The Joe Rogan Experience - #1618 - Mat Fraser

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

Matt Fraser is a retired professional CrossFit athlete. He holds the distinction of being the most decorated competitor in the sport. He is the first and only person to win five CrossFit Games titles, winning the 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 CrossFit Games consecutively.

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day welcome thanks for coming man appreciate it thanks for having me i've watched you compete i watched that uh that documentary too what is the documentary called i forget the name uh the fittest yes yeah, that is crazy. It's the physical strain that you guys are... What happened to the volume? Sorry. I had something set to a dollar.

Oh, okay. We're back. The physical strain that you guys put your body through is fucking insane. And until you watch you guys compete and do all the shit like rucking, like running with the weight vest on and everything yeah it's insane yeah yeah the games so like the games are like the big competition it's like it's it's a wild show because it's sometimes it's five days sometimes it's three days and we'll have like usually between 12 and 15 events over those days do they let you know in

advance what you're gonna to have to do? Some, like we might find out an event, sometimes a week or two ahead. But then like, we'll have others where we're literally finding out the event as we go, like as we're competing. So we don't even know what we're doing on the competition floor. They'll be like, all right, start lifting that weight. We'll tell you when to stop, when you hit your number of reps you know stuff like that it's uh it's interesting to train for because you don't know if you're training for a one rep max or a hundred uh you don't know if

you're training for a 40 meter dash or a marathon you know it's yeah it keeps it interesting like we've had we've had events that are like 20 seconds long. And then a couple of years ago, we had to row a marathon on like the stationary concept tube rowers. So like 42,000 meters. So was that 26.2 miles rowing? Yeah. Yeah. 42,000 something meters.

How long does that take? I think the average time was about three hours. I think a couple of people were like three and a half hours. Yeah. Because you can't row as fast as you can run, right? Can you? I mean, I would prefer to row a marathon than run one. Really?

Just because it's easier on the joints. Oh, okay. Like your ass goes numb just from sitting on the seat. But yeah, I mean, it was just easier on the joints. They did it because they were like, we tested it. And like after you run a marathon, like you can't walk for a couple days like your body's just trashed with rowing a marathon like you're sore but you're good to go the next day it really doesn't really though depend on the person and what kind of condition you're in because my friend cam haynes that motherfucker runs a marathon

every day yeah i think if you're conditioned for and that's all you're doing yeah you know and but he lifts weights too yeah yeah i've met cam i met him a couple years ago he's got problems does he yeah he's crazy he's legit legit crazy like david goggins crazy there's a few people that i know that i'm like what are you doing yourself yeah you know yeah i i'll watch cam and yeah he runs a marathon every day. It's like, why? What are you doing? That seems terrible. He likes those ridiculous ultra races, like the Moab 240s and stuff like that. Yeah, I got a buddy that does all those 200-mile, couple days long.

Yep. And it's like, all right, I get that that's your thing. I don't get it, but more power to you. They're just testing, I mean, for Cam. He's just's just testing his mind yeah he wants to find out when it breaks you know and he he can't break it yeah and every day strengthens it so every day he's running massive amounts of miles he'll run like 19 miles in the morning yeah he'll run like six miles in the afternoon and i mean i wonder if like if he's ever played with like other challenges you know instead of just running because i know like if i'm practicing the same thing over and over yeah you adapt to it you get better at it you get more comfortable with it and it's like when those curve

balls get thrown at you of something that you're not used to and i mean that's basically that's crossfit right that's what our training is like we're trying to think of different things that can be be the test for us and figure out like all all right, if this comes up, how do we deal with it? How did you get involved? Did you just walk into a class one day and get excited about it? So I have a background in Olympic weightlifting. Did that for 10 years. Lived at the Olympic Training Center.

My goal was to go to the Olympics for weightlifting. And then that didn't pan out and like started focusing on school and then i just kind of i guess just gained the freshman 15 so i was like all right i either need to start working out again or change my diet so i was like oh i'll start working out and uh you know trying to find an olympic weightlifting gym is there like a needle in a haystack but crossfits are everywhere and so i just like googled crossfit near me because they they use all the same equipment like the barbells and bumpers and so i just showed up introduced myself i was like hey like i don't want to do your crossfit thing i'll be in the

back room just doing cleaning jerks and squats. And just kept doing that, kind of showing up on an irregular basis. And then one of the girls from the gym who was a competitor was just kind of like bribing me into workouts every once in a while. Like, oh, you might be good at this one. Give this one a try. Give this one a try. And the owner of the gym actually signed me up for my first competition because he's okay i think you have potential in this you should give this a try and uh so we made a deal that

he signed me up and paid my entry fee and then if i won any money he i had to buy a pair of crossfit shoes what are crossfit shoes i mean at the time it was like the rebox like the minimalist shoes like i was working out in Air Max 90s. And so he's like, anything's better than that. And what year was this? This would be back in like 2012. And so anyways, I won the competition, got a couple hundred bucks and was like, yo, this is kind of cool. Like just pocket money for a college kid.

Like, are there more competitions like this? And so they showed me where to find these competitions. i just kind of started driving around the northeast like all of new england and if there was prize money at a competition i was signing up and so i basically looked at it like a part-time job of like while i'm in school full-time and broke i can make some pocket money and uh yeah just kind of i was like all right if i want to keep winning these competitions i need to work on my weaknesses get better and then just kind of fell in love with it and it just ratcheted up bit by bit until like i'm at the world championships and i'm like oh shit how did i get here and then you won over and over and over again which is crazy yeah it's a weird start man

to something that you not just excelled at i I mean, I think you're the winningest guy ever, right? Yeah, I've been on the podium seven times, and I've won it the last five years. That's bananas. Yeah. For someone who started off as a lark. Yeah, I'm not blind to it. I'll be sitting with my fiance. Just when these cool opportunities get plopped in front of me i'm like how how do they

end up here like this wasn't supposed to be my life you know i was a mechanical engineer you know like i thought my sports career was over with olympic weightlifting you know i broke my back like it was a whole what did you do to your back i broke my l5 in two spots oh yeah how uh just training too heavy too often. It just fractured the actual bone? Yeah, like the little wings off the side. Oh! And it was on two separate occasions, too.

Oh, no. They were like a week or two apart from each other. So wait, hold on. You broke one and then you kept lifting? Yeah, I didn't really have a choice. So I was living at the Olympic Training Center, and there was a lot of pressure on the program to like produce and i was on the junior world team i was leaving for romania in a couple weeks to compete and uh yeah i was just i don't know i wasn't training as smart as i should have been and so the first one where i was doing like a clean pull so just like a dead

lift with a big explosion at the top and like loud pop on one side. I dropped the bar and like it. Have you ever seen those heat packs that have the little clicky thing in them? It was, that's what it felt like when it like clicked and then it's just like the inflammation just spreading. And, and so, you know, go to my room, lay down for a couple of days and then, you know, you know, it was, oh, I knew something was wrong.

Like, I've never had an injury like that. You know, I couldn't move. Did you get an x-ray? Did you get an MRI? No, because it was, like, I was leaving for the competition in, like, two weeks, so it was, like, too late to call the alternate to, like, replace me. So, wait, do they know that you're this injured i mean i told them like hey i and they're like suck it up i'm injured and i was told like hey there's a difference between pain and injury and i was like okay uh i'll get back to lifting

and so then a couple days goes by and I'm being super cautious, like basically stripped all the way out of my training. I'm just moving. And then what was it? It was heavy back squat and like load up. And you're going for like a new one rep max, like a week before you get on the airplane. And yeah, I hit the bottom of the hole. Left side goes. Oh, Jesus.

And so anyways, I got went to the competition did terribly you know like the coach was like hey what's your goal for this competition i was like i just don't want to bomb out i just want to make one lift one lift in each and he's like okay we'll make sure that happens i i only made one snatch one clean and jerk and then it was when i got back i like put my foot down i was like hey i'm not i'm not lifting shit until I get an x-ray. And they x-rayed it, and they're like, oh, yeah, there's a break right here, right here. Did the coach feel bad? I mean, I feel for him now that I have a little more life experience.

At the time, hated the guy. But now that I know the situation he was in, he was under pressure for keeping his job to like, Hey, you need to produce athletes. Like none of the American athletes are doing well on the world world scene, but it's like, USA is one of very few countries that competes clean.

And so it's like, how do you compete? You know? Yeah. So he had this outside pressure of to like produce an athlete, whether it was the right way or wrong way. Isn't that fucked up, that statement that you just said, but I know it to be true? When you said the USA is one of the few countries that competes clean?

It's actually true. Oh, it's... And so strange. I remember at the junior worlds that I competed at, the winning guy in my weight class snatched more than what I clean and jerked. This 18-year-old old kid and he like power snatch 155 kilos it was where's it from i want to say he was like somewhere over in europe and i'm pretty sure it was like the whole podium got popped it's kind of like i remember like the 2008 olympics like the 94 kilo class they started testing down and it's like, like currently it's like ninth place guy has the bronze medal because they

just kept testing down, down, down. So did they pop them right after the competition or they pop them? I think it's like years later because it's like at the time with the drug, they don't know how to test for. Right. And so they save the samples and then years later they figure out how to test for this stuff. Did you see Icarus?

I watched like the first bit of it. Yeah yeah i haven't seen the whole thing yet it's fucking nuts yeah it's nuts i mean it's just crazy like if there's a sport with money people are going to start bringing drugs into it well the the crazy thing about that was it was a russian state sponsor they sponsored the entire dope they they doped everyone that guy uh gregory uh rechenkov yeah the guy who is the supposed anti-doping guy from russia he said the only people they didn't dope were the figure skaters because uh they they found that the figure skating it actually interfered with uh fine motor skills really yeah so so made the women too manly so kind of funny about that my parents were both figure skaters whoa and so they they're both olympians 1976 like

no shit yeah paris freestyle and my dad talks about like he would be in the locker room and like different countries they he was like they just had their syringes on the on the bench oh my god and he was like, you come in after your session on the ice, and he's like, the German team's just there. Like, they're not even hiding it because... It was legal. Well, they didn't test for it back then, right? Yeah, they didn't know, you know?

But the American team did that too back then, supposedly. Oh, really? Yeah, I was reading this thing about Bruce Jenner where they were talking about all the shit that they gave him when he was winning the decathlon, and then they gave shit to every... Apparently, post when he was winning the decathlon and then they gave shit to every apparently post when it was uh post the the uh eastern europeans winning like a lot of weightlifting competitions and then it was clear that they were experimenting with different kinds of steroids i remember

reading the article uh like they were testing it at york barbell and like i remember reading the article uh like they were testing it at york barbell and like i remember reading these journal entries from the lifters and some uh they they were bolting the bars like to the ground or to squat racks and they would take the drugs and then just push on the bars as hard as they can because their theory was like the heaviest bar you can lift is the one you cannot and it was like huh and some of these lifters are saying like yo these pills or these injections are where everything is coming from like this is where all my gains are coming from and then others were like no no it's the training methodology like the drugs have nothing to do with it i'm just hitting all these personal records. Yeah. Maybe a little bit of both. I think I know which one's helping out more.

For sure. For sure. But I mean, you know, just taking the drugs doesn't make you stronger. You have to actually lift the weights. But for sure the drugs are helping. Like the idea that the drugs don't help. I've actually seen someone argue that before. That steroids are useless and if you train properly they actually

get in the way i was like what are you talking about what are you talking yeah i mean there's been a couple people that like in crossfit that got popped and they're like oh the drugs weren't even doing anything and it's like oh silly boy of course they were yeah they work there's a reason why they're so prevalent and there's a reason why they test for them yeah they don't test for things that don't work they're not testing you for cheerios you know they're why they're so prevalent, and there's a reason why they test for them. They don't test for things that don't work. They're not testing you for Cheerios. They're testing you for shit that really works. I mean, the one guy that he was on the podium at the Games and then got popped,

I competed against him six or eight months prior. And the one stat, he was snatching like 260 or 265, and then he shows up to the Games and snatches like 290, like he was snatching like 260 or 265. And then he shows up to the games and snatches like 290. And he's taken, he almost hit 300. And he's like, no, no, the drugs had nothing to do with it. And it's like, I bet they did. Yeah, I don't believe that.

And it's like, like you've been in the sport for years. Like if you're just a beginner, you can make progress like that. But I'm like, you've been in the sport for years. and then in the last six months you just had this huge spike in your performance and you're like oh no it's just because i became dedicated it's like i'm not buying it dedication yeah so important to be dedicated now how often do they test everybody i mean pretty often do they show up randomly Yeah. So we have out of competition drug testing. You know, it's like when I did weightlifting, we were on like the NAN programs and no advance notice. So you had to give if you're in the Olympic sports, you're tested by the Olympic Association.

You have to give one hour a day of where you are and they show up. They don't call nothing. So like everyone put from like 5 to 6 a.m i'll be in my dorm room and like if you're leaving for the airport at like 4 50 you'll see someone sitting outside the dorm just like looking at their watch waiting for 5 a.m to hit and give the knock and like they'll follow you they come with you to school work doesn't matter what you're doing will they make you miss a flight uh yeah probably i'd assume they would but i mean like i remember having to talk to professors of like i have an exam and like i didn't have to pee so i'm like you guys got to come to class with me and having to like explain to a professor of like hey

like these guys are here for drug testing i compete in the sport is it okay if they just sit there in wow yeah so the cross how creepy i mean it's weird like i've had it before where they showed up at 5 a.m i didn't have to pee and i'm like yo it's 5 a.m i'm going back to bed and they're they're like yep we'll sit right here so they just sit in the room while you're sleeping, they just pull up a chair and they'll just sit there. Just stare at you while you're sleeping. Go back to bed. How can you sleep while this guy... You just put on the TV or something for him

and you just go back to bed. I mean, after a while, you get used to it. The first time having to take a drug test in front of someone, it's weird. They're inspecting you closely. They have to look at your dick, making sure it's not rubber. And then, I mean, now it's like, I they're inspecting you they have to look closely yeah making sure it's not rubber and uh and then i mean now it's like i don't even break conversation it's like it happens

so often every competition out of competition you get to know the guy that's like in your region for drug testing did crossfit always have drug testing i i don't know i don't know enough about the history i think it's newer um but yeah about the history. I think it's newer. But yeah, with the CrossFit drug testing, I remember the first time I got drug tested. Because when I first got on the sport, I was like, I think these guys are doping. Like, I don't believe it.

And I didn't know about the drug testing protocols. And then I had to sign up for it because I was doing well enough in the sport. And then I get a phone call of like, hey, this is this is so and so from the drug testing where your name got pulled and i was i was honestly excited because i'm like oh sweet they do regulate this this is great so i was like yeah i'm at the address that i listed come on in doors unlocked and he's like oh no no we'll be there tomorrow i was like what i'm like you're, you're giving me a day's notice? I don't like that at all. You can flush your system out in a day, right? I have to assume that if you know what you're doing, you have a plan B.

You have to assume that you're going to get tested at some point, right? I know that USADA stopped allowing people to use IVs because one of the things they said about IVs is it allows you to flush your system out and you can test negative things. I never knew the reasoning. I remember it was coming up, like those IV bars that like they just jam pack it full of vitamins and whatever, like these super doses.

And it's like started as like a hangover cure, right? Right. And I remember that was getting pitched, like other people around me were doing them and they're like started as like a hangover cure right right um and i remember that was getting pitched like other people around me were doing them and they're like you should do this and i'm like all right my livelihood depends on not breaking the rules so i'm like and i'm contacting people at crossfit like hey is this allowed and it's like right there in the rule book of like no ivs over 50 milliliters or something equivalent to like a tablespoon or two tablespoons so I was like okay that's not allowed not doing that but yeah I mean

so you can't even do IV vitamin trips interesting yeah but you can do some IVs like I said no IVs I think if it's a medical emergency so like if if you're super dehydrated. Yeah. So like if you're in trouble and like getting hospitalized or like there's a need for it, I think it's allowed. Is that, do they do that to you when you have rhabdo? Do they give you, I should probably tell people what rhabdo is. Rhabdomyelosis, which is, what is it exactly? Like your muscle tissue is breaking down because you over train. Yeah.

I think it's, so I've had it once. Yeah. And I found out after the fact of like, OK, that's what that was. It looks like you're pissing coke. Yeah. And it's just brown. And you're like, oh, that ain't good. But it's like, yeah, if you don't train for a long time and then you do a workout, super high intensity and it's like one repetitive motion just over and over.

And so I'm not 100 sure i don't know all the science and proper terms behind it but it's basically like uh like your muscle poisons itself something like that um but yeah it's not good i have i know a lot of people that have been hospitalized for it do they use ivs to treat you with that i think so i think it's just like you need to get so hydrated, just flush everything out. Because it's something like your CK level spike. I don't even know what that means. It's interesting that that's a real thing

that happens pretty often amongst people that do CrossFit. Yeah, I think it's probably more towards the beginners. Because now when I train, I don't even get sore. So it's just people that are out of shape that try to do something that you would do. Yeah, and if it's like not a well-programmed workout where it's just like, all right, we're doing a thousand thrusters for time

and it's going to tear your quads. It's like, no, no one should be doing that type of workout. But I'm sure it's the same as like if I just jumped in on Cam Haines running routine when I've done no building up to i have no business running a marathon every day right uh so yeah if i'm just jumping in a workout that i'm not prepared for well yeah it's gonna fuck you up you know yeah that is the thing right when someone says that like uh it takes you six months to recover from marathon there should be an asterisk

if you're not conditioned to run marathons yeah i mean it's like any sport of like if i go in to to roll or something and it's like well no i need to learn the fundamentals if i'm just jumping in into a full sparring session yeah it's like well yeah bad shit's gonna happen yeah yeah it really is like anything and and in crossfit when you talk about like someone doing a thousand thrusters is a workout is are they scheduled by the people that run they call them boxes right your gyms you call them boxes yeah yeah is that like i think that's like the coin term is that dorks is it like so dorky that you don't say it i mean you're too crossfit well i came in from weightlifting so like like it's a gym we used to

watch crossfit fail videos like from weightlifting like when i started crossfit i didn't tell any of my weightlifting buddies for like until they saw me like on espn and like i was getting texts or phone calls and they're like hey so i was watching tv today and you do crossfit now and i'm like ah that's hilarious that was me you're on espn and you're embarrassed that's so silly but yeah a lot of people call them boxes but you would call them a gym yeah i just call it the gym well if you call it the gym i i think everyone should call the fucking gym how about that so if they go to those crossfit gyms uh are the workouts like when they have the workout of the day is that workout scheduled by the person who runs the gym or yeah i mean they could just randomly choose a bunch of shit you could do?

Yeah. So they don't necessarily. It's like the owner of the gym is allowed to run it however they want. They're free to do whatever. So there's no regulations on the equipment, programming, coaching. Interesting. Nothing. So I came from a gym in Vermontont champlain valley that like i thought that

was my first experience with the crossfit gym and it was this huge gym amazing coaches that like cared about the fundamentals had amazing programming like they put thought into every aspect of it and then i remember like visiting other gyms that it's like i mean it's like the size of this room half the plates are broken the coach is just a cheerleader and i remember like wait these are the same this is the same thing you know so do you just have to pay a fee to be a crossfit gym or do you i'm not 100 sure how it works because i've never had an interest in opening a gym i would imagine i think i mean just what i would think you should have to do like the workouts should be scheduled like you

should have like okay this is a workout that you can do like we've balanced it all out yeah and i think i i think it's kind of comes down to you know the gyms that aren't putting in that effort will dwindle out because you know people know, people start expecting, they're like, I'm paying you a good chunk of money, you know, 100, 200 bucks a month. Like, I want something for that money. You know, I'm not just going to show up to your dusty garage. But what I would hope is that there's some sort of accreditation. So if it's accredited and then you have workouts that have been thoughtfully put together

so that you know that you're going to get a really good workout, a balanced workout, and be safe. Yeah. I mean, I've shown up to gyms where it's brutal. Yeah. I can imagine. I'm sure a lot of them are out of business now, but I've also shown up to ones that are great. great, you know, the people take pride in it,

they want to give the customer the best experience they can. I was lucky enough that just by random chance, the first one I showed up to, like if they have a class over, you know, whatever number of people, they have multiple coaches working. During the workout, the coaches aren't just cheerleading and telling people to go harder, go faster faster it's like they're critiquing technique they're giving a good foundation um i mean that's where like i hit the ground running coming into the sport was i have this background in olympic weightlifting so i know how to move my body correctly so it's like i came in like leaps and bounds ahead of so many people because i didn't have to work for years and years to build this foundation right so i all i had to do was figure out the cardio side of it the cardio

side of it has to i mean you're you're built like a fucking brick shithouse well i would imagine that's really hard to have car like you giant fucking legs and yeah i mean like olympic lifters yeah yeah that's not necessarily what i would think of in terms of someone who's a cardio machine. I would think you're fueling so much muscle. Yeah. I mean, just taking in enough calories and fuel for the day is a full-time job. When I was training and competing, I'm taking in 2,000 to 3,000 calories a day just in liquid. What's a typical meal for you?

Oh, man. You have to ask my wife that one she she does all she does all the cooking yeah everything do you have those little plastic things you open up and no it's like i'll just text her when i'm on my way home from the gym and like hey be home in 10 and then i walk in and like there's a whole plate but like i'm like a child at breakfast i hate eating breakfast and it's like she'll have like the three four eggs the bagel cream cheese fruit vegetable like why do you hate eating breakfast i just i don't like eating first thing in the morning but you have to because you need the fuel yeah yeah so it's like i'm like a

child sitting there and she's like no you're not allowed to leave until you clean your plate i'm like oh shit like so now it's like now that i'm not training as a career like i won't eat until two or three in the afternoon and how old do you know 31 now and what made you decide to retire at 31 because it seems like that's like kind of your athletic peak no yeah uh yeah i think people peak at different ages i mean like i had my best performance ever um like my last competition but it was just time you know you were done with it yeah like when i when i did weightlifting it's like i rode that bus until the wheels fell off. And like, when I left it, I had resentments. I didn't like it. You know, I cut off ties to a lot of people

just because I didn't know how to handle it. Um, and so with CrossFit, I wanted to make sure that I left it still wanted to be a part of that community. Like, I still want to feel good about showing up to competitions, keep my friends, like all this stuff. So, you know, like it's been a goal of mine for a long time to like, you know, get certain records in the, in the sport. So I hit that record and there's just been too many other things in my life that I've put on hold. And I'm like, okay, I'm good. Like I've done everything in the space that I wanted to do now i want to pursue some of these other things that i've put on hold and you know like my whole life has revolved around this for seven eight years now of you know not traveling not going out to meals not hanging out with

friends it's like no like from eyes open to eyes closed revolves around this so when we talked about meals you said you don't like eating breakfast, but what would a breakfast be for you when you were in peak form? I mean, the typical, like probably four eggs, four or five strips of bacon, bagel, cream cheese, bowl of oatmeal, bowl of fruit, a big jug of water. I mean, nothing crazy. It was just like the quantities i was having to put down and are you supplementing as well yeah like just the typical like protein creatine pre-workout

uh vitamins a shitload of beta alanine yeah yeah nothing nothing crazy oh i love that stuff works yeah i can't believe more people don't take it like i found where i could buy it just on its own like not mixed in a pre-workout yeah and just kept it in my gym bag just like a scoop before every training session what do you think beta alanine does for you it makes me feel like i have a third lung and then so that that's how i always felt it was like i felt like i had a third lung when i took it um and you just take it with water i mean i would just like dry scoop and then swig it down with really a cup of water it tastes weird yeah i didn't really have much the one i had didn't have much of a taste it was more just

like your mouth gets tingly right away because it had the direct contact there and you would do that how often before workout or how how far before you're working out i mean like 10 minutes oh like because i would do like a very gradual warm-up activation all that stuff going in so by the end of the warm-up like you're rubbing your face just like oh shit it's kicking in here we go but then someone someone told me that it actually blocks was it lactic acid production hmm um so i was like okay that makes that makes sense for yeah why i feel so good when I take this. Cause like so much across it, it's just like,

all right, a, who can spike their heart rate and keep it there the longest. And then who can like hold off the lactic acid the longest. And when you would take beta alanine, what dose, like what's the, uh,

I wish I could tell you, I didn't even do that much research on it. People that are like so meticulous meticulous about their supplements and their training are probably screaming right now. Oh, I mean, even at the games every year, it's like everyone has their prepackaged food. They're weighing out their chicken, their white rice, their broccoli, and I'm just scarfing down Snickers bars.

As soon as I come off the floor, it's like, well, I worked with experts in like each of these divisions of like you know this guy who trains triathletes like he's a scientist that shows these guys how to be optimal and he's the one telling me he's like yo if you're doing a 60 minute workout like coca-cola and a and a snickers bar as soon as you're done isn't that crazy i was like oh okay so i like i can never eat a snickers again i've eaten so many over my career for the last like three four years floyd mayweather was always drinking coke or pepsi after he trains and people like this is crazy he's ruining his body and i'm

like no no no he's he knows what he's doing yeah he's he's dumping sugar into his muscles so it was this guy i went out um i think he's a a university of Colorado and he has like the sports lab, like at the university and the typical, like put you on a treadmill with a gas mask and heart rate wires, all this stuff. And he just keeps ticking up the treadmill going faster and faster until you drop. And it's like every three minutes, he's like pricking your finger and drawing blood. And like, he's telling you where all these different levels are i'm like i don't care like you just tell me what i should do to get better i don't want to know where i'm weak just tell me how to get better

and uh and he was telling me he's like like don't drink the bottled gatorade drink like you buy the scoop of the powder and mix a gallon worth into like eight ounces of water. Whoa. And I was like, Oh, that much. Huh?

And so it's like, you do these like 90 minute zone two training sessions where you're just on a spin bike or running for 90 minutes. And he's like, as soon as you're done, slug that down. And it's just like sludge. Yeah.

It's like, Oh, this sucks. But it gets into the muscles. Yeah. I mean, it's, like sludge yeah it's like oh this sucks but it gets into the muscles yeah i mean it's i don't know the science it's weird the smarter people that are smarter than me that know what they're doing and i'm like okay cool so he's like yeah eat snickers bar after a workout slug down like this condensed gatorade and you're good to go okay now does he want you to do the gatorade because it also has electrolytes along with all the sugar i i think it was just the sugar it was just like the condensed like so i mean

i had good performances the last couple years so i'm like all right what you told me is working i'm gonna keep doing it uh but yeah i mean i don't have a background in exercise science or anything like that so half the time when these people are telling me these things i'm just kind of like all right this is this is your world you're the pro in this do you think that having this background in olympic lifting was a giant advantage huge huge advantage i mean not only am i coming into the sport with lifts that are like already like messing with the top guys but now i know how to move my body efficiently so like a lot of times if you see these guys on like longer workouts where it has like 30 snatches at the end of it or you know just this high volume olympic lifting by the end of the workout they're moving differently you know their technique is breaking

down the bar swinging out they're're not catching the bars efficiently. So it's crashing on them. For me, it's, it doesn't matter if it's the start of the workout, end of the workout. It's like, I may catch the bar lower. I may have less pull, but the movement's identical, you know? So I just have this huge advantage coming in that whether I'm fresh, tired, sore, I only know how to snatch a bar one way. Would you advise a young person if you ran into someone, they say, I want to be a CrossFit champion. Would you say get into Olympic lifting first? I don't think, I don't think it's necessary

to do like pure dedicated Olympic weightlifting first. i think it's a necessity to do pure dedicated olympic weightlifting and doing it properly because so many times you'll see people like oh what's your workout today oh let's work up to a heavy single it's like whoa what you're not working off percentages you're not building up explain that to people what you mean like because a lot of people are like what the fuck is he talking yeah Like. Because a lot of people are like, what the fuck is he talking about? Yeah, I mean, like, a lot of people just, like, if you're trying to bench 315, you don't just go into the gym every single day and take a whack at benching 315. It's like you start at a lower number and doing a shitload of reps, and then you're tapering. You're cutting down the volume. You're increasing the weight.

You're working off percentages to build up to that heavy single so i mean like when i did weight lifting i mean you're working most of the time between 70 80 of your max lifts just dialing in that technique and like making sure you know how to move with weight and i remember coming into crossfit with my background i I'm like, wait, you guys are just going heavy every day. Like, that's not, that's not smart. That's how your body's going to break down. You know, you're not learning how to move this weight properly. And so, I mean, it was a huge advantage coming in with my background and not only knowing how to move the weights in those specific lifts, but then even like with the kipping movements on like for pull-up bars or muscle ups

it's like i know how to move my body by using using my hips like i'm getting that pop out of my hips to get up over the bar and so i just knew how to move a little bit more efficiently and so it's a huge advantage coming in do you think it's better because it seems to me that if you came in with a strong cardio base like as a triathlete or something like that, that it would be harder to put the strength on versus someone like you comes in with a strong muscle base, a strong power base. It'd be it seems like it would make more sense that you would be able to develop cardio easier than they would be able to develop strength i think there is some truth to that because it's hard to develop strength while you're doing the heavy cardio right you could maintain strength but if you're doing a lot of long distance running and shit like that you know i i don't know about that um i mean i've i've

continued to hit strength number prs throughout my career right but you already have this base yeah i think i don't know because that's the one thing that they always say if you're someone who gets into marathon running or something like that like you lose a lot of strength you lose gains is that just like atrophy of i don't know yeah and what i would wonder if it's that or if it's just the fact that you're doing this one particular thing where your body's like hey we gotta get lighter this motherfucker like yeah yeah i think that's that would be it um i would if i were a betting man i would say it's easier to build the the cardio side of it versus the weightlifting because i think there's more aspects that go into the weightlifting because there's the strength the flexibility the technique the coordination there's a lot of things whereas like for me to build cardio it's like i just

just get on get on an air bike and start hammering away right now there's not much technique going on there now when is that was air bike your main source of cardio exercise for me it was rowing rowing like the concept to rower uh and it was just like i showed up the one of the first competitions i did or like anytime it showed up in like the class workout inower uh and it was just like i showed up the one of the first competitions i did or like anytime it showed up in like the class workout in the gym i just got my doors blown off by everyone on the rower and uh so i was like okay like if i want to get better i need to figure figure out this machine and uh and so concept two is actually based in vermont so a lot of their employees went to the same gym as me.

And I'm in the back rowing one day. And one of the main employees comes back and he's like, stop. Stop what you're doing. You're so bad at this. Let me show you the technique of how to do this. What were you doing wrong? Everything. I mean, it was just like I was throwing my shoulders back first movement, pushing like so leg dominant.

I'm pulling with my arms early. And it's like you want to extend your legs first, then your back, and then follow through with your arms. So it sounds so simple. But like when you're in the movement, it's just that you're thinking of 100 different things at once. And so that sequence is just to be more efficient so you can go longer and further? Yeah, I think, you know, it's a very unnatural feeling. Because, you know, like for me, it's like my quads are my most dominant muscle. So I want to use that the most for the pull. And it's like, no, like you want to hinge just like a clean, like you extend your legs first and then you're back, you know, like you want to stay over the bar.

It's the same with the rower. But I think it was probably a good dose of like i worked on it a little bit i saw the results and so i got that gratification of like oh i like this now but you know i worked a little bit on it i got a little dose of that like feel good of like all right you're getting better keep working and so then i just i i used the rower the most out of any of the tools. The bike, I mean, no one likes the bike. That thing sucks. Yeah, it sucks. So brutal.

And especially if, like, the bigger you are, the better. Just because, like, you can manhandle that machine. But I'm, like, 5'6". Like, the handles are, like, up here for me. It's not fun. What do you weigh? Like, what did you weigh when you were at your peak? Usually for a competition, I would walk in like low, mid 190s.

So like usually right around 195, give or take. But in training, sometimes I'd blow up to like a little bit over 200, and my weightlifting would get awesome. And then sometimes my body weight would drop to like in the 180s. My gymnastics would be awesome. But the nice nice happy medium for everything was like mid 190s and so like when you're doing things like running like there's some events where you have to run distance right yeah i would imagine like you're just not you're

built like a you know a bowling ball that's you're not yeah when you attack like that it's not running legs no but you have power lifter legs. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, I mean, I've put in a ton of time and I've worked with a lot of great people to get better at running, you know, just get better at any of the cardio stuff. Do you have any joint issues or knee issues or anything from running? No, no, I'm good. Like, I mean, it was a big thing with, I wanted to end my CrossFit career without a limp or like some injury that dictated, like, I wanted to choose my retirement. I didn't want to be told like, oh yeah, you're retired.

You know, your knees are blowing out. You're right. Whatever. But no, I've always tried to train smart, like doing it properly. And so I've studied like how other people in other sports do these things. I'm not just, I'm not just leaving my front door and going for a marathon ruck. Right. You know, I'm talking to people that are experts in their craft.

So, you know, like when I want to get better at deadlifting, like, I don't know how the fuck to train deadlifting. Like I have a rough idea, but not how to do it perfectly. And so I reached out to a power lifter who had some world records and he sent me over a whole program you know uh when i wanted to get better at running i'm like all right who's awesome at running probably someone that's done some ironmans let me reach out to it and the guy i think he got second place in the hawaiian ironman twice and i've worked with him for years did he change the gait the way you run oh Oh, so much. Really? I mean,

I was terrible. What were you doing wrong? Uh, I mean, my breathing was super sporadic, you know, in the beginning it's like, Oh my God, you know, I feel great. I'm not, you know, just moving air as much as I can. It's like, I feel good. I'm comfortable. But then like by the end of a mile run, it's like, sometimes I'm taking a breath every other step, sometimes every third, whatever it was. So, you know, like the foot position when I land where my foot striking in relevance to my body, my cadence, you know, I was, I think my cadence was super slow. We like sped it up, uh, you know, actually using the ball on my foot because weightlifting is just all heel, heel, heel. Um, and then like changing my breathing

cadence and like, and then finding, all right, where's the bottleneck in my running? You know, are my lungs not strong enough to expand, to take in more air? Is it, where's the weakness? All these different, just breaking everything down into like these minute little details to find where that bottleneck is and put a plan together and did you run with like running shoes or minimalist shoes like oh no i always run with like the big old cushy yeah i'm like i i have no pride like these people that are running in like minimalist shoes like this is the proper way i'm like all right i'm trying to do the fastest way like i don't give a shit if it's the way we were intended to run yeah these shoes feel good i'm gonna wear them yeah need a little cushion

yeah yeah well just sort of imagine like for heavier people that you know the the pounding is the real issue i mean at 200 pounds when you're going out for a 10 mile run it's like yeah that's a it's a lot of weight pounding it's a lot of repetition and when you're rocking when you guys had to do what what's the amount of weight they would make you carry i mean it varies um yeah we like we have to do a lot of runs with like it was like the 511 vests for a long time and then how much is that way i think the men's is 20 pounds and the women's is 14 or 16 um but then like we've had the backpacks like we had to do one race where it was like four laps and it started with a 20 or 30 pound plate in it and then every lap you had to pick up another 10 pound sandbag and throw it in so by like your last mile i think it was like 50

or 60 pounds oh jesus yeah like it gets it adds up yeah that i would think would be terrible for your joints yeah i think you kind of move like you change your technique depending on the weight that you have so it's like by the time you have 50 pounds on your back like heavy walking yeah you're you look like almost like one of the like competitive speed walkers that's just like heel toe heel toe uh so i mean you're trying to keep a bit more of a clip than that is there anything that looks less cool than competitive speed walking i know it's hard to do but most things that are hard to do those guys are they're moving oh yeah like but they look like dorks oh yeah right have you ever seen like the suits were like the aerodynamic suits were like no i i don't

know if it was a joke if someone was or if it was a real thing but it was like kind of like the cyclist how they have like the glasses that integrate into the helmet and it's like a big cone in the back for aerodynamics like like alien yeah that's it yeah yeah oh my god whatever it takes oh thank god that's a joke yeah I mean

no one gives a fuck if you win competitive speed walking if someone goes I won competitive speed walking first place okay

I mean just the way they move their hips I don't know how they let's watch let's see race walking I don't know how they don't like they call Let's see. I don't know how they don't wear out their hips. They call it race walking now.

Look at these people. This is so silly. How do you know that... If someone's competing in that, how do you know someone's not just going to run? Well, I think there's... They're running. That fucking guy in the front's running.

There's referees that are making sure that you have a foot on the ground at all times. That guy's just running goofy. Get in the middle of that pack that you can. That's so weird. They're running, man. This is so silly. Is someone really watching you?

You're running. He's running. Come on. Those fucking people are just running poorly. That is running. Look at them. I think I saw. The guy in the back, in a guy like running a marathon

speed walk marathon and it was like the marathon ended on the track and they had to do two laps on the track in front of people and he was like way ahead of everyone and uh and he got dq'd because like he broke stride. That guy just ran? The fuck? Yeah, he's running. He almost passed out and he got pissed and started running. Well, he lost his shoe. Someone flat-tired him.

Yeah, he lost his shoe. I mean, what a strategy, eh? Like, if someone's ahead of you, just give them a flat tire. Someone got that guy right there. Like, he's so pissed. God damn it, now I've got to run. He threw his water down. Motherfucker, I'm losing the speedwalking Look at it, he's gotta catch up to them now

I'll catch you Now he's running, that guy's clearly running Like, come on man What is running and what is speedwalking? When do you decide? Oh, that guy looked like he did it on purpose That guy's a dick Is it the Olympics?

This was, yeah Oh Christ, how is this in the Olympics? This is so weird I remember like conversations of like weightlifting or greco-roman wrestling getting pulled out of the olympics and then you hear about the sports that are getting put in yeah and you're like are you shitting me yeah like you're putting interpretive interpretive dance in instead of greco-roman wrestling like yeah it's like one of the original sports. What are you doing? There's just too much toxic masculinity, Matt. You don't understand.

We don't encourage that. We don't encourage explosive athletic endeavors that require incredible amounts of discipline. Dude, I remember we shared a window, like our gym to the Greco gym when I was doing weightlifting. And I used to just watch. My platform was right next to it and I could watch through and I'm like, is the coolest shit they're savages oh my god

throwing each other around brutes they all like none of them can use earbud headphones they can barely get a q-tip in there i'm like that is the coolest shit i bet music sounds like dog shit to them though right because your ears design them no i don't have any oh my god i have like little pieces like i've like one little chunk here but i always wore ear guards and people would make fun of me see i like i found some cool ones badge of flat like get the fuck out of here with your badges i remember like there was a sports bar in colorado that like the owner contacted the wrestling team and said anytime you guys want to watch the ufc fights like you got a table here. Oh,

that's cool. And, uh, so all the wrestlers would get together and I would just, and like you show up and it's all like the tap out gear and affliction. Like everyone, they all got invisible lat syndrome in the bar. And then I would just ride the coattails of all of team USA.

And as they're coming in, like team USA wrestling gear and they all have cauliflower ear. And it's like the crowd just fucking moved and i was like this is so cool it's like the international sign of like i'll kick your ass yeah it certainly is if you get your ears like that you earn it unfortunately some guys actually do it to themselves on purpose to make their ears look like that it's like a white belt jujitsu move oh yeah i could see that they'll like crush their own ears. Oh, I could definitely see that. Yeah.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. Well, they get really into it. And they want everyone to know. If you're just in the grocery store, how do people know that you're a fighter? It's like, all right, let me just punch myself in the ear a couple times. Yeah. I don't. Yeah.

You can drain it, too, you silly gooses. Yeah. All it is is. It's so gross. It's just calcified blood. Yeah. When blood gets trapped in between the so gross. It's just calcified blood. When blood gets trapped in between the layers, it just calcifies and turns into a rock. I remember watching my friends drain them.

It's nasty. Randy Couture used to use it. His cauliflower ear is so hard. It sticks out that far. He's basically a rock by his ear, and he would drive it into people. Yeah, he'd drive it in your face.

I guess it stops hurting after a while, right? It didn't hurt him. No, when it first happens, it's super painful. Yeah, but once it becomes calcium. But it does break off sometimes, especially in MMA fights. Guys will lose a large chunk of their ear. I'm serious. A quarter-sized chunk of their ear would fall off and be on the mat, or their ear would

tear off. Where do you go from there? It's not good. Usually, the fight's over. There was a woman named Leslie Smith, and she was fighting in the UFC, and a hole opened up behind her ear that was so nasty. You could see into her head and they stopped the fight.

She was so tough. She was trying to keep going. She was trying to keep going. That was mostly because of cauliflower ear. There it is. It's so crazy. See if you can find a better image. There was one with the hole

And I was clicking so fast I lost it Yeah there's one you can see There it is You can literally see into her head Look at that So that broke off because of the cauliflower ear Damn Basically it's weighted

There's a rock in there So I've Watched UFC and stuff For years and years Yeah, because basically it's weighted. You know, there's a rock in there. So I've, like, watched UFC and stuff for years and years. Like, always loved it. And so I met Chuck Liddell a couple months ago. And, like, he used to fight at 205, right? Mm-hmm. And so I look at that.

I'm like, sometimes I'll walk around at 201. So, you know, he's a little bit bigger than me. Add on some weight for, like, cutting down. I could not believe how huge that man was. He was enormous when he was in his prime. I remember I ran into Chuck when he was just getting into the UFC, and I couldn't believe he could make 205. He was huge. Yeah.

I remember seeing him, and even when he fought, you see him, you're like, all right, he's a big dude. But he weighed in at 205 he was huge yeah i like i remember seeing him and like even when he fought you you see me like all right he's a big dude but he weighed in at 205 he can't be that he's 205 for about three minutes yeah yeah and but then like even when he's standing next to someone else it's like well that guy's in his weight class as well so he's about the same size yeah i met him and i was like i have a whole new respect for, like, how enormous. And, dude, that man was the scariest man I've ever met. He was just huge. And I'm like, yeah, you look like a killer.

Well, you should meet Francis Ngannou. Francis Ngannou makes him look tiny. That guy's the scariest guy. Physically, the scariest specimen. And, like, yeah, like, his hands were just, like, they were clubs. I'm like, that's not even a functioning hand. Like, that's just a club for beating people.

Well, you gotta think Chuck has been involved in martial arts and wrestling since he was a little kid. Yeah. His body's developed into that. Yeah. Fucking crazy. It's a hard way to make a living, man. Tough people, you know? Yeah.

I mean, I think it's like any physical sport like that like i mean you look at these nfl guys or whatever it is and it's like you're literally taking a beating for a living oh yeah you're just trying not to break i think maybe the nfl's worse in terms of the kind of impacts that they take because they're running at each other well and then like it's not like you don't see it coming like ufc it's like there's one dude in front of you right like he may hit you with a kick you don't see coming but it's like you know where it's coming from the nfl it's like some guy's blindsided yeah full clip there's nothing you can do and the guy's a super athlete yeah just ridiculously powerful super fast

and he's throwing his entire body into you yeah Yeah. Yeah, I started working with a body work guy, like Tom Brady's body work guy. Like, if you ever wonder why Tom Brady's playing at 43, it's because of this man. Really? He is a magician. What kind of stuff does he do? The most painful body.

Like, he just makes your muscles supple. He's like, if your muscle is pliable and supple, you can't hurt it and so like i i started working with him like two years ago and it was unreal like just the light switch fix that he gave but anyways uh he was saying he's like what you do is so easy what you do is so easy and i was like after a while i'm like hey like do you mean simple and he's like yeah yeah he's like the bar is not swinging back at you he's like when you do you mean simple and he's like yeah yeah he's like the bar is not swinging back at you he's like when you get hit with a weight it's all square perfect

on like you're not getting blindsided by some like 200 pound d lineman right 300 pound d lineman just like and you didn't see it coming and bending your knee the wrong way he's like you're in control of the bar it's not swinging back and i was like oh good point yeah like how those nfl guys last like decades i know it's crazy getting hit like that like oh my god i guess it's just discipline and making sure you're taking care of your body and then for some it must be genetics i mean just yeah i think you have the combination of like the genetic freaks and then if you have a paycheck paycheck big enough at the finish line for anyone yeah like i mean a lot of those guys like i mean

you're earning 25 30 million a year there's not much i won't do for 25 million a year right and it's like your year is 16 weeks of getting hit it's like all right that's pretty cool the problem is the brain yeah the brain just doesn't recover the punishment those guys take is you know when you hear guys like junior I say last name sale yeah and when he committed suicide yeah yeah it's the same thing with Aaron Hernandez when they did like self-prescribing drugs to get that quick fix and yeah your cte is just out of control viral yeah they said his brain at 28 years old was like an 80 year old with alzheimer's yeah yeah crazy yeah i watched that documentary

and it's like this is real Like, this happened in this world? Yeah. Holy hell. Well, he fucking murdered somebody in Florida and got away with it. Dude, like that. Before he murdered guys, you know, up north. Well, I mean, what was the stat of, like, the 2008 Florida Gators team? Like, the rap sheet, there was, like, 120 people on the roster,

and, like, 40 of them have been arrested. Yeah. It's like, dude, those numbers are staggering. It's crazy. What the hell is going on it's probably the culture but it's also probably the impulsiveness that comes with massive amounts of brain damage yeah well um who's the antonio brown like i i've i know very little on the topic but it was like people saying that like he took the one hard hard hit for the steelers and then his personality just he was a different person like his personality changed his temperament everything and it's like man that happens it's real it happens with people i'm glad i was in

a sport that like i'm not getting knocked out on a regular basis did you watch the UFC this weekend? No. Crazy event. Well, I saw the one guy got DQ'd, right? Yeah, yeah. That's brutal. Just a straight knee to the face while you're on the ground. Yeah, super unfortunate. And one of his coaches was yelling, just punches, just punches. Oh, really? Marcos Tamada, his nickname's Parampa, is the jiu-jitsu coach,

one of the coaches for American Top Team. He's yelling out, just punches, just punches. And then someone else in the coach is yelling Russian. In Russian, they're yelling to Pyotr, yelling to hit him. And, you know, because he's thinking that the guys, it's confusing to some fighters when is a downed opponent. A grounded opponent is technically. Well, I'm sure if he's hunched over, it's like, wait fighters when is a downed opponent. A grounded opponent is technically... Well, I'm sure if he's hunched over, it's like, wait, is his knee down?

Well, if you have one... Here's the thing. If you have your feet down but one hand down, you're not grounded. If you have two... Maybe Nevada is still... Nevada uses a hybrid version of the new mixed martial arts rules. It used to be anytime you had a hand down at all, you were a grounded opponent.

And then they switched it to if you have two hands down, you're a grounded opponent. But if you have a knee down, you're a grounded opponent. So he had a knee and two hands. So he was fucking grounded. I mean, there was no question about it. He was grounded. But I think maybe he thought he was coming up,

and Piotr tried to catch him as he was coming up. But it was 100% illegal. Yeah. So you can see it here. See, he's got one hand down. Yeah, look. He's got one hand. No, it doesn't.

Both of his hands are up. So maybe that's what he thought. Maybe it was because the knee was down and both hands were up. He thought he wasn't grounded. Yeah, maybe that's why he was confused. But it's 100% illegal. That sucks for both of them. See, if you hear your coach yelling, hit him.

See, even I'm thinking, okay, is that grounded or is it not grounded? I know it's grounded because this has come up before. Because it used to be that when your hands were down, then it was grounded. Yeah. But then big John McCarthy explained to me, no, no, no. Anything other than the surface of your feet on your legs, like so your knee, if your knee is down, that means you're a grounded opponent. Like with that guy, like is he coming over from a different fighting league? No, he's the champion.

No, he's the champion. It's just there's different versions of the rules right in some places uh a grounded opponent you what is the new version of the the rule there's one of the new versions of the rule is if you are putting weight on your hand so like you can touch it but you can't if you have weight on it then you're a grounded opponent but if you're just touching that's that's not a grounded opponent all right that's it's all it's too complicated as soon as you allow opinion to come in it's like well then there's the debate on like was that the right call bad call it's like just set up a clear definitive rule right well there's other folks that also think well why isn't that a legal technique well how come you can punch him in the face you can't name in the face this is

stupid like why can't you get how come you can't kick him in the face? How come when a guy's lying on his back, he can kick you in the face, but you can't kick him in the face? Like, that seems stupid too. From 2018, the Nevada rules on it. This is the new, the Nevada has a hybrid version. They didn't adopt the new grounded rule.

I think. Unless they've changed it since then. Yeah, I think it says, to be considered grounded. It says, more technical piece of the new rules pertains to that of a grounded opponent, which states a fighter must have both of their hands down on the ground, whether it be palms or fists, for them to be considered grounded,

unless a knee or anything other than the sole kicks or knee strikes to the head of a grounded fighter, therefore is illegal. However, the Nevada State Athletic Commission will not be adopting this part of the new rules, and we'll stick with the old definition for a grounded fighter, which means anything but the soles of the feet. Okay, so that's why it's confusing. So the grounded opponent thinks the fighter must have both their hands down on the ground. That's what it used to be.

Whether it be palms or fists for them to be considered grounded, unless a knee or other than the soles of the feet are down as well. So either way, he was grounded because there was a knee down. So it was an illegal technique all over the world, that one, that move, which is unfortunate. I mean, that's got to suck for him. He was winning the fight too. That's what sucked.

Piotr Jan, it looked like he was starting to gain control of the fight and i think it was in the fourth round was it the fourth round it was a good fight though really good fight and i'm sure they're gonna have a rematch and the rematch will be super hyped up and yeah you know but he had dropped al germain and he had taken him down and tripped him slammed him to the ground a few times and it looked like he was in control of the exchanges but but still very good fight yeah i mean years ago a buddy brought me into the gym and like he does like it's up in vermont so it's you know it's not that crazy serious but he brought me in and he asked me oh you know do you watch any sports i was like i love love mma and he's like oh i do that like

sundays are open mats like if you want to come in and roll i was like yes i'm there really and do you have any experience at all none none and i was it was the most fun i've had and it was just like the most jv elementary version of him it was my first day like he's showing me like all right if someone has you like this, you know, clamp your arm here, throw your hips here. And it was so much fun. And then the whole CrossFit thing kind of took off. And I was like, all right, I'll put this on the back burner. So, I mean, it was.

So, you're thinking about doing it now? Now that you're. I mean, not like competing or anything. But training. As a hobby. Just for fun. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, just for like the workout, the mental challenge. I don't want to warn you. This is how you got into CrossFit. Am I going, well, I just just went in i was just a hobby i was done crossfit this would be fun i learned how to choke people next thing you know you're at the fucking world with white tape on your fingers yeah warming up no i mean it's i remember watching it and it's like how did you not see that kit coming like we all saw it and then it's like when you're in mean it's i remember watching it and it's like how did you not see that kick coming like we all saw it and then it's like when you're in there it's like oh my god there's so much that goes into just throwing a punch and it's like this whole crazy different type of cardio and

like this grit and oh it was so cool the main event saturday night was really interesting because it was this guy who's the middleweight champion Israel Adesanya yeah he went up yeah he's this really super technical striker and he fought this destroyer this Jan Bohovic yeah who's the light heavyweight champion so you got to see this like really fast guy who's really good at fainting yeah setting traps for you well I remember this fucking just one of the most brutal knockout artists well I remember seeing them like face to face and being like what the fuck are these two guys doing fighting each other like this guy looks like yeah but how's his size he's a big fella did he just like weigh in like one pound over no no he

didn't even weigh in at the limit i mean well style bender he usually fights at 185 yeah he weighed in for this fight at i think it was like one what is it no no no no it was like 200.5 yeah that's what he weighed in and the weight limit is 205 so bohovich weighed 205 but not really he weighed 205 at that moment for like five minutes and then he put on i would imagine bohovvic is walking around at least 225, somewhere around that. So why would he want to take that fight? Is it just a challenge? Just a challenge. I think the real issue in the fight was highlighted when Bohovic took him down.

Because then you realize how much bigger and stronger Bohovic is. And he just was pounding on him on the ground. And Israel just couldn't get up. Yeah. I mean, when you have someone that big, that much bigger than you. bigger and stronger bohovich is and he just was pounding on him on the ground and israel just couldn't get up yeah i mean when you have someone that big that much bigger than you it's not just that it's you know israel is not um his background's a striker he's a super sophisticated striker but he's not that sophisticated on the ground gotcha you know he's he's good on the ground like he knows how to stop takedowns and he knows how to, I'm sure he knows how to do a lot of jiu-jitsu. No.

And for a guy like Bohovich, who's just, you know, there's this old saying that a great big man will always beat a great small man. Yeah. And it's really true. Size matters. I mean. It just matters. And it's really true. Size matters.

I mean. It just matters. I mean, I'm a very surface level fan of like, I see the fights and I'm not following these guys. I don't know their backgrounds or anything. And it's like, I just saw the two of them like nose to nose. And I'm like, yeah, what's going on here? Like, Bohovich is so thick and his power is ridiculous. Like, to put it in perspective, John Jones, who's the greatest of all time, he fought this guy Dominic Reyes.

Dominic Reyes went five rounds with John Jones, and it was a really close fight to the point where some people thought that Reyes should get the decision. Bohovic blew Dominic Reyes out in two rounds, beat the fuck out of him. I mean beat the fuck out of him. He had a footprint on his rib cage like this huge red mark on his rib cage from Bohovich

kicking him in the body and then KOs him. And it was like Dominic Reyes was never in danger of winning that fight. Bohovich was just, it was just a matter of just every time he touched him you would see the difference. These guys would just have, that's a weird thing about fighting um in particular striking some guys just have this

crazy power yeah and it doesn't make any sense like i mean i it's the same like any sport like there's just dudes that have this like grunt force like like i've had it with some buddies that like we'll train it's like squatting benching olympic lifting like our numbers are pretty pretty similar but then it's like we'll just like kind of wrestle and it's like they just manhandled me and i'm like well it's a lot of that's technique though oh no like we're both wrestling neither of us know what the fuck oh okay but it's like they can just they just have that brute brute strength like that farm boy strength that's like what the farm boy strength's real yeah you gotta think if you're throwing bit hails bales of hay yeah just awkward awkward objects medium weight

all day long that's like kettlebells right yeah it's like sandbags like you're kind of doing something you you probably know like what's going on with john jones now john's moving up to heavyweight oh is he yep so what's happening is um next uh in two weeks two and a half weeks um steve amy ochich is fighting francis ingano francis ingano is the guy i told you before yeah you know who he is no he's the scariest motherfucker in the sport he hits guys and literally knocks them into another dimension he's terrifying and his story is incredible man i had him on the podcast he escaped cameroon and made it all the way to europe oh i know this guy yeah yeah it took him 14 months yeah he got arrested seven times and every time they would arrest him they send him to the fucking desert so They send him to the fucking desert

So they send him to the Sahara Is it the Sahara desert? What desert is it? Is that it? You look as Not as convinced as I am Whatever the desert was So they send him all the way to this fucking desert

And he makes his way all the way back to Morocco Every time And they did it seven times. They caught him and captured him seven times. And finally he made it all the way across to Spain. Where they put him in jail for two years. So he's in jail in Spain. Was it two months?

Two months. So he's in jail in Spain for two months rather. Not two years. Because the whole thing took 14 months. So it took him a year to get to Morocco. A year to finally get into Spain. Then in Spain he he was in jail for two months and then finally leaves spain and makes his way to france and lived in france as a homeless guy like literally sleeping in a parking lot and working out at a gym and then finally starts fighting and then makes his way to the united states and now

he's the number one ufc heavyweight contender yeah i feel like after you do that like life's easy it's like yo this ain't yeah this whole thing ain't shit like you know what i just went through like exactly they dropped me in the middle of desert seven times whereas like you know he doesn't know how he's gonna get out how what like he was talking about drinking water that had like rotting bodies in it and you had to like filter the water through a t-shirt to drink it or die from dehydration. He had to make up his mind. Pull up Francis Ngannou KO's Alistair Overeem. This is literally the scariest knockout I've ever seen in my life.

He hits this dude with a left hook and puts him in another dimension. You hear stories like that, guy, and you're just like, oh, okay. My day's not that bad. I'm complaining about a hangnail or something. Watch this. You hear stories like that guy, and you're just like, oh, okay. My day's not that bad. Yeah. I'm complaining about a hangnail or something. Watch this. Francis is the guy that has the frosted tips, but he's- What an enormous human. And he's fighting Alistair Overeem, who's a former K-1 champion.

Right here. Boom. Oh, my God. Just lifted his head right off. But Francis can do that to anybody. Like, literally any human alive francis can do that to anybody like literally any human alive he could do that too and you're talking about a guy who's he cuts weight to make 265 pounds look at that fucking ko like they fight at 265 265 yeah but he really weighs about 275 so he has to lose 10 10 pounds to make the weight class he's the he's the scariest well he's one of

the scariest derrick lewis is the other scariest he's another he's the scariest well he's one of the scariest derrick lewis is the other scariest he's another guy that puts people into i mean it's it's so easy to hear that someone weighs 265 because like we all know a fat person that weighs 265 and you're like okay it's not like that when it's like that yeah like sculpted yeah he's a 265 greek god and fully natural and you know derrick, Derek Lewis is another guy. He just knocked out Curtis Blades with an equally terrifying one-punch knockout. That was with John. Yeah, and so John is now in the range of 250-plus pounds,

and he's weightlifting. He's doing a lot of deadlifts and squats and just packing on the pounds as he gets ready to fight the winner of uh steep amy ochich and uh francis yeah i follow i follow john and i've actually chatted with him a bit like i think it's like he hit me up and was like hey any any pointers on this one thing and i sent him a video uh he's doing these squats did you ever fuck with these i have like especially coming back what's the benefit of doing these i think it's just a lot it's just putting the bar further in front so it's like just a lot more on your posterior chain so it's like the further the

bar is the further the weight is away from your center the more you have to pull back and compensate for it but i i would do stuff like that um i think it was like when i was coming back from my back surgery i was doing them but like what did they have to do to fix your back uh they basically went in and rebroke it so like dremel tool the bone because it healed but it didn't heal back together so it's like each bone just kind of calloused over itself so they gave man so they went in and dremel tool put in some protein that generated bone growth and then put in uh two plates and six bolts so they they so they they said they were like yeah we can go back in in a couple years if the hardware is giving you a hard time we can go back in and take it out

because the bone is going to be healed but if it's not giving you if it hardware is giving you a hard time we can go back in and take it out because the bone is going to be healed but if it's not giving you if it's not bothering you we'll just leave it alone so it just it's never bugged me enough to go through that surgery does it go off at the airport no no it's not i i don't know if it's like a different type of metal that doesn't set it off or if it's just not big enough quantity but i mean it's just like little tiny plates that were just like put in to tack it and it doesn't fuck with you at all i mean i'll have like if i sleep wrong i don't know if that's just like that i'm 30 now and like sleeping can fuck me up but no i mean i haven't i haven't had any like big moments where it was like oh shit like. Like I, something happened. Um,

I mean, I came after the surgery, I went back to weightlifting. I hit personal records. Like I lifted for another year after I came back from the surgery. And then I just like, I trained out of resentment coming back. Cause so many people wrote me off of like, ah, you know, he broke his back. He's done. And so I basically just trained just trained with like the fuck you mentality for i mean it was a year before i came back so like in a full back brace just rehabbing it and then a year of competing and so by the time i was done with weight that i rode that until the wheels fell off like resentment is a hot burning fuel it's good motivator but it burns hot so it's like you can't use it for too long did you have any other significant injuries

or from crossfit from crossfit not really um i i think it was like i came into crossfit with enough of a knowledge base of how to train properly and not just like go hard start flopping my body around you know and I changed how I trained over the years because early on I was still young and I could get away without doing a warm-up or a cool down or you know kind of cutting those corners and then it started catching up with me so I was like okay I if I want to make this a career, I need to take it more seriously. And, I mean, I tore my LCL warming up for an event. But I was just doing, like, the pigeon stretch. Like, where you put your foot up on a table. And you're, like, kind of pulling.

You felt it pop? Yeah, like, I was pulling on my foot. And I, and it just, like, let go. And that was actually, like, out of competition. What did you do you do get my mouth shut i just like threw on a couple knee sleeves like i remember uh so my mom's a doctor and she's out the competition it was like i was like i didn't want to tell anyone i didn't want to go to the medical team because they might like medical medically pull me if like i'm a danger to myself

and so like i remember like getting my mom being like hey i think i tore something in my knee like can you check it she was like impossible you cannot tear your own ligament you can't do it and then she like was just like she's like okay maybe you strained it and then it was after the competition oh yeah you definitely tore that shit you need to like go to the hospital and get a brace. But, I mean, that was just me. That's funny that she said you cannot tear it by doing that. I mean, she, well, I think she was saying, like, you can't self-implement a torn ligament.

Like, she was like, it would hurt too much before it let go to, you can't pull it to that point without the pain being too much is it possible you're already slightly injured I don't think so I mean I was an idiot I was like cranking on it because like more more is better of course nothing in like nothing in moderation right of course and yeah so I mean it was a loud pop and then like I mean it's just creepy how'd you do in the competition I won it yeah I just didn't tell any of my competitors it was the world championships oh that's hilarious but now they're hearing this going fuck he's eating snickers bars too son of a bitch like have you ever seen that like when someone tears the lcl like yeah they just like hold their leg up to the side it just like droops in it looks like the pencil when you do that little like did you have to get surgery no so the lcl is like one

of the few that will like regrow or heal itself so i had to wear like a full full leg brace for like three or four months oh wow i just three or four months yeah yeah it was a while it was enough to like suck it seems like surgery would be a better option so they told me the surgery was like a full year recovery it was equivalent to like an acl or mcl reconstruction but they're like so you want to try this brace first so i just wore pants and it worked yeah yeah are you guys allowed to use peptides or anything like that can you use like bpc 157 or anything to heal you just said a lot of fucking words that you don't know about this no really i've heard the word peptides but like

i i just got introduced to like what sarms are not that long ago and it was because someone got popped for them yeah and i was just found out about that recently like oh he got caught using steroids and people like it wasn't steroids it's SARMs I'm like oh it's kind of similar what is exactly SARMs um didn't Mark Gordon bring it up someone brought it up I remember like I did like the quick google search to like try to figure out what I could from a google search but that was the extent of what I went. And basically the summation I got was like, it's basically like a steroid that only attaches, that only affects muscle fiber and not like all your organs.

Here we go. What are steroids? Difference number one, men on steroids may develop breasts. Oh, there we go. Women will lose their femininity. SARMs have no such effects.

SARMs are more focused on bone and muscle health. You gain muscle faster on SARMs than roids. Steroids are linked to an increased risk of some cancers, like prostate. SARMs are safer than steroids in this regard. Sounds like someone's selling SARMs. Sounds like somebody. SARMs are similar to steroids, but they're not one and the same. Both work by binding to your androgen receptors, triggering changes in your DNA, which increase your muscles' ability to grow.

Okay. What does it stand for? That didn't pop up. Doesn't say. Let me see. Just what is a SARMS? Now, are they legal? Can you just buy them?

So that was this guy's reason was he was like oh i just bought it off the internet how can it be illegal if i just bought it off the air is that real selective androgen receptor modulator is that you could just buy them there's a bunch how crazy is that that's what they are fucking crazy i i have a feeling that's not really That can't be that Hmm Are SARMs safe? Bodybuilding products That contain selective androgen receptor Modulators or SARMs Have not been approved by the FDA and are associated with

Serious safety concerns Well that sounds like it's written by a bitch Including potential There's no fact there, that's your opinion Some little pussy, some little weak fuck You scared to grow? No, BBC 157 is something that helps heal injuries. And the FDA is talking about banning them because they're super effective.

Oh, they're so good at what they do. Yeah, they're really effective at injuries. This is the USADA website. Okay, are SARMs prohibited? All SARMs are prohibited at all times both in and out of competition for all athletes from those competing at the highest level of sport to those competing at the recreational level SARMs are listed in the category of other anabolic agents under what does it say s 1.2 of the WADA prohibited list okay yeah I don't mess around with that

shit like even if I go in and like to the doctor because I'm sick and he'll give me a script of the WADA prohibited list. Okay. Yeah, I don't mess around with that shit. Even if I go in to the doctor because I'm sick and he'll give me a script and I'm like, hey, you need to write me three scripts and then I call the drug testing, our liaison for drug testing. I'm like, hey, is this allowed?

Nope. Okay, throw that one out. But now you don't have to do that. So I'm still on the drug testing list for... How come uh i think it's to prevent people from just like announcing retirement and then like going and doping for six months and be like guess what bitches i'm back yeah right so i think i have to stay in it for like six months or a year or something we were talking before about people sending you stuff yeah that you just can't fuck around i take none of it yeah like you know people they get your address and stuff just start showing up or even like sponsors that are like you know if i'm talking to a new

supplement company they're like i want to they want to just send you their products to try and it's like uh how do i know you're not sabotaging me how do i know you're not on that dude's team over there that's the fear that's a weird fear that i didn't even consider until you brought it up yeah you have to worry about someone spiking your stuff yeah and then like uh does that happen have you ever heard of that happening i've heard of people maybe using it as an excuse of like you know the tainted supplements or you're like, oh, this protein was mixed in a vat that was used for this other thing. And it's like, I want to believe you, but I'm calling bullshit. There's a guy on YouTube.

His name's Derek, and he's got a website called, a channel rather called More Plates, More Dates. It's a ridiculous name, but he's very smart. He's a chemist apparently and uh just brilliant at breaking down uh the what the effects of supplements are and and different steroids and how they work and he's just brilliant and uses them too so he's fucking the guy's super jacked yeah but he breaks down a lot of these uh ufc fighters claims of yeah of tainted supplements yeah and he's like this is how you know that's bullshit

but he shows it in a way that i don't even think the fucking usada people understand because his understanding of it is incredibly sophisticated and he's using he's breaking down their levels like the levels that they're testing at and also breaking down their levels, like the levels that they're testing at, and also breaking down the epitestosterone level, the testosterone to epitestosterone. Does he get people off their bands canceled? No, the opposite. The opposite. He's calling bullshit on people that said, oh, I just accidentally tested positive.

Someone must have spiked my shit. He's like, uh-uh-uh, this is how you know that's not true. And here's how you can still cheat. And he was showing how it's possible for fighters to cheat and how even though they think that the USADA protocol is super sophisticated, it's really not. Like the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio, that's another one that gets manipulated.

He's like, you can fuck with that. Like for sure a lot of these guys are taking something and they can get away with this. And he talks about Paulo Costa and John Jones and a few other people that have been popped. And he's like, here's how you know they were definitely using. No shit. Yeah, and he's, again, his understanding of it is super sophisticated so

as he's breaking down this stuff he's doing it like step by step factual according to science according to the levels that they were tested at like like some of the people in crossfit like the excuses they're coming out with it's like where are you coming up with this shit like what kind of excuses well so i heard it was this guy who's a lawyer that like as soon as he hears about someone popping he approaches them and is like i will get your sentence reduced pick out of these seven excuses oh boy and like he it's the deals you deck of cards same packet and he just changes your name in it he sends it off but it's like some of the excuses have been like uh oh my boyfriend was doping.

And he shot his doped uploads inside of me. So one girl said, like, I went down on my boyfriend and I got tested on that. One was I was making out with my boyfriend. He was taking something that, like, you hold under your tongue for, like, 15 minutes. Well, one thing that can happen to women is when guys have testosterone cream. Like, there's testosterone cream. is when guys have testosterone cream like uh there's testosterone cream and then if you you know you're sweaty and you're having sex it can actually get into the woman's yes that's legit huh 100 the one like there's been one of like oh i was eating i ate tainted meat in iceland yeah one guy in the ufc said he ate kangaroo meat dude he ate kangaroo meat yeah and like i remember

i remember that excuse came out. And it's like, did some research. And it's like, tainted meat in Iceland was a thing, apparently. Oh, really? Like, back in the 80s. And it's like, yo, that hasn't been an excuse in a while. Like, bullshit. Didn't Canelo Alvarez have an excuse like that?

He did, right? Tainted meat in Mexico. Oh, did he get popped or something? Listen to me. Canelo Alvarez used to fight at 154 pounds, and he went all the way up to 175 and won the light heavyweight title. There is no question in my mind he's on some supplements. I mean.

Look at that. Come on, Alvarez. Guys. It was my mistake eating meat in Mexico, no longer eats beef. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, he switched to horse meat like come on son i mean but like clambuterol see oh clumb yeah clambuterol is a fat burner yeah like yeah he's he was on yeah someone in crossfit just got popped for that and they were like

they were like it's not it's not even uh performance enhancer i'm like it makes you like i didn't know what it was i looked it up and it makes like makes you burn fat I'm like, it makes you, like, I didn't know what it was. I looked it up and it makes, like, makes you burn fat. I'm like, how is that not a performance enhancer? Yeah, you'd be lighter.

Yeah, like, you're maintaining all your muscle mass but like stripping away all this dead weight. Yeah, I think clambuterol

is something that fighters use while cutting weight to maintain mass. I think because it helps them, see if that's, Google that because I think that's, because it helps them. See if that's, Google that. Because I think that's,

because other fighters have been popped for that as well. And I think that was. I thought when I looked it up, it was a fat burner. Like it just like makes you strip fat. It probably does that too, but that's probably how they lose weight without losing mass. Yeah. Because a lot of times when guys are losing weight um for ufc fights or for boxing matches uh drugs from popular athletic world helps reduce weight can be increased a person's

metabolism francisco vargas and canelo alvarez tested positive cyclist alberto current why so many athletes like athletes at that level like for him he's earning more money than he can shake a stick at i understand the appeal to cheating in that like the whole thing with crossfit i don't get it like these sports that aren't there's not the multi multi-million dollar contract i don't get says it promotes muscle growth through anabolic properties. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Canelo Alvarez has some fucking preposterous contract with DAZN. I think it was like hundreds of millions of dollars, right?

Yeah, there was some... Once the pandemic changed it because they can't have fights in arenas, so that was part of the deal, I think. Yeah, there was a little bit of a dispute, but didn't he just fight on DAZN? his last fight was on the zone he's awesome though yeah yeah it was yeah he ko'd that guy in the zone that guy's he's phenomenal i mean it's not making him a better fighter but i think i mean just watching his videos yeah like if just his

head movement incredible unreal canelo alvarez Dizon agreed to a minimum $365 million contract for five years. Woo! 11 fights. Whee! Holy shit. $365 million. That's a hell of a payday.

Yeah. At least. Yeah. Damn. Minimum. Yeah. Depending upon. Man, I got into the wrong shit.

Nah, but you didn't though, dude. Look at you. You're here. Coming from weightlifting. Your brain works. Yeah yeah coming from weightlifting getting a crossfit i count my blessings every day of like is there a lot of loot in crossfit uh for most no i mean like the money and the victory is it in the prize money or is it in sponsorships sponsorships i mean every contract's different how you set it up uh so i mean you can set them up well if you got a good manager manager agent um i mean the biggest competition we have every year is 300 000 and there's only one winner and what does everybody else get nothing i think it goes like 300,000. I think this last year I went to second place with 105,000.

So like 300 grand is nothing to scoff at as an annual salary. But when you're rolling the dice, right. Training all year at a, maybe I can get, yeah, I can get rough, especially if like you twist your ankle on day one and you have to pull out.

Yeah. Um, but I mean, coming from weightlifting where there is zero money coming to CrossFit. Like, I remember my first couple of contracts. They're like a grand a year, two grand a year type thing. I'm laughing all the way to the bank because I'm like, holy shit, you're going to give me $1,000 and free protein? I'm in.

Well, that's why it was funny for you to just enter into these competitions, just to pick up a couple hundred bucks here. Yeah, the first competition was like 500 bucks, and then the next one was like a grand, and then it's like two grand, four grand, ten grand, and it's like... Next thing you know, you're the world champion. I didn't have a bank account. I would have to sign the check over to my mom, and she would go cash it. And I made shit like that.

That's wild. I'm driving around New England like this 1988 oldsmobile like this car i bought for 300 bucks like it is a hoopty and i'm just like i'm loving life like i was a full-time college student just like i looked at this as like a side hustle isn't it funny when you look back on those days like not a care in the world just struggling yeah it's the most romantic times just eating eating ramen noodles like you know like after a workout it's like man i'm real hungry like i remember going uh like if i had like a group project or something i had to work on after training i would stop at this gas station on the way back i would get a pepperoni stick and a gallon

of whole chocolate milk and just like go to the library meet up with whoever i need to meet up with and it's like pepperoni stick to make me feel like i was chewing on something like the gallon of milk had like 1600 calories and just scarf that down and like all right cool three bucks three dollar dinner wow you know looking back at moments like that it's like all right those are the those are the times i want to remember like when you're struggling like i live in my parents basement just i didn't give a fuck it was awesome but you got through it and became successful that's why those moments are cool if you're 40 and that's what you're doing those those right yeah that's not fun

yeah it's only fun when you're on the launching pad when you look back and you know you think about struggling and how you got by when you're young. Yeah, I mean, I have those fond memories with weightlifting too. And I was never successful. I won junior nationals and shit like that. But I never made a world team or the senior world team or had any records or anything. But I mean, yeah, working out in the dingy basement, you're making this weight set just work because it's what you have you know it's not there's no other option so it's like there's no like i wish i could have this better this better it's like no that's what you got

either you work with it or you don't yeah i mean those times are they're fucking awesome they're fucking awesome because you became super successful yeah i'm excited for like finding that again yeah what do you think you're gonna do you're so young 31 years of age you can still do things athletically you can still do yeah career wise you can pick your choose you can choose i'm excited you know like there's a couple projects in the works of like as soon as i announced my retirement a lot of it was because i was like all right i've put so much of my life on hold to just strike while it was hot. All right, I'm ready to do other shit other than just these killer rowing intervals and going to bed at a bedtime, a wake up time, all this shit.

What do you think you're going to do? You know, so the first thing I did was like started, uh, release my programming. You know, I've played my cards so close to my chest for so long because I was like, I'm doing shit that I know other people aren't doing in my training. So I don't want to tell people about it. And it's like every other CrossFit athlete, every time they hit a PR, they do something new. They post about it on Instagram to get some likes. I haven't said shit. And so like the day I I'm like dude I'll tell everyone I don't care I don't need it anymore here you go uh so that was that was like a project that I partnered with some people down in Miami that they're they're using their platform to do that so how are they

releasing it they're releasing it like it's a subscription thing yeah yeah subscription so it gets released April 1st okay but it was just like, they already did it for powerlifting, powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, bodybuilding, like uber successful in that side. They built this amazing platform. And then I'm like, I don't want to mess around with a website. I don't want to mess around with inputting all this data. Like, I'm good at at programming and I know how to do that well. So here you go. And then you do your thing. Um, yeah. So doing that with hybrid down in Miami, um, partnered up with some buddies that are like been in the CrossFit space for a long time for sports nutrition company. Um, so, you know, some people from the sports nutrition world, some people that are been in the CrossFit space for a long time, it just seemed like a fun project to do. And we're like, Hey, let's see what we can build this thing into, you know? Uh, so that's getting launched in a couple of months.

Yeah. Just kind of like I had all these opportunities and I, I'm, I, I don't know how to manage my time because I've only done this one thing for so long. I don't know how to manage my time because I've only done this one thing for so long. And so as soon as I announced my retirement, all these opportunities flooded. And I was like, I'm going to pick my two favorite, take these, put everything else on the back burner. I was like, let me figure out these two things. And once the ball's rolling on them, I'll pick up the next two things. Did you know before you entered into the last world championship that that was going to be your last one?

Oh, I tried to retire a year ago. I tried to retire like after my fourth win. Like I was sitting on the dock like a week after I was up in my camp. And and the guy who was coaching me at the time called me. He's gay, man. How you doing? Like we're having a nice little chit chat. And he's like, what's your plan?

What's your travel schedule? When do you want to start training? And, uh, and I was like, Oh no, no, no. I'm, I'm done. He's like, what? I was like, Oh no, I retired. I'm good. Like I won four in a row. I'm happy. I'm done. And he's like, Oh, okay. Okay. And then it hangs up. And then like five minutes later i get a call from from my buddy like my manager and agent and he's like hey buddy how you doing i'm like shane just called you didn't he's like yup you doing okay and he was like yo you he's like you'll hate yourself when you're 40 if you don't go for one more why uh because the the previous record was four. Oh, okay.

And so he was like, you can't just tie that. What happens to most guys when they stop? Do they own gyms? I think a lot of them, like, well, right now it's like nobody else has been competitive and retired. They're all still trying to hang on. They're taking some at-bats or they go team or you know whatever it is you know like they either have like this big injury that they're still trying to come back from or they go team so like they're not competing as an individual anymore

now they have teammates and they're in that division um or yeah there haven't there haven't really been any that have like made a career out of it and then been like, I'm out. I've seen some articles about some guys that are still in it and struggling and a lot of meniscus injuries. Yeah. A lot of, I mean, that seems to be a big one that comes up a lot. Yeah, I think it's kind of like the natural thing of like, you know,

you're putting yourself into these susceptible positions and then if you don't have the technical foundation to back it up like yeah you're something probably going to let go something's going to fall into a bad angle and just now you're putting like such a heavy load on it something's going to pop or break and you think that's what it is is like your foundation and understanding better i've been doing olympic weightlifting since i was 12 so i mean i'm going on like 19 years now you just must have fucking dynamic tension i mean uh tendon strength though from all those years of fucking doing shit like that yeah i mean i would imagine i'm sure it's like i'm sure there's part of it of like my body is adapted to it. Yeah, it has to be, right?

Doing full squat snatches, clean and jerks, squats, everything. I've been doing this for 19 years. My knees are fucking great. Knock on wood. That's crazy. We'll see. But thankfully, when I started Olympic weightlifting, my coach was just hammered technique, technique technique you know and when you're 12

13 you're full of piss and vinegar you want to load up that barbell yeah and it's like like yo i want to go hard i want to like i want to impress the girls in the gym let me put on some big plates and he's like nope keep lifting that broomstick buddy uh well you should thank that guy Oh, I have, many times over It's so hard to Reign kids in Oh yeah, I mean It can't be fun for him Of just constantly

Take the weight off that bar Your technique wasn't perfect, do it again So do you think that from now on You'll only be doing things athletic Or do you think you'll try to do other stuff as well Like in terms of your um i think the natural progression is something i think the natural progression is to do something in the crossfit space so you know like the sports nutrition company like we're starting out with like the basic basic supplements and like nutrition

guides stuff like that um but uh you know like i'm passionate about coffee i would love to get something in the coffee world has nothing to do across it it's just i've been passionate about espresso and like all these different beans once you start learning about it it's a whole different world that you had no idea existed like you got a nice little machine back there yeah that machine's always fucking up, though, man. The coffee's great, though. Have some of this. This is Black Rifle.

Black Rifle coffee's great shit. But the machine sucks. Really? Yeah, it's supposed to be really good, but it keeps breaking. What, you're not cleaning it, or what? Yeah, we clean it. It gets cleaned.

It just breaks. Tricky, right? Yeah, I mean, that machine, most people would give their left arm to have that in their house. Really? Oh, yeah, that's a nice one. Okay. Yeah, a little Lineum Mini. Black Rifle just gave it to us.

We didn't even ask for it. I didn't even know it was coming. Yeah. I mean, that is like, in terms of home machines, that's like cream of the crop right there. Oh, okay. Well, Evan Hafer, the owner of Black Rifle, he's like a super coffee nerd. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I'm good buddies with Evan. Oh, okay. Oh, all right. There you go. Yeah. When we were down here, I was down in Austin for like all of last December and like tried lining up a trip with him. I mean, a whole crazy story.

Like anytime I come to Texas, like I'll hit up Matt. So last year i was in texas i stayed with matt and then this year i was like i don't want to be a nuisance to matt every time i'm in texas stay with him so i hit up evan i'm like yo gonna be in town can i crash with you he's absolutely come on by and then like talking to another buddy and he's like what do you mean you're staying with evan he lives in utah i was like he said i could stay at his house and like i ended up staying out at this ranch that yeah he's got a ranch out here yeah oh that place is the creepiest fucking place i've ever been is it dude it's like 27 bedrooms it it was built in the 60s i think they said and nothing

has changed same furniture you know that's where where all the NASA astronauts used to go to. Oh, yeah. Like we're walking around this. It looks like a motel out on like a couple thousand acres. And I was like, where the fuck are we right now? So I got out there. So we thought we were going to Evan's house because he never told. He's like, you can stay at my house.

Here's the address. Well, it is a house and he does own it. Yeah. And he's out here sometimes. And so then he's like oh i'm not there i'm like well dude i didn't come out here to stay at like a cool retreat i came out here to see you like i don't give a fuck about this place and uh and so we get there we pulled in at like 10 or 11 p.m there's no lights you can't see anything and it's like i mean what is it like 14 000 square feet this place and the dude is like giving us a tour and he's just like there's wings of the house i'm getting lost in this place and then he just

leaves and it's just sammy and i in this house and i'm like this is the creepiest fucking place i've ever been because there's like all the mounted heads on the wall from all the animals and like this place is a time warp into 1960s does it have photos of the astronauts yeah everywhere yeah so like you're like am i in a museum right now like what is this and then we were the only ones there no one else in black rifle was there so we're just hanging out and sam i was like hey you good and she's like putting on a brave face like yeah i'm good i'm like i'm like yo this place creeps me the fuck out i called up matt the next morning i was like yo we're coming over that's funny yeah it's uh that's a big hunting ranch they take a lot

of guys out there hunting but you know i wonder many animals they're going to have out there now because Texas' deep freeze killed so many animals. Oh, yeah. I mean, thousands of animals. Crazy. I was reading an article about a ranch that lost 2,000 axis deer. They froze to death. Jesus. A lot of the ranches out here lost all of their access like like i've kind of

cracked up like living in tennessee for the last couple years coming from vermont tennessee if they if they were expecting frost the next morning they would cancel school and coming from vermont i'm like what are you talking about like i remember being at the bus stop with like snow drifts taller than me and like you just shiver and you're miserable and then it's like once you realize like oh they don't have plows they don't have roads none of the houses are equipped for this nothing and then you even go further south like I remember seeing uh Tim Kennedy like all his pipes froze like in Vermont it's like no the houses are built to withstand winter down there down here it's like no winter doesn't exist well what we had was super unusual once every 120 years they were saying it gets that kind of freeze it was strange driving around was strange it was

i grew up in boston so i'm used to driving in the snow and snow tires and yeah i just know how to drive and that kind of shit and i have a toyota land cruiser yeah so it's four-wheel drive i know how to drive yeah and that stuff and it handles it well but i was watching people slide into curbs yeah just didn't know what to do they'd lived in texas their whole life yeah never even been in snow yeah i remember being down in uh somewhere in texas a couple years ago they got like one inch skiff of snow. And it was like the towns were shut down for like three days. And it was, I'm sitting there like as a Vermonter, like.

Because Vermonters laugh at the snow that they get in Boston. Yeah, I'm like, throw some chains on your tires and get out there, you know? Nobody has chains. Yeah. Nobody has plows. Nobody has chains. Yeah, like the towns don't own a salt truck.

No. Like that's foreign. No, no. What are you talking about no plows no salt trucks there's some um plows apparently up in the northwest of the state you get some plows yeah they because they get fairly regular snow up there so they have plows so they try to use some of the wild world of like yeah winter doesn't exist well what's wild is a week and a half later, it was 80 degrees.

Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. I mean, Vermont gets those weather swings of like... It's like I remember... Do you get more now up there because of global warming? Is global warming real? Allegedly. If you talk to the liberals.

I've heard terrible things. But I remember walking around college campus and it was like... It's like just sub-zero for so long. And it's the first 40-degree day. And everyone's walking around in shorts and t-shirts, just like, this is great. I know, right? Yeah. I remember that about Boston, too.

But I think there's some real good in growing up like that, because it makes you appreciate warm weather. Living in California, everybody's spoiled. It's like they won the weather lottery so they got all this money and they don't appreciate it and they just spend it like no it's like they inherited the weather money yeah that's what it's like because they don't understand like if you grow up in a place like vermont those winters are ruthless and so when spring rolls around the birds are chirping the sun's's out. You're like, oh, this is great. You don't waste a nice day. Yes, yes, yes.

If it's sunny out, especially early spring, like mud season, it's like you're out hiking. You're out taking advantage. I think that's good for people. I think it's really good for people to grow up like that. Yeah. In particular. As you get older, I understand when people move to Florida. They're like, fuck this.

I mean, I remember growing up and I always said like, oh, I'll move move south like i have no connection to vermont i don't care any of this and then it was like we left we moved down to tennessee and we were gone maybe a year and we went up to visit and i remember just driving being like shit i miss this like i miss the trees i miss like the whole state looks like a park yeah it's incredible and i was like's beautiful and that's home, you know, Bernie Sanders and I were talking about this and he's like it keeps people from moving up there That's the thing is that the cold went weather the winter the snow and everything the good thing about it is it keeps This is a very low population up there. Yeah, how many people live in Vermont? What is it? Let's guess Let's guess I think eight half a In the state, half a million? 300,000?

Yeah, that sounds about right. I think it's about 300. Yeah, I mean, it's not cheap. It's a million? No. 600? 623,000. Really?

Huh. I was way off. Yeah, but it is so pretty up there. So gorgeous. And it's like, growing up there like you don't realize how health conscious everyone is like doing sports and activities is normal and then like you go down to where it's like people live off Mountain Dew right holy shit isn't that interesting a lot of times that's based around university towns because Vermont is also a university, Burlington in particular, right?

Yeah, a bunch of colleges there. Yeah. That's the same thing with Boulder, Colorado. You know, Boulder, Colorado is a university town as well, and people are super active. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's an education thing, if they're more intelligent, or if they're just, you know, kids that did sports and stuff. I think it probably just has a lot to do with the natural landscape, too. That, too, yeah. just you know kids that i think it probably just has a lot to do with the natural landscape too that too like i know like when i was training it was like most gyms it's like on the weekend

they're packed vermont empty like it's everyone's during the summer they're out mountain biking because all the ski hills open up for mountain bikes and then during the winter everyone's out skiing it's just that's what people do for entertainment. They're being physically active. And then moving down, you take a walk through a southern Walmart, and it's like, oh, my God. Yeah, not good. Guys, stop.

Not good. Why are you putting this in your body? Yeah, well, there's some weird stereotypes about people from the south, too, about them being dumb. And a lot of that, unfortunately, comes from hookworm. I don't know if you know that. Yeah, it's crazy. For the longest time, the people that lived in the Deep South in particular,

the stereotype of Southerners was always these slack-jawed people that were slow-minded. There was an epidemic of hookworm in in the south where people would walk around barefoot they'd get these parasites that would get into their body and they would radically affect uh cognitive function and it like legitimately made that's real exhausted and stupid yeah it's hookworm yeah no shit who the fuck who told us that seems like an outrageous rumor that just like no it's real traction it was more than half the population was infected by hookworm at one point in time wow until they realized what was going on and so there was this stereotype about really stupid people from the deep south and that is entirely where it came from

these poor people were infected infected by a terrible parasite that was robbing them of their energy. If over half the population is doing that, it's going to stick. Pull something up on that. It's really crazy. When you find out about it and you realize that these people, no one had any idea what was going on,

and they just thought, God, these people down here are fucking stupid. Meanwhile, you're seeing these poor folks are just infected by this parasite. More than half the population. stupid. Meanwhile, you're seeing these poor folks are just infected by this parasite. More than half the population. Jesus. Yeah, it's nuts. Because it's real common for the kids to be walking around how a worm gave the South a bad name.

Hookworms once sapped the American South of its health, yet very few realize they continue to affect that. They continue to afflict millions. That's the worm, that creepy little fucking disgusting worm. Oh, that's that creature, yeah. For more than three centuries, a plague of unshakable lethargy blanketed the American South. It began with a ground itch, a prickly tingling in the tender webs between the toes, which was soon followed by a dry cough.

Weeks later, victims succumbed to an insatiable exhaustion and an impenetrable haziness of the mind that some called stupidity. Adults neglected their fields and children grew pale and listless. Victims developed grossly distended bellies and angel wings, emaciated shoulder blades accentuated by hunching, all gazed out dully from sunken sockets with a telltale fish-eyed stare. I mean, think about any movie that's like making fun of like a deep South Southerners, like that description. It's fucking nuts, man.

Yeah, and the culprit behind the germ of laziness, as the South's affliction was sometimes called, was, how do you say that, Nicator Americanus, the American murderer, better known today as hookworm. 40% of the population, stretching from southeastern Texas to West Virginia, hookworms stymied development throughout the region and bred stereotypes about lazy, moronic Southerners. Isn't that nuts? Wow. Like, without seeing it in writing, you'd hear that rumor and just be like, get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, you're just making some shit up. Yeah, yeah. That isn't real. I wish I remember who told us. That's why I was looking for the clip about it on the podcast. Yeah. Like, yeah, that, that isn't real. I wish I remember who told us. I was looking for the like clip about it on the podcast. Yeah. Tell us who it was. I forget who told us,

but, uh, first story I found was, uh, Michael Yo last year, but it seems like we, I think we were telling him that. Yeah.

I think I was telling him that somebody told me, and I remember like, what might've been Rhonda Patrick. I don't remember. But, uh, yeah, that's what happened, man. These poor people. So you go down there and you see them drinking Mountain Dew and being stupid.

Like that's where all that shit came from. And then those people, because it took a long time for them, for fucking centuries, people were living like this. Yeah, for them to figure it out. Peter Hotez. Ah, there we go. That makes sense. He's brilliant. He's a doctor.

And he's actually a specialist in infectious diseases. He's another one who told me that people that live in jungle climates, like in southern, like really hot climates, almost all of them are infected by parasites. Like they just live with parasites. That's scary Fucking nuts Like we're over here

Worried about This one And I'm sure like Someone else Over there is just like You're scared of what Yeah you're scared of what A little cough

Yeah I didn't even get a cough I just like Lost my taste and smell That's it I worked out every day Like I was perfectly fine

Just couldn't taste Anything Yeah Jamie had like A little sinus infection Yeah It was the same thing For a little bit either I worked out every day. Like, I was perfectly fine. Just couldn't taste anything. Yeah, Jamie had, like, a little sinus infection. Yeah. It was super mild. Like, I took the precautions of, like, all right, I'm going to quarantine and keep to myself. But it worked out every day. Perfectly fine.

Energy was fine. Yeah, well, that's the type of person, you're the type of person that doesn't get hit with it You know because you're fit But you know we've had some problems with UFC fighters Because These fucking guys trained so god damn hard And they were training with COVID And it kept getting deeper and deeper into their system

Because their immune system was breaking down Because there's a difference between Just working out and training for a fight And when these guys are training for a fight They're like They're literally breaking their body down to almost nothing and then trying to build it back up yeah and i i have to assume like if there's a virus in the air it's like the amount of volume that is moving from their lungs when you're breathing heavy like that and it's like people try to compare of like oh yeah i go to the gym and I'll do cardio. It's like, no, no, no, no.

You don't do that. It's like where you're gasping. You're out there speedwalking, bro. Exactly, right, man? Crushing six-minute miles. Yeah, well, the other thing is these guys are literally breathing in each other's mouths because they're training together. Such close proximity.

They're wrestling and they're doing jiu-jitsu and they're on top of each other or they're sparring, kickboxing, they're clinching i mean they're they're infecting each other yeah when when it gets in the gym it usually just burns right through the whole gym yeah yeah that's that's fucking crazy but the thing about it is in these gyms the vast majority of the people that are smart and know that they have it it doesn't become a big deal at all it's a big one of the things they found out recently was 78 of the people people that were hospitalized in America with COVID were overweight. Yeah. 78%.

Yeah. That's crazy. It just breaks your immune system. Yeah. Yeah, your body is dealing with so much... So much other shit before that gets there, and then it's not working optimally. Yeah, out of the people that died from covid 94 of them had something else going on yeah 94 of them had an average of 2.6 comorbidity factors i remember

seeing it was like whatever the acronym is for whatever the company that's putting out all these stats and i was like oh only six percent of the deaths that were reported it was the cdc yeah yeah there it is um only six percent just had just had covid yeah that's crazy it's crazy yeah and it's like you just scared the shit out of so many people well so many people needed the shit scared out of them but what drives me crazy is they didn't do anything other than wait for a vaccine so many people stayed fat stayed lazy keep eating shit yeah and i've had i've talked to people like that and i sat across with them and they're like can't wait for the vaccine i'm like well you know you could be out there fucking drinking water yeah yeah how about workout you slob jesus christ you're just waiting for someone to inject you with a vaccine i mean we were talking about about this when i first got

here if like you're gonna i mean for me i'm like i don't i don't buy the first generation of a phone a car nothing i'm like no you you go work out the kinks you figure out what's wrong with that shit now it's like the vaccine comes out i'm like no i'm not sticking that in me see i'm like you go work out the case i understand why people want people to take the vaccine i understand that they want people to achieve herd immunity but what i don't understand is the lack of acknowledgement that this disease is not what we thought it was this time last year it's not nearly as deadly and for people that are healthy it's not a big deal yeah and that's a horrible thing to say if you hear it and someone you love died and i'm sorry but it's true jam Jamie got it. He was sick for a day.

I didn't even get it. My whole family got it and I didn't get it. Hmm. Yeah. Like you didn't get it at all. For the antibodies. I can test it every day. I was testing twice a day.

No shit. Yeah. Yeah. I, it's not that it's, it's not that thing that we were worried about. The thing that we were worried about was going to kill a giant percentage of the population. And when you, you hear, when people say we've killed half a million americans half a million americans have died with covid yeah and that's it's a tragedy but what's even more of a tragedy is that there's not an emphasis on keeping people healthy the emphasis is only on

social distance wear three masks wait for a vaccine, I was in the airport not long ago and saw someone wearing two masks. I was like, what the fuck are you doing? A lot of people wearing two masks. That's what they're... They're asking people to wear two masks in California. The same guy... That's a thing.

The fucking governor of California is literally asking... This is the guy that closed down outdoor dining with no data at all. There's no data that says there's any outdoor dining spreading COVID. Not only that, he got busted eating indoors with no mask like how was that not enough of like he just implemented the rule of like you cannot eat at a restaurant and then like and then he immediately is at a restaurant it's like there's no mask on that is infuriating he was telling people to put a mask

on in between bites of food and he wasn't doing it dude and now recently he's telling people to put a mask on in between bites of food. And he wasn't doing it. Dude. And now recently he's telling people to wear two masks. And not only that, the cases are dropping, the deaths are dropping. The people that die from COVID. Because they do have much better treatments and much better understanding of what to do. One of the things they used to do initially was put people on ventilators immediately. And then they realized in New York City that 80% of the people they put on ventilators died and yeah it's not good ventilators

and in that particular situation ventilators are not good because ventilators apparently they blow people's lungs out like people were having a problem with their lungs getting fucked up from the ventilators and then also my friend michael yo who got it his doctor was smart and didn't put him on a ventilator but he said to him and didn't put him on a ventilator. But he said to him, hey, if I put you on this ventilator, you're going to die because your lung is going to stop working. Yeah. Your lung is going to want this machine to work for you. Damn.

Yeah, like I know nothing about any of the medical backside of this shit. All I knew was like when it first happened for the for the world championships across it like we couldn't compete at the games unless we had a negative covid test so i just like i just stayed home for months like i trained at home i have a sauna an ice bath in the backyard massage table in the living room like i just stayed home i didn't how did you get massaged did you worry about getting covid from your masseuse? Like just trying to limit exposure. Like the masseuse I was using has a couple kids that are in school. And it's like, all right, well, I'm just going to try to cut that out for now.

Yeah. But Sammy would do a lot of my body work on me. Where do you think you got it from? Oh, when I did get it last December? Oh, I mean, I was at a hunt camp with like 17 people and none of us cared. It was like the group chat comes out like three days later. It was in December? Yeah.

So you got it real early. Yeah, like over, yeah, it was like this last Christmas. Oh, this last Christmas. Like three, four months ago. Oh, okay. So you were over it and you're like, fuck it. I'm just going to just act normal. Yeah, so like I was super cautious leading into that competition and then as soon as i got the negative

test i was like okay cool like i'm still being cautious when i meet someone that you know they're not as healthy as they could be but for me i don't give a fuck. I'm like, all right, cool. Got it. Lost my taste, lost my smell. That's how long did you lose your taste and smell? It was enough time that I got concerned that if it was ever coming back,

uh, I think it was probably like three weeks, zero taste. Like could not tell the difference between coffee and water. Wow. It was, how weird is that? It was so weird.

How'd you know you were getting it back? Smell a fart or something? No, I think it was just weird is that it was so weird how'd you know you're getting it back smell a fart or something no i think it was just like at my coffee in the morning oh i was still drinking coffee just because like like i need i wanted the caffeine right uh but i think i was like i think i took a sip and i looked at sam like oh shit i think i can taste it out of nowhere i think i can taste it a little bit so i think I can taste it a little bit. So I was like, okay, it's coming back. What a weird side effect, you know? Real prevalent. It was, I can't even describe it. You know, like, you can't smell anything.

So, like, Sammy would look at me and be like, hey, you should shower. I'm like, what the fuck do you mean? She's like, you're starting to smell a little bit. I'm like, oh. Whoopsies. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. Yeah, it's a little – I understand people wanting to be cautious.

I understand people wanting others to take precautions, and I agree with all that. We all should, and that's one of the reasons why I test every day, and also one of the reasons why I heavily supplement. I mean, I take everything everything quercetin and fucking zinc and high levels of vitamin d and c and k2 and fucking fish oil and everything and i'm on testosterone and i'm taking a lot of shit you're a walking pharmacy yeah and on top of that i'm going into the fucking sauna every day at 185 degrees for 25 minutes and then then on top of that, I'm doing cold showers.

So I'm just, my body's, and I know when things are weird. And when people in my house got sick, I had two days where my workouts were weird. Two days where I was like, hmm, I feel a little shitty today. So I was like, I'm just going to go through the motions. When you're so in tune with it. Yeah. And then it's like, there's just like a grain of sand in the gear and you're like something's not right exactly something's not right but what frustrates me is this the concept that a lot of people who don't take care of themselves we're pushing which is that you can't

do anything about this like your immune system is not going to help you yeah nothing's going to help you which is nonsense because we all know that some people get it and some people don't right and you're some people around and well what what is that some people get it and they get over it quickly some people don't well what is that well that's your immune system that's 100 your immune system some people get it and it's a terrible experience some people get it and it's very mild and almost nothing what is that that's your immune system and for some people it's not their fault they have issues they have diabetes they have all sorts of things that and they didn't see it coming and they got sick not blaming the people who got sick what i'm what i'm upset about is this weird narrative that people who don't take care of themselves they push is

that whatever you do you just need to get vaccinated you need this because otherwise you're gonna get it and it's gonna kill you it's gonna fuck you up but it's not i don't it's not true like like i understand like if you want to quarantine if you want to wear two three masks go for it do whatever floats your boat do whatever you want dude i haven't seen my parents in a year my parents my parents are super cautious about it yeah oh shit yeah they were living in uh phoenix they were locked down down there and they fucking they didn't go near anybody they get their groceries delivered they were yeah it was rough yeah but i mean what am i gonna do say don't live like that but they started this approach when we all thought you know way back in

february of last year we thought that this was going to kill 10 of the population now i know my fucking neighbor he's 80 he had he was sick for four days yeah got some iv vitamins and he said about four days later started feeling good he's 80 damn he's 80 yeah i i don't understand like i'm like if i don't care and i'm not hurting anyone else yeah well people they get angry at you they like health shame you This I get it. I get where they're coming from I do understand and I don't feel terrible for someone who has neglected their health and then all of a sudden out of nowhere You're forcing the situation like hey, I know you didn't plan for this But now here's something that's gonna radically test your immune system. and if you're not ready you could die and it's not fair it's not fair for them because they were operating under this

assumption that hey i can eat fucking cheeseburgers and drink shakes and and not exercise ever and not take vitamins ever and i'll be okay because for the most part you could be okay and then all of a sudden something comes along that tests you i mean like what's your definition of okay like right well it's not how you want to be or how i want to be no dude like i in my off season i take a month of like i'm not training i'm not watching my diet nothing just like you have a fuck off month like incredibly you love it it's i love it for like a week but you only love it because you work so hard i only love it because i know what's around the corner i know i'm getting back into it so it's like even during my training week i have one day off one complete day i don't get off the couch i wake up have my coffee and i lay on the couch and i'm like i'm not doing just watch tv and just watch

netflix all day when when i know i'm training the very next day i know what i'm doing in 24 hours i'm going to be killing myself in the gym so i want to do as little as possible right here if i know i have a week off after a competition there's no fucking way I'm sitting on a couch for that long. I'm like, no, I feel like I'm wasting. I'm wasting my potential. I'm wasting my day. I'm wasting my life. I'm not progressing in any way. So it's the same as like after competition, after the big one, I take a month off minimum. And it's like, I eat, I eat junk food. And like for the first couple of days, it's like, Oh, this, and for the first couple days, it's like, oh, this is a treat.

This is nice. Dude, after like six days, seven days, when you start getting a bit of a jiggle, and you feel slow, you're tired, and you're like, dude, fuck this. Do you exercise at all during that time off? None. Nothing?

Not even go on walks? No. Fuck no. all during that time off none nothing nothing not even going walks no fuck no like like when i say like i take time i don't stretch i don't roll out i don't do anything wow what is it like the first day back after that rough every year the first like the first week back the first week back i'll like get on the rower because i'm so familiar with that like i i'm i know how to suffer on that rower or like on a bike or something and every year i'll get back on i'll be like i'll pull some 500s with like built-in rest whatever and it's like i went too far this year i went too far to the dark side and I lost all my fitness because I'm doing these workouts

that are like a warmup for me a month ago. And then it's like, I stopped halfway through the workout, like hurting. And it's like, I'm like, I, there's no way I can come back from this. I'm fucked. And then it's like, you just keep coming back day after day and just chipping away at that block and getting your fitness back bit by bit do you ever say to yourself when you do chip yourself back and you are struggling do you ever say next time i'm not doing this every year every year i'm like next time when i take my month off it's like

every other day i'll go for like a 10 minute jog or like do some squats with like 135 something super easy um but like just to not let myself backpedal this much so i have to dig myself out of this hole but on the other side it's like i enjoy doing that because if you're just operating up here all the time by the end of my career, I'm going for like one pound PRS. I'm going for one second PRS. Well, it's not very gratifying when you kill yourself for a year and then you put on two and a half pounds. So it's like, no, I'll let myself slide all the way back

until I'm like this lump on the couch that I just hate. And it's like, I want to look forward to eating healthy. I want to look forward to having a bedtime, like staying up until 2 a.m., watching Netflix. I can do that all day long. Like just – How long does it take before you're back 100%? A couple weeks.

Two weeks. Yeah. Yeah, like usually – So the competition season starts with the open, like the online competition. And it's one workout per week. I'll usually start doing cardio, like hammer and cardio stuff like a week or two ahead but i won't do a crossfit workout until like usually the first workout that's announced and then over that five weeks like the first week you is usually my lowest score the second week is my second lowest score and then usually by week four or five,

I can grab a worldwide win, but it's like, it comes back quickly. It sucks. It's painful. It hurts a lot, but it's like, you just keep coming back day after day,

hammering, hammering an air bike or a rower. And then like doing the recovery work too, because it doesn't matter what movement I do. I'm going to be so crippling sore the next day. Like, like my back squat, like in season, I'm squatting just shy of 500 pounds. I can do sets of 10 with 135 and I'll be walking peg legged for like two days. Wow.

Yeah. So I mean, get doing sauna sessions, ice bath sessions, all that stuff. Like what is your protocol for sauna and ice bath? sessions ice bath sessions all that stuff like what is your protocol for sauna and ice bath i usually do like 15 minutes in the sauna like hovering it'll vary depending on what the temperature is outside but like usually like 190 200 degrees i'll try to squeak out 15 minutes are you doing in one of those barrel outside saunas yeah do you like that i love that thing it's like one of the best purchases saunas are awesome aren't they i i'll never go back to not having a sauna daniel cormier uh use he uses a sauna outside he's got a barrel sauna outside in his backyard and he uses it at night when it's

dark out yeah me too and he says it's so creepy because you just got this one little window that you're looking i mean it's a super thin door yeah like i think it's listed creepy because you just got this one little window that you're looking for. Yeah, I mean, it's a super thin door. Yeah. Like, I think it's listed as, like, a four-person, but it's like. Come on. If you're in there with one other person, you better be comfortable with that person. Right. Because, like, you're close.

But, I mean, it gets. It's DC sauna. Yeah, there's DC sauna. Yeah, so mine's even. So he says it gets dark out there. He goes, his wife shut off the light of the porch. He has to open the door. What the fuck are you doing?

Turn that light back on. So mine's's identical to that but it's even shorter so it's like six feet that looks like an eight foot one those are so awesome though i i can't recommend saunas enough yeah i have one inside the house and then and then right next to it i have uh just a deep freeze in like one of those like plastic garden sheds yeah it's just deep freeze i just ran caulking around all the seams filled it up with water put a thermostat in there so like an auto so what do you keep it at like 33 or 34 or something like that no no i found when i was putting it down that low like it would ice over and it was just like working the engine a lot it was working the compressor so i think i keep it like 38 so i think it i think it cuts

off at 37 it'll kick on at like 41 or something it's fucking cold and how long are you doing that uh depending on like what my training looks like um but usually between three and five minutes and i'll go back and forth between the sauna and ice bath like three times in the middle of the winter it was uh 35 degrees out, and I would just get in my pool because my pool doesn't have a heater. And I fucked up once, and I got in there for too long. I was in there for like seven minutes, somewhere around there, and I had a hard time getting out.

Yeah. I was like, oh, shit, this is a problem. My legs weren't working. I had a friend over training, and we were going back and forth, and she comes in, like her lips are blue. I was like, how were you in the ice bath this whole time? She's like, yeah, like like 10 minutes. Oh, my God.

No, no. Like your lips are blue and she was going all the way in. Oh, no. Yeah. So like if I'm in the middle of a training week, I'll do, I'll always end on hot. Like, so I'll do the ice bath and finish on the hot. If I'm going into a rest day, I just, like, full-fledged, like, right up to the neck, end on cold. I feel amazing, but I'm always afraid that, like, my muscles are tense.

So I'll end on cold if I'm going into a rest day. So you're worried that, like, climbing out, you could pull something or something? I mean, just, like, if the next day i'm going into training right like if things are still tight like i want to have some time to like loosen back up before i get into another like 15 3 15 3 back and forth yeah how many times you do it uh usually two or three like if i'm doing like three sauna sits i'll do like i mean once you're coming out of the out of the ice bath it's amazing because you can have that sauna up at 200 plus yeah and you don't feel shit you're just getting like the nice tinglys from from all the blood starting to flow again but yeah i'll usually do minimum 30 minutes of intervals in the sauna but it really is amazing

how effective that is yeah to do those i mean things. I remember reading the stats of like you sleep better after a sauna if you do it at night. And then it like boosts your natural HGH. And I was like, I'm sold. Anything to help that. Well, they did a study out of Norway that Dr. Rhonda Patrick told me about. They did the study where they showed that four times a day, I think the protocol was 170 degrees for 20 minutes, they got a 40% decrease of all-cause mortality, meaning 40% decrease in heart attacks, strokes, cancer,

because of the amount of heat shock proteins your body generates. No shit. Not a big deal, but I think it's Finland, not Norway. Thank you. Finland. I'll remember that now. Some icy place where they speak weird. Finland.

So it's just massively healthy for your body. Yeah. But for a lot of folks that don't have one in their house or can't have one in their house, it sucks during COVID because you can't even go to the gym and use one. Yeah. When I was in Vermont, the gym that had one was like stone throw from my house.

But then when I moved to Tennessee, I was like, I don't know where a sauna is. And there happened to be a sauna store in that town. Oh, wow. And it was, I remember like going in and like people like poke their head out from the back, like from offices. They're like, can we help you? So yeah, I'm looking for a sauna. They're like, holy shit.

Like we got one. They're like, we haven't had a customer in here in years they're like we do all of our sales just sell drugs and so they're they were like yeah we're we're actually closing the store because nobody in this town wants saunas and we do all of our business online that's crazy so they're like you want one of our demo models i was like dude in the um the countdown show for this uh past weekends ufc jan blachowicz is from poland where it's obviously cold as fuck and he just this is what a savage this guy is he just goes out to the lake and punches a fucking hole in the ice and climbs in there like a fucking viking it's awesome once you get used to it like people their first time getting a cold bath they're freaking out they're tense like yeah like you see them like dip a toe in they run away dude now holy shit i can just like you just tell yourself like no everything's

gonna be okay yeah just relax this guy i mean that's just a whole level look how comfortable he looks too though he's such a savage. I fucking love that dude. Now that you know about him, too, watch some of his fights. Because it's like his bones are made out of rock or something. It's weird. They're just a different version of a human. Yeah, he's a Viking, 100%. That's old school Viking genes.

Because when he hits people, it's different. It's like he hits guys and you can see them just like boom like what yeah fuck i mean it's so funny like so many of the crossfit competitors are from iceland oh of course and power lifters from iceland too and i know like the one that i'm really close with katrin like every time i see her give her a big hug and like she goes both hands over because she's just like she's just like got these broad shoulders on her it's like how are we the same thing you know like you're just this different breed of a human how about the mountain from game of thrones he's an

iceland guy too have you ever met him no he's so big dude i met him and it was like, I felt like my brain like short circuiting because like he was so tall and so big. Like you can't comprehend it. He's six foot ten. When I met him, he was six foot ten, four hundred and forty pounds. Six ten, four forty. Yeah. That's so crazy. And like through his shirt shirt you could see his abs

and like we're we're in like this big circle we're at a dinner and like they're going around introducing like hey thor this is so and so so and so and like he's shaking everyone's hand and like just shaking this like bear claw of a mitt yeah it was like how yeah and then he everywhere he goes he has his father and his grandfather with him he's the shortest of the three jesus yeah like his father's like an inch taller than his grandfather's another inch taller it's crazy that's vikings man i remember meeting him and brian shaw and it's like you guys are 400 pounds plus thor's 440 what the fuck yeah look at him it was dad and his grandfather that's crazy yeah last time i was with thor it was like at a competition and he was about

to go like he was competing and so i'm talking to uh my buddy rob he just finished the event and so i'm like all right thor's about to go i won't say hi like he's getting ready and like we're in this little circle of people and thor's sitting right on the outside and it's just like this like tree branch this tree trunk just reached through and just like gave me knuckles and I was like sup Thor fucking huge human you ever see what he used to look like before he got giant before he got thick no he was thin like a basketball player what I like same with brian shaw like you see brian shaw's high school basketball photo and it's like oh you're six foot eight like and not yeah just like this wide like a basketball player yeah yeah and then they just lifted weights get huge everything eight lambs

dude yeah those guys diets are what is that oh my god that what he used to look like 2006 2009 he went trans for a little bit and then uh 2015 i mean you see him now like he's lost i would love to know how much weight he's lost now oh has he lost weight oh he's way down oh really because he's doing a boxing match oh Oh, that's right. I think he retired from Strongman, I think. Yeah. Why is he doing a boxing match? He had one match. Did you see it?

I watched a little bit of it. He fought a tiny guy. Yeah. He fought a guy relatively tiny. He's fighting Eddie Hall. Yeah. Well, Eddie Hall's enormous, right? Dude, Eddie Hall is such a freak.

How big is that left thigh? That's not little yeah he's such a freak that left thigh that's a little he's still a freak so um how old's eddie hall they're both like i won't even 30s yeah i'd say they're both probably both mid-30s and so why what what makes him want to do that like why is he having a boxing match i think i i think they might have a beef from when eddie competed in strongman and then eddie had the was the first man to ever deadlift 500 kilos then thor did 501 and i think they just talk shit um so they decided to fight and then i think someone with a big enough prize first came in was like yo boys how about this yeah i mean it's gonna be it's gonna be a scary fight eddie is freakishly

athletic well that might be a problem watching that man move boy look at that face look at his neck it's like his neck like pokes out the back of his head he last time i saw it was like he was like 360 pounds and and he had a six-pack. Why don't you Google Eddie Hall boxing workout? I mean, that's what I was looking at to get to this. I want to see if he can strike. Here's December. The thing is, like, sparring is okay, but I want to see his movements.

I want to see him hit a pad. From someone that doesn't know. Okay, that's not good. That's not good. Right away, we're saying that you've got a real. From someone that doesn't know. Okay, that's not good. That's not good. Right away we're saying you've got a real problem. Yeah, this is terrible. But if he's fighting someone else that has a very similar skill level, is it that?

Yeah, he's very rudimentary, but also you see his body is very stiff. I feel like I've seen videos. Oh, no, this is back in December. Okay, this isn't too long ago. Yeah, his body is super, super stiff. Just the body transformation he's gone through. Have you seen when he deadlifted 500 kilos? Is this his Thor boxing?

Yeah. Oh, really? So he had a boxing match in 2012. Interesting. Oh. See Thor right away you could see he's moving a little bit better. He's still fucking ridiculously enormous and this other guy is, see the other guy is just more fluid but so much smaller. I mean the guy looks like he's a hundred pounds smaller than him easily. More than a hundred. Look. Look at the size difference. But you can see he's having a hard time moving his body. When you put that kind of mass on your body like these guys do,

it's just you're not designed. You know what it's like? It's like trying to go around the Nürburgring in a drag car. Right? Yeah. That's what it's like. I mean, you saw the, like like if you can look up like the body transformation he went through when he deadlifted 500 kilos it looks like someone like filled him

up with an air hose but like it's it doesn't look like a real human especially when you know what he looked like before but what i think is scary about eddie is like he's done these other things in the past where he was like i am like look, look at that. Yeah. That's him. Just the thing is like looking at him sparring there, he's just not moving so good. Yeah. Jesus Christ. I just look at him like. So now he's 360.

I think it was like. I just want to see him. I want to see him hit the pads though. Like I'm seeing him sparring and he doesn't look very mobile and he's doing everything, like where he's dropping his hands real low and his body looks – he's having – but the thing about sparring is it's like you're anticipating getting hit back, so you're tense, and if he's not efficient and fluid, like if he doesn't have good mechanics, then you don't get a total sense of what he can do.

Yeah. Like maybe he can do. Yeah. Like, maybe he can get better. When is the match? September 21st, it says. Oh, that's plenty of time. This is three days ago. Oh, okay. We know this video on the screen.

April, May, June, July, August, September. We've got six months to prepare. Okay, see? This is, like, super stiff, man. And he's throwing these punches with his arms you know these are arm punches like almost like he shouldn't even be hitting things no really like legitimately like if you want to train a guy like that like you don't you don't have like more body rotation 100 yeah you don't you almost would not want him to hit things hard what you would want him to do

is like have his hands like loose yeah and you would want him to do is have his hands loose And you would want him to just get used to doing this Just get used to moving your whole body as you punch Because right now he's so jacked and he's so big That he's doing this He's such a huge hitter For sure, just the mass that he has Is going to hinder some motion and some movement.

But if someone could show him, like, there's guys that were big guys that have fluid technique. Like, here's a perfect example. Google Butterbean KOs. Oh, my God. Perfect example. I love Butterbean. Butterbean. Everybody loves him.

Who doesn't love this fucking guy? King of the three rounders. Right. love butter butterbean everybody who doesn't love this fucking guy king of the three rounders right butterbean was an enormous guy but he would flatline people he had good technique yeah for a big guy and he was fluid like the way he would throw look at the size of him perfect example right fucking enormous i mean fucking enormous guy but when you watch him throw punches he's got much look at the the he turns his shoulders like watch he throws this right hand he turns his body into as much as he can with all that fucking mass look at that there's a perfect example see that left hook he just landed go back that up just a wee bit please watch how he tags this guy he throws well boom right there see he's turning his body into these

punches yeah and that's that's the difference he uses his whole body he's still enormous but as he's punching he punches through the hips his feet are connected to the floor i mean he's he's an efficient puncher and that's what i would tell that guy like if you brought that guy to you know any world-class boxing trainer, you bring him to Virgil Hill or something like that, what they're going to do, the first thing they're going to do is teach the guy how to punch. Just how to be loose.

Mechanics. I'm just excited to watch what he does because when he got into World's Strongest Man, he said his claim. He's like, no, it's not an opinion. I'm going to win the world's strongest man and then he won it in 2017 is this thor here and then he see this is so much better deadlift this is so much better this is how you you see how he's just touching these things

you can't hit those things hard right because they're just these little yeah flimsy little sticks so what he's doing is just touching them, but he's rotating his body. See how he's moving his feet and everything like this? This is much better. Much better. Doesn't mean he's going to win. Eddie Hall could catch him and knock him out. Anything can happen, right?

They're just punching each other, and they're both not that good. But he looks way better here. Because this is a guy that seems to be really paying attention to fundamentals and technique. Because whoever his coach is, that guy's doing it perfect. Excellent. That's what I would tell the guy to do.

See how he's just touching things and moving his body, like turning his hips and everything like that? That's really what you want to do. Any other video I've seen of Thor, he didn't look that good. That's impressive that he's moving like that. He's taking it serious. I mean, it'll be fun. I'm excited to see, like... How much do you think they're going to make?

I think they each got a million. Pay-per-view. So they probably guaranteed him a million. Yeah. And then they get some sort of back-end on pay-per-view. I mean, I just want to know, like, are these going to be, like, 30-second rounds or, like, three minutes rest in between?

Like, what's going to happen? Well, hopefully they'll be real rounds, but uh mike tyson roy jones jr fight was only two minutes there were two minute rounds yeah they were mad they're mad they're like this is what the women do the women fight two minute rounds which is probably pissed off the women they're like hey hey hey hey easy but um mike tyson's supposed to be fighting Evander Holyfield next. No shit. Yeah, yeah. Evander Holyfield's been training for a long time. He's been working his way up.

And, you know, in the beginning he looked a little, you know, sluggish and slow, but now he looks pretty fucking good. Who, Evander? Evander. He looks pretty fucking good. He's been, like, real steady with his training and posting it on social media almost every day. He posts something.

Mike's still scary, though. Oh, yeah. That man. So is Evander. Yeah. Evander Holyfield has a bulletproof mind. His mind is bulletproof. You can beat him.

Guys have beat him before. But he's never going to quit. You're going to have to shut him off. You're going to have to drop him and beat him up i mean i i think i'm a tyson fan through like i love that who doesn't love training mentality like you know vander beat him twice i i remember seeing the video uh where he's talking about like how scared he is when he's training yeah we talked we played that the other day yeah dude i saw that and i just related so much to it because like i trained scared like everyone else is training to win and

to win they gotta beat me or like everyone else so it's like you're just training scared all the time and like i thought there was something wrong with me when i was nervous going out from the warm-up area onto the competition floor like i was like man i'm not a confident person i have these insecurities that are coming out and then hearing him talk about like when i'm in the warm-up or like when i'm in my locker room like i want to cry i'm so scared i'm about to go into a ring with this man who's trying to take my head off and i was like oh shit okay it's not just me like this is the most ruthless human ever and he's having these feelings too. Okay.

And then like when he talked about like going out on the floor, he said, by the time I'm in the ring, I am God. And I was like, Oh shit. Like that was, I just related to that a lot.

And I just latched onto that. No, it's an, we played that clip the other day. It's an amazing clip. It's super inspirational. Yeah. Did you feel different defending your world title like

when you won it and then trying to win it a second time did you feel different yeah i mean each year was different um but yeah i remember the first time you know i remember the feeling the first time it was just a big relief you know because i competed twice and i took second place two times in a row. And then it was starting to realize like, Oh man, I might finish this CrossFit thing without ever winning. Like that's a real possibility. Um, and so I remember winning the first time I was like, okay,

that weights lifted off. You know, there's not this, like, I'm going to leave this career with nothing. But, I mean, it's just hearing other people, like other people talking shit of, like, oh, last year was a fluke, you can't do it again. Wait a minute. How can anybody say it's a fluke to win the CrossFit Games? That is literally the dumbest fucking thing.

When you look at the volume of work you guys have to do. Dude, I had the director of the CrossFit Games. That is literally the dumbest fucking thing. When you look at the volume of work you guys have to do. Dude, I had the director of the CrossFit Games. After I had won four times, three of these wins, I broke the record for margin of victory. Like, the best win of games history. I've set and broken that record three times. And after my fourth win, going into my into my fifth like he put out an article saying like matt fraser's slipping his performance is slipping and i'm like the director oh yeah the dude that runs the whole thing who what's what's his name dave castro is this the guy we were

talking about this is no no no no there's a different guy why why would he do that beyond me i don't know that's just did you talk to him about it no no no i just like i saw this come out and i was like how am i slipping like how could i haven't lost an in-person competition since like 2015 like if it's an in-person competition i've won it for the last five years like and he put out this article and i was like wow that's a huge conflict of interest because he's the one programming the games right he's programming the competition and then he also released something that said like it just finished programming the 2020 games and it's not good for matt i was like oh wow are you shitting me like so do you

think he was trying to get you to lose i don't know i mean there there was a couple things that came up that what a dick there were a couple things that came up that made me question of like i think you're trying to does he have a relationship with someone else that's in the no i think he just doesn't like me. Why? Seemed like a real nice guy. Everyone just jumps when he says jump, and I wasn't that guy. He likes power. Yeah, that's a general consensus.

What is the deal with the dude who started CrossFit? Because he doesn't look like he exercises. No, I have... That's baffling to me. Yeah, I remember seeing him... There's a lot of boxing trainers that don't look like they work no i i have that's baffling to me yeah i mean you look there's a lot of boxing trainers that don't look like they work out at all and they're great trainers but then i feel like the boxing trainers that like they look like they don't work out but then like you see them hit a bag and you're like oh shit probably like butterbean yeah yeah um yeah i remember seeing him for the first time like that'm like, that's the guy? Like, that's the guy who started this whole thing?

How did he start it? Was he high? I got an idea, bro. I don't really know. Let's get people to work out until they die, man. I haven't heard enough. I don't know enough of the history. But you would imagine that, like, when I thought I'm going to see the guy who created CrossFit,

I thought he'd be built like you. I'm like, oh, we're going to see something. Or at least, like, when I thought I'm going to see the guy who created CrossFit, I thought he'd be built like you. I'm like, oh, we're going to see some stud. Or at least, like, some form of healthy athlete. Yeah. Yeah. Some guy who's, like, really into, like, extreme competition. Yeah. So I've met him twice.

Like, and it was a, hey, how you doing? That was it. Like, one time he was at an event, and i think he needed something from the person i was talking to and so he was like hey i'm greg nice to meet you i was like hey nice to meet you too and then the the second time bumped into him randomly at a starbucks oh like we were in hawaii and then like he came into the starbucks i was like oh hey greg he's like hi that's it that's hey guy who wins my thing every fucking year maybe i'd want to say hi he's come he came out he came out recently talking about how he hates whoa that's the guy he came out recently like

in the last couple years of like how he doesn't like the games what yeah he was like i don't it made him rich as fuck yeah how did he how is he not like the games because yeah he was like i don't it made him rich as fuck yeah how did how is he not like the games because he was saying like it's not what crossfit's about crossfit's about the everyday person going into the affiliate and it's like yeah that's true but like this is a pretty good promoter yeah for the other part and like during one interview he was saying he's yeah what's to say like you know if the competition if one person's running away with the competition i don't do something to like change at the last minute so they don't win and i'm what i'm sitting there like i'm trying to make my

livelihood off this guys like it'd be cool if you didn't intentionally try to ruin this for me like how do you not like when someone says something like that guy said where he said it doesn't look good for matt and then you win it again how do you not like rub it in his face like hey fuck face what's up with that article i mean especially since you're retiring i mean you kind of put it it's one of those things that like mentally like you pin it on the wall so like it became a thing that he said he goes matt matt's performance is slipping and i was just like all right i'm gonna show you slipping motherfucker and he's like you're just like okay i don't want to give him the gratification knowing that i'm thinking about it right well now he knows yeah i mean what's okay i'm i think i've

already told him some other stuff oh did you i mean it's just a weird relationship because it's like yeah he says stuff like that like publicly and it's like yeah if i'm friends with someone yeah i'll talk shit to you all day long to your face i would never go to a publication and say it without like giving you a heads up or not only that when you say something like that that has no basis in fact yeah when you say he's slipping and then you go well let's look at his performances actually he's not slipping at all yeah like look look he's fucking dominating everything he gets into so how's he slipping yeah you want him to slip is that what it is yeah i mean i mean it's it's been pretty obvious in knowing that he doesn't like me

and he hasn't liked me for a long time do you think maybe like people don't like it when someone just kicks too much ass like they get a little upset and they this is you know i don't know if different people to win every year i i think it's good for the sport i think it's good on either extreme like it's fun to watch someone that just like repeats and keeps getting better and better and i also think it's awesome for a nail biter coming down to the last workout to see who's going to pull it off you know yeah um but i think i think with him like i i got treated a certain way like i wasn't jumping when he said jump

like i got treated a certain way when I first came into the sport uh and it was basically like ah whatever like you're nobody and so I was like okay like I have your card I I know that's how you act now and then like he became trying to be nice to me once I had some success in the space I was like no I'm good it was like one competition it was like all the top ranked people from each country get on a team it's called the invitational and i was the second ranked american after my rookie year in the competition and i was all excited like to be on this team and go to this competition and then they skipped right over me they took the number four number one and number three guy and i'm like what the fuck like no one ever called me explaining this nothing and so then like every year after that when they're like hey you're invited to be on the invitation i was like

no i'm good like thanks i'm still waiting on that invite from 2014 but yeah what are you gonna do what are you gonna do yeah the guy who invented it looks like he's charles bukowski's kid doesn't he i looked a little more he apparently was born with polio According to the article Whoa And he taught himself It said to become a gymnast And there's a picture of him as a gymnast Younger

On the rings And got injured On a dismount Oh That's the story I just heard So he got injured Then he couldn't work out anymore Yeah

But that was all before CrossFit Oh Interesting Okay Yeah That makes sense I mean he's He's his own guy.

Like, he's, the stories you hear, it's like, holy shit, that's real, huh? You know? The stories you hear. I mean, just like how, like, as soon as the whole thing came out after George Floyd, you know know he's under fire because people are like oh wow you're a shitty person um and then it's like kind of like when allegations come out against one person and someone goes public with it and then everyone else steps forward like oh that happened to me too here's my story and those stories started coming out people like had conversations with them when they were where they recorded it and it's like the shit he was doing was disgusting

of just like racist and like womanize it like all this stuff started coming out and it's like holy fuck like how did it go this long without this stuff ever coming out? So anyways, he sold the company. It's in someone else's hands now, and we'll see what happens. Now, CrossFit as a company, when someone starts a gym, they start a CrossFit gym, do they buy a franchise? How does it work? I think you basically pay an annual fee to use the word crossfit and then once you have that name you can do whatever you want in there yeah so like you

construct the workouts entirely your own yeah do you have to know what you're doing like i've never done crossfit could i just open a crossfit gym and start calling a crossfitter do i have to take classes i think i think you need to have your like crossfit l1 like you need to take the course you take a course you learn the thing it's a weekend weekend course oh is it yeah yeah so you don't really have to be an expert i took it way back in the day it was i was trying to impress a girl that was doing it so i was like yeah i'll do it yeah i love this and uh yeah so that was an interesting experience so it's not like teaching karate. You have to get a black belt. I mean, yeah, it's a two-day course or a three-day course maybe.

So you don't even really have to be fit to own a CrossFit gym? No, no. No, there's no requirements on any of that stuff. You just pay your annual fee and keep it going. They have a lot of CrossFit gyms, though. They must be raking it in. Yeah, I think I mean, COVID,

like all the lockdowns. Yeah. Crushed CrossFit businesses. Crushed Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah. Everything. Like anything where you're like comedy clubs. Yeah. Crushed everything. Yeah. Restaurants. Yeah, so I think the intent is good of like,

this is your business, run it however you want. Right. And it's like the, the cream rise to the top, you know, the good ones flourish and they keep expanding. They open up more locations, all this stuff. And then it's like, if you're not putting the effort in to program well, and you're in your, uh, members aren't seeing results, well, they're only going to stick around for

so long and you're only going to stay in business for so long so i think it's the intent of it is great of like no like it's your business do whatever you want um but there's definitely some places that kind of abuse it and it just gives it a bad name like if there's no one in there regulating some joe schmo jumping up and doing ring muscle ups. Right. Well, it's like, yeah. Like, yeah, you're going to get a slap tear in your shoulder or do something. Like I've, I've met multiple surgeons that they're like, oh, you do CrossFit. Oh yeah.

CrossFit paid for my yacht. Like just like from doing shoulder surgery. What a dick. And yeah, it's like CrossFit paid for my yacht. Yeah. It's just like, so straight up. I'm like, yeah, I's like CrossFit paid for my yacht. Yeah. It's just like so straight up. I'm like, yeah, I'm not surprised. Like if you don't have someone actually coaching you,

of course it's going to be a bad news. So like if I just walked into a gym and just started sparring, like no, it's going to go terribly. I'm going to get hurt. Yeah, that's the argument that I always hear about CrossFit, against CrossFit is that all those, this is the argument that Steve Maxwell used to have, was that all those movements are not designed for a competition. They're designed to strengthen you for a competition, like whether it's clean press or kettlebell presses or whatever you're doing. What those are good for is strengthening your body for other athletic endeavors.

And he thought – this is just one man's opinion. He thought that doing those in a competition is not wise. And then that these Olympic lifts for repetitions, it's not wise to do that. And it's not, he didn't feel like it was good. Yeah. I mean, I definitely see that side for me personally. I'm like, okay, like if these weren't good like i shouldn't be walking yeah but see i think you're a perfect example of how to do it the right way

and i think it's really interesting you coming from that weightlifting background yeah you know that you did have all this excellent form and incredible strength i'll watch people competing and say it's like 95 pound snatches by the end i'm like stop like just put the bar down like what are you doing like your back's not tight you're not setting your hips like the bar is swinging away like right you're doing everything wrong yeah you were doing it right why did you change you know you got fatigued and you started yeah spazzing yeah so i think it doesn't matter what the sport is what the movement is i just get so scared incorrectly yeah when i see those injuries man when when i see those injuries man

when when i see like people dropping weights on their heads and shit when they get exhausted and their muscles fail i'm sure you've seen some of those videos they're horrific yeah oh yeah it's uh yeah i mean i've i've dropped bars on my head when i was doing olympic weightlifting oh you know like dropped a bar on your head yeah like going for like a snatch and it was like i don't know my head wasn't in the right place and like just like elbows buckled and it came down to the back of my neck oh there's actually one video i have a buddy he dislocated both wrists he was doing cleans it's on youtube if you want to watch that but But, yeah, he was doing hang cleans with straps on. And, like, 365 pounds, and he's doing a triple.

And, yep. Oh, boy, I'm scared. So this is Zach Critch. The whole recovery from this. Here it comes. So he's strapped on so he can't dump the bar and his elbows hit the platform. Boom.

Just popped off both wrists. Oh, boy. I don't want to see this. Yeah, I mean, it's not a graphic, but it's just like he went to dump the bar. So if you're tipping backwards on the clean, you keep it on. You keep it on your shoulders. But he went to dump it at the last minute and his elbows

hit the ground and just ripped off both his hands but he made a full it was like a multiple year recovery so like that video i was the kid on the platform next to him that was me at the training center and i remember watching it happen and like he he screamed like he was flailing around in pain. I remember watching it and being like, what are you screaming for? The bar didn't even hit your chest. And then you just see his hands flopping. You're like, oh, your hands aren't attached anymore.

Oh, Jesus. How long did it take for him to come back? It was like a year or two. Oh, my God. I watched one where a guy was in the middle of a competition. He dropped the weight on the back of his neck, and he was paralyzed. Yeah. Yeah.

So, or, yeah, he was out in California. So, I remember him talking about that. I want to say, like, it was while the bar was overhead. Like, it wasn't from the bar hitting him talking about that. I want to say like it was while the bar was overhead. Like it wasn't from the bar hitting him that paralyzed him. Like I think like the bar hit the ground and his legs were already limp and then it bounced and hit him. I've only met him once, I think. Or Kevin Ogar. Kevin Ogar.

That's who it is. Yeah, super unfortunate mistake. like i'm not 100% sure what happened there but yeah that was during a competition like five or six years ago and he's paralyzed right yeah yeah he's in a chair still works out like a madman yeah every day yeah he's crushing it but yeah i mean you look at any sport like if i if some someone walked into a power lifting gym it was like i want to back squat 600 and just loaded up 600 and went for a rep it's like yeah yeah of course you're gonna get there's a an issue that happens sometimes in mma gyms where guys dive on a guillotine um like they they dive for a takedown and then as they're diving for a takedown

their opponent gets them in a guillotine and so as they go down their head hits the ground first and their head hits the ground with both of their body weights right so they're shooting for a double right the guy takes a guillotine and they hit head first and so you've got you know if you're 200 pounds

and the guy's 200 pounds you've got 400 pounds on the top of your head and it just pops her neck. It's happened a few times where guys have been. Is this him? Oh, Jesus Christ. Bounced back and struck him in the neck, severing his spine and leaving him unable to move his legs. Holy fuck, man. Yeah, that's a.

Gives you the tinglies. Yeah. But I guess anytime you're doing anything with your body that's that extreme... Anything physical that you're pushing it to the point of almost failure, it's like, yeah, you're taking on risk. Yeah. You know. Yeah.

Scary shit. Yeah. When you look at your career and you look back on it is there anything you would have done differently if you could go and do it again huh um i mean like the the typical answer i always give like you know i love where my career ended up i love where i'm at now and it's like yeah i made mistakes i made very obvious mistakes but they made me they put me to where i am today so it's like no i would leave the mistakes where they are going back i definitely looking back i'm like oh yeah i fucked

up a couple times there are a couple like the whole 2015 season you know i in 2014 i got second place and then the guy in first place retired and i was like, I'm a shoe in, here we go. And then I just like slacked off the whole year, ate like shit, didn't have a good training schedule, nothing. And then I got second place again. I got the results I deserved. But did you still, you came in second, which is pretty crazy. Yeah.

Slacked off, ate like shit. Came in second. I looked at it as like, I lost. I understand. And so that was rough. But then the following year, like that's what made me get my ass in gear and be like, no, fuck that.

If I'm doing this, I'm doing it right. I'm doing everything. And so I went from losing by like a handful of points to breaking the record for the most points and then breaking again breaking again like so in some ways it's like i hate that season like the disappointment that came with it but then i'm like well i wouldn't have had these next five seasons without that disappointment that's the one that kicked kicked me when i was down and just changed everything about what I do.

So it's like, do I want to change that mistake? Like, no, it was a failure, but I learned from it. So it's like, thank God that happened. Cause if I had won in that 15 season, if I had won, why would I thought I could keep out training a bad diet. I could train inconsistently and be good enough. I could stay up late and not give a fuck. Like I would have kept all those habits. So what is the difference in training?

Like what, what did, did, what did you do differently when, when the next season rolled around and you knew you didn't want to come in second place again, what did you alter? I mean, so like going in the whole 2015 season, like I'm a barbell, I was a barbell specialist. I came from an Olympic weightlifting background. So I was like, I never need to touch a barbell i was a barbell specialist i came from an olympic weightlifting background so i was like i never need to touch a barbell so i never did weightlifting you know i just kept getting better at the cardio cardio cardio to the point that i didn't realize that my weightlifting was now turning into a weakness um you know staying up super super late like i'm i'm newly i took a semester part-time at college and so you know just staying up until three four in the morning sleep until noon and then like i would

finish up my training at like 10 p.m and i was like oh it doesn't matter what time of day i'm getting my training done but it was super sporadic my diet was shit i was eating off food trucks and just like pizza chinese food like and i i thought it was funny proving showing people like i can out train a bad diet you know they're the ones telling me like they're trying to help me if like you got to clean this up you got to you know eat these these foods i'm like fuck that i'm still beating you in workouts you can't tell me what to do and so it's like yeah i got my ass kicked in front of a lot of people at that competition. Yeah, I think I don't know if I would change a single fucking thing. You know, there's some relationships that like I said, some shit that I regret.

But it's like, what are you going to part of being a person? Yeah, exactly. Right. That's how people learn. You know, and I think that losing for a lot of folks, failure is one of the best motivators ever. Yeah. That feeling when you know you could have done better and now you go,

okay, now I get it. I think it's one of the best feelings ever when you change from it and you get on the other side of it. Cause I remember like doing interviews of like, and I had my two medals hanging and I was like, I fucking hate that metal like i hate it now it's my favorite one i'm like yo if it weren't for that one i wouldn't have

these five gold ones yeah like there's zero chance i may have one other gold one but i would have kept up those shitty habits i want to made that big life-altering switch to dedicate everything to it. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I look at for the last like five years, it's like everything you do during the day, it's like, there's, it's going to bring you closer to your goal. It's going to move you away from your goal. And so I remember that first year, I was like one year of your life. That ain't shit. Like to dedicate that towards your goal and then it doesn't pan out you lost one year whoop-dee-doo and i was like i'm every decision i make is going to be only towards my goal towards my goal towards my goal and then i did that and it was like there were some parts that sucked you know like my buddy's getting married i can't go to the bachelor party

my girlfriend lives in rhode island i live live in Vermont and getting close to a competition. I can't drive down to see her, you know, shit like that. So it's like, yeah, that was a bummer. But I told myself I'm taking one year to dedicate towards. And then I did it and I was like, oh shit, I won. I won by a lot. This is cool. All right. Let me keep doubling down on this. What else can I improve on to, I don't need to drive to the health and fitness club to get in the sauna. I bought a sauna, brought it to my house, you know, shit like that. Optimizing my sleep schedule, like bringing in all these tools to help me get better sleep, you know? And what kind of tools get you better sleep? So like the one that I've used for a long time, it's called a dawn simulator.

So like, it's just looks like a giant light bulb next to your bed and it wakes you up with light instead of sound and it does like a simulated um sunset as well so it's like you get in the bed and like the lights on it slowly dims down and so it's like your body reacts to that and just starts pumping melatonin because it's like yo sun setting it's time just starts pumping melatonin because it's like, yo, sun setting, it's time for bed. You're just sitting there like reading a book and before you know it, you're just nodding off. So that's been a huge help. I got a, you ever seen those cooling pads? It's like radiant cooling for your mattress.

I got one of those. Holy shit. I'll never go back. Really? Especially like working out so much much my core temperature's just always through the roof i'm always sweating through sheets got one of those and it's like when you bring your body temperature down you're able to get into a deeper sleep hit that like whatever rem cycles and all that jazz it was an absolute game changer because i was waking up

middle of every night 2 a.m always wake up have to kick off the blankets like whatever had that it was like that was the first time i ever slept through through the night it was just one of those cooling pads like completely blacking out the windows having a white noise machine you know all that type of stuff but i don't think people realize how beneficial sleep is it's like if sleep and hydration came in pill form and cost 100 bucks you you couldn't keep that shit on the shelves it's like that right there is just the it's like a cheat code so i'm when i'm training competing i'm sleeping minimum 10 hours i'm just always guzzling down water you know simple shit like that but it's it's so elementary that people just

kind of like toss it off to the side it's like listening to your mom be like make sure you get your eight hours of sleep and you're like oh yeah whatever mom you know fuck it but yeah i mean yeah i'm trying to think like what else what else i got at my house that's kind of like a good tool but yeah well listen man what you did is pretty fucking incredible and i love the fact you walked away when you're when you're in your prime thank you i think it's awesome it's like why stick around you won five years in a row see you tip of the hat i mean i'm just excited i'm just excited like all right did that you know well you could do anything man a guy like you could you can win

the crossfit games five years in a row you could literally do anything all you have to do is just decide yeah i'm excited for it you know like just getting in contact with the right people of all right like i want to i love working towards something it's like all right i just need to find that new thing that i'm gonna dedicate all my time and energy to uh yeah, so I mean, I'm excited. And it's kind of the same as like when my weightlifting career ended, I dedicate everything to school. Then my school career ended,

I dedicate everything to CrossFit. I'm like, this is just the next thing. Like how I do anything is, there's no moderation. I dive fully in and I commit myself. I want to learn everything about everything. Yes, I mean mean and you're still only 31 man you could literally

do anything yeah I mean the kind of dedication hopefully got lots of time you got a lot of time man and if you don't you don't

whatever well hey brother it was very nice meeting you I appreciate it very much thank you for having me super impressive what you've done with your life and good luck

with everything else man thank you appreciate it alright bye everybody Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Super impressive what you've done with your life. And good luck with everything else, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Bye, everybody.