The Sevan Podcast - #296 CrossFit Games - Jason Khalipa & Brian Friend

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

2022 CrossFit Games talk with CrossFit Games champion Jason Khalipa and CrossFit analyst Brian Friend. We talk through the layout of the season and opinions on what is good and what could be improved about the process. The two final semi-finals have been announced; the Granite Games will be returning and the team behind the MACC event will be putting on the Syndicate Crown in Knoxville, TN the week before the MACC at the same venue.  Jason Khalipa is the 2008 Fittest Man on Earth. He competed at the CrossFit Games 8 times. He has gone on to start his company, NC Fit. He is a husband and father and has now gotten into a love for the sport of Jiu Jitsu in his free time. Brian Friend is one of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to the history and numbers behind the CrossFit Games. He is a writer for the Morning Chalk Up and has worked in a number of different roles for the broadcast teams at different CrossFit competitions. "The Sevan Podcast" T-Shirts https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealseva... Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem?

Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show?

We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash y amex benefits vary by card other conditions bam we're live whoa we're live we're live oh good morning laura horvat when are you coming on the show how come i don't see anybody hey do you see that do you see that is something wrong with the show is the show not live did i say something you have comments coming in what do you mean oh it's just oh there it is there it is there it is okay it takes a minute sometimes it's lag uh we are here good

morning guys fun show today easy show i slept so good on days like this when i know jason and brian are going to be here i'm just like oh shit this is going to be fucking slam dunk um uh do you actually stay up at night like do you actually in all seriousness do you actually stay up at night like do you actually in all seriousness do you actually stay up at night thinking oh shit i have a guest on that might not show up right number one yeah or it's gonna be really rough uh do you actually like worry about that at night not that but it's more like um just ripping on Brian jokes, beard jokes. They will just be like pouring through my brain and which one to use. Oh, shit. Oh, my God.

I can't believe I just thought of that joke to say about Jason Kalipa. That one's so nasty. Can I just push it away? That one cannot come out. Seriously, it's more like that. Do not give that person any more attention. But Laura Horvatath deserves attention. Jason Kalipa, the 2008 CrossFit Games winner, is here with us.

He is from an era before CrossFit Games athletes were pussies and complained. So he is a little out of touch, but he'll do his best to give perspective from the Stone Age. He's also an extremely successful successful businessman as you guys know he's continued the uh tradition that he comes from of spreading uh um just just basically health to the world uh you can go to nc fit and see all of his great work we have brian here uh the premier journalist that who comes from the highly respected periodical the morning chalk up uh which is for sale so anyone who can rub your nipples together can reach out to Justin LaFranco and make a bid on it. It's all true, all true.

And we have Matt Susan. What are you still doing on the front end? Go away. Bye. Okay. The open is upon us. Well, almost. It's exciting.

This is exciting. This is when we find out who is the fittest person in the world who can do a workout. Although only three workouts kind of bums me out. Three weeks. Three weeks, right? Oh, three weeks. But we find out who the fittest person in the world is when you get a break. I got a couple of questions.

I mean, I'm being honest. Go ahead, Jason. Go ahead. Yeah, I got a couple of questions. So maybe Brian can, can highlight this. I think for anybody listening, um, I don't, I'd love to summarize what the game season actually looks like right now. perspective, I do think adjusting it from five weeks to three weeks was preferred from a gym owner perspective, five weeks for a lot, a lot of years, it became tough when you're running gyms and you're trying to really have like these Friday night lights. Now over the years, our gym kind of transitioned out of that as much, but there was a while where every week for five weeks, we're going at it and it just kind of gets a little exhausting. So I think the three week model, I actually don't

think is bad. Um, but I am curious about the whole season because i like to think that i you know i read the morning chalk up i i listen to savon i try and keep up and i really don't know exactly what's happening from a game season perspective i know we have quarterfinals semifinals but how is that all working savon you do you know know? No, I don't know either. It's a totally fair perspective what he's saying. My perspective on wanting five weeks is just from the shallow perspective of just wanting to – I just feel like it's a better test on picking out who the best is. And I put a lot of weight on the Open.

I think that if you win the Open, it's no secret that you deserve $300,000 and deserve. I sound like I'm a Canadian. You deserve a $300,000 and you deserve some sort of title. It really is a incredible feat. And the reason why it's such an incredible feat is because Jason could take first place on workout one, two, three, and four, and then take 800th place, which would still be amazing on workout five because there's fucking God knows how many hundred thousand people in this class. And now all of a sudden not even be in the top 10.

And that's why I think the open is so amazing. It really puts a premium. Okay. So you guys have brought up like a dozen important topics here. I think maybe we'll work backwards. So not only is, is, is a leap of wind though.

Sorry, before you go, Brian Kalipa does win the one on what's best for affiliates. I have no opinion there. Like I fucking no clue. I defer to him 100%. I would just say he's right. Wow.

I like Jason's comment, by the way. I remember him complaining a good bit when Dave wouldn't, wouldn't let him compete with a team of three. What a bitch. Who said that? Where are you seeing that? Jason Watkins.

I know what he's talking about. What he's talking about is at the games one year, we had Miranda get hurt, and we were trying to finish out all the events with less people on the team. And, I mean, he's making a joke, but, yes I was complaining. Cause I wanted to actually compete with less people. Uh, but I don't, I don't know who he's saying. No,

no, no. He's, he's making a joke saying like, he's joking that I was being a bitch, meaning like we were trying to do the same amount of work with just less people. We,

we actually didn't finish last in a, in a, in a sled pull event with, with one last person. But anyways, I'm not bitter about it. Would you have beat? Sorry, Brian. Sorry, Brian. actually didn't finish last in a in a in a sled pull event with with one last person but anyways i'm not bitter about it would you have beat sorry brian sorry brian would you have beat rich team that year with just three people they had so many points i i think if they'd been allowed to finish they would have won anyway oh man i i'm not certain i'm not certain of that but

prior to her getting injured they were the best team that year we can say that and I feel very confident saying that I think what Tyler's saying I'm pretty sure it was racist because I'm Persian for sure you know Mexicans hate Persians

long history anyway I guess we'll start from the beginning I do agree with Jason You know Mexicans hate Persians. That's a long, long history. Anyway, I guess we'll start from the beginning. I do agree with Jason that the three weeks compared to five weeks is much more manageable. And I think just overall more fun for affiliates. It's easy to say, hey, guys, for the next three Fridays we're doing this or whatever you want to say. But five weeks, it gets to be long and you have to be like pretty bought in. And you know, the workouts tend to evolve where the first one or two is very accessible to everyone. And by the third one, there's a, there's something that

most people can't do, which is okay. But then when there's still two more weeks after that, and you've already had one, you can't do, it's a little bit of a letdown for a lot of people. Whereas in this case, and if we saw if the programming this year is anything like it was last year, the first two are super accessible. And the last week tested people in a different way where there's going to eventually be a higher barrier to entry. But that was the last week. So it was seemingly more appropriate. Okay. I just want to start by saying something about the open so here's my opinion on the open i think the open is if i'm not mistaken the largest physical uh the largest sporting event

in the world in terms of total participants as a singular thing uh at its peak i think it had what 400 000 maybe savannah i could be wrong or brian yes i think like 462 or something yeah and the one of the things that's interesting about the open um is that it wants to cast a wide net and i'm curious what's going to happen with this year with hq because they want to make it inclusive because you want to get as many people to sign up as possible so normally the first workout's like for example seven minutes of burpees which oddly enough when that workout first came out i thought it was stupid. Then I did it a bunch of times because I want to try and set the best score. A bunch of times?

Oh, I probably did it 10 times. Anyways, but I think they're going to try and cast a wide net and make it inclusive, but then they also want to test for the fittest. And so it is interesting, this dynamic they have where they need to incorporate some complexity, some challenging movements to really get the right people to move on to the next stage, right? Not just these, you know, typically, for example, if it was a seven minutes of burpees, that's going to cater towards one type of athlete versus heavier or more complex type workouts. But those like handstand walking and things like that, they're not very fun necessarily or inclusive in the gyms. So it becomes difficult to run these as an affiliate or as a, as a gym. So I'm curious, they're not very fun necessarily or inclusive in the gyms. So it becomes difficult to run these as an affiliate or as a, uh, as a gym. So I'm curious what they're going to do this

year and how they're going to balance complexity and challenging with inclusiveness. Cause that's ultimately what they're trying to do. Yeah. And this is, um, kind of where I was thinking of starting was the fact that, uh, what Savan mentioned is you could do great on several workouts. And if one workout is a bust for you relative to the rest, that it used to be a lot more detrimental. Now it doesn't really matter so much because of the quarter, the way the quarter finals is structured, where if you're actually a contender to make it to the semifinals, even you're going to get through the open just fine and then the quarterfinals is where you can't really afford to have that kind of a mistake especially depending what continent you're competing in um but susan i think to help out maybe everyone we could pull up the uh schedule

from the the last i think it was the hopper the last hopper episode article uh email that cross what is this hopper thing i keep hearing about what is that like i know it's a name for a new publication that they have and at the very bottom of this one there's something that says 2022 crossfit game season schedule and it's actually laid out pretty like in a very simple basic with no extra information there wait so the hopper is the the crossfit games new it's like a newsletter it's it's there they're kind of like in-house morning chalk up sure they don't send it out every day editor huh yeah they send it out infrequently and and as far as i don't know if there's any incons like

consistency like you're definitely going to get one every two weeks every month i don't know anything like that but here's a very like it's very simply laid out you see the open lasts for three weeks and then what i really think for the you know the people who are actually competing in the sport to try to advance throughout the season is that the quarterfinals is is an extension of the open because it happens two weeks after and therefore it's still five weeks to qualify for the semifinals which is the equivalent of regionals from the old model. However, you see that if we go back up there to the quarterfinals. And that's online, Brian? So the quarterfinals are going to be online as well? Quarterfinals will be online. And there's three, you know, there's kind of three different groups

in that stage of the season, but each of those groups will have a series of tests over one weekend. So there's not a specified number last year. I think there were five for the individuals, maybe also for the teams, maybe actually for all three divisions. I think there were five. So that's kind of what the expectation is. You do three weeks of testing to get to the quarterfinals.

And then you have one weekend of testing. And that's where like, you know, you really, that's the test that the competitors in crossfit are like they can't mess that one up and what were the dates for the open let me just see real quick one more time uh okay feb 24th february 24th to march 14th and then basically you take you know a week or two uh of a, I mean, prepare for quarterfinals,

which I imagine if you're at the top of the sport, you're not really gonna have to worry about the quarterfinals. But if you're trying to just on the fringe, you're probably tripping, right? This is a really interesting model because, you know, previously when I was really competing a lot, you had the open, then you had regionals, then you had the games, then you had Team USA or depending on if you got invited to the invitational. And when that season is pretty long, you know, you got to kind of be on your game for a long time. And so athletes right now, I imagine, are just starting to really get ramping up.

Like if you're at the highest level, you're looking at the open in terms of, you know, like for me, I would look at it in terms of what type of workouts can actually be done on a worldwide scale in the brick and mortar. With a super limited equipment list that they've already announced. Oh, they have? Yeah. So you start tailoring some of the stuff towards that. Then you say, okay, well, quarterfinals are still online. So you know that I'm not going to be swimming, for example. Or running.

Or running, really. And so then you start preparing for the semifinals, which can be a little bit more broad. And then ultimately when you start preparing for the games, that's when you really start doing significant amounts of work on odd object, you know, long, slow distance type stuff, because those aren't really going to come up. I don't think in the open, like, I mean, the most open workouts can be sub 20 minutes for sure. Quarterfinals probably will too. Semifinals will probably have one longer event, but for the most part, sub 20. And then the games is really where you're gonna get a little bit longer events i think ryan what is the longest open um workout in the history of the open do you know well

well sometimes the clock hasn't mattered not seven okay in that case there's people who've done workouts for well over an hour but in terms of a fixed time domain, the 20 minute AMRAP is kind of the longest that they'd, that they'd set. Um, and honestly, hopefully in those, even in those workouts that are for time, they're not meant to be taking more than 20 minutes. Okay. Yeah. And Savan, just like from a gym owner perspective, you know, we, we, this year at NC fit, we also have the NC fit collective, which we put out programs to gyms all over the world. And we had to do a really deep dive into do we want to have the open workout as the main workout and have an optional workout? Or do we want to have the main workout be whatever we program and have the open workout be optional?

And this is probably the last year that we'll have in one of our of our tracks, the, the open workout is the main workout. And then we're going to provide another option because it is challenging as a gym owner to not know what's coming up on a Friday and just get the workout on a Thursday night and have to go out there and create a session plan for our coaches, make sure they're prepared to do it and then execute it. But also what's really difficult is it's outside of our control with the workouts going to be. So you're going to have to have multiple heats. If it's long, you know, how does that work? One year, for example, we had overhead walking lunges.

It's very difficult to do in the confines of a brick and mortar. These are the concerns, I think, from a gym owner. So I'm curious how they approach it this year, especially without Dave being on board and the changes that have been happening at HQ. Jason, is that, is that really, sorry, I'm going to push here a little bit. So those are the reasons there's no other reasons. There's no,

like, I'm like, Hey, you want a distance from CrossFit or, Hey, you guys are going to start your own cross, um, uh,

fittest competition. Really? It's the fact that it just comes out with too short of notice. Yeah. You're saying if they would give it in advance that you would probably keep it. Well, I like the idea, you know, we've been doing these workouts at our gym for a decade, right? And I think it's, it's great. And it's good community engagement and whatnot, but ultimately

our community has shifted over the years. So at one point, I mean, man, we'd have Friday night lights. I'd be in there doing the workouts. It was, it was wild. Right. But it also caused a lot of disruption in the gym, especially for athletes that really have no interest in competing. It caused a lot of like, what's going on? What's going on? Right? Because maybe they weren't aware of the games. And so what's challenging about the Open from a gym owner perspective is that it's outside of our control in terms of workouts.

Now, granted, it's only three weeks instead of five, which is a big deal, makes a big difference. in terms of workouts. Now, granted, it's only three weeks instead of five, which is a big deal, makes a big difference, but it is difficult to try and program your week out and then have this outlier that you have no control over. And so they could hypothetically program something like wall walks, handstand walks, and overhead lunges, things that really don't accommodate the majority of the people in your class or GHC whatever and they can't do gh because they already give out the equipment list and we would be at the the kind of like the mercy mercy of whatever that is so that is a major factor i would say so it's not political it's not ego is what you're saying that's where i'm digging at it's not like i'm done with this bullshit it's all

practical because you do like the open you do want it would be cool to participate but it's just it's not it's not practical to the from a business perspective or for your members yeah and it's also not as much of an interest for our athletes as it used to be so for example we used to have you don't think that's bias on your part because your your interest is waning is maybe there so you're projecting it onto them or 100 yes absolutely the the owner the head coach have to be bought in as well right i like it instead of being like no no no you're like yeah well yeah 100 like like when the head coach is really bought in or when i'm really bought in right of course the athlete's gonna get excited it's like if you do anything um yeah the more excitement they feel from you like if you're doing nutrition challenge

they're gonna jump in but if you're talking about nutrition challenge but you're not actually doing it or really living it or whatever of course they're not going to be excited about it. And that's ultimately what we're seeing. Um, in addition, you have any games athletes in the NC fit, um, uh, collective inside of those gyms that you have in your California gym specifically, you have any game, um, you know, people aspirational games athletes. We have a handful. Yeah, absolutely. But, but the, but the thing is, uh, Savan, I think what's also important to note is like our members' interests have shifted, right? A lot of them joined us 10 years ago when they were 25. Now they're 35. They have kids. They might not look at the Open the same way. They like doing the workout, but it's also important to note that if you're not a technical affiliate,

that you have to then film all these if you actually want to upload your scores. And so there is a factor there, right? I think they've actually made a new amendment this year so that that's not the case. Really? You can do the workout anywhere in the presence of someone who's done the online judges course for this season, and that's as good as doing it at an affiliate with or without a video. Well, then there you go. People are going to hate that, but you know what?

My immediate thought is I love that. Well, one of the main reasons, you know, it's, I do think it's positive. I think one of the main reasons I did that is because there are still parts of the world where gyms are closed. And so if you have forced to do it in your garage or, or somewhere else that they needed to, you know, like you might be a member of an affiliate, but not have access to that affiliate still. So you need a place to do it. Hey, Lauren, I agree. Like good coaching can adjust just fine. I totally get that.

Good coaching, a good coach can adjust a workout just fine. Totally agree with you. At some point though, you start saying to yourself, as a business owner, I want to be in control of as many factors as I possibly can with my business. And this is one that's outside of my control. I'm choosing to pull can with my business. And this is one that's outside of my control and I'm choosing to pull it into my business. At some point, maybe you decide you don't want to do that anymore. But if it's a great community engagement, you have Friday night lights,

your members love it, keep doing you. All I'm saying is that for us, we take that in consideration. That's it. And yes, as I said before, we are having it as the main workout for our Metcon program, our x program so i'm still on the train i'm just saying we're having good conversations about how long we're going to be on it for that's it and you have a nice back and a nice baby i have a nice back yeah oh there's a picture of her back holding with a baby's face like peeking up over it it was oh that was savannah talking about your back and your baby not me yes yes i am the back and baby talker okay brian i'm liking it i'm digging it we're starting to get a hold of it brian um to address jason's question is it our fault like

i'm so tired of hearing people um say what jason said but i'm in the same boat like this is so hard to follow it are we just being babies or is it hard to follow? Cause, cause I agree with Jason, but like, I want to take some ownership for it. Like, come on, really? It's just an open quarterfinal semifinals. How hard is that to follow? No, the, the skeleton of the season is not, I don't think it's that hard to follow. And I actually really like the way that it's designed and laid out.

And I think that CrossFit's making a lot of choices, decisions, and actions this year that are actually making the stuff that Jason's talking about as being potentially frustrating easier for anyone who wants to do the open. Putting the equipment list out, having it be so simple as it is. I mean, they've said you need wall space. They specifically did not say that you need any space to traverse distances. So there is no 25 feet of space you need wall space. They have, they specifically did not say that you need any space to traverse distances. So there is no 25 feet of space you need. And what I see here is that the things that are on the open list is also in a way communicating to people who are serious about the sport and the season, what's on the quarterfinal list. So the stuff that's missing from there, like the rings are only listed for the adaptive division for the open. Presumably you can assume those will be in play for this quarterfinals for the individuals. Same with

ropes, GHDs, feet of space that you need to traverse, wall balls, rowing, those types of things that are all missing from the open. And those things that are missing are all of the things that are going to be really, really difficult logistically if you don't have access to a gym, which we already said is the case for some people around the world. So that's fairly accessible in terms of equipment. And then, you know, the thing is like we've been, this will be my ninth open and I've, you know, coached many, many years of people through the open and prepared for it. And I think that we're like more prepared than ever to program up to and through the Open this year, especially because it's only three weeks.

And we've been kind of planning that for months leading into it based on the training cycles that we're in and the kind of layout that we have. We're in like a two-week cycle for our strength stuff right now that ends with gymnastics and a conditioning day specifically that we're going to kind of omit for those weeks during the open and allow for people who want to rest on Thursday to rest on Thursday. And if people who don't, they'll have a very low intensity, probably focusing on the machines type workout that we know we won't be getting on Friday. Hey, Siobhan, back to your point. Are we being babies? I think, yeah. Yes, we are. I think that, that it is relatively easy when you look at it, the way they have it. Hey, we're going to do an open, which is going to be three weeks of this. Then we're going to go to quarterfinals that are online. Then you have semifinals that are in person and then you have the games. However, I think the reason why some of us kind of make it

seem like it's a bigger deal than it is, is because of the back and forth and our preconceived biases and all this thing that's gotten us to this point right now. If you just into the picture someone say hey what's the sport of fitness or crossfit games how does the process work big well it starts here it goes here it does this big okay cool but if you were back in the day where it was just the games remember that savon yeah then anyone show up you're saying it's changed so much that like we can't figure out where we're going to land the people that's right then it goes to sectionals then from sectionals it goes to regionals and and all i'm saying is that i i do think at this point they've done a really good job uh solidifying it but i think the reason why we make it a bigger deal than it probably needs to be is because of

just all the changes the last couple years so you know and granted there's been a lot of factors that are outside the game's control that have led to that, like COVID and all kinds of challenges. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I could take some ownership and say that the season doesn't seem as difficult as before. But I think the reason why I've gone back and forth is because, for example, they just released another sanctional and they just kind of solidified this whole structure. Semi-final. That's to your point. Yeah, that is to your point. All I'm saying is that I come with some biases because I've been around the industry for so long that I think if someone new came in and looked at this, he'd be like, okay, that makes sense.

It would be nice. They need to kind of put out a – and maybe they do and I just haven't seen it, but just a weekly letter. Just completely ignoring the teams, completely ignoring the teams completely ignoring the um age groups and the kids and all that and just every week or have someone who's available to go on all the podcasts who just tells you what's going on they need a really really solid like one page release every week of just what's going on in first place is here for men and women just just somewhere that you can latch on to you know like like the UFC, there's the top 15 in every category, but they only focus on the top three.

And the athletes get upset, but who cares? Like, this is for the fans. Like, you know. Mercedes-Benz has to have the airbag 10 years before the Kia has it. I mean, it just is that way. This is going to be a really important year for the games, in my opinion. Yes, yes. And I'll tell you why. I think you'd probably agree. It just is that way. This is going to be a really important year for the games, in my opinion, because yes, yes.

And I'll tell you why I think you'd probably agree. So there's a lot of people that are currently in CrossFit as affiliates who've been in for at least three, five, seven, 10 years, a lot of them. And these people were bought into the culture, the community. But the challenge is that CrossFit's a business and they were sold and there's certain now changes that are going to occur. But a lot of these affiliate owners were bought into Dave and the way he did the open, the way he did things, which is fine. And that was his way. And people knew exactly what they were going to get. And I think a lot of affiliate owners enjoyed that. But this year is going to be really big because I don't know

how many affiliate owners are going to feel as bought in to the open and the process as they did two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago even. And so I'm wondering, based on what we're talking about, and I know there's gym owners on this YouTube right now, like CrossFit Anna. I totally get it. For their gym, dude, this is a great community engager. It brings people to the gym. They fire people up.

They bring their friends in. Hell yeah. But it stems from the head coach or the owner so how many of these head coaches and owners feel like there's been a lot of changes in crossfit maybe they're not in alignment with the dave being removed i'm not i don't have an opinion i'm just saying and they're not going to get as you have an opinion you we just haven't we just haven't dug it out yet of course i have an opinion but they don't but they don't feel as bought in to where crossfit's going or the open and so if they're not as bought in they're not going to encourage their members as much to pay the 20 bucks or whatever it is so i'm wondering what the open

numbers are going to look like uh this year i think it's gonna be a really pivotal i hear they're good i hear they're good i hear they're very good compared to the last two years well you're not going to hear if they're bad i don't i don't know i know. I mean, good point. Good point. We'll see. I'm hearing from people who probably don't want it to be good, that it's very good that they're doing an amazing job. I went over to the games Instagram today too. And I, and it looks like they're working hard. Sorry. Go ahead, Brian. No. And, and I mean, we'll see, there's still two weeks,

still the open starts and a lot of people sign up right towards the end or even the first weekend after the first workouts announced. So I don't like to get too ahead of myself in terms of that stuff for now. But I think that, you know, Jason's right. Whatever community you're a part of, if the leader of the community is not about the CrossFit Open this season, then most of the community is not going to be either. And if they are, then they'll get a lot of buy-in. Most of the community is not going to be either. And if they are, then they'll get a lot of buy-in.

And I would encourage anyone who doesn't sign up for the open to take that $20 and add another $10 to it and go over to Life as Rx and purchase a shirt. And that money, that money that you spend on the CEO shirt, it will not go to my favorite charity. It will not go to a local charity. It will not go to a local charity. It will not go to a charity of your choice. It will go into my hands, the money I make into my pocket. And I will spend it like, I will spend it at people who provide services to my family. Like the guy who teaches my kid jujitsu, the people at the farmer's market who pick the watermelons and bring them in the car. That's how I will spend your money. So you can have that nice shirt and then I will take your money and enhance my life with it and then spread and spend it at local businesses in the car. That's how I will spend your money. So you can have that nice shirt and then I will take your money

and enhance my life with it and then spread and spend it at local businesses in my area. If you don't use, if you don't join though, even if you join the open, you got an extra 30 bucks. Please buy the shirt.

Thanks. Can you get me a coffee with that money? If you drive down here with your gas money, hell yeah. Oh man, I'm going to lose money on that one because I'm going to drive over the hill.

I know. Brian, do we have any idea what the workouts are for the Open? I mean, I saw the equipment list, but is there any leaks or hints? Do we go to Justin Berg's Instagram account? Where do we get the hints and shit this year? I have no idea. But I would guess that's not the place. I don't know if they'll do any kind of hints or anything like that.

The workouts seemingly have been known for the inner circle there since end of December, early January. I think that the open workouts at the very least were programmed by Dave. And I expect that they will be both fun and challenging, but I don't know anything else. They are, they are the workouts Dave made. I think so. Okay. I mean, he was an employee for CrossFit at the time that he designed them. Do they, do they own the rights to that work? I mean, not to get all businessy, I'm just curious, like by the way, fitness junkies asking a question, Jason, from a business standpoint, do you feel it's ideal to not run a Friday Night Lights if you're coaching another business? Here's my opinion on the open.

I think that if you, the owner, or the head coach are bought in and you're fired up on the open, dude, have Friday Night Lights. Bring in the Coors Light afterwards. Enjoy the experience, right? Embody that culture. Go for it, right? At 5 p.m., it's popping off, right? We're going to cone off the area and we're going to get after it. But if you're not really bought in, then don't try and be something that you're not. You know, if you're not even signed up for the open and you're going to try and do Friday night lights

and be like, wah, wah, wah. Instead, just don't be about it, right? So that would be my recommendation. That goes for anything you're doing in your business. If you're really bought in and it's really a part of your vision, your mission, your culture, go for it all in. If you're kind of like one foot in tiptoeing around it, then, then don't go all in. For example, at our gym, we're not all in. So we're not going to do a formal Friday night lights. We're going to have a special open gym time. If you want to come, we're going to program it as the workout of the day, just like any other workout of the day. And that's the way we're going to do it but if we were all bought in fired up like we were five seven eight years ago dude of course we're having friday night lights let's go

suza what are you guys doing matt at crossfit livermore are you guys um are you guys doing the you know to jason's point i've signed up for every single year i I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it this year. I'm just super busy and I'm the type of person that like if I can't at least put my best foot forward with it, then it just frustrates me when everybody else crushes my scores in the gym. So, I mean, we'll have it. We have a couple of members that are excited about it. But it's definitely not what it was, you know, previous to the pandemic response. And also, too, I would like to just kudos Jason on that point that five weeks in a row putting on events every single week.

Fuck you guys. So I'm glad it is three weeks. But yeah, that's my take on it. So not not as enthusiastic, but we'll definitely have it because we have some members that are into it. There was this guy in here who like Devesh or something from india who like he he was my opinion he's like in my camp he's like yeah let's make it five weeks and then and then he says disclaimer i never actually did all five and that's how kind i am yeah yeah five weeks i love that and then like put that comment by wesley fernandez up i peter how yeah oh yeah that's a good one imagine justin burke posts a hint and the picture is up dave

you'd probably be fired the next week oh that would be good anyway um seven i do have something that i thought might be interesting to you given how highly you've always ranked the open yes procedure of the open so Jason's right the last several years have been very inconsistent in part due to changes that were self-imposed by CrossFit and in part due to the nature of the way that things happened and unfolded around the world but this year the season is very similar in layout to last year. And so we can kind of have a direct comparison. And last year, of the 40 athletes who made the games for the men and the women, 42% of the men also made the top 40 in the Open. And 60% of the women also made the top 40 in the Open, which means half of the games competitors were also in the top 40 in the open six months before in a very limited scale done for workout test that was

done at their gyms and online with a lot less equipment and a lot less variability in the testing half. Yeah. And I don't know if it's true. I don't know if I believe these games athletes. I don't know what they're saying. That's not because I don't know if it's true. I don't know if I believe these games athletes. I don't know what they're saying. That's not because I don't, I think they're lying.

I think that they themselves don't know, but are they going their hardest? Like there are people are always like, Oh, I'm not peaking for the open. I didn't go my hardest. I just did it once. Like,

I don't know what they're saying just to relieve pressure on themselves. And I ain't hating on that. I don't blame them at all. Zero judgment. One more, one more set for you. Yep. Please.

I think they're trying fairly hard, but I don't think they're in like a peak condition uh that they would be for a semi-finals or a games you know especially the athletes that are making top 10 top 20 at the games anyway the for the games athletes last year for the men averaged 83rd worldwide in the open and 61st for the women 83rd and 61st it's pretty good yeah that's awesome hey brian how many how many athletes go from the open to the quarterfinals 10 by continent so it's a it's like a big cut obviously but um i made the quarterfinals last year and i'm not competitive in any regard or manner i've just been doing it a while and then from from the, so there were like 8,000 or 9,000 men in North America who made the quarterfinals. And of those 8,000, let's just say, uh, 4,500 participated in the quarterfinals and 120 advanced to semifinals. So it's another very drastic cut.

Yeah. So when you, when you think about it from an athlete perspective, I mean, I was always trying to go out there and personally I wanted to win the open and I wanted to win the open and I placed well in the open for a lot of years because I was trying to, uh, well, number one is I wanted to kind of like establish this lack of their term, like establish dominance through the open, right? Make people nervous, like, oh shit, this guy's out there putting up top scores. So the way I would approach it, and I'm just sharing this just for me, I would do the workout on Friday with our crew and I'd post my scores immediately. I wouldn't hold on to them. I wouldn't belabor it. I would put it up. I would do it one and done to show that like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to do this workout. I'm going to immediately put my score up. No waffling, no redoing, no nothing. Just let's go. And that for me was more of a mental thing to tell the

other athletes like, Hey, I'm prepared. I'm ready, but I was not in like peak shape for open. I was in peak open shape. And then you start shifting your, your, your mindset and your workouts towards peak regional shape. And then you start shifting to peak game shape. The shape you're in at the game is a lot different than the shape you're in at the open over those next couple of months you shift your training a lot and i imagine a lot of these athletes will be doing the same thing and to um jason's point um carla v we have a fucking blast at kinesis uh box and yeah it's kyle casper bowers one great dude amazing guy too yeah yeah amazing games competitor um and so helpful to everyone on all levels respects all crossfitters from all fucking levels of participation and in three he he's on the affiliate jock that guy's

like he's like some sort of he works for crossfit i mean so but yeah if i went to that gym and i didn't even want to do the open i'd probably get sucked up and do it and do it because that guy is such a great cheerleader and such a great ambassador of CrossFit. Yeah. Do you follow him on, do you follow him on Instagram, Savan? I probably do,

but I don't scroll. The other thing about him is he's, the other thing that I really respect about Kyle is he's very confident in, in expressing his opinions and his thoughts about things. And he doesn't, he doesn't do it like in an empty manner. He has solid ground to stand things and he doesn't uh he doesn't do it like uh in an empty manner he has solid ground to stand on and he's prepared i think to have a conversation about those things so i think he's just a high integrity guy all around yeah we had him on the podcast

great guest very smart not a pussy yeah but he's old school he's from jason's era he's from jason's era no yeah yeah yeah yeah uh he um when you used to when you used to win the games for a box of Jason's era. He's from Jason's era. No? Yeah. Yeah. When you used to win the games for a box of crackers. Yes, Jason. Dude, when you used to win the games for a pair of do-win-oli shoes. That's what it was. Slightly used. Slightly used.

Slightly used. The FGL, is that the functional? No. What's the FGL? Florida Grid League? Florida Grid? I know that grid doesn't really exist hardly anywhere else anywhere, but there still is the Florida Grid League going on,

so I'm not sure if that's what they're referring to. I don't know what's going to happen. This year is going to be interesting. There will be fun numbers to look at. I do think more people will register this year. I do think. Than last year? Yeah.

Oh yeah. I don't know how it could not be. Well, I mean, I definitely think that there'll be more people, but I definitely think you have to take into consideration OG affiliates. Like if you're an OG affiliate owner, one of the challenges you're running into is that you're so connected to CrossFit. I mean, Siobhan, you've seen this left and right, right? Where the owner feels like they actually are a piece of CrossFit. The challenge is that CrossFit's a brand, it's a methodology, it's a business, it's all these different things, but it changed their life. It saved their life. They lost 100

pounds. So what happens is they get this deep connection with this thing that they don't own, have any rights to, and frankly, it's a for-profit business. So when that for-profit business starts making decisions, they start feeling like it's impacting them personally, which is very difficult, which is why you saw a lot of people be so frustrated about Dave. So I'm wondering how many of those OG affiliates that used to be the main drivers of getting new people in the open. I want, I really am curious how many of them are going to do it this year. of getting new people in the open, I really am curious how many of them are going to do it this year.

Right. Right. I mean, from the stuff I've been seeing, a majority of the gyms that have hundreds of people sign up are already on their way towards that again. Okay. Yeah. Seven.

You feel good about the open conversation? I feel great about it. I feel great. I'm excited. I'm you want to pick a weight you want to pick who's going to win the open this year you know actually i'm preparing an article to write about that because i have last year i wrote an article that was called the open elite and it it highlighted five athletes who'd met a certain criteria in every open workout for, I think, five consecutive years. And there was only one guy and four women who met the criteria. And there were some that barely missed it. Like Rich, Rich missed it by like two seconds on one workout. Kristen Holden missed it by like three pounds on a workout, but it was very high standard that I set for like,

you know, five years worth of open workouts. But this year, you know, there's, first of all, like last year, there's actual prize money for winning the open. Now this year, you know, there's, first of all, like last year, there's actual prize money for winning the open. Now it's only $15,000, but for a lot of athletes, $15,000 is pretty, yeah, is, is, is pretty significant. And I'm a three bedroom home in Baltimore. And I'm sure that, you know, in, in some athletes cases, there's also some incentives built into some of their contracts where if you also win the open or whatever that you might get a little bonus money. So some people will definitely be motivated for that. And I'm investigating right now to try to identify the people who I think are most likely to.

I don't necessarily want to give them away now, but I think that there's a high probability. I will. And anyway, I think that there's a high probability that the winner of the Open this year for the men comes from Canada and for the women comes from Australia. Oh, Tia and Vellner. I didn't say any names and Vellner would probably be like third on the list of Canadian men I think might win the Open. Hey Brian, did Tia end up, did she end up competing i don't i haven't been tracking well enough did she end up making the i know that she supported the team that made it to the olympics for australia for bobsled i understand that she was she was on that however

the driver gets to decide who they bring as like this right so she was she was not selected for to actually compete at the olympics so she worked and qualified their team for the olympics um but she was not selected and that's apparently not that uncommon in that sport because you you know only get the one team or whatever wait so she i thought that okay this is kind of that's kind of not cool right so she she helped this woman the driver driver, make the Olympics. And then that team qualified, but yet they didn't bring the team on to the actual Olympics. I know that there's a detailed explanation of this in a Morning Chalk Up article.

But I'm not sure it's that mean. So I don't exactly know the details of it but she i think that her that she did what she needed to do to help the australian team qualify and ultimately wasn't selected for the team oh all right i gotta go check it out but this is i mean this is this has happened in other sports too you know in swimming sometimes whatever the relay team qualifies and then they end up selecting a different personal alternate or whatever. So I don't think it's totally unprecedented, but for us who would think obviously it'd be incredibly cool to have the five-time game champ also be an Olympic competitor in a summer and a winter Olympics. Yeah. That's, it's a little bit of a blow. I love the way Liz spells her name.

Samuel. That's how, that's how I think of it when I say it, Samuel. Brian, do you ever get shit? People will – do you ever get shit for working at the morning chalk up or get shit for coming on the show from outside people? I want to be super-duper clear. I love it that you work at the morning chalk up. I love it that you do other podcasts. I mean – and I've been very vocal about this. It just adds integrity or depth to, not integrity.

It adds depth and perspective to what you bring to this show. I want you to go to all, even though I'm disgusted that Matt O'Keefe got you for Wadapalooza to do that, because I would rather have you be working with Jason and I. or Wadapalooza to do that because I would rather have you be working with Jason and I. The fact is that when you're done with something like that, you get information and perspective that then you can bring to further shows so that if we had you for that show, you wouldn't have it for these future shows. It's always a win for the Sebon podcast. But some people think that there's some sort of like... In the morning chalk up and the fun that I have with those people over there is just great content for me. I mean, it's great for my stand-up routine, my stand-up shit. So do you ever get – is there anyone in your life who takes it seriously?

Like, I cannot believe you go on the Seblon podcast. I cannot believe you work with those people at the morning chocolate. Do you get any of that? Yeah, both of those. Like, anonymously? Like, anyone close to you? Like, your dad? Is your dad like, oh, I cannot believe you you work it it's such a at the morning okay there's no there's no one that's like a media family or

anything that's that says anything like that they're just happy that i'm you know actually working and not the low life taking money from everyone else wait say that say oh gotcha gotcha so so you're you're you don't you like your girlfriend doesn't like, um, at night after you guys have, you know, hung out a little bit and you're laying in bed and you're smoking a cigarette, your girlfriend doesn't say to you, um, I really want you to stop going on the seven podcast because the way he talks about Daniel Brandon is so disrespectful to him. You know, knowing that close to you. Uh, no, but there are definitely people that are like, that have asked me and do ask me regularly, um, why I associate with the morning chalk up or why I associate with you. Um, and maybe some other questions also. And I, and I actually appreciate those questions because it gives me

an opportunity to self-reflect. And so I can ask like, yeah, why do I write for the morning chalk up? Why do I agree to go on sevens podcast? Why do I travel to these events? And so I, that's like an opportunity for me to check in and make sure that I guess like my compass is still pointing North and I'm not being distracted by a paycheck or by an agenda outside of what I originally started doing this stuff for, uh, which was that I saw, you know, something that I really gravitated towards and liked that I saw something that I really gravitated towards and liked that I thought had a lot of opportunity to continue to expand and grow. In particular, I've always said this, I would think that there's a lot more athletes working

really, really hard to get sometimes one opportunity. And if that opportunity comes for them, I feel like we should be prepared to highlight their success in that moment. And I don't think that that was always the case. And I think we're getting a lot better at it now. Who's getting better? The people who cover the sport. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do.

Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling

problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. This episode is brought to you by PC Optimum. If you like a curated playlist, why not try a curated grocery list? With Swap and Save, the new feature in the PC Optimum app, you'll get PC Optimum's best price for your grocery items.

Simply add products to your shopping list in the app, and it'll show you similar items at a lower cost. Add coffee to your list, then swap it for one that's cheaper. Craving chips? The app will suggest some on sale. To get started, just open the app. It's as easy as that. See the PC Optimum app for details.

Just in totality, all of us. Yeah, broadcasters, emcees, podcasters, fans. Am I under that umbrella? Just on the fringes. All right. Well, I'm my own umbrella i've always been good at it i must say humble as a humble monk who's just trying to minority as a humble monk who swears where did susan come from as a humble monk who's just trying to make it his way in this very

dangerous and aggressive world i've always been good at highlighting the athletes we even had fikowski calling yesterday well that's actually actually seven. That's actually exceedingly true. And I, and anyone who's watched your behind the scenes stuff over the years can see that while these documentaries are being made. And even before those are being made to highlight the one, two, three in the sport, like you talked about with the UFC, you were talking to more people and therefore communicating to the rest of the world, you were talking to more people and therefore communicating to the rest of the world, different personalities, different lifestyles, what it takes to get there, what it means to be there and all those other conversations that you had. And in fact,

it was your idea for the trolling the leaderboard segment and the CrossFit podcast in 2018 that encouraged me to reach out to you because what I saw there was finally someone who had a platform to talk about all the cool stories of the open apart from just the, the winner week to week, which was basically all across it was putting out at the time. And so I said, wow, this is a cool opportunity. But then you got really distracted and talked about like your mustache and stuff for 35 minutes. Unacceptable. Your beard looks really good right now. Savan, for those who are just listening and not watching, it's like the perfect length right now.

Before you had it a lot while ago is way too long. Then you didn't have it at all. Coming back. Yeah. Hey, Brian, just real quick, man.

I really appreciate. I'll just share this as like a, an athlete in the sport. I think it's really important that the athletes continue to get stories told about them more information, whether it's morning chalk up the Savant to get stories told about them, more information, whether it's Morning Chaka, the Savant podcast, or anything of the like, because these athletes need to continue to dive deeper with the audience so that there can be a deeper connection so that the sport can continue to grow. Without people like you and Savant, this is not just a fluff

piece. It's the truth. Without you guys putting out this message, the athletes wouldn't have as big of a microphone. They can only share so much. But then you might engage one of the people listening right now to go check out one of these athletes who then builds their following. And now it just does really good things for the sport overall. So I think we need to keep telling more stories about more athletes so that people could feel more, you know, bought in to what they're doing. To the person who is asking about semifinals, we have not gotten to the semifinals yet, but I think we will soon. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get to them. Let's get to them.

Hey, Matt Burns, shout out. Thanks, man. I thought that podcast was really good too. For anyone didn't listen to it, you know, shelf, selfless plug for the effort over everything podcast. We did a really good podcast on red lighting um so make sure you guys check that out red lighting or red lining uh well red lighting is from the tibon podcast red lining if you're i need a red light i need a red light oh wait what's it i'm looking at what's the name of your podcast effort over everything yeah effort over everything i'm looking we've done rebranding over the years we did amrap mentality to business fitness now it's effort over everything and the most recent

episode is called redlining should you be redlining it was inspired by a morning chalk up article and um i i enjoyed the conversation so yeah i just put a link to the podcast by the way down in the chat for anyone who wants to run over and check it out. Don't do it now, though. Don't click it now. Click it later. And you definitely should because I think it's something that a lot of people misunderstand and that there's a lot that can be learned about that concept and that approach to fitness. Yeah, do not ever redline. That's the Seva Matosian approach. Well, I think there's probably a better conversation around it than that and now people know where to go um okay semi so do we need to talk about

the quarterfinals why do we have just really quick why do we even need the quarterfinals why not just make it the the open more aggressive and just go straight to the uh semifinals i i actually like the the quarterfinals layout. Like I said, it doesn't take away from the timeframe in which we're advancing people through the season. It used to be five weeks of the Open. Now it's three weeks Open, one week off, one week quarterfinals. You still have that five-week time domain

where you have to be good enough to make it through. And I think that the things that are tested in quarterfinals, you can up the skill and you can up the really, really critical, important of competitive CrossFit, which is the ability to recover and repeat an intense effort multiple times in a short time domain. That was not tested in the open unless you're a crazy person like Jason and did seven minutes of burpees 10 times in one weekend. After that, I stopped repeating the workouts. But yeah, Brian, the quarterfinals, I think are really important because think about the drop-off, right?

So the open is supposed to cast this wide net. It's supposed to be for, you know, the moms and dads, all these people to feel like they're a part of a worldwide sporting event, which I think is great. The quarterfinal- You see what Jason says? Feel like you are.

You're not really. Okay, go on, Jason. You pay the 20 bucks. You're on the board with Jason. You're on the board, baby. And then, and then, you know, and then what happens is ultimately you say, okay, you know, Hey, that was nice. You know, like, you know, good claps, like good vibes, all good. And then we go to the quarterfinals and that's where people who are really taking the sport of fitness. I'd say everybody who goes to the quarterfinals is probably taking the CrossFit space seriously. If you're in the top 10%, you're probably, you have aspirations to compete in the sport of CrossFit. Whereas if you're in the bottom 90 or even the bottom 50, let's just say you're probably just doing it as a fun community event. You're enjoying it.

So I think the quarterfinals definitely play their part there because then the uh games team can can know their audience better right they no longer need to cater for the masses they can now start identifying what they should put out as a better test because then you have a live event coming up with the semifinals well and let me and let me give you an example and a little counterpoint to that because i think that there's the quarterfinals is such it's still a big broad group of people but what it allows for is some like I'm really serious about CrossFit but I don't have any aspirations to compete but I've been doing it long enough and smart enough I think that I was able to make it last year but one of the workouts started with 185 pound snatch that was rep one okay and I actually I've never snatched 185 during the quarterfinals last year. I actually

missed it behind me, but that was like, that was actually a good challenge for me. And it was an opportunity for me to get potentially a first thing in the quarterfinals instead of a first thing in the open. Cause I'm probably not going to get any firsts in the open anymore. And Lex, it's maybe a PR on a one rep max test or something like that. So there is a group of people who maybe even though they're not that competitive, they've been doing it long enough that they're really good and they're competent and they have good pacing and strategy and execution on these workouts and they can make it through and be tested in a different manner because I don't sign up for a lot of competitions. I don't go to any weekend long competitions really. So this might be the only time in the year that I get to do something like

that while at the same time CrossFit can more precisely identify the next field of athletes dude 185 that's how much did you weigh when you did probably 167 i don't know damn but i'll hit it this year if it shows up hell yeah you will have you hit it since have you tried it since i've hit 175 a dozen times and 180 once i've only tried 185 one time and I didn't one other day and I don't think I hit it, but I didn't hit it, but it's right there. And I did hit 165 like 10 times in a pretty intense Metcon the other day. So I think I'm on the right track. In a row or?

No, singles. It was 10 rounds, like an AMRAP. And it was one snatch at 165 starting day. But there were ring muscle-ups and strict toes to bar and other things in there that would detract from me my ability to hit that high of a percentage under fatigue so how's your shoulder health how's your shoulder health very good yeah you know that is part of the open that i i i miss but i don't miss at the same time like when you're in the gym and you got you know 100 people around you you're trying to go for a pr lift or when i was doing the open announcements, those were the most nerve wracking,

but also the most rewarding. I mean, dude, those ones were so nerve wracking because it's just you and another person. Um, but then, you know, Hey, get a little uncomfortable. So I hope you hit that one 85, Brian. Uh, okay. So, so we're, we're good with the corner finals and basically what my takeaway from your answer is is that the oh is what we're really starting to test there is recovery we got the open it think it's it lets more people compete then we go to the corner finals and then you don't get this rest between the weeks you got to do everything in a three-day period between the 24th and the 27th and we move to probably some heavier weights too, right?

Yeah. Heavier weights, higher skills, more complex combinations of movements. Um, and the one thing that is like unknown is if they'll mandate that you must do these two workouts on Friday, you must do these two on Saturday.

You must do this one on Sunday. Like, uh, I think they had that last year where the, um, I can't remember if they had that word mandate. Let's well, why not? No, no, no. That's you're creating, you're creating something in your head. Seven. You taught,

you taught me about this. I know. Hey, Savan, did you see that every single County by us removed the mask mandate except for Santa Clara County? No, but I saw, I saw LA is having the super bowl, but your kids still have to wear a mask. You are a fucking idiot if you're putting a mask on your kids still and they're doing the super bowl in la you're a you're an you're a monster monster it's crazy that's a whole another story

but yes the super bowl in fucking la no my favorite part so much it's a state of emergency in la right now yeah we're gonna have the super bowl there yeah i mean it doesn't matter what side of the politics you fall on that in itself is like wait hang on you have a state of emergency we have to wear a mask indoors yet you're at the same time gonna host the super bowl i just i it does i just don't get it hey dude it's a stadium that sits 70 000 people that they're gonna they've sold 101 000 tickets to so like there's they're gonna be i mean i've been to the super bowl before i wasn't i went to the one in dallas you're packed in there like fucking sardines dude and by the way all of these events are super spreader events all of them the crossfit games wadapalooza and the super bowl will be of epic proportions go there and get your

virus now oh man it's crazy all right let me ask you that by the way while we're off on this tangent i promise we won't go back here again will the games will the games allow people to compete this year with covid is there going to be this nonsense where you test positive and you can't compete are they just gonna like will they just is there going to be testing the games this year it's so unfair to the athletes i think they're gonna i think by then especially in minnesota i i would hope that they just like it's one of those like don't ask don't tell like just let it ride thing i think that's what ultimately is going to happen because what's going to happen is you're gonna don't ask don't

tell you're so 1990s jason i love you or what maybe that wasn't the right term that's old school motherfuckers that's perfect don't ask don't tell it's are you gay or do you have covid it's fine just don't tell us welcome to the crossfit games but if you don't test and you don't know right but yeah yeah yeah and you feel perfectly fine it could just it could create this this controversy so no i don't think they're gonna test but um hey eric says come on guys they're handing out n95s to everyone uh you know my favorite thing was is that the la mental disaster the la marriage you see this one savann the la mayor took a picture with someone and he got a bunch of heat because he's like trying to do the whole mass you know non-stop and uh and he said he was holding his breath when he was taking a picture

oh sorry hey that reminds me of like the um i'm sorry for all the mormons out there i love mormons but mormons do this thing called soaking they're not allowed to have sex so that they found a way if you just put the penis in the vagina and sit there and don't stroke it it's not sex it's just called soaking and it's legit and it gets you past some of the the biblical obstacles that would be having sex it's like that for everybody listening i am not anti-mask i'm not anti-vasc facts at all at all just logical just a little bit i just think that the fact that our county hasn't removed the mandate but every other county has is just is is really outrageous or the fact that you can hold your breath with a picture and it's all good um that's all politics by the way oh all politics that they let they don't give a shit about your constituents oh man are they covering their nose too otherwise i don't know

okay man i heard there's 400 million masks in the ocean already is do you think that's true can that be true the worst thing I've heard today. I know. That is painful, right? Eric says those N95s are going to end up as toilet paper for the homeless after the game. You cannot make this shit up. He held his breath. Okay.

So, Brian, have you heard anything about that in all honesty will they be testing or is that is that i don't know i don't know updating that policy okay it'd be nice on the same page as you i hope not yeah it'd be nice if they didn't i mean look all we had to hear all we had to hear was from justin kotler the other day he had two athletes who were competing at the games one of them felt very very sick and was unable to compete. The other one felt totally fine but failed the test and was unable to compete. Yeah. Should be up to the athletes. I mean, Jordan was out there with the fucking death flu, Michael Jordan.

And people make responsible decisions anyway. I mean, Ricky was really sick at Guadalupalooza, and they called it the day of the competition. You know what I heard? I heard that the reason why ricky got sick at wadapalooza is on his way to wadapalooza he went swimming in the water at madison and that's why he got sick let's go back to the summer time um hey uh uh real quick savannah matt is asking uh would you like to see grappling or wrestling the games?

We've definitely, Siobhan and I have talked about this. I actually think, Brian, we all spoke about this. I would like to see some form of combatives at one point in the games, but it probably won't happen. But I think if you're going to test for the fittest on earth, some level of would, would seem to be an appropriate measure, but then at that point you might, it might go down a whole different tangent, but I think if you're going to test for fitness on earth and not test any sort of physical combatives, I think there could be our argument for that.

I don't think that there should be at the games, but I do agree. I do think there's a place for it. And the Spartan guy's doing it. And, uh, the Spartan guys doing it. And I would like to see Jason go over there. I'd like to see Jason go over there and enter that by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason, if we got the role with you, Rodriguez, you're so fucking cool. Were you scared? Sorry, Brian, were you scared?

Just real quick. Were you scared? Would you be scared? So fucking terrified. I was scared for you. I was scared fucking terrified. I was scared for you. I was scared for you. I was scared for myself. Okay, good.

You're normal. Okay, good. That makes me feel better. Okay, go ahead, Brian. Sorry. Jason, if we asked you to do a max L-sit hold today, would you beat your time from the games back 10 years ago? No, dude. I held a minute that time.

from the games back 10 years ago? No, dude, I held a minute that time. I had been adding L-sit holds into my training for like the previous six months because I wanted to strengthen my hip flexors. And dude, there's no way, no way. Did you win that, Jason? I mean, you know. He did, he did.

And he was very clever. He took off his shoes and socks, which was no rule about competing without shoes at that time. So he had a little extra leeway before his heels hit the plate. He's not just all muscle. He's brain too. You know, yeah, all good, man.

That was an interesting event to win. I actually liked it, especially because I like the stuff that comes back around that Greg wrote about in the early 2000s. And even though I think it's absolutely insane that he thinks a three minute LSAT is possible. It was always a part of the core curriculum. Yeah. Clive,

Clive just said the craziest thing ever. You're crazy. He says this common sense should surely reach the States by the summer. I apologize, Clive. There is no common sense in the States. Okay. So,

so we go, we finished the quarterfinals and then we moved to the semifinals and we just so in the last chance qualifiers after the semifinals right we haven't even talked about that well it's technically a part of the semifinals but okay the semifinals is the part of the season that i think uh people are most uh maybe up in arms about right now because the news is the most recent and it's still the part of the season that i am most frustrated with from crossfit's perspective however i mean i have some understanding and empathy about why some of these things are the way they are but i think there's a better way okay and what's the deal with the semifinals is that the one that they've

released some of the workouts already or they've talked about with the workout so the the updated information sorry one more thing the semifinals is a live event. Wow. Is this the first, is this the first live event in the season? It's meant to be. Yes. And hopefully they'll all be live this year. But the semifinals,

as they're currently laid out, span four weeks. And then there's, I guess, a three week gap or something, two more weeks before the last chance qualifiers, which ends up, and Jason, I would really love to get your perspective on this as an athlete, it ends up that there's potentially 38 days between the first person and the last person qualifying for the games, with the last person having less time than that to prepare for the games.

So, you know, when regionals were going on, do you remember what the split was, Brian? Um, I mean, there was always like this idea that, so when regionals were going on, I don't know how the semifinals are going, but, um, when regionals were occurring, they would have like, let's just say like, uh, NorCal SoCal, then it would be like Midwest this, and it would be like over the span of, if I'm not mistaken, a month, three to four weeks. Is that, does that sound about right, Brian? Yeah. And it's basically the same format for semifinals now. And you know, I would say as an athlete, I wanted to go in the second week. That was the week that I wanted to go because I was able to watch the first week, be able to see how the athletes performed on the particular events, look at their times as a, as a idea, test it a little bit the

next week in the gym, but not so much that I'm just belaboring. You know, I had gone one time in week one, week two, and then one time week, like four or whatever, you have so long to dread on these workouts and to test them that you overthink them. And so I would like to go like week two, but I do think there's a disadvantage for the people that go, there's an advantage and disadvantage. If you go last, the advantage is you've seen all these weeks, you know, exactly what times are you've seen. The workouts aren't all the same. They're not all the same. Only some of them are. In regionals, they were always the same. Last year for semifinals, there was no uniform programming. And recently CrossFit announced that this year at semifinals,

two of the workouts will be the same at every semifinal. And the rest will be left up to the interpretation of the programmers within certain unspecified parameters that CrossFit is administering. Then I would have wanted to go in week one or week two then, because then you have more time to prepare. Let me say a couple things here uh just to help out here um brian are you implying this 30 will you explain that 38 day thing again i mean and then really drive it home so jason i think knows what you're talking about there and then

of those two one quick question of those two workouts that will be unified over the um all the semi-finals how many are there in total workouts? We don't know. Last year, one of the big controversies I thought around semifinals is that some of the semifinals, including the ones that were programmed by CrossFit Online, had, I think, six workouts, and some of the semifinals had seven workouts. And in my opinion, and I actually documented this with some data to back it up, six compared to seven workouts is significant in terms of it's still a relatively small sample size.

And it's not going to affect the first or second place person, but it will affect potentially the fourth and fifth place person. And are you advocating for seven workouts instead of six? I think at that point in the season, seven workouts over three days is very reasonable and expected from the caliber of athletes that we're trying to send to the games. Yeah, for sure. So 20% of the workouts are the same between every regional approximately. And the other way, semifinal,

sorry. Okay. So Jason, I think the concern Brian has with the semifinal schedule is the fact that how much rest people get. No, no, we can scroll back up there.

You can see the first week there are three semifinals. This one says it's TBD, but it's the one that's in Oceania. It's one of the European semifinals, and now it's going to be the Syndicate Crown in Tennessee that the people who run the MAC are going to be putting on. And so they'll have had their qualifier by May 22nd, and they'll know that they're going to the games. And then we can just even eliminate the last chance qualifier by May 22nd, and they'll know that they're going to the games. And then we can even eliminate the last chance qualifier. If you go down to week four, you see that there are also three semifinals, another one from North America, the other one from Europe, which means that in Europe you're either going week one or week four,

which is a huge, huge difference, and then the one in South America. And when are the games just really quick? July, what? August 3rd this year. Okay. So we can say from May 22nd to June 12th, which what is this 13 plus 12, 25 days between the first and last qualifiers from the semifinals. However, from each of those semifinals, there's going to be three men and three women who also advance to the last chance qualifier now just that and therefore that doesn't happen until june 29th ending on july 1st and so you have ultimately could have maybe jason finishes fifth at the north american semifinal in week one and i finished sixth one point behind him and barely miss it. And I make the last chance qualifier and I have to wait till June 29th to take my next shot to make it.

And because I was one point worse than him, but I ended up, I ended up being the best guy at the last chance qualifier and make it anyway. Now, while Jason's been preparing for the game since May 22nd, I don't get to start preparing for the games until July 2nd. And I've just done a competition. I'll have to have a little bit until July 2nd. And I've just done a competition. I'll have to have a little bit of recovery from that. And the game starts a month later. Yeah, I mean, I would just say, Brian, it pays to win, right? For sure.

I mean, if you don't want to be last chance qualifier and have to worry about that competition and get ready for the games a month later, then... And that's why I broke it down into two separate segments there. Because what do you do if, let's say, you know, we're both in Europe. Let me translate for people. Jason said, don't be a pussy and win. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I'm not even going to buy that argument because CrossFit has created this scenario and it's totally unnecessary. And I can talk about that in a second.

And how is that? What's the quick fix, Brian, to remove week four? Do all of the semifinals in three weeks? Is that what you're saying? I think it should be in two weeks. I think it should be the same programming. And I think that they should take all the people who didn't qualify. If they want to have a last chance qualifier and allow for the potential that they've already misdistributed the spots for the games based on regions, that there's the best people will outperform all the best, all the rest of the people on those workouts. And when you rank them on what used to be called the all-regional leaderboard,

then you just take your last chance qualifier from that thing. And over a two-week time period, the best people who won, to use Jason's word, will make it through. And at the most, they'll have a seven-day advantage to prepare for the games over the other half of the field. As a fan, I hate it. How am I supposed to follow an extra seven look at the semi-finals look at the semi-finals over four weeks and you want to smash it into two weeks i fucked athletes

i want let's worry about the fan well one of the big shit out to eight weeks one of the big problems with the current format is that it's really hard to follow because there's 45 different workouts going on but if there were only seven or six different workouts going on, that would simplify it all to begin with. You're right. You're right. You're right. Second of all, do it in two weeks and have them do all the same workout and then you don't have to worry about that. I agree. Yeah. And I already explained how you can space it out across time zones. So you have one from Oceania or Asia in week one, the other one in week two, you have the Africa paired with one from Europe. You have the other europe paired with south america and then you have one from north america on the east coast one from the west coast etc and it can line up so they're not really overlapping you can

have the scheduling of the competition be like it probably should be anyway which is on any given day the teams compete in a three-hour block in the morning and the individuals compete in a three-hour block in the evening relative to their own time zones. Hey, Siobhan, so I got to jump off because my daughter's doing a, giving a presentation here in about five minutes, but I just want to say, Brian, I appreciate the insights. I personally think when I look at it, yeah, is there a better way of doing it? Will it evolve in the future? Sure. Maybe. Yes. They probably didn't want all the events on the same weekend or two weekends, just in case. I mean, there's probably a variety of reasons why. I think as an athlete, you just take it and you say, hey, look, I'm in week four.

Like it is what it is. My preparation is going to be adjusted because of that. Or maybe I'm in week one. My preparation is a change because of that. And there's pros and cons to all of this. But ultimately, man, you got to take what's in your control and just go out there and go smash it. I guess that just would be my outlook as an athlete is that what weekend i go is outside my control what's

in my control is how i'm going to prepare for that particular weekend i'm going to smash that shit so i don't have to go to the last chance qualifier and go right into the games and make it happen so that's a little bit of positivity to end on uh but uh positivity hey always positivity hey make sure you get that ceo. So I get my cup of coffee, you know what I'm saying? And maybe a little bit of gas money to get me over the hill. Hey, if you come to the beach and you want to hang a Saturday or Sunday,

call me. Yeah. Hey Brian, it was great catching up with you. Uh, Susie, hope you're doing great. Everybody listening.

Hope you guys have a great day. Uh, Savan, I'll catch up with you in a little bit. You're the best Jason. Thank you, brother. See you guys.

Um, this is a good question, Brian. Can the athletes cherry pick which semifinal they go to? What's the process of which semifinal they go to? First of all, I completely agree with Jason's perspective on the athletes. That's exactly how

any athlete or coach combination should be approaching it, and they should not be the ones complaining or criticizing the season layout. They should just be reacting to it and preparing for it. That's what we have opportunities for people like us to have conversations like this, not because we want to say CrossFit's doing a bad job or that they could do a better job. We're just kind of seeking out, is this really the best way? And does it really make sense to have this much time pass at that point in the season for that caliber athlete?

We're just asking questions. As far as the seeding goes, it's a little bit uncertain because of the language that's used in the rule book. But there's last year, you know, I don't know how they're going to do it this year. Last year, they said that they were using their ranking from quarterfinals, their geographical location, and their responses from an athlete survey to see the athletes in North America and Europe. So they use some kind of combination of those things to do it. This year, I don't know. It doesn't say that in those specific terms in the rule book. It just sums it that says basically that they're going to do it in a fair way and distribute the athletes. I, again, think that this should just be eliminated as a topic of conversation by having a uniform method to do it.

And, you know, the other thing is someone asked, would they love to hear what CrossFit says about these things? Yeah, I'd love to know the conversations that go on and how they come up with these decisions, but I don't. And from my perspective over here, if you're going to take 60 men and 60 women in Europe, just see them one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and just go back and forth in a snake. You have two lists of athletes and then you just draw it out of a hat list. One, you guys are going to the lowlands list too. You're going to the strength and depth. That's your assignment. Get ready. You could do that with four in the, in the United States, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And then after they're seated based on their performance in quarterfinals, you just draw. And someone's like, well, what if you live in the West

Coast and you get drawn on the East Coast? So what? Get over there and do the competition. And part of the problem, part of the responsibility of CrossFit is, and we still haven't seen this come out, you have to make it worthwhile for the athletes who are at least in contention to win to make that trip over there. Semifinals is one of the biggest competitions of the year for the athletes, and there's not really any financial feedback, kickback from that, including the fact that even if you make the games, you're not guaranteed any money at the games.

It's, yeah, it's tough yeah it's it's tough it's it's it's weird it's it's there there someone is not going to be happy no matter how they do it first of all let's just say that maybe and of course there's the logistics of putting on the event 100 and we should talk about that too because the other thing that recently happened with regards to semifinals is that they announced the last two. And the Granite Games is going to be back this year in week three of semifinals in Minnesota. And we know that the team there has experience and capacity to put on a good event. And then they've announced that the Syndicate Crown is going to be happening in week one, and that it's basically going to be run and organized by the same group, which comes out of

12 flavors CrossFit in Maryland, uh, led by Wilson Park, who's recently done interviews with Tommy and Sean on talking to me fitness. He actually was on with us last night for the morning chalk up and we'll have a, an interview with him coming out next week. And they, um, they also run the mid Atlantic CrossFit challenge the next weekend, is also in tennessee i love the fact that they're doing in a place where they know they can host live competition and i respect the fact that given the limited time in which they had to make this this decision to you know find a new um semi-final host and the fact that there's not that much time between now and when the semi-final is going to run that they went with someone who has a lot of experience doing it

because it's not easy to put on these events who are you talking you're talking about wilson pack and his team yeah yeah um does do you know him yeah does he like me yeah it's all about me good good good remember he was uh in the background of our one of the things that man yes yes yes i will oh who's sorry my grinder dater date. This is totally self-serving. Who's in charge of the media over there? Would I contact that guy and be like, hey, can I send someone over there with an iPhone to do behind the scenes? Who do I talk to about that shit? I don't know who the director of media is.

Do I talk to Elaine over at DEI at CrossFit HQ? Where do I go to? I don't know. I'm not sure. All right. I'll send Wilson. I'll watch those interviews with – oh, maybe that's what I need to do. I need to invite him on the show and kiss his ass a little bit and see if I can get into that event.

It's a pretty cool name, Syndicate. What does that mean? Hey, I just Googled CrossFit Games Instagram. You're going to love this. Yeah not maybe you won't love this i just googled crossfit games instagram i use duck duck go and look who's look who comes up first the dave castro profile comes up when you google crossfit games instagram fascinating right fascinating not fascinating uh it says a lot uh okay there's nothing we can do about the semi-finals now other than like like there's no point complaining about it right there's no it's just like hey we can

give this feedback we can talk about what's what think. No, no. And I know maybe I get a little emotional whenever we're talking about it. But ultimately, the semifinals, there are eight of them that are being run by organizational bodies that have done this for a long time. And two, that I don't know necessarily who's running them. That's the one in Asia, which I've heard some conflicting things about, and the don't know necessarily who's running them. That's the one in Asia, which I've heard some conflicting things about, and the one in South America that's brand new.

But they're probably all going to be great events. Hopefully, they're all able to happen live. I think that every one of them that has to go online is an unfortunate circumstance. And I really hope that the decisions about where to have them, as we talked about on a previous show, isn't what ultimately forces some of them to be online. Yeah, I still think that there's an opportunity for CrossFit to make some decisions in the coming months that can enhance the overall quality and like reception from the community about these events. Those things would be doing everything they can to get them online, having a very easy, understandable way to communicate how they see the athletes, making sure that not all of the Canadians have to compete together. Those types of things would go a long way.

And then also, hopefully having some, it doesn't have to be a ton, but I think that it would be a miss if they don't increase the prize purse at semifinals at least by a little bit this year. If anyone who's running these events wants us to, the Savon podcast, to participate and blow it up, we will go out. I mean, we'll try to anyway. But if you want to work with us, feel free to reach out to me or Brian or Matt Souza, and we will do our best to get someone on the ground there and cover your event as best as possible throughout the weekend and make it even more accessible and more fun for the fans.

If you didn't see what we did at Wadapalooza, please check that out. If you don't want us there, that's fine, too. You can also be like, hey, stay the fuck away. No hard feelings. But I would love for anyone. Are you prepared to send someone to South Korea? I mean, I'm prepared to find someone. Yeah korea i mean i'm prepared to like find someone yes suza will go anywhere just fucking put them in i have a submarine the seven podcast

now owns a submarine a russian sub that we got on ebay and we will go uh anywhere no if any seriously we could and we'll cooperate with anyone to do that it's so fun it was so cool what it added to wadapalooza it's so so fun. And, of course, then we will invest more of our interest and time into interviewing those athletes who go there too. And only at a small cost to you for one bag of coffee. Brian, do we know what the two workouts are for the semifinals that will be consistent over all eight of them? What did they tell us about those workouts? Nothing. us about those workouts? Nothing, but in addition to the fact that they're programming two semifinals, this was actually in that same Hopper email that we were referencing earlier. Not two semifinals,

two semifinal workouts. Two semifinal workouts, excuse me. Yes. That they also are going to have some guidelines or parameters that the programmers must operate within. And I think this is important. There's two notable things that really jumped off the page. Well, there's more than two, but there's two that I'll talk about that jumped off the page last year that people were, and including me, were a little bit critical of. There were fallouts of the result that each semifinal had the opportunity to program for themselves. And so it didn't seem to be a really long or endurance type of event at the Granite Games where there were at every other semifinal. And there didn't seem to be.

Oh, and then at the West Coast Classic, there was a workout that involved a pretty hefty deficit-stricted 6-inch handstand push-up. I think I'm parallel. Which is fine. It's totally fine to test that at semifinals, but I think that that needs to be tested at every semifinal if it's going to be tested for the same reason. If you look back to 2013 or 2014, where in subsequent years,

Katrin Davidsdottir and Sam Briggs failed to advance from the regionals because of legless rope climbs, very high skill movement, and handstand walking. Not so high skill anymore, but it was back then. So if you're going to have a high skill movement, like a strict deficit, handstand pushup, a legless rope climb, a handstand walking obstacle course, a super high volume of ring muscle ups, then they need to be taught. That needs to be tested at every competition because, um, it, it is a limiter for certain athletes. because it is a limiter for certain athletes. Okay. Fair enough.

It just seems like time has – man, it just doesn't seem like – I hear you. You think – what was the movement? Parallel handstand pushups? Strict deficit parallel handstand pushups. So you're basically saying if that's going to be in one, it should be in all of them. Yeah. And then from there, it would get more difficult and it would be ring handstand pushups and you would feel the same about them. Yeah, for sure. If that's at one, it should be at all. And why don't they also say, hey, these are the two that you must have,

and maybe it will be those movements will be in all of those, Brian, yet to be seen. It could be, but then it still leaves that other one. And that's why the parameters that CrossFit imposes for the rest of the workouts, maybe they say, we're going to program two, you have to program four. Yes, that's what I'm thinking. They need to give a number of how many more there need to be. All of them need to have the same amount. Right, but all of this is unknown. And what hopefully is happening, because you have to keep in mind also that it's part of a season. It's part of a story. So if you have the open that's programmed by one person or one group,

and you have the quarterfinals that's programmed by the same person or the same group, and then you have the semifinals that's programmed by a random assortment of other people. And then you bring everyone back together and have the finals that's programmed by the same original person or group that it's something's missing there. That's why the sectionals didn't last past one year. That's why regionals came into existence is because they're like, we understand that even over the course of the entire season, not everything is going to be tested. And the athletes and coaches know that too. You have to be prepared for everything. And you have to understand that the thing you're most prepared for might not show up. The thing you're least prepared for might not show up. You don't know what you're going to get year to year.

That's what Dave was really good at. And he seemed to always be a step ahead of the game. Now we have this big question mark in the middle of the season where you might be like, man, this is perfect. I made it to the semifinals and I know at semifinals, they're going to test running in a long time domain because they weren't able to in quarterfinals and the open, but they're definitely going to have at least three events that have running in the game. So they have to test it here. And then suddenly you go to a semifinal and there's no running in it. And you're like, what the hell? But every other semifinal had a running in it. Why didn't mine have running in it? And it's like, well, you could use the same argument and say,

well, you got unlucky in that draw. But really, I would zoom out further and say, no, this is on the organizational team of the season. And that for that season, the test should be parallel. I know I'm partitioning these three for the sake of conversation. There's overlap for all of them. But what you are saying, what are the implications for these three groups of people? What are the implications for the athletes? What are the implications for the fans? And what is the implications for the judging? And I mentioned the judging because more and more I keep hearing

about that, about the super duduper importance of consistency in workouts and the argument that workouts should be the same and maybe there should only be 50 workouts that CrossFit ever chooses from, etc., so that you can get judges who become very, very qualified and practiced at judging these workouts. So let's start with this problem that you're suggesting. What are the implications for the athletes? Is there any chance we're not getting the best people? No, right? We're still getting the best. So for the athletes, I would say they

have to adapt Jason's mentality. I'm going to get sorted into one of these semifinals by whatever means CrossFit decides. And some of the programs, then some of the program is going to be left up to the organizers of that program. And I just have to be ready for it, whatever it is. That's all the athletes should be thinking about. The implications, if you want to take a more wide view, I think is that you could potentially miss out on having the best athletes at the games. And what are the implications for the fans? Why should the fans care about this?

Well, I could see this going either way for the fans. For some people, it's really appealing to know that every athlete who made the semifinals, which is 300 across around the world for men and 300 for women, did the same workouts. And so we have something that we can draw on and say, yeah, they might have done in a week one, two or three, but they all did the same workouts. And we can see relatively that the people in this region were better than this region or that this guy who hasn't competed in three years, Ricky Garrard or whatever, outperformed some of his biggest competitors on four of the six workouts. We can start to have conversations like that leading into the games, which breeds excitement, I think. The ability to compare and contrast athletes' performances or performances across

different regions and continents. It also gives Cross a more, a CrossFit, a more solid opportunity to do what I think they should be doing every year, which is re-evaluating how the game spots are distributed based on relative performance at the highest level. But if they're all random, then all of those things are kind of missing to some degree right now with two being programmed and the rest of them not being programmed the same. It's, there's a little bit of an in-between. Yes, we can compare those two, but then there's still a lot of variables on the rest of it. However, there's other fans. And I think that some of the people in the comments have said stuff like this, that they like the fact that there are new and exciting workouts week to week. They like that different people in different parts of the world can

program a little bit differently to suit their climate or culture or whatever. That was one of the things that was super popular about sanctionals, for example. So I could see it either way for the fans. The open is a true equal worldwide test is having semi suggest. They don't truly believe the open is representation worldwide ranking. I'm going to take a quick stab at that. I don't know.

I don't think that I think basically what happens is if, if if the it's just basically the open is people's commitment to the open is probably affected by the quarterfinals and semifinals by that i mean if you went straight from the open to the games the open would be the it would it would be it would be equal to the games it would be equal to the games equal to the game and that's why i i actually like that model i like going straight from the i i like it that someone can qualify maybe you do have a semi-finals i don't like the quarterfinals but i maybe you do have someone if you finish in the top 10 at the open you automatically go to the games i mean i i like that i like giving more clout to the open. But I don't think it's that they don't believe in the worldwide ranking.

I think that you undermine, and that's with a bias. I'm using that word undermine, the power of the open by having quarterfinals and semifinals. I don't say that in a derogatory way, even though I'm couching it like that. Go ahead, Brian. I wanted to say something about the um like they send out those certificates to the fittest in every country yeah that's cool but i don't even know what they're basing that on necessarily because um i mean and i don't think he did last year but you know rich was right up towards the top of the open last year but but he, he chose to compete on the,

I guess he would have been, there were still three other guys from North America. I've had of it or from USA ahead of him, but like, let's say he'd finished second instead of fifth in the open last year, and then chose to compete on a team the rest of the season. Was he the, is he the guy who gets the fittest in the USA or is it the guy who places the best in the games from USA?

Uh, I, well, Oh, and there was something weird like that in Canadaada right what was it well yeah yeah yeah adler won the open but can't but velner was the fittest in canada or something so there's all these little incongruencies that pop up overall no the open is a is a good test but i don't think i don't like it as a qualification to the games because i think that it misses out on some of the

key components that you're going to want people who are competing at the games to have, which is the ability to recover quickly and perform again and the proven ability to compete in front of a live audience and next to, when you're lining up next to your other competitors. Will we get, would we get better judging if we had consistency in the events? I think so. That's the last area that you wanted to address. And so there's several reasons, especially with the layout as they have it now,

that this could be where there's four weeks and therefore there's a possibility for judges to judge it more than one of the semifinals. If there's two weeks, they could, I mean, they could still do it. They could have five judging teams that go, you know, they are in Oceania one week and Asia the next,

or they're in Tennessee back-to-back weeks, which, by the way, is going to happen for the syndicate and Mac this year. prepared, visually, aesthetically, a little course online that says if you're going to judge at semifinals, you got to run through this course or you have to attend this Zoom meeting where we're going to go through the workouts, talk about judging standards, et cetera. So they have the opportunity to prepare a little bit more ahead of time for those things and then hopefully be more consistent when it comes time to actually judge as well. Someone from one of the uh semi-finals just reached out to me nice yeah that was quick thank you thank you i'll sleep better tonight i am not even close to the fittest in armenia um armenia is one of those weird countries that has like really really really bizarre fit people in um you know it's just a small country everyone's inbreeding it's like iceland like there's just dudes there who

can throw weights like crazy weights crazy wrestlers they're crazy fight community crazy fight community go ahead i think that the guy who was a fittest from armenia his last name was like balavicious now his first name might have even been like armenia or something like armen balavicious he didn't have an ian at the end uh Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong country, but that name comes to mind. Anyway, those guys out of that country are savages. I am a more procured, I am a more refined Armenian. I have come to the civilized land of the Americas, the United States. Those guys over there, they probably still train with rocks and shit.

Armenia is like no joke. It's like Georgia or Iran. You don't want to wrestle or do any fitness shit with those guys they're like russians basically not not in their culture but in their in their toughness they're not canadian let's put it that way okay uh brian is there is uh we're at uh 90 minutes is there um so so tell me about this so we were talking about something yesterday you would tell me about um i want to finish on this. An article you have coming out. This is actually very, very important.

Most sports going in – Okay, I was wrong. I'm sorry. Arminis Belovic has finished 43rd at the Games in 2019, but he's from Lithuania. I was mistaken. Ah, Lithuania and Armenia, whatever. So there is a – a lot of sports we know going in. We know the rankings for sports, people's favorite sports. Usually you know who the best 155-pound fighter is in the UFC.

You know who the best 171-pound fighter is in boxing. We know going into the beginning of the season of the NFL who the best teams are. And it's not something that we've really pushed in CrossFit. And yesterday Brian was telling me that he's written an article for the Morning Chalk Up. When is that coming out? Probably next week. And it's going to be a power ranking. So we will know going into this season who the best people are.

And by the best, you mean who is the best in terms of at the end of the games in 2020. It's kind of a 2022 games prediction. Yeah. And there are people who've done like power rankings based on recent competitive performance before. And that's cool and fine. But what they're missing there is someone like a Sarah Sigmundsdottir or a Ricky Garrard

who's been absent from the competition scene, even a Roman Krennikoff, et cetera, because they've had injury suspension or are not access to travel. who's been absent from the competition scene, even though Roman Krennikoff, et cetera, because they've had injury suspension or are not access to travel. Whereas in this model, I'm able to, I'm not solely relying on competition performance. I'm looking at the total field, the total test and all the athletes that I'm aware of who are probably going to compete. And I'm saying heading into the 2022 season, these are the 10 best athletes on the men's and women's field in order.

And then we can, the nice thing about that is you can reevaluate after the quarterfinals, you can reevaluate after the semifinals. And then obviously, you know, in other sports, as soon as the games end, they would say,

well, here's the next, the top 10 for next year. Right. Are there any surprises in your list so far, Brian? Is there anyone you're like, Holy shit.

I didn't expect to see that. I would say that just in general, the surprise was how difficult it was. Um, so I left out, you know, five or six from each list that I think easily, I could easily make a case for squeezing into the top 10, but even amongst the ones that I put in there, um, you know, there are several places along the lines where I was like, man, I'm not sure if this person or that person, but I wrote what I did was I wrote my justification for each one of them. And then I kind of like just balance those out against each other. And I said, I think this is a stronger case than that in those situations. So when this article comes out, we'll try to get Brian back on.

We'll try to talk to him about those lists. And then also maybe, Brian, if you don't include it in the article or even if you do, it would be nice to see the top 20 even. Just a quick look at those people who didn't make it. Give them a nod. Talk about the tough decisions. For sure. Love to do it. All right. Is there anything else you want to – so we know, just so we know, the open starts on?

24th, February 24th. And I'm guessing that's a Thursday. Is that the announcement? Yes, and they're announcing it at noon Pacific time instead of 5 p.m. Pacific time this year. And that's a three-week event that will be announced every Thursday at noon, according to Brian. And then we will go into the quarterfinals, which will start March 24th, and then the semifinals, which is in May, and then the games, which are August 3rd. We'll keep you guys up to speed here, I guess. That's the plan, right? Yeah, that's the plan.

Thank you. Thank you. Sousa? Thank you. Thank you. Sousa? Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. You're always such a wealth of knowledge bringing it to it. We always appreciate your time on the show here.

I know. Enough of that bullshit. Enough of that.