The Sevan Podcast - #59 - Taylor Self

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

The Sevan Podcast EP 59 - TAYLOR SELF & BRIAN FRIEND @taylormidself @sevanmatossian @brianfriendcrossfit The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Sweet. We have to be nicer to Jason Taylor. So, dude, I can't believe you go to my instagram and where did you dude so why'd you pick that picture well first of all but before i look cool and you do look cool as shit in it um first of all we have we can you told us uh before we started to that we don't have to take it easy on you like jason and we and't have to take it easy on you. No, you don't. And we have to take it easy on Jason because, like, what if we have to interview him for the next five years and we just destroy him and scare him away in the first episode? But we got to think of us as Jason's the cart.

No, Jason's the horse and we're the cart. We plan on monetizing the shit out of Jason. We got to take it easy on his ass. I've ridden his coattails pretty far, too'm here congratulations thank you man so you have the smallest instagram account i have ever seen yeah i've ever seen followers wise no no no i've seen smaller yeah you're shadow i can't even find you on instagram but um you have a picture. Your first picture is in August 4, 2014. And it's you on a horse, then another horse, then a motorcycle, then a motorcycle, then a jet ski, and then a motorcycle. Then water skiing.

Oh, a bunch of dead animals. Yeah, a bunch of dead animals. Oh, a bunch of dead animals. For people who are listening tonight, I want to tell you, on one hand, I want to thank you because this is all an experiment. And we're experimenting with different platforms and we're trying to work out the kinks. But be thankful that you're just part of a podcast experiment and you're not part of some sort of, you know, like random vaccine experiment. Like imagine if there was something like that going on and they had to inject you and your kids with shit i mean that would be horrible so this is just a just be thankful this is just a simple experiment audio podcasting video experiment brian friend do you know him yes we actually exchanged brief words at the granite games

yeah that makes it sound like we got in a fight. No, no, no. In a good way. But I remember on the other – I watch all your podcasts, by the way. So I'm really excited to be here. This is my favorite podcast. Thank you. It used to be Rogan, but he interviews some weirdos sometimes.

We'll do that. We'll do that. Give us some time. You might be our first. Definitely. Definitely. you might be our first definitely so brian mentioned to me so so he's getting me up to speed on all the game shit i used to be a gamesista and i kind of fell off the scene three or four years ago so he's been getting me up to speed and this year there's a last chance

qualifier and he's been we've been doing these shows where we analyze all the athletes and i think if i remember correctly he had you as a possibility. He was hopeful for you for making it in the top five in the semifinal and going to the games. Is that correct, Brian? Yeah, I had kind of trusted some stuff that I heard from some other guys, and I think he was good enough to go to the games based on his physical capacity. I don't think that's what prevented him from qualifying.

And then Jason humbly said that when we interviewed Jason, that you beat him in workouts on the regular, and that he also thought that you were going to go. Like he saw his success, and then when we interviewed after him, he thought you were going to go. And then I don't know if it was last or this morning, it's all a blur, that Brian said, hey, there's a bunch of new stuff coming out. We should do a podcast tonight. And I go don't know if it was last this morning. It's all blur that Brian said, Hey, there's a bunch of new stuff coming out. We should do a podcast tonight. And I go the last

chance qualifier stuff. He goes, yeah. And other stuff. And, um, I said, okay, let's do it. I go, what about that dude, Taylor self to get on and have him talk about it. And Brian goes, oh, that's awesome. Let's do it. I also heard through the grapevine that he's testing all four workouts today. I was like, did you tell you that bro? I didn't, I don't know who told him. Uh, I don't know anything about the workouts. I just, he said that you might be doing them all today. I, I did. I didn't do the three rat max deadlift today, but I did do the other three. Yes. So let me pull that up to right now to be honest i look at those other three workouts and that looks like a potentially a normal training day anyway yeah yeah i i mean the athletes that are in the last chance qualifier

have been tested like 16 times now so what i mean what i mean at the end of the day i knew it wasn't going to be like you know eight workouts or whatever they're just going to give you some stuff that can create separation i think and see who can suffer um but before we get any further how how old are you taylor i'm i'm 25 and how long have you been doing crossfit four years and have you been in sport your whole life uh uh yeah that's a yes i played sports was not very good at them at all i was a i was a fat kid i was a very big kid like what do you mean my instagram is so small well okay uh i was a chubby kid i wasn't like you know i wasn't rolling around in like a you know a thing but did you wear your t-shirt at birthday parties like at swim birthday parties yeah yeah me too

me too hashtag yes i was oh yes i was and it only made it worse because then the shirt's hanging on your gut and shit and you're like every time you do the same thing you're like what the fuck this t-shirt ain't doing shit except exacerbating my fat it's exposing me bro that's funny um okay so and then you found crossfit and then what made you think that you were, I mean, it's utterly absurd to think anyone's going to go to the CrossFit Games. Like, it is absurd. You know how many people have that dream and it's just fucking absurd. It is so hard. What made you think, what happened in your training that made you go, oh, shit, maybe I'll be good at finally at a sport and this is it?

and your training that made you go oh shit maybe i can i'll be good at finally at a sport and this is it um i just so i actually was maybe i started doing crossfit to get into better shape to go into the navy um and i was already in pretty i was in i was in good shape running swimming stuff like that but i just wanted something extra. So I started CrossFit and then... Is that a can of Coke behind you? Yeah, you like that? Ryan, turn the show off. It's over. This shit is fucking over.

This shit is fucking over. Dude, I'm surprised it took you this long to see that, bro. You're lucky you have an American flag back there. This shit would be over. At least you got some balance. Oh my gosh, that's funny god get back to that can of coke okay go go on so what dude well matt matt said that he drinks coke and eats snickers so i was just getting on the bandwagon for sure um so so i joined crossfit to get in the better shape for the navy the navy didn't end up working out for a few reasons and i was doing crossfit a lot at that point um i think i've been maybe doing it for like a year so i i was like

probably doing two workouts today just like for fun i don't know it's weird um a lot of people wouldn't think that'd be fun but so i was just like i'll try to i think that was 2018 yeah i was like i'll try to go to regionals and then i did pretty well in a couple of the open workouts and then got hurt um and what was this what year you said 2018 2018 yeah 2018 um i was really raw and fresh and also had you know was not strong so there are there's some huge holes um and then uh i got hurt and i was like i don't know i just like it i just love crossfit i love crossfit the methodology i love crossfit the company and i've been really lucky to be with some amazing mentors in the crossfit community for sure. But, but did you have like, did you like do Fran the first time and it was nine minutes and the second time it

was four minutes and all of a sudden you're like, Oh shit, maybe I can make it to the games. Um, I've thought I could be pretty good. And I've had people at that point had people tell me I could probably make it to regionals. Um, but I just really like, I don't know. I mean, I just like, I like, I don't know. I just love, I love CrossFit dude. I love working out. And, uh, over the past year and before that, I had some people kind of tell me that and believe in me. Um, that helped for sure. And are you, do you still live at home with your parents? No, nope. Um, it's pretty cool, huh? Yeah.

That's weird. 25. You seem a little young to be out of the house. Do they know that you're doing this? Um, I was at home until I was 34. I was just, I would be come home for like a year, get kicked out, come home, get kicked out, come home, get kicked out. So I've've only lived i lived out of my mom's house for like a few months before i moved to north carolina i live in north carolina now and i've lived here for two years um

but uh yeah she knows she's super supportive it's really cool because like when i grew up i sucked at sports my sister was really good so I always got dragged around going to her like events and like, you know, they just watched every single dive meet and whatever she dove in college. And um, so it's cool that my mom, that I see like the support that she showed my sister, she shows the same for me. Like she's invested. It's, it's awesome. I love it. Yeah. That is awesome. It makes you proud that is awesome it makes you proud right makes you proud that you're making your mom proud yeah for sure where did you move from let me guess i'm looking at these pictures alabama where do you come wait what dead animal ghetto water wall i'm skiing as a ghetto but anyways uh actually virginia my parents are from south

carolina but i grew up in virginia okay and so you find crossfit four years ago you start going hard around 2018 you have some um goals you're still too raw and you hurt yourself. And then, but you don't quit and you keep going. And I think, I don't remember what the numbers are. Maybe Brian has them, but you made a significant increase in your performance this year versus last year. Isn't, is that true, Brian? Like, I mean, I think I was looking at his open numbers. I thought I killed it in 2020. No, you had one bad workout yeah i had knee surgery i had a huge so in 2019 i was in 2018 after i got hurt in the open i qualified for granite games the pro

division which is not really that wasn't anything crazy it wasn't like a sanctional or anything they were inviting games athletes so that was like my first big competition, the only one I had done. And then like six months later, maybe, so that was like September 2018. So then late winter, just early 2019, I qualified for the MAC, which was going to be a sanctionals, like one of the first sanctionals. And two days before that i was skateboarding and blew my knee out entirely my entire left knee like everything i was going like i was going like 30 down this hill on this little not a longboard like a regular skateboard i grew

up skateboarding got the old speed wobbles and had to jump off that wasn't wearing a helmet and uh i'd like to see some posts on your instagram do you think you could put a post of you skateboarding of me like like doing a kickflip anything that would be what you think that would be cool or like an ollie i would i would like you more anything i would just wait till at least wait till next week and if this weekend goes well wait till august yeah yeah well i don't skateboard anymore that's for sure i don't fucking skateboard anymore but dude i live vicariously through your instagram actually savon that's why I don't post that much because everything that I feel like I need to say, you say it.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. And you won't get shadow banned. Exactly, dude. So, but wasn't it in 2020, didn't you, like you were in the thousands in the open? Like you were in the 2000s? I had one leg. So the pistol workout, I couldn't do a single pistol squat.

Which, yeah, I mean, there's no excuse there. But, you know, I just wasn't ready. And then how did you do in 21? Do you see those numbers, Brian? How did you do in the open? This year? Yeah. I was in the top 50.

Wow. And that's in the world? The skin of my teeth. Yeah, 49th worldwide um and a majority of his points came on the uh lifting complex at 21.4 he had yeah 161st 13th 62nd so three like phenomenal performances on the three more you know work capacity workouts and then 820th on the lifting and what was the lifting workout that year but so the this is the interesting thing about that lifting workout um like pat pat velner had a uh similarly bad performance on it but i know that he

had um hit one like he just missed the jerk barely at like 40 pounds 30 or 40 pounds more than whatever he'd actually posted yeah i didn't miss i nailed 282 and stopped there i didn't miss any i just powered it all i've you know i have quite a bit more in the tank for sure that wasn't there so you could have done a squat clean i don't know what the workout is but from what i'm hearing yeah it was a deadlift squat clean but you didn't there. So you could have done a squat clean. I don't know what the workout is, but from what I'm hearing, it was a squat clean, but you didn't really squat clean. You, you just power clean.

It was a deadlift clean, hang clean jerk. And I just powered it all. I probably, yeah, I could have, I could have, I could have broken 300 for sure.

Um, but it was good enough. There was good enough. And that's what Pat said too. Played the save card. Yeah. It was the open. And then I think from the notes Brian sent out this morning about you,

you missed going to the games this year by, is it five points? Six points. Six points. Yeah. Kicking the nuts right there. Is that. Should have been one point. It's funny.

Cause I, when that first happened i was like oh my god are all the last chance qualifier people like bummed because now they have to deal with the last chance qualifier and i kept getting this sort of like no they're not bummed and then but i don't believe it i have to think you're like what the fuck man i mean you're excited but yeah i could answer that really well okay i mean, I think I was really fucked. I just didn't have a lot of really no competitive experience. I did Granite Games in 2018

and that was some experience but really what I learned was that I was fucked and I needed to get better. I wasn't really there to compete. It was like, oh, Travis Mayer is going to be there and all these other guys. I'm like, well, I have no fucking chance to win to win so yeah you love that guy um yeah his name has to be said in every podcast and you just checked it off it's like at the top of it yeah okay yeah um and so

so at this this year i mean i was pretty confident in my fitness for sure i just made made a made a one really big mental error on the thruster workout just went out too hot and i really don't do that in workouts typically i'm the opposite um which i was the rest of the weekend but i went out too hot and kind of blew that up and then on a couple other events i didn't sprint through the finish line and was had like a couple workouts where i was like a tenth of a second slower than someone else. I jogged across. So just learning things like that. And yeah, I was pretty – I was bummed out, but I knew it wasn't anybody else's fault.

You know what I mean? I'm not like blaming anybody other than me being a dumbass on the thruster workout. It's okay to blame the games team for anything you want. That's what most of the athletes do the athletes do i'm not that athlete you're never going to get instagram fame if you don't start just blaming dave and the games team for some shit dude right i resent that to be honest i'm glad you brought that up i really really resent that a friend of mine told me and i've said this story before and don't brian and i are going to probably get into a fight here but um but brian maybe hopefully will not even listen to what I'm saying and just move on to

his next question. But, um, a friend of mine who's a professional arm wrestler said, Hey, there's always two people you have to beat. I'm like two people. There's only one guy across the table. He's all dude, you got to beat the referee and the guy. And so it's kind of like, and you know, you see that in fighting all the time, someone loses a decision and they're like, Hey, it's my fault. I should have knocked that fucker out. Yeah, that's for sure. But they take the ownership. Like, you know, you got to take the ownership.

If you're not fit enough to survive the mistakes, I wasn't fit enough to survive my mistakes at Grand Games. And I need to be. Or even the administration's mistakes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You need to be fit enough. It's part of the game, for sure. I mean, you don't look at the best in the sport.

You don't hear that shit from them because they're winning. Right. Well, sometimes you do. Yeah, well. Brian, were you talking, was it his first workout that you were telling me about? Yeah. Was that the thruster one? No, the first workout was a snatch and he was very impressive.

I think he hit 295. Yeah, it was a 10-pound PR. crazy yeah and it looked like a good snatch i mean and this was a thing of you know i hadn't seen you compete in person before that so to see that right away i was like oh if you can hang and snatch over 290 when the pressure's on and you have like a limited amount of attempts especially because i know it's so difficult to line up in the corral wait all that time get walked across that massive field you know you're really kind of cold and then you only have three lifts so i was like this is a really good start to the weekend and the fact i was you know i was basically watching you there i was like if he finishes in the top 10 in the snatch i think that he might have a chance and you did. Yeah. I, I, I think I just carried that adrenaline a little bit too hard into the

second workout. The second workout was the thruster one. Yeah. Right after Brian, didn't you say something to me that you were wondering how he was after that day? You were wondering how, like how his mental status or what,

what did you say to me? You said something to me about him. The workout was just, it was, it was an it was a unique workout to watch because you saw someone like mal o'brien who went out fast and stayed fast and won the workout you saw someone like taylor who went out fast and then you know couldn't hold on and and it was his worst workout of the weekend by far but you saw a lot of athletes like tim

paulson and alessandra pocelli start very slow like last or second to last in their heat and finish top five in the workout by the end of the workout that's what i should have done and i know i know i had a fitness to approach the workout that way and do really well um so just that's what i should have done i learned that lesson it's interesting you say that because there's and i hate to misrepresent danielle brandon or jason hopper but there's two things that I feel like I heard from them where they basically said hey man we don't even know we don't even know how good or how bad we are like it's almost like they're not even themselves like they're taking their race car out onto the track and they're not sure what the top speed is and so also part of

your situation too like yeah I did I thought i mean going to the event i wanted to win that event and i think yeah i think i think that was i didn't know clearly that i couldn't hold that pace i mean i'm not i'm not i like to think i'm not stupid i felt stupid after that well it's like you said it's your experience you're young and you've only been getting fitter so like yeah no doubt and look at your two night look at your 295 snatch you didn't know if you could do that either and you did it right yeah and i was pretty proud of that in 2018 at granite games i snatched 255 the guy next to me anthony davis was actually there and he snatched 325 in my fucking face dude and like was jumping all over the place

i'm sitting there failing 265 pretty funny is that scary who told you to what was your lift before 295 285 i did 275 wait i don't know don't worry brian will tell you brian will tell you what your lifts are did i did did i do 260 think I did 265, 285, 295. I feel like a lot of people made that choice just because of probably how cold they were going into the first lift. I needed to be sure they hit it. 265 is now my power snatch. So I knew I had 265.

I think 285 was my PR and it was a long time ago. So I knew I had quite a bit more. So I was confident. I've been under 295 before that a couple of times. Yeah, that sounds confident. So does someone tell you, is there a coach from the sidelines saying, okay, Taylor, you got to go for 295 now? No, we had it planned out. It was pretty much, I had locked it in. We were going to go 265, 85, 95. Wow. Do you think you could have just gone out there and done two 95 or you needed that warmup?

That's a good question. I don't know. Maybe I, I don't know. I mean, two 85 felt better than two 65. So I probably needed that, that first two lifts probably. And then once you kind of of once you struggled on that thruster workout and this is actually i think brian was talking about it right after it happened or he mentioned to me that evening oh shit now we're gonna see if he can pull his head out of his ass like how much i didn't pull my head how much does that head fuck him it fucked me big time dude my head was in my ass oh weekend bro after that second workout i was like

damn i lost to like some guys that i've never heard of by over a minute so i had that do you ever get your head do you ever get your head straight or do you just leverage that to work even harder like how do you how do you how do you come out of that i was battling it i think i was battling it all weekend not i definitely i was fighting the negativity for sure and it definitely carried over my workouts i don't feel like i attacked any of the workouts after at that point in fact every workout i was in i probably started the workout in last place and then pulled out towards towards the end of the workout so i just was not starting them aggressively fearful maybe not to fuck it up learn that big lesson and do you think you learned that or you

can't you don't you can't tell if you learned it until you're put in that situation again oh i definitely learned it you did awesome i definitely i definitely learned that lesson dude don't you worry that's not bad i mean that that lesson has to be learned by most people yeah that's what andy yeah that's what my boss said. Same thing. He's like, you know, that's a really good lesson to learn. And it's pretty hard to learn it unless you make the mistake. It's hard to learn it from somebody else.

He's right. Who's your boss? Andy Hendel. You know him, right? Oh, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. He's the man.

Holy shit. Yeah. That's who you're working with? Hell yeah. Andy Hendel. So I work with him. And then I have another coach, John Main, who was a longtime staff member. holy shit yeah that's who you're working with hell yeah andy hendel and well he's so he i work with him and then i have another coach john main who was a longtime staff member quiet guy over in california um love him but uh have you seen andy hendel's business card dude yeah i'm his head

trainer how crazy that's the one with eric dickerson on it oh no it's not that anymore oh oh he i think he had a business card where he's drilling eric dickerson dude andy is so fucking funny man and i'm just like holy shit i don't know if you guys know who eric dickerson was but he was the man when i was growing up as a kid and i think he was a running back for the rams or something yep and uh and i think he had this picture where he's just drilling them dude oh oh dude i know the picture you're talking about it's not on his business card but it's hanging on the wall right next to the door yeah i think it used to be diving just diving right into that picture is legendary dude uh for people who don't know who andy hendel is um i don't know if he's still on the l1 team he was on the l1 team forever he was hardcore um crossfitter og and um he played in nfl and his

son is the charming and beautiful and polite spencer hendel yeah yeah spencer's the man too such a dude such a good family they've taken care of me and you and charlotte a good family they've taken care of me and you and charlotte and sensor and hobart and maliola what they just pulled off right oh yeah huge how crazy i love that i love that for them and for crossfit yeah it's great it's too bad crossfit's changing the name of the programming oh yeah yeah hard as a motherfucker i love that and then they but a consensus fit could never have that in there so they gotta they gotta andy hendel was uh he was a games athlete once too yeah masters masters one year greg cluess at our gym who's a multiple he's actually made it this year for the 65 plus old greg cluess inaugural year yeah greg cluess don't die on the floor

i'm gonna tell you said that bro we talked so much shit to him um andy may have been in the 2007 or 2008 or 2009 games too no no no this is spencer i think i don't know what spencer's first year was but andy's year at the games is 2015 okay he could have easily competed back then though i bet oh for sure if he wanted to dude he's ripped he's still ripped dude yeah he's a savage he's freaking yoked yeah i think he um the and if you look at the old videos there's some cool videos of him even working out side by side with pat barberber and people like that back in the day. He did 100 overhead squats at 95 on Broken.

That's right. I think he was the first person to do that. That's right. We have the trophy at the gym. But isn't that still nuts? And to this day, dude, he will kick everyone in the gym's ass if it's overhead squats. Which is crazy at 60, right? His shoulder should just be just a pile of goo yeah

he's a beast so so but we didn't really get to this so we know you're pissed we we know you're blaming yourself and you know you shit the bed um at the semi-final and you know and and you learn the lesson but and we know but tell me about, this isn't just on last chance qualifier, another fucking head fuck. Like, don't you just want to just know? I'm excited. I'm excited for it. I'm excited for it.

Oh no. I think I was feeling too much pressure at Granite Games and I didn't, you know, I definitely didn't have fun, which is again, is my own fault, but I'm in a much better head space now. I mean, what happened? I'm as fit as I've ever been fitter than I've ever been been i just go and do my best on every workout and where the chips fall they fall um and i'll know after that i'm either fit enough to be a crossfit games athlete or i have these areas where i need to get better in order to be a crossfit games athlete and that's

it how important is it when you do the deadlift relative to the other workouts? I don't know that it's that important. I mean, you don't have a choice. You have to do it between Friday and Saturday because of the passwords, which I like that as well. What exactly are you asking, Brian? Like you can choose the order of the four workouts? You can choose the order of one and two,

and then you can choose the order of whether you do three first or four first i can't i can't even understand that i can't even understand that well that's not i was hoping that he would say that i don't think everyone quite understands that that was even happening in the semi-finals because in the quarterfinals all all three of these stages of competition it's the first year that we've had them. So as we receive the information, that's what we assume the process is. And so for quarterfinals, they gave you five workouts, but they didn't give you – they said they were due at a certain time,

but you could actually do them in any order you wanted. You just had to make sure to have done and submitted the first two on the first day, the second two on the second day, and the last one on the last day. But you could have done them all on first two on the first day, the second time, the second day and the last one on the last day, but you could have done them all on Thursday if you wanted to. And a lot of guys did, did redos, a couple of redos.

And Hey, quick question. Do you have my Instagram handle on this live? No. I'm just trying to make it bigger like you. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's at Taylor,

T-A-Y-L-O-R, the Instagram whore. You have the same suffix that I have. Dude, that's my OnlyFans. That's not my Instagram, bro. Oh, sorry, sorry. It's Taylor, T-A-Y-L-O-R, M-I-M-I-D-S-E-L-F, S-E-L-F. I guarantee you, I figure you don't care how many followers you have but jason just

fucking text you and be like dude get some followers get some help well i would see i would have if you didn't get shadow ban now we're not going to get the recognition bro because no one even knows i'm on here true why'd you have to go do that i that's a good question i don't have the answer for that that sucks sucks, dude. I'm sorry. So, so no, no, it really,

it really is. Okay. It really is. Okay. It really doesn't upset me as long as I still get to play a little bit. And now I have this podcast. So I'm just kind of like parlayed all. I'm just parlaying all of my energy into this and trying to keep up with

Brian. Okay, Brian, go. Sorry. So yeah, let's talk about the, cause I don't understand shit.

Did you know that what he said? Sorry. Did you know that you could do them in any order in the quarterfinals, what Brian just shared with you? Yeah. Okay. I didn't. All the athletes knew that,

and most of them did the front squat at the beginning of the weekend, even though it wasn't due until the second day. I did that, but I didn't redo any of the workouts. And they changed the rules for the semifinals and the semifinals. There were also three 24 hour windows. This time there were two workouts, two workouts and two workouts, six instead of five, but you could not do them in any order you wanted. You had to do the first two and there was some password. Taylor may be able to give us more insight into it. I don't know. Yeah, I can. He's going to experience it now.

But you had to say the password, and the other passwords were locked until you'd submitted the first workout's password, I guess. So basically the password, so this is how it was for semifinals. The windows for semifinals were Thursday at 3 to Friday at 3, then Friday at 3 to Saturday at 3, and Saturday at 3 to Sunday at 3. They'll email us a password at that 3 p.m. opening of the window for only two workouts. So you can do those two workouts in that 24-hour period

because you have the password. And then you'll get the next password when that window closes on the next day and then et cetera. How did you know that if you were at the granite games someone told you um well yeah so someone who competed in the alice games told me and that's also the email we just got for last chance is it's going to be the same way but we are instead of three days it's friday to saturday and then saturday to sunday let's work okay so friday at three so brian what workouts so what workouts do you have to do friday

between three o'clock p.m and three o'clock p.m saturday one and two and it doesn't matter the order you do them yeah so he's got the three rep max deadlift and then he has the the rowing hang dumbbell snatch i think it's 42 30 18 scheme. Look, someone's texting him right now. Well, sorry. No, no, it's okay. It's okay. It's someone who's watching. Just don't pick up a FaceTime.

If Jason fucking FaceTimes you, bro, and you pick that up, I'm out. You can put the Coke can back if I do that. Okay, so that makes sense. Now I kind of understand it. So you can do one and two in any order you want, so you can do one and two in any order you want you can do three and four in any order yeah yep so then i guess brian's question is on the second day will you do workout the burpee workout first or the oh no sorry on day one throw down bell or deadlift yes yep and brian was asking which one will you do first right brian no he didn't ask me that he asked me if the deadlift would affect the rest of the workouts

because i'm not same thing except i asked it more clearly same thing but i asked it more clearly more succinctly more directly uh i don't know for i don't know everybody's different i don't think it makes it i'm not sure that it makes a huge difference whether I do the dumbbell row workout before the deadlift or the deadlift before, uh, I did the dumbbell row today. So I know a little bit about it. It was a good workout. I like it. And will you beat your time when you do it? Is it this Friday? Yeah. Yeah.iday for sure for sure

i'll be i didn't go slow i don't i'll never like test a workout and go slow i don't think and i don't test it with the attitude that i'm just gonna go at a at a you know a learning pace i mean i feel like to learn about a workout you have to fucking hit it um so that's what i did but yeah i'll definitely go go faster Friday for sure. Learned a little bit. And you don't know other people's times or weight. So you don't even know what to deadlift. You have to actually like do your max.

Yeah. That's not just, there's no game. I think that's where I screwed myself over at grant. I mean, dude, I'm just such a new, new to competing. That's why I love working out with Jason. Cause like we, I, I kind of of sharpen that when I work out with him. But at Granite Games, dude, I got caught up on that thruster workout. Dude, this guy next to me.

I don't remember him, but, like, fuck. He went out so hot. I was just like, fuck, if this guy can go this fast, I'm about to beat his ass. And then after the round of 12, I was like, oh. So you don't get that with the last chance it's just kind of you just gotta you just gotta go as hard as you can do that dude who went out too fast also yeah but he got crushed with no reps and i don't know that he earned them okay

after seeing what's after seeing the last two weeks of the virtual semi-finals and all the the penalties how do you balance like making sure you're meeting the movement quality with something like that? Hang dumbbell snatch when you know, it's basically a full send workout. I love this question. So yeah, movement standards are binary. I mean, I'm Savan. I work with Andy. So this is my opinion is just going to be exactly how he feels about it. You either meet the standard or you don't and the points of performance within that are what you kind of own so like if you're do i look like a pooping dog when i squat it doesn't really matter if my hip crease goes below the knee and i reach extension at the top so i think anytime i've gotten a penalty i've only gotten one penalty i've only ever been good enough probably to have my video reviewed one fucking year which is this

year but i got the i got a penalty on the quarterfinals dumbbell hang clean workout because on the first rep to stand it all the way up, I, my shoulder was definitely still over my hip. I didn't fully extend the deadlift and then I kind of stood up into the hang position and then initiated it. So I got nine second total penalty for those three initial reps. And I agree with that. I was like, yeah, I kind of wish. Yeah, I should have stood them all the way up. I just was trying to go as fast as I could and fuck that. But I feel like I moved pretty well.

I don't really ever get concerned with movement standards or penalties. I think if I'm going to get a penalty, it's because I deserve it. But I just, yeah, I don't know. I don't think about that. I just try to, I move well. Brian hangs out and comes from a lineage and cohort of... I have no idea what he's about to say. Does he have to talk shit about something OPEX?

No, no. Well, no, no. Actually, not OPEX. I have no issues with OPEX. He comes from a lineage of journalists and his cohort of journalists are uh professional complainers when it comes to judges movement standards and um okay i will say some of the judging i will say this the judging in some of the semis was not as consistent as it could be like if you look at like nfl reffing now you're

talking brian's talk now you're talking brian's talk well you can't control it as an athlete but it's just a fact it was not super consistent that's a that's the truth the truth is it wasn't extremely consistent they're volunteers and they're doing their best out there so like you know i'm not gonna shit on some lady who's given up her free time to give me the opportunity. It's not always just on the judge. You know, it's on the competition. Yeah. Well, it's on the competition and the head judge to clearly communicate the standards to both the judges and the athletes and make sure that there's no gray area. Absolutely.

Like I said, it starts with the competition director, how they communicate to the head judge, and it filters down from there. Oh, yeah. And there is always also a responsibility on the athlete to ask questions if they have them. And usually you have the opportunity to clear any movement limitations you have prior to competition or at least have that conversation. So if you're the athlete, you've got to take advantage of all those things and then have the mentality that Taylor does. I'm going to move well, and if I get a penalty, it's because I deserve a penalty.

Yeah. There was one so at granite games there were two things in the briefing that i that i noted on the d-ball clean workout they allowed you to clean it to the shoulder and drop in front of you or go over the shoulder i thought that was i i didn't like that just because i thought they should make everyone do the exact same thing granted i went to the shoulder i think it's faster and i and i beat a lot of people at the end of the workout because of that because they were going over the shoulder but that's kind of their own it's their own fault um and then from the other one was i just thought that was kind of some gray area they didn't need to be there

it didn't need you didn't need that gray area you could just make it one or the other and then there's no gray area um and then on the devil's press standard they were saying like you couldn't i get what they were trying to do they were trying to keep people from going so wide with the feet on the way up to like purposely shorten the range of motion but like you can't really you can't really purposefully shorten the range of motion with 70 pound dumbbells on devil's press bro you just if you're strong enough to do that then that ruling is almost contrary to the rule with the d-balls like in the d-balls they're giving you a choice to go do however you want basically yeah and then the devil's press are saying you know we can't quite

do it however you want yeah so but it was also it was like your feet couldn't be outside the shoulders and it was like if your feet can't be outside the shoulders. And it was like, if your feet can't be outside the shoulders, then at the bottom position, your chest can't go in between the dumbbell. It was just really weird. They ended up fixing it, um, over the Slack group text.

But during the briefing, it was a little, a little sketchy, but, um, why would anyone throw the ball over their shoulder? Can you, can anyone explain to me why you would do that?

If you have the option to put it back down in front of you? I think I can. I think a lot of guys thought it would help them pace. I think they thought that they would pace the D ball and go faster on the wall ball and GHD. And I had the opposite. I kind of paced the wall ball and went faster on the D ball. I give you another thought on that. You know, if you go over the shoulder, I guess you could get a rot no rep. If you go to the side of the shoulder, if you go over the shoulder, I guess you could get a no rep if you go to the side of the shoulder. If you go over the shoulder, it's a more easy standard to judge. If you go to the shoulder, you think you're on your shoulder and they think you're not,

and you go back down, I feel like it could be easier to get a no rep on that. That goes back to movement quality too. You know you're hitting the standard or not. I'd be curious if you finished top five in the Granite Games and went over the shoulder. It doesn't seem like a championship move. I'd be curious if it is who finished top five in the granite games went over the shoulder. Um,

so Chandler, it doesn't seem, it doesn't seem like a championship move. Chandler didn't go over the shoulder. Tim Paulson did not go over the shoulder. I don't think Colton Mertens went over the shoulder. I don't know about Roy. I know that Saxon did go over the shoulder.

I saw him during the workout going over the shoulder. Um, so I know Mertens Paulson and Chandler didn't don't know. I'd love to hear workout going over the shoulder. So I know Mertens, Paulson, and Chandler didn't. I'd love to hear if Saxon regrets that. I wonder if he would redo it. Yeah, he fucking killed it. Fuck me. Yeah.

He didn't win any workouts, but he had just super consistent performances. Are you going to be going to the crossfit games like when you look at these workouts are you like oh shit i got a good chance i i like the workouts a lot yeah um what do don't have the list on me i mean i know some of them for sure just from leaderboarding i like to i like to you know know who i'm competing against but there are a lot of guys i don't know much about a lot of the like asia south america and um some of the europe guys, I don't, they're newer, but it's all mine.

You know, they're, they're probably not looking at me like, Oh, that guy's a threat. So I think there are 10 to 12 guys that could, could qualify. It's a,

it's a pretty deep, deep for sure. Yeah. There are a lot of good. Are we talking to one of them? Yeah. I mean, it's a,

all these guys have already beaten a good field of semi-final athletes to place wherever they placed within three spots of the qualifier some cases four some of those I mean just like the three guys from the West Coast Classic all three of those

guys could easily have been to the games just like Taylor could have and several other guys just easily have been to the games, just like Taylor could have and several other guys. They just made one mistake on the weekend or maybe just missed by a point or two. Do you have your picks, Brian, of who's going to go from the last chance qualifier? I think it's one of the most difficult competitions to pick

that I've seen in a while. The main reason for that is I think there are two workouts that, um, are, are tough for me to evaluate. The deadlift is just a large unknown for me. Yeah. And that burpee standard changes things a little bit where I love it. I think that, uh, you know, there's a, there's a new element to the, of being able to jump a foot a hundred times. And what, while going fast that might catch up to some people like around seven, you know, 70 to 80 burpees in you do like it.

I love the standard. I don't know. I'm a big, again, I reiterate, I'm a big fan of CrossFit. I like the wall walk workout. I like things like that. So for that burpee,

you guys have to do it like next to a wall, right? Yeah. It's, it's, it's awesome. I did have to jump and touch, touch the wall on the that. So for that burpee, you guys have to do it like next to a wall, right? Yeah. It's, it's, it's awesome. I did have to jump in, touch,

touch the wall on the side. So yeah, the target is to one side. It's a tape line on the wall for the first 50 reps. You'll face away from the camera, touch it with your right hand for the last 50. You'll turn and face the camera here with your left hand. Wow.

Wow. Wow. Um, so you can't be facing the wall. You have to be, you have to be adjacent to the wall. Is that the way you would have done it if they didn't have rules or would you have been facing the wall? Would you have done it right by the side like that?

I would have done it to a pull-up bar if they didn't have rules. Oh, hard to find the pull-up bar. That's exactly 12 inches above you know everyone's reach yeah he's right about that you could always do rings rings move but and that's how they've done it in the past too right with rings and then they blow around or they move and people get screwed yeah they have but at the crossfit games they've just put a giant red tape across the entire ring through the same height i love that

wow i mean if everyone's yeah if everyone's got to jump over the same height bar or the same height box or lift the same way why not make the burpee height the same you know for everyone so like someone like tim paulson's like just touching like right where his eye is exactly what happened yeah fikowski wasn't jumping Fikowski wasn't jumping. Fikowski wasn't jumping. So this is in the video. I think Matt and Fikowski were next to one another. Fikowski was not jumping and touching the strap,

and Matt was jumping like a foot. Dude, that's awesome. What year was that? I'm pretty sure he still beat Brent. That was in the Chaos event. 2018. Oh, yeah, yeah. I didn't watch any of those games. Yeah, that was a tough year. I was in Madison City. Yeah, that was a tough chaos event 2018 oh yeah yeah i didn't watch any of those games yeah that was a

tough i was in i was in madison yeah that was a tough year for me i was in i went to the crossfit games to film the behind the scenes i had my entire team there all my cameras all my prep work and i ended up sitting on a couch we were supposed to do that podcast that year too dude i love by the way i love every behind the scenes i've watched them all they're hilarious everybody does thank you thank you that west coast guy what's his name i don't know if my mom likes him oh uh i know you're talking about t'sdale oh my god dude is that you're talking about yeah that's what i'm talking about bro so funny yeah it's so good and you know what's funny is before i was the head of media there i wanted to do a piece on him but the director of media executive director of the media team

wouldn't let us do a piece on him because he didn't want to give him any attention i'm like fuck i don't care if he wants attention or not i want to do a piece on him he looks so interesting yeah so that was like that was i think that was one of the first years i was the the boss and i'm like i'm'm doing it. It was cool. And I tried to do him and Ryan Fisher, but I only got Ronnie. Ryan wasn't game. But I interviewed Ryan recently on my podcast, and that was cool. Oh, he was on your podcast, Ryan Fisher.

Yeah, yeah. And that was great. He was amazing. What a savage. You would like that one, Taylor. You would like that one. Ryan, wait, Ryan Fisher. Am I thinking of the right guy? Out out of la he sells a bunch of books chalk performance programming yes yes yes

yeah all right yes yes um okay i'm done how long have we been on the air 50 minutes wow they're cutting short? That's fucked up. Go, Brian. Go. I got a lot more. Go, though, Brian. If you want to. I was getting ready for you to ask me who's actually going to make it.

Oh, yeah. I've been waiting to hear that. Are you sure you've been waiting to hear it? Dude, he was wrong about me at Granite Games, so why the fuck do I say he's not going to make it this time, dude? I was wrong, but I don't regret that pick. I feel like you had the capacity to finish where I had picked you. This, I think, is honestly very, very hard. I'm just going to stick with the guys that I've been how many people are competing brian up to up to i think up to 32 right over 30 guys

uh it's possible that they won't all register they have to pay another 50 bucks and if they don't think they have a chance or they don't like the workouts you know the leaderboard's not full yet oh it's there there's a leaderboard now i was looking and i couldn't find one because it's kind of that's another i wonder if we agree on this too taylor that's nothing i'm so sick and tired of people whining about the money oh yeah like shut up it's 50 bucks shut the fuck up you don't have so they're only getting rich off that there's only 16 on the leaderboard is this on is this on the app i don't know if you go to the 2021 semifinals there was a new oh under semifinal there's competition last chance qualifier okay that's cool it was just recently i don't see

i don't see it i see there is there i don't see that where do you see i i met the leaderboard oh semifinal oh last chance qualifier okay got it got it nice all right yeah this is a pretty good field I mean these are the guys a lot of these guys are so there's I think that there's oh shit Taylor is not even on there yet you're not even on here

I'm third dude look I'm in third place oh yeah okay okay so you know I don't know if I should pick from these 16 guys or from everyone that can qualify, but the two guys I was going to pick are on here anyway, and they're Alexander Caron and James Newberry. I knew you were going to pick James Newberry.

Interesting. Why? Because you have something for him. I've heard you mention in this last year than I've heard his name mentioned in the previous 10 years. I have something for him too. He's a really – he's a – dude, he mountain bikes. That's pretty cool. And I suspect he's a very nice guy.

I've interviewed him very little, but I think he's super nice. He's vegan. Are you sure you're okay with that? He is vegan? Oh, yeah. Wow. And a savage at it, yeah. Wow.

Like he eats plants raw. Like he just eats them raw when you say a savage. Like just rips a fucking radish out of the ground. No, like he's yoked. He's yoked and he's a vegan. Dude, I just bought a cow with Andy. I'm not a vegan. That's awesome. that's awesome imagine trying

to eat enough food being vegan you know dave does that too dave dave buys cows yeah buys baby calves and lets them graze on his property okay we didn't do that we just bought like a cow's worth of beef from this farm oh not a school no not i wish dude about a yard big enough for a cow you bet your ass when i have one brian let's push you a little further who's third place so you said newberry and he's the guy that i i would pick first overall um you know like i said there's like 10 10 guys i think could make it uh i want to pick from guys who have actually registered so far, I suppose. What about Dallin Pepper? Dallin Pepper, I don't think it's a great slate of workouts for him.

I think he's good enough to be at the games, but I don't think he's good enough to beat this group of guys in these set of workouts. Okay. Not him. But some of the guys I was going to pick aren't registered here. Who? Who?

Yeah, I want to know this other guy, man. Oh, I don't see Spencer Panchik on the list. I don't see Cedric LaPointe on the list. I'm not sure that. Has Tyler Christoffel had one? He doesn't think you're going, Taylor. He doesn't think you're going. No, I'm just saying.

He did say I was one of the 10 guys, which is cool. Thanks. Well, no, I'm just trying, like I have a list of people here, but they're not all signed up.

So I don't know if I should pick from the list or pick from the. Did you end up going to the Navy? No, I did not. They wouldn't, they wouldn't have me, man. And why is that?

Uh, I, I did too many drugs growing up. up and and that's how they really they were like hey have you ever done this have you ever done this have you ever done this and you're like yeah they're like dude well dude my recruiter told me they're not giving you a gun what yeah dude the recruiter i was like dude you shouldn't tell us about this but but so i wanted i wanted to go and be a seal and i made it i so i got all my medical waivers approved for like regular navy while being honest i've been to like rehab so

there's there's a lot of it was a big ask for sure um but then after you get approved by the regular navy all the medical waivers then i was ready to take like the PST for the slotted buds to get a seal contract as a civilian. And I took the PST and automatically qualified with the score that I had on the PST that first time. And then I went to take the C sort like a week later, which is the resiliency exam. There's like nothing. There's like no info on it. It's like a week later which is the resiliency exam the honor there's like nothing there's like no info on it it's like a secret test and whatever i think it basically decides are you like a team player are you super selfish it's kind of the test um and then that day the so commander i'd actually talked to this guy like over the summer i have a lot of family friends

who are seals and they had put me in touch with this guy and i didn't realize he was the commander of special warfare recruiting in the Richmond area or the east coast whatever in the summer he was like yeah man with with your record you really don't have a chance and I just thought man fuck that guy he doesn't know me and then I it turns out he's the commander so he was like oh this is the guy with the that particular history yeah we don't we're not going to take him I think it's better you didn't lie I think yeah for sure you lied oh 100 much better you didn't lie one one i i'm not i'm not proud of the things that i've done but i've overcome a lot i think at the same time they would 100 find out at some point i mean if they put me on a poly or whatever like fuck i don't want to then you get a

dishonorable discharge what year were you in rehab? What year? Like what was my graduation, my graduating class? Like how many years? So how old, how old were you? You're 25 now. How old were you when you were in rehab? I was pretty young. I was 16. And did you relapse? Nope. So you went through rehab and that was it? Yeah, it was that easy, man. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, I mean, I had been through a lot, but yeah. So I've been sober nine years.

Oh, God, I really hope you come to the game so we can have you back on the show and people give a fuck about you. Sounds like a great story. I will 100% make it to the game. Don't you worry about that. Because it's so interesting i i don't i don't think anyone goes like no one normal goes to the games i was just talking to danielle brandon about this athletes but like i don't think you go to the games what is normal what do you mean by that though like you have to have like like i like i like something has to have happened to you like they i'll give the example i do with daniel brandon i don't think it's a great example but basically think of your life as a well and you live at the top of the well and you look around

at reality but in the bottom of that well if something happened to you that's really really emotionally traumatic you every once in a while have to go down to the bottom of the well and nurture that thing. And, you know, sometimes some people use drugs so they don't have to go down there and nurture it. And another way to do that is to nurture it or nurture is not the right word, but to stay connected to it, to be aware of it. I'll work this thought out 10 podcasts later from now, but basically doing CrossFit is a way you stay tethered. The pain and discomfort you feel from CrossFit keeps you tethered to that emotional charge down there. And without that,

you would have to do drugs or some other shit or like, there's, there's some sort of, there's some. I would, I would – I don't know. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I get where you're going with that. I think for me – I mean you don't just get sober and then everything's good. You know what I mean? We're the reason obviously that – like I was the reason I got fucked up like that. So it was my own issues.

But also I'm not going to live a happy life if I don't resolve them somehow. I think that learning, I think maybe that's a good way to put it. A lot of normal people, quote unquote, I don't really know what you mean. Someone, anyone listening to the podcast,

you're all not normal. You guys are great. But a lot of people like comfort and it's uncomfortable to do CrossFit a lot. I have learned that I definitely feel the best about myself and grow the most and improve the most when I'm the most uncomfortable, when I'm challenged the most, when I go through the worst stuff. So I think I'm not scared of that. And CrossFit definitely feeds that. It's like, I mean, it's a direct representation of life the harder you stress yourself in crossfit the better you get and the more uncomfortable and

more you face challenges in life the more character you have better of a person you are the more experience you have when i saw that workout 100 burpees today and this thought just popped in my mind i was like holy shit there's people who don't know themselves. There's people in the world, a lot of them, who've never done 100 burpees as fast as they can. And so what does that mean? That means they don't know themselves after doing 100 burpees as fast as they can.

Or in the middle. Or in the middle. You don't know yourself. Right. It's me. Right. Not at the end of the workout, you're like,

damn, I shouldn't have been a pussy, but it's in the middle of the workout. We were like, I can't do this. Or the workout, you're like, damn, I shouldn't have been a pussy, but it's in the middle of the workout where you're like, I can't do this. Or at least, you know. And what a waste to go through life and never push yourself like that. But I think people like you who've had, I think it comes more naturally for people like you who've gone through more shit to want to re-experience that.

To be able to take that journey. I think it comes naturally for some people take that journey i think it comes naturally for some people i don't know that it necessarily came naturally for me i was not dude i was just such a quitter growing up i i feel like i learned more than anything like toughness or stuff like that from reading definitely getting sober but from reading i read a lot shout out to david goggins i'm a big fan of that guy wow Wow. So you think reading, you reprogrammed yourself? You can learn. You learn from people, right?

So the people you surround yourself, you learn from. And it's a pretty good way to be mentored by some of the world's greatest people is by reading about them. Do you think there were any events in the semifinals where you could have gone harder and you avoided discomfort? No. I think there were several events where I had in the back of my mind not to blow up. And so I went out to conservatively and then finish the workout

the way I should have started. Okay. Yes. Like I can't even get my head wrapped around that. You have to understand like every day I work out, there's like, I never like what you do every day, pushing yourself as hard as you can. There's always somewhere where I'm working out where I'm like, ah, okay, that's enough. Like I learned that. This hurts too bad. Taylor, when you did that, uh, work that across that competition, a crucible, like, uh, I learned that pain lesson there. I pulled up on a skier workout towards the end. It was this, it was a two,

it was like a two two three interval style workout 100 toes to bar for time with a 25 calorie ski buy-in each round and i think i was three i was three or four reps away from finishing the 100 calories in the third interval or the 100 total by the third interval so was josh miller so was jason i think josh was six or four away and jason jason was fucking behind me dude so this is why he won that event i hope he's listening he could see my screen dude and i was facing away from him anyways so i like pulled up on the last couple cows and like double double clutch the things you know thinking the calorie would roll over and pulling up. Really.

I pulled up instead of going all the way through hard and like lost to Jason on that workout by like one second or two seconds. So I learned that lesson too. That's where I learned that lesson. Had you known him before that? No, we did a, we did a competition.

I actually beat Jason in a competition in Myrtle beach before crucible, the old beach town throwdown he took eighth i think you can even make a longer pause by the way when you say that you took a little pause i think you can get two more beats out of that dude you should ask him about that comp that myrtle beach competition ask him what happened there um i'm curious. Was there a swim event? What? No, there wasn't. It's at the beach. There wasn't.

That's funny, though. There was not a swim event, no. I think you got a penalty or some shit on a workout or something. Those local competitions all have swimming. Brian's curious if he's a good swimmer. And Brian's curious about his handstand pushups. I'm the best swimmer. That's negative. I's a good swimmer. Brian's curious if he's a good swimmer. And Brian's curious about his handstand pushups. I'm the best swimmer. He's negative.

I'm a good swimmer. I am a very good swimmer. I love to swim. I don't know about Jason. He's pretty good at handstand pushups. I kind of hope you make the games so that we can see that. I want to see some more good swimmers at the games. Oh, my.

I'll be one of the only. I don't even want to say this on the podcast because I don't want to give people the idea to start trying it. But I'm a very good swimmer. I would, yeah, I would crush a swim event, open water pool with mixed modalities, CrossFit involved.

I'm very, I'm a little, a good swimmer. Why are you a good swimmer? Did you swim growing up? Um, I was always around the water. My sister was a collegiate diver,

um, for Clemson, like really good. did you swim growing up um i was always around the water my sister is a collegiate diver um for clemson like really good so he said he was swimming before the the navy that like before adding crossfit in he was doing running and swimming a lot yeah i was swimming like i was running like 40 miles a week and swimming like three or four miles a week for like a year so where i got good this morning did you work out hayley yeah oh sorry i'm looking at my wife walk around the house she looks all buff like she just got all swole but that's just her normal look do you feel going going back to making it not going back to not making it to the semifinals,

did any of your training partners make it? What do you mean? Make it to the games? To the CrossFit games, yeah. I don't have a trainer. Jason is the only person I ever trained with. When you saw him win the week before, what did that do for you?

I was already in a... I don't know uh on the one hand it was like well pressure's on a little bit but on the other hand i know for the most part i felt like i know my fitness um and i know his fitness and so it definitely gave me confidence. I think I was just too worried. I think I was, I don't know. It's just a really new, I've never been under pressure like that. That's not an excuse, but I just didn't, I didn't, I know I handled it like a rookie. Did you have like a designated coach or person there with you that weekend?

Yeah, I did. I did. I think one of the other things is I got there a little early. I got there Tuesday and then spent like Tuesday and Wednesday without anyone else had gotten there. So it was just me. And Minneapolis is not my favorite.

I mean, dude, I'm a country boy. Oh, we should have gone and played some disc golf. Dude, we could have, but damn. Well, you could have attended some local riots or something. What? Holy shit. That's funny. I was running one of the days dude i was running down the street that my airbnb first off my airbnb was a shithole anyways i was running down one of

the streets dude and like pubic hairs in your sheets shithole no but like they know so this is going to be now you say that it's going to be more embarrassing but the ac was window units dude and it was like it was it was pretty hot too hot for window dude you're from virginia don't like don't be talking shit about window unit your first picture you ride horses bareback fuck's's sake. I will say, he sees my $3,000 glasses and he's trying to front on me. Are those $3,000, dude? I don't want to talk about it.

I wouldn't have paid that for it. I do think Taylor has a good point, though. I often am at those competitions for like 48 hours before they start and I see the athletes and they just look so confused. These are people that wake up every day and they're going to move and they're going to do something.

And then they got like 36 to 48 hours of nothing. It just looks like they have no idea what to do with themselves. I just wasn't, I don't know. I, I didn't handle the pressure well, as well as I would have liked to, right. I would like to handle the pressure like a professional and like a veteran. But I think in that second workout i didn't the rest of the weekend i was pretty proud of fighting the negativity and and doing you know battling back a little bit not as well as i would have liked but

yeah i just didn't handle that as well as i as i will next time that's for sure so you're going for a run what did you see dude this whole with the broken window and grab something there's still fucking plywood covering all the buildings down that street man and that i heard there's a five mile i haven't been there but i heard there's a five mile stretch that's just decimated it is just like unenviable dude the street i was i had the airbnb on i didn't know this so we got the airbnb shout out to my sister for for uh for getting us that i think she might be listening but anyway so that whole street was like one of the main streets they marched down um crazy um you look uh i'm looking at this picture from august 9th Yeah, you do look hot. Two dogs. Oh, yeah.

How much do you weigh in that picture? August 9th, 2020. Two dogs. You only have 12 pictures on your IG, dude. It's the one with the dogs. Okay. And you with your shirt off. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You like that one. Yeah. How much? Probably the same as I weigh now. 195 maybe, 192. I'm probably closer to 200 right now and then is this your mom the picture where you're dressed up as canelo alvarez for halloween with your arm around that lady is that your mom don't you look like canelo there do you see that shit every one of my so i have a crossfit latinos class across with charlotte um we do it's like it's like 30 it's like 30 of uh just hispanic

people in the 7 p.m class so i coach the class and raise a little bit a little bit we don't get out of here anyways it's like uh i try to coach the class in spanish so i'm learning spanish and i coach it that's awesome broken spanish but dude they call me canelo all the time it's funny oh dude he's a way better looking guy and he would beat the shit out of me so but but i do that's okay people used to say that i look like fonzie from happy days and he was way better looking and he'd probably beat the shit out of me at a leather jacket and shit. Andy says you look like a, what did he say today? So I told him I was doing the podcast with you and he's like, Oh yeah, the little professor guy. The little professor guy.

So funny. Oh, my gosh. I am. Oh, shit. Look at I got the hat part. I'm putting the hat back on before someone makes fun of me. And then you got a picture of your dad in here. Is that your dad in the picture holding you as a little kid? Yeah.

Yeah. He passed away when I was 15. Oh, wow. Yeah. How did that happen? He had cancer. Yeah. i went through like a stretch there were like that year it was like a two or three year stretch where my dad's dad so my grandpa who i really grew up with a lot it's been a long time he passed away then my dad passed away and then his mom so

my grandma passed away it's pretty crazy and what kind of cancer did your dad pass away from lung cancer small cell like stage four savage he smoked cigarettes oh yeah didn't stop and your grandma and your grandfather smoked cigarettes for a long time yep and so my grandma oh i was gonna say she died from secondhand smoke wow okay okay so you so you know how to stop yeah that's a lot yeah i actually what did you smoke um well i stole his marlboro lights for the longest time um and he didn't know dude he smoked so much i could just go into it like i could just pull a pack of cigarettes out of his carton he would never fucking know bro oh by the carton he bought yeah dude no joke so and did you smoke up until you started doing crossfit no i stopped by them but i was dipping when i started crossfit chewing tobacco

yeah and a lot of people i did crossfit probably like two years until i really quit that and uh that doesn't that doesn't interfere as much as smoking right i like told myself the lie for the longest time that you know it's not messing with your gums but nicotine is like a vasoconstrictor and there are some studies where like it's a stimulant so like could it benefit you in some areas but also a vasoconstrictor so it could have have negative effects. And others at the end of the day, it's like, it doesn't, I don't think it matters that much for, maybe it does. I just don't want to die of cancer. So I stopped it.

Right. For sure. And why did you, why did you quit? Like, why did you quit smoking? Cause you were scared. No, I just, so I went to rehab. I smoked until I went to rehab and i went to rehab and i you know i couldn't have nicotine there because i was 16 and then oh then i got out and i was sober

and then i just kind of picked up dipping it was easier wow wow it was just harder to quit dipping or smoking cigarettes yeah chewing dip quitting dip is was so fucking. And you can't beat around the bush either with Nicorette gum or the little nicotine pouches that are just nicotine and salt. No, you have to go cold turkey because nothing comes. It's not like you can vape. Vaping is closer to a cigarette

than any sort of substitute is to dip. Don't ever try vaping. Have you ever tried vaping? I vaped a few times off a jewel holy shit that is gnarly that shit is addicting that i imagine that's like freebasing crack i mean the first time you take a hit you're like that's not like freebasing crap at all dude i mean i was just in heaven. I couldn't believe it. It is fucking gnarly. Dude, when I first, yeah, dude, when I had like quit dip for a while at one point and like put one in, I was like driving.

I had to pull over. Because you couldn't even see? Your eyes got all weird? Yeah, huge buzz. This is, dude, why are we talking about this? Makes you relatable. Makes you relatable. I'm pretty normal. Well, the thing is, is you're not going to. Makes you relatable. Makes you relatable. I'm pretty normal.

Well, the thing is, is you're not going to be, you're not going to get, I mean, look at, all that shit's out of your life now, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Dude, I'm an open book. I'm not worried about sharing any of that. Yeah. But you just said, let's not talk about it. Well, I was just like, I feel, I feel gross talking about how much of a sicko I used to be.

Well, I was just like, I feel gross talking about how much of a sicko I used to be. Well, man, it's the journey, and it makes it hopeful for everyone else, right? I mean, there's someone out there right now who's addicted to cigarettes, but they want to do CrossFit. I mean, I only quit smoking CrossFit. I only quit smoking CrossFit. I only quit smoking cigarettes at 34 because I found CrossFit. I'm 49 now. That's awesome. So at 34, I was smoking cloves. And then I found CrossFit.

I'm like, Hey, these two can't go. And I really like smoking. I didn't want to quit, but I like CrossFit even more. So I'm like, shit, this thing's got to go. I actually think that, um, you know, rehab and CrossFit both have this in common is that if you, if like a lot of people go to rehab to quit one thing and end up quitting several other things also. And then when you start doing CrossFit, I feel like it's a different time frame for a lot of people. But if you stick with it long enough that similarly other things will start to either disappear or add to your life because of that lifestyle. Yeah, CrossFit, both sobriety and CrossFit have changed my life in a huge way. Dude, like I i said earlier i really love the stuff you post on your instagram and so it pisses me off that they shadow banned you what a what a shit show dude can you

believe that they can do that in our country no i'm very um isn't that crazy because i don't even think i post anything crazy well you even if you did we have a i mean i feel like that's a public i'm just pro i'm just pro freedom pro love pro equality pro everyone go do whatever you want i'm just like are you yeah yeah you want to wear six masks wear six masks you want to put a dildo in your ass put a dildo on your ass hold your beer while you do it i don't care what you do as long as you're not being violent and then and i and i see it as sorry to go off the tangent i see it as violent to force people to put a drug in them and inject it in them i see that as violent dude have you watched rogan don't fuck with don't fuck with little kids and don't be violent and then other than that i really

i really don't care what you do like i love all people but just don't force other people to don't do violence on other people it's really that easy i agree with that i think it's crazy i agree with that i just think it's crazy that instagram or youtube whatever you know quote unquote is like a public platform how they can the censorship is just i don't know it's a slippery slope. Have you watched Rogan's latest podcast or one of his most recent ones with Brett Weinstein? Oh, I watch. So one of the only podcasts I really listen to is that Dark Horse podcast. So did you see the movie No Safe Spaces with Adam Carolla? I watched a lot of it and I've seen so many documentaries like that that it's a little muddy but yes okay so adam carolla and dennis prager did a movie it's called no safe spaces and this the main character is that guy brett bernstein or whatever his name is the guy who was on rogan recently brett weinstein and you know hardcore

progressive liberal teaching at the college peace and love from the 60s and you see him basically get run out of his college oh is this the college the college of Oregon? Right? Yes. Evergreen. Yep. And so now this guy, it's, it's just a mate. I just, I, and I just love that guy's podcast. Cause it's like, and I don't really have time. Unfortunately, I just don't do anything. If I'm in my car driving, I would listen to a podcast, but usually I'm listening to audio books. But then other than that, I'm just taking care of kids all day. But yeah, he's amazing.

And it's great that someone who's such a hardcore progressive liberal is willing back – is doing – is taking the front stage on this issue. Yeah. Like, hey. It is crazy. Brian, what's your opinion on this? Am I drawing you out into something you don't want to be drawn out into? No, I've just – I've heard – this is the third time I've heard that, that Weinstein on Rogan interview brought up today alone.

So dude, you got to check it out. It's crazy. Usually that's my rule. Three times in a day. Yeah. I need to look into it. It's long. I didn't listen to the whole thing to be honest, but I listened to enough of it to be like,

wow. Yep. We're fucked up. Podcasts. Listen to it. He has, he, his, we're fucked up. Podcasts, listen to it. He has, his guests are gnarly. I mean, they're like, they're amazing. Like, he had two guests on the other day, both vaccinated.

One of them was the co-inventor of the mRNA vaccine. Yeah, one of them was the co-inventor of the mRNA vaccine. And the other one was, I forget, another guy. And they were like, hey, dude, you can't be giving kids under 12. And then they break it down. They break it. And they were like, hey, dude, you can't be giving kids under 12. And then they break it down. They break it. And it's like, go ahead. He was on Rogan because YouTube took that off.

They took it down. Yeah. So that's why they did the podcast. Because they flagged it. Good on Rogan. Yeah. Good on Rogan. If. Good on Rogan. If you go to the games, will you beat Jason Hopper?

Depends on the workouts. There are a lot of workouts. At the end of the day, on Sunday, when we see the leaderboard. It depends on the workouts, dude. There are a lot of workouts that jason would beat me in for sure and there are workouts that i would be him in um he thinks very highly of you do i love jason he's a great guy and he's fit as hell obviously he said that um when we talked about him moving he said something that was like i said hey like why don't you train with whatever i forget who i

said like a bigger camp and he said like moving isn't an option i think he said that um is it and it made me think oh shit then this guy's not willing to do whatever it takes to win like it would just maybe just put a little footnote on there okay um would you would you move from where you are i think i'm in the i think i'm in the best case scenario i could possibly be in to succeed i have andy who's a legend one he's a great mentor an even better boss he's you know teaching me the business side and and developing me as a coach which i which i also would like to pursue um and lets me you know fuck dude i can work out at the gym whenever i want and i mean i have you know he's he's taking me in from there i

think i can train with people who are competitive as much or as little as i want to i don't know that being around them 24 7 like me and jason couldn't train more than once a week there's no idea we but we butt heads enough as it is and we both acknowledge it during the open dude we got into a heated shit talk and like didn't talk to one another for a couple weeks oh i love it i love it dude i wish i still had that text thread yeah i sent something mean right before i redid this workout i was heated it's funny like like go ahead brian no just this whole thing is an experiment right now we don't know if these athlete camps are going to actually produce better results than the guys who are choosing to train on their own for the most part well dude i

think the ideal situation obviously obviously, look at Matt. Well, I don't know that that's even the ideal situation, but pretty successful for them. But at the same time, they were both pretty successful beforehand. I mean, it's one thing if you decide to get together with a couple people for the three weeks leading up to the games and train. But like you said, to be around the same people day in and day out, maybe you're not even doing the same workouts all the time, but it's just, I don't know how that's going to affect athletes. And this is the first year that we'll have, like these camps have just exploded to stay in his environment and you and Jason you know guys like that up and coming that are also doing individual training for

the most part maybe throwing a you know a competitive session here and there so we don't know which is going to be better yet I'd wager there's more of that individual training going on and it's successful than the big camps well I mean look at this the comp train camp you have amanda barnhart katrin and chandler who qualified and then you have the the underdog athletics is really new um i don't know much about think tank yeah well think tank is like noah and travis are going to qualify if they even if they don't train with each other would you think the underdog people were undertaking people underdog people were all pretty good to start with too right probably as well i think most of the athletes that are that are going to these camps are already well established in the space what there are a couple that they're bringing along kind of peripherally like we could talk

about underdog for example the women are all well established they've been to the games been in the top 10 of the games but the men matt delugos told marquino nicholas pedarte not as many you know about them because they haven't broken through yet but they're a part of that coalition there yeah so it's interesting to see how that helps them at the same time i like look at that and i think damn like i don't know that i'd be all right with my coach having another individual male athlete who really do you want to win then you know I don't know I mean I know there's a lot of hot that's a hot I'm with you on that I'm with you I don't know how I would feel but every time I see a guy with three coach three athletes I start tripping I'm selfish I'm selfish as shit my coach had some other individual I'd be like fuck that but he's not that type of guy anyways

we're pretty locked in. Hopper, have a code or the people you're on a thread with, hey, we're going to do this workout, not to share the time you guys get outside of your group? Or do you guys even share? I would never share Jason's time with someone else if he gave it to me and vice versa. I know that.

That's just the code. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think it's probably been – yeah, I probably i don't know i mean i think it's been probably been yeah i probably like what he would like asking all my time i was like you better not fucking tell anybody but i don't care if you know it because you're not gonna beat it right or vice versa he'll give me a score that i couldn't touch and you know but i'm not gonna yeah i like jason if any if i want anyone to do well at him um can you tell us what you said to him that was mean at the open was it wasn't like something like really mean like hey you shorted your reps or i can tell you i can tell you exactly what i was gonna what i said to him i can tell you exactly what happened so it was the first burn the bridge

though i want you guys to stay friends i'm not gonna burn the bridge because we already we kissed and made up and he's gonna laugh and i'm telling you guys this. So it makes me look like a dick. We were doing – we were talking a lot of shit leading up to the Open, and when they announced wall walks and double unders, I knew I was going to beat his ass because he's just a bigger guy. He's a really good handstand walker and handstand pushup, but that workout also has some cycle speed involved because there wasn't a height in terms of getting, you know, whatever.

So I did the workout. And I think the first time I was going to do one and done every single open workout. So I do that workout. And I'm, like, pretty happy with it. I think I was 14 minutes flat. So a minute under the cap. Not a great, not an amazing score. But I beat the cap.

I'm good with that. And then Jason did it. And I don't know if he told me. I found out something. I think he told me he got capped or something. So I kind of LOL'd a little bit. And I knew he was – he said he wasn't going to redo it. And I didn't think he needed to.

In reality, he didn't to qualify because it was such a broad net of athletes that go to quarterfinals but you know we our egos are big so you're not going to get capped on a workout and be satisfied with that um but anyways like we were talking shit about who's going to win the first workout i spanked him on the first workout first time and then i hear somehow that he goes and redoes it and beats my time beats my time like a couple seconds and doesn't tell me that he redid it dude so he didn't even fucking say he did it dude i'm like in this story i'm thinking this fucking snake in the grass just redid his workout beat me and doesn't even tell me it i was just getting more heated and more

and the stuff was coming out about like sean sweeney made this post about oh make sure your standards are right and so then it started this frenzy of everyone redoing that workout. And like I'm coaching my CrossFit Latinos class at 7 p.m. And I saw the CrossFit push the deadline, 7 p.m. Monday, to push the deadline to submit it to like 9 p.m. I'm like there with my dick in my hand. I'm like thinking about how pissed I am that Jason redid it and beat me by a couple seconds. And how everyone's redoing it from the standard. I'm like, fuck this guy.

I'm redoing it right now. And so I pull up the group text between him and JR. And I was like, hey, Jason, I just want you to know that I'm about to redo 21.1. And I'm going to fucking destroy your score even though I don't know it. And I sent that to him. Before I did it. And up until then, he didn't even know that you knew that he had redone it yeah and then we didn't talk to each other for like two weeks and i was like dude i'm sorry

hey did you send that to him to put pressure on yourself to beat it no i knew i was going to beat it but i was just really pissed that he didn't tell me he redid it and beat my time so i wanted him to know that i was going to bury him awesome but he's man he's a fit guy dude crazy what he did at the mac insane yeah f2p brian can you keep the show going so it's like relatively interesting let's talk about crossfit now savan's gone who should i put in charge definitely savan dude so ryan jevning that's interesting he competed at grand games 2018 when i was oh yeah talk about him that's interesting. He competed at Grand Games 2018 when I was there. Oh, yeah. Talk about him. That's interesting that you know that.

He just told me yesterday. He's like, he's so chill. And then the other day he just said, I can't remember what he said, but it was on a phone call. Oh, yeah, we were doing a debrief, me, him, and Brian. And he's like, oh, yeah, I took 201st in the quarterfinals or 199th or something like that. I can't remember what he said.

And I could, even though Brian's fucking 2,000 miles from me i could hear brian's brain start turning he's like what i'll tell you something else that i haven't shared with i haven't shared with brian yet either the other day i was just on a call with ryan god i hope ryan doesn't hate me for this and he says to me he goes you know and he's he me, he goes, you know, and he's very chill. You know, I know a lot about CrossFit too. I think I can hang with Brian with the stats and shit. Like I think I can hang. I'm like, damn.

Dude, this is a new realm that these – go pee, man. We'll talk. Okay. Yeah, you see me doing the pee dance? Yeah, get out of here, bro. go pee man we'll talk okay yeah you see me doing the pee dance yeah get out of here bro so this is this is really new in the crowd this the stat part of the crossfit space i mean it used to be like pat sherwood and sean woodland but they really weren't talking about it unless it was live during games events so this kind of stat realm i I feel like, is kind of, I like it.

No, there's always been a guy who is the CrossFit statistician who's providing those stats to them. And it's been the same guy for 10 years, really. You've probably heard his name on some of the shows. It's Chad Schrader. And he's got better databases and more information than anyone I know.

Maybe even more than than you know definitely more than you can find on the game site i think i even have more more than you can find on the game site in some regards but uh in the last couple years and i think specifically coming out of the the media collapse from crossfit and then the sanctional season you know there just started to be such an influx of relevant athletes because of the way the season expanded. Guys like me and maybe guys like Ryan,

I think there's actually a bunch of people who are doing stuff like this for the last, between 2014 and 2018 maybe, that just started to have more opportunity to be relevant as it was much more hard to like navigate the entire season yeah interesting i like it i've always fancied myself to know the field pretty well i mean i grew up a fan in the sport you know and so i've you know

i've just tried to stay like i i have um i I feel like I have a good surface knowledge of a lot of things, and then there's a few things that I have a lot of depth of knowledge also. So I know a lot of Masters athletes, but I couldn't tell you the history of their competitive performance. You know Jeff Tinter? Yeah, I know the name. I would recognize him. So he was my boss before I moved to Andy. Oh, shit. Yeah, Jeff's the man.

Wow, that's a crazy lineage too right there you're from. Yep, yep. I love Jeff, man. He was the first person, I think, really to believe in me. I think I was doing an 18 workout. Yeah, he was the first to be like, you can be pretty good. In his day, he was, I don't remember, it was 2008 or 2009. He was one of the most fierce people I'd ever seen.

I love Jeff, man. his i don't remember his 2008 or 9 he was one of the most fierce people i'd ever seen he was in that elite level like like i could tell you some stories about him training at the gym yeah he's he was a savage how old is he now uh i want to say he's 50 or 51 maybe okay so i probably met him 15 years ago and he's probably like 35 and he was an absolute oh my god intense as a mofo and a pleasant man soft spoken pleasant man yeah brian is there anything we i got in the p break we said travis mayor's name we touched a little bit on the personal life who's the most interesting athlete you've had on the podcast? I want to know your thoughts on this.

Fun to talk to. You're pretty easy. Savan, I was going to say, Tinsher is one of the guys you could have chosen for the last second counts documentary. He ended up in the top 10 that year. Yeah, easily. He's really soft-spoken.

Yeah, he's quiet. He's very soft-spoken. Yeah, he's quiet. He's very soft-spoken. But then again, Josh Everett back then was very soft-spoken too. I love that he was doing split snatches and split clean. Josh Everett, is that the Catalyst Athletic guy? No, that's... That's a different Everett. That's Greg Everett. Greg everett greg everett yeah greg everett

i don't i don't think we have it we don't have a favorite person who's ever been on the podcast i don't think no there's no one like i'm trying to think um not we you who do you enjoy who do you enjoy fooling with the most dude dude? Brian's my favorite person. And that's why he's been on 60 episodes, 59 episodes or whatever. He can sometimes... 30 episodes. You can say something that I will fucking lose it laughing, and he just sits there on his mic and he looks away.

I'm like, dude, how is he not losing it right now, dude? That's why he's on here. Like, dude, how is he not losing it right now, dude? That's why he's on here. People, so basically people interpret, I get DMs every day where people interpret everything that Brian's does, his reactions to what I'm saying differently. So like, it'll be the same reaction

and someone will be like, oh, Brian thinks you're so stupid or Brian knows you're talking out of your ass or man, Brian loves you. I could tell he's laughing really hard inside. So it's like those, like when he doesn't reveal what he's showing. It was just making fun of us. Yeah.

If you hate me, then you're like, yeah, Brian really hates you. Or if you think I'm funny, you're like, yeah, Brian's laughing his ass off inside. So he's just this blank, like interpret him as you want. It's a good balance. Yeah. Taylor, a lot of people have been asking me about, um,

about what Jason's realistic potential is at the games and the way I've been answering it. I would be curious if this makes sense to you. So basically what I think is he's amongst a small group of men who has the potential to win the games, maybe four or five guys, but I also, this year. Yeah also this year.

Yeah, this year. But I also don't think if I was just ranking the athletes, like one through 40 of the best athletes there that, that I would put them in the top five. Does that make sense? Like to say that, that he's one of the only five that could win. But if I was ranking them one through 40,

I might put them 9th or something. I get what you're saying. I think Jason can win the games. I think he can. Yeah, I'm biased for sure. But look what he did. This is my opinion of him. The guy is a competitor like like very much so so

you know i think it is one thing to beat someone in training and that's not detracting for me because i know i'm extremely fit um he is and he's also has a really sharp he has that sharp and competitive skill as well um and he's hungry i think that is very very underplayed and under talked about in terms of guys that are going to go win the crossfit games i'm sure those guys are hungry but i mean i know jason pretty well you know it's just it's such a crazy year i feel like there are eight guys eight guys how did that affect you when he said that brian did that move did that that moved me just now when he said that how did that affect you that he said that, Brian? Did that move me just now when he said that? How did that affect you? That's exactly

what I want to hear. He's a very hungry individual. But when you hear Taylor say that, do you feel his needle, Jason Hopper, raising your rankings? Will you take what Taylor said as a data

point? Will you take what Taylorlor said as a data point will you take what taylor said yeah i will but i also think he's i also think and this will be the last time i jerk his meat but i also think he's like yeah i don't know i think there are a lot of competitors that kind of have that nice yeah they just as they don't seem as mentally aggressive in competition or killer instinct that's exactly what the phrase i'm looking for he's got a killer instinct and i do too i think i didn't have that at granite games i i i fucking snuffed it out of me with the thruster workout but i'm telling you the amount of guys that have

the killer instinct at the semi-finals is small the amount of guys that have it at the games is a lot more yeah i get that but look at look and i'm not comparing at all but if you look at this is a great example i think matt fraser had the best killer instinct of anyone and it was so much better than everyone else's that no one stood a fucking chance i mean if you look at yes what about t is well i'm talking the men's field, but yeah, same exact. I mean, she exudes that shit, right? The gap in the women's field with the killer instinct, I think, is even more. I don't know about that. I would say that I think that Hayley Adams has a killer instinct. Oh, that's good.

That's a good point. Very good. I think Hayley probably has that immensely. You're right. Spot on there. And Katrin has it. And Katrin has it. Don't you think?

But there's still a gap. What I'm saying is there's even, they might, Haley might have just as killer instinct as Tia. There's a physical gap between Haley and Tia, I think, but the mental one's narrow because Haley is, you're right.

But I think Jason probably has that as good as any of the field. That'll be at the game's mental killer instinct hunger wise. I think the physical side, I don't know. I don't know what the program is, wise i think the physical side i don't know i don't know what the program is but i think the mental is crossfit it's cross yeah exactly across he's i mean look what he did at the mac there's that was good i think i i think he i think he's in the mix i think he's in the mix for sure um but i think there's 10 guys that feel like this is their best chance to have their best performance at the game this year.

And they've known that for eight months. Yeah. That's every man. That's every male competitor. When Matt retired, it's like guys who fucking were 500 in the open last year. Like, Oh,

I'm going to the games and winning too. But I mean, these, these guys that I'm talking about are guys that have been knocking on the door that have been on the podium, top five, multiple years, you know, six to nine years experience at the games they've also been beaten in the dirt nine years by matt fraser jason hasn't i don't know that that i don't know if that plays a part

i don't know it does but jason hasn't been beaten on that level and like like you look at someone who's worked so hard for six years and they're like fuck i can't do any more to beat him that's gotta be pretty demoralizing dude until the day he retires exactly but then you have somebody new who's just as hungry as you are but has never been beaten like that and doesn't know that defeat i don't know i don't know it's hard i think it'd be really has there ever been a rookie to win the CrossFit Games? No. So there's a first for everything. Okay. All right.

You know what I mean, though. That's hard to do. So there's a – I think it's extremely hard to do. I think if there's ever been a rookie that could win the Games, I think Jason probably is close. Haley, too. Oh, yeah. 2009. rookie that could win the games i think jason's probably is probably as close as hailey oh my 2009 um eight sorry let me ask you this guys what do you think about the fact someone sent this to me today they said hey they're changing crossfit athletes and i said what do you mean he said well the nba went from having and I forget what the position is. I don't know if it's power forward or what.

To that position, they said used to be 6'4", was the perfect height. And then all of a sudden, the new perfect height overnight became 6'9". And that they were basically saying the evolution of the sport is now that all the agile big men are now have been doing CrossFit long enough

that they're going to pop up on the scene and build the roost, that we're going to see just a a size increase there's any truth to that who said that just some random it's just a random guy in my dms dude i don't look colton mertens and all these other guys qualify that are the exact opposite so i don't know that that's true i mean i don't know i don't know shit about that, to be honest. I think CrossFit rewards being good at everything. Based on the size of the guys who've qualified for the Games this year, Mertens is a huge outlier at 5'4". And the guys that are closest to him are 5'7".

Or at least this is what they're all listed at. And those are Noah Olsen and Neonikoski. And those guys have been around for seven years and they're, you know, we don't know how long they'll be able to stay around as this new wave of guys pops up. But I think there's a dozen guys, six feet or taller this year at the games.

And I haven't checked, but I think that's pretty rare. But look at this. And this is also interesting to note. This is also the first time we've been through two tests virtually that have a strength test that, also the first time we've been through two tests virtually that have a strength test that that have that much of a points disparity across in terms of all of the other strength or all of the other workouts like dude and this is my like i'm a much better front squatter now than i was at quarter

finals but and i'll continue to get better but dude i took 800th in the fucking i blew it on the front squat and at pr i was like happy about my pr still took 800 points and i was like top 30 on every other workout but but 337 and you've already beat that and you've already done more than that i know i can do more than that now for sure yeah um and what do you think about this deadlift in the um to sort of push your that theory even further well it's a much smaller field it's a much smaller field so and it might be a different scoring system i have to assume it's a semi-final scoring system so it's listed with the other side yeah yeah 196 92 yeah yeah which is different than one to one two thousand or whatever yeah so he's right about that um so that i think

that was i think that probably has a little bit to do with why there's a lot of bigger guys but at the same time like in years past it would be the open straight to regionals so you have a lot of littler guys do better in the online stuff but then so many of them make it to regionals that it's just a smaller field where i think some of the athletes that have more power and are a little larger tend to do a little better at the bigger – I don't know. There's definitely a different template for – I don't know. Maybe I'm full of shit. The first workout is row and dumbbell hang snatch. A big guy can cycle the shit out of that, right?

Oh, yeah. That's not a little guy's workout. And look at the second workout. The second workout is three rep max deadlift. That's a big guy's workout again, right? Not necessarily. Yeah, not necessarily. You mean because of range of motion?

Yeah, range of motion. I mean, some short guys can deadlift. And then you have 100 burpees to a target and i know generally that that is a i know generally that's a little man's workout but how about when it's just 100 straight because we what do you think about that does that change it as opposed to it just being like i think that 12 inches changes it i don't think that yeah i don't know i know some i know some not small athletes that are pretty good at burpees and this is something that hasn't been talked about 12 a 12 inch jump for a taller guy is still easier than a 12 inch jump for a shorter guy so even though they're jumping

yes percentage wise it's yeah for sure like i don't have an issue with that 12 inch target at all um and then that last workout is that the fourth workout double under squat cleans legless rope climbs i mean you could say that that it's not a big person's work it's a crossfit workout it's pretty i say it's pretty even you gotta be good at legless and but also the clean is not very heavy either, relative to the field at least. What if I said I would just rather see the two guys that win workout four go to the games? I wouldn't disagree with that a big time because that is a games workout.

But at the same time, I think – I don't know. Look, if there's a guy that takes that takes third fourth and fifth on workouts one three and five and takes 23rd on workout four and misses the games by one point i don't know you mean takes 23rd place on workout four to workout two two two oh on the deadlift finishes in the other workouts bottom bottom five or seven in the deadlift and miss the game by a point i don't know i know yeah i know who i'd rather see go to the games as well i i i get what you're saying but it's not up to the athlete you got to be strong enough to survive and fit enough to survive so it's it's our job so you really like workout for

it's interesting i love that workout too it's great workout it reminds me of first cut kind of it's a triplet legless a weightlifting movement yeah it's it's first cutty it's just not a snatch it's a clean i'm you know i don't i don't feel like there was a ton of testing done for last chance qualifier could be wrong with that but i bet that this one was tested because i'm curious how they settle on the weights it's not it's not super heavy relative to exactly it's a yeah we've seen heavier squat clean ladders in the open oh yeah it's a rope climb workout for sure it's 15 legless rope climbs yeah is it is it 11 o'clock at your house right now 11 46 p.m oh yeah dude we're fucking raging that's cool i think this is the longest athlete

dude i'd probably be in bed reading right now to be honest i'm on oh you'd still be awake dude i'm on a wheel of time have you have, have you read that series? No, I don't read fiction. Oh, I don't read fiction. I don't read fiction. You should. It's great. Anyways, wheel of time is sick. I cannot put it down. Yeah. Ryan, how come you're not putting up any images? Can you put up, like, can you show up? Can you, can we know that you didn't fall asleep and you put up the cover of the book wheel of time or something? Yeah. Wheel of time. that up uh robert jordan one of the best book series

ever probably the best probably the best series of books i've ever read that's ryan's first time he's talked in the um history of the show you just ryan do you remember do you remember me from granite games 2018 remember me i do i i told that's why just why i brought that up dude i remembered your name how do you remember me i took last place dude i have the shot because i'm always creeping the leaderboard i have the sharpest memory really it's a unique last name uh yeah but i also well you also didn't you win like the dakota games or something a fargo games or something yeah how do you how do you know about the Dakota games?

I think I saw one of the judges I met at Granite Games 2018, Thuy Le. Oh, Thuy. You know Thuy? Thuy's awesome. She's the shit. Yeah. She's a head judge that she can go to any competition and be the head judge for whatever competition she wants. That's how great of a resume she has.

It's so cool yeah so i i saw her again at granite but well are you are you bringing wheel of time up i am um all i have to do here is dragon reborn is the is the one i'm on the fourth book it's like a nine book series so window is it a movie yet no no but they're dude i don't want to make it a movie they'll fuck it up but if you've read the book it's kind of cool anyway right because then you can fill in all the parts they fucked up i can and i can also watch it and be like disgusted with how bad of a job they did right you know does that ever happen i mean you know what i'm talking about i read i remember

reading interview uh with a vampire and then seeing the movie and the movie was horrible but but it was okay with me because i just filled in all the shitty parts. Cause I was like, Oh, I can just, I know what happens. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. That's it. I think it's the first book. I have the world for sure. Dude. Fantasy. Fantasy fiction is so good. I can't believe you don't read fiction.

Savan. Not ever. No, not at, well, not, I mean, I can't remember the last time I read any fiction,

but give me something. Tell me what I should read. Dude, read this fricking. Well, okay. What do what I should read. Dude, read this freaking. Well, OK, what do you like? If you like if you're going to go watch like a movie sci fi, like are you what kind of movie you're going to watch? Spy thriller like like some Jack Reacher shit or. I don't really watch movies either.

Like if I watch a movie, it'll be just something like a like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, an old one or old Steven Seagal movie. I've already seen. He's my grandpa's favorite actor dude funny steven seagal dude he's a cop you know that right i didn't know that and he's an actual police officer yeah i didn't know that yeah i just know that towards the end of his career he got so obese that he had to wear a trench coat in every film yeah he was pretty he was pretty it's interesting that your definition of the way he was at the end is so obese i you would have definitely called me an obese kid then i mean he's he's holding 80 pounds he was holding i mean 80 maybe i I mean, his head doubled inside. When you start getting a fat head.

Oh my God, dude. All right. The book you should read is you should look up Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. It's a good series. It'll take you a really long time to get through it because you don't read. But you'll like it. Do they have an audiobook version?'m sure they do yeah it's like is the author still alive i only read books where and i think i can

get the author on my podcast no he died actually he died oh that sucks dude it's this is like the pioneer of of like fantasy fiction okay yeah oh you know what you know what the last um fiction i read i read strangers and stranger in a strange land have you read that no what's it about instant classic you should read it instant classic he he was friends with uh who's this uh l ron hubbard oh my god it's about l ron hubbard no it's not about l ron hubbard but he wrote fiction in the same time with Ray Bradbury and L. Ron Hubbard. They were all like, they were all contemporaries and they were all, they all hung out together. I want to say it was even in California, Robert Heinlein, Robert Heinlein. It is the greatest book I've ever read.

Is it? So are you a fan of L. Ron Hubbard then? Cause it sounded like he. No, I haven't read anything of his. I haven't read anything of his. I probably should. I've always wanted to read that first scientology book what is it like dianetics or something have you seen have you seen the documentary going clear i watched all those documentaries so i'm just like yeah um and then and then another great book i would recommend if you really like fiction is i would read stephen king's only nonfiction book. It's called on writing. It is fucking amazing. Really?

I will read that. Oh my God. It is so crazy. Dude. Since I've been sober, I've read almost a thousand books. Isn't that crazy? What?

Yeah. Since I was born, I almost read a thousand books. Dude, I got upset. I'm up so obsessed. I read, I've read,

I have like 400 on my kindle maybe closer to 800 so close to a thousand but not like within still a while but i've got about 400 on my kindle and hey dude all i hear is that you're missing a lot of good instagram posts you should be posting pictures of every book every time you finish a book dude maybe maybe do you have a girlfriend do you finish a book. Dude, maybe. Do you have a girlfriend? Do you have a girlfriend? Should I start an OnlyFans?

Do you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend? Do you have any relationship? Wow. Actually, I'm talking to a girl right now. I like her. She's, like, cool. Yeah. Does she live in your town?

Yeah, dude. Well, she lives 30 minutes away from me. Yeah, no, we're not like talking on Instagram. Did you meet her on the internet? No, we met. She did a competition at my gym, and I slid into her DMs. I was actually like we were laughing the other day about how cringy. Dude, I did not have a good game.

It was pretty bad, but it worked. Yeah, you met someone in real life. I mean, that's better than most people's game. You don't hear that very often anymore. So did you meet her? Yeah, for sure sure we've been on a ton of dates like we're dating oh shit oh shit your life's way complicated he's not making it he's not making it to the games he's got get the fuck out of here bro he's got too many distractions yeah when a guy says uh that he's talking a girl, that means that he's dating her. Oh,

thank you. Yeah, there's no distractions, bro. Dude, she did Murph with me in 41 minutes. That's probably better

than you would ever do Murph. Did she do it with the weight vest? Yeah. Yeah, I've never even done it with the weight vest. What?

You could do that. That's like 30% of my body weight. 40% of my body weight 40 if you come to andy's gym he wouldn't let you do murph without the weight vest oh really yeah there's no way that's a you no dude for you you've been around the block i have been around the block yeah so i would be reading right now but you don't have to talk by the way in this podcast someone wrote in the comments the other day seven your long pauses are not intellectual Yeah, so I would be reading right now, but... You don't have to talk, by the way, in this podcast. Someone wrote in the comments the other day,

Sevan, your long pauses are not intellectual. I had to look up the word intellectual. I'm like, yeah, obviously they're not intellectual. They're me waiting for my brain to fucking start talking, dumbass. I'm not just going to talk for the sake of fucking talking. I'm waiting for my brain to give me something. If you had a job in middle ages, you would be the king's wit. That's exact. Do you know what that is?

It's like the person. No, but it's better than the king's twit. Dude, you're a smart guy. I love it because you just, you catch people with things sometimes and it goes over their head. But like the king's wit would be the person who like does all the shit talking for the king that he doesn't have to do make people feel like fools about themselves you know but i don't have to fight do i no no no like if somebody fucks with you the king kills them oh that's perfect for you dude because you could not physically defend yourself but you also have you have a good wit

man i like it i have a strong wife a big ass dog and a gun and those are my three lines is that your big ass dog i see in the background because that's not very big bro relative to you that no that that's just the local gotcha i have two dogs i got my dog locked in the room she's abusive what kind of dog? Oh, a healer, right? From the picture? Is it a healer? Yeah, dude.

Yeah. She's the best. The smartest dog I've ever been around. Yeah, smart dogs. Extremely smart. You take the dog to the gym with you? She does go to the gym with me, yeah. She has kind of free, you know, some days are better than others,

but I have a GPS collar for her, and she kind of just, like sometimes she'll days are better than others but she i have a gps collar for her and she kind of just like sometimes she'll roam the business park a little bit and i'll have to go get her but she doesn't run off she just you know she's like a farm dog does andy that you bring her into the gym yeah yeah he brings his dog i mean his dog is like fucking just lays under the whiteboard all day but core is a little more active. Do you know the origins of your last name, Self? Self. It's Western European for sure. But other than that, no, I don't know.

Did your parents come through Ellis Island? Or your grandparents? Sorry, or your great-grandparents? They did? I think great, great, great. I don't know if they came through Ellis Island. My mom's side of the family ancestors came from Ireland, but that's not self.

It's my dad's side. I don't know where his family tree is a little muddier with the alcoholic lineage there. It is a good name for a games champion. It is a good, it's a marketable name, Taylor Self. You like the name? Cool. That's important to me that it's a marketable name for sure yeah jason hopper marketable it is marketable yeah some

people have shitty names yeah brian's got a great name brian just disarmed yeah just disarms everyone right away very easy it does right i mean if you have your last name is friend everyone's just like oh hey yeah yeah tsa is very easy for him tsa dude so actually when i flew to minnesota get this dude i didn't put my mask on until i got to uh security check checkpoint whatever um and then right after i took it off and i didn't put it back on again until i got on the plane and then i let the nose ride are you a big fan of that would you give me a gold star for that for sure nice for sure they've lifted all mask restrictions where I'm living and yet like everywhere I go everyone's still fully yeah everyone's fully masked everywhere I go I feel like I'm the only one who's not wearing a mask and someone will be walking outside on the sidewalk

and I have one on I'm like I mean look if that's what you want to do but what are you thinking yeah it's a trip to me crazy i wonder how how long do you think the ramifications of this will be seen and felt forever really you think and you i feel like okay what happens when it's flu season are they just gonna say oh wear your mask it's flu season i i don't know about that but i i within I, within the first week I knew, Oh shit, like these people are already trained to wear their mask. They're already scared. You know, Brian and I interviewed a guy, he's the head psychiatrist at some hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. And he's been a psychiatrist since 1986. And he basically told us we're in a mass, mass delusional state. And he explained it pretty well. And he's got a great TED talk on it. But people and basically his whole premise is around this thing that people can't do risk or aren't doing risk assessment, which I call third grade math.

in the last 50 years, we've sort of been in a tailspin of people wanting more and more safety and more and more security because it was kind of built into our DNA, right? Find a cave that bears and foxes and lions and tigers can't get into and try to survive. Well, we're the safest, healthiest, I don't know if the healthiest, we're the safest planet we've ever been for humans ever to exist. humans ever to exist and resting in the safety, we're crippling ourselves by trying to get more and more and more safe. And so we've lost all ability to, I mean, to, to assess it. I mean, what, if you look at the rules that Australia and Canada have put on themselves specifically and the UK they've given, and this, this psychiatrist psychiatrist explained to us, they've given themselves no exit strategy.

So they made their they made the goal of what would be safe so high that it can never be reached. So they'll be in a perpetual, you know, trend of locking down, wearing masks, locking down, wearing masks, locking down, and they'll never get out of it. And so – Fuck that. Dude, that post you – Go ahead. I was going to say, that post you made today about the press conference with that Canadian official. Oh. Talking about, oh my god, dude, that scares the shit out of me. How crazy is that?

That's happening. If you're a Canadian, if you're someone who seems like a Canadian with a relatively good head on your shoulders, are you thinking about getting out? I don't know, but we interviewed one of my favorite Canadians of all time, Chris Cooper. And he kind of explained why it's happening the way it is like that in Canada. And I'm familiar with this because of my time spent in Europe and northern Europe and some of those other socialist countries. And basically, they have a deep faith in their government and their program basically just to take orders. They don't even realize like most people don't even realize they've been indoctrinated. Right. They don't real. they've been indoctrinated, right? They don't

real. And that's a really powerful word. If you don't know the definition of that word, look it up. I look it up every couple of weeks just to make sure I I'm sharp on the definition. They just don't realize they've been indoctrinated. And so that's really hard. It's like, that's really hard to break. I was indoctrinated, you know, and it's really, really hard to break. It's tough to give up. It's really, really tough because it's who you think you are. So, I mean, I don't think these, someone said, hey, do you think there's any good people on the left? Yeah, I think it's all good people. I have the tremendous faith in humanity. I believe in humanity. I don't even believe in evil. But I just think that it's like people don't realize they've been programmed to run off the cliff. And it's like, dude, just look up just a little bit. You're running full speed towards a cliff. Just look up.

But easier said than done, right? For sure. You and Coach, Andy would get along because you guys both have the the big food taking it the the good fight you know fight the good fight sugar so what was the deal with your coke up there was that just to fuck with me or you're good you're chugging the coke that was to fuck with you dude dude yeah i can't drink coke that would make me feel like shit i will say like sometimes if i go have a burger i like a coke zero i know it's not any better a lot like i know it's not any better

but um what are you gonna do yeah i would drink i would like coke it says i would eat or drink pretty much anything dude this thing has but there's circumstances for it this thing is 39 grams of sugar it is 78 of your daily added sugar that's pretty crazy we're yeah we're a big country i've i've i've heard that the stat i saw was that mexico i don't know what it is for the united states but that in mexico they 55% of their calories come from soft drinks. Dude, I believe it. I mean, dude, you walk into the grocery store and when you're checking out, it's like all the candy's right there for your last chance to get your fix. That's crazy, dude.

Tomorrow, I'm having the author of Ravenous on at 8.30 in the morning. That's kind of why I'm stressing right now that I need to get off and prepare more for it. But it's a story about – Ravenous' story about a scientist, Otto Warburg, who won the Nobel Prize in 1931 or 1932. And he basically discovered that cancer cells consume 10 times as much sugar as regular cells. Yeah. And it's such an overlooked overlooked and then it was kind of buried and lost forever i'm reading that right now oh what are you reading metabolical it's a book coach andy gave me this book um it's it's about a similar topic it says doctor who was in

the um i'll just send it over in the group text you'll get a better idea but meta amazon it's a short and that's the guy right there robert lustig's the guy he's the sugar expert out of uc san francisco yeah he's the man oh shit i should read that and see if i can get him on the podcast is that new yeah i don't know that it's new andy just read it is new may 4th 2021 oh that's right because it has a bunch of dude he opens the book railing our covid response and kind of everything that's going on you'd love it um read that well that's the most fascinating thing about ravenous it's when cancer is coming and cancer is like exploding on the scene and that and then the nazis are

fucking taking over basically germany and the parallels to what we're going on now. Cancer, COVID, not fucking authoritarian rule that we're trying to be put under. It's nuts. Yeah, it is nuts. I'm going to read that. It's called Ravenous. Ravenous. OK, yeah.

And it's written so well. Another book I think you should read. I read this book right before I read Ravenous. i read a book called range by david epstein do you know that book no what's it about it's it's i someone will probably correct me in the comments but it's basically pop psychology it's like malcolm gladwell stuff but it's all about whether talking about the difference between specialists and people who have a broad scope of skills and the opening introduction. They say they compare Tiger Woods, who is given a golf club at the age of 10 months old versus Roger Federer, who is the greatest tennis player. And he, he played everything.

I heard you talk about this with Matt on the mat. Josh, Matt. Yeah, it's awesome. It is so good. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Your third live show. You might be the only one where Brian had good audio. By the way, people, that really isn't Brian's fault. That's a compilation of errors. And like I said, thanks for sticking with us and letting us try to clear these technical issues.

Thanks for having me on guys. I really enjoyed that. Good after. We'll do it. It'd be fucking awesome to have you at the games. Sweet. And we've,