The Sevan Podcast - #549 - Brian Friend Recaps the 2022 CrossFit Games

Episode Date: August 14, 2022

Welcome to this episode of the Sevan Podcast!Sign up for our email: https://thesevanpodcast.com/-------------------------Partners:https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATIONhttps://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK!Master of Coaching  - COACHING PUBLICATIONhttps://www.hybridathletics.com/produ... - THE BARBELL BRUSH Support the showPartners:https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATIONhttps://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

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 yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Bam, we're live. Brian, hi. I missed you.

It's been a while. It's been a while. I know. Where is Brian? Why wasn't he on any of the games coverage? I heard rumors that you got a really bad case of COVID. Is that true? And you were hospitalized and vented?

No. Oh. During the games this year, I had the opportunity to work kind of on the internal production team for the broadcast. And I thought that it would be important for me to commit myself to that and not be distracted or put myself in any environments where I could potentially, you know, just be at risk of getting in trouble. I didn't want to have. Oh, like leak stuff.

Yeah. Like James Craig did, kind of. I was on the show for that, unfortunately. But, you know, it's even, you know, obviously on those shows, there's a lot of speculating going on. And, you know, it's kind of weird to be in a group of people that are speculating about things that you already know about. Right. I totally agree. So what did you do over there?

What did you do? You worked with, uh, that's, um, uh, Charlie and Jonah, Charlie, uh, Doobie class act and Jonah Vela class act two of the classiest dudes I ever worked with. Yeah. And so it's Hamilton roads and Mike Roth, who's the director there. And those guys, I worked with them at Wadapalooza. I worked with them at those guys, I worked with them at Guadalupe. I worked with them at the Mac. I worked with them at Granite Games, and then I worked with them at the Games. I don't know what the technical role is. Some have called it a floor producer or a field producer, but in this particular instance, I had a mobile headset

that had a direct line to the producer, Tim Pabst, who I also worked with at Granite Games, and Chad Schroeder. So the three of us were able to communicate and it's better than having for me to have a line to the producer than the director because the director has so many things going on and the last thing he needs to do is hear from me if there's something critical that we're talking about it's Tim's job to communicate that to Mike and then Mike will make the decision of how to react based on what people at home see. So my objective in doing this is hopefully to tell the stories of more athletes better via

the broadcast. And I know that there's still a lot of want in that regard for, for changes with regards to the broadcast, but you know, there are also, there's all, you know, it's really easy to just say, give us wide shots all the time. And there's certainly some value in that perspective, but there are a lot of other things in play. And this year I've had a chance to learn about some of those from a different perspective than I've ever had before. If you want a bee friendly shirt, and it's got a cool picture of Brian on the on the back small one up on the by the neck it's really cool actually you go to you know they surprised me with these shirts oh they you didn't even know no are you gonna sue are you gonna sue no it was uh i think that the i think

that the logo on the back the vindicate guy made and then he was working with sherpa works they sent me a like a sneak peek of that mock-up but i didn't really think anything of it i just thought they were like playing around because that's what like shirts guys do or maybe it was a sticker i don't know and then at the game so i showed up i cost saw ken from sherpa works and he just tossed me the shirt and i was like oh damn that's that's pretty cool. Ken, so it's a shirt, but just go to SherpaWorks.com and people can get that. Can people buy that shirt? Yeah, the thing that was kind of awkward about it is he gave one to Lauren Kalil. She wore it on the Morning Chalk Ups review show one night.

So people saw it like a week ago, maybe more. And then there were a few that he brought on site with him that he had been given out to some people. We had a little get together at the RV camp one day and I gave some out to some people there. Uh, and then a lot of people were asking about him, but I didn't even know, like, I didn't even know they were being made. So I didn't know where they'd be available or when, but today he finally did make them available. If you want to get one, uh, Travis, uh, Bellinghausen, if you're listening from, uh, uh vindicate see this shirt right here can we change the b to a c could it be c dot beaver and we make a um and then on the on the

other side can you can we see the other side of that shirt and see the little picture of uh brian do they show it no if there's another i don't think that's too bad oh there it is there it is on the sleeve right there nice and and we have a picture of uh of caleb sea beaver and then a and then like a picture of caleb that would be awesome you like that huh suza suza's dying i thought you're gonna have a different picture and listen listen with the and and and make c Caleb's eyes really big. And then in the pupils, maybe a picture of a sea urchin or something or a sea anemone.

And all that money we make from selling the T-shirts will go directly to purchasing Caleb a new computer. God, I love this idea. I did use the manscaping. I did use the manscaping clippers. They've never been used on my balls or my cockings, but I did use it manscaping. I did use the manscaping clippers. They've never been used on my balls or my cockings, but I did use it on my face on the second shortest setting. How do you feel? Good. I, my mom called and said, Hey, you should say shave that shit. And then I asked my wife, Hey,

should I shave it? And she goes, I'm not going to tell you what to do. And then as she walked away, she goes, it's weird kissing you. And I just, I literally, I was, I was at the counter, I think eating like a bowl of meat and beans. And I just walked up and I went straight to the bathroom and I just fucking shaved it off. That was all you needed to hear. Yeah.

I think I was just looking for like. Those clippers are easy to use. Dude. I only have the 3.0 and they have a 4.0. They're the best clippers ever. I mean, I've never tried to go shorter than this with them, but like, they're so nice so nice i don't know why but they're so nice and i have a 20 those are expensive i have a 20 send me the link i might i want to try them out okay i'll send you a picture i heard though that if you do use them on your balls they chop your balls up i'm not planning to use them on my

balls all right so so i use clippers once on my balls that weren't for my balls, and within like a half a second, it gave me like 20 small paper cuts on my testicles. It was horrible. Oh, look at Paul Desmond, 4.0. Paul, do you nick your nuts? Do you nick the golf balls, the avocados? Avocados? I saw today that Dave Castro went over went over sorry guys we're lagging

getting started but i saw today um that dave castro and don fall f right yes this uh this is on the dave castro instagram a fun afternoon session with 15 affiliates from the bay area i didn't even know there were 15 affiliates. Have you sent a, have you sent Dan a shirt? No, that's a great idea. We did invite him on the podcast. Send him a shirt to the notes say congratulations. Join the club. Oh, okay. That's a good idea. Okay. I like that. A fun afternoon session with 15 affiliates from the Bay area and the new and new CrossFit CEO, Don Fall. Fall, Fall.

Thanks for hosting CrossFit Palo Alto, the discussion. Thanks for the discussion, guys. MVP of the session was Neil Maddox. Oh, and you can kind of see him just to the left. It looks like that's him, just to the left of Don. Right. I came across Neil Maddox's name today name today as doing some prep for this show actually oh like for some sort of skills or some sort of record he set for the games

uh he's got four event wins in his career and adler now has four and geese gee now has five so he was just on the list near them wow i don't think that that's interesting uh who's a better crossfitter a games athlete uh all time if if you were to put neil maddox at his prime adler and gee in a in a in a competition who'd win at this point i i think uh adler would probably have to take it even though he went you know his one of his better finishes was on the 2020 year. He does have two top five finishes. Neither of the guys have any. Gotcha. And then if you go over, will you click on the CrossFit affiliates Instagram? This is perplexing to me.

So we have the new guy with Dave talking to affiliates, but if you go over to the affiliates Instagram and you click on it, they haven't posted in four days they must be taking some time off after all that hard work at the games um and it's just junk they're selling anyway brian likes to keep his head above the fray so i will leave it at that and i will revisit this at another time. Let's see. But I am curious.

That was a surprise to me. It is good to see that the CEO is out and about kicking ass already, taking names. He's in good company. Is that different than we usually see from the CEO in the first few days to weeks in the job uh shit i don't know i i know greg was always out and about talking to the um affiliates i do think that it was premature when rosa did it i don't i think rosa was destined to fail because he just didn't know what crossfit was and he went out and exposed when you go how many ceos have there been in the last like 15 months four five there was there was well i don't know about in 15 months been in the last 15 months? Four? Five? There was, well, I don't know about in the 15 months,

but in the last two years, there was that other guy, the garbage guy. Then there was Greg. Then there was Dave. Then there was Rosa. Then there was Nunn. Then there was some dude that was the president who I think doesn't work there anymore, but they won't tell us that he doesn't work there anymore. Fuck, I forget that guy's name.

I met him in… And then there was the interim, and now there's this… And then there was that girl, Allison, the CFO. Yeah, and then now there's Don. Hopefully, he sticks around for a while. Some consistency could be a good thing. Yeah, steep learning curve. He needs to surround, immerse himself with Dave and Nicole.

Steep, steep learning curve. And, boy. Anyway, I'm avoiding, I was going to show you the new CDC, the COVID guidelines by the CDC, but let's dig into the CrossFit Games instead. Before we start, I just want to ask you some big-picture questions before we start. You did a – you've done power rankings. We did predictions. You're arguably no better student of the game of athletes capacity.

And did. Are you shocked by the workouts this year? My left turn, I was expecting to ask me about the athletes. Am I shocked by the workouts? Because here's what here's why. Obviously, you see where I'm going. It's a loaded question. You had this pool of athletes, and you talked about how they were going to do. And somewhere in there, there had to be some presuppositions that we all have of what the challenges are going to be for these athletes. So if it was a knitting contest, we'd have no fucking idea who was going to win. But we have 15 years of games that you thought you knew what they were kind of going to be doing to some extent. A pretty good extent. I would say

you did catch me off guard with this question. There were a couple workouts that surprised me. For the most part, and when I look at the total test, it's not that surprising. Okay, and what workout surprised you the most? I would say the biggest surprise to me was the skills medley. Now, it wasn't surprising that they had some kind of skills test.

I thought that they would have some kind of skills test. Is that the pegboard crossover? That's the one with the three or four new things, the unbroken shit? More than that. Yeah. And I think that JR and Taylor mostly nailed the analysis of this one last night, which is it's okay to have new elements. You should have new elements at the games. It's weird to have a workout that has so many new elements and not give the entire field a chance to test themselves or prove that they have those skills.

It could, oh yeah, it could, I think they even mentioned it. Oh, yeah. It could. I think they even mentioned it could lead to future iterations of seeing some of these skills in an in an environment where everyone's tested by them. But I think that for the most part, if you're going to have a new implement, that it should be available for the entire field to test. So you're mad at Adrian. Do I sound mad? No, you don't sound mad at all. But but but but but it is it's some constructive criticism i tried to i brought that up with him and he said absolute i said i i would have liked to have seen them have two weeks and he looked at me like i was out of my fucking mind when he was on the show and and i and i felt him i thought he had a good answer we have to test

their ability to adapt also and that was one of those things or a new skill. Definitely. Definitely. But you know, um, if you're going to put something in that you want them to adapt to give all 40 of them a chance to adapt to it. Don't, you know, like, you know, the obvious, the obvious things, I think, first of all, that it was too, it was really unfortunate that the, um, L sit pressed to Hanson was buried so deep in that workout that we hardly got to see anyone do it. None of the women got there. Three of the guys got there. Two of the guys were able to do it. None of the women.

I don't think any of them were able to finish the 25 crossover double under, so we didn't even get to see them attempt it. Right. I think that that's something that, well, that's annoying, that dog over there. Oh, that's annoying, that dog over there. I think that's something that most of the community would have appreciated getting to see, because I think that a lot of the athletes would have been able to do that. And you might have even seen some people kind of getting it for their first time on the competition floor, potentially. It would have been an exciting moment and a fun moment and a good test for the athletes to say like, OK, well, I haven't really mastered this or I don't know if I have.

Is this something that I'm able to do when it matters the most? And we saw that in other regards, you know, notably with the sandbag where in the back, not a lot of people were having very much success. Ricky was struggling with the 260, only two of the guys even managed to do the 300, but you put them on the competition floor and it's a totally different ball game. I think we might've seen something similar with the press to handstand and that that was a missed opportunity to showcase that movement as a new and potentially unexpected movement for some of the athletes. Whereas now if we test it next year in that regard,

they've had a full year to test and therefore, you know, to test and practice that. And therefore that thing that Adrian was seeking, which is their ability to adapt to something new under pressure is lost with a lot of, with a four or five different movements, pirouette, press to handstand, legless pegboard sink, or, you know, unbroken sets of jump rope, unbroken pistols, like all of those things. I don't know if it was necessary to reveal them all in one workout that not everyone got to do. necessary to reveal them all in one workout that not everyone got to do. If you don't mind me asking, how did you know that Ricky was struggling in the back with a 260?

He told me. Most of the athletes talked about that. Actually, one of my friends who works for CrossFit Media came to me before the men even took the floor. He goes, dude, the competition just happened in the back, and there was only two guys that were even able to get the 300 back. And I sawicky and kotler and ben gerard after the event and ricky was like i'm like damn dude that was impressive he goes yeah man i could barely get the 260 back here warming up wow um i'd never seen so many um i basically every athlete after they lifted did that shit that people do like after they've been in a car accident like this shit and like this and they were like you been in a car accident like this shit and like this and they were like you know what i mean they were doing shit and they were getting in some

fucking contorted positions i mean if if you think about it like justin madaris had his head like this with 340 pounds pushing on his fucking head and it's straining his neck it doesn't look like shit to us at home but dude i had a really, it would kill an average person. Go ahead. I had a really good vantage point for this workout. And, um, I would just say that the last 20 or 30 minutes of the men's sandbag ladder is the most fun that I've ever had at any individual CrossFit event anywhere. And, you know, I've been to a lot of competitions around the world. It was such an awesome environment. I think every fan and every athlete abandoned all sense of who was lifting. Everyone just wanted everyone to be successful with the lift. Like it was us against the bags.

Yeah. And it was great. And this is exactly what I think Adrian's talking about is give them something that they haven't done. You tell me you've been doing cross and bend the boxes all over the world for 15 years. Have you ever seen a sandbag over 200 pounds? Maybe at one, maybe a two 51 somewhere where the starting weight for men was bigger than that. Right. Right.

Now stones is one thing. And I talked to Nick Fowler about it, but sandbags like that, and you just had to figure it out. And it was amazing. The two athletes that impressed me the most were Jackson Dahlstrom and Justin Madaris. And not that either of them ended up winning.

How about Emma McQuaid was pretty impressive too, right? The athletes as a whole were incredibly impressive. The thing that I really respected about Justin was that his movement pattern from first bag to last bag was identical. The hardest part of the lift for him was a deadlift, especially as the bag got heavy, but he got it into his lap. He positioned his hands a certain way. He took clear and obvious and big breath in. And in one effort, he got it up and did the

rotation technique that the strong men who demoed it for them, uh, Jerry Pritchett, I think, uh, explained. And then, uh, you know, Jacqueline Dahlstrom, I mean, Jacqueline Dahlstrom is a body weight specialist. She should be dominating on ring muscle-ups and handstand push-ups and handstand walking and uh the fact that she beat amanda barnhart and laura horvath and tia toomey and and and all these women in this workout and the only person that beat her is danny spiegel who was absolutely incredible in that awesome savage uh and the way she did it was unique you know she she got it up there she inched it up in this way that really no other athlete was able to do. I'm sure the strongman would have kind of said, like, that's not a very efficient technique, but it worked for her. Cole tried it.

Cole Sager wore it using that technique. I know you guys talked about it last night, but that was insane to watch in person. I thought the same as you guys. He was going to black out for sure. I mean, 310 pounds just sitting on his chest for 30 to 40 seconds uh the fergie show asks um is brian moving to northern uh new york with the calise no uh the question is is the calise moving to the sebon podcast like brian i think he had his he's probably been drinking he had his question i I was screwed up. When you mentioned that the women, no woman, did the press to Hansen, there were a couple of events that I thought – that opening event with the laps being shorted.

It was a disaster, but it was fun. From our place where we sat doing this show and doing the commentating it really charged us up right like it was fun that there was a colossal fuck up but it moved so it was still a great event it moved so quickly to another event and that's another thing right there that is a colossal fuck up in my mind that none of the women got to uh the the l sit or the low position to to even try it that is a fucking problem but that's how good the events were that it was i call it the donald trump effect like you just he has just one fuck up right after another so you know you just keep forgetting that he did this and he did this and you just keep moving it just kept moving forward

um and and i and i now that i think about it, that was, uh, Chase Ingram even said, were you standing next to Chase and Sean when Chase dropped that line? Oh, Adrian, giant bead of sweat just rolled down Adrian's head and he can breathe the sigh of release as Nick Matthews, um, completed the, uh, press to handstand. No, I never stood next to him the whole weekend. I, uh, Oh really? Well, you weren't, I picture you standing in a room, the three of you. That dude only has one arm. That dude's mom just died.

That dude has the most games wins with throwing a ball. That's what I picture you doing. I have done that in the past. At the Granite Games, I was right next to Chase. And at the MAC for one of the days, I was right next to Sean. But I would text them things occasionally. Just the vantage point is different. So for the North Park events, they weren't out at North Park.

They were in a broadcast trailer calling it from there. So they have a limited point of view from there. And I have a more, so I can get a different perspective than them. And in the Coliseum, they're up in like the mezzanine, like the second, uh, between the first and second tier looking down from a horizontal view. And so I just go down on the floor to a different angle where I can see a little bit, you know, the perspective of the floor differently than they can. And so I, you know, kind of a divide and conquer type things we can see from more perspectives. And I try to, they're not, is that the first year they haven't been out on the park? I think, i believe so

yeah and actually sean was saying that that was somewhat of a relief that's a pretty it's a pretty tough environment calling it from north park up where they were before it was often very hot very crowded there was a lot of things like a lot of commotion and stuff going on that could be distracting so he didn't mind that change um i don't even uh ryan menard i don't even do crossfit and i love this shit podcast now that's it you could read that a couple ways you could i'm gonna just not read it the correct way okay oh yes savon spiegel 2024 i. I'll say since you brought it up, I'll say the, the bike to work event was that was, that was unfortunate. That men's, the final lap of the men's race would have been extremely fun and compelling.

I'm a hundred percent sure that Yonikoski would have won that event. If, if Lazar and Spencer had it missed the lap. The reason that I know this is because. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's the first I heard that. Wait, what the fuck did they have to do with that? Because those were the athletes he was citing. They were within 20 seconds of him. And there was another 25 seconds to Ricky and Justin in that group with three laps to go. On lap four, Yona could cite them because he could see them because they were within 20 seconds.

He could not see 45 seconds behind them on the track. And the way that the track was at once you made a turn, there was a period of time where you couldn't see anything unless someone else made the turn. And then once you went up the hill, you couldn't see anything until someone else crested the hill. And so even coming into the stadium and if you, and the thing that, uh, it took us like hours to break down the broadcast, to run back the cameras and to try to find where the hell Ricky and Justin came from. But the entire lap, Yona, he and Ricky are the best cyclists in that field by far. And, you know, you saw how they were working together early and teaching Justin and Lazar how to trade off the lead in draft. Yona knows how to sight on a bike as good as anyone.

But the entire lap, he never saw Lazar and Spencer because they didn't do the lap and he couldn't see Ricky and Justin because they were too far behind. And so by the time he came over the last hill and came and he was going around the last fence into the stadium and looked, Ricky still had not come over the hill, like 200 yards behind him. So Yona had no sense of urgency and Ricky saw him and he just, you know, guns a blazing went balls for the wall, risked it coming down the hill. saw him, and he just, you know, guns a-blazing, went balls for the wall, risked it coming down the hill. He had the shorter lane. And, you know, so it was a huge advantage for Ricky that Lazar and Spencer missed that last lap.

It cost Yona three points in an event, winning $1,000 for sure. It cost Lazar at least 15 points, which I thought might have been pretty significant for him come the end of the week. But I'll tell you this about Lazar Jukic. For everything or whatever else you think about him, his mental fortitude to bounce back from stuff like that was insanely good.

After that event and the Capitol, he never wavered. He was so positive. He put it behind him immediately. I told him two days later, I'm like, dude, I still haven't gotten over the fact that that cost you 15 points and you got over it instantly and just went out with the competition. He's like, can we see the leaderboard real quick? I want to see what 15 points and you got over it instantly and just went out the competition he's like that's can we see the leaderboard real quick i want to see what 15 points is if those 15 points alone wouldn't have had an effect he still would have finished it uh okay uh brian uh brian have you talked to yana koski or i talked to him about this i talked to yana immediately after the event while he was still on the field.

I'm like, where did those guys come from? He goes, I have no idea. But on the last lap, I couldn't see anyone. I was going slow. I mean, I definitely could have gone faster and won that event easily. So he took the onus on him. But I'm telling you, I'm certain of it. If Lazar and Spencer had done the last lap, Yona would have won the workout.

No question. No questions asked at all. The question is, wouldicky and justin madaris have caught lazar and spencer i think yes and i think that would have been a really fun four-person race for those next four spots the other thing is that go back to the leaderboard one more time let me see one more thing and and then and then that would have been less points for Ricky also. Three less points. Okay, okay. He's still safe. Well, maybe up to 12 less points if he would have finished it.

But I think he would have finished second or third, fourth at worst. It wouldn't have affected. Obviously, Sam Quant was almost 100 points behind him. Okay. Yeah, so that was the other thing is when they came into the stadium, Spencer didn't hesitate. Whether he knew he was wrong or not he just ran across lazar had that like hesitation which cost him additional time so he like double punished him oh yeah yeah yeah yeah he fucked he got up finishing yes in that workout and lazar finished 10th which is kind of laughable

like obviously they would have been within once one or two spots of each other otherwise so it was just the really the word i was used to describe that it was really unfortunate. And the thing that I think was most unfortunate about it is there was nothing else going on. It was the first event of the weekend for any division. You have so many judges and scoring team there. You should have just had someone go out with every athlete. There are workouts where there's 40 people and there's 80 judges. Then there's two assigned to you, one in the stadium, one out of the stadium. You just have someone out there that's specifically responsible for every athlete and does a little counter. And as they go by, they say, one, two.

Brian, I've heard two stories, though. I've heard that they were – I heard that they were – Lazar was told to go in. We didn't find any evidence of that when we looked at the footage going back. But Adrian said that the judge actually told him to get – both of them to get out. We did see that. to go in we didn't find any evidence of that when we looked at the footage going but adrian said that the judge actually told him to get both of them to get out we did see that okay okay but i don't know where the so there's a there's a guy with an orange flag the orange flag guy was not waving them into the stadium from the camera we went back in a truck and looked at cameras over and over and over we didn't see any orange flag people waving them in once they went into the stadium there were definitely people telling him to go back out yeah there were okay hey um do you know it's crazy

too if he would have gone out he may have finished even worse maybe the thing is that they decided to penalize him by adding their slowest lap time and their slowest lap time included probably when they had to get off the pull-up bar run their bike outside and then get momentum to start going up and around the course so i don't know i i think that i wasn't upset i mean i know that some people think that they should have uh penalized them in in depth from taylor was you know saying they should have got a zero or something like that i think that it ended up working out okay. And the girls, there were some mistakes on the girls. It was just not with the leaders, so it was less obvious. I knew instantly that Danielle Brandon had not done enough laps

because it's impossible to make up that much time on one of those laps. She was like in 20-something place, and all of a sudden she's in seventh. That's funny. I forgot about her. The ones I didn't know about because there's you know as as the event goes on it gets it's impossible to keep track of the 40 athletes and all those laps and whatever was elena karatala and sun yang choy doing an extra one i didn't know about oh they both did elena did three laps instead of five and sun yang ch on the workout anyway so uh this this show is off to a funky start so i'm just going to keep being funky can you pull up the leaderboard again and

can we look at where spencer and saxon um actually maybe we should just go straight to the document that Brian made. Spencer Panczyk finished in 17th place. Yep. No, I had him in 17th. I ranked him in 17th. He finished in 20th. Okay, okay, yes. He finished in 20th.

And where did Saxon finish? Saxon, on the left there, I had him in 6th. where did saxon finish saxon on the left there i had him in sixth he finished 11th okay so okay because spencer was ahead of saxon for quite a bit of the crossfit games wasn't he no maybe maybe early on but it didn't last that long saxon made a little run in the middle of the event he had some good event finishes um saxon had a really up and down games relative to what he usually has chris hassle yeah because none of these shows are funky more funky please all right i'm trying i'm trying to clean i'm trying to clean up. I'm trying to be professional. So what you guys are looking at here is this is the ranking that Brian gave prior to the games, his predictions for the men. And you see he predicted Justin Medeiros to be in first place, and he took first.

He took Patrick Vellner to be – predicted him to be in second place. He took sixth. And you can see there's that consistency. It goes down like that. to be predicted to be in second place he took six and you can see there's that consistency it goes down like that and then down below there's a um what are those things called down below a legend uh and the legend is uh helps you understand the the color codes um uh and when you when you say you valued them appropriately, you gave yourself some wiggle room, like three places or something, up and down? Yeah, I mean, in some cases, like maybe I could have been more critical

and said I placed Adler ninth and he finished fifth, so I undervalued him. You could say that. I think, you know. Lazar, Lazar Jukic. Oh, no, seventh and eighth. Okay, yeah, that's correct. Spencer, 17th and 20th. Okay. So I took, you know, there, Lazar Jukic. Oh, no. Seventh and eighth. Okay. Yeah, that's correct. Spencer, 17th and 20th. Okay.

So I took, you know, there's a little bit of liberty there. But the ones that are like that were obviously off are in red. But they were if they did worse than I thought. And the ones that in green did a lot did like significantly better than I had thought. Before we dig in here, have you heard anything about the rumors of Haley Adams going to HWPO and Tudor Magda going to Brute? I heard. I mean, I know you've heard them, but have you? Can you verify those at all? No. No. Oh, this is the document that Trump got raided for? This one up here?

Oh, shit. Brian had it the whole time time you can't verify those or you won't verify those cannot you cannot because you don't want to i don't know anything more than you guys talked about last night okay fine i find that hard to believe uh let's look at let's look at um let's just dig in here have Have you spoke to Patrick Vellner? Yeah. And what would you say? We got to get him on the show. I'm dying to know what his sentiment is.

No, Sousa, don't schedule any games athletes. I didn't mean it. He's, uh, he's putting, um, you know, recaps of every event on Instagram and you can get a good feel for that. He's generally very open about that stuff. Of course, you can invite him on and talk about it. I know he's been having a little bit of a knee issue most of the year. I don't think that he used that as an excuse or anything, but, you know, like I said, before we started the games, there were people in this field that could be fitter than they were last year, or just as fit as they were last year that do that have worse finishes this

year, because the men's field is so good. I spoke to BKG right after the last event. And he's like, man, this is my worst finish since, uh, 2014.

And I said, I know. And you look really fucking fit. And he's like, I am. And I said, yeah, but look at the top 10.

This is as good as top 10 as the men's field ever has had. It's not embarrassing to finish ninth against this field. That's just how good they are. But that's not his mentality. BKG said, I have to raise my level for next year. So that's like now he sees the field has gotten better, and he needs to get better. And the new guy took a spot.

Two new guys. Yeah, two new guys took two new spots, pushed everyone down. Yeah, I mean, look, well... By the way, we're talking about Ricky and Roman. Yeah, there's Roman and there's Ricky. There's also Sam Quant, who wasn't in the equation last year, but he was in the top five the year before. This validates that performance a little bit,

so that's kind of a third new guy. There's also Jason Hopper, who's looked completely different than the Jason Hopper we saw last year. So in an essence, that's kind of a fourth new contender. And outside of that, you still have Justin, you still have Pat, you know, Adler was flirting with the top 10 last year. He obviously has made some improvements. Lazar was in the top 10. BK was in the top 10. Guy was in the top 10. So it's not like that. It's not that shocking of a list, but this is what I was saying beforehand.

Like only 10 guys can be in the top 10. And therefore with these new guys pushing in there, you have guys like Saxon, Noah Olson, and Brent Fikowski that were in the top 10 last year that, that couldn't make it this year because there's more guys that are really good at the top of the men's field. I mean, Fikowski took 16th.

I couldn't have talked you into that in a million fucking years. But before we go to him, though, hold on. Okay, hold on. So is Vellner doing any finger pointing at, I think that the general programming, like, uh, like Christie, Christie Aramo is,

is, is definitely like those guys. I don't think Christie is complaining about the programming in general. She's just pointing out that, that the decision to not have the legless row climbs in that workout definitely had an impact on how some of the women did on that workout, which is true, but they had to make a

tough decision and they ended up prioritizing safety over the test in that regard. Oh, wasn't it more, wasn't it? Maybe I'm, maybe I misread it, but I feel like there was a bigger picture piece. I'm paraphrasing with the way I read what she wrote was hey this isn't what we've been training for the CrossFit Games for the last 15 years and we pretty much know what we're training for and this year we didn't know what we were training for

that's not I would say that that's not accurate that sentiment is not founded in fact okay so here's oh what do you mean that's not found in fact that I'm reading into what she said or she's saying, if that is what she's saying, or if that's what any athletes are saying.

So I, you know, this is one of the reasons why I wanted to wait a few days to do this show. One was so that I could have a conversation with Adrian Bosman. And two was so that I could actually process what I just saw happen without making assumptions based on what I think I saw happen. So one of the, I would say that probably the reason why people feel that this test was

different or skewed is twofold. One, there were a lot of new things, more new things than we're used to seeing. Taylor identified those last night. Secondly, the distribution of where the new things were and where the gymnastics slash skill components fell was skewed. So a majority of the gym. What's that last thing mean? Where they fell was skewed. Oh, you mean like all in one workout? So last night, Taylor identified 14 or 15 gymnastics elements that were in this competition. I only counted 11 because I didn't count some of the duplicates that he counted, but either way, 80% of them showed up in the first half of the work of the workouts or the first seven scored tests. Cause there were

13 tests, but there's 1400 points because two a and two B counted as 200 each. Okay. So after Friday, you're basically just like, what the hell? This is a skills and gymnastics test. But if you just had flipped those, the seven workouts that were last to first, you would have felt totally different. And you would have been Haley Adams saying, this is fucking bullshit. Every workout is heavy and beating me down. And I have no chance to show off my skills, which is why I didn't want to come on the shows because I had this whole picture the whole week.

And so, you know, I didn't want to, I didn't feel the need to make any assumptions about what the test was after five workouts, because I knew there were going to be 14 scored events. And that over the course of those 14 scored events, the balance that we're used to seeing in terms of what are the limiters or what are the things that are being tested or where the athletes trying to be exposed, uh, would play themselves out and be balanced over the course of the entire test. Will Brand said, or she posted a whole video and said she loved the programming as a whole. Okay, I apologize for misrepresenting. Thank you, Will. Which makes sense. Christy is obviously extremely fit,

and she's also extremely mature as an athlete, I would say. Programming doesn't matter if it all bounces out at the end, and it did. Okay. I don't think I think that there were a lot of, there was a lot of new stuff introduced a lot, a lot of new stuff.

And I think in the beginning of the show that even that you were even saying that maybe the crossover, not maybe that, that, that, that, that, that,

that the skills medley, some of those things, maybe we should have at least given them a warning so that they could have had a better chance at. No, it's not what you're saying? No, I'm saying that we either should have, which I think Taylor suggested this last night, had one new thing, maybe two new things tested where all of the athletes had a chance to do the test, to do the new thing. Instead, in the first round, you could be eliminated, if you were Spencer Panchik or Tia Clartumi, by missing one single under, which they both did when they were very close to finishing that set,

and that was enough to keep them out of the next round, and therefore they didn't get a chance to do a legless pegboard or a pirouette. And only five people had the opportunity to do the crossover double unders, and of those 10 people, only three ended up trying to press the handstand. So I would like to see. I love the fact of having a skills test. But I would have liked to see a format where more of the athletes got to do the new stuff or try the new stuff. Okay, fair.

I'll throw away my notes from yesterday. I was about to dig in. Okay, Patrick Vellner. So have you heard any athletes complain about the test? Like I said, most of the athletes feel like it was a lot of new stuff and, um, some feel like it was too much new. Uh, but I think that if anyone can, once you take a couple of days away, and if you actually take the time to sit and look at this, at what the test was, there were, there were

actually elements of this programming that I think are, are worth highlighting instead of criticizing. Okay. Fair. Let me, let me throw, let me throw one more piece out there. So Justin Medeiros takes first and Patrick Vellner takes sixth. And you can, at first you can be like Ben out of shape and then you can be like, well, it was Roman, Ricky, uh, Samuel, uh, Quant and Jeff Adler and Jeff Adler who pushed him out. Fair.

Okay, I can get my head wrapped around that. I really can. I really can. But Fikowski is down at fucking 16th? So Fikowski, here's a fun stat. Last year on the Echo Bike Workout, he took first and got 100 points. This year on the echo bike workout, he took 35th and got 12 points. Those 88 points, the net difference of 88 points alone, move him from 16th to 12th. not something that slowed him down, but because the echo bike was paired with that strict upper body pressing movement that did slow him down, he lost a lot of points there. So he didn't get to flex himself on the echo bike the way that we've seen him in the past. This year, they had

a bike workout that was outdoors instead of a kayak as a supplementary monostructural element. He took 35th on that biking event as opposed to eighth on the kayak event. So he gave up another 63 points there. Last year in the format, the yoke was tested. He managed to get 50 points on that workout this year, only 16. And then the sprinting workout that he had last year, he managed to get 67 this year, only 26. He got 16 points on this year's yoke workout yeah so some of the things that he's done well with which is the yoke in the past people will remember that he won strong man's fear he had a decent performance on it last year middle of the pack at least he was in the bottom six this year so some of the elements that he's traditionally shined with were paired with

other things that were struggles for him and that's's more or less what happened to Jason Hopper last year, by the way. And as a result, it cost him 216 points that he got on workouts with those implements last year compared to not getting this year. And if he had gotten 216 more points, he would have finished fifth. Over that comment, by the way, thank you for the 1999 crazy generous um it's funny i recognize people's pictures and and kind of like and their demeanor this guy's always a little uh aggressive as you could tell by his giant biceps overall feet uh uh overall uh overall balance i loved it but crossover dubs could have been skateboard flips not fitness um is what's the biggest drop we've ever seen

um in an athlete uh from year to year that's not like you know they get pulled out for an injury do you know uh no i don't know and it's and it, I know Josh Bridges had a pretty big fall one year, but I think he was sick. Yeah. And he might've, it might've not even been year to year. It might've been like he, he missed a year and then he came back and he was never able to get back to

the top. I feel like that might've been the case for him, but I mean, what did he get last year at the games? Third and 16th. I mean, that's, that's,

um, yeah. What did Ben Smith get the year after he won the games after he won i think second okay he went back on the podium 2015 first 2016 second 2017 seventh michael nice og shirt thanks for the money. That's real money. Thanks, dude. Michael Banyan. I mean, are you shocked at all? Look at you. You have it red. Man, I overrated. Are you freaking out about Fetowski?

Is he done? Do you think he's done? Bye-bye. No. So one of the things about the programming this year, and again, I think the guys did a great job last night, is highlighting, is that they were forced into certain circumstances in the workouts that took away Fikowski's best attribute, which is pacing. So there were a few workouts where you could certainly pace it and it could pay off. But in many of the workouts that he would, like I just talked about, in many of the workouts that featured the implements that he's best at pacing. They were coupled with stuff, things that were slowing him down. So it was a muscular fatigue preventing him from his, from a pacing being executed.

And then other workouts like, um, for example, the wall ball dumbbells and dumbbell snatch, which he should be very good at. You know, it was for, it was because there was so much rest and so few rounds you were forced into a breakneck speed. So there was no pacing so some of the best advantages that he traditionally has at the games were negated by the style and format of which adrian crafted some of the tests so i think that's good you know i think that that's okay and i think that i was talking to taylor and jr earlier today actually and i think that it's important for people to understand that just because this was the nature of Adrian's test this year, doesn't mean that the test is going to look identical next year. Taylor had, you know, he was upset that there was only one monostructural weightlifting gymnastics test. They don't need, and he said, I would like to see three. Well,

they don't always need to be three. There could be five next year and there could be three the year after that. And the variance of how you craft and and move around some of those things uh is important and that's what's um you know so when you're saying like oh we've been preparing this for 15 for this test for 15 years and this was a totally different test i don't think that's the case at all first of all but second of all i also think that the test should be different year to year and like adrian mentioned prior to this test, he knows where the athletes are weak. He knows where they've been neglecting things. And now that he's exposed some of those things for some of the athletes, they're all going to practice those things. So I'm confident that we'll see some elements of

this test next year. And there's other elements that we won't see again for a while. I'm going to say something really stupid, but it's really true. If Justin would have taken sixth and Tia would have taken sixth, this would be fucked up. They're the anchors. Their two first places are the anchors that legitimize this this year, I think. I know that's harsh to say. I think it goes uh beyond that i remember someone saying i remember someone uh saying could you

could you program and i think it was like i don't know 2014-15 could you program a games oh um oh could you program an athlete out of the games and some athletes i think um would say i think like you would ask chris spieler that and he would say yes and you would ask rich froning that and he would say no you cannot program me out of the games i still win and so my point is is that you couldn't let's check something here okay justin and tia weren't programmed out of the games, but you were starting to hint, at least the way I'm hearing it, in my view, that Fikowski was programmed out of the games this year. Or maybe he was just some of, you know, he was exposed.

The thing about Fikowski is we know he's not BKG. BKG is so consistent and steady across the board that pretty much any test, he would end up in the top 10. I would say any test, barring an injury, he would end up in the top 10. But there are other athletes that have these little, the way that they're good or the reason that they're good, you can program them out of those strengths.

And in this case, in several instances, Fikowski was because he's not as well-rounded as BKG. He's much better than him at certain things. He's worse than him at other things. And in this case, the things he was best at were negated because they were coupled with some of the things he's worst at. But let's just look at the men from 2017-2018. Fraser, he's in both top 10s. Fikowski's in both top 10s. Vaser he's in both top tens fukowski's in both top tens velner's in both top tens bkg and noah olsen are in both top tens this is 17 and 18 okay also in 2017 you had

scott panchik he didn't make the top 10 the next year ben smith not top 10 next year alex anderson not top 10 next year yonah koski not top 10 jason smith not top 10 so there was a turnover of five five of the top 10 didn't make it the next year and that was exactly the same for men's field last year to this year so it's not unprecedented for there to be about a 50 turnover within the top 10 some years it's a little less some years it's more but it's it's normal solid that turnover and we'll don't like don't lose sight of the context we were talking about. John Young and I did our pregame rankings. We both had guys the same top 15, but in a pretty different order.

There were a lot of people with top 10 potential in this field, and even some guys that were well outside of our radar that were pushing for the top 10 during the competition, like Nick Matthew. Cody, I appreciate you saying even dumber things than I say. that we're pushing for the top 10 during the competition like nick matthew uh cody i appreciate you i'm saying even dumber things than i say i and i i'll send you 20 bucks thank you for making me um you're a good dude that you're and you're love drunk that's why you think that uh barack bez rumors about ellie turner and madaris dating i i don't think it's true because i saw an instagram post where someone tagged that they were um jason's girlfriend and i went to the account and it was

private so i don't know i don't think it's true. But I'm curious. It would be. Maybe he has two girlfriends. I'm not. Who's to judge? And. You want to know something cool? What? I do want to keep talking about the gossip now. No, no.

I was going to talk about Jason Hopper, but tell me something cool. Yeah, we could talk about Jason Hopper. Well, tell me what you were going to say that was cool. Oh, oh, nice. Just because we were talking about some of the parity and this turnover rate, I thought there was a pretty cool – when it came to event wins this year at the games, I thought it was pretty neat. So on the women's side, there were 10 women who won events.

Wow. And seven of them won an event for the first time in their career. Wow. And this is like – there's uncertainty about Tia retiring at this point. I think Kara Saunders is going to retire. But the women's field is in great hands, regardless of if they both come back or neither of them come back. There's a lot of women that showed this year that they have the potential to shine at the CrossFit Games. That was cool.

On the men's side, there were also 10 event winners. Wow. And three or four of them won for the first time. Ricky, you know, did win two events when he competed in 2017. They obviously won't count for him. And nobody, men or women, won more than two events this year, which was also a pretty unique occurrence. So the parity on both fields is very good. The future for both fields is very bright. Obviously Tia is still, you know,

dominating, I would say. And if she comes back, she'll be the heavy favorite, but if she doesn't come back, I think that there's a, you know, it's wide open for five or six women. And I think if the, you know know and the men's field that everyone who finished in the top 10 has the chance to come back better next year Lazar Jukic Sam Sam Sam Quant

Jason Hopper are these names we're going to start getting these these are guys for the next four or five years these are the we're going to start getting? These, these are guys for the next four or five years. These are the, we're going to start seeing these guys fighting into the top five. I would say for sure for Lazar and Jason,

and assuming that Sam quant has shored up all his, um, the medical problems that he had the previous year. All also true for Sam. This was, I think, I don't know. I said it in the prediction show. Sam was

the biggest unknown in the entire field. I think I put him in six, 15, 16, something like that. I think 16th, um, because I just didn't know, you know, he's a very quiet guy. Harry Pally's a very quiet guy. He did put a post up recently saying how much he, he values and respects. Harry is one of his best friends and one of the best coaches he's ever been around, which was cool for him to say that because we don't know much about him everyone you know including me thought that he overperformed in 2020 and was a beneficiary of the format that year and that if you know even if for example Vellner didn't have a pulled groin during stage one that probably Sam Quant would have taken third instead of second at the games that year. Uh, and that if there was a

bigger field there, he might not have done as well. But when you come back two years later against what I've called the best men's field we've ever seen and looked this good. And the, I'll tell you what, the moment that I knew Sam Quant was relevant in this competition was at the end of the capital workout. He picked up that sandbag. And while everyone, I mean, not everyone, but a majority of people were struggling with it.

He just wrapped his arms around it. His course integrity was amazing. And he walked up those steps and passed a bunch of guys. And I was like, damn, Sam Quant is back. What do you, what do you think about Vellner's win?

And, and, uh, Wadapalooza relative to how he placed here? He beat Adler there, right? He beat everyone there. I've talked about it before. I think that Guadalupe in general is the worst predictor of the major offseason events relative to the games.

Obviously, you can do both, great at both or bad at both, of course. But there's more people who have inconsistencies with their performances from Guadalupeooza to the games than they do from dubai to the games or from rogue to the games um there are a couple exceptions to that like katrin davidson or generally doesn't do as well at rogue as she does at the games for example but uh nevertheless you know uh look like fellner still got sixth it's worse than we're used to seeing him doing. It's not a bad finish. If it's true that he had a knee problem that he's been managing for up to six months, that's post-Watapalooza and obviously leading throughout the game season.

So who knows? And he put a post up and said he's planning to come back, which I think is great. And, you know, as far as he and Fikowski go, both of them, they're getting into their 32, 33, 34, and those are the ages where you have to prioritize health over everything. BKG has talked about it before. Coming into the games feeling good is really different than coming into the games knowing that there's something

that you're going to have to work around for the entire week and when the test is that hard. Samuel Cornway. I was thinking about this earlier today. Thanks, Frank, for bringing this up. We had some unknowns this year, but in some great unknowns. Like, I'm so thankful we have people like Quant, D pepper jay crouch and and the women have them too emma lawson was fucking an amazing one these these these rocket ships and we conversation with rob forte sunday night by the way okay good um and i can't wait to hear about it i'm gonna write

make a note here uh they were they were unknowns and we got to see them perform like we did we had no idea was this dude dude going to wreck shop? You could have really high hopes for them. Now, next year, Cornwall is going to be kind of that guy, right? He's going to be one of those unknown factors. Is he top five? Does he win the games,

or does he shit the bed because he's had one year out, and he takes 26? I'll tell you who is going to have a really, what i think is going to be a tough decision is is rogue of who they decide to invite and allow to compete there this year because i think there are way more than 20 guys that are capable of being in that field the reason i bring it up is because i'd love have they ever invited someone from the team like that oh yeah they invited rich right for the legends yeah i don't know but they've invited you know they they have the liberty to invite who they want for i think 15 of the 20 spots traditionally and they usually give five to the qualifier i'm not sure if that's the same

format they're running back this year maybe maybe someone knows but i would i'm hopeful that we get to see sam in at least one of the major off season competitions this year. So we have a little bit of relevant data for him. Corn Y. Yeah. Okay. Uh, he,

his name is somewhere. Okay. Okay. Well, the last time we saw him at the games, he, you know, supposedly had gotten sick.

He did have one incredible performance on the muscle up, uh, sandbag workout. After he got, was it the muscle up workout or was it the rope climb workout? I think it was the muscle-up workout. Sled flip, pig flip, muscle-up workout. Yeah, sled drag.

Anyway, and that was like a glimpse into the elite potential that he has. I think he won his heat and took second overall to Vellner on the workout. He has talked very highly about himself. He looked great this week competing alongside rich. He didn't look like a inferior to rich. He looked like he was very much holding his own on just about everything. Um, yeah,

I think that, you know, if Sam Cornway comes back into the men's individual field, that's just another guy that's, that's in the way that's going to be threatening for a top 10 spot. Top five. Uh, five.

Oh shoot. You can't see it oh wait look at oh son of a okay can you pull that oh maybe i can share it some other way can you pull up that i need to show brian that brian loves the gossip brian loves the gossip he's such a little gossip whore uh click on that and then look at that top And then look at that top comment, people. Look at that top. Oh, it's not there. It's not there. Damn.

It's in this picture, this screenshot someone just sent me. Maybe I can show it to you in a different way. Hold on. I'll just do this. I'll share it ghetto style. Look at this comment right here. So this is Ellie Turner. Put on a shirt.

Did Ellie get a win this games? She wanted to test. Yeah. Which event? Ellie Turner. I apologize. I'm drawing a blank on that. And her and her boyfriend didn't get a win, right?

Oh, she won the hat trick. It was, dude, her squatting speed, the rebounding out of the wall balls was insanely fast. And she had depth. Or did she? Yeah. Not easily. And look at this comment by O'Keefe on the bottom here. Look at everyone.

Power couple. Power, like Ben Affleck and J-Lo. God, I'm showing my age. Power couple. Okay. I wonder if there's a... I wonder if there's a... Want to comment on that comment of O'Keefe's, Brian?

I know you like to... Romance is kind of your forte. Oh, romance is my forte. No comment. Yes, Rich. Fire. Bam. oh romance is my forte uh no comment yes rich fire bam best two dollars i ever spent i don't know what that means but yeah oh yes you made a comment earlier uh compare vel no that's not you that's mike sauce mike the sauce it's mike the sauce hat trick uh justin madaris didn't win an event did he he did not it's the third time in the history of the CrossFit Games that the winner of the Games has not won an event

and the other were back in the turn of the century right James Fitzgerald 2007 Tanya Wagner 2009 crazy but do you want to say anything about that is there anything to say about it no i mean fraser's done it only winning one madaris did last year only winning

one you do not have to win any events of the games to win the games he was 18th on shuttle to overhead 12th on elevated elizabeth and i don't think he had anything worse than seventh after that or eighth after that he was eighth in the capital justin madaris won the games because of the exact reason that he talked about in his post games interview which is he doesn't give away points anywhere he fights for every point in every position in every workout and he maximizes his potential better than any other athlete in the field every single time he takes the floor it's by far the most impressive thing none of the individual skills are that impressive they don't shine out the way that Guy does sometimes or Roman does sometimes or any of these athletes do sometimes. He's just as steady and consistent and as efficient

as possible every single time. And it is amazing to watch. But you have to watch in detail though. You have to watch closely. And I know that it's hard sometimes to see on the broadcast because you can't see everything the same way you can in person but being there when I took the time to actually watch what he was doing like I said about the sandbag it was incredibly deliberate incredibly intentional and his execution is flawless Feldener's talk about it the guy just does not make mistakes he hasn't made a mistake since uh last year at semifinals and what was that mistake uh just miss pacing a couple workouts. And he's cheap.

And he's cheap as all get out. Cheap? What do you mean? Just cheap. He doesn't like, he's frugal. He's frugal. He's good with his money.

He watches every penny. He watches every penny. I didn't talk to him at all the whole week until after he'd won. Him and Ellie Turner go Dutch. What does that mean? Like they both pay you. Like when you go out with a chick, you pay 50-50.

That's good. You don't know what that means. Okay. King of romance. I pay 100. Sevan thinking about Bethany's birthing plan when Brian is talking. I don't know who Bethany is. Is there any Bethany's in the games?

I had Bethany Hamilton on the surfer. You know, I've had three one armed, uh, uh, people on the show. You didn't know that. Yeah.

You talked about it. Uh, I, one of our prediction shows. That's pretty cool. Can you name them? It's a good reminder though, in case anyone wasn't there.

I know you had, thanks Brian. You kind of had my back there. That was that hard for you to do that was cool i had who well i'm assuming that bethany hamilton was one of them casey i know is one of them yes and uh not sure the other one logan aldridge oh yeah don't forget about zach rule i have no legs oh shit here's one of our first ever podcasts of the Revived podcast. That's right.

Thank you, Susan. So I've had four people with missing body parts. God, I need a tranny. So fucking bad. As a regular, I think it would be good for me. We're not live, are we? Oh, shit, we are live. We have 1,000 people watching. Are you talking about on the podcast or just in your personal life both well i got one or

two in my personal life but i need like one like a regular on the podcast like that can answer like just questions for me i don't know who bethany is okay uh brian i want to go over to the women there's still a lot of dudes we didn't talk about i have questions about andre who day um travis mayor of course jay crouch uh eric zanoni deserves a mention um no no what he deserves is to be called by his proper name oh what is that enrico yes that's what i said enrico zanoni maybe the most handsome guy at the games uh handsome humble funny uh yeah i just got to spend a little bit of time with him he was great does he speak english uh not amazing but well enough you should invite you can invite him on okay nick matthew probably needs to be invited on the show is nick matthew is nick okay before

we go to the win is nick matthew the vanilla ice of crossfit is this just like a fucking i'm not like vanilla ice but just a one trick one one like a fucking, I'm not like vanilla ice, but just a one trick, one, one, one hit wonder. We're never going to see him again. Well,

I'll be, you know, Nick Matthews is, uh, no, I know Nick Matthews is a very, sorry. I blended those together is a very curious case for me going forward.

He's been really close to making the games a couple of times. And, and based on the statistics that Tyler Watkins and I ran earlier in the year, you can make a pretty good argument that North American men deserve a couple extra spots than they have relative based on their performances at the games year after year. And if they did have those extra spots, he may have already been there. I do also think that, that this year featured some things that really favor Nick Matthew. Uh, obviously he excelled on some of those more, uh, specialty workouts. He's got

really good gymnastics as we saw. And he's also pretty good with the odd object stuff, which there was a lot of, um, so it's possible that no, so you're not sure. Yeah, I'm not, I know. I'm not really sure. So we throw him in the pile with, with corn wide're not sure. Yeah, I'm not. I know. I'm not really sure. So we throw him in the pile with with Cornwall for next year. Like, huh? Question mark. The first question is, can he make it back? Right.

Because he got in on a backfill this year and he didn't qualify through the last chance qualifier. So, you know, apart from a failed drug test, he's not in this field at all. And we don't get we don't. And then we don't have this data on him either. He took Phil Toon spot. Yeah. And he actually finished basically exactly where i ranked phil toon oh shit wow that's good stuff uh jay bateman roman would have won based on final points if it weren't for the sandbag tie break fail have we addressed this? I don't even understand the question.

It was a three-way fail, wasn't it? I'm not sure exactly what he's referring to. Can you bring up the scoreboard real quick, Sousa? Let's see. First, can you recap what happened? They were on the 300. Oh, he was out before. He didn't make it to the 350.

Right. Okay. So what he's saying is he took 13th. He had the potential to take eighth. If he would have met. If he would have won that tie break outright. Okay. That's 64 points versus 79 points.

That's 15 points. 15 points would not have been enough for him to win the game. So maybe he's talking about something else. It would have still made him 12 points behind. He also sacrificed nine points on a hat trick where he failed to tap both heads of the dumbbell to the ground a couple of times and got some no reps. He could have gotten an additional nine points there. Even so, those 15 plus nine points, 24 points still would have left him at one point short. But that's this is what I was talking about, where we can point to moments in the weekend where Roman did not maximize his potential based on points in a moment.

Justin always did. That was that's why Justin won and Roman didn't. His execution and maximization of opportunity. Magnus Holgrim, who watches the show Only Drunk. How many three-legged guys besides Brian have you had on the show? What country is that, that MX? Is that like the new currency, the new world order where Klaus Schwab is? Is that Klaus Schwab money?

Magnus Holgrim. All right. Is that Klaus Schwab money? Magnus Holmgren. All right. So much. All right. Too much shoulda, coulda, woulda. He lost. Shut it.

We have time to fill. Rob Forte, before we switch to the women, tell me about your schmoozing with the former James Gray. Totally random. I came downstairs to the hotel that the broadcast was saying and they were having a you know drinks on the broadcast at the bar get together and all the australians were there jay crouch and his brother baden brown not ricky he was with the underdogs and whatever else but rob forte and uh some of their i think jay's whole family was his parents were there.

And I ended up talking to Rob for a while. And it was pretty interesting talking to Rob because we spoke to him. And last year he was unable to go to the game. So he was only able to watch Jay from home. And as we've talked about, there's some things that you can't see at home that you can see when you're there in person. And so this was Rob's first opportunity

to be at the games in person, coaching a great athlete in Jay Crouch. And his assessment in mind of Jay is very similar, which is that he has all the physical skills. I mean, he's not the biggest guy out there. I'd say he's average to below average size and weight relative to the field, but he's pretty, he's, he's strong enough. He did well on that, uh, back nine workout with the, with the yoke front squats and heavy deadlifts. Um, you know, he did okay with the sandbags. Like he's, he's strong. He's strong enough to be at the games. He's got a good enough gymnastics to be at the games. He could improve a little bit on some of his cardio stuff, but he's not terrible, but he didn't really do that well. And so Rob was watching him of course, very closely. And then he was watching some of the other athletes and he was trying to think to himself, it's something in, it's gotta be something intangible.

It's something that these guys are doing differently in the workouts and he's not. And the funny thing is that Rob basically said this and Jay told us this in the interview we did with him two, three weeks ago, which is that you have to lay it all on the line in every workout at the CrossFit games. Otherwise you're just just gonna bleed points every single time. You cannot be worried about the next workout. You cannot be worried about the next day.

You have to go on the floor and risk it and hope that you have the ability to recover and perform again and hope that you can rise to the level that you need to the next time that you have to take the floor. And your recovery is gonna be worse than it usually is. Your sleep might be worse.

Your nutrition might be worse. And you just have to trust that you've put in enough work and preparation to do it. Because if you take an event off or two events off, or you don't push it the appropriate time, the rest of the field is too good. And they're going to pass you by. And Rob more or less identified that by watching some of the guys that were the best, as opposed to Jay, where when the moment was to push and to go into the dark place or take the risk and send it, other athletes were doing it more so than he was. And he's not the only one in that situation.

But it's risky to do it, and it's hard to do it. Every event is a Super Bowl. You can't think of it as a 15-event day. Or it's like the UFC. Every fight matters because there's no homeostasis. You're either going up or you're going down. Sure. It's not like baseball or basketball where there's 600 games in the year and you could lose one.

Right, and you just have to be good in January or whatever. No. So I got off track. Well, it's cool you said about Jay Crouch. I got off track. Well, it's cool you said that about Jay Crouch. Something I noticed when I was watching the teams is how fast Annie is compared to team athletes. Annie is fast.

Annie could throw herself back into the individual field and be top five, top ten athlete. Yeah, and I don't think there's a lot of women in the team division that could do that the capital is the best example of what we were just talking about is that at the end of that event i talked to some people that were at the finish line i did not go to the finish line for that one and i talked to some people that were there and they're like dude there were athletes that had to be rolled out of the way they were just just like sitting there. Oh, I saw that. I saw that. Yeah. They were

basically non-responsive that their nervous system had totally shut down. And two and two and a half hours later, they were back out on the field at North park doing a workout that had 36 ring muscle-ups, 90 GHD sit-ups and jumping over these super high boxes. Their bodies are so well-trained and so well-prepared, and you just have to believe that you'll be able to do it. You have to know that you're going to be able to recover from it and not worry about it. If you want to do as well as you can do at the games, you cannot back off in any workout.

Full throttle. Full throttle. Sevan's kids were conceived on that couch. Not exactly. Not that one. That one was in my... No, not that. That's a hand-me-down from... You were conceived on that couch.

Yeah. That's possible possible that's more likely that's more accurate uh okay let's cruise over to the uh chicas chicas i don't think i don't think t is quitting man that was that's a brutal situation why because they told us that she was everyone i think it's okay like for there no no but but sean woodland's taking a huge hit for this publicly for announcing that he checked with every source beforehand and said you're sure and you're sure and you're sure and everyone's good with this fuck those people that's okay it's not that no i would say that that's not. Don't tell us that and then not do it. If you're not sure, then don't say anything.

But, God, I can't. If you're going to blame someone, you just got to. Well, if someone's going to own up to it, it's just got to be Sean. He came out of his mouth. But, like, who cares if she changed her mind? He would never say that on a whim. But, oh, I agree with that. I'm not saying.

I believe 100% that Sean knew for a fact she was going to quit and that she believed she was going to quit. I also believe that she changed her mind. And I think that that's – That's what it looks like. Yeah, and I think that's totally fair. And anyone who's – like, it's obvious that Sean wouldn't have just said that. Hey, they – even before someone else said it, even before the event said it, even before the broadcast is the thing that lives on in history. That's the call that's always going to be there.

And now and going forward, if she decides to compete, then that he always looks like an idiot on that call. And it's not his fault. Well, I'm telling you, it is his fault. He said it's not. He chose to say it. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Agree to disagree.

Okay, fine. Well, the thing is, is I don't think what he did was bad. No, I just don't think that it was necessary to tell everyone that. Let me ask you this crazy question. Let's say she told Sean, hey, this is it. I'm done. And then he said, hey, can I say that? She said, yeah, go for it. I think done. And then he said, Hey, can I say that? She said, yeah,

go for it. I think that would actually be cool. Let's say she, let's say that happened. And then she changed her mind. Do you, would you say, ah, don't change your mind. You're going to make Sean look bad. No, I would say, yes, we told him, we told everyone that we were planning to do that and that was okay. And now that I'm done with it, I don't feel like I'm done. I feel like I have more to give. And if she says that? I don't feel like I'm done. I feel like I have more to give. And if she says that, then I'm cool with it. And everyone's, I think, cool with it. Dear Sean.

But I just want everyone to know I spoke to Tia earlier today, and she wanted me to tell you guys. Earlier today, Tia called me, and she wanted some recipe, banana bread recipe my wife made No, Sean knows. I asked her, go ahead. Sean, Sean knows and prepares to all of those and prepares for those final calls. They're, you know, those are big deals. They're big moments.

They're the ones that are going to be replayed. He writes them up. He goes over them. He checks in with some of his confidence about it. He'll rewrite them. He'll practice them. He wants to get them right. Lining them up with the timing can be difficult in the workout. It's a high stress, high environment. It's a high emotion

time. He had something prepared and then they were, it was informed that she was going to retire. And so he reworked something. And I thought he did a great job of reworking it in a short amount of time to get that call off. And it was all, you know, now it's kind of. get that call off and it was all you know now it's kind of why do you think that she changed her mind because i here's why i think it this is based on nothing this is complete fucking bullshit i'm making up but i think that she's she didn't like being exposed by the programming a little bit i think i think she wanted more i think she's like fuck it i i can i can beat these bitches down more like yeah i mean look she's she was she was exposed a little bit by the programming i think she was exposed kind of uh less than the results necessarily show i think

that there were two workouts that she was a little bit exposed on and neither one of them were her worst event finish the skill speed manly was a single under trip which could i honestly could happen to anyone uh elevated elizabeth i think she was her position on the traverse of the parallel bars was not as impressive as i thought we actually can we see the workout susan now that brian's brian wants the show to be like a legitimate sports show. I want it to be TMZ. We're in a tussle. Okay, go on. We bring up the workouts. So she was coming off of, obviously, well, her second worst event finish of her career in the skill medley event.

And coming into Elevated Elizabeth, we were putting lines in the back, betting lines of how much she would win the next workout by. And I set the overrunner at 40 seconds. And she ended up taking ninth in that event and finishing, um, over a minute behind the winner area alone, who is awesome in that workout. Um, and she was actually just awesome in general. Uh, and, uh, it was kind of cool getting to know Ariel's husband too.

I've seen him in a lot of like, uh, footage now, which is kind of cool, but the, um, cool, He's cooler than I thought. I thought he was going to be like a dork who just flips houses, but he's like a man's man. He's manly. Okay, go on. So the parallel bars, her shoulders are really up on the traverse, and I think that it was taxing her more than most of the other women, especially the women in the top 10. Still, ninth is not a terrible finish, but I do like she was a little bit unprepared for that one and then also the alpaca event on the last day alpaca event um 17th on that was i was pretty surprised but i wasn't sure on

the last day she was chilling i wasn't sure how much she would i know on the final event she was taking it in and she wouldn't seem to be in a rush i'm pretty confident much she would, I know on the final event, she was taking it in and she wouldn't, she didn't seem to be in a rush. I'm pretty confident that she would do top three at worst in that workout. If she wanted to, I think she was pushing it on the back nine workout because I think she wanted to beat Laura on the yoke and get a little bit of redemption on her from the Aeneas workout in 2018. She took second to her again here, but the alpaca workout was the one that was curious for me. And so, yeah, maybe, maybe she does feel like that. I don't know, but it's also like, it's very possible. That's why, you know, I'm always hesitant to, for people to like make these big decisions or

claims in the heat of the moment. It's really possible that she went home and within two days, she was like, you know what, Shane, I don't think I'm done. I still love doing this. Well, even, I mean, the, uh, whoever was interviewing her at the end, she said, are you going to compete again? She goes, now that's the question. She said, we'll see, which was not what we were supposed to do. She said, we'll – I thought she said, well, now that's the – well, either way, she basically left it open. Yeah. left it open yeah and even before sean said it someone had said we are now seeing about to see tia to me take the floor for the last time or someone someone else said he said no sean said

and for the final time tia to me is the fittest woman on earth no but even before that even before that event began someone in the live broadcast someone interviewing someone somewhere on when we were watching okay basically said it. I think it was a girl. It may have been a day at the games. Annie Sakamoto maybe. I don't know. But that's because we were all informed that it was.

I'm glad it's not. I hope it's not. Here's the thing too. Oh, Kiki said it on the floor thing too here's what i here's here's oh kiki said on the floor maybe maybe that's what i heard brenda kiki also did say it on the floor which was the whole thing was weird there were plenty of opportunities for it to be done elegantly and orchestratedly and in a clear way and right now everyone's just confused about which is good good i like it well that sandwiches it up between the first bike event which we're just confused about it, which is good. Good. I like it. Well, that sandwiches it up between the first bike event, which we're all confused about.

And T.S., that's a good that's a good shit. So those women who are competing against her should be ecstatic if she comes back. I mean, if I was Mal O'Brien, like, I mean, if you can beat her, you take her soul. You take her. And by that, I mean, in the most superficial sense, it's probably the opposite. So you take all her street cred to your sponsors. Like it really you're the girl who beat Tia Toomey. It's cool as shit. I think that for all the other women, they really shouldn't worry about it.

If they're coming back, then they'll say, okay, I have another chance to beat her. Well, if you can leverage it to train hard. If you can leverage it to train harder. Sure. But I think that most of those women that really believe that they have a chance to beat her, which there might not be very many, are going to train pretty damn hard either way. And maybe it's not even trained. Maybe it's like, Hey, Justin Medeiros doesn't make mistakes.

Maybe some people are going to start realizing that and be like, Hey, that's what I need to train this year. Not to make mistakes. If you haven't figured that out by now, you know, with your coach, uh, you know, I don't know what, you know, it's one thing to know that and to prepare for it. It's another thing to do it. Do the doing. It is the hard part.

Rich going masters confirmed. That's just. Oh, yes. Well, Rich, me and Rich going masters together next year. Head to head.

Last night show. There were 20, over 2,200 comments in the chat. 2,200 comments in the chat. You never mentioned to me a stat about the comments. It's so funny. I didn't even know there was a stat for that. Look at Susan laughing his ass off.

I didn't even know there was a staff for that. I just was just digging around today when I was at skateboarding camp for fucking three hours. And I saw that as a stat. I was like, Holy shit. 22. They tell you how many people were in the chat there's like a graph for it probably susan could find out how many people have already commented in the chat so far we could just stay live until we break that uh to me um i want to ask you a question about justin now before i forget is that the worst performance of a games champ ever? I know that's a fucked up way to ask that.

No. No. Okay. I mean, there were 14 opportunities to score events or points, and he finished eighth or better 12 times. Okay. Okay. How would you compare that? Can you compare apples to apples? Could you take all of Rich's, take all the athletes,

and add up their scores and divide it by how many events and be like the placement is 3.7? Is that how you do that? We could do that, but here's Rich's last year. Halpin can have it done before the show is over. The 27th, the 13th, the 15th. He had five finishes of that caliber, two of which were way worse than any of the finishes that Justin had.

So Justin's better than Rich on track. I'm saying it wasn't the worst games performance by a male champion. Good. That was a trick question. You were going to be struck by lightning. We've done a lot of episodes. I can navigate your trick questions all right uh and tia toomey was this her worst performance as a champion i don't know it's maybe maybe close with 2017 i'd have to look more at that this is such a fucked up comment.

Brian, thank you for your knowledge, everyone. Thank you for your pleasure. Oh, so I'm the guy with the camera and he's the nude one. And thanks for taking naked pictures of Brian. Fuck off. I mean, thank you, Soccer Mom, for being a longtime supporter of this show. Where are you? Okay.

Mallory O'Brien, um, points wise, she looks, uh, Oh, over a hundred points. What?

Uh, she's over a hundred points below Tia. Um, do you think that that played a role in Tia's 17th place in the final event? Well, it wasn't, uh, look,

if she took 17th on that workout i mean mal took 18th if mal took first on that workout and closed 60 points on her that might have been a problem and would have caused some drama going into the last two events so i don't you know that's why i said that's the one that's the that alpaca workout for tia is the biggest question mark for me about. Oh, I'm sorry. She took 10th. Sorry. And Jackie pro. Sorry. Oh yeah.

By the time she was starting the final, she'd already locked up the wind. So she could just soak that in if it was going to be her last event, which, you know what? It's totally possible that she could have believed starting that workout, that that was the last event she'd ever do at the CrossFit games. And it looked like it based on the way she was methodically going through it, looking around, taking things in, smiling to her family. looked like it based on the way she was methodically going through it looking around taking things in smiling to her family um so yeah for the last workout i would say definitely it was reminiscent of fraser on the last workout of the feminachi finale workout in 2017 where he was just

making sure he got the minimum work requirement and enjoying the moment and then lunging to the finish i'm thinking about maybe how sean could have worded it differently i still don't think it's his i i don't think he did anything wrong though uh um so mal o'brien a second place really no threat to tia there's still no threat to tia uh laura horvat no threat right i think that i mean those were the three that i had predicted to be on the podium i think that they kind of showed their class by the end of the weekend relative to the field danielle was very impressive this week but still i think had uh some of her holes exposed laura's known holes were exposed in this programming, which is expected. Mal is, I is, you know, you know, she still had some event finishes that were a little bit low, primarily on the strength tests. She's pretty small relative to the other women up there,

but she's also very young. And in general, she's plenty strong for how young she is um i mean she has like everything is lining up for her to to possibly be the next woman that can reel off multiple titles uh i i think it i'm not a sports guy at all but i think in sports it's called clutch i think that what laura and danielle did was clutch what what what and maybe even brooke wells what emma lawson did was not. What, what, what, and maybe even Brooke Wells, what Emma Lawson did was not clutch. Meaning when it, when push came to shove in the last day, they fucking did what they needed to do to fucking scrape and climb their way

to the top. Emma Lawson did not just have to do with where the workouts were placed. So you can look at him a lot. I told you I'm not a sports guy. Fine. It's not, this is a good, it's a good point of conversation.

Okay. You could look at Emma Lawson's last six workouts workouts which is the last two days and you could say 15th 10th 33rd 24th 21st 14th that's not very good she broke down as the week went along or you could say you could remind it of the earlier part of the conversation where i told you that the gymnastics was heavily featured and the skills were heavily featured in the first half of the workouts and the weight lifting was heavily featured in the first half of the workouts. And the weightlifting was heavily featured in the back half of the workouts. And we can make the same conclusion that we did about Mal, which is she's incredible. She's only 17. The fact that she's not strong relative to this field should not be that surprising.

You mean Emma Lawson? Yeah. If those workouts with the strength elements, like the back nine and the sandbag ladder and alpaca, as it ended up being written written were in the front half of the workout or the test, her weekend might have looked very similar to Laura Horvath's where she started in the mid-20s and ended up all the way up at six or something like that. You could also say that God loves Laura Horvath the most and took the rope climbs out of. say that God loves Laura Horvath the most and took the rope climbs out of? I don't think the rope climbs would have affected Laura as much as most people think. There are other women that certainly would have been affected by that. And I think much more harshly so than Laura. I still think she finishes top three in that workout either way. Probably still wins it. Okay. I'll tell you this. When I first saw the entire slate of workouts and I looked at what the last four workouts are, I thought Laura's going to get 370 out of 400 points. She actually got more than 370 out of 400 points.

In the last four workouts, she took a third, a first, a first, and a fourth. I thought she'd get at least 370 when I first saw those workouts. And I was like, damn, if you get 370 out of 400 points and that's on day one, you're leading. Maybe you're second to Tia. If you get 370 on the last day, when you know that most of the athletes are going to be broken down and at their worst, and Laura's never shown that she breaks down over the course of the game. She's always good from start to finish. I was like, she could make a really big jump either points-wise or placement-wise on the last four workouts. And she did. So for me, who saw the whole slate of workouts on Tuesday, there was nothing surprising about that.

But for someone who didn't know what was coming, it was incredible to watch. Extremely exciting and potentially surprising. Laura's the only athlete to have two first-place finishes. No. Tia, Laura, Haley, and Lucy Campbell all had two first place finishes I don't see Tia I'm cruising through oh

okay who were they again? Laura Laura, Tia, Haley and Lucy Campbell and anyone with three? No, we already talked about that. Even on the men's side, there were five. Did I count that right? Patrick Clark said something.

Oh, because there was a tie. That's what it was. Patrick Clark said something interesting here. He must have stole from Mike Halpin. Unless Patrick's got the calculator off, or the calculator out while Halpin takes the F. He was saying the average age of, where is that

comment? It was a fucking, uh, Holmberg 2011. Ah, thank you, Patrick. Uh, thank you, Susan. Uh, Patrick Clark, only four women wore the leader jersey. Take out Tia, and the average age of the other women was 18.6 years old. Haley, Emma, and Mal.

Yeah. And they're competing against their mom out there, Ariel Loewen. Crazy. Should have been a pretty young mom. Um, do you think, um, uh, what do you think about Danielle Brandon's, uh,

performance in this? Did we just watch her do the best games of her career? Is that, is that we just saw her? Uh, I don't know because, you know, similarly to both Emma and Mel,

she struggled on sandbag ladder, a pack and back nine. So her strength was exposed there. And we know that, you know, from, from semifinals, for example, even with the barbell and the, in the barbell complex, she didn't do great. So she's definitely got room to improve her strength. She has barely been able to squat this year from my understanding as she's been coming back from some injuries that she's been having. So I'm hopeful that she can have a healthy season where she's able to actually go through some meaningful strength cycles. And if she is able to improve her strength,

then she is obviously in the conversation for a podium threat. Can you talk honestly about Gabriela Magawa? Yeah. Okay. What happened? What do you mean she took eight okay this was supposed to be her year top five top five and if the fifth if the legus rope climbs had not had been included she would have done worse than eighth yeah right it's, uh, no, I mean, Gabby's got some, uh, some incredible, uh, workouts, of course. I mean, she won the capital workout. That's like, uh, one of them, you know, that's, that was incredible to, you know, to win that workout, of course, but she actually had exposed in a few workouts.

Uh, most everyone did. Um, she struggled with that hands, hands you know the gymnastics basically got her and i think in some elements uh she just wasn't ready for for some of those new variations of of specific movements but i think that she has her holes forever like i don't think she'll ever be elite at legless rope climbs for example but she could why why not why not is that a not? Why not? Is that a hard one to fix? Who else is not elite at legless rope climbs? Danny Spiegel. Brooke Wells this year for sure.

Amanda Barnhart. Okay. Okay. Those are good names to be lumped up with. Are there any dudes who aren't world-class? Legless rope climbs? Um, no. So the thing is like, you know, people are obviously complaining a lot about that workout.

Adrian Bosman was very clear in the briefing that he talked to us that that was not a legless rope climb workout. He did acknowledge that if you are really bad at legless rope climbs, which I, I think there's about 10% of the women's field that is very bad at Lagos rope climbs, that those can obviously stop you in your tracks. But he told us beforehand, and he told me yesterday when I talked to him, that in all of the rounds of testing I did for this, the kettlebells were the limiting factor for most people. And the time they spent on the kettlebells was so much more significant than anything else. Which we saw the kettlebell rock Emma Lawson. And Tia and Mel and the Panchik brothers.

You know, a lot of the smaller athletes struggle with those kettlebells. Now, some of those athletes certainly could have made up time, especially some of the women, Haley and Christy Aramo, maybe Mal, Emma Lawson, on the Legos rope climb relative to some of the other women. But I talked to Taylor Self, and he thinks that Christy could have gone from 27th to 5th on this workout if the Legos rope climbs weren't included in there, never having seen anyone do it with Legos rope climbs. And I talked to Adrian Bosman twice about it, who's seen everyone who's ever done the workout do it, and he doesn't seem to think that that is that traumatic of an impact. We don't, we don't really know because we didn't get to see it play out. I do think that the workout is better with the

Legos rope climbs. I think it was a really hard decision for them to make. I do think it had some implications on the leaderboard, particularly for the women's side come the end of the weekend. And it's just one of those things that you have to accept um the workout brian's talking about it's alpaca just so you guys know all the women are fucking horses strong as oxes who who laura horvat danny spiegel karen freyova ellie turner gabriella magawa alexis raptus those are the the top six then emma mcuaid squeezes in there. She's a bird. But then Amanda Barnhart, Cara Saunders, Ariel Loewen. I mean, these are these are fucking strong humans. And but but you're also saying that that most of these women are strong poolers also, except for the ones you mentioned that like the Danny Spieiegel and in laura horvath i brought that up before thinking for some reason i i just can't accept the fact that she's a great climber but but the boys jr and taylor unfucked

me on that too they're like dude the girl can pull so here's the here's the thing it was it was similar to the bike to work it was just unfortunate circumstances they were pressed for time because they had to make the obligation for the cbs later in the day. So they had to make a decision under tension. It was never Adrian's intention to abandon the rope climbs altogether. But he doesn't make that decision independently. He talks to a bunch of people that are consulting him from an equipment specs perspective, from a weather perspective, from a safety and medical perspective. And at the end of the day, with all the input from all those people they that's the decision that they came to we heard bill henniger we heard a report that bill henniger said wet ropes are not

a problem well i don't know if that's true that's just like one of the most interesting things about the situation yeah is that there has been a crossfit sanctioned event in the filthy 150 that had a legless rope climb with a legless descent in an outdoor venue, and they chose to do it even though it was raining. It was raining during the event. Yeah. And the athletes figured it out. And that's one of the things that I would say in general about this. This is just a general learning point. And we talked about it earlier with the sandbag. And this is the reason why I wanted to see all of them have a chance to do the crossover double runners if you're going to have them and why I want to see all of them have a chance to do the crossover double runners. If you're going to have them and why I want to see all of them have a chance to do the L-sit press to handstand, the athletes will respond in the moment. Dave's always talked

about it. It's the athletes that make the test. It's the athlete that makes the experiences. It's the athletes that make the moments. I think that if there was any way to include them, you should have tried to include them to have those big crash pads here for a reason. This is a good question from David Arsenault that we can definitely talk about if you want you know who this is yeah he and i have co-written a couple articles for the morning chalk up he actually just sent me one earlier today as well that we'll see if we publish it or not because he knows the answer i like people who ask questions like this like this guy knows the answer to the question but still asks it and that's important uh he may or may not know the answer. So I was super curious about this, in fact, because when I looked at the entire test,

I noticed that they were chest bar pull-ups, ring muscle-ups, bar muscle-ups, legless rope climbs, peg boards, and legless peg boards. So you have just about every possible element of upper body pulling movement, a high skill that you could have in one competition. Last year, they had almost all of those also, but they didn't have legless peg boards, but there were more peg boards and they didn't have legless rope climbs, they had regular rope climbs. So it's not unprecedented to have a lot of volume and a lot of diversity of upper body pulling movements. But upper body pulling was still tested sufficiently, I think, in this test. That's where Taylor and JR disagree with me. But I watched people do that swimming workout,

and the people who did it best were intentionally skiing without their lats. They were skiing using the legs and the hips and saving the lats for the last two rounds when the pulling would matter the most. And for the women, at least, the ring muscle-ups was the limiter on the up-and-over workout. For the men, it was not. It was definitely the tall box jumps. was a limiter on the up and over workout for the men. It was not, it was definitely the tall box jumps. Um, but there was, uh, this is the cool thing about this work, the workouts this year.

So it is. So just to answer Dave's question, it was fine without the rope climbs. We didn't, it didn't, didn't, it was fine. I think overall, here's the thing. What I was about to say is a lot of the workouts, it's difficult to identify one limiting factor. For example, in the last workout where you had 30 bar muscle-ups at the end, there were people that were making big passes on the bar muscle-ups, but why were they making big passes on the bar muscle-ups? It could have been because they could handle the forced rowing pace better. So they were fresher getting there.

So even if they didn't have as much of a capacity on them, they were in a better condition to knock out big sets. This is a true, this is a true statement. So I do think, I do definitely think that there was something lost. The thing that I can't ignore is the fact that the guy who programmed the entire test and who clearly invested a ton of time into doing it has told me on multiple occasions that the kettlebells are the limiter on this workout for the men for sure and for 90% of the women's field. And until I see the workout play out in real time, I have to take his word for it. He's the only one who's ever seen it done that way. I saw them testing that workout. He tested it over and over and over again, just like he did a majority of these different variations, different iterations. And he knew that the legus rope times were there and they were obviously a challenge

and something a little different but it wasn't in his opinion the limiter um as it turns out oh the the kettlebell and specifically the kettlebell to overhead was the clear limiter in this workout otherwise and uh and therefore, and therefore I think that, yes, this test was that test. The Alpac was definitely slightly skewed by not having those. And was the over overall test skewed. I already have said that there are some women in particular who would not have done as well, or might've done a little bit, or would have done a little bit better placement wise. If the legacy role clubs had been in there, maybe two, two to four spots at most up or down on a leaderboard um i i know this is a tough uh time to ask you this but without any more data but ellie turner took 18th in what

in the uh crossfit games this year oh okay uh right below danny spiegel yeah does she do better next year ellie yeah i think so um can she break top can she break top 10 next year i don't know in her career i think eventually yes um did anyone else retire just speak about retiring i'm under the impression that car is gonna retire i don't know where i heard that or why um i would i would echo this can we check her instagram suza car saunders sorry go ahead ryan but i would i would overall echo the sentiments in the comments is you know let the athletes make those announcements when they want to um uh did you hear any of those athletes any athletes make that announcement that

you can echo uh let's see okay let's click on that uh a decade of lessons how lucky i've been to learn so much the biggest most valuable thing i've learned in this sport and life is unpredictable it's not always fair and you often fall short more than you succeed however each person is given choices daily i choose how much i want to give a certain parts of my life and how much blah blah blah took me so long to understand but but choosing to enjoy my journey a hundred percent. I'm one of those weirdos that likes to work really hard, but isn't. That's the end of my motivational speech. Morale is what a bloody chaotic, but epic week.

What a ride. Okay. Nothing. Nothing, nothing nothing nothing nothing uh is it true that um that the taller athletes didn't have to go to the red bar because it was lower to do the bar muscle-ups yes okay uh which is you know taylor had mentioned that he thought that workout should have been placed somewhere else and i think in particular because of because of that, the fact that they allowed that, I agree with him. At the final workout, you know, you want something that's really easy to follow, a progression that's natural and evolves across the floor,

especially since it's going to be in a live showing on CBS where you're trying to showcase the sport. You want it to be easily digestible uniform and application and you know obviously there was a controversy around the pull-up bar heights at the at the granite games and the atlas games and throughout semifinals i think that it was a good decision to let them do the bar muscle-ups on the bar that where they could actually get the benefit of the kip um but having it as the last workout takes away from a little bit of the drama of the race because roman was beating justin but he was two bars behind him so it wasn't really obvious that he was beating him right but but we knew at home what was going on because we had a counter okay so so yeah i mean i it um it turned out good uh brooke brooke wells incredible finished top five

right uh come back from uh yeah i mean i'm thinking it's got to be one of the most the scariest injuries we've seen across the game's history and the next year bam she's probably she might finish as low as seventh if the legos rope climbs are are included here um maybe eighth not anything getting lower than that but either way just the the way that she what she's done in the last 12 months is incredible and should be celebrated it's it's uh you know it's honestly it's a testament to you know the just overall medical of things that we have available for athletes to make some kind of recovery like that. But also, she has to put in an incredible amount of work. She has to be very trusting in that process.

She has to take some risks. I think it was a very emotional year for her. I'm really happy for her and impressed that she was able to do that. You might not like this question. Do the women have might not like this question uh do the women um have a fukowski a fukowski did the women's race have a have a brent fukowski um possibly maybe like uh amanda barnhart you know she finished 14th we're used to seeing her in kind of that seven eight nine range but if that's what you're asking. Yeah. Like anyone who didn't, there's a bit of a like, Whoa, what happened? No, I mean, Haley and Gabby did a little bit worse still

inside the top 10 Haley's performances this year echoed last year's pretty, it was pretty similar. Last year she had seven top tens, no event wins. This year she had five top fives maybe i wrote that wrong two event wins she had three bottom tens this year four bottom tens last year but a lot of those were coming after cuts were made so you know it just i think overall speaks to more of the the field getting better then she didn't really do that much worse um amanda barnhart finished in lower than she traditionally has, so she might be the best answer to that. I'd like to say this, by the way, anyone out there,

if you did not see the short interview I did with Amanda Barnhart, you should. That is one of the coolest ladies I've had on the podcast. And if you are a podcaster and you want to have a fucking slam dunk, easy, awesome, engaged guest, get her. She's cool. She's real uh she's healthy people should know her uh i'd like to have her on again i'd like to have her make shows for me better hurry up calisi i'm looking for someone else uh three helga daughter nine times to the crossfit games 10 times how many times i think i don't think it was nine

either but a lot of times she gets capped on the row you know it was this is this is a fucking real games athlete this is this is like a seven times seven times i mean she's she's um that she's like that's a that's like Hall of Fame status, right? Starting back in 2012. I mean, she's been very consistent in the sport for a long time, and she's been to the game seven times. Yeah, there's not a lot of people who can say that. I mean, there's great CrossFitters who have not been to the game seven times.

You want to know something cool about that row? Yeah, tell me. Christy, she PR'd her row to make that time cap. And I didn't know that when I was watching it. I think she's publicized it since then, but I was watching her. And I mean, it was obvious that she was- Her stroke rate was nuts. Everything into it. Yeah. She was going into that place where you're not even like going all the way into the catch and you're just increasing your stroke rate and getting everything you can. And said she had a two-second pr on a 1k row to make that time um that's that like i saw someone made a comment about she was wounded she was like they showed her she looked

like a dog had been hit by a car i mean she's like she was wounded and so that's what i'm saying where it looked like the bar muscle-ups were maybe the separator on that workout. It wasn't necessarily the case. Depending on how well you were able to manage the row, you could feel pretty good getting to the bar muscle-ups, or you could have just been totally trashed. Christy, in 30 bar muscle-ups for time, is going to probably be top three in the field. And she wasn't really able to make as big of a push on those as she would have otherwise, because she had just PR'd her 1K row at the end of a week of competition.

But as with many things, someone had made a comment in there that the demo team athletes were good at Legos rope climbs. Adrian tested these workouts with many people before the demo team ever got on site, and a variety of different people that are good and bad at these things. And he said that he was very confident in the men's time for that row and that it took a lot of nuance and testing to finally get the women's time. Right. And that he was a little nervous about it, but at the end he was confident it was the right time. And the fact that 28 out of the 30 women made it means that I think he chose a perfect number at three 40. Um, the, the rookie did make it rebecca a fusli a small not doesn't look like

she was given any uh tools to to row uh at birth but really is is that the right time that a seven times seven times crossfit games qualifier from not easy regions doesn't doesn't make it yeah i i don't think there's i mean you wanted it to be aggressive the time for men was 3 15 i don't think anyone finished under 3 10 some of them were able to just be very consistent control oh you would be so disappointed me brian i brought that up in the show i did with john young and thank god for john young he saved the day so many times but anyway let me go back to bashing him and i push back i'm like these times are crazy aggressive he's like they're not that aggressive it's not that i'm like and i just back down like a pussy they're so this they're crazy aggressive tell me how right i was the goal

was they could do it but they don't want to do it if If you didn't have that there, everyone would have rolled road 10 to 30 seconds slower, knowing that they could then capitalize on big sets of thrusters or big sets of bar muscle-ups. But by forcing them into that pace there, that's not how they would usually execute a workout in a training session. And I love that he did that. And I guarantee you that people in general will now be second guessing how they incorporate pacing into the structure of their workouts. When, when the, the, by the way, this is why you watch the show. Just Brian's just dropping gems. Now, um, the Christie Rama thing is brilliant that that's a PR for, um,

tell me what you know about the sandbag event brian tell me what as the when you guys are the broadcast and these fuck these fucking knuckleheads max out the bags um yeah yeah this is what are you guys doing are you guys like oh shit should we get ready for the the tiebreaker should we get ready for the the interview to for the winner like what the fuck were you guys like trying to figure out what the fuck's going on but so adrian was standing like 20 feet away from me on the floor while this is going on and he's watching and i'm watching him because i know from the briefing that griffin raleigh either barely got or barely missed the 330 bag and everyone knows sorry for some one second for those of you who don't know the there

there was a this event was lifting up a heavy bag and putting it on your shoulder and there were bags that kept getting heavier and heavier and heavier and there became a point where the bags went up to 340 pounds and three guys lifted them or four guys and those four guys you could tell from watching it they couldn't fucking believe they lifted them they were in shock we were in shock at home the whole thing was fun and the show kind of stopped for a second because it was like, oh, now what? OK, sorry, Brian, for the agency. Go ahead. So Griffin Raleigh, who's one of the strongest guys in CrossFit, had either just barely gotten or just barely missed the 330 back in training. Adrian is a seasoned veteran. Of course, he knows it. And in the heat of the moment, like people will rise to the occasion, but by no means did they expect that many guys to last that long into the competition. They had actually a plan for pairing it down at 21 athletes to only three guys lifting and then pairing it down at

10 athletes to only one guy lifting. And they almost had to abandon that because there was like still 16 guys left at the 310 or 320 pound bag. I mean, it was crazy. And then you had those huge tie breaks, but when they were about 300, 310, I got Adrian's attention and I asked him, because the broadcast was asking the exact question that you are, what if, if multiple people lift the three 40, what's the plan? And he said, stay tuned. But as for now, it's tie break. We're just going to do the tie break. And then a few minutes go by, people are still staying in and he comes over and he goes, Hey, there's a three 50 bag in the back.

Bill just made it for him. Just made it. I think I asked Adrian that too. So there wasn't a three 50 bag. No, that's a row. Cause when the bag came out, there was a piece of tape.

I thought like it would come out. It'd be like a gold bag, but it was a red bag with a piece of tape on it. Covering weight yeah yeah it was not there was not a there was not an intention to have a 350 pound bag so they just decided which i think was the right decision to make it the thing that i would have done differently is i would have wheeled it out there unlabeled and put it in front of them when the 340 bag was still sitting there and the reason i would have done that is because i think that after all the athletes finished lifting the three 40 bag, and I knew they'd cleared the ladder that their nervous system shut off.

And that if it hadn't, if they knew there was another bag out there, I'm really, really confident that at least one and potentially up to three of those guys still would have done it. If you go back and watch Guy lift the 340 bag, it looks pretty easy. And if you watch him lift the 350 bag, he had no chance. Right. But Kowski was literally an inch away from getting the 350 anyway. I'm certain that he could do it. And, and I think Hopper, even though it didn't necessarily look like he got that close, I think the same for him. If he had known there was another bag, I think he would have had a chance to get it. I'm not so sure about nick matthew but either way it was incredible what he was able to do in that

workout um so i i think that was like and it but either way it was great that they brought out an extra bag and gave him a chance and like i said it was the most fun that i'd have ever had at a competition that 20 or 30 minute time period and the only thing that could have made it better is if one of those guys were to hit the 350 bag for the outright win. When they roll the 350 out there, does the stadium go fucking bonkers? Yeah. You know, this happened at

the this happened at the third CrossFit Games also. And it happened in the clean ladder with the women, I think. That they went beyond what was the heavy bar and they just let them keep going. That was in Carson? No, that was in 2019, I think, with Barnhart and Tia. Okay.

I was probably crying. The one you're talking about is from Aromas. Yeah, I was probably crying in 2019 2019 i probably didn't watch those games i was just in a fucking puddle of tissues but um yeah that they they ran and then they came in and had to do deadlifts starting at i don't know what 200 going up to 500 pounds or whatever and they never they never thought in a million years that anyone would be able to fucking run. However far they ran seven miles in the Hills and come in and deadlift 500

pounds. And the fucking dude who took last place in the run, I don't remember his name. Big old fucking yoke, dude. God, I wish I could remember his name. I made a video on him.

He was cool as shit. Anyway, he, he fucking did 500 and then, and then it started happening i think 16 people did 500 that year in 2009 yeah i think there was a 16 way tie for first yeah and i remember tony and dave like fighting with each other it was mo kelsey peter edged jeremy teal jerome perryman jc nessa rob orlando jordan holland Holland. Jordan Holland? I actually met him this week. Josh Everett, Lance Mosley, Scott Lewis. Lance Mosley! That's the guy, Lance Mosley.

Lance Mosley. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, that's cool. Jason Niago, DJ Wickham, Graham Holmberg, Spencer Hendel, and Jason Kalipa. Wow. And you didn't say Miko. He wasn't, uh, no, this was, this was in,

it was there. Oh, you're talking about not Miko. Correct. But, but, um, but he got it off.

He got it off the ground and just ward, but, but didn't complete the lift. Look at, look at, uh, I got a picture of Lance. I'll never forget it.

When he picked it up, the fucking place went crazy. Oh, shit. Look at this website. Look at this website. This is nuts. This is like, that's the old site, right? These sites are where you have to go to find,

or used to be where you have to go to find the results for the CrossFit Games from way back when, but now they have them on the game site. 36 years old, 5'7", 198. Oh, he's 50 now. Lance is 50. He's the same age as me. Look at that.

Okay, what are we talking about? Oh, we're talking about the games this year and the events. Was there an event you didn't like, Brian? There was one I did not like that I thought was just ass. I can't remember which one it is. The other workout that I was a little bit skeptical or questioning of was the hat trick workout. And this was the sprint, tall wall balls, dumbbell snatch sprint workout. Oh, yeah.

That was one Ellie Turner was just a savage on, right? Yeah, and she won that workout because of rebounding speed out of the bottom of the wall ball. It was incredible, and it was faster than everyone else, and that was enough for her to make a difference every round. Now, Adrian was very specific in why, what he wanted in this workout. He wanted it to be where there were 20 athletes going 20 athletes watching, and then another 20 going and another 20 watching. And you, and you knew that you had to push every

single element. You had to run hard. Couldn't miss a wall ball. You couldn't miss a snatch and you had to run hard to the finish line. That's what he wanted. And that's how it ended up playing out. The thing that the reason that I'm a little bit questioning of it i think i would have liked to have seen five rounds because i think after three rounds you were still and again this might have been exactly what he wanted but you were really rewarding the person who didn't make a single mistake and one miss like you couldn't over like i said roman missed two snatches not he didn't miss him he just tapped one head and set it to, to the ground. That was the theme of the games.

I'm penalizing those who make mistakes. It was a theme. Yeah. But I think that in terms of if, if you wanted to test fitness in that workout, five rounds in the fourth and fifth round, you would have started to see some people fade off a little bit. So that was one of the workouts that I was, you know, questioning a little bit. little bit. So that was one of the workouts that I was, you know, questioning a little bit.

Um, he, David, uh, McKell is talking about the 2009 games. I don't remember Sam being there, but maybe he was there. If he did say that, I'm sure that it was me who interviewed him. They're talking about 2006, uh, 16. Oh, at the ranch where they did the trail run deadlifts and then ranch mini chipper okay i don't know him and brooke wells both finished last i think on the run and then first on the deadlift that was the 10-year anniversary one 2016 yeah okay um the workout i did not like was the echo press ah echo press so interestingly enough and i think that taylor and like i want to throw it away they are speculated correctly on this one he had tested this in a few different iterations with varying numbers of handstand push-ups or varying amounts of um echo bike and actually uh the last change that he made was to increase the calories on the echo

bike to balance the workout a little bit more. And so he knew full well, same as could have been the case with the alpaca workout is that you could, you could get stopped in your tracks. If you're not good enough at the handstand pushup. But as we saw that didn't happen to very many people, there were a couple of people that happened to, and a majority of the people were but as we saw that didn't happen to very many people. There were a couple of people that happened to, and a majority of the people were able to do it, but not all of them were able to do it in the same number of sets. I think it was Colton Merton's heat where he was able to do it in one set,

one set, two sets. And there was a bigger guy in his heat that was able to do it in like two sets, two sets, three sets. And so he's always losing ground on the handstand pushup, but could always make it back up on the bike. And I think he might've even gotten him on the bike or

maybe gotten really close to on the bike at the end. And that's what Adrian wanted in that workout was that back and forth for the handstand, the echo bike could pull ahead. The handstand guy could pull ahead. The echo bike could catch back up. The handstand guy could pull ahead and the echo bike would have a chance to catch at the end and it played out that way in a few instances and did create the kind of race that he was looking for my guess is that you didn't like the standard for the judging of the handstand push-ups which did produce inconsistencies when what i would say to that is and i didn't like the presentation i didn't like the judging i didn't like the presentation of it. I would have much rather have just seen their hands on plates. They set the negative or what's it called, the deficit to whatever you want it to be with the plates, put a fucking pillow down there and fucking let them – ab mat and let them get at it. So I can see what the fuck is going on. There was this – that giant rubber thing was fucking ridiculous and i was just

imagining in my head the whole time them cutting those in the back and it was just it was he said they broke a lot of saws cutting them yeah it looked it looked absurd looked like something like you do with a dremel at your house and you regret starting the project it's asked the same question yeah how am i supposed to know if i'm low enough yeah and what adrian's response to them is how do you know you're low enough in a squat? You just feel it. You know it because you've done it enough times. Now you haven't done this necessarily before. So there's not quite that parallel, but this speaks to what he said, you know, I said to you about wanting to see the athletes adapt. So he wanted it. He did not want there to be a tactile response at the bottom. That was an intentional omission from the workout. I still think that there are other ways that you might

have been able to design this that would have made it easier on the judges. And my overall critique of the movement standard here is if you're going to have something, and I've said this date going back all the way to 2019 with the second cut workout with the double kettlebell shoulder to overhead, that if you're going to have a new movement standard or a new movement, it cannot be new for both the judges and the athletes. So if you're not going to prepare the athletes ahead of time, at least prepare the judges ahead of time. And at the CrossFit Games, you should trust the judges

because those are all level one seminar staff that are always trusted in the CrossFit circle. And if you're going to have that movement, you should send them out something ahead of time. That's some kind of NDA accompanied with, hey, by the way, there's a few new standards that we're going to be implementing this year. Review these videos and be prepared to make these calls. In the case of the women, the problem was the hair. Some of their hair was hanging down or they had a point on top of their head or whatever. Adrian told the women that they needed to pull their hair tight so that that didn't happen.

But, you know, hair gets out of place sometimes in a workout. The echo bikes blowing the hair around and whatever. And so it did make it challenging to judge. Upon video review after the fact, many people showed me videos of different athletes where it appeared fairly obvious that they weren't meeting the standard and they were getting credit for the reps or that they were making the standard and weren't getting credit for the reps and it was definitely a little bit subjective so i would say that the overall takeaway is it's really difficult to have a brand new standard or brand new movement for both parties involved athletes hey you could put your hand down there and have the fucking them touch your hand.

Did you miss the part where I said he did not want there to be a tactile response? I, I, I, I, I. You don't like it. It's just. Did he say why he didn't want there to be tactile response? Because he wanted them to feel it and to know, yes, this was enough. Ask me again. How do you know when you're at the bottom of a squat?

How do you know? You have to ask me again the whole thing. How do you know when you're at the bottom of a squat, Savant? When the helmet of the penis hits the cervix. Are you happy with that response? Yeah. It's crazy. A tactile, no tactile response. That same thing happens to me when I do handstand pushups. happy with that response yeah i'm fucking it's crazy a tactile no tactile response that same

thing happens to me when i did handstand push-ups so did you hate i hated the workout period it did not you right right right right uh i i just i i don't like the workout i didn't like the way it was presented i didn't like maybe it was the layout but those i just didn't i i could tell you who did impress me in that workout was Jason Hopper and Roman Krennikoff, because those are two of the heaviest guys in the field. And they figured out a way to make that work. The other thing I will say, one of the things that Adrian was looking for in that workout

is that you could not get away with the arching position that we see in the handstand pushup occasionally. And he really wanted the athletes to be forced into having to stack appropriately for a handstand push-up and to expose you if you weren't able to do that. And I think the athletes were able to... Stack appropriately? Is that like... Yeah. You mean the muscle? Yeah, to not have a big arch

in your back when you're coming out of the handstand push-up. You know, some people have that big arch and then push their head through to the finishing position. Yeah. And he wanted you to have to be in that ribca cage closed and good overhead position. That's taught at every level one that's ever existed, but the athletes were able to skirt it a little bit and you could still arch

your back and kind of worm your way up the wall a little bit more than I think was the intent. Brian's voice is soothing and calm. The bam seven, you could put your fucking hand on there. Thank you. I don't know what that means, but I just like it. You could put your hand on there.

I always like a hand on there. If you think maybe your testosterone levels are low, you should go to CaliforniaHormones.com. It's CAHormones.com. You should use the password Sevan. CAHormones.com. You should use the password SEVON. C-A-Hormones.com. You should use the password SEVON. And you'll get a free doctor's consultation.

If you live in California, you'll get free blood work. If you're not in California, have your insurance pay for it. I cannot believe how many people are sending me DMs telling me how stoked they are that they're doing this. It's crazy how many people are telling me that it's good for their head. If you want coffee, you should go to paper street coffee it's paper st coffee fuck why are these guys web addresses all fucked up it's ca hormones that's with an h not with a w by the way it's paper street coffee paper st coffee you use the password seven you get 10 off there's probably some other people who've been taking such good care of us

if you want a shirt a bee friendly shirt go to sherpa sherpa sherpa if you want if you want uh some some some sub on podcast gear go to life is rx or to vindicate i like life is rx's stuff by the way yeah me too i like it too i like their shirts are a little thicker and so they hang off my shoulders a little more nicely uh matt reynolds what about squatting to a wall ball for people who are new to the matt matt this is the crossfit games what are you talking about this isn't a show about the l1 yes fine squat to whatever you want if you're new just make sure it doesn't hurt you. Darren Coughlin. Oh, Darren has a professional coaching daily website and newsletter that you can subscribe to. It's called masterofcoaching.online.

Always a great contributor to the show. Always sends me very thoughtful texts. Please check it out, masterofcoaching.online. Another fucked up fucking, why can't it be master of coaching.com master of coaching on dot online. I thought it had to be three letters. Darren Coffin, the capacity to judge needs to be tested before the athlete's capacity is

tested. I think this is most more or less what I was saying. You can't have blind judges, lots of variations of standards throughout the games. No, I think, I think that in general, this is a theme throughout the season, is that there are opportunities, there were opportunities for the CrossFit Games team to communicate things either to judges or to athletes in a way that would have set them up more for success. I totally understand Adrian's perspective of wanting the

athletes to have to adapt and that's appropriate, but I also want to see them put into settings where they have the capacity to show their capacity or their fitness. And when you put them into an environment where the standards are new and unclear for everyone involved, fan, judge, athlete, et cetera, then that can often be, I don't like the word, but it can be, you know, you can detract from the main emphasis, which should be the athlete's ability to either do it or not. I think you handled, that was a great word. You're not going to get canceled. Uh, Brian, this isn't a programming show, Jeremy, but great question. What about no burpees? So I thought that when they took out the rope climbs that they were going to put in a burpee.

Like I just thought it was like, okay, we got to put in something in there to, so that it's not just a straight up power output test. And I thought that they might put the burpee in, but overall, I think that the takeaway from this is you don't have to have burpees in the test. You don't have to have any individual thing in the test. And I think that it would actually be good for things like swimming to show up twice one year and no times a year after that. And to make elements of that a little bit less predictable. So no burpees this year. No problem for me.

What about the length of the games? In terms of? I actually liked the fact that there wasn't a day off. I think that it should be five days. I think some of the days could have more volume than others, and that's totally appropriate. But the way that it played out with the three workouts, two workouts, and then et cetera, the rest of the week,

I actually really liked that. I think five days is great. I think there should be workouts every day for the individuals. And obviously the intensity, duration, and difficulty of those can vary day to day. But I think it's appropriate. I think it's cool too. I like the length of them. I think it was really cool that there was a rest day that they got to utilize to make up.

I also think the cuts were good this year. Yeah. say that they got to utilize to make up for i also think the cuts were good this year yeah um i think this is the format that it i i hope that they stick with this format i think that it's very fair for the athletes that even in the bottom 10 they got a full test i mean 10 11 scores already by the time saturday night hit they got to go heavy they got to go long they got to do the skills they got to try it all. And there is. The bottom 10 athletes, to me, have always been at the games less capable than the top, than the next 10, the next 10, the next 10.

Every heat's always getting a little bit better. And I think that it's OK to cut 10 going into the last day. So I was a fan of this, the way that it planned out in terms of the cuts this year as well. Any, any updates on, uh, miss Emily Rolfe? Oh my God, dude, I saw her. Uh, I guess it was a day she got out of surgery, which was a couple of days after trying to remember what day it was that happened. Um, and, uh, man, I just felt terrible, terrible for it. Not only was, is that obviously like a super unfortunate thing and it's pretty brutal, you know, surgery procedure to have to go through, but she's, she thinks she would have done really well on a lot of these workouts.

I think she would have too. And she would have been a, you know, a good addition to the women's field, uh, in that let me be like 15 to, I think 15 to 25 in a about where she would have finished but maybe a little bit towards the top end of that uh 15th was jacqueline dalstrom 14th was amanda barnhart 16th was lucy campbell yep emma mcquade up there we don't have we did we didn't have a Fikowski here. Um, uh, Danny Spiegel,

uh, completely fucking handles her business on that bag workout. Um, do you think she comes back next year? I mean, her, this, I mean,

look, we had to be talked about it before the games. And I said, man, like she needs to prove to me that she can survive a full cross of games. This is a tough test. It was a full test. It was five days.

There were a lot of different things. She had to run far. She had to run fast. She had to lift heavy. She had a lot of gymnastics. She did it all. She finished in the top half of the field. And even if the leg of stroke times were in there, if you look at the points margin, it's

over 100 points down to 20th. So she would have finished in the top 20 either way, which is a great credit to her. I think this is the best performance that she's had yet in her career, even though some other performances, other competitions were higher. It was not as difficult of a test. It was not as difficult of a field. So to me, this is the best Danny Spiegel we've ever seen. And hopefully she comes back next year. Yeah. If I told you that the greatest improvement of any of the top ten athletes you're looking at, which are Tia Toomey, Mal O'Brien, Laura Horvath, Daniel Brandon, Brooke Wells, Emma Lawson, Cara Saunders, Gabriela Maguawa, Haley Adams, Alexis Raptus, in that order. If I told you that there was an athlete in here that was going to improve twice as much as their next closest competitor and be on the podium next year who would you think it is uh either emma or alexis wow wow okay so before we go to the great emma lawson who i i i think uh i think we might be seeing something absolutely insane here, but why Alexis Raptus you're high on her.

Well, the way that you asked the question is a little bit, you know, theoretical. How old is she? How old is she? 23, I think 23. Um, those are the two rookies that made the top 10 for the women this year. Uh, you know, Alexis has some, some great skills that we were able to see um the reason why i say that is okay so you added in to make the podium i think emma lawson is a

bigger podium threat than alexis is but apart from that to to improve to get twice as good or something like emma's already i would say is a is a level ahead here. So I think there's more room for improvement for Alexis. Um, but I think that both are likely to be top 10, you know, contenders and pushing even higher up that throughout the next, I mean, it's always hard to say how long they're going to compete for, but I think they're both in a really good spot. What was, what, what did you find most impressive of, of Emma Lawson? If you were going to sell her to a sponsor, what would you tell them? Maturity and composure at that age. It's unteachable, I think. Mal has it too. Discipline, grit, hard work, the ability to push through pain, the intangible stuff. All these people are very talented, but it speaks to what Rob Forte talked about. Jay Crouch can have all the skills, be strong enough, be good enough. But if you don't have the discipline to recover event from event, the discipline to know when to push and the willingness to go to the dark spot when you need to work out after workout,

then you're only going to be so good at the games. These two girls from everything I saw, because it's not, you know, again, when you're there, when you're close enough, you can see their face. You can see their breathing. You can see the way that they're navigating the workout apart from what the rep counters are showing on the TV. And it's different and it's unique. And it's the thing I said about Emma before this was I need to see her compete on the field with the best women in the sport. And this week we got to see that basically every single workout because she was in the best women in the sport. And this week we got to see that basically every single workout because she was in the top 10 from the beginning.

And yeah, she had some lower finishes towards the end of the week. But like I said, those are mostly based on strength that I think she'll get better on. And the things that these two girls are doing is only possible because of the intangible stuff that you can't measure. When she got 21st in the test of strength workout, the back nine. Can I call it that, the test of strength workout? I love that workout, yeah. Okay. I liked it too.

And I thought the athletes did great at it. The weights that Adrian chose and the movements, it was awesome. There were people just cruising through it and we got to see that. Emma Lawson, 17, takes 21st. Haley Adams, still super duper young, takes 26. Neither of them finished the workout. Danielle Brandon, 25th, did not finish the workout. Alexis Raptor, 20th, did not finish the workout.

So four of the top 10 didn't finish that workout. And the only reason, if we had never seen Haley Adams before, and she showed up to the CrossFit Games this year and took ninth, right? And we knew she was 21. We would still believe like, holy shit, she can get stronger and win the CrossFit Games this year and took ninth, right? And we knew she was 21. We would still believe like, holy shit, she can get stronger and win the CrossFit Games. But because we've seen her for so long, and the strength workouts are always the holes, we're starting to lose faith. I'm not losing faith in that.

And part of this is just based on my own experience. I'm not very strong. part of this is just based on my own experience. I'm not very strong. And for basically from 2016 to 2020, I wasn't getting any stronger. And then in the last two years, I've been able to get stronger. And so, and I'm a lot older than her. I know people at my gym that are 45 and 50 years old who are still PRing some of their strength numbers. So sometimes, and especially in the realm of strength, I think there can be long plateaus before a breakthrough. The thing is that not everyone's always going to stick to it. She's right. This person is right. Haley does have great discipline. The other thing is that I don't know what Haley's training is like and how much of her training she's really committing to strength.

And that doesn't just mean how many times she's going in the gym and squatting. It means what she's doing surrounding that and how much of a focus she's putting on it. And maybe it's enough and maybe she'll just have that breakthrough another year or two, three years from now. But maybe also at some point she'll just be like, okay, this isn't working. And she has to make that decision. It's, it's kind of like a, if you've ever known anyone who's had an addiction and I can talk about this because I have had an addiction is that it didn't matter how much you loved me or cared about me or told me until I was ready to admit it and work on it. Nothing was going to change. And I, and it change. And maybe it's the same thing with fitness.

She's so good at so many things that she can go in the gym and do those things and feel great about how good she is. She is going to have to want to and really want to say, no, I'm going to change the way that I approach the next six months, the next nine months or the next year, maybe two years. If I want to make the nest, it's not just a 1% improvement. If I want, if I want to make the podium, if I want to win the CrossFit games and I'm Haley Adams, I think she has to make a two year minimum dedicated commitment to getting stronger. Even if her performances regress over those two years at the games. Someone, someone posted Emma's still in public school. I wonder if she's still in school. Okay, so you haven't lost faith.

I like that. Okay. When can we expect a new power rankings from you? Like all time? That and all time. Or going into the offseason. But both. I was thinking going into the offseason.

Like this is definitely things have changed, right? We looked at one about 30 days before the games. Then we did a games prediction show. And I think it's time to reevaluate. That's super fun. Cause you could still include people like Jamie Simmons or Sarah Sigma's daughter, Catherine Davis, daughter, Annie Thor's daughter. If she decides to go individual that didn't make it to the games,

you could include someone like Jake Berman, who missed the last chance qualifier by one spot, who missed the Mac by one spot and all five guys who beat him at the Mac finished inside the top 20 at the games. So it's, you know, it's one of those things like how well would he, could he have done there if he'd been given the opportunity to get in?

So yeah, that's definitely a good idea. What do you, what do you think? Will we have it it sometime in September? Yeah, we'll do it sometime. Maybe before then. I don't know. Mihael Padrini-Poletti.

I think the offseason is too short to get strong in the level she needs. That's what i'm saying she has to abandon her finishes or rankings for a two-year period of time and commit to the strength she's still got such a huge amount of capacity obviously she's still going to do some other stuff besides just lifting but she has to make that a priority for an extended period of time except the fact strength increases so i'm going to look for that this is a brutal comment. Trent for by Trent Merrill. You know,

here's the thing is I don't know how much Trent Merrill knows about what, how true this is, how, what does it mean that she's focused exclusively on this? And this is all she's worked on. She could say that she could say, Oh, it feels like all I ever do is squat.

My legs are always sore, but I still think that there's a difference between really committing to that and doing it a lot uh anything anything else uh brian we didn't talk about teams that could be a whole nother show uh i haven't i haven't delved into the team a lot, but the one thing that I'll say about the team programming this year, there was very, very little worm work, almost none. And similarly, there was no heavy or even really moderately heavy barbell work for the individuals. But I would not assume that that's not going to be the case next year. And Mayhem ended up handling their business, and reykjavik didn't do so bad themselves with the fourth correct uh any word on what annie's doing next year no i honestly i

haven't really pursued any of those things i have you know i haven't tried to find out what's going on with hayley or tutor or annie anyone else. Haley isn't on the juice. Okay. Anything else before we wrap this sucker up? You tell me. I think we're good. I think we've stimulated a lot of talk. I think we can circle back and talk about some of these guys more in depth.

I think we need to have some of these guys on. I'd really like to know how the games affected some of these guys. It would be really fun to – what do you think about walking through the events with Ricky? I think people would love it. I think he might enjoy it. Yeah. Just pull them up one at a time and let them just to tell us like shit that happened back there shit that benny said to him people like shit that him and velner talked about it'd be nice to do that

with velner too actually i'll say so i will say a couple things i was incredibly impressed with roman sam quant jeff adler and jason hopper i already talked about lazar jukic these guys were super impressive to me and we didn't really get a chance to talk too much about them. It was awesome to have Kara Saunders back at the games, finishing seventh, which is, it was great. She seemed to be having a ton of fun. It was cool to see her with her kid and her husband. I was really impressed with Danielle. I was really impressed with Emma Lawson, Alexis Raptus, Ariel Lowen. And I was impressed with a lot of the European rookies on the women's side,

even though they didn't necessarily do as well. Lucy Campbell, Matilda Garns, probably not a lot of people. Lucy you saw a couple of times because she got a couple of event wins, but one of them was the last event that she won in from the third heat or the second heat. And Matilda Garns, who you probably didn't see very much of at all, had a pretty respectable 19th place finish as a as a rookie at the games um i thought paige simenza was was uh good there were a lot of people that were you know telling me she was

gonna she was gonna do pretty well she finished 21st it was great to have her back and it was her best ever finish there and i was really impressed with the uh the women from asia sung young joy looks like she belongs at the games i mean she for sure from last year 26th place and sahar kaya made the top 30 so both of the women out of asia qualified and made inside the cut line i thought there was a huge win for them um so those are just some of the things we didn't get to that i thought were worth mentioning i know this is kind of a cheeky comment and maybe doesn't deserve uh your time but brian not impressed with ricky garard incredibly impressed with ricky i apologize if i didn't

mention him in that list um i i didn't really know how good ricky could do i did have him slightly outside the top 10 john had him inside the top 10, but neither of us, I don't think either of us were expecting him to be clearly. I mean, those three guys were clearly ahead of the rest of the field from getting 10 to the weekend. I know he slipped a little bit relative to the other two in the end, but those, but like the fact that Roman was in the top three after the first half of

the workouts, when not, when all of the gymnastics movements and skill tests were being exposed i mean this guy he is um i i can't really say enough good things about him and uh and yes i i could say the same about ricky so i apologize for omitting him in that list uh does justin win the games again next year? So I will stick to what I've been saying, which is I will pick him to win every competition he enters until he loses. But I will not be surprised at all if Roman wins the games next year.

Impossible. Thank you guys for checking in. Impossible. And tomorrow morning, 7 a.m pacific standard time uh i have the ufc show with justin nunley tiktok comedian superstar and daring weeks ufc welterweight and i think the following day i have ariel lowen and then the following day there's just, it's just pouring in, just pouring in. Okay. Brian, thank you.

You were amazing. Thanks. Peace and love, everyone.