of the folks that was on it, or maybe a couple was this woman, Elizabeth Northern and Maddie, and they were talking about Hy Rocks and, I was like, I don't even know what that is. And then I think you said you saw that post, or you, I don't know if you listened to the podcast or saw a quick hit, but you reached out and said, Hey man, I know what it is.

So tell me about that, what you do and all of that kind of stuff.

Talon Smith: Awesome. Yeah, so I definitely saw that hit. I thought it was great. And it's one of those things where, you know, and a lot of people don't know what OX is, however, it's blown up like. I dunno, like an oxymoron, right? I could, people know what it is.

Don't know what it is, but it's huge. It's everywhere now, so yeah, [00:01:00] it's really cool to see. So for me, I actually own a gym. We just rebranded. It's FTX Hybrid Athletics and we are probably one of the biggest, actually the biggest High Ox gym here in Fort Worth. We've had one of the most successful teams in the us.

We sent nine athletes to the World Championships last year, and we have over 40 podium finishes, which is insanely unheard of. So High Rocks has become my specialty. Used to be a CrossFit gym. We still are we're not affiliated anymore, but we still have that type of training.

But ever since 2021, my first race in Dallas I completely got destroyed. The running obviously got me. I fell in love with it. And so since then, I've taken a deep dive and helped. Build and create a huge community that's not only successful, but also inclusive. And believe it or not, it's a lot of running.

So it's been cool.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. And that's what you're telling me during our conversation before this, and even prior, but let's talk a little bit about that. Tell me what is it that, high Rocks does and what it's about. And then you mentioned that there's races and all these kinds of things and you've had some, a really good athletes that have been to the world.

Something, or. Whatever. [00:02:00] Yeah. World

Talon Smith: Championships. Yeah. For the last five years. Yeah. World champions.

Chris Detzel: Tell me what that means because I, I know that I've heard of some of these championships even somewhat recently or somewhat recently. I couldn't even get in. Like I think I was, I think somebody's Hey, you gotta go to this competition.

Or maybe it was a world champions, but it was a competition and it was close to Dallas and I was like. There's a lot of people trying to get in, couldn't get in because it was so packed. You where a lot of people want. It's a very popular thing from my understanding.

Talon Smith: Very popular. Yeah. So Dallas is actually 21st, so we're 10 days away from Dallas and the, they sold out 12,000 tickets in three hours.

Yeah. It was absolutely insane. So it's it's just, blowing up. And I would say that the DFW era metroplex and Dallas in general, like we have one of the biggest hubs for it. 'cause this is one of the, pilot locations, if you will, in the us But for high rocks for those who don't know, it's a total of eight kilometers of running and every 1000 meters you actually have a station to do.

They are skier, a sled push sled pool, 80 meters of burpees, a thousand meter row, 200 meters. Farmers carry a hundred meters of lunges and [00:03:00] then you finish with a hundred wall balls. So it's equal part strength and then equal part endurance. And I would actually say more endurance bias. Yeah. So it's, it's gonna test you in every single way.

If you are super strong in a slow runner, it's gonna eat you alive. If you're a super fast runner and you're, missing some strength, it's gonna eat you alive. Yeah. So it's a really cool sort of test of fitness and I think it blends. Everything that people love, like a lot of people love running, but they also, don't love running longer than five miles.

So it's that, that perfect distance. And then a lot of people like doing, weightlifting, but they don't wanna do complex movements like snatches or cleaning jerks and CrossFit. So they have all these functional movements that everybody can do. So it's that perfect combination that I think they put together in a very unique order.

That's, it's just fun to do. So it's cool.

Chris Detzel: And at your gym you do, different than, is it just high Rocks? You mentioned you did a little bit of, you do used to do CrossFit, but now do some of the CrossFit. What does that look like?

Talon Smith: Absolutely. So we have what's called hybrid training right now.

And essentially you can choose two paths. This is gonna expand a little bit more as we move into our new space. That's something exciting. We're actually building out a new gym. [00:04:00] And Benbrook. So it's Benbrook Camp Buoy right there, so we're gonna do a lot more with it, but we have hybrid, so you can choose your route.

If you wanna do more of the endurance high rock specific training, you can do that. Or you can do our strength and conditioning route, which mimics the high intensity, functional movements of CrossFit and traditional weightlifting. Or you can combine your day and pick and choose what you wanna do.

You can do the weightlifting, and then you can do the ROCs workout, or you can do the ROCs. Running and then do the workout for the class. So it's been really cool to give people a choice on how they wanna pursue their fitness, and we've really mastered being able to make sure that these programs have really good crossover, right?

So if you enjoy Olympic lifting, you can do that in class and then come up and hit, a workout that simulates, not necessarily the High Rocks workout, but train the energy systems that we're going to hit that day to help us develop our capacity in High Rocks. Do

Chris Detzel: you guys have like classes

Talon Smith: throughout the day?

What does that look like? So we have classes. All our classes right now are tailored to be an hour long. Okay. We also have online programming, and that's gonna be another aspect of the FTX Hy hybrid Athletics program is we're gonna start our very own fitness app. That's gonna be [00:05:00] international.

It's gonna be really cool. But yeah, we have one hour classes and people come in, we warm 'em up, and again, you choose which path you wanna do when our coaches work with you to help you get there. It all sorts of starts though. Like it all star. It all starts with what's your goal?

If you're just looking to get in generalized good shape, then obviously pick and choose. If you want to pr your hierarchy better at running, then clearly going to High Rocks Pathway is great if you enjoy functional fitness and when do a CrossFit competition, then you stick with hybrid. So it's really what is your goal?

But we wanna provide that flexibility so people can choose their fitness. I feel like there's a lot of, you need to do this and this is all we offer. We wanna give people more options.

Chris Detzel: One thing I like is that one is as a runner and we, and especially marathon runners, half marathon runners, we do a lot of running.

Absolutely. So when I think of and we leave the weights out or we leave out the other pieces of it, and as you get older, especially, that doesn't bode well, 50 years old plus, just. Starts to wear on you a little bit. And I think that strength training and maybe like a blend of, like a running and stuff like that is, is very key.

And I love that, high Rocks does a lot of that. And it gives [00:06:00] people the opportunity to compete because we all like to compete. You could go and go do running if you wanted, but you could do, the weights and the other things that you, the sled thing, you were talking, I don't know all this stuff.

So sorry.

Talon Smith: It's No, you're good. You're fine. You're spot on.

Chris Detzel: But I think that's a good thing, and I always tell runners like, if you're not strength training, but you're not gonna get the most out. Your running, you're not.

We all don't like certain things or we're not necessarily good at certain things. And it sounds like your gym allows, folks to get to that

Talon Smith: a hundred percent. And I think for me, we have, again, a very successful team, but for me it's more about like that transformational, like life change we can provide for people.

And when you look at high rocks is, not just something that's competitive, but as something, a goal that you set to compete and reignite that and give people a purpose, something to. Chase that they can, do bi-annually, they can do it annually to work for. It always keeps 'em making that forward progress.

And it changes it up a little bit. And I think the coolest thing that we're seeing, even with High Rocks and this kind of hybrid training that we have is [00:07:00] like our athletes are now diving more into endurance sports. Like I just had 12 athletes who did the outlast Fort Worth, which was, I think.

It was three miles every hour for six hours. I can tell you this, out of the 10, only two have ever done over 10 miles of running. At one time. It was the longest they'd ever run because they're getting introduced to the sport and to running, and I think in a fun way to be able to break it up. And to that point, I think that strength training is very important for runners.

Simply because like you said, it's number one, it's gonna make you faster. You're gonna train the muscles you know that you're gonna be using your primary movers, and then you're also gonna prevent injury, right? There's so much impact that you have, like a number one in a way. You need to try to find a way to decrease that stress on your body, but also prepare your body for that stress of, going for 26 miles.

So it's critical and I think it's gonna be, weird if you wanna get into kinda like the program aspect of it. I actually tell athletes like they don't need to be at the gym for us, like for high rocks depending on the season. Like when we're out foundational strength three times a week because they need to be doing a long zone two round to build aerobic base.[00:08:00]

We're gonna have our track day, we do a free performance track day, which is gonna either be threshold or a tempo day. And then they need to have an active recovery day where it's an easy zone to. 30, 45, 50 minute, nice, easy zone one, even run, brisk, run, recover, and work on mobility. So I really need them to, have really hard training days, two to three days at the gym maybe, and we'll do the lower bottom, upper body split, as well as a high rock specific workout to build it out.

But when we're in our foundational phase, not our competition phase, like they're primarily doing running training minus one day that somebody might do when they're preparing for, a 10 k or half marathon. So it's a really cool crossover to see, how much. Running actually does help our athletes.

And how there is such a crossover between running the strength training hybrid and high rocks. It's just a really beautiful combination. I love that. And like I said, it keeps it interesting. It breaks up the monotony of, just, I love, I love my hard days. Easy days are hard, but it can break up the monotony of those easy days.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. Absolute. So let's back up. We [00:09:00] just.

A little bit of running and just how you got into the gym and High Rocks and CrossFit. All that could, let's just talk about, when did it start for you?

Talon Smith: So gonna lead into that. I just wanna say Happy Veterans Day to everybody out there today.

Chris Detzel: Yep. Happy

Talon Smith: Veterans Day. Happy ve

Chris Detzel: And this could come out in three weeks, but Yeah.

Yeah,

Talon Smith: absolutely. So if you guys are here, happy Veteran's Day. And the reason I say that is, so I first I used to run track in high school, joined the military when I was 19. Oh, nice. And yeah. So I wanted to be with the Marines at Marine and, they run three miles. So my whole thing is like I wanted to be the best.

I didn't become the best, but my fastest three mile time when I was with the Marines was a 1545. So yeah. Yeah. So I used to be fast. Not anymore. And you weren't the fastest somebody ran a 15 flat. Dang. Yeah. There were three guys in front of me and I was very sad 'cause I couldn't beat 'em.

It's that's where I started. And then, after that, when you got really with my units, I realized that hey, I could run, but I wasn't strong. Yeah. And that's when I got into CrossFit. And then after falling in love with CrossFit, when I got out, I came here, I started working at a local gym, eventually became part owner while [00:10:00] going through nursing school.

And then became full owner of the CrossFit part and just really went hard into it. This is gonna sound crazy, but I actually ended up going more higher rocks and endurance based after. I got Rhabdo twice, which was crazy. So the first time was doing mur. I'd done Murph a million times, couldn't figure it out.

Went to Rhabdo and this was after I ran World Championships. So I was in like peak condition and went to Rhabdo, couldn't figure it out. Went and did my Ultra, went into RDO again. That one was like my fault 'cause I, David Goggins the last 10 miles, like I was peeing, buttoned, puking. Like my nutrition plan wasn't working.

Yeah. That's dangerous. Dude. I was at mile 90 and there's no way I was quitting. There's no way. Yeah. Like mile 90, you're like, man, I'm gonna be doing three miles an hour. I still got like another three hours we're gonna get through this. Yeah. But that one was predictable, but it was leading up to that, which was weird.

My legs were heavy. I was having a hard time. So I went to a vascular surgeon and they're like, Hey dude, you got valve issues. So blood wasn't going back to my heart. It was pulling my feet. Wild. And he goes, Hey, you need to start see a cardiologist. And I'm like, what do you mean I need to see a cardiologist?

He's just go see one. So it turns out that I actually have a congenital heart disease. I have bicuspid aortic valve. Wow. I have [00:11:00] mitral valve and tricuspid valve regurgitation. And I actually have an aortic aneurysm that the military never caught. So that's why I left the military was I medically retired.

'cause at I go to surgery at five centimeters for the aortic aneurysm. So when I found this out, that sounds

Chris Detzel: intense. I'm no nurse or anything, but Yeah. Yeah. My wife will listen to it and she'll tell me what it.

Talon Smith: Yeah, it's wild. It was pretty wild to find out 'cause I finally got the like official diagnosis in March of 24.

So this isn't this isn't old, this is like literally finding out it's pretty new military. A year ago you're done. But the deal with the cardiologist was, is hey, you can't lift a lot of heavy weights. We know running at Intensity is gonna bring your blood pressure up. But as long as you manage it, like we'll let you keep doing high rocks.

So that's when I went from being a strength athlete and I used to be pretty strong. Like back squatting 4 25 deadlifting, 500 heaviest snatch was 2 85. Like I was a strong kid. Yeah, I had to leave that. We had a

Chris Detzel: lot of talent in running and in mos it sounds like too, I guess

Talon Smith: everybody makes a joke that what?

Like in, in High Rocks you're a mid lifter and a bad runner or something like that. But ox it works. Yeah. Then after the doctor's Hey man, if you wanna do this, you have to. Six months, six month [00:12:00] checkups, but you can definitely go cardio. So that's where the switch was from. Pretty much trait CrossFit to like high rocks and hybrid and cardio.

'cause I could decrease the amount of weight that I do. So I didn't have to put so much load in my body and then primarily train, my aerobic system and my base with minimal, threshold and tempo work sprinkled in there. And my heart would be okay to be able to pursue this. So that's how I kind of branch into High Rocks was more out of necessity and out of gratefulness that I had something that I could still do.

Yeah. When I was given bad news, that I kinda had to deal with. Oh,

Chris Detzel: alright. That's a lot of info, right? Yeah. And that sucks, but it sounds like you're making do with the best you can. You said this was in 2024, so you just now left. Was it the army or what'd you say?

Talon Smith: I got, so I was in, I did five and a half active and then the rest of the years, yeah, I did a total of 17, but 15 sat And they don't medically discharge you outta the reserves. You're allowed to retire early if you have a medical issue and they deem you not medically fit. Okay. So I retired in March of 25 of this year, so I'm like recently out.

Chris Detzel: Wow. That's a long term time to serve, yeah.

Talon Smith: Yeah. So

Chris Detzel: that's great.

Talon Smith: I [00:13:00] was raised by Heathens, so I was raised by the Marine, so it's it was a good time.

Chris Detzel: Exactly. I just talked to a Marine not too long ago on the podcast summit. Like she Oh, that's awesome. She yeah, she's great.

I think I saw that and she still, yeah. Yeah. Her name's Grace and grace and her sister were on there, Maddie. And that was a recent one. Yeah. Anyways she's still in there. Her husband's in there and all that stuff, and so they still, they're in DC right now, or Virginia, and but I think that's awesome.

Then my brother served in the Air Force years ago. Oh, cool.

Talon Smith: Yeah, my dad was an Air Force guy, so I feel that

Chris Detzel: he's a firefighter now he was in the Air Force as a firefighter and now he's doing some stuff in McKinney, but No, it's funny. I'll just tell you this little story just because I think it's fun because every year, so I remember one time he came back with this picture of this Jeep, I forgot what kind of Jeep it was that he had to, he had to solder or the put the seats were falling off. And so he just not really glued 'em but soldered them all together and then just drove this Jeep. 'cause it was super cheap because he was on this island. And so he was like, I just had to keep the Jeep going.

I don't wanna [00:14:00] buy anything expensive. And so now every year, whenever it's Veterans Day, I'll post it on either Facebook or LinkedIn or something, then tag them in there and just kinda. It's fun, so deep. Was he on Okinawa maybe? No, he was I forgot where he was. It was actually a cool place.

Oh, nice. It's on a, some, that's cool. Love island. You can't was,

Talon Smith: yeah, it was like Guam, Okinawa, somewhere out there, because I was out in Okinawa. They had the Air Force base,

Chris Detzel: and this was a long time ago. He was a firefighter, right? Yeah. So for every Air Force base he was on he was just doing the firefighting for that Air Force base, not, he didn't fight, as in, put on his, he wasn't flying or anything like that.

No, he's

Talon Smith: still very important plane to do catch fire, so no, he is still serving. That's really cool.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, he has a couple good stories, but alright, we got off on that, but it is Veteran's Day. Might as well tell your veteran's story. Of course, you gotta to. Exactly. All right. So you had all this news and so that happened last year, right?

So 2024.

Talon Smith: Yeah. So I was, like I said, I was dealing with issues like when I was running, my legs just didn't feel right, like I wasn't feeling right. Yeah. Again, coming from somebody who could, run pretty [00:15:00] fast, I was consistently throughout the years, holding me at a five 15 mile pace I could cook.

I didn't feel right. Yep. Yeah. After getting all the news, it was like, I was already fully committed to high Rocks, but at that point it was like. Since I found out like late 2023 finally diagnosed 2024, it was a hundred percent like deep dive into everything and like, all right, cool. So like how do we get into the science behind this?

How do we keep on making it better? How do we make sure that, we're gonna make one of the best programs in the world? And if I'm not gonna be able to, like at some point I'm gonna have to be checked out, right? At some point I'm gonna open

heart surgery.

So like it was that point. It really shifted my mindset, like, how can I be the best coach?

Because that's the one thing that I can keep on doing even during my surgery. I'll be done waking up doing programs, so how to be the best coach. And that's where everything's like really shifted and changed. 'Cause I feel like the program has gotten that much better when I actually stepped back and said, you know what?

I'm just gonna be the best coach. Learn everything that I can about running take all my experience from CrossFit, take all my experience from weightlifting, and we're gonna create a program that is inclusive, but it's gonna be really good. And that's what we've got. So it's been cool.

Chris Detzel: All right. So what's crazy about this whole conversation is when, so you told me you just ran a marathon and was it your first [00:16:00] marathon?

Talon Smith: It was my first actual like 26.2.

Chris Detzel: Okay. That's right. You ran a 50 K and a hundred miler, right? Yeah. The 50 miler

Talon Smith: and a hundred miler. Yeah,

Chris Detzel: 50 miler.

Okay. Yeah. So you're telling me all this stuff and already knowing, what made you decide to run this marathon knowing that, you have this heart thing going on. I'm curious.

Talon Smith: Indeed. So there's, I get asked this question a lot, like, why do you continue to push it? And there's two things.

Number one, I could sit here in my house and feel sorry for myself and not live nobody's asking you to do that.

Chris Detzel: No,

Talon Smith: But that's just

Chris Detzel: how I see it. Again, if I'm not, go jog five or 10 miles, like you don't, not sitting at your house,

Talon Smith: that just wouldn't be my mindset.

Like I wouldn't be living because I like having challenges and I like pushing myself. So like for me, if I was just gonna step back from fitness and hey, like I could avoid surgery for years. That wouldn't be who I am. And I don't want my daughter to ever see me not be me who I am. Like I don't want her to ever look at me and say that my dad changed because he found out some bad news.

So I will run myself to the limit. I will find every challenge. Like my goal is to redo another a hundred miler in about two years when I can actually train for it. 'cause it's the mindset that matters, not the [00:17:00] injury. 'cause if you, if I let that overcome me, then my daughter's gonna find out and look at me and be like my dad gave up.

It's okay for me to give up. My dad became somebody different 'cause he found out news. I can become somebody different and I just want her and everybody to understand that just because your cards are stacked against you doesn't mean that you should stop pursuing what you love. Because if I did that, then I would feel like a sellout and I don't ever wanna be that person.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. I guess the other thought is, I mean there's a lot of good stuff you could do. You ran this marathon in a very. Good time. What was it, 3 24 or something like that? Yeah, I think my

Talon Smith: watch time was 3 24 and then I, there the clock time was like 3 26 or whatever, but we ran extra.

It's okay.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, whatever. It's still 3 24. We all do that. It's I remember running this half marathon and. Thinking I was gonna hit closer to under one 30 and it was a 1 31, 1 30 something. 1 31 or something like that. That half marathon was like 0.2 or 0.3, it was just two miles too far.

I'm like, dude, I would've hit under one 30. I hit one nine. A hundred percent. [00:18:00]

Talon Smith: Yeah. It's.

Chris Detzel: See what happens with that? What's the,

Talon Smith: so the threshold because of the bicuspid aortic valve, which is a congenital heart disease. So like most people have like a, like a Mercedes-Benz Chevron, so it closes completely. Mine doesn't, it looks like more like a football. So like basically the blood, instead of it getting all of it pushed out, some of it gets regurgitated back in my heart and that creates too much pressure.

'cause of that, once I get to five centimeters on the aneurysm, like I have to go to surgery. 'cause my risk for rupture is really high. And if it ruptures and dissects, like I'm dead in a minute. So we're just waiting for it to hit that criteria before he had surgery.

Chris Detzel: What's the timeline?

Talon Smith: It's whenever it goes to it's whenever it goes to five, and I go to my cardiologist like once every three months.

Okay. And like, why she, it was part of the deal for me to keep doing this. She's you need to see him every three months. Every three to six months you're getting an echo. If you have chest pain, like you're going to the er it's all this criteria to basically. Put in like a, not necessarily a fail safe 'cause you don't really have that, but put in as much supervision

Yeah.

As we can to allow me to keep doing it. And it's very [00:19:00] much like I understand that at five I go, so it's just making sure that we don't hit that and not know it.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. I just have so many questions. I'm not sure I should ask it.

Talon Smith: That's

Chris Detzel: good. Hey man, I'm

Talon Smith: up for anything. It's, I'm an open book. It's all good.

Chris Detzel: So I just, I think that, and I didn't mean to get into this, I didn't know what I don't know, but you literally have this heart condition that sucks. And I understand you're a very competitive guy and you don't want things to stop you. I would say this is probably more than just an injury, this is a condition that, can literally stop your heart. And, they're people like, as a matter of fact, two people. At the Indianapolis Marathon this last week that died for whatever reason. Yeah. I don't even know why. Just, a friend of mine, I was running with him this morning and he goes, Chris, I was running and I looked over and I saw one of those guys because, getting, his heart pumped or whatever, CPR, that kind of stuff.

And I didn't know it was going on, and apparently, the guy died for whatever reason. The last thing you want is, I would think is. Somebody to see you dead on just from running a marathon. You know what I mean? Because if it can happen, you can, [00:20:00] marathons are hard.

Yeah. It's not easy. I'm not saying that you're not able to do hard things. Obviously you're with all this stuff that you're doing and hardcore you are. You got talent, you got all these things, but you could do 5K or something, or that's

Talon Smith: a train day.

That's a train day.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, I know. But yeah. You're being more than just a coach to me. It's like you are still going out and doing these marathons. A hundred milers. You still wanna do that, and I'm not saying you shouldn't, but geez, man, that seems dangerous.

Talon Smith: There's an aspect to it that it is, and I just think that I, I fully accepted that because like I said, the other option was, what they wanted me to do is I'd be miserable, like just my personality wise, like just my mindset, just where I'm at.

Like I would be miserable and like I'm more afraid of that person than I am of me dying at a marathon or a race. That wholeheartedly.

Chris Detzel: I'm the same way. Like I can't understand that. Yeah. I'm pretty high strung and if I just had to sit around the house and not be able to exercise and blow some steam, that, that would be pretty difficult.

But you do have this gem that you get to motivate people and push people and do things like that. A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. So that's fun, I'm sure.

Talon Smith: Yeah. It'll, I think [00:21:00] with the amount of oversight that I have, like I feel very confident, sorry, one of my dogs just walked in. I feel very confident with my doctor and the follow up that I have that yeah we're very much understanding it if it goes there.

And it, I also know that at any point in time during a race, like if something starts to hit, like I'll pull myself out. Like I won't, I'm not up to the point where for I feel something going south or I feel like something's not right, like I will pull myself out and I'm not worried about the DNF, but like I'm still gonna go out there.

I'm not gonna take it to the point of oh, I feel my chest ripping, like I'm gonna keep on running. No,

Chris Detzel: You would, you should know to not do that.

Talon Smith: Yeah, absolutely. So I won't do that. But as far as you have this

Chris Detzel: problem with your heart, so it starts to hurt. Just stop. Yeah, exactly.

Talon Smith: That's in that guideline. But as far as like still pursuing it and doing that, like I'll still keep training. I'll see still keep going after it. Okay. And like I said, the doctor's gonna tell me when it's time and I'm not gonna be that person to argue.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, you gotta do what your doctor says and you built that trust, it sounds and all right.

I'm not sure I feel better about li but I feel like you, you have it under control. Although, you never know what's gonna happen, I certainly, yeah,

Talon Smith: I tell everybody to stay [00:22:00] dangerous. That's one of my, that's one, one of my key words. Stay dangerous. Yeah. No, I feel that.

I appreciate that.

Chris Detzel: So it's funny because you say stay dangerous and I think that to some degree that's that it's okay. And there's this one guy that was telling me he was on the podcast. And great guy. He goes, Chris, I did this 50 miler and I didn't even train for it and it was the worst thing I ever did, and he goes, I didn't finish. And I'm like you didn't finish because you didn't train. Like you're telling me I didn't really train for a marathon. But what you do a lot of high rock stuff. You do a lot of. Five and eight mile or eight Ks and things like, so you're in there all day, every, doing stuff. Not you're not training on a consistent basis and you have some

Talon Smith: talent. I would never tell anybody to full send a 50 miler, even a 50 K or a hundred miler, or without training. I would never do that, that's, but I'm

Chris Detzel: just saying that's, that to me is the, dang, that's just dumb.

You know what I mean? Don't, yeah.

Talon Smith: I think the stay dangerous is always keep the mindset and the edge that like you're always training to get that 1% better. Like that you [00:23:00] want to keep going, when you step on a course, it's for my athletes, and I even tell my athletes this, like when you get on the course, be the best representation of yourself.

Have that edge, have that mindset that you're gonna go out there and you're gonna run smart. You're gonna listen to your body, you're gonna run off a feel, but you're also gonna not be afraid to push yourself. You're not gonna, you're not gonna succumb to fear if you feel like you're pushing hard.

Then you can push it. Don't lose that confidence, stay dangerous. And have that mindset of I'm strong, I can do this. I have trained and I'm not gonna be fearful of this. I'm gonna attack it. And that's more of my mindset of stay dangerous. Is that sort of faith and trusting your training?

If I could say it the best ways, trust your training, because I think a lot of people train hard and then I'm sure you've seen it, I'm sure you've trained people, they've done all the prep that they can do, you know their numbers. On Garmin, on labs, they look great and they go out there to execute and their mindset stops them from ex achieving what they should.

Chris Detzel: Hundred percent.

Talon Smith: So that's where that stay dangerous comes from because at the end of the day, you know this as well. Your mind can defeat you quick, quicker than anybody then, quicker than a clock, quicker than an athlete, quicker than competition. Your mind will put you in the gutter so quick.

And that's an endurance sports [00:24:00] too. That's in a 5K. That's in a 10 k that's in a marathon. Yep.

Chris Detzel: No, I, it's funny you say that because I, get to pace runners and, I've been part of different pacing groups and leading pacing groups and things like that, and you see some really talented people.

But, the mindset is I remember telling, and this happened many times, but I remember this woman, she had run with us and you could tell like she had a lot of talent. We were running at that time, was the pace. And I said, I'll just say her name, Lexi, and I was like, Lexi.

You have to go under one 30 easily. I was like, easily for half. This is a half marathon. I was like, and you're hitting and I understand it takes little bit time. Get your mind get your, you gotta get the training right. Things like that. But I was like, it takes time though, because I think for whatever reason, we say, okay, we're running with the one 40 group.

That's about the best I'm gonna do. You've done 1 43 or four times, like it's time to push yourself a little faster because you can do under one 30 or whatever. Three years later, four years later, she hired a coach and all this other stuff, and she like a [00:25:00] 1 23 or 1 24.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, it's fun to see. But I think, you're right. The mindset is the key is like know there's this other kind of guy, there's this other guy that had this same mindset. He goes, Chris, I don't go out there and if I blow up. Because that blow up, I'm gonna try for this time and it's maybe a little bit more, tougher than maybe than what I could do.

But why would I go out there and just not shoot for it? You know what I mean? And I think you're right, but if you don't, if you don't push, then you're not gonna get it. A hundred percent just don't, and

Talon Smith: there's always the idea too. And especially in running, like I tell my athletes, it's for high rocks.

There is a strategy, there is a pacing to it, but at a certain point it turns into a race. Like you can't, and I think this was very relevant in running, you train to a certain capability. Yeah, a hundred percent. You have to understand and work within those capabilities, but at some point it's how bad do you want it?

Yeah. Like you can out push your capabilities if your mind lets you, and that's what I train my athletes for. High rocks. Anybody listening, free tips, I tell my athletes like, run within your capabilities after you get off the row. It's time to go because you got three stations left. And what do you, what are you made of?

What do you want? If you want the podium, it's [00:26:00] gonna hurt. Nothing's gonna feel good about it. That's right. They designed this race to make it not feel good. Just like a marathon. Like when somebody ran a marathon, the dude who ran the message 26.2 miles and falling over dying that's your first sign.

It's not gonna be easy. Like the dude died after running 26.2 miles. It's not gonna be easy. That's right. So at some point he, I think he hit 26.1, but whatever. Yeah, 26.1. My bad. But he, my whole point is like when you look at the design of this, you like it's gonna hurt race within your capabilities, but at some point, how bad do you want it?

How bad do you want it go? Go get it. Dangerous.

Chris Detzel: So I have question for.

The Marine Corps marathon some more recently? Yeah. It was like a few weeks ago, two weeks ago, maybe six weeks by the time somebody listen to this. But the point is like how did you go? What was your mindset going in and tell me about the marathon. I'm curious.

Talon Smith: So my mindset is, again, I was in, in High Rock's training.

I was in like my sort of like peak phase for Toronto and Atlanta. Because I ran Atlanta the next week after the marathon. Terrible idea. We still did really good, but it was rough. But my whole [00:27:00] idea is I was running for the Marine Recon Foundation, which is the unit that I served with the community that I served with the majority of my career.

And we raised money for it's like the Gold Star families, the families of the fallen. And we raised it to help our teammates in need. So they called me up and they're like, dude, you're doing the Marine Corps marathon? And I was like, all cool. So when I just showed up there, my goal was to sub three 30.

Okay. Obviously putting in the base work and like I said, there's a huge crossover between running and high rocks. High Rocks is I would say for most people, 60% running. Yeah. So I was doing a lot of running, a lot of again, zone two base work, zone one base work and I knew where my pace was.

So I was like, Hey, if I can just push a little bit, I think I can get a three 30. So I went out there and my goal was to essentially try to just do, just cruise for the first 13 and then try and send it. And I actually ended up just holding the pace the entire time, which was crazy. I think it's because, I'm a little A DHD if you can't tell, but I saw the pacer in front of me with the seven 30 sign and he, or sorry, the three 30 sign and he was just really pissing me off for some reason.

So I decided I was gonna pass him. So I just stayed with him and passed him. But it was just go out there and have fun and, just obviously honor my brothers, who he lost in combat and just keep them on back of my mind and just see what happened. [00:28:00] And I ended up hitting the goal of three 30.

I guess my guesstimation just off all this running was right.

Chris Detzel: How'd you fuel during that race? Was it, so it sounds like you stuck with the three 30 a bit then passed. Did you find, I mean it sounds like you did pretty well overall. So

Talon Smith: for me, I, the fuelings always been like an interesting portion of me.

'cause I feel like it's very customized and personalized. Like we can go by the rule of thumb. And the craziest thing was I was going in with the mindset of I was gonna do 60 to 75 an hour. And then my buddy who's a triathlete, dude's insane. He qualified for Worlds on his first race. I think he ran a 3 0 9, and it was like.

Outside of the cruising, just cruising. Absolute beast. And he did this with a torn labrum in his hip, by the way, 3 0 9 and zero training. Insane. Like he hadn't trained for three months after it's wild. But he is dude, he's you're a bigger dude. So I'm almost 200 pounds. He's you need to be, at least at one 20.

He's I'm at 180. I'm like, bro, how are you doing 180 grams of carbs an hour? He's bro it's you're straight steady steak. Yeah. He's yeah you're burning carbs. I got that. He is like. You're burning 'em a lot faster than you think. With as big as you are. So I literally went in there and I had a gel in my mouth [00:29:00] almost every like constantly and I just kept on at it and I was like, man, this is terrible.

My mouth is nasty. But I just tried it. I'm like, dude, I'm gonna listen to you 'cause this is what you do all the time. And you never tried it before? Yeah, never tried it before. And I just literally made sure I had a gel in my mouth. I was grabbing everything they gave away. This like molasses stuff. I dunno what it's called.

The syrup. It's like maple syrup stuff from some company. Yeah, I've had some of that.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Us mint, just sugar really. But yeah, it's all sugar,

Talon Smith: yeah. They gave us mint. I don't know who would give you mint while you're running a marathon, but like at mile 13 to 15, I thought it was gonna throw up, or like it was gonna come out the other end.

It was terrible. Like I'd never tried it before, but I was like, oh, Dom said I need gel. I need gel. So I just started eating it and. It ended up working out pretty good. Like I, I felt great. Just got it done. Thank you. And afterwards, like I said I think I was sore for one day and I started training on Tuesday again for Atlanta, and I was fine.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, look, it sounds like High Rock's really helped you a lot, in doing those, that training and that's pretty remarkable. Just think what. If you were really push yourself to do like a three, 10 or 15, maybe you would've been hurting.

Talon Smith: I think. I think [00:30:00] that at some point, if I decide, 'cause they want us to go back and do the marathon again next year.

Okay. I think I might carve out a three month block to see what we can do. I might, because.

Chris Detzel: You'll do a lot better.

Talon Smith: Yeah, absolutely. I think I'll do that. And then also I'll practice the fueling this time and not just go off of whatever I'm handed. Pretty much. That'd be a good idea. You should

Chris Detzel: do like a half marathon before I don't know, several weeks before as a test, that's local or something, it'll help you'll have a really good, look, not saying you don't know what you're doing. A lot of times a race folks will do like a half marathon right before a race, like three or four weeks before, maybe four weeks. That way you can, race it and see how you do.

Test out the pacing. See where

Talon Smith: they feel, see where they're at. Makes sense. Absolutely. We kind, we do similar stuff with ROCs, right? So we do, we'll do a mock sim, a couple like, so we do ours 90 days prior and then we do a mini sim and our tape a week. So again, you can see what it feels like, right?

You gotta be exposed to that stimulus and see if you can sustain that.

Chris Detzel: I always tell people like. I think it's important to race, and get that race especially if you're doing a marathon. If you don't know what it's like on race day in general and you don't know what it's like to compete, you've done a lot of [00:31:00] competitions and things like that, so you know.

But if you're going in there blind or you haven't done it in a year or six months or something like that, go do five Ks, go do a 10 k or a half marathon or whatever to get your mind ready. Because the thing is if you start off too fast, 'cause everybody's starting off fast, they're excited.

You do that for the first three miles you still have 23 miles to go, absolutely. In mile 20, you're just gonna be, getting your ass kicked a little bit. You might anyways, but sometimes you gotta run a little bit smarter.

Talon Smith: A hundred percent. I think that's one of the, this is a great carryover.

We teach the same exact thing for hix. Most people blow up, and again, I don't, I think a lot of people sometimes don't fully understand their energy systems. What's the cost risk versus reward, right? Like in the military, you have operational risk management. If you do this could happen. Are you willing to take that risk?

Yes or no? And that's how you almost have to race, right? If you go out too hot in high rocks in the first, first two runs in first two zones, like you're blown up. Like you just went completely anaerobic, you tipped your heart rate into a place. Now you're fighting for recovery. I'm glad that you had a great, 15 minutes of your race, but guess what? The next hour, the next 30, the next 40 [00:32:00] minutes, like you're not gonna be loving life. And I think it comes down to, it comes down to, it comes down to a couple things, right? Like number one is coaching, but number two is having discipline. And again, always race within your capabilities and then figure out how bad you won it when it matters.

It's about even in training, right? Like it's about peaking at the right time. It's about staying disciplined to your training plan, peaking at the right time and hitting the race when you're gonna be at your best and not feeling the need. Like I gotta smash it hard. I'm one week away. I'm gonna go as hard as I freaking can.

No, like you need to have the discipline in the training and that discipline in the training needs to be applied to the race.

Chris Detzel: That's where I think the racing comes in, like the practice racing and like people just have to learn. You could tell 'em all day long things and they'll just be like, they'll still fuck it up.

You know what I mean? We all do. Excuse my language, but it's true. No,

Talon Smith: you're fine man. It's fine. And so this is one of the things too. This is where I come from. So I, it's wild story. I think I have the most races out of any US athlete. I know. Any US male athlete for high rocks. Okay. I always tell everybody.

Yeah. So I have 44. I'll be at 50 by the end of the year, which is wild. I have an addiction. That's fun. It's great. It's good.

Chris Detzel: We do, we all have it.

Talon Smith: So I get it, but to your [00:33:00] point, I told somebody, I'm like, you don't always figure it out after your first race. You don't even figure it out after your second race.

And sometimes it takes five or six. Yeah. And furthermore, if like you're running solo open versus solo Pro, it's a whole new ball game. You're pushing now a 4 85 pound sled pulling a 375 pound sled, and now you're using a 20 pound ball and a 70 pound sandbag. And a lot heavier gear. Your body's gonna respond differently.

Like you've gotta give it time to figure it out. And just because you have a bad race doesn't mean you suck. It means like you really gotta figure out what this race feels like. And just like you said, man, same thing. Same thing with the marathon. Like you gotta figure it out. I just happen to get lucky and run a good one.

And I think it's because we do so much running. I was able to guesstimate it, but same thing, like if somebody's going out to be competitive, like you have to be a competitor to be competitive in a competition.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, yeah, like you've had lots of experience in, in kind of race things and you said you've done 50 miles in a hundred plus, and you do this stuff every day, you coach. And so it makes sense, you know that you did pretty well, 3 24 or six or whatever you wanna call it. It's pretty [00:34:00] good, man. It's blow up, you've never ran. A marathon as in, race.

Thinking about it. Yeah. It's you go like this, three 30. Yep. I think I can do it. Most people, a lot of people would be like, oh man, that's really good.

Talon Smith: Thank you. Yeah, it was it was definitely a, it was definitely a trial by fire. But you know what,

Chris Detzel: I think that you're way better than that.

This, if you were to truly train three, four month. Telling what you would do. I think it would be pretty, pretty awesome. Look, you never know on a marathon, anything could happen, but, and race day could be hot or whatever, but can't control those things. But the talent obviously pretty cool.

Thank

Talon Smith: you. Yeah it'll be cool to see. Like I said I'm thinking about it next year actually when I get done, so we have Dallas next week and then I race Anaheim. But after Dallas is when we go back into some more of our foundational running and strength phase. So it's gonna be.

Gonna to be cool to see that develop over then it probably will be a two or three month block for me. So it's gonna be cool to see what I can do. And we actually are gonna try to have [00:35:00] everybody run probably the Cal Town, half of my athletes. So we actually work up to, we actually work up to our athletes sometimes two and over two hours of running.

And I use time domain for training specifically for higher rocks because. Everybody runs a different pace and within those two hours, depending on your pace, like where your zone two's at, like you're gonna get the miles that you get. And that allows us to increase the mileage safety for each athlete.

So our athletes will work up to half marathon. We have some who are gonna do a full marathon. But it's just really cool for that crossover to do that. And as you said you gotta be racing. So I need my athletes to go out there and while we do a lot of threshold and tempo work, hey, get out there, set and go see what you can do.

And o obviously wanna also see how much has our run training paid off. In the last year where you can go retest your fitness in that and that, that's I think what I love about hybrid is there's such a crossover. So if you wanna go do, and this is what I tell my athlete, if you wanna go do a CrossFit competition, you might not win, but you're gonna do what?

If you wanna go run a 10 K, you might not win, but you're gonna do well. If you wanna go do high rocks, you might not win, but you're gonna do well. But I'll promise you, in all three of those events, you're gonna [00:36:00] have fun.

Chris Detzel: There's always somebody better in general, a hundred percent.

Talon Smith: It's a great, that that's perfect.

I love that.

Chris Detzel: He could be the there's this guy one of the fastest people I know in Dallas from a marathon, he runs a 2 28. And he's not gonna win. He's just not gonna win when he goes to most marathons. You know what I mean? Yeah. No matter how, it's really fast, but yeah.

He didn't win and whenever he did it in Indianapolis you get, I don't know, 10th or something, there's 10 other people that, or more that were way faster than he was, and and that's fast.

Talon Smith: Yeah. No, that, that's crazy. And I think it's too it's what I kind of love about, running and even all of this is that for me, like you can really set a goal and that'll determine your training.

You're still doing more than 90% of the world. And that's what's cool. Yeah. And even though he didn't win, he's gonna say I ran a sub two 30 marathon. Dude you should get that tattooed somewhere. Probably. I got a lot of tattoos, so I'm all about tattoos. But that's an accomplishment.

And depending on what he does, I, I don't know if he works full time or has a family Oh, he does. Does, yeah. Yeah. Has all that, that, that says so much about his character than ever winning a marathon would.

Chris Detzel: That's huge. And [00:37:00] I'm sure he is won marathon. It's not that you're, he's not gonna win one or two, but in general, there's gonna be somebody faster than you at some point.

And he's 40, he's doing really well at 40 years old. That's,

Talon Smith: yeah, that's

Chris Detzel: even more incredible. Yeah. But when you think of or one thing I did wanna ask you, like this, the Dallas High Rocks, tell me more about the competition. What does that look like? Your guys come up here.

Do it. Are you doing it? Is that you got in? Yeah so ocs basically,

Talon Smith: they have races almost in I can't tell you how many countries, but it's huge. It's global, right? Yeah. Last year they had 1.2 million racers. This year I think they're probably on par to hit 2 million, but yeah, they're gonna hold it at the k Hutchinson Convention Center.

It's gonna be three days of racing. So depending on your division is whether you run Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. And so again, you can run a relay, which is four people. So you're only doing two runs in two zones. You can do doubles mixed or men's mixes like male, female. And then you have like pro doubles and open doubles and you have solo.

So people actually flying in from all across the US they people from That's awesome. Overseas coming. It's gonna be a big event, like 12,000 people in three days. It's crazy. And when you're on [00:38:00] the course, like you feel it. There's a lot of people, a lot of congestion. But I think that the coolest thing is you have athletes from every single discipline there.

You have OCR racers, you have triathlons, you have marathon runners, you have CrossFit athletes. Like you'll even see bodybuilders out there doing it, and you're like, bro, like you look like you should be in the middle ages swinging an ax at somebody's head. Yeah. And you're running this event. And then you'll see, like for example, it's one of the most inspiring things that I see is like when I watch my parents, my mom's 70 and my dad's 69, like they run mixed doubles together.

That's right. And like you just see everything from that. And then you go to the other spectrum where you'll see like Nick Bearer, everybody's familiar with Nick Bearer from BSM supplements, you'll see hunter McIntyre, you'll see just all these individuals out there on the course doing the same event together.

And then there'll be somebody who might be 50 to 70 pounds overweight, with a friend getting through the course. Yep. So it's just really just cool experience that you have. Everybody's treated the really treated the same. It's one of those things like, you know how the marathon, like how electric it is?

Will you just keep running? 'cause people are treatment for you the entire time.

Yeah.

And they don't even know you. [00:39:00] Same thing. You have people cheering for you and it's just like a really cool feat. And then you cross the stage and just like you cross the marathon line and everybody's, it's just, it's a really cool experience.

But yeah, Dallas is gonna be one of the biggest US races this year. It's gonna be crazy and we're really excited for it.

Chris Detzel: Do you think it's taken over the CrossFit movement? 'cause I feel like CrossFit is, I don't wanna call it dying, but it's kind dying.

Talon Smith: It's dying. Yeah. So CrossFit is dying. And I actually did a video on this, so I was getting ready to release it.

So we officially unaffiliated with CrossFit. And CrossFit is dying. And I think that Higher Rocks has to take heed to this because first of all, like they outgrew the support they could give their affiliates. Yeah. And what I mean by that is we had issues where they came in town and we're a smaller CrossFit affiliate.

My gym's tiny, my gym's 1200 square feet. Like it's not huge, but they posted every one of the major CrossFit gyms, but ours on Instagram when they were coming into town. Oh wow. Yeah, and not only that, I think that their regional manager called me one time. One time in the last 11 years that I was affiliated, they never sent anybody at HQ to come check on us.

There was nothing about that. And so they [00:40:00] outgrew the support that could give the affiliates.

Got

it. So it's Hey, yeah, you're in charge of your gym. Do your own thing. And then they tried to compensate, but it's too little too late. Furthermore, like CrossFit really didn't take care of their athletes, in my opinion, as evidence by the CrossFit games and the tragedy that happened there.

Like you're not taking care of your athletes. And they were trying to push fitness to a level that became dangerous. And then furthermore, they raised without giving us that. And not only that, I think the biggest thing for CrossFit, and this is with anything, right? Like it's the barrier to entry to be a coach.

So they could take a two week course and you get your level one, and now you have these people saying, we're forging elite fitness. And they could never have any CrossFit experience. And my story is in San Diego in 2011, when I took mine, there was a guy there who was never into fitness, never taken across a class, never really worked out in his life, but he took his level one, he was opening a gym.

So when you have a low barrier to entry, you have low standards, correct? Exactly. So Oxs is taking over because I will say their affiliate support is second to none. You send 'em a message, you're getting a message and response. They'll check up on you. You're getting the emails, you're getting the follow up.

It's been incredible. Number two, the thing they have to take heat of though is to become a High Rocks h OXS Training center or become a High Rocks coach. [00:41:00] It's still a very easy, simple online course. So I would say that for high rocks not to put on CrossFit, they need to continue to offer the excellent customer service on the affiliate support that they are.

And also there needs to be more buy-in for the training. And for me, and this is really huge, is I'm actually getting my doctorate of nursing practice in psychiatry. So I've been doing doctorate level research now for two and a half years. I actually, craziest thing ever, I present my project the day of Dallas on the 21st.

I go from presenting my doctorate project to the race, but I've taken that level of research and put it into training.

And that's

increased not only the safety and efficacy of my program, it's increased the results. Not everybody's doing that, and they're selling the program, and you wanna find an in between of creating a program.

Where coaches are gonna have a high level of buy-in to ensure that they're giving the clients the best experience possible. And I think that there's always a once, and this even comes for training, right? It's like you don't necessarily train the race, you train the energy systems, you train the adaptations, and you train the stimulus.

And a lot of programming. Again for CrossFit, wasn't that, it was just generic. And then for ROCs, [00:42:00] there's a lot of gyms doing generic programming because it looks like Oxs, but they're not actually training their energy system. And that's where, like I said, I love talking to you about running, because the great ROCs programs in the right phase are going to be doing essentially a structured running program and it's gonna still be structured.

It's just the time that you're gonna spend in each modality is gonna change as your race becomes sooner and sooner. So I love that crossover between running. 'cause for my athletes, like if they're not doing zone one, zone two and having a nice easy zone, or sorry, long zone one, zone two run every week.

If they're not having a, zone 2, 30, 40 minute run on top of recovery day, and they're not actually actively working on tempo or threshold runs. And training that then they're missing out on what this program really has to offer. Like I said, that's one or two days less than the actual running program would be, but the only reason is we have to train for the speci specificity of the race, and the demands are gonna be put on his race from hitting his own.

Chris Detzel: Wow, that's awesome. Now, I was looking at High Rock's gyms in Dallas or whatever, but I didn't see a [00:43:00] bunch of them. Is there just not a lot of. Gyms that are, and maybe there is, that's just like in the wrong place like Google. So

Talon Smith: There's 3000, there are plenty of there are plenty of gyms in Dallas.

There're still, like I said, there're still, it's happening at a high rate that they are updating the website, but there is a little lag on that. There are quite a few gyms in Dallas. For me it's like I tell everybody, I don't like to ever, I don't ever talk down to anybody, but it would just be like, would you hire a running coach who's never run a marathon?

Okay. So my whole thing is make sure you guys are vetting the gyms in the program right now. 'cause high rocks is very much blowing up. I think it's great that gyms wanna add revenue streams to it. Sure. Just make sure you're like, vetting the coaches, vetting the experience and really see what it's about.

Screwed because again, like I wouldn't hire I would just

Chris Detzel: call you and I'd say, Hey, what do you think about this? Yeah.

Talon Smith: And absolutely, and I would tell you what coaches are there, but it's just one of those things to just make sure that athletes who are looking for a gym to vet them.

Like how does their coach run a race? You don't have to be a great marathon runner to coach marathon running, but you have to understand the race. Yeah. Freaking coaches. You don't have to be a great High Rocks athlete to coach High Rocks. You can be a great strength and conditioning coach, but just if you've never run a marathon, you can't tell everybody what Mile 20 feels [00:44:00] like if you've under fueled.

Yeah. Agree. You can agree. Same thing with High Rocks. You can't explain that to people, so just be very careful. When looking for a High Rocks from to vet them, ask 'em about their training program, look into it. 'cause the sport is gonna blow up. And like I said, there's lots of great trainers.

I'm not saying they don't have a great program. I'm not saying that you won't get in shape, but if you're looking for a specific HIX program like. It shouldn't just be workouts that look like ox. It should be foundationally based on building your aerobic base, right? Building your overall work capacity, and then training for the stimulus that Oxs is gonna force on you, where you're having to run a one K after pushing a 4, 9, 5 pound sled.

But it shouldn't look like that every day.

Chris Detzel: And I feel like that's in anything, right? You're looking for some kind of coach to, to do certain things. If you wanna get the best one, and you gotta ask good questions, or if you want a good doctor that is gonna look at your heart or whatever, there's a lot of doctors that are, they might know, doc, they know their stuff, but maybe they don't have that much experience.

Maybe they're not the best. Somebody working on your heart. You cannot want the best. Correct.

Talon Smith: Yeah. And like I'm saying, I'm not saying they're not good coaches. I'm not saying that they just, I'm not saying that they have to run hi rocks well, but I think that it's important to, that they understand hi [00:45:00] rocks and what is it from a physi physiologic perspective and have at least run way so they can really explain the pacing to you.

Explain the zones to you. Yeah. And have that experience. But yeah, OXS is blown up. There are a lot of gyms popping up. But to that, to my thing is just make sure that it's there, like their foundational approach. Everything should be built on, again, foundationally running. Now, if you come in and let's say for example, we have we have two athletes who are insane, absolutely insane runners.

Like now our shift has been like training them again as runners. They don't spend a lot of time on barbells. Now we're trying get 'em a barbell and build that foundational strength. So again it's cool. I think there's a lot of really good gyms out there. I think trainers. As they get the experience and as high rocks blows up, you're gonna have a ton of high quality training centers, which is my goal, right?

'cause I always see it. I dunno how you feel about that. If there's a lot of good programs putting out high quality runners. When you get to race day, you have one hell of a race and it's fun.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, there's certain coaches that kind of produce a lot of really good runners, but the other pieces.

A good, they're running groups. So we in Dallas there's Pegasus, that they're, they just cultivate, a culture of running [00:46:00] and they just get better and, white Rock running co-op is really good and some others, that really cultivate that.

There's a lot of great room in Fort Worth as well, like Cal Town has a running kind of group, but where is your gym located for those that you know are in Fort Worth and that might be interested in doing something like this?

Talon Smith: So right now we're on we're on Camp Buoy, but we're only gonna be there for about another month and 10 days.

And then we'll be right off of Benbrook, like if you know where the 180 3 turnaround is. We're just slightly down on Benbrook, and we'll be releasing that all over our social media. Like I said, we just did the rebrand, but it's really gonna be like a hybrid training and recovery center. So we'll have cold plunges, infrared saunas, norm tech, hyper ice, because as is running too.

It's not how hard you can train. It's how well do you recover. Yeah. So we wanna bring that full spectrum piece to it. But yeah, we're on bui right now. Seven 5K buoy in Fort Worth. You can look it up. CrossFit all three or all three high rocks. We still have those domains. And then by December we'll be at our new place.

We're really excited for it and I think it's gonna be cool.

Chris Detzel: Cool. And tell, is there anything that I missed that we just didn't cover that I probably should have asked and just didn't?

Talon Smith: No, I don't [00:47:00] know. I think, we covered like the whole idea of training, just kind like my theory on that of where high rocks, like you have to be a good runner.

You have to train your energy systems. And one thing, and I don't know if you guys, how you guys looked at this at running, but one thing I dove into on. Studies was, I saw a really high carryover between cycling and running. And I, I don't know how often like that's trained and I was gonna ask you that personally, like just in your experience.

So what I found out, obviously for us, like we have concept two bikes. I don't know if you're familiar with those. So any bike that you can adjust a damper setting on, the resistance, so setting it to a low setting, working on turnover and having a high RPM, like we're seeing it actually benefit our runners.

The running economy, and not only that, we're doing their zone two work and we're de decreasing their training stress while still, again, training the energy system, training the stimulus, and not necessarily the movement. Yeah. So I just didn't know if like you guys are actively doing that because we do the same exact thing for our VO two max work, where you would do a, a four by four or Norwegian four by four.

We'll do that on a rower to de decrease the training stress that's actually put on the body from the impact. So I just didn't know for running on your side, if you see carryover between [00:48:00] using, again, cycling in any way, shape or form to help with running economy, to help with fatigue resistance that.

Chris Detzel: Probably, yeah, it's probably a true statement, but a lot of the runners, I'm trying to think, some cycle, but it's rare because if a lot of these guys are, if they're marathon runners, a lot of these folks are just running, gotcha. They might be in the gym a little bit or whatever.

They're not generally cycling much seeing that they don't do much of it. They're running 60 to 80 miles a week for their, for their marathons. And some guys like the guys that are running the two thirties, two forties, whatever, are under three hours. The women that are doing that, they're running, some of 'em are running 110 miles a week, which is ridiculous.

Talon Smith: Yeah. That's insane. That's a lot, that's a lot of volume. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. Not, not, it's not every single week, but getting up to 110, I was looking at this dude the other day and his Strava. And he hit 110 miles a week. This guy was telling me I should interview him because he's gonna do really well with Dallas Marathon.

So I went to go look at him. I was like, Brent, this dude is running 110 miles. He goes, yeah, he's doing two days a week of running. [00:49:00] That's the only way to do it, to hit that many miles. I agree that more miles does help you to, one, be able to do the distance. And then two is, it does help you to get faster.

And I know the guy's doing speed work and all of these things. I just think it's probably too much. I'm hitting 40 miles a week and that's enough. Yeah. I don't do a bunch of marathons either, yeah, I gotcha you. Yeah,

Talon Smith: so that's funny too. So when we work up to, like, when we work up to our high mileages, like from more competitive athletes we're usually around 50.

So we generally hang, like we'll ramp up from usually like around 18 to 20, depending on the athletes level. Yeah. Because we've gotta ramp 'em up safely. Like new athletes, you can't just throw that mileage on. And then we'll usually get up to at the high end on 50, and that'll be back in our foundational phase after we've ramped up for a few weeks.

But yeah, we're right. Think's plenty.

Huh? I think that's plenty.

That's plenty. Yeah. No, absolutely. And we'll, again, we'll, we're usually around a week, anywhere between 2025 and ramping that up, and then usually in the thirties. So quite a bit of running volume too. But again, it's a little different with everything else we gotta work on.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, you gotta put in the other stuff and for what you guys are doing. Tyler, this has been great. I really appreciate you coming on and teaching me and hopefully the [00:50:00] audience a little bit of about High Rocks and just the things that you guys are doing and I think it's a great compliment to running, and those kinds of things.

And it's doesn't seem as dangerous as maybe CrossFit could be, I dunno, dangerous is the right word.

Talon Smith: Way, so way lower, buy-in, less complexity. You're not doing a handstand walk, you're not trying to do a muscle up like you're using, yeah. Traditional strength and conditioning.

A strength and conditioning and movements. Everybody can do. So if you can do lunges, squats, and you can push and walk back on a rope, like you're gonna be okay. Couple burpees, you'll be fine.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. I love that. I was, I did Orange Theory for a long time. That was decent, it's not perfect, but good compliment to run.

Talon thanks so much for coming on. Thanks everybody for tuning into another DFW Running Talk. Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter at DFW running talk.substack.com. Talon. Thanks again. Really appreciate it.

Talon Smith: Thanks for having me. I'm excited. We got talk about High Rocks and some running.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, me too. It was pretty awesome. All right, thanks everyone. Take care. Thanks.