Massenomics Podcast - Ep.119: How The Fitness Apparel Business Works

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

This week, the fellas give you an insider look at how fitness apparel juggernauts like Massenomics rip off their customers by trying to sell their products for more than they buy them for. What a bunch of crooks. Also, CrossFit is suing Reebok, and one of CrossFit HQ's main voice's gets fired...

M-M-M-M-M-M-M-Massanomics Welcome to Massanomics, the world's strongest podcast. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Massanomics. Make sure you go visit massanomics.com. There you'll find the rest of our powerful content. While you're there, check out our store and buy yourself some of that sweet Massanomics gear. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode of the Massanomics Podcast. I'm Tyler, and joining me is Tommy.

What's up? And way over there is Tanner. Hey, everybody. Hi, on the camera. So, we've got a lot of stuff to get into this week uh news we almost didn't really address when it came up half of it some of it's new but we'll jump in right away with uh the news we forgot to disclose until the end of last week is open power lifting um we're just going to call them uh unpaying sponsors of the podcast they give us really good information all the time and they're super helpful with us

um they're they're basically now what are they they're basically now like at the forefront of all the data in power yeah i think it's becoming more and more where that's the almost everyone at this point is recognizing that as the go-to source. I think, I feel like if maybe if you're not on Instagram, you don't know outside of that. I mean, yeah, it seems like you should know,

but if you're not on Instagram, like where are you learning about things? Yeah. I mean, you're outside. There's not even really the modern world. I don't even magazines anymore. I don't think there is even any,

except for not Bell's magazine. Not just powerlifting. I mean, like in the world. Do you get them? Actually, I don't think they make paper anymore, even now that I think about it. What is this? That's an antique. It's a strange object.

But, yeah, so that's their news as of, this was a couple weeks ago? Yeah. We really broke it first, the last 10 seconds of the podcast. I forgot. But they finally got everything available for iPhone. So now they are just rolling across every platform you can imagine. Yeah. So it's slick.

I checked it out the other day. And it's way faster too. And what did they say? Like 235 times faster. Which is nice. I wasn't actually i didn't have a lot of problems with the speed before towards the very end here i noticed a few times maybe as they started getting more yeah because they're getting more and they're getting

more and more data in there all the time too uh wow the number crunching machine was really really working overtime google machine did you guys did you guys see the little insider tip on how to turn it into an app on your phone or how to make it look like it's an app? I did, yeah. How do we do that? So if you go – and I think this kind of works with anything. Yeah, any Safari.

Yeah, any Safari. So you just go to the website. That's openpowerlifting.org. And this is for anyone using an iPhone right now. You can follow along if you'd like. A little tutorial. You will just listen to the sweet sounds of my voice but uh it's power lifting open power open powerlifting.org i didn't do this early so i'm

actually gonna i have it and do it it just feels cool just to have it on your uh home screen and then once you're on there the next trick is that you want to hit that little box with the arrow, you know, like the share button on the bottom of your browser. And then send dick pics to open power. That is exactly it. Add to home screen? And now that I'm saying this, I completely forgot how to do it. Add to home screen?

You hit the – oh, maybe you have it. I could be on the wrong. Yeah. Go ahead and do that. Add to home screen. Maybe hit the, oh, maybe you have it. I could be on the wrong. Yeah. Go ahead and do that. Add to home screen. Maybe it's already on you. Oh, mine's already on it,

so it's not showing up. Gotcha. So, and then you should have a nice, there it is. Yeah, it's just the add to home screen button

and then you go and you have a nice little open power lifting icon. Click it. Boom. Right there. What if I go to massonomics.com

and do that? Ooh, now, that's, that's a real power tip right there. So you I go to massonomics.com and do that? Ooh, now that's a real power tip right there. So you just went through a decent tip. Now I want to take everyone through maybe what I might think of. I mean, as functional as this is, this next tip is the real tip. Let's try it. Just the tip.

So this one's going to be a little different. First, this time I want you to go to massonomics.com. Okay, can i try that yeah how do you guys spell that oh guys actually i also have this tip is that i put it on my favorites so that it appears right there all the time i but let's see let's just see if we can deck out our home screen i want to see what the icon looks like oh yeah have we are we prepared for this it should be that no it's not. Oh, really? It's still not. It's still.

Is it stupid, you guys? No, it's. Oh, it's the cover. Oh, not at all. It's not that cool. Tommy. We got to get somebody on that. How is that done?

What are we missing, Tommy? My guess is it has something to do with the favicon, which is a little bit of industry lingo for you guys there. But I've got it now, at least. I mean, I'm not even going to put that busted-ass shit on there. I can't handle that ugliness on my phone right now. Once Tommy gets that order. I need a legit icon.

We'll let you know. Are you guys particular about your home screen and icon cleanliness? Cluster fuck. If something gets tight. Wow. Also. Are you a notifications guy? guy like does the red bubble bug you uh oh i have i haven't batched so i have like my social media batch of notifications that i can go in and i can just write like everyone does i'll just go from facebook to instagram to snapchat to twitter back from until they're all done and then keep doing it over and

over again do a few laps but other than that none of it really bothers me which as you can see i have 4584 unread emails yeah no i can't do that 27 missed calls yeah can't do that either 18 notifications on our facebook business pages yeah it doesn't bother me but like my daughter the other day saw my phone she's like doesn't that make you oh like this is if mine doesn't look like this 99.9 of the time i i have issues i i've been upset late oh that's me right there like i keep that right there i've been upset lately because my google drive has two notifications that i for the life of me for like the last six months i got the same one like somebody somebody added some shit or added notes to something that I was doing and now I can't fucking observe them and make them go away.

That's, I've, that too. Just because that's a thing that's new now. Well, you could just turn off the notifications completely. Okay. And then would they take, it would make that go away? Well, then I just wouldn't have anything there. Well, that's fine. I don't need notifications from Google Drive.

I don't even know what it should be notifying me about. All the cool new stuff that's happening in it. All the new activities in Google Drive. So we've spent the first six minutes of this episode playing on our phones. But the open power lifting on the mobile is... I use open power lifting all the time for the different things that we put together, like meme things or our Versus series or the lifting legends.

Yeah, it's like the only spot where you can actually find information. Yeah, and you know that it's accurate. I mean, I suppose there could be something that they have to change periodically, but you take it as accurate, whatever's on there. Yeah. I just assume they never make mistakes. No, I mean, they only have probably 50,000 line items. There can't be anything wrong in there.

I think it's more than that. I think it's a couple hundred thousand, actually. Because they used to have a counter on there, I would say. That would make me super nervous. That's a lot. Because I feel like I could fat hand and fuck up it all right away but they are really good about changing anything if you do ever notice anything wrong just dm them and they uh get it in there and if you do they have my 3 000 pound total in there yet

see i think that might have been something that they want to run that had an error like listen it was at this unsanctioned thing yeah Yeah. I don't think they got that yet. Fuck. All right. I was... I'm not actually wearing them right now, but some of my... Underwear? Yeah.

Oh, I'm never wearing those. Just extra fabric. I don't see the point. Yeah. It's hot here. You know, we complained about it being cold forever. Now it's hot. It is hot.

It sucks. There is no in-between, though. Yeah. No, it is awful. Oh, it's like 95, 96 today? And thick to where the heat gets inside. It's not the heat that gets you. It's the humidity.

It's the humidity. So that wetness. Have you ever heard anyone say that before, that it's not the heat that gets you? No, literally. Well, here's the thing, Tanner. Here's the thing. It's not a dry heat. The dry heat, you can do that all day.

You can handle the dry heat. Until it's like 105 dry heat. No, but this shit, you go outside, and it climbs into your ears and mouth and in every pore. Yeah. And you sweat out of just everywhere. I walk, and I was wearing sweat shorts. You know, they're like cut-off sweat shorts. And before I got to my truck, there was beads of sweat pouring out of my ass crack down my leg.

I was like, this is super unsanitary, for one. I need to wash now. And have not washed. Here I sit. And here we are. Two days later, sitting in it i did have a kind of a bee in my bonnet about something oh well something grinding your ears oh calm down over there so our our new shorts are lift shorts that we have out oh yeah they're they're uh they're pretty

cool and we've gotten good reception from those we've sold quite a few pairs and uh i think people have been pretty happy with them and i love them personally of course i'm biased though yeah uh but we've had a few posts about them and we got some negative nancy's uh multiple uh i only see i remember the one he uh he i'll it will started with one okay there's more got pulled into the yeah jesus and i mean basically you're gonna get a a brief lesson on what it is we do here and this is economics 101 and you can't uh can't fault us i mean if if you think we're doing anything uh unethical or anything i think you'll find out otherwise because we'll all be pretty open with about it exactly what you do and i think you'll find it to be fairly reasonable um so when we

sell products from our website we try to sell them for more than what we purchase them for. Believe it or not. We are not yet set up as a nonprofit. No. And actually, believe it or not, we still don't take home any money. Right. So like while we are charging for more than we buy for that item, somehow yet none of us have any money. Right.

So let's start with that. Yeah, that's like the 10,000-foot level. Once you understand that, then we can get into the next part of it. So I posted about the shorts, and like I said, a lot of positive comments. Almost all good, just one bad one here that had to squeak in there and get a b in my bonnet but uh so he said something to the effect uh just a brief line like oh so you bought these shorts for 15 and just put your logo on them and are charging 10 more no thanks i'll just buy the plain ones.

Also, if that's what you are into, that's fine. I don't know why you would feel the need to tell us that. It is literally the equivalent of going, all right, so LeBron James just signed with the Lakers, okay? But I can just get a plain-ass fucking jersey with nobody's name or logo on it for $20. Why would I spend $100 on one with a name and a team on it? And the crazy thing is to get mad at, as far as businesses go, we are almost as small as a business as you could possibly have.

We are not the Walmart. So if you think a $5 to $10 markup, whatever that is, if you think that's offensive, it's like a known fact that Nike makes a lot of their shoes for like a dollar and then sells those for over $100. And people don't bat an eye at that. It's the same thing with that phone you're holding. That's made in China for like, I mean, it still costs some money, but it's getting marked up hundreds of dollars yeah hundreds and hundreds the point is not only is it the same

thing that every apparel company is doing it's the same thing that every company is doing that sells goods actually including services like when I used to work in the heating and air conditioning industry I got paid x amount of dollars per hour and gas and my parts cost y and you however when i came and did a thing paid more x plus y plus z pretty much z and x and y again basically like you know what i mean like i i tried it boiled down in the end like it was hourly would have been about like $275 an hour. Uh-huh. But like, that's fucking what it costs to do business. Fucking idiot.

Right. So the point there, if we're paying $15 for something and selling it to you for $25, you might think, oh, they paid $15, selling it for $ it for 25 they get 10 in their pocket but that's not even the reality because we pay tax sales tax we pay an annual fee to squarespace to even have a website we pay a percentage yeah a percentage of everything you buy two to three percent which is gets taken away which that money actually comes out of the top. Yes. And then you have to buy the packaging for the item to go in. We write a lovely handwritten note,

which also requires time and the printing of those. And then Tanner has to go to the post office every single day to deliver these things. Right. Every single day. Which also we don't pay him for that. No. Yeah. single day to deliver these things right every single day which also we don't pay him for that yeah we pay uh a fee to a monthly fee to have a uh podcast hosting we don't like any money literally the podcast literally does nothing but cost us money at this point it does that's right

and so what the point there we're not making ten dollars i mean maybe most importantly we make somewhat entertaining memes for almost no money yes so there's a lot of time that goes into all of it you design that actually design the the the another step the logo doesn't just appear on those shorts uh in our inventory you have to source it you have to source it through a vendor. This is a fun one. If you've never bought apparel, just go to a store and say, I want to get t-shirts.

And then when they say, what kinds, say, I want a nice shirt. And then when they present you with 200 options, narrow it down to one. And then figure out what sizes you need to order

and what quantities. And then what color you're going to print in, what size your print is going to be. And you better get some samples in because it's going to look fucked up on you. And then once you to print in, what size your print is going to be. And you better get some samples in because it's going to look fucked up on you. And then once you get it in. Some shirts have funny necks, some shirts have funny sleeves.

And then once you decide on it and you size it perfectly and they print it, then you got to get it and you have to schedule a day to take photos and then you have to write a fun caption for everything and edit it. And that takes me between doing those things, shooting and editing a good half a day to a day depending on how much edit it. And that takes me, between doing those things, shooting and editing, a good half a day to a day,

depending on how much we do. And like you were saying, this is my job to do graphic design. There's times when I can make quite a bit of money per hour, and this isn't one of those projects. So, if

you think $25 for a pair of shorts is too much that's also cool that's fine that's and that's but like but that is also you can't think that it's unreasonable for us to ask that and here here's the thing that's the beauty of it is if it's too much just don't buy it like that's capitalism just don't buy it right and that that sends us the message people don't buy it. Like that's capitalism. Just don't buy it. And that, that sends us the message. People don't like this. And you know what? We'll never do it again. Well, there's also some people will don't want to spend more than $10 for

shorts. Some, I own multiple pairs of Lululemon shorts that are between 80 and a hundred dollars. Because I like capital. Yeah. Right. There's going to be different people that like different price points and

different. Some people will never be able to that like different price points and different level of product quality. Some people will never be able to justify the $5,000 add-on for their air-conditioned seats. Right. Right. But to some, they're like, oh, yeah, I'd be fucking stupid not to. And so his point is, oh, you're just charging $10 more for your logo? We kind of are because we do a lot of things that we've built up a little bit of a following or fan base that they kind of want our stuff if it has our logo on it like and usually and i would guess too though that anybody who was going to be like

i would never spend an extra 10 more and i just buy i'm like well you'd certainly like don't like us and the things that we do yeah yeah because like that's what you're actually buying right it's like hey i like the brand and the things and the stuff like some people might have even bought our stuff and not even liked it they just want to support us like that that wouldn't surprise me what they're trying to do you know they're fucking trying real hard over there bless their hearts so i mean they're certainly not smart they're handsome i i explained all that to him in a short you know more concise and written form and i wasn't uh you weren't a jerk about it no i was you were way better than i was like i just

tried to be very factual because i felt like what he was saying was way off base so i was like just tried to put the facts out there and then i i put that on our uh what do you call it the story yeah and kudos to a lot of people out there and a lot of other small businesses i got a lot of good positive feedback from that from other businesses and another businesses like ours that are considerably bigger than ours too where uh which made me feel good because i was starting to wonder if i was just completely insane like if i was like oh maybe i'm the one that like do i do i not get this yeah so i did feel you know kind of validated from you're like you're like do we have to actually start

so yeah shorts right but i mean like like one of the guys that like right now there's one person that loves to talk about how rich they are off of powerlifting and that's mark bell loves to go on about it and essentially all he's done to make his money i mean he made the slingshot which i've have heard things like maybe there may or may not have been something around yeah around at the same time titan ram but now at this point he's making his money selling neoprene and like wraps from china that he probably gets for well believe it or not we have looked into such things and chosen to keep things a little more domestically. Because anyone and their dog, and I won't fault some of these brands

because they do a lot of good things for the sport, but anybody really can go. Go on and do it right now. Go to Alibaba.com, and you will find any number of basically identical products to the Mark Bell stuff. And you can get them made and sent to you for fucking literally almost no money per item. And to turn around and sell them for $40, $50, $60 a piece. Granted, there's still, he spends a lot of money too to create the brand. He's a. There's still, he spends a lot of money to create the brand. He's a marketing machine.

It's like, we can't really fault him because that's what we're talking about here. It's just the same thing. Like we're not, I'm not paying a person out of my pocket to sew fucking shorts. And then also take those shorts and have someone else put our logo on them so that I only created them from the dust of the fucking earth. Right.

And I was like, no, no, yeah, you buy them and you put some shit on them and you put your brand on them. Your brand has value. And then now that's how you sell it. And probably the biggest one in the fitness industry is like the whole supplement industry. I mean, that's even five-time fold. It's like they buy some maybe real or not supplements for pennies and then package it, and that's all of a sudden a $40 bottle of supplements. Like there's some crazy stuff going on right there.

Yeah, even more so. One more thing about that guy before I just let him off the hook. So I explained that, and he kind of came back with another thing that I thought was even more ridiculous. His response to that was something like, oh, so you're just buying this crap cotton apparel from China and marking it up 300%. And I wanted to just be like, see above post. But I did. At that point, then I was like, I got to click on this guy

and see what his thing is. At that point, then I was like, I got to click on this guy and see what his thing is. And every post of his, he was repping a supplement company and a fitness apparel company. So I looked into both of those. The fitness apparel company was selling their clothing for more than what we sell ours for. And they're doing the same thing. They're selling their shirts for $30. We sell ours sell ours for 22 and they don't do any free content and so i looked in the found out more and i was like maybe this is like an exclusively uh all all american source

so their description is american designed and printed and i said yeah you and everyone else which is every company is like you and so that's what i said i was like you're you're a hypocrite because you're doing your you're repping that just because you like that company like it's okay but they're doing the exact same thing even to a further extent yeah that's just that's just not getting it. Right. And at that point, I kind of, then I was like, okay, I'm not really mad now. I see this would be a losing battle. You know, there's. I think. Yeah.

What do you do? But then he, so I had put that in our story. Yeah. I didn't tag him in it or whatever because I didn't even know who it was. Yeah. And he obviously like had followed that and watched it and so then he had like three uh diatribes yeah in his uh story and then it kicked over a couple of his friends that came back to a picture of our lift shirt one of

them the one i'm thinking of that i remember just you know this is a post that's like two weeks old and just uh like an hour later i get a comment on there that says this shirt sucks this shirt sucks and it's just designed after some shitty shit beer i would never buy this and like i got that and i was and it was serious you know it wasn't. It wasn't like trying to be funny. It was trying to be a jab. Because if you're trying to be funny, that's pretty funny. It was trying to be a jab, and I laughed, and I wanted to write something back and also kind of be a dick,

but also not be. Yeah, so I said, well, if you're not interested in this shirt, I understand, but maybe we could interest you in our Zima inspired t-shirt line and his response was uh i would never buy any of your shit so i mean we are pretty awful yeah like so i like i so i mean all the hate that we spread around the fucking strength sports industry. Yeah. Right. Here we are just going around shitting on people. Right. The end takeaway, the positive of all that I thought was that we're getting enough of a, you know, still a small following, but enough of a following that we're actually reaching people that are.

Yeah. We're actually reaching. We're not just reaching people. That don't get it. Yeah. So far it was only really intelligent, discerning individuals. Well, it has been like pretty cool people. Like you guys all listening to the podcast are all really been nice.

Yeah. You know? And then, and every once in a while you're like, wait, what the fuck? It's like, but we do see glimpses of like when Ray Williams was deadlifting. Yeah. And someone's like, dude, what is that guy? He's going to hurt himself. Yeah.

And it's the same thing. Where it's like, that guy's justlifting. Yeah. And someone's like, dude, what is that guy? He's going to hurt himself. And it's the same thing. It was like, that guy's just fat. Yeah. Or like when Chris Weiss did that, like nine 15 with that guy is the way he's rounding his back. He's going to get hurt someday. It's like,

okay. Like you people do not get this at all. So it is kind of exciting that we're getting out there to enough people that we're getting out to the wrong people too. Yeah. That's great. Just imagine what it's like for like mark bell though or someone like that imagine the ridiculous stuff he gets you just have to be i don't compartmentalize those things very well so like i'm bad really bad with the like you know like you're 10 most difficult fucking clients or

customers or whatever are like 90 yeah the 80 20. yeah like that is very true and that is very true and it works in like i think in all business like i'll i'll come home and it'll just be like a couple of clients same couple you have people and it's just like motherfucker it's just like 90 of my fucking irritant comes from the same few you know and you're just like mother fuck what the fuck and whereas like oh you just have to not give a fuck at that point like no no those those things you just dismiss them because otherwise like it just never ends but um yeah but i can't imagine like on a huge scale just because it still might be the

the ratio might be the same but then you're just way more 20 000 people saying you're a fucking crook because because you could you i hear people say this all the time you know like people like that on podcast you know they might get 4 000 positive comments but then they just come to that one the negative one it's like you know like well that is the truth like how many people with the shorts and shirts and hats we've done where people are like oh that's fucking dope you're like i know but we don't even like it's it's like yeah i mean i know they're pretty awesome because i like them you know because you do you're like i like them i think they're cool too i'm glad you agree yeah

yeah but that's not a thing that we perceive as like a win right you're like oh cool it's like well that's the goal that's what we want you know i don't even know what the end goal would be where we're like yeah this is the best thing i've ever seen yeah so but i'm not against people not liking it i want to make that clear because it's not for everyone yeah for sure like it's yeah but you don't think like a shitty light beer on a shirt is kind of funny and you can't be on that joke like it's the same thing like when you make memes and people think that the memes are serious like like the verses they don't get it like some of the verses like holy shit where people are like i don't get it why like why would you compare those two people why in the world is the point we're all in allen thick right right um we had uh oh fuck i thought i had a interesting little piece of massonomic shit

talk on here but i don't know if i'm gonna find it in time well speaking of what a couple things we've gone through with massonomics um this week we've been we've been running our lifting legends series down for how many have we done tanner i think we've done about eight now or so that we've got out tanner would know because he's done 100 of them from the bottom up in case you guys are wondering tanner does most of the leg work here tommy makes it look cool and this is all i do uh i'm the worst but the the last two that we did are probably the most pertinent yeah so this year well this was this week right this was it would have been sunday yeah i think within a couple

yeah it probably was sunday sunday uh lifting legend terry todd passed away i'm not sure from what but i don't know that's terribly pertinent i don't think he was like 80 years old i don't think it was an explosion or anything. We're just going to run through some of the... First off, I've never met Terry personally, other than though we see him and Jan in an unreasonably close proximity for people like us at the Arnold. Because we're just really fortunate enough to sit just kind of right behind them. And Tommy's right next to Jan.

I never did actually figure out who they were until this year i didn't it didn't register to me who they were and tommy's like sitting right next to jim she was literally like tapping me on the shoulder this year to talk to someone else like like hey get the fuck out of my life who the hell are you guys like we run this show get out of here please leave but uh but terry todd passed away i was not clear how strong he was how strong he was also only having seen him as frankly as an old man yeah in person how big he was and he was fucking enormous yeah i haven't seen any of the old 300 oh really he's huge 325 i'll pull up some pictures of it as yeah as i go through like

yeah all we've seen him as is probably i don't know like 200 pounds well like what you would expect an 80 year old man to look like like it was um tanner do you want to run through these numbers and i'll show yeah some of the so what we do on the lifting legend thing is we put out some of the facts of uh accomplishment accomplishments that they've made and Dude was yacked. Yeah, he was big. He first started out in Olympic weightlifting, which people in the 60s, that seemed to be what everyone started out with because that's what there was. And he was a junior champion, national champion in weightlifting,

and then he moved to powerlifting in 64 and 65. Some of these first two stats, I was talking to Tommy about it the other day, get a little bit confusing because there's so many different ways to slice it and dice it. Like the first two, because a prior lifting legend was Paul Anderson. He squatted 920 pounds well before Terry Todd's time. But Terry Todd was the first to squat 700 plus in sanction,

a sanction powerlifting meet because Paul Anderson, there wasn't powerlifting. It was just a guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So first to squat over 700 in a powerlifting meet and the first to total over 1600 over 1700 over 1800 and over 1900.

That is pretty crazy. Which means basically you were he was the best got better and without anybody ever catching it yeah what i mean though right it almost reminds me of like of like big z's log press i was like oh there's nobody even challenging him he just was the best so he squatted over 700 he bench 515, and he deadlifted 742, which, like you said, looking at him as an 80-year-old man, it's hard to even wrap your mind around that. And then what he became known for later on, I think,

is Arnold went to him in 2001 and asked him about creating a strongman event. So is that how that started? I didn't know the specifics of how. So for people that don't know, they are the ones that started the Arnold Classic? Yeah. Arnold, by what I've read, Arnold literally went to Terry Todd and said, I want a strongman event at the Arnold Classic. I think it would be a cool addition.

And he took the reins on it then and made it in 2002, the first year. And then they also, Terry and his wife Jan, they run the Stark Center. It's in Austin, Texas. It's actually in Darryl K. Royal Stadium where the Longhorns play. I've been there. I've been to the Stark Center before, but it was at a point in time when I wasn't appreciating it as much as I would if I could be there today. But from what I gather, it's like the largest collection

of strength history information in the world probably. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, because don't they say they are like the historians of strength sports? Yeah, right. So we did one on Jan, his wife also. Did not realize this year. This one was maybe even more surprising for me. Also exceptionally strong.

The first woman ever in the IPF Hall of Fame, okay, but broke over 60 world powerlifting records in her time. Very impressive. The Denny Stones, we've seen those yeah at uh at the arnold she was the to this day it sounds like still the only women to woman to ever lift them so that's impressive to be the only woman to ever do something and then first woman to squat over 500 first woman to deadlift over 400 and first woman to total over 1200 that's insane yeah some legit lifting right there so and those two got married like if you go through that the resume of those two like they're the first to do

everything yeah and then i want did they have kids i don't know like it's a shame if they didn't like that's crazy is there there is their son larry williams there's a part of that that doesn't make sense but there's a part of that up but the age the age gap just doesn't make sense there that's the only thing but uh but yeah that kind of came as a i mean i came as a surprise to us but you know maybe we're not involved in their daily right daily life or anything like that but But I saw a couple posts regarding it and kind of looked up some stuff to confirm it. And so, yeah, the world lost a legend.

Terry Todd. And I saw a lot of positive comments from a lot of influential, strong men. I saw Halfler had a big post about it. Brad Gillingham posted about it. I saw Rogue, of course, had some stuff out on it. But I think he was still actively a big part of what was going on on the Arnold Strongman Classic.

They're all over the thing. Yeah, so I'm curious how that, you know, who fills the – I don't know if – I'm sure he's one of the ones that was deciding which events they do and what equipment they use and everything. Yeah. Yeah, that's wild. We have other, what time we got? Yeah, we have time.

So we'll move out of the world. We did powerlifting. We got to some strongman, sad strongman, and powerlifting news. What about bodybuilding? So bodybuilding next then? Bodybuilding? Guys, I'm just not getting any leaner i'll say but uh no um we've had this news all of this news is a little bit

antiquated now by antiquated since it's 2018 it means it's like two to four weeks old yeah it didn't happen right we just haven't talked about it yet. So for you guys, if you want to hear our take on it, that's what we're here to do. So we'll start with talking on CrossFit. We want to get into the firing probably first, and then we'll get into the lawsuit next. So Russell Berger is one of the – CrossFit HQ has a blog called The Russell's Blog. And that's Russell Berger and Russ Green. I believe they're both attorneys that represent CrossFit HQ in lots of things. CrossFit is a very litigious organization.

They just sue the shit out of people all the time. Oh, do they really? Yeah, they protect their name primarily because anyone can do what CrossFit is. You just can't call it CrossFit. CrossFit didn't invent those things. They just put a name on it and created a certification deal. So that's what they protect. So if Massonomics tries to launch Massonomics with the word CrossFit in a separate room or something like that,

like there's like an anonymous tip line. I thought that's what we did. Shh, don't tell anyone. What we're doing wasn't functional training. Here comes the cease and desist letter. But so you, and there's like an anonymous tip line even for submitting fucking IP. Being a narc. Yeah, like on their website and everything.

Turn in pictures. Address, pictures, whatever you want. And they'll just, they just, boom, and get after it it's pretty crazy but they uh anyway russell burger i believe was the one pretty sure yeah he got fired um how do i frame this so it was it was pride week or month what was that the month of june i believe so in the beginning of june some crossfit affiliates somewhere where it is isn't relevant to me or to you but the staff and coaches were going to have like a pride parade event or something like that you know so they were going to have it the owner of that gym caught wind of it, and he's the owner.

It's his business. He basically said, oh, it's just not, doesn't align with what I believe. Because he's kind of an outside owner. He's an outside owner. More like an investor. Exactly. Yep. He's not an owner operator.

He doesn't own and coach. He just owns. And he said, ah, that's just, I don't want that. That's not what my business is. I don't want to be a part of it and the way the free market and capitalism works the coaches said all right fuck you and a bunch of the members left because they didn't agree with it and that's the way capitalism works and that's the way it should work aren't you just supposed to complain but not do anything yeah usually and so but that's the way it should work so they voted with their feet and got the fuck out yeah and so that gym had to close because they lost a bunch of members over and that's fine like if you're if you're willing to

take that stance knowing that that's the possible outcome then that's on you if that's if you believe whatever that hard then no one's gonna talk you out of it right and so he had to know that was a potential consequence so So that happened. Russell Berger comes out and writes some deal basically condemning homosexuality as a sin. And then I think actually hashtagged his post or his tweet as like hashtag CrossFit underneath it. To make it look like it was like...

Well, but everything he does is basically in an official capacity anyways because he's like the fucking voice of their shit so that came and they immediately fired him and i believe how could he not expect that that was gonna happen well here's the other thing is he deleted it and then i think reposted it again and just didn't have hashtag crossfit on it like didn't back down from it at all which again his right to believe it also his right to say it and also your right to not be able to use that platform that your fucking business gives you to say it so um he got fired and then greg glassman came out and i think the former ceo

the guy who started the founder of crossfit and i believe he said uh russell needs to take a pretty hefty dose of shut the fuck up is what he's like. His exact, it was like his exact quote, which is like, Oh shit. That's actually a,

I like that. Yeah. That's not a very stuffy way to say it. And I like, I appreciate that. But, um, so that,

I mean, it is part of this, the way society is now is if you say something that pisses a lot of people off and then come at you and you can have your fucking job, that's fine. But I think generally speaking, I mean, it is part of just the way society is now is if you say something that pisses a lot of people off, they come at you and you can have your fucking job. That's fine. But I think, generally speaking, if he would have just kept his mouth shut, it would have been just fine. I mean, that gym closing didn't cost CrossFit HQ anything, and that's just the way the business works.

Was he tied in any way directly to that gym? Not to that business at all. He was just literally throwing his opinion out there, right? Yeah, exactly. But, again, your opinion out in when your job is that well and again i mean i a lot of people should and can just keep their opinions to themselves you know like it's for sure i work for a big company and my personal stance i've seen people in the company that i work for post things on social media about the company. People not that high up.

And I always think, why are you doing that? Like actively trying to undermine what pays you. My stance is I would never, ever do that. I'm not even going gonna really post anything positive because i'm just like gonna i don't want to be attached right public right right exactly then you could come out and you could say you know what i just i think sitting in wooden chairs is a sin and they're gonna be like we fucking make wooden chairs what the fuck you know but nobody knows you work in the wooden chair factory right

so like they can just be like nobody's gonna fucking push back on this deal so you got a good strategy yeah but every time

I see someone that does that hey I believe what I believe but every time I see someone that does that I want to be like

why are you doing that unless you like really want to be fired or you know like maybe it's, it's just like an attention validation thing of like, look what I've been,

look what I'm going through. Russell's done a lot of, not Tanner. Russell's done a lot of very like, let's keep talking about the bad. Very, very like fundamentally Christian open stances. And a guy's allowed to believe what he believes and he's allowed to say what he wants

about it but that can affect it the way the world works like that can affect your relationships and your friendships and that will affect the people that you're around that pay you and like you can't i feel like in the last even like two years that's even it the angry the angry mob mentality like and that i mean there is a and in this case I think it's CrossFit I don't even think it was the mob that went after him his employer was like dude what the fuck the one that always blows my mind now is like

when not that long ago there was the thing in Starbucks where there was just those black guys hanging out and the people working there kicked them out for loitering in Starbucks or whatever it was. And people go on this whole tirade like, fuck Starbucks. It's like Starbucks didn't do that. Like that person working there is one of your – someone you know.

Like that's not Starbucks. That's just a shitty person. Like that's no different than if just some idiot did it. And like – so I think people don't have a hard time separating the act from who actually did it, you know? And I don't believe, I mean, I disagree with what Russell Berger said, obviously, but I don't. My thing is, I don't think that you should like have his head for it. But if a company wants to fire him, that's fine. Yeah.

his head for it but if a company wants to fire him that's fine yeah and but but i don't think also that like i don't know it's strange that nowadays something like that happens and people will now will only attach you that you like you're going to always be judged now by the most public and worst thing you've ever done yeah and that's the way it is which is pretty unfair yeah you know what i mean like like whatever it is if you're listening to the worst, whatever the worst thing you've ever done is. Okay. Ever. Now that becomes known and everybody knows about it. And now everywhere you go,

every time you go to the store, every time you fucking post something on Facebook or on Instagram, it's seen through that lens, you know, like, you know, Oh, that's the guy that whipped his dick out at the party.

That one time, you know, you're always that guy. You're trying to sell insurance to somebody. It's like the guy that whipped his dick out at the party that one time you know you're always that guy you're trying to sell insurance to somebody's like this guy took his dick out at a party you know like i still routinely see in the comments on instagram posts that kevin durant blew a 3-1 lead to uh people don't forget no no so um and then in other crossfit news um crossfit is suing reebok this i thought this was kind of interesting so this is i i read a fair amount more than i wanted to of this fucking 100 page fucking legal document laying out the suit i will say this this. There was words. I wonder if I can find it really quick. There was terminology used. I'm going to Google this really fast. CrossFit, Suze, Reebok.

While he's looking for that, Tanner, did you know that Reebok is their parent company's Adidas? Oh, no, I didn't know that. Did you know that? I did know that. what country is adidas from they're out of germany okay and i think do they own puma too does adidas own puma they might i don't know i don't know that but you know like nike has jordan they have converse yeah yeah nike nike and adidas yeah so those would be the two that they're. So here it is, 98 pages of it.

We'll start with phrase one. No, I'm kidding. But there's some terminology here that's used that like, I'm not an attorney, but this is not legal speak. You're a doctor. This is like spite speak. speak so it's like for nearly a decade crossfit granted reebok exclusive licensing rights that have breathed new life into the reebok brand and played a critical role in helping them make a long overdue comeback like yeah it's like like that's not those aren't that's not it's like it's like man your shit was sinking you know like so there's u? There's a lot of – and then the next line is,

but unbeknownst to CrossFit, Reebok has spent the bulk of its licensing relationship with CrossFit engaging in a surreptitious bait-and-switch scheme designed to systematically deprive CrossFit of millions of dollars in royalties owed under the negotiated terms of the party's agreement. And it's like – So what were they doing? But all that is saying, like, the party's agreement. And it's like... So what were they doing? But all that is saying, the way that's framed is that's like hearing only your ex-girlfriend's

side of the story. Yeah, yeah. It's like, whoa. So what they're saying is, there's a few things going on here. I don't know if I'll be able to get to it to really lay it out but um one of them is that crossfit is supposed or reebok was supposed to pay back a certain amount of money like a percentage to crossfit on sale they were using those percentages though off of their wholesale pricing and not their retail pricing which so we'll say they're supposed to kick back 10 percent and it's a shoe that maybe they're selling for a hundred dollars at retail but they were telling

adidas or they were telling crossfit yeah yeah that are you saying that reebok was selling their goods for more that sounds like a bullshit company to me. I want to sue them now that I know that. I assumed they were giving it away. Can we Instagram sue them? At cost. And then there is a, I'm trying to think of what the other one is. There's also some things about they made some efforts to conceal the underpayment. They actually had agreed in 2016 already to basically fix that calculation method but they never then paid the money back that they had already agreed to do um then here's here's another another like

catty line though unfortunately reebok returned to its deceitful practices again a few months later when it reverted back to its concocted wholesale equivalent price and so like and and then so there's other things too like they're supposed to pay a certain amount so they were directing traffic to the Reebok store which is actually they're supposed to be excuse me supposed to be paid more for what goes through the crossfit store if you buy it at crossfit.com you get more and so those numbers were fucked up and then also reebok was not spending the amount of money that they were supposed to spend on advertising as well so they're supposed to spend a certain amount of money advertising for the crossfit slash reebok stuff that they weren't doing um all of that

however so the crossfit girl broke sounds like they probably broke now because all this stuff happened probably not they'll be okay but they are going to one of the basically and i'll give credit to uh this is uh arman hammer formerly uh i don't even say where he's from anymore because fuck him but uh arman is now it's arman hammer tv um so he's the one who kind of, I got like the good filtered version of this because I read as much of it as I could. I didn't understand much about the whole dynamic, though, where it's probably going to go. It's basically not going to mean anything.

I believe CrossFit's still with Reebok till, like, another quite a few years. So they're still going to be the sponsor of the CrossFit games? They're going to have the apparel which now because of this they can opt out i don't remember how to word it right but basically somebody else can take over the naming rights of the crossfit games um however so there's all this talk you know about oh reebok suing or crossfit suing reebok that's going to fall apart and then nike's going to swoop in because nike's been making crossfit shoes and and they thought that was just obvious thing well there's two problems with that one crossfit choosing to sue reebok means nike doesn't have to give a fuck

nike doesn't have to pay a hundred million dollars for exclusivity to crossfit because reebok's out of the picture and fucking a6 isn't gonna fucking make it work right so nike's doing just fine without paying that money yeah and it is set up in this contract that uh nike or any competitors uh in apparel or shoes or footwear whatever there's a whole list of them that includes nike and all these others um that cannot they can't name the crossfit games after so basically it's not going to be what's going to happen is rebox you have to probably pay the money because they probably fucked up um but and then they they may give away the naming rights to someone else or sell the naming rights to someone else but it can't be something that competes in this crossfit

game no no it's probably going to be the budwe Budweiser. Be what? Rogue. Oh, yeah. Which makes the most sense. And they said that basically, and because of this suit, it opens the door for that, even though that was a clause in the original contract anyways. So, like, basically what it is, it's almost like this suit is arbitrary. And it's like they're going to throw this out there so that then they can sell the naming rights to Rogue.

That makes sense. And Rogue will pay a fortune. It'll be the Rogue CrossFit Games. That doesn't mean it'll be this year, but that's probably where it'll go. So it probably won't be the Nike CrossFit Games like people would think. No, it doesn't sound like that. Because it honestly wouldn't make sense for Nike. With Reebok out of the picture, you're Nike.

You're not really competing against Reebok in the world. You're only competing against him in the CrossFit scene. Nobody's lining up outside of fucking the nike store to buy fucking the metcon fours yeah you know they're just gonna buy it online but like you know the nike shoes which is more popular amongst the people i think it's 50 50 now yeah it's pretty even everyone has a different preference now it's not like one is better or worse yeah you know one doesn't give you a better time and make you lift more i wouldn't know i don't do anything for time anymore once you once you get once you get so big doing anything for time is out of the equation now i do

things for less time uh-huh that's my goal but but that's kind of my like hot take three weeks later after getting everybody else's opinion on what's probably going to happen oh that's news to me yeah so for those who hadn't heard it you know you can tell everyone you heard it here first but i will give the credit most of that information i got from uh arman hammer tv which arman's good dude so um check him out on instagram he's got the good hot takes that then we just rip off later when we've cold takes yes we got the lukewarm takes leftover takes but but we had to wait till the uh frankly we had to wait that all happened while i was in europe so um yeah that was that for the suit stuff did we have what else did we had something else we

had to get into didn't we we could have but we've just talked so much that we've covered so much ground already. I'm trying to think. I thought I had something saved, but I still can't find it, guys. Lift shorts, though, those are available. Yeah, if you're all right paying a premium above our cost, they are available. Fun fact also with the lift shorts is there's also research and development that goes into getting these things, the lift shorts is there's also uh research and development that goes into getting these things like us getting them and having to try one printing method and make sure that and then find out that doesn't work and then waiting and waiting and waiting and then getting that

dialed in perfectly good part is though the product that you guys are going to be buying is a durable product yeah a premium yeah premium product you pay a premium though yeah we also do charge more than we pay for our shirts believe it or not and our hats and uh the flex flasks we sell those and we charge more for those you can get listen we'll be open with it you can get a flask you can actually get a water bottle for a dollar at a gas station yeah just use that nothing on it that will keep water cold but don't get designed to sani you are going to want to get the gas station brand one if you don't want to pay for the brand. But, yeah, so we're out here just hustling you for money.

You can also order custom order singlets from our website. Those are on there. How does that process work? Mostly magic. It's all hamster wheels behind the computer. Some dust. No, if you order one, the lead time is not particularly fast because we turn around and order it from the singlet manufacturer. But it probably takes, if you want one, better plan out on six to seven weeks.

better plan out on six to seven weeks okay but the options uh are in there on our website where you can uh fill out your your typically your last name is what a lot of people do on the back of it and then um your size and the sizing charts in there the sizing chart is is wacky so pay pay close attention to that if you're gonna buy one super weird yeah yeah like i accurate but weird yeah it's accurate but like I wear the 5X. Oh, really? Yeah. So it goes on SBD's T-shirt scale? It's like I don't think anyone's ordered smaller than a large that I've seen.

Really? Yeah. I'm going to have to bring up and show you guys my 5XL SBD shirt. It fits tighter than this. Speaking of SBD, what do you guys think of their new yellow and dark navy? I just kind of like the memes I've seen from Frustrated. They do things like where it's like USAPL Summer Starter Kit. And it would be like the new yellow SBD covered in that stuff.

And then, I don't know, a couple other things. But I've seen those a couple times. They make me laugh. But I think it looks pretty cool. It is sharp. Yeah, times. They make me laugh. But I think it looks pretty cool. It is sharp. Yeah, I like that. It is sharp. I think it's pretty cool.

Also, if you're SPD, you, frankly, I'll be, they don't pay us anything either. The products seem to hold up pretty well. My first two pairs of other branded, Mark Bell, knees, fucking went to shit so fucking fast. Now, they replaced them for me, but they just went to shit so fucking fast now they replaced them for me but like this just went to shit eventually still pretty quickly yeah and i've had these ones for a while now i mean like we're coming up on almost a year i've had mine for like five years yeah and like and they're still like tight and they're still hard to get on and they still work well and they don't mine don't even stink yet i i did read a thing i think it was on instagram someone. Someone was complaining about like, man, you guys charge 80 bucks for a singlet.

It'd be cool if you change the design once in a while. And they replied back and said that part of the IPF approval process is the design of the singlet. And so they're not allowed to change that until the next cycle, which I think they said is in a year or two. Which also kind of sucks for everyone because I'm sure they could probably another amount because that's an additional yeah additional approved item but i do like what the idea of like you know now like tanner it's been five years let's just pretend you're a super huge fan of some sort of sports team that was yellow navy you'd be like oh fuck yeah i love me some you know get me some of those beer steel yeah whatever i didn't realize that was navy even i thought i think it's really dark You'd be like, oh, fuck, yeah, I love me some. I'm going to get me some of those. Like beer steel.

Whatever. I didn't realize that was navy even. I thought it was black. I think it's really dark navy. Because I thought I remember. So maybe you're a Michigan fan or something. But like, so that's a good way to move some product. You know, we could do the lift shirt in five different colors if we wanted to pull our fucking hair out of managing inventory.

Yeah. Not that these are problems that would be impossible to solve, but unnecessary to create for us. Yeah. But that's a good way to move more product. If your shit lasts forever, don't make it shittier so we got to have more. Just make it look different. Yep.

Make it match my dress shoes. That's right. But, no, I think they're pretty sweet uh we will wrap up here though uh again same way we opened with a quick plug for openpowerlifting.org um i think they're doing about as well for as little in return for the sport of power and if you do want to contribute i did see they have shirts available and also uh they have a patreon where i think the top level is like i think the lowest level is like a dollar you can contribute a dollar a month or whatever but i think it's it's either five or ten bucks you can change your name to whatever color you want yeah dan green

changed his to green i saw that yeah i did like that i like i like the idea of the of the donation like probably even the t-shirt's cool because people see it but being of the people on the internet that sell t-shirts you're probably not helping them as much as you would if you just donated two dollars three dollars a month for a while especially if you use the service use the data that's true like i don't know like we do but we'll just give them these plugs we were kind of racing them to 10,000 on Instagram, and I feel like we're unfortunately not going to win with them now being over 9,000 and us being around 7,000. It's going to be.

We need you to unfollow. We have been laying low, though. We need something really good to happen in the next 30 days, like something that's never happened to us before in order to win the race. One of us is going to have to kill somebody. And we have to film it. It's got to be

very, very violent. Tommy, you don't have any kids. Go. Sean's going to have to put somebody away. But no, openpowerlifting.org.

Check them out. But as far as this episode of the podcast that's going to do it so uh go to massonomics.com you'll find our articles videos all the good shit there um there you're going to find the store with all the shirts hats uh we still have the uh og the og red heathered red yep do you just flex just oh just yeah is that what you did well i sorry I was moving my arm I haven't stopped for like the past 57 minutes

as soon as you drew attention to it I didn't know this was going to be the one episode I didn't flex the entire time and

yeah so there you're going to find the store all the shirts hats all the good stuff's there make sure you if you have any

business inquiries sponsorship money stuff send us an email at get big at massonomics.com go to youtube.com forward slash massonomics make sure you click subscribe um we're dropping the new hotness there pretty much all the time as consistent as the bro science guy yeah when it comes it's awesome but it's few and far between yep but. But we're still killing it out there. So make sure you like us on Facebook and that's about all the bases. Oh, and if the shorts are too expensive, fuck you.

Yeah. If you don't like the shorts, go buy some plain ones. Like you're in fucking eighth grade. Okay. I got my plain champion gym shorts. Cause I really fucking like the way they look. So now that we devoted

an entire episode to the inner workings of the apparel, fitness apparel business. But I'm Tyler. You can follow me on Instagram at Tyler F. and Stone, Tyler EFF, I and Stone.

Tommy? Find me at Tomahawk underscore D. And Tanner? The Masanomics Instagram account at Masanomics. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll talk to you next week.

You just heard the Masanomics podcast All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll talk to you next week. See you then. You just heard the Masanomics podcast. With your ears, you're welcome. Check us out on Facebook. Find us on Instagram at Masanomics and make sure you visit masanomics.com and buy some of that sweet Masanomics gear. From your friends at Masanamics Studio, home of the world's strongest podcast,

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