Barbell Shrugged - No Mat Fraser? Can CrossFit Survive? w/ Armen Hammer, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #557

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

Armen Hammer has been doing CrossFit for more than 10 years and has been producing content around the CrossFit Games since 2012. You can find his coverage, commentary, and analysis on YouTube on ArmenHammerTV and his various podcasts including Scale As Needed on iTunes, Spotify, and everywhere else you can find podcasts.   Download his free eBook: https://bit.ly/101freeworkouts   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: What happens to the CrossFit Games without Mat Fraser? Is Tia Clair Toomey the best athlete of all time? CrossFit selling out to a venture firm is now cool? Is opening a CrossFit gym in 2021 a good idea? How does CrossFit regain dominance in the fitness industry?     Armen Hammer YouTube Armen Hammer Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   U.S. Air Force. Find out if you do at airforce.com.   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, my good friend Armin Hammer drops into Barbell Shrug. He's probably the most connected person that I still follow in the CrossFit world. And I love listening to his YouTube channel because we share so many of the same thoughts on CrossFit, the CrossFit games. Many of the faces that you see on a daily basis if you are in the CrossFit world, whether it's Greg Glassman, Dave Castro, new ownership, all the moves that they've done. And he's one of the most respected people to me in CrossFit because he's been around so long that he has seen all of these stories happen from day one all the way to current day CrossFit and what everything looks like, how it's shaping out.

Many of the athletes that have come and gone, and many of them that are still in it. Today, we spent a ton of time talking about what is going to happen to CrossFit once Matt Frazier, now that Matt Frazier has left, how much of a savage Tia Tara Clumias, I really think she's like one of the best athletes to ever walk on the face of this earth. How U.S. Bobsled has been picking a lot of the female CrossFit athletes to be on the U.S. Bobsled team this year. Shout out to Kelsey Keel, former Barbell Shrugged podcast guest. And also, if you enjoy this conversation, make sure you get into the link in the bio. Armin has a free download, 101 free workouts, and he's just putting out a course now for any of you beginner coaches out there or people that are into training people called

How to Write a Workout. So if you've ever been into the programming space, coaching space, and interested in how you can write workouts, he's been a gym owner. He's programmed for tons of CrossFit athletes. And I think it's a very valuable course just because he's got a great brain on him and understands the CrossFit space, understands how to coach people,

understands how to connect with people. And this course is going to be very good. I believe it's kicking off at the beginning of May. I could be wrong in that. But if you head over to his YouTube channel or his Instagram, there's going to be tons of content. So get into the show notes and connect with him as well as hop on that free download. In this episode, we talk about what happens to the CrossFit Games without Matt Frazier. Is Tia Claire Toomey the greatest athlete of all time?

A little bit of the backstory in CrossFit selling to a venture capital firm, which was like so not CrossFit a couple years ago. And also a lot of the entrepreneurship side of CrossFit. We are going to do reads in the middle. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson. That's Armand Hammer, the only person in this whole world that keeps me engaged in the CrossFit community.

We just did all this pre-show leading up to, and CrossFit dot,fit dot dot dot in which i have to cut them off but first off i have to say before we get into this dude i've been following you slash friends slash like watching each other's career grow and do what we do for over a decade now do you know that we have been in each other's lives for 10 years, which is one of the coolest parts about just being in this weird fitness, CrossFit, strength and conditioning space is that somehow the people we all met when we were super infant in this world, and now a decade later, we're still here doing it. I don't know don't know about you anders but it has been the best

decade of my life so i'm pretty sure that has something to do with like our relationship probably affected that a little bit at least yeah we made it a lot of fun i remember your your very initial uh launch into the world of media with the WODcast podcast, I remember getting on that show because of the OC throwdown and thinking, dude, there's something about talking on a microphone that I just need to be a part of. Little did I know Doug Larson would let me come and be a part of Barbell Shrugged. You were the intro. You know what? Sometimes it's like being struck by lightning. You didn't ask for it.

It just happened, and you were able to grab it and run with it. Maybe I was the guy that introduced you to the microphone. I'm not going to take credit for it. I'm not going to say anything. After that, it was all you. It was all you that turned into what you've done. Man, one of the reasons i i really enjoy watching your channel specifically is because you've done this crossfit thing from so many different angles

from gym ownership to athlete to thinking everyone was on drugs to realizing most of them weren't and that we all just probably weren't good enough to be professional fitnessers. Um, what, what really keeps you going talking about CrossFit for 10 plus years in a row now? Damn, that's a great question. Um, it's been, so like I, and I think this is something that a lot of us who are still in it this long can share this like idea we all kind of have this in common is that something about our experience with crossfit when we were first introduced to it dramatically changed our lives there's no other way to describe that at least for me like this has been a decade of adulthood. You know, I started doing CrossFit when I was 19.

So I was basically a child. I'd been essentially, I'd been alive for like maybe two and a half years. You know what I mean? Like really truly alive. You didn't have a full brain. Yeah, I didn't have a full brain until like I launched my podcast pretty much. Imagine that.

And so, you know, there's this idea of like, I had this profound life changing experience and it would be, it would be like a shame if I didn't try and, and, and pass that on and sort of like serve that purpose. Now, obviously I've, I've had so many highs and lows and so many different roles in the space. At the end of the day, I think it still comes back down to the idea that I enjoy communicating complex topics into like simple and understandable terms, which is why I loved being a coach,

which is why I love taking things like the, the sort of like complexities of the CrossFit game season and turning it into things that like people can understand and follow along, which is why my content is so different than everybody else's in the space. Because my entire thing is like, here's what is happening and why it matters in the context of the past 15 years of the CrossFit games. Yeah.

I think that's the thing that really keeps me, I mean, there's a lot of things, but I like hearing your opinion of it because you have such a depth of history and understand the personalities involved in it, which is really interesting because the biggest personality isn't there for the first time. Like it's all learning a new person at the helm.

And how do you think that's going to affect the games, regionals, like getting back to the sport? Is Glassman being gone? Do you think, do you see that as an overall positive for the sport? It depends. It depends on a couple of things. And this is another thing that I do a lot of, which is I go very, very deep analysis into things that seem like they're not too deep. So I guess it depends on how you define a positive for the sport. It depends on how you define Greg's previous involvement in the sport to me i think the the sort of era of regionals super regionals like the craziness of let's say 2013 to 2018 and the rate of explosive like interest into the classic games that wasn't greg right that was dave yeah and so if you consider that to be where this sport should be going and how it should exist then absolutely this is going to be a positive because 2019 and 2020 were greg's vision of well not 2020 so much but 2019 was more of greg's vision of what he

wanted the games to look like especially in the greater context of his CrossFit Inc. Yeah. So now that he's not here and we're seeing what's happening with the game season, like the format is going back to something that's very, very familiar and very much derived from what Dave had created all those years back.

And, you know, for a lot of people, that's a positive. And for some people, it's not so much positive. We, as viewers of the CrossFit Games, like, we always need a heel. And you need somebody to be the person that nobody likes. And Dave Castro played that role so well. And there was also, like, athletes in there, here and there, that would show up. Everybody loves froning, of course.

But the lack of a heel in the CrossFit space has, in my eyes, led to what has become a relatively boring sport. Like, we don't have those the guy with the mullet is his prop is it medeiros yeah madero's justin madero he's the only one that i care about now that frazier's gone and it's because he's interesting everybody else looks like the same five foot eight 205 pound male that you know when they walk in the gym you go oh you're supposed to go to crossfit games you look like that person and we by finding out who the what the body shape was and the amount of training you needed to do and the lack of personality you needed

to have to be able to do that much training it became really hard to follow what was going on in the sport that's why i'm so happy he's alive and doing so well because we need somebody that stands out yeah there is there's certainly a there's a sameness in in crossfit that it's like you know i i follow i cursorily follow ufc as basically the only other sport that I'm interested in. Outside of like, obviously, like, I like weightlifting. I like Strongman. But even those, like, look at Strongman. Strongman is basically the same problem that CrossFit has, but it's all Eastern European gigantic humans.

Yeah, like if you lined everybody in the same weight class up, you go, oh, you all are the exact same. Exactly. And so I think in CrossFit's case, it almost is sacrilege to say something like, it's boring to watch. But it is. I don't know how else to put it. The team competition is a miserable slog. Chaos. Unless there's only like three teams and you know everyone on the teams the individual competition is a is a miserable slog unless you're

talking about the top 10 the fact that people are interested like no one was ever excited or interested to watch the bottom two heats at the CrossFit Games. It never was interesting. And I can prove that to you because the stands were always empty until the last couple of heats started. And the only reason why they started filling up earlier is because they would like oversell tickets and people would have to be there early to watch, but no one was paying attention. And so the idea of like being involved in like uh uh this this sport that's like really only specifically exciting at the very very top whereas like ufc the comparison i was going to make there

is that there's so many personalities and it's always one-on-one so you only really have to care about two people and really you only have to care about one you have to have like one person who catches your interest to be able to be like all right i recognize that name i want to watch that person punch someone else totally i feel like there's a lot more unknown in the ufc as well especially because like in a football game if you're down by like 60 points you can't throw like the magical touchdown pass it's just for 70 points and win the last second if you're like way far behind but ufc you could be totally dominating and then just get fucking knocked out at the very last second so there's kind of always an element of the unknown where if you're like this this is consistent across all

strength and physique sports where it's way more fun to do and participate than it is to watch that goes for weightlifting powerlifting strongman bodybuilding i feel like they're all kind of like that they're not really very spectator, but unless you're really into it, you'll watch it. But the mainstream population won't basically at all. I think that reactive component for UFC, though, is a big component there where you never really know quite what's going to happen, where in CrossFit, if somebody's way far ahead, you just know that

everyone else is not going to catch up magically. Yeah, and CrossFit's way of trying to resolve some of that and of adding the unexpected into the games has both been like successful in some, in some versions and unsuccessful in other versions. Like the successful version of it is when you see workouts that are a spectacle to watch. That is just, wow, look at this implement implement look at what they're doing they had no idea what was coming and a perfect example that for me would be you know way back in let's say like 2012 there was the burden run they ran they carried they flipped the pig they carried a log they pulled the sled it's like the coolest possible thing you could do with the human body. Then there was another one like 2015 or 16.

There was the 2015, I think. It was like the pig flip rope climb running workout. Super dope. Like what isn't cool about that? Or no, it was like pig flip rope climb handstand walk. It's like, it's awesome. There's nothing not cool about seeing someone do that. But like watching a group of 15 people who you can't name

do clean and jerks really quickly down the line is not that exciting. And so unless you're someone who's way deep into it and you understand, oh my God, that's 380 pounds. How the hell did he just clean that? Or, oh my God, she just cleaned 265? That's absurd. That's more than any of the guys at my gym. Unless you have that understanding, it's very difficult to relate to it in any way that's not, oh, this is a circus sideshow. This is just like Strongman.

I feel like Grid tried to capitalize on that, like the heavier weights, like the more complex and interesting gymnastics movements and whatnot, but it just kind of it just didn't work for whatever reason but they they tried to do that to make it a little more entertaining a little more fun to watch yeah i mean the grid grid grid was a bit of a bit of a

shit show i mean there was like there were some really exciting parts about it but grid was a bit of a shit show for a lot of different reasons. The best thing about it was he actually paid the athletes. Like maybe it bankrupted all the teams, but Madison square garden opening night with three people in attendance. Yeah. Well, what do you expect?

Like Wednesday at 11 a.m. Yeah. I do want to talk about though, that the the girl side of things has become one of the more interesting things and like relatable cool pieces that's come out of crossfit i mean i don't think t is going to lose the crossfit games for the next decade that's probably accurate i mean much like matt fraser she can she will continue to win until she doesn't want to win anymore yeah and the interesting thing is that her wins uh you know she's had

a couple very dominant wins but she's also had a couple of them that were really close and that is really interesting because then you can actually look and see, Oh, Katrin's right on her heels. Kara Saunders is right on her heels. Like these are people who could actually beat her, which says a lot about the field because on the men's side, who's beating Matt, you know, like a sudden and dramatic injury.

That's who's beating Matt. I also feel like the thing about T is like crossfit's just a thing she does it might be like the main thing but she's also a two sport olympian she may be one of the baddest athletes that's ever walked on this planet like she needs to have lebron james size deals because yeah she is such a savage. I have strong feelings about this. I think, I think there's an argument to be made that,

that, you know, Tia might be one of the most impressive specimens to ever walk the face of the earth because a hundred percent in agreement competing, you know, competing in the Olympics. That's very impressive. Winning gold at the Commonwealth is a thousand times more impressive than just competing at the Olympics.

She won a gold medal in the second or third largest weightlifting competition in the world. It's like the Olympics, the world championships, and either Pan Ams or Commonwealth. It's like either one of those two because they both cover half the globe pretty much. So the fact that she took a gold medal the year that she won the CrossFit Games and she's now going into a Winter Olympic sport and there's no doubt that she's going to make the team, like she's going to compete in the winter Olympics. That's absurd. What also is going on? Like did the bobsled Federation of America just find out that there's a bunch of girls that can clean two bills really easily for reps and decide, Hey, maybe our recruiting should go to all the CrossFit gyms and find girls that

look like, I don't know, Kelsey Keel, who is so freaking jacked. She could probably push the bobsled down the hill by herself. Like she is a freak of strength. When we went to Boston and interviewed her, I was like, I don't even know how. I would never train with her.

She would just dominate me on a daily basis in everything. I think that's a case study in fantastic organizational management and vision. Whoever's in charge of USA Bobsled, they're not just in their little corner completely separated from everybody else. They clearly have their eyes on the prize. And you guys know Lauren Gibbs? Gibbs was the first one to show up she was like the first did she spot 400 in like 2012 or something exactly exactly like i

remember she she cleaned a weight that i remember going oh i don't well that's a heavy clean and she was like when we used to show up to those local competitions and she was there you just go she's different i don't i don't know why but i know that genetically she is far superior to me absolutely gibbs gibbs is like uh gibbs is the prototype here right she's the she's the version of of like the crossfitter who doesn't belong in crossfit yeah Yeah. Way too athletic. Yeah. She's way too athletic, way too strong, much more explosive. And in order to be successful in CrossFit, she would have to dampen those natural abilities that she's not only been born with, but also developed over the past lifetime of athleticism. So the fact that she transitioned into bobsled and has been really

successful there, it's not surprising to me. And this is exactly what you're describing. It's like USA bobsled just noticed that, Hey, there's a lot of athletes out there who like have the work ethic to put in hours in the gym and they have the physical capacities to be able to do what bobsled requires them to do, which is you got to be able to sprint. You got to be able to jump and, and, you know, basically clean. Like you have to be able to clean a lot of weight. You have to be able to squat a lot of weight and you have to be able to sit. All right. I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

I'm pretty sure you can find athletes that can do that. And you know, like, like a, like a Blaine is the same thing. Like freak physique Blaine. Like he went out there, CrossFit games athlete, and now he's, he's working on getting it to team usa for the bobsled like the guy just is too explosive to be a successful games guy but if you put him in the thing that takes three minutes and requires him to clean 400 pounds he's like please this is literally what i was born for and because they can't they clean 400 pounds, they're not going to win the CrossFit games. They're too good at one specific thing. Like you can't have, uh,

that muscle fiber and then think you're going to go beat somebody in a 30 minute workout. They just, James Townsend was the first person I was like, when I saw him, I was like, dude, you are just a freak power cleaning, pounds whatever it is and doing muscle ups where he just throw himself through the roof like dude do less but now he could probably he's too tall but now these people that have these like freak abilities that have been doing olympic lifting for the last decade they're just making this transition so easy what going back to tia though like how long does she do you think she's still obviously she's still interested in the crossfit games but like what does she do like nobody can

touch her she's a two-sport olympian like where's the challenge for her like what what keeps her going i think she's i mean I don't want to speak for her because, like, I don't know. But from the outside looking in, she has this sort of killer instinct to compete. And I think the fact that she's exceptionally good at CrossFit and she's very successful in CrossFit is, you know, just the only little domino

that needs to tip over for her to continue competing. Yeah. Just, she loves being in that environment, like toe to toe with everybody showing off what she can do, beating everyone and, and sort of like putting on a show. And I think she understands that there are a lot of opportunities out there for her. And the most lucrative one for her entire life and her entire future career is continuing at CrossFit. The business behind Tia seems to have taken off a little bit too. Proven Fitness is now, do you know what happened kind of behind the scenes?

Cause it was just this tight little thing like me, or it was like Shane, definitely not me. They don't want me saying that as if I was Tia. But Tia, Matt, and Shane had this little thing that nobody else was allowed to. You were only allowed to go train with them if you were, say, best in the world at CrossFit and multiple times to prove yourself um but now they're bringing in a ton of athletes what does that

shape up to is that like basically online program did they all move to cookville so right now the sort of like roster of athletes that they have almost all live in n. So they, they basically all train out of Trivium in Nashville. It's Bruce Wells. It's Will Morad. Um, there is a couple other athletes in there too. Alex Smith is there. Uh, there's another male athlete, um, street corner, I believe is on that believe is on that is on that roster as well yeah uh so you know they they have this group of athletes and i think most if not all of them train in nashville and i would assume that since tia doesn't have matt to train with anymore that she's she just like is opening like you know she and shane are incredibly smart and And I remember asking Shane about, Hey man, why are, why don't you provide programming for anybody else?

And he was like, I have a job to do. And it's specifically to make sure that Matt and Tia win. Yeah. And until that job is complete, like I can't, I can't put any focus on anybody else because that's taking up my entire day. Like that's my full-time job. Yeah. else because that's taking up my entire day like that's my full-time job yeah and so i think now that that is like a proven system and he doesn't necessarily need to worry about handling matt and

matt's you know future legacy because i can imagine that's very stressful yeah um you know i think it makes sense for them to open it up and also they're the way that they sort of opened it and launched it and launched it and brought people into the fold is really, really smart. I think they're doing something that's going to end up making a big impact in the sport. Yeah, I think people probably have brought this to Matt's attention a billion times as he's winning five CrossFit games.

Like, put your programming out. Put your programming out. Well, five years later, it's much cooler. After you wait and wait and wait and wait, and then all of a sudden, Steffi Cohen shows up, and you're like, oh, I'll do it here. What do you think about that? Oh, my gosh. There's going to be 7 billion people paying him $49 a month,

and then they're going to realize that all he did for the last eight years of his life was sit on a rower at 6am. There was nothing more telling about Matt Frazier's life over the last seven years than his retirement statement where he goes, I'm tired of selling my soul on an Airdyne every single morning. Like nobody, I was like the most average 21st place at regionals when CrossFit was barely a thing. And I remember having to do conditioning and just being like, this sucks. It's boring being good at CrossFit. You sit on airdynes and practice breathing for hours and hours. And by the time you get to the end of whatever that is, it hurts really bad. And he's been doing that for eight years, every like three times a day. It's not the weight

lifting. It's, it's the just selling your soul on an airdyne every morning and nobody's going to, everyone's going to buy it. No one knows what's coming if it's actually his program i do you think do you think all that's specific to matt like he came out of weightlifting you kind of talked about gibbs a second ago being like a natural basically like an nfl prototype player like super fast explosive matt kind of started out like that too but national champion whatever weightlifter like very prominent in in something uh strength speed power explosive oriented and then now he's doing crossfit and so he just he has to sell his soul to an airdyne because he's already so far down the other end of the spectrum he has to clean up the other end and not every other athlete's like that maybe i don't know i i that that is a good point he did he did have an extreme and specific skill

set coming into crossfit and i just remember like you know the first time i ever heard of him i was i saw him do isabel at 225 and i was like this guy is a monster uh this is unbelievable like who is this kid and yeah you're absolutely right coming into CrossFit with the ability to do Isabel at 225 in like four and a half minutes. That's, that's, that's, that's extreme. And you have to sort of counteract that. I do think Andrews is speaking to something that is much more endemic in the CrossFit space, which is, there is a reason why the two best CrossFitters of all time,

let's say three, cause I'm going to count Rich and Tia and Matt, the three best Crossfitters of all time, let's say three, because I'm going to count Rich and Tia and Matt, the three best crossfitters of all time, all were known in at least at one point in their career, if not most of their career for being engines. There is no doubt that spending a large portion of your time on an erg or moving your body in a conditioning environment is one of the most beneficial things you can do as long as the other pieces are there. You know, like I remember when Rich was coming off of his knee surgery and he was sort of like rehabbing, he was doing, you know, an hour or two hours of conditioning intervals on like the biker because he couldn't run. So he was doing like an hour or two hours of conditioning intervals on like the biker. Cause he couldn't run.

So he was doing like an hour or two hours, like each day or every other day. And he came back in and he was like the best he'd ever been the following open basically. So it makes sense to me that, you know, Miko spending his, his evenings in a dark closet rowing,

like these are, these are common traits. Like they, they don't go away. You know it, it really is. It really is an undervalued portion. Like even, even friends of mine who are good at CrossFit, I was, I always encourage them regardless of what their strengths are, just add in two extra days of conditioning. Even if that means taking out like a CrossFit workout, add in two extra days of conditioning each, that means taking out like a crossfit workout add in two extra days of conditioning each week and you're going to see massive improvement in your ability

to recover and perform and adding so much volume you have to do it in a way that's like semi joint friendly at some point you can't just run more and do more box jumps and whatever it is more heavy squats like at some point

you need to to build the engine like you just said but do it in a way that's that's conservative enough where you're not going to end up you know just beating yourself up absolutely that's why yeah like swimming is important the bike any sort of biker or airdyne is is really valuable the the rower is really valuable for that you know like like you guys know bobby maximus like that's a giant he's like 260 pounds six or whatever and he spends like multiple one hour sessions a week doing nothing but like 60 minute or 90 minute of just breathing on on a salt bike and that makes total sense. Like it's, we're not, I think a lot of people are stuck in the idea, even doing CrossFit, people are stuck in the idea

of like, well, we lift weights, we do CrossFit. Why would we do extra cardio? And it's like, I don't know, man, maybe adding in the ability to not lose your breath and recover and get that blood flow. It's just a baseline ability to cultivate much less the idea that like, I hate to say it. And maybe I'm going to get canceled. But like, hey, guys, shocker, Greg Glassman was right about a lot of stuff, including the pyramid. And the base of the pyramid is is nutrition. And right above that is conditioning. So if you're not like eating eating well and you're not doing cardio constantly, there's a reason why it's a pyramid. The base has to be conditioning.

Yeah. Even James Fitzgerald, when he was bringing – it's so funny to think about – bringing energy systems into CrossFit and talking about that, he was very well known for all of the pacing, and he was the first person to start talking about doing long, aerobic work just to practice moving blood and getting oxygen. I think that most people, when they think about CrossFit and the training for it,

they like playing the game, which they should. But they don't understand the training to play the game. If you were to play for a specific weekend, how are you preparing? And that's a very different question than going to your 5 p.m. CrossFit class and kicking it with the bros. I feel like 10 years ago as well like the the crossfit world was trying to establish itself as its own separate thing and they kind of they demonized bodybuilding of course but then they also kind of demonized long slow distance like it just wasn't it wasn't

the cool thing to do they're like no you don't need to like go for an hour long jog you can do your 20 minute high intensity workouts all about intensity and they were trying to push people away from like the like the um the distance running um 80s so to speak like it used to be all about just doing cardio going for jogs that's what everybody did but then crossfit came around and really tried to get people out of that mindset but now people understand crossfit and then they they're seeing the benefits of adding back in some of that kind of more old school stuff yeah and i think the the last like the the sort of like final point that i'd like to we can keep talking about this all day but the final point that i'd like to make regarding you know the importance of conditioning in a competitive crossfit is that you can you can be a home run hitter all you want, but if you can't do the next workout at or like a, you know, second or third place effort in every workout,

then there's no way that you're ever going to be able to win or podium at the games. You have to be able to like knock it out of the park, recover and knock it out of the park again. And you're not going to be able to do that. If you have to sell your soul on every workout, like look at, look at Matt Fraser's like 2020 games or Tia's 2020 games. He sold his soul like three times across 20 workouts over the open, the online version and the in-person work version. Right. Like there's no reason for him to have to do that other than, uh, you know, the, the fact that he needs to sprint for that, like sprinting interval workout they did with the pool and for the heavy, clean stuff or whatever.

Why else would he have to sell his soul? He can go 85% and still be able to keep a decent heart rate and recover from it. Dude, getting to Matt Frazier, what does the male side of the CrossFit Games do without him there? I mean, they've had Rich Froning for four years. You had Frazier for five. So for the last nine years of competition

with a little Ben Smith sprinkled in there, man, it hasn't been hard to find who's the best and what's the storyline and can they be this dominant? And there's like this – with those two guys, there's like this cool killer instinct to them. There's not many guys with that vibe and that like killer instinct that was so easy to draw people to the sport. Like where does the male side of story go? I think there are a couple of people who have the potential of not just winning,

but like winning a few. I know it's probably, you know, like he's had some bad years, but like Fikowski could win the games. They have no doubt about that. And to me, that would be one of the most impressive things that any human being's ever

done because he's 8 inches taller. 8 inches taller than the average CrossFit Games athlete. But I think Fikowski could win the Games. I think more realistically, that would have to kind of go in his favor. But more realistically, I think someone like Belner or Noel Olsen have a very decent shot of winning the Games. Medeiros, if he can stay healthy and keep training, has the potential to win a few.

He's just so young and such a freak. He just reminds me a lot of Tia when Tia first showed up. He's in a really good space too. He trains with Reagan Huckabee. Fort Vancouver's been to, what, like six or seven? 11,000 CrossFit Games finals. Yeah, like it's unreal how many times they've been to the CrossFit Games. So he's accidentally on purpose in the right spot to be very good.

Adam basically developed all of those athletes from scratch so clearly he's doing something right and the fact that you like when you look at maderos is a perfect example of what it means when you have a great coach with a compliant athlete who's talented and disciplined like maderos missed going to the games in 2019 because of a sandbag. So at Granite Games, he was on a verge of qualifying, and he just got crushed by a sandbag. The next time we saw him compete in person was at the Filthy 150, and he murked the entire field, a field full of killers.

Like, Roman Krennikov was there, and Medeiros beat him at conditioning workouts I was like what is going on with this kid sandbag workout showed up and he wiped the floor with like legends of the sport so the fact that he qualified for the games the games, a year out of the 2020 games, and then spent that entire year training diligently. And we saw what was an incredibly impressive rookie performance out of him. Like if he can keep that up and stay interested, there is no ceiling to what Justin Medeiros could do. But the men's field, you know,

other than the fireworks that must've gone off in everybody's head when they're like, Oh my God, I can make more money now. Like, there's potential for me to make a living doing this. You know, other than that, I think it's finally entering a stage where there might be some parody. I mean, there might be a few years in a row where there's a different men's champion. Does the sport do better because Frazier wins five in a row and Rich wins four in a row? Or does it do better when we have four people that could win it? Going to take a quick

break, friends, to thank our sponsors over at the Air Force for the second straight year. We have been lucky enough to partner up with the United States Air Force Special Warfare. We have three episodes coming with the Special Warfare from the U.S. Air Force. And every time, last year we ran the Spartan World Championship with them. They got in the ridiculously cold water. I shouldn't say it, it was two years ago.

They got in the ridiculous cold water at the top of Squaw. Like nothing. It must have been 50 mile an hour winds at the top of Squaw Valley Mountain. And they're jumping in ice cold water at the top of the mountain, climbing ropes. And your boy, me, totally backed out. These are the toughest, most savage people. And getting to hang out with them, getting to understand all that goes into their job is one of the highlights of my year every time we get to talk to them. And you can find out if you have what it takes to become a special warfare operator

in the U.S. Air Force by going to airforce.com. Once again, find out if you have what it takes to become a special warfare operator in the U.S. Air Force by heading over to airforce.com. You can see all kinds of fun videos that they have released as well as learn more. And as always, check in with your recruiter if you are interested in special warfare for the U.S. Air Force. I also want to thank our friends over at Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That's where you save the 20% on the green, the red, and the gold. Guess what I had this morning? As soon as I got out of bed, just like I tell you every week, just like I do it,

Organifi Green. You know why? Ashwagandha relieves stress. Everybody needs a little down. The coconut makes it taste delicious. Getting your greens, everybody needs the vitamins and everybody needs the minerals. Everybody needs the micronutrients because you're not getting enough throughout the day. I didn't start my day with a gigantic salad. Neither did you. And neither did you plan to have all the greens that you needed throughout the day. I guarantee you, wherever you're listening to this, you do not know if you are getting the micronutrients that you need to optimize your immune system. Every system in your body, you don't know. And then when it comes to the red, you got to have one, a little bit of a boost in energy before your workout in the afternoon, and then a nice soothing turmeric blend gold

to set your night right. That is the Shrugged Stack, the sunrise to sunset, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged drug to save 20 making sure all of your micronutrient needs are met the vitamins and minerals to keep you healthy optimizing your immune system and guess what you're going to save 20 so head over to barbell or organifi.com forward slash drug to save 20 and of course our friends over at bioptimizers most gut health supplements include all the same old ingredients packed in two capsules. But what if there was a breakthrough gut repair supplement that had a new patented ingredient, tasted great, and came in a powder form so you could add it to water, coffee, or your favorite smoothie?

Well, guess what? That gut repair supplement exists, and it's called Leaky Gut Guardian. Not only does it include powerful probiotics and prebiotics it also includes a patented one-of-a-kind ingredient called igy max igy max is an egg-based protein that enhance enhances gut health reverses damage caused by antibiotics and even helps with immunity threats i don't think i'm overstating the case when i say igy max is one of the most powerful gut nutrients ever discovered and it's in every serving of Leaky Gut Guardian. By taking Leaky Gut Guardian daily, you'll eliminate bad bacteria, feed the good bacteria,

repair your gut lining, and build up your immunity all at the same time. Now here's the fun part. Leaky Gut Guardian comes in two delicious flavors, vegetarian vanilla and chocolate carnivore. Just like it sounds, our vegetarian vanilla flavor is a vegetarian formula. Our chocolate carnivore flavor, on the other hand, is an enhanced formula that includes collagen and bone broth for additional gut healing and anti-aging benefits. The Get Gut Guardian is easy to add to your daily routine and could help transform both your gut health and your immunity. So you experience fewer gut problems, less gas and bloating, and even less sickness.

Simply add one scoop of vegetarian vanilla and chocolate carnivore to your favorite beverage a coffee smoothie or even just a simple glass of water mix as well tastes delicious and you'll be helping repair your gut health with powerful prebiotics probiotics and patented igy max protein so what are you waiting for repair your gut health and power up your immune immunity today by trying leaky gut guardian risk-free at leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrug and use the code shrug to receive 10% off any order. That's leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrug. L-E-A-K-Y-G-U-T-G-U-A-R-D-I-A-N.com forward slash shrug

and use the code shrug to save 10% off any order. You have a 365-day money-back guarantee. leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrugged. Back to the show. And Rich wins four in a row, or does it do better when we have four people that could win it? It's hard to say. I think it's really hard to say.

I think, again, looking at the UFC, which is the only sport that I even cursorily follow, you have guys like GSP. Absolute legend, greatest of all time, arguably. Very fun to watch. Totally different style. Yeah. Okay, cool. He defended his title, and every time he stepped into the ring, you were like, I don't know if anybody be able to beat this guy but i'll watch we'll see what happens khabib's kind of the same

way like interesting never ever going to lose because he has like the he has like the kryptonite for every ufc fighter but connor like connor could lose on any given night dude connor he's still the most interesting one like what else is there to say about Conor? It must hurt so much worse when you have that many millions getting punched in the face. My buddy came over and he was like, I think I'm going to bet on Conor. I was like, don't bet on the rich guy in a street fight.

Bet on the poor guy. Yeah. I know nothing about arm bars, but do not bet on the guy living in a mansion and getting massages every day. No. The poor guy that only has one way out, and it's through some other dude's skull. Go with that. Yeah, so there's an argument to be made, I think, that CrossFit, because it has exclusively been dynasties up

until this point essentially on in both divisions yeah it that that it's a flaw in the system in my opinion like you can make a good argument that that's actually a flaw in the way that crossfit is built and and strategized as a sport yeah um but the. But the other side of that is like, yeah, Rich and Matt and Tia, they're just better than everybody else. There is no other way of getting around that. They're just across all these different tests. They're just better than everybody else.

And so we'll have to find out whether having a more exciting race for the podium is interesting. But the caveat to that is that without interesting people, it's not interesting to watch. So there has to be a way of the athletes becoming more accessible and exciting and, you know, sort of personalities for people to root for. Yeah. And, you know, we're starting to see some of that, but there's, there's a lot of athletes with YouTube channels now, and that was never a thing before. It's true.

Um, I want to get into kind of the, the new business of CrossFit because you put out a video when the Glassman DeRosa thing was going on and there was so many, your freaking YouTube channel annoys me so much because most of the time I just want to reach out and be like, dude, let's talk about this for seven hours and not get any work done today. But there was a couple of really good points. And the first one that I just wanted to call you immediately about was when Anthos came in and tried to take over CrossFit and every affiliate got the, well, unbuyable. Unbuyable was the t-shirt. And then all of a sudden in 72 hours, we had a new venture capital company coming in led by a CrossFitter and all of a sudden everybody was

cool with it. Are we going to see like a very corporate CrossFit Inc. coming to the affiliates and has that, I guess, kind of that relationship with the affiliates? There were some really awesome things you brought up about like credit card processing and lead gen referrals to your gym, stuff like that. Has any of that stuff started? Yes and no. You know, CrossFit under Greg Glassman, Greg's whole like philosophical model was he called it the least rents. He was like, what's the least amount of money I can charge you for the least amount of work on my end? So it was like, you can pay me almost nothing and you can use my name. That was like his business model. I don't really care how your business does, but you can give me pretty much pennies on the dollar and you get to use my trademark.

Congratulations. And the model that we're going into right now with Rosa and his background is not that at all. He's much more business focused. And again, there are pros and cons. I think Rosa is a very astute business person. He understands the idea of having a plan, an end goal, and then working backwards to execute along that, that guide guideline. Right. And when you look at what he owns, when you say like Eric Rosa owns CrossFit, he owns probably a cash rich, but you know, profit poor company that has had a couple of real bad years back to back that has a, a training business that could be really successful and an affiliate business that could be worth billions. And at the end of the day, that was billions of dollars that Greg Glassman didn't really care to squeeze. He was like, I don't really care about that. Yeah, I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me. So I'm

not going to do that to you guys. It is what it is. And that led to, you know, not really the most healthy affiliate system. It was just a bunch of people that were brought together by this concept. Now, Rosa has an opportunity to actually make a lot of money out of the affiliates and provide value to them at the same time. And we're starting to see that happen. Like he had a, he had a town hall last weekend, which was, you know, not publicized, which is strange to me, like how do you not publicize a town hall, but he had a town hall last weekend. And one of the things he talked about in it was that they're going to develop and launch an on-ramp series by crossfit for the affiliates and the way it would work is that crossfit becomes the first interaction for a potential client like a

potential member goes to crossfit does the on-ramping thing, learns a little bit about what CrossFit is about. And then the last part of the on-ramp is getting them to talk to an affiliate. Right? So it's like they learn some movements, they do some stuff, they get an understanding net positive because you get the ability to control the communication in a really homogenous way. But from the other side of the coin is that you as a gym owner may not necessarily be the first point of contact for your prospective clients. You don't get to pick your client, right? So let's say for example, you know, CrossFit is sending you a dozen referrals. That's great for your business, but they're the ones who are deciding what happens inside of your

room. Your box suddenly is much more reliant on how CrossFit is defining that first on-ramping period. So that's one, like the're really talking about is the idea of these like client services they can offer to their business, which is the affiliates, becomes a data and homogenization play. So if they serve payment processing, they'll know how many CrossFitters there are. If they serve a client management system, they'll know not only how many CrossFitters there are, but they'll also know what time of day they prefer to work out. If they start doing deals on the more innocuous end, it's like, hey, we can do bulk deals for the Northeastern United States for toilet paper for all the

affiliates. So you're saving 50 cents a roll or whatever. On the more extreme end, we can do bulk deals for your equipment needs. And then they suddenly know like per square foot, exactly how much poundage of plates and how many rowers you need per square foot per member, whatever the way you want. So suddenly CrossFit has a much more deep and intimate understanding of what is happening within their facilities that carry their name. Yeah. And the end result of that is like an unknown. Is it, can you buy into a more franchised version of CrossFit about having an affiliate where it's very much the same experience from door to door? Can you be the sort of like old school

rust and dust and chains type crossfit affiliate like i don't know i think it's gonna remain to be seen but the the moves that he's making are really interesting not just from a what can we provide to the affiliates for them to be more successful which they need a lot of work. Yeah. But also from like, what does that process do for CrossFit as an entity? Do we have any numbers on how many affiliates there are and where that graph is trending? It's trending down for sure. Yeah. I assumed it was. I just haven't seen any numbers.

I don't think we'll see like an official number released. And I, uh, I would actually trust morning chalk up with this, this data. So they, they do a lot of work behind the scenes, kind of going into CrossFit's own affiliate map and keeping track of changes. So they have a full list of all the affiliates. Yeah. They have a full list of which ones are open month to month, like how many things are opening and closing and what that graph looks like. You know, I heard from Cooper at Two Brain Business

that the gym shutdown rate in 2020 was something like 5%, which is a 5X increase over normal year in terms of churn for gyms. My guess would be CrossFit's affiliate number is probably somewhere in the 13,000s, like mid to high 13,000s at this point, which is actually pretty good. Like all things considered, that's not that bad, but it's going to, yeah, I think we're going to have a much better idea once we start seeing, because they'll never release that information. They're just going to use estimates. So I think Morning Chocolate will probably publish something around games time would be my guess about how many affiliates there are.

Yeah, I feel like they're in a weird spot in that, and you probably remember this day for sure as a gym owner where the people came in and they went hey what is this and you could say oh well this is crossfit blah blah blah and then all of a sudden they came in and just handed you a credit card and there was no more what is this there was no more education process there was no more what is this. There was no more education process. There was no more like the affiliate is now the coach. It was I'm just paying for this thing, and right now it feels like a lot of people aren't just handing their credit card over

because they know what it is. They don't want to pay for that thing, or they want to find whatever the new thing is. Mainly, I have a home gym. Everyone has a home gym, and it's a really tricky market to become cool and relevant and and continue to to keep that um that growth curve that they just have lost yeah that that that is very true i i do recall that being a thing that was

actually one of the most frustrating parts for being an affiliate owner for me which was the average non-crossfitter thought they knew what they were going to be buying and they had no idea they just thought it was like group workouts and so when they see my gym is called like crossfit 818 and there's another gym that's down the street they don't know that there's a difference in the coaching there's a difference in the programming there's a difference in the community there's a difference in the vibe. There's a difference in the programming. There's a difference in the community. There's a difference in the vibe. They don't know any of that. They're like, well, there's a gold's gym and then there's gold's gym like South. So that one's closer or that one's cheaper. I'm going to go to that one. And so there was this idea of, and this kind of comes back to the, you know, who has the first touch point with your, with your potential members,

you as an affiliate owner need to pick your member, not the other way around because you're not building a business that's going to have 10,000 or 5,000 or 1,000 members. You're building a business that's going to succeed if it has 150 or maybe 200. And if you're being that selective, well, it's on you to be selective. It's not on them to pre-select for themselves, right? You have to be able to educate and teach your prospective clients about what it is you're providing so that they're not caught off guard when they're paying 200 bucks a month for your product. They have to know what it is they're paying for. Yeah. When you even bring up the idea of, I was like cringing almost thinking of that

CrossFit headquarters would be the person that controlled the first nine sessions of somebody coming to anyone's gym, specifically mine. Cause they'd walk in and be like, well, this is what they said. I mean, Whoa, well back up. That that's, I don't know where you got that information. Like from CrossFit.com you go, ah, that's not good. That's not good at all. Um, it's a, it's a really tricky thing to, that's what was so nice about CrossFit, you know, a decade ago was that you could control everything about what was going on,

including how people found it, their on-ramp class and all that, I think it's going to be a really tough road for, I don't know what the long-term goals are, but building out the infrastructure seems like the biggest opportunity as far as growing the business for somebody that comes in and spends many hundreds of millions of dollars to

to buy to buy what was left of it such yeah absolutely i mean if you look at if you look at what the roi needs to be in order for this to work and if you look at what the end result ends up having to be if you're focusing on the affiliates. Well, I mean, just look at it from like a sales perspective, right? CrossFit is selling something to other potential entrepreneurs. We're selling you the opportunity of opening a CrossFit gym. Well, right now, what does that mean? That means that you get to use the name and you get to use some branding and then you get to do thrusters and burpees. And other than that, you're kind of on your own.

Yeah. Well, in order to make that sales proposition more enticing, you just offer more stuff. Hey, we'll do the on-ramping for you. We'll send you clients. We'll do national advertising for you. We'll send you prospective leads. We'll do programming for you. We'll tell you what workouts you should do and offer, you know, hour by hour class session plans of here's your warmup.

Here's your teaching section. Here's your workout. We'll do a group buying for you so that your equipment is more reasonably priced. We'll negotiate your insurance for you. Right? So like there's all these value ads that can be done there. And what's the end result of that right the end result of that is crossfit gyms end up looking and behaving more and more similar to one another because that type of homogenous behavior if it's enticing to the market is going to be picked up by the market and therefore everyone's going to start looking the same yeah when you see some of the big players, I mean, from Invictus, Invictus being one of them that just all of a sudden went from having, you know, one facility downtown to Sereno Valley.

They had another one. Then they've got two in Boston. Are we seeing the big players coming in and kind of scooping up gyms? Or has that slowed down a lot too? Because that was very indicative of that big fast growing market and people that had budgets to come in and just buy gyms on the cheap yeah i mean you and i both know that scalability is not one of the factors involved in owning an affiliate it's actually awful it's the worst like a double a second affiliate is like two and a half times

the cost yeah twice the cost and twice like that with kids that's actually how i feel with dogs we had one dog and then we got a second dog and the second dog is like one and a half times the amount of dog it's like really reasonable i was totally able to give my to shut my second gym down I don't think that second kid's going anywhere. No. We added a third dog, and it was like adding 10 dogs. It was not – it was like in terms of practical aspect, it was not a net positive.

It was so much harder. So much harder to deal with the logistics. But that's how – you and I both know that's how gyms work. Adding a second gym is more than double the logistics. But that's how you and I both know that's how gyms work. Yeah. The second gym is more than double the difficulty. It doesn't add a double the revenue. It adds way more in terms of costs and debt and problems. Right. And so when we see those companies like Invictus gobbling up gyms and having, you know, eight gyms or nine gyms, there is like the question for me, that's worth asking there is like, the gym's probably not the profitable part.

The gym is your loss leader. Like the gym is your branding. You don't really need anything to, you don't really need anything to be like hugely profitable inside the gyms as long as they're breaking even and they're doing their job which is working as marketing for your online business or your merchandise or whatever ends up being the winning thing for invictus and i don't really know but like that's my guess like looking at it from the outside in and knowing how smart cj is my guess is that yeah he understands that the gym scaling is not that functional. Yeah. The margins on having all those employees and the systems,

when he started buying gyms, we kind of had some insight into it. I don't really know how it all works with the two gyms that they have in Boston, but I just remember thinking, like, my Lord, this is a logistics nightmare. I had two gyms that were like a mile and a half away from each other. I couldn't imagine 3,000 on opposite ends of the country and managing staff. And I mean, it's just, it's crazy. But at that time, there was so much opportunity and people were just handing credit cards over that it became just a giant business for him.

What if, if somebody is like, you know, us from a decade ago finds fitness wants to do it, see how good they can be at it. Are they going to CrossFit anymore? Like where, where did those us's from 10 years ago, go to open their gym? And I mean, this isn't like against CrossFit. I would have never, ever, ever without CrossFit thought that I could train people for a living and make enough money to feed another human.

But like, where does that kid go now? Is it a CrossFit gym? Do they throw CrossFit My Neighborhood on the sign and get after it? Because that was the obvious choice 10 years ago. Yeah, you know, I don't know if, so the reason why I think CrossFit originally succeeded as an affiliate model

was it was an opportunity for the small percentage of personal trainers who were like, fuck it, I can do way better than doing hourly 24 hour fitness to take some risk, put the skin in the game, and actually get out there and prove it. And it was cheap, and it was accessible. And if you worked hard enough and were smart, it would be successful. Yeah. And that's what made it so enticing to, you know, the average gym owner. Some of us came into it with other perspectives. Like my brother

was an entrepreneur. He didn't like the job that he was doing at that time. And he was like, I'm leaving this job and I'm starting a gym. This is going to be what I do now. It's going to be great. Other people were like, man, this changed my life. I would like to proselytize on behalf of CrossFit and launch my own little church. And, you know, among that group of people, they ended up seeing a moderate amount of success. Today, it's different. Today, the world is different. You know, nobody knew what CrossFit was. So to the average person, it was unique. It was different. It was a completely brand new experience, something that they'd never literally never done. I mean, the, the average human being never did interval work, never did mixed modal stuff, never did Tabata, never weight lifted. lifted and for better or worse and arguably in my opinion for better crossfit changed the world the any physical training that anybody is doing right now whether it's recreational or professional

has been affected by crossfit and that that's not an under that's not an overstatement that's just a statement of fact nobody was doing this stuff before and now everybody is doing it now. Peloton would not be successful if CrossFit hadn't existed in the early 2000s and early 2010s because it wasn't cool to be gross and sweaty and try really hard in the gym. It was actually really uncool. It was really cool to like wear your Jordans and put on earbuds and like stand in front of the mirror. Right? Like that's what was fucking cool. Now it's like, what's your Peloton score? How did you rank on the leaderboard? All of that comes from CrossFit. And the idea of people understanding that is like you don't need people to know that that's the case but

deep down inside subconsciously people think they know what crossfit is at this point so when the the entrepreneur is looking for an opportunity what does the average entrepreneur who's outside of the space know about crossfit well in past year, the previous owner and founder was kicked to the curb and sold and embarrassed publicly. Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently used to own a CrossFit gym. There's that one guy, Bobby De Niro. Hold on a second. You can't just gloss over the fact that she got caught cheating with the gym owner?

Yeah. cheating with the gym owner yeah like is there anything more cliche than the congresswoman or whatever she is that does crossfit and it's like a story that she cheated on her husband with the owner of the gym or the train it's like no no no no no back up back up that has nothing to do with congress that just means she went to a CrossFit gym in 2011. Yeah, that's exactly what that means. That's exactly what that means. Who cares about our MAGA hat? She just was a CrossFitter.

The idea that like you look at CrossFit from outside of our little bubble as CrossFitters, what does CrossFit, what's the impact that is made as a brand not as like a methodology but as a brand well like the past year it's all pretty much negative very negative so you know people opening affiliates right now it's a hard sell it's like really hard sell even if it was profitable which by the way you know take it or leave it i don't know if it's profitable at this point you know know what I mean? Like I know what our numbers did from 2015 to 2016 and where they've been since 2016 to today is not, uh,

it's not a pretty, pretty thing. And yeah, so CrossFit has, CrossFit has a lot of work ahead of it to, uh, to make the, uh,

affiliate work as like a model for, uh, for hi, that's such a balloon. Little diesel just showed up to the podcast. All right, go get mommy. Yeah. They just have, they have a lot of work ahead of them when it comes to, uh, when it comes to figuring out how to make themselves profitable and like a solid investment for future entrepreneurs yeah i think that there's uh like you said it's just a it's a really tough sell to get somebody to come in and think that there's a an actual money-making

opportunity when you take out which which no longer can be for us sixty thousand dollars sixty one thousand dollars and forty thousand of that was gone before we opened the doors and thinking I'm gonna make I'll be able to make a paycheck before we run out of money it's that's a tough one to the gym that I live right next to to their credit CrossFit Surmount they I feel like do such a good job if I was to like pinpoint a gym that does things in the exact opposite manner that I felt like we did things in a sustainable method of generally creating like a good community where everyone is invited. Everyone feels good. No one's going to regionals. The marketing is like hugging a friend afterwards. And they do it in a neighborhood in which nobody is moving to where I live right now

to leave in two years. No one comes to Apex, North Carolina to find a mate like they do in Pacific Beach, California. These people are here and their turnover may be one athlete a month, maybe two. And I, I feel like there is a way to do it, but you have to figure out how you're going to go into the suburbs where people don't move. The family is the number one thing and, and find a way to, to build communities around families. And that is a sustainable model. I just wonder how many people see that as the opportunity of like, we're going to grow this business over a long period of time

because we wouldn't have survived in 2010 without that. Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that sentiment. I think there's something to be said about looking at fitness as not just fitness. It's not just physicality that you're developing there. There is a lot that can be done in terms of the model of, of a community.

And if you look at building like a local community and serving a local community and just being like, you know what, we're here for the people within a couple square miles of us. You can make a business that functions and works pretty well over a long period of time as long as you're not sort of lost and misguided in how you're going to represent yourself. Yeah. Where is Greg Glassman? I believe he's in Wyoming.

Is he really? Yeah, I believe he's in Wyoming, but I'm not 100% sure about that. He had a pretty easy escape from CrossFit. It was a really tough couple weeks, but we seem to not talk about that at all anymore. Or what happened from, say, 2008 until 2016 or 2020. Yeah. Did Andy Stump's podcast just say, we're never going to talk about that because there's one guy that was flying a plane that knows everything?

You know, I don't know. I don't know what the end result of that is because that entire situation was very serious yeah it was really serious names were named and i knew some of those names and it was very serious yeah there was a lot of um there was a lot of really, really gross, tragic, awful, unconscionable things that were accused during those times. And I'm pretty sure the sale was timed perfectly to stop that before it grew any bigger. I don't know what the end result of that is now i don't know if any of that is continuing to be uh investigated or looked at um but i i have no idea the entire thing to me is is really really uh yeah i don't know what greg's up to uh i last i heard that he had moved

and it was potentially Wyoming but I honestly have no idea what he's been up to I haven't spoken to him in a long time even if CrossFit's in a rough space moving forward it's in a way better place than it was in June 2020

I believe that's when that all got crazy absolutely it is dude what's going on with arm and hammer tv what do you have coming up well i mean you know the the season is about to kick off we're probably i don't know like three and a half weeks away from the open at this point is the new open format interesting to you the open hold on a second hold on a second can you lay out the whole structure by the way like i just got so excited again i don't even know what the structure of

the games is right now like what what is the setup right now currently yeah so uh the the okay so it works something like this in march is going to be the open it's three weeks long it's going to have a whole bunch of different divisions they've added a bunch of different variations to it but realistically the only one that we're talking about in terms of the games season and not just the participatory community event is the rx right so it's the same as it's been before in terms of the open you have to do the workouts as prescribed unless you're in some of the like older age groups but either way that's like we're talking about like 100 people so the the

games season starts with the open the opens three weeks long out of the open you're going to qualify the top 10 percent per continent to quarterfinals the continents are north america south america europe asia africa and oceania so there's six and it's 10 percent of registrants i believe per area so that 10 number is another thing is like how do you define 10 is it 10 of people that do all the workouts is it 10 of people who are all the workouts? Is it 10% of people who are doing the workouts as prescribed? Is it 10% of people who all sign up? Because let's say there's 10,000 people that sign up, but 6,000 of them do all the workouts scaled. So are they taking 400 or are they taking a thousand, right? So there's a big difference there about what 10% means, but either

way, they're taking the top 10% of scores from the Open into quarterfinals. Quarterfinals is like the first stage of the 2020 CrossFit Games. It's online. It's one weekend. It's a bunch of workouts. It's filmed, but it's not going to be broadcast. And it's going to be the qualifying step for the in-person competition, which are called semifinals.

And those are going to be the ones that qualify for the games. The quarterfinals are split into two weekends. There's the individual and there's the team quarterfinal. So if you want to do both, you can do both. And they will qualify anywhere from 30 per continent to 120. So there's only 10 semifinal events, and there's four in North America, there's two in Europe,

and then there's one each in the remaining. So that's 10. And it only takes 30 from the quarterfinals so the top 120 in north america will get to quarterfinals the top 60 in north america i'm pretty sure it's 30 yeah we'll get to the quarterfinals um and then on the team side it's the top 20 the top 20 teams per continent and the top 80 in North America, top 40 in the Europe continent. So you have to be really, really, really good to make it to semifinals. Semifinals are going to basically function the way regionals function

in that they're going to be over the course of a few weekends in May or June or sometime between May and June. And they're going to take place in undisclosed locations, but not organized directly by CrossFit. So the sanctionals that we got to know over the past couple years are the pool from which those 10 events are going to be selected. And those events are going to be able to do their own programming, following some guidelines by CrossFit. They'll be in charge of their own leaderboards. They'll be in charge of whatever they can be big giant events like Granite Games is with all these different divisions and all this different stuff. But the

games qualifying division, the elite division has to function under certain rules, or they can just be like just the games qualifying divisions. Like regionals were very elite, only those people coming in to compete. And then out of each of those sanctionals, depending on which region you're in or which continent you're in, you're going to qualify a certain number of athletes. So like the Africa region, it's only the winners. It's like number one, number one, number one in the men's women's and team divisions. But in the North America, for example, it's only the winners it's like number one number one number one in the men's women's and team divisions but in the north america for example it's the top five so it's five five and five um at the end of the day there's going to be 38 males and 38 females and uh 38 teams i guess actual affiliate teamsual affiliate teams.

Actual affiliate teams. The affiliate team is no longer super teams like it was in the past couple years. They have really strict rules now about you have to live within 100 miles of your affiliate cup team. You have to prove that you train there. You have to prove that you're a member there.

And you also can't be the owner of another affiliate and be on another affiliates team you have to be on your own team if you're an owner and affiliate so yeah there's there's a lot there yeah it's super confusing it's it's like you know we've had a few very confusing years for the game this one one, at least, it has the one simplicity that regionals offered, which is you start with a really wide base of the open, and then you qualify to something that's more elite, and then you qualify for the games. Whereas this one just adds wide base of the open,

you qualify for something more elite in quarterfinals, qualify for something more elite in semifinals, and then you qualify for the games. Yeah. I feel like even though it was probably the most expensive route that you could do by throwing 15 regionals around the world, man, that was so easy. We take 60 guys, 60 girls, 30 teams. We tell them all to meet in Del Mar, and we get after it.

This whole trying to to figure all that mess out must be just a disaster and realizing how incredibly expensive and the logistics behind all of it and and now taking it online there's just an insane amount of stuff to try and figure these competitions out. Especially, like, I thought that the sanctionals thing. First off, does anybody know that you're the reason they're called sanctionals? Yeah, I don't know. How about a little fun fact there, Barbell Shrugged people? Arm & Hammer is the very first person to use the word sanctional.

And it just caught on. Next thing you know HQ is using it and then they trademarked it did you just show them the video like what are you trademarked by I'm not fighting HQ and

I'm not fighting HQ anymore I'm not interested it's not a thing I'm not fighting them anymore. I'm not interested. It's not a thing. Oh my God. I'm not fighting them anymore. Dude, tell me, tell the people where to find you, YouTube, everything you got going on. Yeah. At Arm & Hammer TV. That's the move. That's the one.

There's a lot of cool stuff going on on my YouTube channel. There's some fun things going on on my Instagram. Not so much. I'm not as active on Instagram as I am on YouTube. But yeah, I've got I've got some pretty cool stuff. I actually have. I'll send you guys the link you guys can can can send it out. I have this like PDF that I put together. It's 101 free workouts. So it's just workouts that I had written and coached and done from when I was, um, uh,

an affiliate owner. So it's like proven true, not shitty workouts. Like here's like five months of workouts if you really want them basically. Uh, that, uh, that,

you know, I've just, I've been giving out to people, uh, providing some sort of like value just getting back to to, cause everyone's asking for programming. Like, I don't know if you really want programming as much as you want to like know how to write workouts. So here's an example of a bunch of really good workouts that if you really want to study, you can. And to that end, I'm working on also doing this little course of like how to write workouts that don't suck. Um, but I don't really have to.

Yeah. Thanks man. I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a solid launch date for that. Probably, uh, early March is the plan.

Um, and I'll, I'll be putting out some more information about that in, in over YouTube and Instagram over the next couple of weeks for sure. There you go. Doug Larson. I don't find me on Instagram. Douglas C. Larson.

I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are barbell shr on Instagram, Douglacy Larson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged, Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash DieselDad. Hopefully, in a couple months, Armand Hammer will be joining us when he's sleep deprived. His eyeballs feel like they're bleeding at 3 a.m. and he's wondering if he's going to be able to train the next day. Don't worry, buddy. We got you.

20-minute EMOM aesthetics. Strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness. And get over to Walmart. If you are in San Diego, L.A., Palm Springs, or Vegas, we are on the shelves in the pharmacy. Friends, see you next week. That's a wrap, friends. My good friend, Armin. Make sure you get over and support our sponsors, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged.

Save 20% on the green, red, and gold. The U.S. Air Force, head over to airforce.com and check out all things special warfare. Also, leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrugged. Our friends over at Bioptimizer, save 10% using the code shrugged. Friends, we'll see you next week.