The Sevan Podcast - #53 - Noah Ohlsen

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

The Sevan Podcast EP 53 - Noah Ohlsen & Brian Friend @SEVANMATOSSIAN @BRIANFRIENDCROSSFIT @NOHLSEN The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers 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

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Yeah, by the time I got there, it was the posted closing time of the party, but the party was not closing anytime soon, so I stayed there for like four hours. Was that the Heber and Mars party? Yeah, but it just So I stayed there for like four hours. Was that the Hebrew and Mars party? Yeah, but it, it just, um, I mean,

I think it was, I don't really know. I think it was more exclusively CrossFit people. And then it kind of bled into just a normal night in Vegas type thing. Gotcha. You spend a lot of money. Yeah. Did I earn money?

Excuse me. Did you spend money? Oh, hold on. Noah, just text. Let's see what he's saying oh he sent a heart on the link i spent no money and i gambled no money oh good job

no money on drinks or anything like that no um a couple different groups of people had uh Actually, I think someone from Noah's gym might have won a huge gambling night the night before, and so they had some bottles and stuff, and I was hanging out with them. The secret is always have a drink in hand, but drink it very slowly. Did you end up in someone's room? No, just my own. Did you see Noah at the party? Yes, I did.

Was he drunk? No. We got there around the same time, and I'm pretty sure he party? Yes, I did. Was he drunk? No. We got there around the same time, and I'm pretty sure he was still there when I left. Oh, shit. Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of people from Training Think Tank out there for the competing, and obviously they had a bunch of people come to watch them compete. So they had a big group, so I think they were just having a good time. He said he wanted to keep this podcast brief. What do you think he meant by brief why the fuck is my siri on okay go

on brief um how long do you think i don't know i mean is that 10 minutes or is that 30 minutes or is that an hour i have no idea we'll just go with it or is it going to be like. Or is it going to be like, Oh, or is it going to be like most people? Once he starts talking to me, he's just going to want me to come over and spend the night at his house. Oh, is that, is that what happens?

Always. You know, I was, um, there was an evolution in our, in our friendship today. I was kind of tripping. There's this point you get in a friendship with people where you're talking to them on the phone and it's just,

it can be just quiet for like 30 seconds or a minute. it's not awkward like like we're just hanging out you're doing your shit i'm doing my shit then we talk we're on the phone and then maybe i'm driving or or you know do you know what i mean yeah yeah or like i'll walk into a store you'll hear me talking to the guy or you're like in an airport and you're going to the metal detector and i just wait it's weird it's cool cheers to the evolution detector and I just wait. It's weird. It's cool. Cheers to the evolution of our friendship. It's forced to happen at different rates, depending on what you're doing. Like driving in a car comes to mind. Like if you take a road trip with someone, the first hour, two hours, three hours, you always feel like you have to talk. But by the

second half of the day, you're just riding along in silence. Yeah. You kind of crack the, what is that just comfortability or is that too generic of a term i think i don't think so i think that you just get comfortable look at look at your upload numbers again it says oh that's scaring scaring me a little bit gentlemen gentlemen gentlemen mr, gentlemen. Mr. Olson. What the heck is going on? What time is it where you're at? Yes.

Is it 10 p.m.? It is. I'm usually not this tired at 10 p.m., but last night in Vegas, you know? Oh, I just asked Brian if you were getting crazy. He said no. He said you were chill. Brian, I appreciate you, uh, having my back there and lying for me. You can be out late and not be getting crazy. I guess that's true. Yeah. I mean, we were getting crazy in, uh, the sense that we were like dancing and having fun and staying out late, but not crazy in the sense that I think people probably associate with Vegas.

That's right. No, I don't think I've talked to you in three years. It's been a good three years to be honest. Yeah. Maybe since like 2018. I've missed you. Yeah.

There've been things where I've thought about you. Yeah. I've definitely thought about you too. I thought about you a lot this weekend. Did you? Yeah, I've definitely thought about you too. I thought about you a lot this weekend. Did you? Yeah. Thanks, man. It was cool that the camera finally found you.

After watching the first and second event, I wasn't sure if you were even there. They even cracked the joke, the commentators. I think in the first event or the second event, like at the eight-minute mark, the camera panned you and Tommy made a joke. Oh, yeah, Noah Olsen's here. He was acknowledging that it was, he, he was acknowledging that it was a fucking absurd that they hadn't been on your jock. I mean, like they should be watching you like getting changed in the back instead of like having that, instead of like

having that, like was there, he had all access locker room and everything. Who did my camera guy? Oh. And that was one of my questions. Do you have a camera guy? I do, yeah. A full-time guy? Joseph Yates. He's about as full-time as it gets for something like this. He'll come and film me here in Alpharetta, Georgia, where I've been training once or twice a week, and then he came out and was there for the entire week of the event. So it's been awesome.

How did you meet him? We got connected through a brand photo shoot a couple of years ago. And I reached out to him recently when I was coming up here to train and it's been awesome. He puts out amazing content. He's a good guy. We get along really well. So how'd the gym shark thing come about? Cause all the girls at my gym were gym shark, but I hardly ever see any guys wearing it. at the end of last year. And so we were exploring some new options and a friend, like kind of a mutual friend who was sponsored by Gymshark, not in the CrossFit space at all. His name is Devin Levesque. He's kind of like a, I don't even know how to describe him. He just does these awesome,

crazy physical feats. He like bear crawled a marathon and does backflips and crazy stuff. But anyway, he is a Gymshark athlete. He said, Hey, let me connect you to those guys. I think it's worth the conversation. And I was like, ah, yeah, I mean, may as well. But as soon as we got connected with them, we hit it off and it just seemed like a really great fit. And so far so good, man. I'm really happy with them. What is it? It's a clothing line. So far, so good, man. I'm really happy with them.

What is it? It's a clothing line? Yep. Yeah. They're just like any other major athletic clothing brand. They're a young company. I think they've only been around for like five to seven years, but they've grown tremendously. They just got valued at like $1.7 billion.

Holy smokes. I'm telling you, all the girls at the gym i coached in the past like six months it's just been gym shark gym shark all like all new apparel so that's kind of they were in like the globo gym bodybuilder space primarily for a long time and now they're trying to make pushes into other like professional sports and so i believe that i'm the first um official like contracted athlete in our space, in the CrossFit space. And I don't know. I hope to see a little avalanche of people being able to wear their stuff.

It's really, really good stuff. Obviously I'm sponsored, so I'm supposed to say all of this, but I truly do love the quality of all this stuff, the design. And the price point is really low. It's like this t-shirt super stretchy kind of like you you could relate it to another brand i won't say the other brand name but um really nice high quality t-shirts like 20 25 so could you stand up for a second a little bit i want to see how that hangs on your midline because those kind of shirts usually show that like make

me look like i have a gut you just want to see my butt don't you oh okay yeah yeah i could never wear that look at i mean that that wraps around your 37 pack and that would wrap around my my what my yeah my my gut i am wearing a uh size large and this t-shirt is meant to be that fit but they have a lot of other fits and sizes that I think might be appropriate for a gentleman of your stature. Thank you. Thank you. My stature, by the way, we'll say that again. It's a beautiful stature that you have. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to hear you say it twice. When I type in your, when I type in Noah into Instagram, I just, I just go N O a and then it's like you, you're the third Noah Olson on Instagram that pops up the third one who are the other two i don't know i didn't even look at them i just know your like avatar i

recognized it but it's a it's it it uh it that touches me dearly because i've been shadow banned and so like you got to like type out like i mean no one knows how to spell like if you were shadow banned it would be easier shadow ban means is like when you're like when you're against racism and you're against uh sexism and you're against sexualizing kids and you speak about it openly and instagram doesn't like that they they they're like nah nah you can't or like basically it means like even though he's someone that i regularly interact with if i type in sev nothing comes up oh that yeah i have if you type all the way to s-e-v-a-n-m-a-t-o-s-s before i finally see him interesting yeah or if you post anything off

the cdc website like what the government posts if you repost it they don't like that either they don't like third grade math but anyway another subject do i get new say on the internet? Yes. Has the show begun? Is this it? Are we in the. Oh, we started before you were. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We're, uh, let me tell you how many, we're nine minutes in and we're 327 megabytes in. Can I do two things real quick that will necessitate my leaving the frame? Oh, absolutely.

This is your show, Noah. We're just flipping my chicken sausages in the frame. Oh, absolutely. This is your show, Noah. We're just... One is flipping my chicken sausages in the pan. Please. And the other, I'm going to try turning this light on to see if that makes me look... Whenever anyone leaves, Brian gets nervous

because I just attack Brian the whole time. Actually, I got a DM today that someone told me that I handle your jabs well. You handle them very well. You're like water and the wind hey you could rock that shirt yeah i've i've always i've kind of always wondered why i've never seen men with it yeah you could rock that shirt the chicks who wear the gym shark shit um in the search like if you hit search on my uh instagram for some reason a ton of hot chicks pop up and always at least one or two of

them are wearing gym shark the algorithm does not understand me at all but for some reason, a ton of hot chicks pop up and always at least one or two of them are wearing gym shirt. The algorithm does not understand me at all, but for some reason I have to sift through all those beautiful women wearing shirts that are too small. Noah, I got a fun stat for you. What you got? I wonder if you already know this stat. Probably not. Do you know what your time was on the ring muscle-up squat clean ladder in 2015 compared to yesterday? Huh. I don't, but I would imagine that it was significantly slower.

Actually, it was only seven-tenths of a second apart. Really? Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. Dang it. I thought I had gotten way stronger. Oh, hi, Max.

But you had because the uh the weights were completely different i know i know but even with that little uh jumping weights i thought that i moved a lot quicker through it but tell me the workout and tell me the weights in 2015 versus now oh god hit him bro yeah get him bro good job no always lean on brian 15 ring muscle ups and then a squat clean ladder and i don't know what it was in 15 but yesterday it was 235 255 275 285 295 geez and and six years ago it ended at two 65. So there were three bars heavier than the final weight from that year. Got it.

Could you have finished the workout you did, uh, this weekend in 2015? Um, I think I probably could have at that weight finished it, but I think it would have taken me like a full minute longer. What was it? I apologize for that would have taken me like a full minute longer. What was it? I apologize for that. Let me ask you a question. I asked Brian,

what was the vibe like at the venue? Like in terms of the energy from the crowd, are things like a hundred percent back to normal, 50% back to normal? What was it like competing? I thought it was good vibes. I think that people were really excited to be there. It felt pretty normal. There wasn't much of a policy regarding any COVID stuff. I mean, all the athletes and coaches had to test. I don't know what they did for spectators in that regard. But yeah, it really did feel like glorified regionals to me, which is cool because I loved regionals back in the day. But I thought it was a really, really well-run event. All the athletes seemed to enjoy themselves. Spectators seemed to enjoy themselves. Did you enjoy yourself?

Yeah, I think I said a lot of the same things. What do you mean by glorified regionals? I don't know if that was the right word. That was the first one that came to mind. I knew he was going to say that. Dylan Malitzky is a friend of mine. Oh, such a good dude. Yeah, I love Dylan. We started doing CrossFit at the same time back in college.

We were both RAs, resident assistants at the University of Miami our sophomore years, and we started CrossFit at peak three 60 that same time. Oh God, you must have some incredible stories being a resident assistant in a college dormitory. Did you follow all the rules? I actually ended up getting fired. Awesome. I was supposed to be on call for one weekend and I had snuck off to a Awesome.

That's not the exact story I wanted to hear for where you, why you got fired, but I mean, But anyway, I had said to Dylan this weekend that it felt like regionals. I was complimenting them. And then I wanted to one-up that. I didn't want him to feel like it was just they had recreated regionals. And so I had said to him it was like regionals but better. And so the word glorified, I was trying to make it feel like it was a step above regionals. And I don't know if that was the right word choice. Is life getting better for you every year? I think so.

Yeah. No, I don't think so. I know. So for sure. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. I want to hear something very exciting.

I don't know if, uh, you're getting another dog, man. We are going to add to the family. I think I, we're, we're not,

not pregnant yet or anything like that. We're still, uh, trying on married toward the end of this year, potentially beginning of next year, but we are very actively talking about having some babies, which I'm super, super excited about. So I think that will be in the next like year or two. Did you have to, did you have to delay your wedding because of this past year? Kind of, we hadn't officially planned one yet. Like we didn't have it all set in stone and a date and a location and all

that. But as we were starting to plan, all this stuff was unfolding. So we just kind of like put a pause on it and said, let's wait until the world gets back to normal. Wait till Joanne graduates PT school and takes her board exams. The games are over. All that stuff is done so that we can enjoy the process of planning the wedding rather than stress it.

I saw you put her resume on your Instagram, like the boyfriend version of your lady's resume. I thought that was super duper cool. Thanks, man. Do you know what post I'm talking about? Are you talking about when she had graduated? I put like a couple quotes from her instructors complimenting her. Yeah, that's awesome. What a great reference.

Super proud of her. How long have you been together? We actually just did the math the other day. We kind of lose track of that sometimes. I think we started dating at the end of 2012 so it would be 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 at the end of this year will be nine years so we're eight and a half years into our relationship you made it through the seven year itch. Is that a thing? Yes.

Oh yes. The seven year itch. You made it too. Yeah. You and Heidi. Yeah. Who? Heidi.

Remember that was our thing? Heidi. I'm Heidi. My wife's name is Haley. I, when I was out there, I went and visited you guys once and you guys kept saying that Heidi, which is father in what language?

Afrikaans. No, Armenian. I thought your wife's name was Heidi. I was calling her that. I thought that's what you were referring to. Oh, that's awesome. I forgot that. Damn, you have a good memory.

Sometimes. Noah, did you ever smoke weed, Noah? I don't know that I feel super comfortable talking about that on a public forum. I will say, I will say this. I only ask because you have a great memory. Thank you. Yeah. We don't even have to continue that conversation. Okay. That'll be the next podcast. Did you ever, did you ever smoke cigarettes? Never. I can firmly say no to. Good on you. Although it sounds like I did now.

My voice has gone from screaming at my friends over the weekend and having fun at the pool last night. Did you drink last night? I took a celebratory shot. You're asking me all these inappropriate questions that my wholesome fans are not going to like to hear the answer. Wholesome Olsen. So how is that? The thing is, is that must have been like drinking like 10 drinks, right? I mean, because you've.

I mean, for sure, I'm a lightweight. Like after quarterfinals, I had half a glass of wine at my friend's house and was buzzed. But I did like a celebratory shot last night and I didn't really feel anything. So I don't know what it was. I think sometimes it gets you, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. And I'm assuming your girlfriend doesn't drink either. I think similar to me, by the way, she's my fiance. Fiance, sorry. You call my wife, my girlfriend. It's all good. to me by the way she's my fiancee fiance sorry you call my wife my girlfriend it's all good um yeah similar to me like very very rarely on special occasions yeah that's good no you guys

had a bunch of people there this weekend and then you know everyone had kind of different results over the course of the weekend what was the vibe between the training think tank people last night after the competition yeah i mean it's a mixed bag i think it's interesting it's i've had that conversation with max before my coach because he's coached multiple of us at different levels water palooza as regionals games and nobody ever finishes the same right travis and i he'll have a really good competition and i'll have a bad one and max has to kind of manage like celebrating with one of us that's done well and consoling the other one. Um, this weekend, as far as I could tell, I think everybody was relatively satisfied with their performances. I don't think there was

anybody in our crew that like was expecting to make it a hundred percent and they didn't. So I think everybody, maybe it didn't go absolutely perfectly, but people seemed to have had a good time, to have been proud of their effort. And most of us were out having fun celebrating all the hard work that we've put in the last couple of months last night. So I don't know. It's a bit of a bummer that from our crew, the only ones thus far that have moved on are myself, Travis and Alessandra Pacelli. But Alexis Raptus and Cedric Lapointe both have the last chance qualifier coming up. How well do you know Alexis? She doesn't live. Does she live in Georgia or has she just been visiting? She just moved there a couple months ago, so I've gotten to know her quite well in the last few months,

and she's awesome, man. She's a really, really good kid, awesome athlete. We've all just become so invested in each other, training together every day that, I don't know, I felt so emotionally tied to the way that everybody performed over the weekend. And with Alexis being so close and doing so well all weekend, it was like I was so anxious when they were announcing that top five. And when she didn't make it, I was crushed.

But she still got a chance. How did you guys choose which semifinals you went to? You know, I think everybody probably chose differently. We didn't choose like as a group to kind of all go to one. Did you purposely avoid Travis? Did you guys purposely, did you and Travis purposely avoid each other? No,

not really. It just kind of worked out that way. I had a, a good friend's wedding the weekend of the Mac, I think, or the Granite games. I don't know one of them. That's why I didn't choose that one.

And then I preferred West coast over the other ones, just because I'd always wanted to compete in the West coast. I know the group, the lab and lab events, cause they've put on a lot of blues before. So I don't know. I had my reasons for choosing it. And somehow nine of us from training think tank all ended up at that one. Would you have in Travis avoided going to the same one?

If you guys both would have chosen it, would you be like, uh, we both have a good chance of going why push one of us out uh i don't think so because i think we probably would have been confident enough that we could have both fit inside of the top five that it would maybe cool to have each other to lean on and push that is an event together i like it no i got it i got a kind of interesting technical question here maybe i should ask maxis but i think when you register for the open that whatever affiliate you put down like you're stuck with that affiliate for the whole calendar year because i knew that like when i'm writing the for example the closing ceremony script and i'm thinking that alexis raptus has a chance to make it i want to acknowledge the box she trains at yeah i try to do that for all the athletes

you know to credit the affiliates and but her box is listed as c2x crossfit because that's where she had been training when the open began but i know she's training at training think tank yeah and i didn't know if i should put like which one i should put yeah i don't know if you have any insight it does feel weird for me too like peak 360 is my home gym it's the gym that i started at and will always like consider my home gym but i have been training at training think tank for the last four months so it does feel like when they're announcing me out to a competition it should probably say training at a training think tank um but i don't know where you even go to update that.

Like maybe the game site. Yeah. And I, you know, a lot of times I'm preparing those stats or, you know, giving, providing data to the MCs or the announcers or whoever.

Yeah. And so, and I'm, I have that question and I don't know if, you know, I just go with whatever's kind of written in your registration. Brian, do it. I think Brian, do it like UFC. They'll be like, this is Vladimir Putin from Russia training via Miami.

I mean, you could just throw, anytime you want to put two in there, just put a via. No, Olsen, 360 CrossFit via Max's lap. Hold on. Do you have a middle part right now? Oh, come on, man. I saw it for a second. You're making me put my hat back on. No, I like it. Keep it up. It's a little it's a little pixely, but it looks like you have like a nice middle part going. Thanks for noticing, buddy. How's that?

I want to join you. What's that show called? The Little Rascals? Holy shit. You're like the most buff version of that dude ever. Holy cow. If you're listening to this and not watching this, you need to flip back over to the YouTube and watch this.

Noah. What's up? Is the Ruck Run a good test for a semifinal? Man, I don't really know i usually don't get into making judgment on things like that because i don't have a choice i kind of have to do whatever is thrown at us i feel like there's no point in putting emotion into their Um, but, but fuck that Ron. I think that you want to touch on testing endurance in some way. And when they were probably looking at all the past tests, since they were doing repeats, there are not too many options of straight endurance events. It could have been really cool.

Somehow they incorporated a swim. Maybe they were limited by the venue. Um, but i don't know what do you think what do i think you know i did that workout he's got basically the same version as you the day before and it was pretty challenging for me um yeah i the thing that i like what was your time brian it took me 43 minutes what was your time no Brian? It took me 43 minutes. What was your time, Noah? I don't know. His was 33 minutes. Oh, shit.

That's pretty good, Brian. Holy shit. Yeah, it is. I was happy just to finish. But the thing that I like about the ruck run as a test at a semifinal is that it's really testing more than just that endurance. It's a testing. Now you're actually testing your ability to recover from something that's debilitating to the body and potentially the mind and the spirit too. Yeah, yeah. I would agree with that because afterwards there definitely was the air of all of the guys and girls saying like, man, I'm wrecked.

My legs are just so tired and heavy and people's legs were cramping up on the triple G chipper in the afternoon. So that's a good point that that's a factor when you put an event like that in it since you know that and since you said that i want to throw another fun stat at you this one's not about you but i think you'll appreciate it so the live competition record for a clean and jerk is 387 pounds by a man by a man and it's been done twice tolamore quinoa did it and Jake Douglas did it. Two separate competitions and sanctionals. Stephen Wallace on Blue City Athletics did 385 pounds two hours after finishing that ruck run. This weekend? Yeah. That's pretty cool. That's a lot of weight. Man, I didn't get, not that I didn't get to, I guess I didn't prioritize it. So the blame is on me, but

I didn't watch any of the team stuff this weekend and I kind of wish I had. It's fun to be able to check that stuff out. I don't think that you should be bum this weekend, and I kind of wish I had. It's fun to be able to check that stuff out. I don't think that you should be bummed about that. You've got to focus on your mission at hand. Noah, I haven't seen this yet, but Brian was telling me yesterday that Danny Spiegel, after doing three laps, she went to pick up the 40-pound ruck. That's what the women used in the final round. And whatever they saw, whatever the judges saw, made them, I guess, call over a doctor and they told her, you're done.

What is that like? How heavy was the final bag you picked up and can you relate to that? Is like picking up that final bag like, oh, shit, there's another 1,500 meters. And it was hot as shit, right? It's 95 degrees at 730 in the morning. Yeah, it was hot. But honestly, I personally didn't feel like the heat was too much of a factor. And that has to have been just like by chance her body reacted to something differently than everybody else's.

Could have been the heat. Could have been just general exhaustion, under fueling, dehydration. I don't really know. Um, and I saw her, I saw her getting carried off after or like helped off. And then I saw her later in the afternoon and what did she say? She said she felt like she was recovering from having the flu was what she related like hours later feeling like, um, and yeah, I don't, I don't know what caused it, but that's got to be tough. And she bounced back really well. That could very well have ended her weekend,

and she was able to hang in the mix and qualify. So that was impressive. Yeah, she's a badass. What's the lightest you've ever weighed at a CrossFit Games? That's a good question. I feel like I've probably gotten a little bit heavier every year. My first year, I was a good question. I feel like I've probably gotten a little bit heavier every year. My first year I was maybe like around 180. Now I'm 190. I've been 200 at a games before, but somewhere between 180 and 200, I had weighed in at one 90. We competed all day, did the marathon row.

I got back to my Airbnb after the marathon row and I weighed in at one 80. So throughout the day, but wait, it gets crazier. Hold on. So, so throughout the day I lost 10 pounds, which is very significant. We ordered a pizza. I drank water and just a ton of other food from when I had gotten back to the Airbnb until I went to bed. And when I went to bed, I stepped on the scale and I was 199. So I had regained 19 pounds. I had like a 20-pound fluctuation in a single day.

Didn't you put that on your Instagram that day? I did. For the next day? Yeah, I think I remember that. It's actually a 29 pound fluctuation. 10 down and 19 up. Right. Yeah. Holy. When you talk to other athletes, do they experience that too? Was that something that was? I don't know. I don't know that anybody was that too? I mean, was that something that was. I don't know. I don't know that anybody was tracking it.

I just, by chance, there was a scale in the bathroom or Airbnb and I had happened to step on it. Um, but I would imagine it was pretty common because I think a lot of it was fluid loss and regain. Um, Matt, I, I don't want to misquote him. I think one of the podcasts I did with him, he said that over the weekend, he likes to try to make an effort to gain weight over the week of the CrossFit Games. Just to overeat so you're fueled enough.

Yeah. Is that a tactic you use too? I wouldn't say that I'm purposely trying to, but I definitely will try to track my macros and always err on the side of being over like a normal training week. I'm trying to get between four to 500 grams of carbs. And then every day this weekend, I was getting like 650 grams of carbs. So a little bit extra fuel. Brian, I think we only have a couple more questions. We got to let this guy go. Do you know what you want to ask him? I'll just stay with you guys all night. Why ask her to be brief?

Cause I was tired, but I'm having too much fun. I told you, I told you, Brian, I go before you came on. I'm like, how many minutes does he mean by brief?

Brian's like, I don't know. I go, dude, as soon as we start talking to him, he's going to want to come over to my house and spend the night. Brian goes, is that how it works?

I'm like, yeah. Can I? Oh yes. Always. I put some wood in the chimney. We'll have a campfire outside. The chimney. The chimney. Perfect. I'm in. yes, always. I put some wood in the chimney. We'll have a campfire outside. The chimney.

The chimney, perfect. I'm in. Noah, does it bother you or irk at you at all that you didn't win a single event this weekend? Yes, is the answer to that. I, the first three events had gone by and I had done well, but I hadn't had any like moments. I felt, I said to Joanne, I feel very like mediocre and flat and I really don't like that feeling at all. chipper being able to win my heat and kind of have that feeling and sense of like i don't know just being being dominant and being um a top level athlete was very refreshing and i feel like it was something that i needed to like shake off the rust and feel like all right i'm back i want to ask you about that event because i remember watching you behind your lane right before it, and I was like, oh, oh, shit.

He's ready to go for this. Yeah. And you won your heat, like you said, but you didn't win the event because Spencer Panjik. And this actually happened two or three times in the men's division where the winning time came from a different heat. He put up just this phenomenal performance, the heat before. He crushed that. Do you feel like you could have? I mean, the gap in time wasn't that close.

I think it was 25 seconds between you and him. Yeah. I honestly thought before he would have made that up. I'd like to go back and maybe side-by-side it. When you skip from round three to round five, it's super easy. I felt when I was watching, I was like, I wonder if he was going against Spencer

if he could have hung with that time. I feel like he might have been able to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could have been cool to have been able to push each other like that he definitely made up time on the dumbbell i know i put mine down in the middle and he didn't put his down at all and he might have bought a little bit of time on the rower but is that dumbbell too light for the men now um i don't know i think it still is heavy enough to slow people down. I had an interesting relationship with it. I think I had tweaked my shoulder a couple of weeks ago to the point where

when they had announced that workout and I was testing it, the a hundred pound dumbbell, I couldn't even hold in my left hand because of the pain and pressure that it put on my shoulder. I had to like lean the dumbbell into my body and have it like resting on my chest. So for me, it's people that ask that they're like, Oh, the hundreds too light now. Right. And I was like, I cannot move this thing right now. So it didn't feel too light, but if I was fully healthy, maybe it would have felt like I could have maybe done the 115 or the 120 or something like that but uh I was just happy that my shoulder got to a place where it was good enough to have no issues for the most part throughout the weekend when you woke up this morning were you sore quite yeah and how was that shoulder shoulder is a little bit tender it's not like it never got

to a hundred percent and the snatch ladder which was the first event i didn't like retweak it but it didn't feel good the last two snatches i finished and i was like oh man um we're not all the way back to full health there yet, but I survived the weekend. Did you talk to Brandon Luckett about what happened to him in the snatch event? No, but I heard him mentioning it after. He hyperextended his elbow or something. Yeah, he actually put it on Instagram on Saturday, and you could see it. It didn't look very good.

I was amazed that he was able to finish especially with the tests that were on sunday yeah man that reminds me of um it made me think of patrick down there at regionals back in i think 2015 i think it was the same event didn't he like tear his bicep and then finish the weekend i don't even know how that's physically possible me neither maybe he has two biceps he had a kid yeah so cool how old are you Noah and Michelle um I am 30 years old so you you met your wife when you were 22 the year after you became legal she went from my girlfriend to my wife and then yeah shoot yeah girlfriend to fiance how is that what are the challenges of of for if I were to ask her What are the challenges of, of, for, if I were to ask her, what are the challenges of, of being in a relationship with you? What would she say?

Besides your insane marijuana habit? Me personally as a human, what are the challenges? Um, like, like do you leave your socks all week? Like your socks smell horrible and you always leave them right in her purse. I am often pretty stinky though. Like I spend all day at the gym. And so she, we used to have a routine where we would kind of like, she'd get home from work and I'd be coming home from the gym and I would give her a kiss and she would like plug her nose and barely give me her lips for a little kiss and say, go shower. And then I'll see you after.

So that is one thing, but that's just kind of the way it is. Is she immune to that now? Did she learn to love it? No, definitely not. She still hates when I stink. I am. Maybe you should become vegan so you smell better. Honestly, I'm considering it because I had a kidney stone issue and i need to do a urine

analysis to see what caused them but animal protein is a potential cause and if that were the case it's they're so miserable that i would alter my diet and try removing animal protein if it was going to help with that when was that when did you? That's basically you have a stone in your, in your urine and you got to piss it out. The old Johnson. Yeah, man. So I've had, I've had you pee one out. What's that? Did you pee one out? Yeah. So this, it's actually been kind of a crazy month and a half at the end of April. I peed blood after a training day and I was like, that's kind of weird. I wonder if that's rhabdo or what, but I hydrated. Did it hurt? Cause I had a urinary tract infection once and I peed blood and it was,

it felt like I was peeing shards of glass. I mean, I went to ran to the hospital. Did it hurt? It didn't, it didn't hurt at all the first time. And I'll make a long story short, but it turns out. No, dick talk is cool. Spell it out. Let's roll. We should extend it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah everyone half the listeners have a penis go and the other half love it so had uh had some bloody urine it went away a couple weeks later it came back i went to the

hospital they checked my creatine kinase levels which is what they check when you maybe have rhabdo they said they were elevated but nothing nothing too crazy. And then a couple of weeks after that, or a couple of days after that, I got this crazy pain. It was almost like in my bladder area, but this excruciating pain that I went to the hospital for, they did a CT scan. I actually, if we're making this an extended portion of the podcast, I had done the worm at the gym one day, the dance move where you like, you know, yeah, right over the Johnson at it at all. And so I basically like slammed my stuff into the floor and like the helmet, like the helmet got took out the brunt of it. No, just everything. Okay. Did you make a noticeable gasp? Like the helmet got, took the brunt of it. No, just everything down here just got rocked.

Okay. Did you make a noticeable gasp? Like, did you like, did people like, oh shit. I mean, it definitely looked like it, I don't know, it looked like it probably didn't feel good. And the feeling that you get when you get hit in the nuts that lasts like 30 seconds that goes up into your stomach. Yeah. That lasted like five hours.

Oh. So I was thinking, man, something is really wrong here. I started some Googling and I thought I maybe had testicular torsion, which would be really bad. Um, so I went to the hospital, they did a ultrasound and a CT scan and they found that I had an eight millimeter kidney stone, which is big enough. They said that that's not going to pass on its own. It's going to get stuck along the way from your kidney to your bladder, cause a backup of urine in your kidney, causing your kidney to swell and a whole bunch of other issues. So they said, we have to do a procedure in the next couple of days to go in with a laser and break that up into small enough pieces to pass. Oh, so they can't. Oh my God. So it's, you're not

even clear once they do the procedure, they break it up into little pieces, they pat you on the back and they said, Oh, good luck, buddy. Yeah. So the, they break it up into pieces, I guess, that are small enough that you shouldn't feel them at all anymore. I'll clear up a little, um, potential misconception for people about kidney stones. I used to think the pain of a kidney stone was imagine like the tube that it's passing through that as it was passing, it would like scrape along the walls and that would cause the pain. Apparently that's not the case at all. It's what happens is as it's passing, if it gets stuck and urine cannot pass to your bladder, it causes a backup,

and literally your kidney will swell with fluid, and that swelling is what causes the excruciating pain. Wow. Yeah, I just figured it was like shoving a golf ball down a piece of garden hose. Right. It was kind of like rough on the edges, and it was just scraping the inside of whatever that tube is, your urethra or whatever has the urine. So look at Brian's getting all squirmish.

Brian only talks sports. He doesn't talk medicine. Well, I found something while you guys were talking about that that I think Noah will like. Okay, what you got? Besides you, four other people did that same event with the squat clean ladder. With the busted penis. And they were all also slower, but none of them were as close to their previous time as you nice i'll take it wow i didn't want you to leave feeling bad about that

i thought it was pretty good that you were able to be the same you just did all that during medicine talk brian yeah sorry go ahead that's okay i don't know if i should continue the kidney talk or the sports talk or both i can tie them together yeah tie it together hey so was your penis fine by the time you went to the competed this weekend so and do you know if you peed that you know if you peed the stones out yet you have no idea because yeah yeah here i'll wrap so i'll wrap that story up because it's kind of crazy so i had the procedure to break up that eight millimeter stone like three weeks ago. And they put a stent in, which is a tube that kind of opens the passage from your kidney to your bladder so that you can pee out the pieces and urine. And it was a week long of like blood coming out in your pee. Like if you had a cut and you're bleeding, that's coming out in

your pee that much blood, which is crazy. I peed a blood clot one day, which was very disturbing. That was a baby. That was a baby. Yeah, it might've been. All that being said though, in the process, my doctor said something happened that doesn't often happen. The procedure caused, I had, he said from our original CT scan to our last one, I had five kidney stones in my right kidney and the one that was trying to pass. So six in total, I did a follow-up CT scan like a week before going out to Vegas and they were gone. So all six kidney stones that I had from the procedure had been like shaken up and decided to pass. I passed six kidney stones over the course of like two weeks, which was incredibly uncomfortable and really altered my training.

You know, I had to take multiple days off of training. I was in and out of the hospital like six times in a couple of weeks. couple of weeks. Um, and so I was, I was pretty nervous going into this event because on top of being in and out of the hospital, being on medication for pain and swelling and all that stuff, I finally got back into the swing of things. I tweaked my shoulder and it was just, uh, there was a lot of doubt before the West coast classics. So I'm glad that I'm sitting here on the other side of it, talking to you guys, able to uh celebrate being an eight-time crossfit games athlete brian before you ask something relevant let me keep with this irrelevance how did they put the stint in so you probably would like this um the procedure is they go in your p- hole with a camera. Are you asleep for this?

Yes. It was anesthesia fully out. Okay. So they go over the camera and the laser, they break it up. And then once that is done, they put the stent in through your pee hole. I actually,

I'll send you a photo. I, this is not like a post worthy photo, but I can send you a photo of the stent after the fact. So they have the stent in that runs from your kidney to your bladder and then attached to the bladder part of it, they put a string that then trails out through your penis. So hanging out of my pee hole, I had this like fishing wire for a week. This is amazing. At the end of the week i pull the entire thing out and it was like it's like a 20 inch long string and stent combo that just comes straight out of your penis hole now

i'm gonna ask you a loaded question be very careful how you answer this i'm setting you up for a slam dunk but you could fuck yourself and trip. How, how much string is hanging out of your penis? Um, I, there's a funny story related to that, that I'm not going to get into.

Well, I think I'm going to get to it. How much string is hanging out of your penis? Just tell me enough, enough, more than enough. What was there? What was there enough if you get a chub were you ever concerned there wouldn't be enough string like if they only give you two two or three inches of string and they're dealing with a penis that's that's i can't imagine

is very impressive when you're when you're knocked out i mean it's like do they ask you hey sir do you have a 12 inch dick when it's hard because we only got 10 inches of string they do they do leave a significant amount of string probably for anybody just to account for that because if anything happens and that thing disappears inside you that you then have to now go and get another procedure to remove all that. So luckily that was not the case. But you did have a moment where you thought you lost the string? No, I never had that moment.

No, okay. Wow, that's amazing. So you pulled that thing out and then the stint came out with it? Correct. It was a very strange experience. Did you have to then the stint came out with it. Correct. It was a very strange experience. Did you have to return the stint? No. I thought about keeping it as a souvenir, but Joanne said we should probably throw it away.

No, no, dude. That thing should be in a fucking jar with like some vinegar or whatever. You're going to freak out with the photo that I send you. That's amazing. Why? Because when you see this thing, you're like, holy shit, I pulled this thing through my dick? Yes. Wow. That's amazing. Josh would be so disappointed

in me. He tries to make... He wants me to say words like penis or genitalia. He doesn't like me saying cock and dick. Sorry, Josh. Disgusting. Wow, that is an amazing, amazing story, and I'm glad you're better. And I guess the relevance of it is how it affected your training. Do you think that there was any positive to it because it got you to rest,

like gave you needed rest you needed? Uh, I don't know. I, there were definitely a couple people that tried to spin it in that way just to make me feel a little bit better, which perhaps that was the case. Um, I, I think I could have gone into the weekend more optimally trained if that hadn't been the situation that I was dealing with. But it is what it is and it's over now. And it just makes me appreciate feeling normal and healthy and not taking that for granted as much. Brian, what are the those who were those four guys that also redid the workout? Cole Sager, Sean Sweeney will more at alex smith wow good good good company and sorry go ahead no those are my dudes and and you're saying that they all did worse

and noah did seven tenths of a second better he no he was seven to also seven tenths of a second worse it's just he was much closer to his time from six years ago than those guys were. But in some of the cases, there were different things going on. That year, Cole Sager needed to win his event and have like five other guys do poorly. And it all happened for him to make the games. This year, he basically already locked up first place in the competition, which was also going to be his first ever competition win. And all he needed to do is finish the event. So I don't think he was racing it as much as he was six years ago. Yeah. Cole did great this weekend. I was impressed. I was wondering, since you guys are thinking of having a kid in the next year or

two, did you talk to Cole at all about that? Yeah, for sure. We did talk about his son and just that process very briefly. Um, he, I don't know if you guys know that Jack was born like very premature and Cole was holding a shaker bottle in his hand and he said that he was, his son was smaller than the size of that shaker bottle when he was first born, which is crazy. Um, yeah, that's scary. Yeah. But he's, he's much healthier now. And apparently his growth is like on the normal track. So I'm really happy for them. And they said that life is awesome now. What, how many people are in your training like cohort? Like when you show up to the gym seven days a week and there's this group that Travis has kind of mentioned to us, how many people are in that? Me, Travis, berman kyle bernier lauren fisher alexis raptus

alessandra pichelli brin kerlin so there's usually those eight cedric has joined us in the last few weeks and then there are a few other people like kalarina and some others that'll kind of jump in here and there oh she did the did the, she did the virtual, right? She did. Yeah. She did relatively well. She didn't qualify, unfortunately, but she had some awesome performances. I think she took second on the snatch event. She's the girl who won that snatch event is only 21 years old and she had, she did more snatches at the hot at, well,

she beat even Katrin David's daughter, Laura Horvath. Every single woman from Europe in that workout is really impressive. So second to that girl who had the world record is very good. Yeah, that's really cool. So in the original person, so it was originally Travis and Max. They were the duo? Yeah. And then Max expanded into a full games training camp, clinic?

Yeah, it slowly evolved over the years years max has coached a lot of athletes remotely myself included and has always kind of been trying to build the on-site environment for whatever reason it just worked out this year where a bunch of people were able to do it they've actually got a team that qualified for the games this year as well. So that's been pretty cool to see them training. And I guess now going forward, it will be Travis, myself, Alessandra, and then team training think tank kind of all continuing to train for the rest of the season and hopefully Alexis and Cedric. When I used to film you and Travis at the CrossFit games and you would be

there with Max and like in between the events. You guys seemed like you guys were made for each other. Like you guys always kept it lighthearted. There was a lot of fun. There was a lot of playing around. You had a very – not that other athletes didn't have that, but you guys were very unique in your relationship, the three of you. I can't remember if there was a third person. I don't ever remember – I mean a third athlete, but it was always just the three of you,'t remember if there was a third person i don't ever remember i mean a third athlete but it was always just the three of you max you and travis

with all these other guys around do you guys just dictate the mood do you and travis dictate the mood and keep it light and are do you have pet any pet peeves from the other athletes or do you hear things like what their self-talk that you're like, man, they should not be doing that. I mean, you're eight years in the game. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would say Travis and I are probably the two and Alessandra, she's been in the game longer than both of us. Um, but we're kind of like the, I don't, I don't know what the proper phrase would be, but I feel like we kind of help bring the group together and make sure that the dynamic is good, the timeliness, the focus of the session. Um, so yeah, I, what was the

original piece of that question you asked? Well, I was actually just thinking if you guys, you work. So the presupposition I make is that all of you guys at this level, people who don't know you or who aren't intimate with you like Joanne or maybe she's the only one and Travis and Max, is the fact that you guys – people have no idea what you're really like. Because to be at this level, if you don't know anyone who's at this level in anything in life, whether it's car racing or cooking or being interested in the stock market, you guys are not normal people. racing or cooking or being interested in the stock market, you guys are not normal people. You guys must have enormous idiosyncrasies. I don't want to say control issues, but control, like things have to be, everything has to be fucking dialed in. I don't know if that's the case. I can see why you would think that. And maybe it is,

maybe I'm just so used to it now that it doesn't feel abnormal right but I feel like Travis and I both in different ways are very normal you know I'm very go with the flow I'm not very neurotic about things so being a little bit off on my macros or my schedule or my body work or whatever that stuff stuff doesn't really bother me. I mean, I try to optimize it to the best of my ability. Um, but then Travis, same thing, like managing his family and balancing that and training and stuff. I don't know. I definitely get what you're saying. Or even things like someone like Josh and Matt who would train in their like dungeons. Um, they, they probably have their favorite bar and it's always put away in the same place and their shoes are always in the same place and you know no you're

you're it's not like that with you i i don't think so you could come study us for a day and probably pick out some things but why does noah always put his right shoe on first but tie it with his left hand? I might actually do exactly that. You have been watching me, you sick freak. Yes, absolutely. Noah, were you impressed with Dallin Pepper? I was. I was, yeah, yeah. Right off the bat, too, on that snatch event.

I mean, I know he's a strong snatcher, but that is not just about being a strong snatcher. And then throughout the rest of the weekend, he did great. We had a couple chances to hang out and chit chat. I think he's a good kid and I definitely think he has a future in the sport. When you finished the final event this weekend, the camera was on. Before you finish this question, I need to know. Be honest. I said before you finish this question, I need to know.

I want you to be honest. Yes. Did you watch a majority of the competition? No, hell no. I just watched the men and women final heats, the ones you were in. Okay. But I mean, you watched most of them. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Got it. Okay. I, uh, my six year old son did a hundred pull-ups. We took turns doing until we got to a hundred while, while watching you guys go. They're awesome. That's very cool. got to a hundred while watching you guys go. They're awesome. That's very cool. You finished and I saw, I mentioned this too in the podcast yesterday that I did with Brian, you had an air about you that is very rarely seen, I think in CrossFit. Um, I would call it

sort of the rich froning phenomenon. You seemed like you were you on a whole different level level of gentleman-ness like you weren't in like i would see rich finish workouts and he's not in his head he's around congratulating other people you know the weekend and yeah you just i was like holy shit this guy is just a full-blown veteran now. He's like, you know, you went from kid, brand new kid in the thing to the guy who's running it, like win or lose. Do you feel that? Do you feel like an era of calm or like you're at home, like, oh, hey, this is all happening in my living room now?

Yes and no. I think that I felt a little bit out of my element at the beginning of the competition. I don't know if it's because it had been a while, if I was a little nervous because of those health issues leading up to it. But once I kind of found my flow, I definitely felt very comfortable and confident. It does feel good. Yeah. I mean, it is my eighth time qualifying. Um, and I don't know, I don't, I don't want it to be just that though. I would like to qualify for 10 games in a row, but I want them to all be like high, high level, like going for the title, um, performances and seasons. So I know that doesn't really answer your question. I don't know.

I know what your question is, but I don't exactly know how to answer it. Well, maybe that's good. Maybe it's just become natural to you because you're not trying to do it. It's just, it's just the evolution. Yeah. You look, you look very comfortable. Thank you. No, no. Will Morehead used to train with you guys, right? Yep. Silly Willie. That's my guy. Thank you, man. cool and good and are you happy for him yeah yeah for sure and we've stayed in touch throughout that process i miss him you know i miss like being able to train with him we don't chat as much as we probably did when he was coming to visit and training with us um but it's it literally was like

not to sound cliche but um i don't even know what the phrase is when you meet back up with a friend and it's like you didn't miss a beat like we like we're homies and I was super excited to see him do well and qualify again. I think he deserves it because he's a really good guy. Happy to see him succeed. Do you have something more, Brian? Because I'm going to change subjects. Go ahead. When you go to the hospital and you go to the hospital the first time

and they're like, okay, will you get undressed and put this robe on? Is that what happened? That did happen. And then the doctor's in there and like he lifts up your robe and like now he's looking at your body. Does he say anything? Like does he gasp? I mean he's been – 70% of his clientele is morbidly obese, maybe more. I mean 50% of the population is morbidly obese i can

only imagine it's got to be 70 to 100 of the people in the hospital are obese and it's like imagine if you were like all you worked on was 1970 toyota pickups and then all of a sudden some guy's like fuck you're the only mechanic around and can i bring my car and he's like yeah and he brings in a fucking testa rosa or some fucking experimental car from fucking italy are they tripping on you i'm honored that that's what i'm related to um i there was one doctor that said something really funny about my physique and i can't remember exactly what he had said now but like they've never worked on a clean car like they're the mechanic where they're like they show up and there's like dirty diaper i mean doctors like they work on cars with dirty diapers in the back and vomit in the

front seat. And this fucking like pristine, this pristine, yeah, I've heard that story, a toilet in the car and this pristine car rolls up. What? Yeah. What did he say that was funny? I really can't remember. But something making note of my physique.

And it's funny that you say the car thing, though, because my mental performance coach that I've been working with for about half a year now used that analogy this weekend. She said that before, like a big race sports car driver is not the week before is not like driving around testing the car there. All the work is already done. The car is primed and ready. All they're doing is polishing the car that week, getting ready to go put it out and perform. And so she was kind of saying like, for your taper week, you know, like, don't push it too hard. You've done the work. This week is just time to polish the vehicle, get the little touches in that you need, do the body work,

have gratitude for all of your physical capacity and capabilities and just basically shine the sports car was what she was saying for the week. I don't mean to make you self-conscious, but I guarantee you when you were unconscious and they did the procedure on you, they took a picture of you naked. Just, I'm just, I'm just telling you, I guarantee it. I'm a, I'm a, that's gotta be illegal. No, no, it's not. It's not.

It's not because they could just say it's like for work or something like they can. Yeah. Yes. I'm telling you. I'm telling you some doctor. That's fine. I don't care. Yeah, you shouldn't care.

That wouldn't really bother me. The good part about it is if that picture gets out, I mean, it won't get out. Those doctors are good. But like doctors got lots of naked pictures. Like I know doctors that like do certain kinds of procedures and like i mean they're people's faces aren't usually in it but they'll i mean you can even go to doctor's instagram accounts and they're like yeah we cut this guy's chest open and here is his heart beating and you can watch i think dr nick had some of that shit on his instagram but nick was a guy we had on on the show a few months ago.

Oh, cool. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. I'm like one of those people that just talks about people like no one knows them. Lauren Fisher, hardcore veteran. What was her mindset going into the games or going into that semifinals? Did she want to go to the games again? Yeah. Does the whole team, to be on your team? Do you have to want to go to the games?

I mean, that's the intention of being in that training group. I would have to imagine that she would not have moved herself across the country for two months out of the comfort of her own home with her fiance to live with somebody else that she doesn't know and train if she didn't want to make it back to the games. And she's been training super hard. So I know for sure that that was her goal and her intention. And I'm bummed for her that it didn't pan out that way. I think it was just kind of luck of the draw and like she just had a couple things that went well and some that didn't i think prep went really well but i don't know it is what it is i hope i know i know she's not done you know she's got way more in the tank so i hope she continues to push i think she'll probably end up going back to San Diego now. Um, but I am curious to

see if she'll potentially want to stay on board with training think tank, if she really enjoyed this experience or if she'll go back to Invictus. I'm not sure what the answer is to that. What do you mean when one of her really close friends did make it Reagan Huckabee? Yeah. So I'm, I mean, I, I saw Lauren after the competition and she she seemed to be she didn't seem to be very down on herself. She seemed like she was celebrating the people who'd done well and had a smile on her face and was having a good time. Yeah. Maybe there was some internal stuff of disappointment, but she didn't she wasn't letting it show when I saw her. Yeah, she's definitely good at that. Yeah. Long time. But what good at hiding it or good at being supportive? No, good. Just good at being professional, you know, like carrying herself appropriately in places where she needs to.

And then when it's appropriate, if she needs to go cry, she's going to do it in a place that she feels comfortable doing it. What do you think about taking, um, to the two part question, what do you think about being an individual athlete at a super high level, top 10 person taking a year off and then trying to come back and also in that same thing in respect to um being a top level athlete going to teams and then coming back do you think that both of those like in my opinion it doesn't mean shit in all honesty i'm not even just trying to be humble or funny my opinion doesn't mean shit but i think it's a bad idea to take a year off and try to come back or to go to teams and try

to come back. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be really difficult. I think a feeling that I had this weekend on a very small level of that, like shock to the system, the first day of competition, because it had been a while and I had been a little bit detrained because of these health issues. It really, I was like, whoa, it kind of punched me in the face that first day. And so I can imagine that if you take a year off that first competition, just everything about it, I think would be so shocking to your body that physically you wouldn't be able to keep up mentally and emotionally. You would just be having to process that and not be able to perform well enough to do what you need

to do. I'm sure some people could do it, but it would be much more difficult than just kind of, I think if you ever got to the situation where you felt like, Hey, I need to take a year off, there's probably an appropriate way to do it where you can like really back off and work on certain things and then plan your comeback. But if you just decide like, Hey, I'm done competing. And then all of a sudden you decide you want to jump back in after a year. I think that would be really hard. And, and, and what we have seen is, is that out of necessity, women do it because of pregnancy, but that might be a whole different mindset. That might actually even in some, some, you could rationalize that that could even help them. I don't know because, because,

because they're not, they're not quitting for, for any reason besides, I mean, you just can't compete pregnant. I mean, who am I to say you can't compete pregnant? I wonder if the CrossFit games would allow that. I know athletes have competed pregnant without knowing it. Do you look at the Atlas Games game qualifiers? I did a little bit. I just looked at the leaderboard. So all five of those guys that qualified from Canada have placed inside the top ten of the games

before. Nice. That's cool. I feel like that's a pretty formidable group of men that just all added their name to the games roster. Yeah. Wait. That don't scare me. You can't scare me, Brian.

He was saying that trying to intimidate me, looking for my reaction. Noah, I think I heard you say, and if I'm wrong, just slap me through the computer screen. I think what I'm hearing you, the difference in the last time I talked to you three years ago was you used to, the goal used to be on the podium to get on the podium. And now it doesn't sound like that is the goal. The goal is to stand on top of the podium. Yeah. I think that there are levels to goals, you know, you can have the one overarching goal, but as much as you probably don't want to set those like fallbacks, there's always going to be like, oh, well, if I don't achieve this, at least I get this. And so I think I've always wanted to win the games, but a consolation prize is always like, well, at least hopefully I make the podium. I make the podium. And I think prior to having achieved that, that would have been a big accomplishment. Now that I have achieved that, literally pretty much the only thing left to do in the sport, I think, is to win the CrossFit Games. And I don't mean that to sound arrogant

at all. I just mean like, I've won the Open, I've won regionals, I've won sanctioned events, I've won this and that. So winning the Games is kind of the one thing that I still want to be able to check off my list before I go bye-bye. How old did you say you are? 30. And if you want, and one of your ideas in your head is that you'd like to qualify 10 times at the highest level. Yeah. So that would be this year. I just did eight.

So 31 would be nine. 32 would be 10. i just did eight um so 31 would be 9 32 would be 10 do you see guys getting old have you did you did you did you watch mac get old or did you watch rich get old or did you see anyone like are you watching travis get old like as you look around are you like shit these people some of these motherfuckers are getting old i mean we are all getting older but what i thought used to be kind of the cutoff it seemed like guys and and i had this impression that when i got to 30 i'd start to fizzle out and it doesn't seem like that is the case right now there are a lot of us that are all 30 years old. Myself, Travis, Cole Seeger, Will Morad. Scott Panchik. Scott Panchik.

That are all 30 plus and are still doing relatively well. And it's funny because we talked about this. We were all standing there waiting for them to do the award ceremony, the five guys that had qualified. And we were saying that we were all veterans, Cole, Noah, Will, Brandon, and Sean. And people have been talking about these new up-and-comers. And for sure, there were some. James and Dolan and Tudor all did great that weekend.

But it's not quite yet the crossing or the passing of the guard that it was as significantly as it was in 2014 was the year that there was the biggest shift in the games, for sure. That was me, Cole, Matt, Will, a bunch of those guys coming in for the first time. And that was the last year that Rich, Jason,ris graham tommy all those guys competed so there was that very very tangible changing of the guard and i don't think that we're there quite yet but in the next few years i think that might have been uh i think that was bkg and yonakoski's first year too that 2014 it was a big group for sure wow. Wow. You know, there was also two master's men who qualified for the games this year. One out of Russia and then Jason Smith from Africa, 36 and 37 years old.

Nice. That's awesome. Good for them. In April. Go ahead. Go ahead, Noah. I was going to say, I've been thinking about that a little bit. And so if all goes to plan and by the time I'm 32, I qualify for my 10th games and say

at that point, I call it, I'm like, you know, I don't want to compete individually anymore. I think, I don't know if I would want to compete in the master's division when I'm 35, maybe. I do think it would be a lot of fun to go team. I've always had that desire, but I've always been kind of chasing individuals. So Travis and I have talked about potentially putting a team together in a few years. I think that could be really cool. Um, but I don't know. We'll see what happens. Have you thought about entering the woman's class ever identifying as a woman and entering? No, I can't say that I have considered that.

Taking that path to the podium no okay i mean anything's possible yeah yep that's true that is true my chicken sausage i'll be right back yeah are you gonna eat it on camera that's awesome so didn't i tell you didn't i tell you he's he's he's swooning he's swooning right now. He has the string out of his penis, and he's ready to test his penis out. So those are patties. You say chicken. Max.

What's the dog's name again? Max. Yeah, that's what I thought. Same as the coach. Yeah. Do they get mixed up? Like when you're in the gym and you go, God damn it, Max. Do they both turn their head? Yeah. I would never say that to either of them though and then you're and then your coach

is taking a shit in the corner and your dog's over there picking it up classic how is max how is max's what which is named after the dog believe it or not i believe it um tell me, what is Max like? The dog? No. Cuddly, loyal. The coach. Also cuddly and loyal. He's a really good dude, man. I love that guy. We have grown a pretty special relationship over the last few years. He is a unique individual for sure. I think less so now than he used to be. I think now he's like found a way to be a little bit more comfortable with who he is and the way he relates to people. But he is very intellectual.

He's very, very smart. I don't know. He's hard to describe. I feel like he's like a guy that you need to interact with and hang out with for a day to really get a feel for him. Oh yeah. For a second, I thought you were describing Brian. Friend? Yeah. That guy. So, so he's, he's good. Whenever I've, I've talked to him and usually it's at competitions where he's obviously got a lot of responsibilities and things to think about. He's always very generous with his time and thoughtful with his comments. And he'll have good conversations with me and go out of his way to say hi.

So I've always appreciated that from him. Yeah, man. He's a good guy. Does he believe in you guys, like tangibly? I mean, I know it's easy to say, yeah, he does believe in you. Do you feel that he believes in you? I do, for sure. believe in you. Do you feel that he believes in you? I do for sure. And I think that that's,

that's big in my belief in myself. And I know I'm not fully reliant on that. I think people would say that that would be a fault if like I needed to rely on what other people thought of me. But I think hearing that he's as invested as he is in me and my process because he believes so strongly in my ability to win makes me believe it even more and be even more invested in it as well. Keep it at that. Yeah. I think, you know, my, my, my wife, what, how many more minutes do you want? Five or seven, seven, my, my mom and my wife believe in me and they've always believed in me and i take it for granted but man it it is so awesome yeah very subtle it's constant it's unwavering and i know what you mean it's like it's like huge for sure it's like huge i think that would be one of the things that like your general excuse me like your general health that you maybe take for

granted when you have it but then when you don't it's like the only thing that you want back right i imagine if that was absent that you'd be like oh wow i do not feel good without this i'll give you just a stupid analogy it's like planting a tree in your backyard you know you have a wife a house with your wife and you plant an avocado tree in your backyard and your wife just says oh that's a beautiful tree good job that i like where you put it and shit i don't know if i believe her or not but she believes in me that tree is going to be there for fucking 60 years and i stuck it in the ground instead of like well should we look on google and see if you put it in enough sun and what's the watering regimen on that?

And did you mix the soil properly? And she's just someone who just takes the fun out of fucking everything. And you just want to blow your brains out. And my wife is not that person. And usually neither is my mom. But you know what I'm talking about, right? You know those kind of people. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

You're like trying to decide on the Volkswagen or the Honda. And someone's like trying to figure out how much the $3 you're going to saving gas over the next 30 years. You're like, listen, dude, I'm going for style points here. Yeah. Did you get a chance to, uh, to meet or say hi to Jason Hopper this weekend? I did actually. Yeah. I saw him hanging out watching and I went up to him, shook his hand. Just wanted to introduce myself. He's a large fella. He's a big kid.

You know what I basically found out this weekend? I don't think he's done a lot of traveling in his life. So he had a lot of firsts this weekend, and it was like eyes wide open type stuff. Not from the competition, just being in Vegas and doing some of the things that he was able to do. For sure. He basically told us in the podcast that moving somewhere to train somewhere else was not an option i wonder why i mean i mean he's young he's he's 21 or 22 you know just loves his family just yeah you think that's a sign that he can never win that that's the sign of someone who's not a champion like it's a win by any means

necessary doping in the bus that's a uh what's his name analogy what's the guy of someone who's not a champion. Like it's win by any means necessary. Doping in the bus. That's a, what's his name? Analogy. What's the guy's name who doped in the bus? The cool dude, Lance. I don't want to hear it, Siobhan. I don't want to hear it. Okay.

Would you think that that's, because when I heard that, I'm like, oh, it should be by any means necessary. I think things change. I think that I've been in that position before as well, where Max has told me he feels like I need to be here at Training Think Tank on site with him. And just like life circumstances, it didn't make sense for Joanne being in school or whatever it may be where I was like, man, I can't like that. There's no way that that is the only way that I'm going to be successful. You know, I believe that there are other options.

But I don't know. And then things didn't end up changing for me. You know, over time, I have made sacrifices. I have lived up here a couple of times. So I'm sure it'll be the same thing for him if he feels like that's necessary. If he has a year where he's a little bit disappointed in his performance and needs the spark of something new, maybe that will be the catalyst that he needs to go try that out. But he might not even need that. Maybe his place is optimal and bringing people to him is even better than him going somewhere else. Right. Um, it, whenever I would hear at work and I know this isn't a truism, but, but I, I live by it. Whenever I hear, would hear someone at work be like, Oh, and I, and I, I have strong boundaries and I let my boss know my boundaries. I'm like, this motherfucker is never getting promoted. You're never making it to the top. So, but, but, but I know that's not a truism. I know there's people who do it, do it both ways. Do you think that there's a shitload of pressure on the guy because of his performance?

because of his performance? I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe, I don't know if it's going to be coming from outside sources or just on himself, you know? But it's so hard to tell. I could see how,

yes, very easily there could be a lot of pressure because he did really well. And people are thinking he's like the new up and comer, but I don't know. I think if he manages it well, that'd be fine. What about Justin Medeiros? You think there's a shit ton of pressure on him getting the – he got some like nutritional supplement contract with Matt.

Do you think that that – being in Matt's shadow, that that puts like an enormous amount of pressure that maybe isn't necessary or healthy? I also am not really sure. It's so hard for me to say being in like them being in their shoes. I think maybe if I was that age and in that same situation, I could see it being both like really exciting and beneficial, but also maybe putting a little bit of that pressure on. Yeah, I think Justin maybe had some of that coming off of the games last year, but he's had a couple, like, okay performances in the Open and quarterfinals and the sanctioned events. I'm not saying that he performed poorly, but he didn't, like, crush it. So I don't think there's – I think if he had finished third at the games

his rookie year and then crushed the Open, crushed quarterfinals, crushed semifinals, everybody would be like, yo, this kid is it. He's the future. And that probably would put a lot of pressure on him, but that's not the case right now. So we shall see. You said this would be your eighth games. Correct. One more eighth games. Correct.

One more than Travis. Important, important. Well, how much, how much do you like now that, you know, in preparation for the games,

are you still learning things in year eight? Or do you feel like you guys pretty much have it dialed in all the time? I learned stuff. It's crazy. Like little, little physical things too. Even I like a year ago started to, instead of catching my snatches like this with my wrists locked out, I started to receive my snatches with a little bit of like, um, that flexion or extension,

I guess that's extension in my wrists. And it just like changed everything in my shoulder positioning and my setup in the catch so yeah i mean 10 years deep sometimes you'll accidentally discover something sometimes it's purposeful but i think being willing to make those changes and adaptations is beneficial do you have an agent i do you know bijan do i know bijan i think so the name sounds familiar what's his it's a he or she he bijan harabi very handsome fella tall dark chiseled he represents myself travis chandler mal saxon spencer oh wow yeah yeah the name the name sounds and i have horrible memory not because i smoke weed i just have a horrible memory i think maybe it's from all the weed I used to smoke. I used to smoke a lot of weed, Noah. Yeah, I believe you.

It's too much. And so he has all of these people. And how did you meet him? I were fraternity brothers in college at the University of Miami. And we actually both started our careers together. He was graduating law school the same year that I qualified for the CrossFit Games for the first time. And he said he didn't want to go the traditional agency route. He wanted to do his own thing and asked if he could represent me. And we both kind of have grown from there together. It's pretty cool. And you've been with him the whole time? Yep. Holy shit.

It's actually is a, you're really similar to Matt O'Keefe and Matt Frazier's, you know, start. Yeah, it is. I think we've been together the exact, I think Matt and I both started in 2014 and have been with our guys ever since.

Were you his first athlete? Yep. Oh yeah. And Matt Were you his first athlete? Yep. Oh, yeah, and Matt was Matt's first athlete. Yeah, I didn't realize this. There's a lot of parallels. Yeah, it's cool. And Matt and Bijan are both good friends and bounce ideas and stuff off of each other

and help grow the industry. Is Bijan in Miami? He is. I'm going to Google him. I know when I see him, I'm going to be like, oh, yeah, shit, I knew that guy. Yeah, for sure. Many a night at the bar with him. What ethnicity do you see?

There was an athlete control guy there this weekend that kind of reminded me of Bijan. I don't know if you saw him or not. Yeah. At first I thought it was him. He was there. It probably just was him. Was he working for the event? No. But he was there it probably just was him was he working for the event no but he was there hanging out like no no this was the guy who was wearing like one of those pink athlete control shirts but i saw bijan there but i also saw this guy i was like wait a minute got it no i didn't

know what what is he what ethnicity is he no he is persian and spanish, what a great name. What's his last name again? Haravi. H-E-R-A-V-I. Now you're just showing off. I've gone through all my... No, I haven't. But we're going to let Noah go. Brian, do you want to tell him anything?

Leave Noah on a high note. Listen, I want to... Sivan, I want to apologize for not engaging in all your humorous banter. I'm very tired and I don't think I'm as witty as I usually am. So I apologize. Hey, dude, you owe no apology. The fact that you told us that story about your journey to the games, your journey to the semifinals and some of the trials and tribulations and the, and the string. And I mean, we covered all of my favorite subjects. Oh yeah. I got to send you the photo.

You told me one question I asked you couldn't answer. I mean, this is great. That means I'm doing my job. Hold on. You guys stay here. I'm going to send you the photo while we're on this. I can get your reaction to it. You just can't post it anywhere. Okay. I want to find out his doctor's name and get that nude of him and then use it to, uh, what's that called? When like you, I tell Noah, like, Hey, I have a nude picture of you and I read blackmail or ransom. Um, Brian, do you have anything you're going to leave him with? That's going to make him like so stoked, like,

like some stat or something that's going to make him chubbler? I'll give him a stat. I'll give him a stat. I did this little study a few weeks ago, and I looked at the regionals from 2012 to 2018 and the men's podium finishers at the games from the same year. 15 of them won their regional. And the other six all finished second, and one guy was fourth it was ben smith the year that he won so you've done well enough in this region this semi-final which is

kind of like regionals that you should be i think very confident in your abilities to challenge for all of the spots on the podium this summer nice man thank you i appreciate that i am looking forward to that for sure excited to get healthy get peaked and primed and go out there and give it my best shot first of all that's an amazing photo of you you look like a movie star i don't know which one but you look like a movie star um the face he's making is just priceless i was like oh my god that just came out of me wait so the part that's dang is down was the part that's in you everything that i'm holding in my hand was inside of my body so wait so that loop on the bottom was inside of you and that loop on top

it's a very very flexible rubber so that loop in top? It's a very, very flexible rubber. So that loop in the bottom, it's actually like flipped upside down. That bottom part was up in my kidney and the loop basically kept it from sliding out of my kidney. So that top, the bottom loop was up in the kidney. The tube goes all the way down. goes all the way down and then the loop that i'm holding up like by my ear was in my bladder and the string that's attached to that was coming out of me and there's nothing hanging on to the end of the string no to like stop it from going in the hole they should do that couldn't you put like there was some x there was like a lot of excess and they tape it up to. Like your chode? Aft, if I may.

Your what? Your aft? Chode. I really appreciate you sending that. That is amazing. And I don't mean to. I know your fiance, Joanna, is amazing. But I think that you should have kept that.

Do you know what you could have done with it? You could have used that, like, to hang a plant, like, in your living room. Like, one end goes on the hook and the other end goes on the plant. And only you and her would know. That would have been pretty hilarious. Even better if it would have been some mistletoe. Oh, yeah, yeah. You'd hang it from the Christmas tree.

Hey, babe, kiss me been some mistletoe oh yeah yeah you hang it from the Christmas tree hey babe kiss me under the mistletoe hopefully there's never another one but if there is I'll keep it thank you I'll mail it to you well thank you very much um if um if there's any point during the games I know it's going to be crazy but if there's any time during the games, I know it's going to be crazy, but if there's any time during the games, you need to call me and do a podcast for counseling. You just let me know. Cause I would love to get some numbers off you. I mean, be there to support you. You know,

Travis asked seven to come to the games as his camera guy. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. Yeah. I half chubbed. was i was like no fuck no come on i know i want to jason hopper actually asked too and then someone else asked too but i don't know i cannot reveal who but you got yates already i got joe yates baby i actually did

put together a proposal to come there and do the behind the scenes. I just haven't sent it off because I just don't know. Just don't know. Yeah, scared. Don't be. I'll welcome you with open arms. I'm just so happy in my little igloo here in Santa Cruz, California. I'm glad you're happy.

Good to hear from you. And Brian, it was good to see you this weekend. Thanks, dude. Gentlemen, truly my pleasure. I'm glad you're happy good to hear from you and Brian it was good to see you this weekend thanks dude gentlemen truly my pleasure I'm off to bed