The Sevan Podcast - #717 - BREAKING NEWS: Another executive out at CrossFit

Episode Date: December 24, 2022

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Bam, we're live. Caleb, I think we're going to need that. I don't think I sent you a link to it,

but that CrossFit Games equipment listing post we'll probably need on this show. And I think I have some revised notes. I sent you the notes to this. Okay. I want to show you this. Sorry, Caleb, I didn't send you this link. So I'm just going to pull it myself. A couple of things. The California hormones, as I finished the last show, I just told you this. California Hormones, use the code SEVON.

Go there. It's CAHormones.com. Sign up between now. I just told you this. California Hormones, use the code SEVON. Go there. You like that? No, I didn't like that too much.

Oh, sorry. And from there, you will be entered into a contest to win a free level one. If you live in the Los Angeles area or in California, you can get your blood work done for free in the doctor's consultation for free. If you live outside of California, you have to figure out a way to get your own blood work. I did change my shirt.

Sure. Am I wearing? I don't even know. Dear. It's my dear Bill and Katie shirt. Dear Bill and Katie. Um, and this is the inaugural show of this shirt. Brian, what are your thoughts about this?

About that? Yeah. What do you mean? The Rogue Alpaca Sled. Were you the one who told me that this was available no but i'm not surprised i mean they had it at the games this past summer you like it right looks i mean i'm sure it's very well made i don't know i mean there's some things i really like about it i you know i'm a big fan of

um i'm drawing a blank on the name right now, but the sleds that have high handles on one end and low on the other end. And that's what this is, right? A prowler sled is what it's called. Yeah, well, you can use it like a prowler sled. Because you could push it down one way, and instead of turning it around, you could just go to the other side and then do the low push, and the low push is very different i think more difficult um obviously this is also nice because

there's some versatility in terms of how and what you can load into it so there's probably a little bit more variety of the you know like they did in that workout you could put some stuff in it take it somewhere drop some stuff off, et cetera. I don't understand this. I don't understand. I want one of these so fucking bad. That's why I put on my Dear Bill and Katie shirt. I'm going to put on my Dear Bill Sharp shirt because he's got the best comment of the day so far.

What is it? When's the Brian Friend Disc Golf Podcast? All kidding aside, we've had a long discussion about it less than 48 hours ago. It needs to be done. It needs to be done. I want to do it. There's 16 pro tour stops in the season and four majors. I think we could cover it.

I want to tell you how the conversation, Brian's not being completely transparent. It started with excited, you know, the conversation just because he liked disc golf. Then he, then somewhere in the middle of the conversation, he realized how much work it would add to his plate. And then by the, and it looked like it was going to just crash and burn. And then by the end, he was like, yeah, okay. So it's not that much work. I mean, I watch all this stuff anyway. I know a lot of the athletes. Uh, so it's just the time that we would actually spend to do the show. Yeah, it's definitely it didn't get taken off the menu. I thought for a second it was I got to watch him explore it in his head in real time. I thought for a second it was going to burn, but it was really just like a stunt plane that swoops low to the ground and then went straight back up. burn but it was really just like a stunt plane that swoops low to the ground and then went straight back up uh this sled brian how is it that um this is the all things crossfit show

anything you want to know about crossfit you can ask brian um uh but also um you can even ask about equipment and that's what i'm doing here today with the alpaca sled now look look what it says here first of all do i want plastic skis if I buy one of these? I'm going to be pushing it on the street in front of my house on asphalt. Do I want plastic skis? Yes or no? There are other things you can put on it, but I would assume that this is made sturdily or durably enough to handle that. What's plastic for?

If you have turf in your gym? I'm not an expert in that remember i think i think jr was asking me one day at my gym to take a picture of the bottom of the sled because he wanted to know what was on it and he knew what it was but i wasn't even sure but he said oh yeah that makes sense caleb make a note invite jr next all things crossfit show and take ding brian one point for not having the answer um what about this who is buying that sled not practical for most garage gym goes why not what i just i would just leave that out outside the garage and then push it in the street right i mean this if you're buying a sled for your home gym yeah you probably want to buy one sled you don't want to have to buy another sled two years from now and another sled two years from now. Yeah. This, of all the sleds that I've seen, my guess is this is the most versatile and durable sled that there is.

If you already have one, it works fine. There's no need to buy a new one probably. But if you're looking for a new one or never had one, it might be worth it to get a really good one. This is probably a really good one because of the things we already talked about. You can load a variety of different things on it. There's a high and a low set to push from. Obviously, you can tie a rope to it. So you probably do just about anything you want to do with this sled with this sled. Where do you tie a rope to it? There are different ways to do it. I wonder if there's a place to

attach a carabiner at all. Usually, there is. Otherwise, you can just tie it and put some plates on top. Yeah, there's a sled handle kit but why do i don't understand this uh pan kit every picture has the pan in it you have to have the pan right um i know you don't work for rogue and i know it just got put on their website but from you looking at these doesn't it look like every i mean that looks like you can take it off what where would you put the weights then it would just have the the pull but possibly without i'm not sure yeah i want to see the base of the sled without that on it yeah um extra 16 foot strap

all right Extra 16-foot strap. All right. I'm going to start. Oh, wow. Yeah, I want that. I've never owned a sled. Really? No. I rarely push the sled at HQ either.

That shit's hard. I used to do a lot of sled training with the high school football players that had collegiate potential as little extra practice for them when I used to coach high school football in Texas. I thought you coached soccer. You did football too? I was a varsity soccer coach. I coached the kickers on the football team. The whole, the 99% of the student body at that school was black or Hispanic. And the football team was, there was two kickers. They're both Hispanic, one Hispanic offensive lineman, and all the rest were black kids. And they weren't, you know, and a white coach.

There was a, we had 18 coaches on the staff. I think probably six of them were white, 12 black, or maybe 10 and two Hispanic. But I didn't know much about football in general, but I did know about kicking a football and those, all the kickers were basically the forwards from the soccer team. And they were actually really good. And I learned a lot about football and had, I was actually really, I think it actually was valuable for me from even the coaching that I do now. That was a really valuable experience. Hey hey did you enjoy that going from like soccer's got

so many pieces and then all of a sudden you're the head varsity coach from there and then now all of a sudden for football you're just responsible like hey boys you got to kick this ball through this these posts that must have been kind of nice I think we were the most well-prepared kicking team in the in the state I mean that the head coach of my team actually played for the Patriots. I think he was on their Super Bowl team in 2008. And I had a very hard work ethic himself. And he told me when he hired me, he's like, kicking is one third of the game, in my opinion, the kicking game. Kickoffs, punts, field goals matter. I don't want to worry about it.

And I don't want you to worry about anything else. As long as I don't have to worry about the kickers, you don't have to worry about anything. All the other assistant coaches have laundry duty and all this other stuff. Just take care of the kicking game and we won't have any problems. And I took that pretty seriously. Did you go to all the games? Yeah. And, and, um, did, did anything, did your kickers do well? Yeah, very well. You were proud of them? Yeah. Longest field goal in a game? I had two guys that both hit like 42 yarders in games. Wow, cool.

Two different years, yeah. Nail biters? Like you're like, oh shit, like when they go up there, would you get stressed out? Fists clenched? No, I mean, even the best in the world will miss a kick every once in a while. What I wanted to be sure of was, you know, cause he would ask me, you know, coach friend, can we make this kick? And I wanted to be sure that, that if I told him that,

that I felt like he could make it at least eight out of 10 times. And if I didn't think he could, then I wouldn't send them up. And he was okay with that too. Wow. So when it got close, he'd pull it put he's a friend over here and then as he needed me he let me know yeah and those 42 yarders you were confident yeah sometimes it just depends on conditions you know a windy cold or not and critically important that i found out was you know you can have the best kicker in the world,

but if the snapper and the holder aren't good, it doesn't matter. Oh, I demanded that we had at least a specific amount of time every week to practice with the entire kicking team, the snapper and the holder that is. And then of course we do some stuff with the whole team, you know, and walkthroughs or whatever towards the end of the weeks. Get the ball down in time, have the threads pointed in the right direction

and the angle of the ball proper? Yeah. I mean, it's got to travel from the center to the holder and then be in the right spot at the time that the kicker's approaching. And, I mean, we played some good schools. We went all the way to the state semis one year, and every school in Texas has a handful of guys that are just incredibly fast quick i mean it was dangerous like kickoffs were no joke you couldn't

just kick it to some guy back there he might run it back so you had to have a pooch kick that was good you or a guy that could kick it out of the end zone what's a hooch kick pooch kick it's like you kick it basically to the 30 yard line really high so they have to fair catch it and you're just conceding the ball on the 30 instead of the you know risking them running it back further shit caleb did you know that that's called a hooch kick pooch pooch i used to be a kicker in high school too no shit what's the longest field goal you ever kicked i think one time i hit a 50 in a game no no no no like just for fun what's the longest you ever kicked in a game oh in the game i think it was about a 40 wow that's fucking awesome i had i actually lost a bet to one of the kickers one year he said coach i think i can hit a 60 yarder

today i said okay 100 burpees he goes no way i said i'll do 100 if you make it you do 50 if you don't and he made it and there's a video on on youtube of me doing those 100 burpees for time they were supposed to be counting i think i only did 97 or 98 because i miscounted but i did it in under five minutes holy shit with the whole team watching i most of them lost interest after 20 minutes or 20 reps or so, but the kicker state, um, I was a snapper.

Something I did not uncover in the podcast I did with, uh, Mr. Schweitzer. Um, uh, I was a snapper much harder than you think. Yeah,

we lost, uh, the last year that I coached there, we lost our long snapper to injury for like uh the middle portion of the season and it we basically didn't kick very many field goals during that time what was the injury he has leg rolled up on oh shit uh i bet brian was a great coach i bet so too stoic as a motherfucker right and it's stoic coaches get a lot out of kids oh cory kicked a 42 yarder

holy shit in a game wow wow uh you last question about a field uh kicking uh field goals what um is is the ball have to be straight up and down or is there a benefit of kind of like putting it at an angle um for the kicker caleb you gotta find that youtube video people don't believe me it's not my youtube station but i haven't thank you alan thank you someone had to say it someone i know you guys think i'm brave and shit but that's what i was thinking and i kept it to myself too it's true but i also weighed only like 150 pounds at the time you look like a string bean and i could run like a 510 mile wow oh shit you didn't weigh 150 then you're 137 wow here we go this is tyler texas yeah go to the go to like the 440 mark. Let's see.

Nothing changes. I think it stays about the same. God, you do goofy burpees too. Look, do you still do them like that? I try to have a little more core integrity now. You don't touch? I do this. I touch my hands like this.

What, what? What, what what what what tyler what what look how close his feet are at the top god you are a goofball you're such a soccer player speeding up at the end if you'd have told me that guy was going to be snatching 185 a few years later i'd have laughed at you. Seven years later. No, Reb. Look at this shit. You assholes. Those are all good reps. Come on, man.

Come on, man. Oh, please, David. Those were good reps. I'll make fun of them. Nano fours, I think. Those were good. Full range of motion. Those are nano fours, Seva?

I don't know if they are. I proved. The four was good. The four if they are i proved the four was good the four was weird because it had the same shape as the two but it was like a hard plastic that was a good shoe you know they actually they actually had a serious concerns that the nano was so well built that they weren't getting enough sales from it that was actually a discussion i have nano twos from fucking i don't know 10 years ago that are still been washed three times and still awesome it's crazy what a great shoe that is i know it's like there's no question yeah fours were insane too those were cool squat thrusts uh at least pull up lee pozorik's comment

uh mr lee pozorik uh brian Mr. Lee Pazorik. Brian Friend, have you heard about the trans disc golfer who's beating the pants off the ladies? Wait a second. So you're saying there's a dude who's playing in the girls competition? I'm pretending like we didn't. Don't ruin my bit. You're telling me that there's a dude playing in the girls competition? There was this past season, but now they've made a ruling that that won't be allowed next year.

Is he, is he upset? Have not checked in. As you know, we have a hard time getting in touch with the disc golfers. Why? Yeah. Why would it matter?

Why would a dude be better at disc golf? Yeah. Well, throw it farther i thought that i thought that it would be primarily because they could throw it further but from watching as much disc golf as i have and i'm sorry to say this ladies but while they can also not throw it as far they're not as good at putting either and i can't think of any genetic excuse for that um is it is it is it, is it, is it kind of like CrossFit just for a while? They were a little far back in the evolution of the game possibly, but like putting is, you know, it's like playing a cornhole or bags. Like it

shouldn't matter if you're a man or a woman or a right-handed left-handed or tall or short, like that's just a hand-eye coordination thing. But I would say in my experience of playing bags more often than not the really really really good players are men and so that's what i found when it comes to putting with disc golf too ah yes so you think oh you you think that like that they throw it and then like their boobs the momentum of their boobs comes like this and makes takes off their accuracy is that and girls boobs are always changing size like minute to minute it's a fact yeah but for putting it shouldn't matter you don't put across your body you put forward i know but i'm just thinking of the momentum you're like this and

the boobs are over here and then you throw it and then the boobs move over here and it kind of like yeah it's like doing it's like doing a push press with the earthquake bar like you have to like wait for it a second yeah and and it's never the same because the boobs are always changing size you heard that here first i've never heard that actually said but you should know that's true the boobs are always changing size that is a scientific fact wait till you wait till you wait till you guys get a woman pregnant and she has a baby and you see the difference in the size of the boobs between when they go to bed and when they wake up it is nuts it is nuts well someone's at brian's house someone's at your house you don't allow people at your house during the show my brother's here you want to say hi you're slipping yeah tell him i said hi savan says hi does he look like you

can we see him real quick ke Kev, come over here. Is he older or younger? We're going on the live YouTube. He wants to know if you look like me. No, just better looking. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. You look like a little Chris Weidman, the UFC fighter.

Yeah, he does. Wow. Was he a wrestler? Was he a wrestler? No, a tennis player. He's still a tennis player. He actually, his men's state league team took second in nationals this year to Texas. Holy shit. He's a coach? He was playing on that team, but he coaches a college in Madison. Yeah, in Madison. Yeah. Not Madison, but a D3 school.

Ask your brother this. Once you're at the highest level of tennis, what's the most amount of time you can take off before your skills start eroding? Does it happen within a week? I actually had a similar conversation about this recently with him and another friend of ours who's also a tennis pro. No, not quite that fast.

But, I mean mean if you're trying to be like ultra competitive at the top a couple months and you'll you'll have to take some time to pick it back up the game speed is kind of what i understand because my my kids coach recently said when we were gone we were gone for two weeks and he said you know at this level it's okay but as you get to the higher levels two weeks is way too much to take off. He just wants all your money. Maybe. One sec. Okay.

I don't need any of this. Okay. Brian off. Brian's brother on. Sorry, Brian. Wow. Hand him the headset. Is he CrossFit?

He's leaving. He works out with me sometimes. He's going to Florida to visit my dad for Christmas. Oh, so you have the same dad? Yeah, and mom. He's not there. Did he sleep at your house? Yeah.

Where did he sleep? The guest bedroom. You have a guest bedroom at your house? Yeah. You have a two-bedroom place? Yeah. Is that uncommon? I just think you're way too frugal for

that kind of shit i just think of you just being really tight with your money and you would have got a one-bedroom place to save money or go ahead put go ahead put the whole show on hold to talk to your brother go ahead it's your show that's why it's called everything crossfit with brian friend okay brian's brother yeah um i don't think this shirt is for sale by the way the dear bill and katie shirt maybe it is i don't know if it is it's over at uh vindicate um you should definitely go over there and get your ceo shirt and your miami shirts we're not allowed to call them water palooza shirts so i won't i think there's a Be Friendly Miami shirt coming out. Wow. I didn't know anything about it and then SherpaWorks

sent me a little graphic the other day. SherpaWorks is copying my guy. The black shirts. Oh, I got that one. I finally got a camo shirt, by the way. That shirt's a really nice, cool shirt. That one right there should be $30. Raise the price on that on that please that shirt will not be 27 for very much longer after i called travis after the show 27 my brother's gone now we can get back to

business there should be a beaver shirt that's a great idea definitely should be a great idea and beaver tail shirt sea beaver wow with a beaver tail on the back yeah it's low down yeah just below the hip caleb caleb says like like three things per show and right after we got off the last show he goes okay i'm never saying that again he asked the guest about the viscosity of her husband's load jesus cry me oh how embarrassing what a thick end it was just weird it's the answer no no no she didn't answer it was we everyone knew it was inappropriate it was like someone dropping like their drink in a in a movie theater it's very nice too, Caleb. How dare you? I know. It just came out of me. I couldn't help it. Boobs get crazy with pregnancy and so sad after.

Oh. I don't know. They're always good. They're so fun. God, they're so fun. Sea beaver, be friendly. We could do a collab alan kesterbaum great question beaver yeah it was it was a great question it was just um

the art of timing or something or something was off beaver's been around seven too long that's it that's funny that's exactly what i thought oh all boobs matter that's a great shirt too all boobs matter another um yeah you're 27 you don't know you don't know hang in there okay um i okay so i we we talked about the sled i want i wanted to make sure i talked about that talked about the sled i want i wanted to make sure i talked about that um oh okay what uh i want to talk i want to tell you about what dave's doing um and get your opinion on that uh and then i want to go to this morning chocob article there's a morning chocob article that i didn't put a link to caleb that i want to ask after i tell this story about dave i think you do have the links to the dave pictures and the morning

chalk up article is the 2022 mute most viewed stories that they had on the morning chalk up so i just want to ask brian about that but i want to tell you something about that that happened with crossfitting because i think it's really important and i think it fits in the show all things crossfit basically it looks like dave went over to the east coast over to Fort Bragg. Is that where that is? Caleb. And he met, and he met, I think we also, by the way,

have one on the West coast. We also have a Fort Bragg, which is kind of weird. FYI. I just texted you guys something. Okay. And the, and the, um,

Oh man. oh man we deeply value this came to the affiliates oh this is interesting I'm going to read this to you and then I'm going to get back to the Dave story and then I'm going to come back to this story and then I'm going to go to the morning track up story and then we are going to get to the equipment list. We deeply value our

this is a letter that just went out this morning I think to CrossFit affiliates. It says we deeply value our affiliates trust in CrossFit and are committed to keeping you informed about changes here at HQ. In the spirit of timely transparency, I wanted to let you know that as of this past Wednesday

Gary Gaines is no longer with crossfit holy shit i've been tracking this story for three days um and um i i did not want to share with you this story because i didn't want to um there's a couple reasons why i didn't share it um effective immediately austin maliolo will be serving as interim gm of the affiliates so so so austin maliolo is the new gary gains temporarily it sounds like at least this trend transition will ensure that you remain uh equipped with the tools and support you need to continue uniting and growing the crossfit community i hope you're able to have an enjoyable holiday and take time to be with your friends and family and community if you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out that's don fall are you going to reach out and don fall is the ceo of crossfit

i'm very saddened by this um i really liked uh i i do i do believe that crossfit has some massive massive i i know they do more than i can than i ever share with you guys some mass and i apologize for that it's just i just can, um, who, who my friends are and who I take direction from. And I was, I was very close. Uh, the story was unfolding over the last three days and I was told to, um, by someone, one of my mentors, my only mentor, I think my closest mentor to keep my mouth shut. my only mentor, I think my closest mentor to keep my mouth shut. And so I will do that because, um, this person has always steered me straight. Um, and I'm very sad also to see, even though I think the affiliate department has some enormous fucking issues, the marketing department is in complete fucking disarray. Um, we just, I bite my nails every day. I, um, wondering what they're going

to do to fuck the affiliates by posting something stupid. And I also think that the games teams has some very similar problems because they have so much inner conflict. Because all in all, I don't think that those teams are working in conjunction with each other. I actually think it's worse than that. I think they're fighting with each other and there's some massive egos there. And I think from what I'm hearing, things are only getting worse and spiraling out of control. That being said, the training program that falls under Nicole Carroll is stronger than ever. I do, and a very impressive group of people that I highly respect. I do have some concerns that

Gary Gaines is leaving because I think he was a crossfitter through and through i think he was uh uh beyond charming and um and and eminently uh um capable of the tasks that were ahead of him i just think he needed more time and it is a that i think that is a huge loss to the affiliate community. Massive loss, actually. Like really, really fucking too bad. He had a crazy life experience, and he had fully drinking the Kool-Aid. And that's what we need people over there. We need people who are fucking CrossFit fanatics.

So that sucks. Have you heard anything else about that besides that, mr friend no i think no and i i echo your sentiments yeah you you like him too didn't get to spend a ton of time with him i got to meet him on a couple occasions and he was always very nice and from the people i know who did work with him he seemed to be a good leader and hard worker, which I think are both very important things. And he came in at a tough time. I remember our first, this was fucking ridiculous, but I remember the first time that I was introduced to him, it was in a call with like 200. I was on a Zoom call with like probably 200, 300 CrossFit employees at the time. And it was him and eric rosa sitting in an office together and we're all watching them talk and eric rosa goes this is

gary gaines um he's head of the affiliate department now he's a black american i was just like what it was so fucking weird i never heard anyone introduced like that in my 50, 50, 50 years being. How's the temperature where you are, Seva? I'm going to the beach today. Going to the beach today. You see that feels like. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my good negative 27 in Chicago.

Hey, the good news is crime will be down. Crime will be down. Someone told me there's a Bears game here tomorrow, and it's going to be still this cold. And someone told me that they weren't allowing any fires or portable heaters in the tailgate. Yeah. I'm like, what? There's no rules in Chicago right now, but you can't make a fire and cook some food in the tailgate. They said it's too windy. But you can bring your gun.

Sean M., can we get a go over Gary's resume? I very I don't remember specifically, but a crazy resume. I think he comes from somewhere. I think he does come from Elon's lineage. I think he comes from somewhere. I think he does come from Elon's lineage. I think he worked directly and maybe even reported directly to Elon Musk at a previous job. He is very well connected to the ownership of the company. I heard that, which is super duper important to me if I care about the future of CrossFit. And he was a good CrossFitter. I remember when he came in, the people that I know who still work there said he was just a fucking beast.

He's a beautiful man, charming. And he came in whenever Rosa came in. He came in with Rosa. And I think basically one of the owners of CrossFit, one of the big investors is very close to Gary and wanted Gary there to keep an eye on things. The whole thing is fucking weird.

And there is a, I don't know if the details of his departure will ever come out, but I totally wish the best for him. We had a bumpy beginning at the beginning. I had a lot of venom in me, but I I admire him for, uh, for the journey he's taken with CrossFit. I really do. He wasn't, he wasn't in a, and he assimilated well with the team. He assimilated very well with the team, which is, um, it's not easy to, uh, assimilate with

Dave. You have to, uh, you have to take your lickings. And I know, and I know I've been talking to Dave recently, but I know Dave really was starting to warm up to him and that's super duper important for an effective team. So I hope that helps. Okay. Ooh, I got a little anxiety talking about that. I feel my, my, my back to Dave on the East coast, back to Dave on the East coast. Yes. So Dave Castro was fired from CrossFit, and while he was fired from CrossFit,

it sounds like if you watch his most recent weekend review that when he was fired with CrossFit, he was working on a contract with the U.S. military. What do they do? Is Fort Bragg, is that Army? When you hear Fort, that means that denotes Army, if it's a fort? Yeah.

Okay. And so... Fort Bragg is the Special Forces of forces of the army okay and that's delta force uh part of that yes okay what other special forces do they have over there well delta force is like a subset of the army special forces so okay i'm not going to get particular okay and and i know that when i just to clarify because there's some people confused here. Gary Gaines was fired from CrossFit. Dave Castro has not been fired from CrossFit for a second time.

No, no, no. Dave has not been – sorry. Dave has not been fired. I'm going to – so new story. Clear the slate. I'm going back to – Austin, thank you. Fort is Army. Camp is Marines.

Okay. So I'm going back to when Dave was fired by Eric Rosa. You know, Dave had started – it sounds like from watching Dave's weekend review, David started, you know, reaching out to people or people were reaching out to him. And he started speaking with General Donahue. He's a three-star general. I think at the time when Dave was talking to him, he was a two-star general. And Dave knows this guy, General Donahue, because they were deployed together. When Dave was a – is it the guy on the far right?

Which one is General Donahue? Do we even know? I'm pretty sure he's the guy with the black shirt right next to me. X-V-I-I-I. Okay, 18. Okay. That's what I assume, too. So when Dave was deployed to Iraq on a combat mission, he did almost nightly combat missions. He was deployed with a program where they mixed DevGroove. That's the SEAL Team 6 guys with Delta Force.

And Dave was one of the guys that switched and went to the Delta Force. And Delta Force would also send guys over to the Dev Group. And it would be like an exchange program. It's something that like Brian probably did in high school. Brian looks like he went to like some Asian country. Did did you brian ever do an exchange high school exchange program france you did yeah you look like it you totally i've told you about it before well and i now i don't remember but i can see it because the guy who i did the exchanges was named guillaume pion and when Guillaume Brion made the cross the games this past year, it struck a chord.

Yeah. I see more of going to an Asian. I think you're going to marry an Asian woman. You look like one of those guys. Oh. Just so you know. So here he is. So this is Dave.

He's cleared out the people's faces. But one of those guys is General Donahue. He wasn't a general then, but he was the guy who was in charge of that Delta Force unit. Then I think it was 2005 that Dave deployed with. Oh, he was the force troop commander. They did almost nightly combat missions. I remember Dave doing nightly combat missions even in 2007 or 2008 when he was still running the CrossFit Games because I would talk to him through Gchat. And Dave was a CrossFitter. It was on that mission that Dave decided for the first time in his life to do CrossFit.

And so he started following CrossFit.com. And after he would come back from his CrossFit missions every single night, which by then it was probably morning, he would do the workout of the day. And he would say that General Donahue would make fun of him and joke about him and bust his balls. And Dave would say it was a good banter back and forth. sounds like Dave was about to do a contract just with himself where he was going to train the troops over at Fort Bragg. And it sounds like it was going to be a really big contract. And this is where it gets interesting. So now Dave works for CrossFit again, and it sounds like he is taking his connections there. Now, I'm speculating this from watching his weekend review. He just says one line in there. But that line makes me think that then Dave came back and he did the right thing. I don't know if it's the right thing, but he gave the contract to CrossFit. It sounds like CrossFit has got a huge contract now with these guys, which is going to do several one-day courses over there and introduce those people at Fort Bragg in the 3rd ID.

What's ID stand for? Infantry Division. 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, that they're going to start learning the CrossFit training protocol. And it made me think, oh, shit, I wonder. I'd never heard this or come up with this before, but I wonder if they brought Dave back because they knew he had that connection or if Dave just really is now

pulling his weight now, because either way, Don must be pretty stoked. That's a great contract. You need the base to be invigorated. Who is the base? First responders, anyone who sees CrossFit as a way of making them better at their job and possibly saving their life in the line of duty, whether it's your paramedic, fireman, whatever, male guy. And so all of those guys who learn about CrossFit then will trickle down into telling other people when they deploy and they will share it. And Caleb, I'm sure has seen that one guy's doing CrossFit. Next thing you know, there's 10 guys around him doing it. And then those guys come back and they enter the affiliates and then they open their own affiliates. And it's an amazing cycle. And those people really understand the value of the protocol.

Dave goes on to say that his first workout there that he did while deployed was five rounds for time, overhead barbell lunge, 25 yards, 15 burpees, five rounds, and he said it kicked the shit out of him. He said that he was excited that when it was years later that he heard the General Donahue, although he was making fun of Dave for doing it when he was deployed, he said that General Donahue a few years later started embracing CrossFit. And he said Donahue was an extremely good CrossFitter. He said he's very strong and just a beast.

He looks like a tank. So this is pretty cool. This is one of three-star generals doing CrossFit and bringing the trainers to a place. This is a good sign for everything, for the affiliates, for the community, for our country. Another thing he mentioned, I just want to say this too, and I have a friend who just did it. Dave has been doing shooting competitions up at the ranch. I think anyone can sign up. And he's also talking about teaching a shooting course. So that may be something for those of you who are into guns. I think Dave's good at teaching people who are,

what's it called when you're dominant with your left eye or your right-handed. Oh, I don't know. Why is that you? Yeah. I didn't know that for a long time, and I didn't know why I couldn't hit the target. I'm trying to shoot my right eye, but I'm left-eye dominant. My kid's tennis coach said one of my kids – Both eyes open? One of my kids said – he thinks one of my kids has that, where it's backwards from everyone else. I can tell by the way he moves. He's backwards from everyone else.

He has a different eye dominant than what he's supposed to. Yeah. You got to know that. Otherwise, I can hit the target. I can tell you that. OK, so there's that across the news. OK, let's go over to the Morning Chalk Up article about the most popular. Have you completely severed ties with um uh morning shock up is there any chance you would ever like like write for them like are you allowed to go back and forth brian are you are you strictly a barbed guy barbed so it's like you've switched from the new york times to the los angeles times are they i don't even know if those are competitors but you're not in that you you don't go over there anymore you don't do their podcast you don't go know if those are competitors. But you don't go over there anymore.

You don't do their podcasts. You don't go on their shows. You don't write for them. No, and I try to not read very much of their stuff either. I just try to focus on the things I'm working on. How come? Don't you want to know what they're doing? I do get their newsletter every morning, so I see the headlines of what they're putting out and then i you know but i mean maybe we'll talk about it but you know like the fact that they put out their

wadapalooza previews this past week is not uh i'm not gonna go read them i don't know why they're putting them out a month early but i'll you know i'll have some stuff closer to the event when i think it's more relevant hopefully more informative okay why so let me ask you that do you think that they did that because they're desperate for content like uh nate edwardson was saying that it's i don't know he basically said he's basically saying that every time after rogue media go it's very it's very i'm paraphrasing what he said but it's very difficult to make media about crossfit because there's just not a lot of stories there he calls it the dark ages the dark times and morning track up no just in general just in the crossfit space that there's nothing to write about now right now i disagree with that i've been working on some

stuff and uh didn't crossfit games just do some a wadapalooza preview also earlier today like an hour ago i think they did i i really don't understand. It's like, I personally don't have a big tie to the holidays. You know, I have no kids in the school system. I have no, I'm not going to see my family, maybe see some friends or whatever. I'll be working through this next week as I usually always do. But most people are not interested in Wadapalooza right now. Like, like yeah they see the instagram highlights post announcements people competing whatever but people are getting ready for christmas or hanukkah whatever they celebrate new year's traveling if i was in charge of putting out any content for crossfit which in some ways i guess i am for barbend uh i would be scheduling

those things it starts on the 12, like starting on the 4th or the 5th, leading into the competition, not before a two-week period of time where everyone's going to forget everything that they read and watched beforehand. Yeah. It almost, to me, also seems like a waste of effort and resources. Like, why would you do that now? Why not save whatever resources you have that you use to make this? Plus, I mean, I saw an Instagram story a day or two ago.

I think it was Dex Hopkins posted something, tag Lauren Cleland. He goes, Oh damn, too bad. We recorded our preview show and now they've announced this team. It's like, they're still announcing teams. They're still announcing individual athletes for their roster.

So putting out any kind of a preview right now, it doesn't, I just don't understand it. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I think I agree, especially if you have limited resources, which clearly they do by looking at their posts. What posts are they looking at?

Just any, I mean, look at the post from CrossFit Games. It's just all old stuff. Oh. Hey, why do you think... I think that Hayley Evans is new. Yeah, that one's new. Let me ask you this. Why do you think they didn't cover Fit Wars?

Who, CrossFit? Yeah. Just like an update. Like, hey, it's in the ecosystem. It's easy to cover. They could have... What did they do for rogue fair question what they do for dubai do you think that they should have covered fit wars let me ask you that well the i mean if you're a crossfit games team i think i think it's across a games

team that's would be involved with that i not sure. Then you have to make a decision. Are you only going to cover stuff that's relative to the CrossFit Games season? One. Two, are you going to also cover things that are CrossFit licensed or sanctioned events or whatever they're called now? Or three, do you want to cover anything that's related to high level competitive crossfit i don't know what their answer is to that question uh top uh here we go here's something from one month ago top women to watch at 2022 rogue invitational do you think it's politics that they didn't cover um or do you think it's resources so like okay so we have an example of them putting some stuff out with regards to Rogue. We already saw today that they put something out with regards to Wadapalooza.

They have three videos from Rogue, by the way, in a row. They have invitational men, invitational women, and numbers from Rogue. Yep. And so I'm thinking that probably their answer to that question is the middle one. Slash, we only want to cover events that are affiliated with us license sanction whatever they're calling it and that have a certain pedigree of athlete and maybe the pedigree is also relative to the number of athletes competing and not just the quality i'm just i mean i'm just assuming do you think it's a miss that they didn't cover it

fit wars yeah for crossfit yeah colton merton one-on-one something new in the community easy to watch maybe even reach out to jared and be like hey we'll stream it for you because we have uh 798 000 subscribers who's jared uh oh sorry sorry uh i was confusing zealous with um uh fit wars uh a wad zombie like even reach out to him and say hey we'll stream it for you yeah i mean they certainly could do something like that if the things that you're talking about earlier which is the fact that they're having a hard time working amongst each other and i mean that there's evidence of that that we've been seeing over the last several years about earlier, which is the fact that they're having a hard time working amongst each other. And I mean, there's evidence of that that we've been seeing over the last several years with the abundance of inaccurate information that they publish about the CrossFit Games and CrossFit

Games athletes and season themselves. Then it might not be that wise to reach out into other endeavors. You probably want to get your own house in order first. Do you think that, I'm going to go even deeper into this, do you think that it has any fact that FitWars was affiliated with Andrew Hiller or myself and WAD Zombie? Do you think there's any politics involved? you know, I know for, for sure that both you and Andrew have, you know, there's groups of people that are very hesitant to be associated with what you guys are doing, or maybe not everything you're doing, but certain aspects of what you guys do. Um, which I, you know, and I consider that also, but I, I just think about the bigger picture, which is, uh, you know, I think that, uh, apart from that more important is the opportunity that it can create for athletes and fans, which I think that apart from that, more important is the opportunity that it can create for athletes and fans, which I think is trumped to those other potential concerns for me. It seems pretty obvious to me that if you support Fit Wars and it's two athletes that have a good chance of going to the CrossFit Games, one a very, very, very, very, very good chance, Colton Mertens, that if you hype this up um in in the the benefits end up going downstream

you end up getting the benefits when he goes to the crossfit games and he's a very nuanced athlete he's a very he's a very unique athlete he's one of those athletes that could take on a lot of fame without ever having to be in the top 10 and by fame but following for sure following but but but and when i think of inclusivity i think of inclusivity in terms of hey here's a guy who has all the fucking chips stacked against him in every single fucking way his genetics his work his his his lifestyle say that again and yet he's out there doing rope climbs when it's negative five with no gloves on yeah he doesn't have big sponsorships he um works he works his ass off at his day job and he's not genetically gifted and yet um uh yet yet he he can be one of those guys that can i

when i think inclusivity i think of him i think of people like if you want like or you know you could choose smaller women too uh rebecca fusli doesn't matter how well she does someone like her makes it to the games god look at his fucking thighs negative seven legless rope climbs no gloves i want to i want to subscribe to his only fans where i watch him put those sweats on and off. How does he do that? There's no way it's not just negative seven either. You mean it's colder? 100%.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, so no fit for wars. There was something else I wanted to ask you about. Oh, will there be a Fit Wars 2? Do you know? There will be a Fit Wars 2. Oh, you like that question.

I saw the way you turned your head like that. Like, oh, good job, Sebi. We're targeting end of January. Wow, okay. And any idea who the athletes would be? We were really hoping to get two women. I think we have one locked in. She was at the games last year.

And are you choosing women because you think that you should alternate between men and women, or it was just two athletes who were like, hey, we want to see them compete? Or is this part of the DEI council over at wadzombie.com? Not necessarily that we have to alternate. I mean, actually, it's been cool. There's been a lot of people that have reached out and had different ideas of like a winner stays type format or a knockout style where instead of two people,

there's four and you give them like a test and then remove one, a test, remove one, or that we do some masters or international. And I'll don't do that. Don't get crazy. International. We are not ready for adaptive or masters. Do not know and get fucking crazy.

Come on. You wouldn't want to see a Jason grub, Sean Ramirez fit worse. Okay. Okay. You win. Yeah. I do want to see that.

I want to see a little, I do want to see that. Nicole Carroll. Hi, Annie Sakamoto fit worse. I do want to see that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. want to see that nicole carroll hi annie sakamoto fit worse i do want to see that yeah yeah all right all right is that the is that the adaptive division give me give me two adaptive athletes i'd want to see you went you went okay i would want to see both of those i think those what about adaptive adaptive is tough for many reasons

um just pick two dudes missing an arm by the way don't get all crazy if you guys do it like try to it's a real topic we're talking about crossfit stuff they're making changes to the adaptive divisions this year i don't really understand all that stuff that well i do have a friend who's uh two years ago was not eligible for one of the master's divisions last year he was and this year he doesn't know if he is again or not adaptive or master's division adaptive oh okay and i think that's you know and honestly it's a it's an area that's not within my expertise i have like a you know a broad but not deep knowledge of the adaptive community um and it's also kind of strange like there there are just, there seemed to be one or two in every division that are just way better than everyone else.

Right. And so I think there could certainly be some opportunity for something like that down the road. But the point is that's a place for transgender athletes to go to, by the way, that should just throw that in the adaptive class. I just solved that problem. I just solved that problem. Okay, great. Nice. That's what we're doing here. Solving men to women or women to men. Yeah, that's all we do. We just solve problems

anyway. But the point is we can't do all those ideas at once. We do want to have a little bit of variety to, to the, you know, we don't just want to have two elite men, two elite men, two elite men. I think that eventually it might even be fun to have to, if we could do a man versus a woman. Oh, I would love that. I would love that. But you know, but we also want to get it right. Like I'm, I realized that I think we got, I think we did really well for the first one. And maybe in some regards, we got lucky that those guys are willing to participate, that they are so closely matched that we got the workout pretty much right. Which is not like, that's not necessarily that easy to do when it's only two people.

Like you could pick a workout and think it's great and then they go to do it and you're just two minutes in. You're like, oh, fuck. Like it's not that exciting or entertaining. So I think we got pretty fortunate. I mean, there's a lot of. I think it's going to be hard to match it. I think it's going to be so hard to match. I think you guys set yourself up for failure.

It's going to be so hard. I don I think it's going to be so hard to match it. I think you guys set yourself up for failure. It's going to be so hard. I don't know if we set ourselves up for failure, but we recognize that it went well. So, yeah. So, Daniel Brandon and Andrew Hill are fit wars too, yeah. Oh, that is it. That guy guessed it. A couple of women, yeah.

Every time I see this name, Dylan Dykes, I just think of – I want Dykes to be a verb so bad. Dylan Dykes. Like, you know, like Dylan – I want it like Dylan Dykes. I don't know what it would mean. Like Dylan runs. You know what I mean? I just – You can make up meanings for words, you know. Just go over to Stanford University and –

Whatever you want. I love Brian's navigation of the tough issues yes he is a world-class navigator okay let's go over to morning chocob and i want to i want to look at that i i like articles like this that are like talk about what were the most uh popular topics and the most popular topic of 2022 is two articles that published about that kind of thing today on barbend oh really top seven athletes of the year top five moments of the year but let's do let's do this one okay um uh as a final victory lap for 2022 we're oh oh oh oh what uh we're reflecting on we're reflecting on year of open workouts, inspirational stories, and CrossFit games drama. The morning chalk up staff wrote more than 1500 articles,

but these food stood out the most to viewers with combined 765,000 views. Here are the top 25 most viewed articles in 2022. I only just want to look at this first one and get your thoughts on it. Dave Castro ruled the news cycle this year, whether he was working for CrossFit or not starting the year off strong on January 4th news of Castro's departure as the director of the crossfit games and subsequent return in june dominated headlines man a lot happened of course these changes were met with various opinions from the community um thoughts on uh just the whole um dave castro drama and

where he is now i feel like he's kind of gone undercover now. Like we don't even really know. Dave? Yeah. In terms of what he's doing with CrossFit? Yeah. Like I'd like to see him more forward facing. You think that there's a chance he could become the new affiliate director? You mean instead of Gary?

Well, it sounds like Gary's gone from that article that we opened with. Possibly. I mean, possibly. It's like you would know better than me what kind of experience he has working with affiliates and for how long and in what capacity. But he's certainly seen a lot and I'm sure has a lot to offer in that department or that role. I would guess that the reason why he was brought back originally was because of the clamor from the affiliates, and that's why I say that.

I'm guessing that nothing could have influenced him coming back more than clamor from the affiliates. Yeah, and I mean, he's been traveling around the world and the country visiting CrossFit gyms forever. He has a good pulse on the affiliates from that regard. He's probably been to as many or more than anyone CrossFit affiliates around the world. Would you like to see more of Dave forward-facing? I don't care so much about who's forward-facing.

I think that I've always felt like there was probably a lot going on in certain parts of CrossFit that I just didn't know a lot about. I think that there could be some value in knowing more about that. But who was it? There could be some value in knowing more about that, but who was it? I think it was Barbell Spin last week put up a post asking, how would people like to see information communicated from CrossFit? And he gave options like social media or YouTube or email or a newsletter or something like that. And most of that, I was like, at least 50% was wanting social media. I think if I remember correctly, the results he posted, he might be listening in now.

Who Dave? No. Mr. Spin. Mr. But that's, if I was CrossFit, that's something that I would be paying attention to. He's at, you know, he's one of these media guys. He's at putting it out there. Presumably the people that are responding to that are also the people that are digesting the news that CrossFit's putting out.

Why would you not want to know? It's like they're doing a free survey for you. I don't know if CrossFit's paying attention to that stuff or not. What I want is I want a Dana White of CrossFit. I want a Greg Glassman or the old Dave Castro backer. I want someone who's going on podcasts at you know, at least once a week. People are asking him tough questions. They're doing press conferences.

I would like to see either Dave or Don, you know, once every two weeks or once a month do a 20 minute show like this where it's live open calls and people fire questions at him. Like we see Dana under so much adversity from the press and the media and people asking questions,

you know, like, oh oh just go back i mean there was a while when they were like we'll never let women fighters in the ufc and then they got women fighters in the ufc and then you get to ask what changed your mind and like they have this gambling they have this their first big gambling scandal in the ufc recently like that kind of stuff or like even what we saw just happen with the liver king the scandal these types of things when they're handled properly only invigorate and and charge the base. No one who likes Liver King has stopped buying his shit. No one who sees the gambling scandal in UFC is like, oh my god, I hate the UFC. I always knew that. All of these things invigorate the base. you know like a a new year's eve uh message uh you know on jan 1 don fall don't do a live show for 20 minutes or day and be like hey guys get out there and fucking work out today you know that's what we do fuck your hangover only a half dozen people can see no no no no no come on my

show i'll fucking do it for you or or finally get a profile fit pick for the crossfit podcast and go live there i i'd like it the the white, the only thing that's cool about the White House is that black chick with the curly hair that fields questions. And you just watch her get bombed. You know what I'm talking about? I mean that shit's crazy. That shit's a circus. But it keeps us interested in the White House. And, like, we need that.

Do you see that, that we need a guy? I hear what you're saying. Yeah. I want a guy. I think so, but not every – When I mean a guy i hear what you're saying yeah i want a guy i think so but i don't know i mean a guy i mean they can have it can be a gal too it can be nicole carroll fuck she's a savage does the pga tour have that no but i don't know that's the thing nhl have that no no you don't have to have it no you don't have to have it. No, you don't have to have it. There are successful models with both. But those also aren't communities. And UFC is closer to being a community. And CrossFit is definitely a community.

And we just, yeah, CFHQ press secretary. Yeah, make it that fucking, make Dave that guy. I mean, how great would it be if someone asked a question to Dave and you see him just snap on him? Like it doesn't, like. I think that's happened before. Yeah. Are you against it, Brian? Do you think it's a bad idea? Not against it. I just don't. I'm just, that's what I'm saying is I think it is a solution. I don't know if it's the only solution. I think that, uh, you know, there are other ways that

you could communicate consistently and accurately information that would be better than what's happening now. I mean, you're more that you're more that guy than than anyone. You coming on the show, me asking you questions like when I ask you about the kettlebells here in a minute. Oh, we should invite Adrian on. We should do an equipment list show with Adrian. You want to do that? I always love talking to Adrian. Yeah.

Good answer. OK, good answer. Okay, no surprise that that was a huge news story. Let me ask you this too. If you go to Don, why did Eric Rose's account skyrocket to 100,000 followers when he became CEO and Don's is like at 10,000? Is it because the drama's over don likes to hang out with the people he doesn't need to be up there in the spotlight okay you get do you get the answer you get that you read between the lines um yeah i just think it's that the for some reason the community wasn't as charged i don't think it's so much

don i think it's the community wasn't charged charged. I don't think it's so much Don. I think it's the community wasn't charged. But if you are going to follow – I mean, oh, 6,000. This is a fucking – I mean, he was on the show. He's a fucking cool guy. He's a down-to-earth guy. Well-spoken, funny. Marine recon.

Dabbled over on the woke side of the hill for a while. Played around with the Google and Facebook guys. I mean, he's seen it all. He's got good life experience. Because Don isn't in it for the spotlight. I don't think, I agree with that. But that doesn't mean that we can't thrust him into the spotlight. Rosa was hanging out with the Buttery Bros and forcing people to watch and work out well

that's true johnny that that is uh true okay um on to the next page oh wait i'm maybe one line off this page no no i don't need that page game release semi-final locations and equipment lists um let's let's look at that uh games locations we have uh orlando florida johannes south africa pasadena california brisbane rio de janeiro and berlin that's Germany, and Busan, Korea. Never heard of Busan. What do you think? Good timing? Is it good that they're releasing this so soon?

Oh, yeah, definitely. I think that the, you know, I know that there was getting all the dates and the venues locked in was a little bit challenging, but that their intent was to release this before the new year, which they were able to do. I think that's great. And they're, you know, they're the first two things they said, start planning. I hope that that's the case. I mean, we talked about it a lot last year that certain semifinals were very well attended, seemed to be very well supported, others not so much.

And in particular, the ones in North America were very, very poorly attended. We're going to Florida. We're going to Florida. We're going to California. There's been regionals in both of those states before that have been very well attended. I hope that's the case this year. And what do you think? Let's look at that first one up there, Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida. What do you think the attendance will be like? You think it's going to be off the chart this year? I've gotten so confused about this because I, when I see orange County, I think California,

the other ones in California, this one's in Florida. Do I think the attendance will be off the charts? I mean, I would hope, I hope so. I know there are a lot of people that were saying like, I had heard that it might be in the Northeast or that it might be, you know,

some people want it to stay in Tennessee, ends up being in Florida. I don't think it really matters. I think that the fact of the matter is that if you're looking at the best CrossFit competitions of the year, you know, these semifinals in North America and Europe, in my opinion, are immediately elevated into the top five ahead of Guadalupalooza, ahead of Dubai, alongside the Games and Rogue. These are the next three biggest ones, in my opinion are immediately elevated into the top five ahead of Wadapalooza ahead of Dubai, alongside the games and rogue. These are the next three biggest ones, in my opinion, in terms of the quality and depth of field,

uh, Europe and both in a, and both in North America. Yeah. Is it enough to just have one semifinal in Europe? Well, it is, but there's some, like there are some, there are some questions that CrossFit still has to answer in terms of how these are going to be run.

And as you saw on the previous slide, some of them are lasting longer than others. Yeah, why is that? Three days and four days? The ones that are lasting four days are because the fields are so big. I have personally brainstormed amongst myself and with a couple of close friends, several different ways that you could potentially run this. But I think pretty much everyone will agree that if we show up on a Friday and we say, let's just say we're doing triple three as a semi-final workout. And you said, and we're going to have six heats of men and then six heats of women and then four heats of team do this workout. No one's showing up to watch that. I mean, what, no one wants to watch 16 heats of 10 do a workout that's going to take 35 to 40 minutes. And we've had workouts that take that long at the games before at the semifinals, the qualifying stage of the CrossFit Games before.

stages of the CrossFit Games before. So there are other options. You could run bigger heats. There's definitely drawbacks from that. You could have heats of, let's say, 20-20, 10-10. That's a solution. Or you could have something like the bottom 30 men, the bottom 30 women, and the bottom 20 teams, the bottom half of the fields, compete in the morning. The other half compete in that evening. And you understand that there's going to be different populations of people attending those things. Either way, because the fields are so big, they need an extra day to fit in all the competition. And the other ones that have 30 men, 30 women and 20 teams, half the number can get it done in three days. How much larger are the fields? Let's just take, uh, let's just take, uh, this orange County, Orlando one.

How much bigger is that field this year that will be showing up there than the field that showed up to one of the events in Tennessee last year? Twice as big. It's basically like combining them. Okay. So the implications there are that there will be significantly more people in the seats. Oh, to watch. To watch. You would assume. are that there will be significantly more people in the seats. The syndicate, oh, to watch. To watch.

You would assume. I mean, the syndicate crown had 30 men, 30 women, 20 teams. This event, North America East semifinal, would have 60 men, 60 women, 40 teams. Let me ask you this. Do you think that the limiting, what do you think the limiting factor is to people attending and let me throw out some just some ideas out there uh cost of cost of entry um knowing who the athletes are um or or or maybe uh media exposure to the people because my feeling is

is that for whatever reason whether they don't have the resources or the leadership that there's just this at last year there's just just this expectation that people are going to come to these events without promoting them and that and that works in australia because you got to you to me i think that the people in australia will show up anyway um like why were the crowds empty last year and why why do why can we expect them and we already know the attendance is going to be double from last year but that's still not enough right no it should be more than that for sure i mean the frankly the the attendance at the north american semis last year was embarrassing. Yeah.

I think it's just laziness. I think that North American people have gotten lazy in the past couple of years as a result of COVID. Okay, so you put it on sort of the fans and the social milieu of the situation and not on CrossFit not promoting it properly. I guess I don't know how well it was promoted relative to regionals from 2018. But if I'm looking back at 2016, 17, even 2014, the first year I went to regionals, first CrossFit competition I ever went to was in Navy Pier in Chicago here. And the top athlete competing that I can remember was Kyle Kasperbauer. Kyle Kasperbauer. I mean, I could name it two dozen men alone that will be at the North American East semifinal that are more popular now than Kyle Kasperbauer was in 2014. Nothing against

Kyle, phenomenal athlete, great accomplishment throughout his career and everything else that he's done. But there's no reason that people shouldn't be going to that. Let's just see. There's an event in three weeks in Miami that a bunch of athletes are going to. How many people are going to show up to that compared to the semifinal that's in Florida six months later? That event's going to be massive at Wadapalooza. Yeah, let's do a preview show

closer to the event, maybe. Yeah, the whole week before. Fired up. Here's the thing. If I didn't do this show, I wouldn't have even known that the open had started yet. The open registration. Yeah. I would have no idea if I wasn't so entrenched.

I don't see anything on – Every year I sign up for the open, the week of the open. But there should be some sort of like – I should not be able to get away from the fact that I'm entrenched in the community that the open is among us. And it's so easy for me too. If I just don't do this podcast, if I don't go out of my – I have to go out of my way to find that stuff I guess is what I'm saying. It should be easier. It should be easier. It should be easier. Wait, there should be just more.

There should be more or stuff that that's more catchy. Something viral. Make something viral that we all see. Okay, so these events these events are going to be at these venues.

What are the implications of there being more athletes there? Does that mean fewer events or does that mean more events because it's more serious? Does it mean harder events, different time domains? Is there anything where the actual workouts will be affected because it's so many athletes or is it just same stuff? Just more?

Well, the programming, the same workouts for all the semifinals. Okay. Some of the fields have 60 individuals and 40 teams, and three of them have those numbers, and four of them have 30 individuals and 20 teams. So the size of the field should not affect the programming because the size of the fields are different at different semifinals. What the size of the field does dramatically affect is the scoring. finals what the size of the field does dramatically affect is the scoring because we've never seen that i can remember crossfit administer uh a competition of this size and importance to know

what kind of scoring system they might they might use we could look back at some crossfit game seasons that had like 45 to 48 athletes qualify in like 2011 through 14 time range, I think. But even then you can have two point spread all the way down from 100 to zero or something like that. In this case, if you're going to use a standard scoring system, then they're probably only going to be able to have gaps of three, two, and one point. And they'll probably slide those down. Maybe, you know, I don't know exactly how they'll do it, but you could conceptualize that. Or you could have a different scoring system that is much better when there are more athletes in the field and more events in the competition. Is that the Tyler Watkins scoring system? It is. So you think that you

don't think it's too risky if crossfit were to try the z score at this year's not if they worked with us to do it because there are things about z score that you have to be cautious of when programming but we've already troubleshooted most of those things and they could tell you know say what is this format going to be a problem is this format going to be a problem and we could tell them yes or no. And we don't, and you don't have to program the, um, couple styles of workouts that are problematic at that stage of the season. What about the fact that the Z score isn't easy for the fans at home to, uh, understand or to do the quick calculations in their head? I think that, that affects the, uh, enjoyability of the sport? Well, when I'm watching like the, I'll just take golf, for example, and they have a very

easy to understand scoring system tournament to tournament. I had five under par, you had four under par, I beat you. But throughout the course of the season, they have a FedEx cup points rankings that the athletes are constantly accumulating points for. And I have no idea how that scoring system works. All I know is that the people that do know how it works, occasionally put a graphic on the screen that shows Brian's in 15th place on the FedEx, seven's in 35th place and the top 40 make it or whatever.

And you can see that there's all the points that people have. And, um, that would be how it is in ZScore, is that there's, you know, you can understand how it works for sure. We've already written articles. So you still see who wins the event, but you have to wait a couple seconds to see by how much

until the scores are calculated. Yeah. So maybe it even adds tension to the events and helps it. And it doesn't take long to do. I mean, there have been many times this entire year, basically, where as long as Tyler is available, the event would happen,

and a few minutes later, he'd say, like, here's the Z-score results. If someone had hired him to be in that role, obviously, he'd be available. He'd be on-site. It would happen very quickly. This, any chance, what do you think the chances are of them adopting z score zero this year ever not i i think there's a potential in the future um but i don't think this year i think and i and i don't think it's necessary this year i think they've already made a lot of changes i think there needs to be more consistency year to year and better to introduce one change per year than many changes per year if possible. But I do think that it is critical that they are thinking about the scoring system with fields of that size and hopefully have done several different case studies to make sure that it's not going to be a problem, whatever version they

decide to use. Same thing with the schedule. And at semifinals, at regionals in the past, there have been times where teams would compete early in the day and then individuals would compete later in the day. Usually they're doing two or three events a day at most. If that's the case, again, they have to factor these things in. Are you going to have all of the teams go in the morning and all 120 individuals go in the afternoon, evening? Or are you going to have the bottom half of the field go in the morning and be done by one and the top half of the field go from 2 to 6 p.m. or whatever it is? So there's definitely some different ways they can do it. They have to factor in those decisions when it

comes to how they want to broadcast the events. Are they going to cover every heat or not? If they are going to cover every heat, are they going to have an A team and a B team so that, you know, Sean Woodland's not having to call 32 heats in a day if they still want to show everything? Because guess what? There's still some pretty damn good athletes that are going to be ranked in the bottom

10 to 20 of semifinals that might have an extremely relevant performance, uh, depending, especially depending on what the scoring system is. So a lot of logistical factors that I've been thinking about since I heard about this new system. And I can only assume that CrossFit is doing the same. Um,

so the, the 10, 10 men and 10 women who performed the best at this Orlando event, go to the CrossFit Games? No. They're guaranteed a minimum of five spots. Okay. We don't know how many spots they'll end up getting.

Okay. So if you take sixth place at these events, you're still going to the CrossFit Games? Almost definitely. I mean, it would be very, very difficult to imagine that not being the case, but we don't know the exact number. We know it's at least five men and at least five women, which I don't agree with, by the way. So, okay, we'll get to that in one second. So when they announce, you know how there's that tension? They'll announce who got first place, second place, third place, fourth place, and then you'll see like the two athletes who are in fifth and sixth. This year, when they announce that, there won't be as much tension because you know that if you got sixth place

in the men's or women's individual in Orlando, you're still going to the games. If you got fifth place, for sure. Sixth place, for sure, too. We don't know that yet. Pretty much we know. Pretty much we know, but we don't know. But we don't know.

Okay. Because we haven't been told how those spots are going to be allocated. What the mathematical calculation will be, how they'll do it. Wouldn't it be safe to assume that it would be just since all the regionals have the same, semifinals have the same workout, that it would be just who did better? No, it has nothing to do with your performance in semifinals. You'll already know before semifinals start, how many spots will be allocated to each semifinal,

how they're going to determine that, which I think is going to take place after the quarterfinals. And before the semifinals is still unknown by us. Oh shit. So you're telling me it's five now, but before semifinals starts, they'llinals starts, they might say it's eight. Pull that back up. Based on some calculation that we don't know it is, and that's the calculation that goes back two years.

Well, we don't know for sure. That's kind of what they've alluded to, but look at the numbers. 5, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. 5, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. So 23 of the 40 spots from, we'll just talk about men. It's exactly the same for women are already allocated. That means there's 17 outstanding positions for men, 17 outstanding positions for women. Those 17 positions will be distributed to these seven semifinals in some way before semifinals begin.

So no matter where you're competing in semifinals, when you show up there, you will know for sure X number of spots goes to the CrossFit games. That X number of spots is not guaranteed to be the same for the men as the women at each semifinal. However, the way those spots are distributed, we only know vague details, not any concrete specifics. But we do know this. We know that your performance there… At the semifinals? At the semifinals will not be part of that calculation

other than the fact that… It could be part of the calculation for next season. We don't know, but it's not going to be for this season okay by the way whoever thought it was a good idea to leave off the number one uh for africa you fucked up like listen you jackass that's like that's like someone who's like stuck in like grammar land like dude all the others have numbers just put top one it's okay i know it's redundant but we need to see the fucking number there for or don't make a graphic just write it out on a piece of paper okay so we don't know we don't know but we okay so that this is uh these are going to be tense if you're if you're doubling the competition

well yes and no because let's just say for example that north america east men end up with 11 spots it's not going to be very tense at all for the top five guys. They're just going to waltz their way through with a lot more breathing room than they had before and only five spots. So even if you're third, you're only three spots away from missing. Now, if you're third, you're eight, nine spots away from missing. It's not very dramatic for the top guys, unless there's a meaningful prize associated with semifinal, which we have not had the last two years, which I'm very hopeful that we will eventually have.

Noble has taken on the sponsorship role for the semifinals. We know that they made an investment into the CrossFit Games last year to pay out more spots, more divisions, et cetera. And hopefully they're going to be able to do the same this year, if not this year, next year, as they, you know, it took them two years with the games. They've taken it on as a title sponsor this year, maybe next year, they'll be able to offer more money if they don't this year. But like I said, I consider this to be these North American and European semifinals to

immediately elevate into the conversation in terms of quality of athlete and at the top and depth of field, top to bottom of top five, the three of the top five best CrossFit competitions of the year. And if they're paying out, those top five are paying out, we'll just say first place. If the first place payouts are 315,000, 288,000, and then 5,000 for the next three, there's a problem. You're talking about for the semifinals? Mm-hmm. Well, I think you'd be lucky if first place got 31,000.

But hold on, we'll come back to that in one second. No, 5,000. 5,000 is what they're getting now. So I'm saying that the top five events on the calendar for this year in terms of quality and depth are the games. $315,000 or so pay up for first. Oh, oh. Rogue, nearly 280,000, whatever, pay-off. And then North American semifinals, two of them,

and European semifinals, one, where last year the top prize was $5,000. I don't think it's going to be much higher than that, buddy. You're probably right, but it's out of balance relative to the quality of the field. Mike Halpin, it's a rolling 24 months of of events that factor into the worldwide ranking i have all i already have all of the data for that period we just don't know the formula or how they will wait the events competitions competitions um okay so he he's happens feeling pretty uh certain that it's going to be uh two years um what do you think they've communicated that i've heard some other

some like nuances or variations of that that we'll see but it's one of those things like until crossfit tells us what it is i'm not going to waste too much time speculating okay let me let me propose this to you. Can you pull up that map again? What if CrossFit figured, okay, we're going to match our games purse with the semifinals purse, but here's the thing. It's six events, so we're going to divide it by six. Seven events. Seven events, so we're going to divide it by six seven events seven events so we're going to divide it by seven so then you get seven goes into uh 318 000 that's not how you they would do it i think if they were going to do that they would say we pay out 40

positions at the games and there's 40 qualifying positions and now we can see some kind of parallel there so we might say do you know what I'm saying? Right, right, right, right, right, right. Okay, so then, oh, I see what you're saying. So you might say, across all of these semifinals, we have this many of money, and we're going to distribute it to only the games qualifiers, meaning that the first place person at every semi-final might get the same.

But if you're second in Africa and you only get one spot, you might get little to nothing. Yeah, I'm thinking this. I'm thinking you take that $318,000, you divide it by seven, and you get 40. What if they gave $40,000 for all the first place winners? 40, what if they gave $40,000 for all the first place winners? Yeah, that'd be fine. What about second, third, fourth, eighth, ninth. And you just go down and you do, what if you match the semifinal purse to the games purse, but because it has to go to seven locations, you just divide them all by seven. That'd be pretty amazing.

Maybe, but now you're talking about someone who's finishing 10th in Africa, nine spots out of a games qualification spot. That's earning the same amount of money as someone who's qualified to the games by finishing in North America, West. So I think that it's, you know, but again, these are all the questions that the CrossFit Games team should be having in conjunction with Noble and going through these scenarios and saying, okay, well, we want to pay out this number of spots at every semifinal, no matter how many game spots they get. Let's just say it's three. Fine. So what's the minimum amount that we're going to pay for first, second, and third at each semifinal? Okay. What about the semifinals that are going to qualify five positions, eight positions, 12 positions? Are we going to pay out every game's qualifier? If we are, what's the minimum we want to pay them? What's the maximum we want to pay them? How much money do we have and how are we going to distribute it?

Hey, what if last year you're saying they gave $5,000? If they gave $10,000 this year for first, would you be pretty happy? That's doubling the amount of money. It doubles it relative to that but it is still significantly lower than than than rogue or what a week before dubai fitness championships yorgos kervis won the marbella championships in spain and won 12 000 euros yeah but they're not putting on seven events they're not putting on seven events they also don't have they're also not the CrossFit Games season.

They're also not qualifier to the Games. They're also not one of the top events of the entire year in terms of caliber of athlete competing. And if you have one of the top events of the year in terms of caliber of athletes competing, why can't you get any money into that event? Fair question. You said twice Crossfit in conjunction with noble should talk about the prize prize money and one of the things that i learned from watching um lauren khalil's podcast with uh decker and chase was is that the guy's name decker dex dex uh with dex and chase um yesterday was that no this is the first time that the game sponsor is also

the sponsor of all the semifinals I didn't I didn't know that I just always assume I assume Reebok when I when I was there sponsored all that shit I guess I didn't pay attention to that are there implications to that like does that maybe the prize money is even going to be less because noble is going to be spread so thin uh i don't know i mean noble i think noble is uh has been doing doing good things they have taken their time in some regards but um i don't think they would do this without having a well-thought-out plan. It sounds to me, based on the things I know about them, whether you like it or not, that they think 12 to 24 months ahead. So they've probably been wanting to do this pretty close, you know,

since at least a year ago, if not two years ago, and that there's hopefully a good reason why it's happening this year. It concerns me. I think the opposite. I think it's that they're, they're, they're having trouble getting sponsorship, but I have no proof of that. I'm just, I'm just, but it could be the other way. It could be like, Holy shit, we're fucking killing it in the CrossFit space no matter how much shit that people talk about how crappy their shoes are. And we have tons of money and we want to keep supporting. be like holy shit we're fucking killing it in the crossfit space no matter how much shit that uh people talk about how crappy their shoes are and we have tons of money and we want to keep supporting

oh yeah i don't know i would i that's not true i i like decker i love how when someone doesn't like someone and mispronounces their name i love decker and there's no i don't even know him. I don't even know him. Not true. Good try, Mason. Okay, go ahead, Ryan. Is it because Noble's having so much success with the sponsorship? Or is it because CrossFit's struggling to find sponsors?

It would be, I mean, it's hard for me to imagine that CrossFit would struggle to find sponsors for events that have that many top athletes at them. Okay. But it's an area I don't know a lot about elise car redow i never mispronounce it how would you say her name this her name i would love to know how to say her name but you don't know i don't know for sure I would love to know how to say her name, but you don't know. I don't know for sure. Uh,

what about the Antarctican athletes? You don't even, you don't even have, um, aren't there supposed to be monitors for guys like that? I think he is one of the monitors. Uh, you don't even get a response for Brian like that. Um, okay. We talked about, uh about uh oh let me ask you this what would you like to see what would you like to see um for promoting um the games this

year what do you mean uh the what what type of promotions would you like to see that would draw eyeballs to um the semi-finals like Like roughly, like what kind of videos? It's kind of follow up to that other question. What can we do to make it so more people are interested in coming to this, to these events, watching them? Do you have an opinion on that? I don't know. I mean, I love going to CrossFit events.

I used to go to a lot, you know, a couple a year when I wasn't working at any. But you have to make it like if you're working adult with the family, like you have to make that an intentional trip. So if you're going to take one of your, I don't know, three trips of the year to go to a CrossFit game semifinal. What's like, what do you need to have there to make you want to go? You want to have great programming, a great venue, great athletes, compelling story, probably some activation, some vendors things, some fan stuff going on, accessible location, good weather. I think that there's, you know, checkbox, like we've checked the boxes on some of those for sure.

A compelling story. That's what I like. Yeah. And so to answer your question about what I would be doing to promote that, I would be putting together highlight reels from past semifinals and regionals of those things happening. I would be re-pumping up the, there's only three from 2013 that the then director of media made for CrossFit. I would be showing highlights of Cole Sager and Con Porter and Will Morehead coming from eighth

and ninth and 10th place and the last event to take a game spot and the emotion that's involved with that, both making and missing the games. I would show, you know, and the same line, I would show the heartbreak. I would show the years that Catherine Davids utter missed that Sam Briggs missed. And you say like, nothing's guaranteed at semifinals. You had to earn your spot, show all these incredible storylines that have happened over years at a don't put them out right before Christmas though.

No one's going to be paying attention. Then wait for the right time and pump them up and uh and get people going and it's you know after the holidays is not a bad time because they're already encouraging people to start planning so you should have a marketing plan a scheme that's going to be rolling out some of these storylines over the course of not the three months immediately before semifinals you'll tell stories then of course that'll be more focused on the athletes that are actually going to be there. The three months prior to that, January, February, March, you should be pumping up the stories from the past that would make people be like, Holy shit, that was really cool. I w I want to be there. If that happens again,

this year, you know, um, I like what you're saying. You could put together a one minute video so easily talking about how Colton Mertens was lucky. He made it last year. Will he make it this year? You can make a one minute video talking about talking about how Colton Mertens was lucky he made it last year. Will he make it this year? You can make a one minute video talking about how DeLugos got robbed. You can make a one minute video saying what's going on with Ariel Loewen. She's gotten lucky twice. Will she get lucky three times? Really just add some drama to it. You know what I mean? Show these

all these people one minute videos. You can even have a series and it's called On The Line. And look at all the people who took fifth place just using all old content. Yeah. So, so, so fucking easy. Yeah. I'd like to see compelling stories that make me decide.

And even if people don't like the videos that that's a powerful video. What about this? What about changing the price group affiliate discounts? Not a bad idea. You could also have some incentive based on open signups at your affiliate. You know, if you have, you know,

they have this, if you have 12 people sign up for the open, you get an early access to the CrossFit games tickets. Maybe they say, if you get, um, 20 people to sign up for the, uh,

for your, the open from your affiliate that you can get a 20% discount on five or more tickets, just five to 10 tickets to a semifinal pack, get a hundred to sign up and you all go free get a hundred to sign up and the ceo goes free wait wait that's yes yes okay can we can we look at this um equipment list seven there's there's a semi-final in california you're gonna go to it no it's so close by it is oh maybe that's when i'll come in and meet your family

that would be cool like for i i swear to god for like 15 seconds no that's too long like five seconds last night i imagined myself at that uh semi-final and then i was like no fucking way um i think there is going to be a Turkish getup. And I think that J.R. Howell would agree with me. I think we, have we ever seen a Turkish getup in a competition? Not that I know of. I think it's coming. Because I feel like I can see Adrian doing them in old videos.

So a couple of things to keep in mind. This equipment list, and I haven't watched any of the other stuff people have been talking about or writing about it, is for all online competitions in the CrossFit game season in 2023. What does that mean? Tell me what those are. I need to write those down. That's a CrossFit open for all divisions. So that means that these equipment could be distributed in some way across the adaptive, teenage, team, but there's no team in the open, individual, and masters or age group divisions. For quarterfinals, there are three rounds of quarterfinals. There's individual quarterfinals online, team quarterfinals the following week online, and then age group quarterfinals the following week online, and then age group quarterfinals the

following week online. So it could be in any of those. The next stage of the competition is semifinals. Individuals and teams will go to a live competition. So this equipment list becomes irrelevant for the individual and team semifinals, but it remains relevant for the age group and adaptive semifinals. The age group semifinals will qualify 10 per division to the games. The adaptive will qualify different amounts or none to the games and actually be the CrossFit games, determining the champions for some divisions. So if you're in those adaptive divisions,

this is the equipment list for your entire season. Otherwise for the rest of the adaptive divisions and the age groups, it's through semifinals. And for the individuals and teams, it's through quarterfinals. Who is it for their whole season? Some of the adaptive divisions. Some of the adaptive divisions? Oh, the one on games champions online. Okay. Wow. According to the CrossFit, those divisions don't have enough participants to warrant having them at the live CrossFit games. Wow, very well said. That's good.

That's important. Make that a clip. And they call it the nonspecific and exhaustive list of equipment. Why don't they just say— I'm pretty sure at the bottom of this list, it says like it always does in the rulebook, that CrossFit can change their mind at any time. says like it always does in the rule book that CrossFit can change their mind at any time. Why don't they just say, um, climbing ropes and GHGs will not be required for the open, but may be used during later stages and online competition. Okay. That's an important part too. Well, that is extremely important. So now with that disclaimer, they're saying that everything

else is eligible for the open, not that it will be used, but that it's eligible. Um, I, uh, I need to take a small... How are you on time, Brian? I have 24 minutes. Okay. I need to take a small one-minute break. Please excuse me. You don't even have to want to do CrossFit. You don't have to want to be a coach. You don't have to want to be a trainer. If you just want the operating manual to your body, it's not just forging elite fitness. It's the operating manual to the human genome. You'll take this CrossFit Level 1 seminar and you will walk away inspired.

From the second you leave, your entire life will change. You will make significant changes to your life because you are excited. You will start tweaking with your diet. You'll start tweaking with your movement. You'll start tweaking with who you hang out with. Everything will take a shift. For some people, it'll be massive. For some people, it'll be a little bit.

No matter what, you'll move towards a better life. Everyone is going to sense it in you that you are more accountable, more personally responsible, happier, more helpful, more thoughtful human being. And you'll be nicer to look at. You might talk too much shit about CrossFit, but...

Didn't quite make it, did he? Almost. You almost made it. You can't make this shit up. I jump out of my door of this podcast studio, have my hand in my pants just about to pull out the hefty gawkins, and I look up and my stepmom is there admiring one of my fruit trees. So I had to run inside.

Well, we played a very nice video while you were gone. Thank you. No, I wasn't farting or picking my nose, but I almost exposed myself to my stepmom. Okay. So I think maybe that's what she was hoping for. This is real life. This isn't porn. That was a fantastic explanation of what that equipment will be used for, needed for, and how it's not necessarily all going to be used by any one group of people but be mixed up.

But there usually is some continuity between all of the divisions, correct? Yeah, so the reason that I wanted to bring that up with regards to what you were saying about the Turkish getup is, and credit to JR for reminding us of this also when this first came out, kettlebells were involved in the programming last year. They were only farmers' carries, and they were only in the semifinal or qualifying stage to the games for the age groups. And I think that Adrian, like Dave has often done in the past, it's very probable that he'll introduce certain elements of programming

further on in the season that will then trickle down backwards into the quarterfinals and open, et cetera. So farmers carry with kettlebells, I think, would be a good bet because we saw it last year in the semifinals to see in either the quarterfinals or open stage this year. Whereas Turkish get up, since we have never seen it before, it's a little bit of a complex movement we have limited number of weights of kettlebells so they can't really do

it for a one rep max it might be like the number of reps you can do in a minute but it's not necessarily really a speed movement if we were going to see it which i don't think we will at all by the way i would expect it to be later on in the season for us for maybe the masters divisions opening up the door to possibly see it in the future and in a more broad uh testing realm here's here's what i my takeaway from that is is no no turkish get up because it's not conducive to speed but on the other hand totally in in adrian's wheelhouse fits all of adrian's the way we know Adrian thinks. He is probably, he sees it as a core movement, something that's been neglected. And we know that he wants to remind people like, Hey, there's some really important things you should be doing that

you're probably neglecting. Yeah. If, if I were Adrian Bosman and I wanted to remind people of the Turkish get up, I would program it at the games so that it's very visual and under, and it's like, Hey, Whoa whoa if i haven't been doing that maybe i should be do that just much like a press to handstand not like a crossover double under let me ask you this could you see a strength event like we saw the sandbag, but it'd be Turkish get-ups and we see them paraded out there one by one with increasing weights. Yeah, you could do something like that at the games for sure. Would you like that? I think I would like that. In concept, I like that. Yeah, I mean, I think you have to factor in a little bit of a just a safety element like i know and like there are a

lot of questions you have to answer if you're going to do a one rep max turkish get up for example do you have to do with both arms in order for it to count or can you only use your dominant arm and you get away with it or dominant side of your body really um what is what is caleb what is the max turkish get up anyone's ever done people have done them with an echo bike i think that seems pretty heavy that does seem pretty and awkward as shit so i don't think that there was there was a turkish get up in the programming this year anywhere other than the games i think that there is a good chance that we see kettlebells used at multiple times kettlebells i mean look if you want to introduce kettlebells you have so many

different options you could do and we've seen kettlebell sumo delf high pulls at the games i think going back over a decade now but you know you could do single arm snatches you could do clean and jerks you know i'm not sure if it's said that you have to have one or two. 168-pound Turkish getup. That seems like the kind of thing that that world record could be broken at the fucking CrossFit Games. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I can't believe it's only 168 pounds, by the way. I'm struggling with that. I think it's been more.

I see, like, pretty average guy at my gym do it with 72 pounds it's almost half someone turkish get up to me one time the video is the video somewhere uh okay so so sumo deadlift high pool snatch turkish get up tons of tons of uh farmers carry shit loads Yeah, lunges, clean and jerks. I mean, of course, kettlebell swing, hard to judge, but you could have it. What is that, Caleb, you're looking at? Was that on the rogue site? Oh.

Oh, wow. Anything in here that surprises you in this list? I don't know. are we watching something um the one thing that i would still say and we talked about this with regards to zelos games because we decided to use a bike and i've been talking about it for a couple years i do think especially when you have multiple stages of testing for the season, and in some cases, it being the entirety of their season still, but in other cases, even for the age groups where it's everyone but 10 athletes is eliminated in an online format, that it's okay to broaden the scope of testing within the monostructural domain.

So we've had rowing forever double unders forever but in in particular i'm basically talking about machines like are we ever gonna see a skier or a bike of some kind be a part of the online programming for the crossfit games and i think that the big red flag is well maybe not everyone has those which is why i consistently said, so put it out two years ahead of time. So if you say, here's the equipment list for 2023. By the way, for 2024, skiing is going to be an option. And for 2025, Rogue Echo bike is going to be in play or whatever it is. That should give plenty of people time to get those things.

I think most people would be able to have access to them anyway. And it just gives them a little bit more diversity. Obviously the shuttle run gives a little more diversity in that time domain that we are programming domain that we now have as a possibility. But, um, does your, does your gym have all three,

um, uh, pieces of equipment, the erg, the bike and the rower. And I personally own one of each. And they're at the gym. Oh, no shit.

We have three ski ergs, three seat tube bikes, 12 rowers, and 12 echo bikes. And one of those in each category is yours? You let other people use it? Well, that's nice of you. That's weird that you own all those. Why did you buy those? Just try to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

I know, but you – okay. I might go into that. All right. What about the floor space, 25 feet? Does that guarantee that there's going to be shuttle run or handstand walk or something that requires more space before we ever had shuttle runs or handstand walking in the open we had overhead walking lunge with the barbell as i meant you know you could do walking lunges with dumbbells we had those you could do with a kettlebell walking lunge so there's a variety of different things that

could be done with that space. They have had bear crawls too. Is there anything on the list that you're like, hey, that's ridiculous. That shouldn't be required. Let's see the list real quick. Brian, the online age group is already strength bias, which usually means bigger, stronger guys have advantage. They need to increase skills tests. Yeah, I've spoken about this too i have a guy at my gym who's in his 60s and can do 10 unbroken ring muscle-ups more than that bauer muscle-ups he can do freestanding handstand push-ups strict

handstand push-ups skipping handstand push-ups but in his age division they get programmed what i call surplus handstand push-ups where he has to go two or three inches above parallel to do handstand push-ups it's the hardest thing or three inches above parallel to do handstand pushups. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to judge. He's literally just going, locking out his elbow at the rate of one per second or something like that. And he never has a chance to show his high, high skill gymnastics because he can't make it through the strength bias testing that this guy's talking about to get to the top 30, where they finally will test some high level of gymnastics. So that's definitely a problem within the older demographics of programming

that maybe Adrian will be able to, um, to help kind of blend the, the bias. What's the solution? Just make the weights lighter. Or if you're going to have weights that are that heavy for those guys, then you,

then you can't also be afraid to program things like handstand, walking, strict handstand, pushups, ring muscle-ups. The way you program them is important. So you don't put them as the first movement, but you put them so that if you don't have these things, by the end of the workout, you're going to be paid for it, like they did with ring muscle-ups in that chipper workout back in 2014. 60, 40, 30, 60, 50, 40, 30.

Everyone could do. And then you get to the 20 ring muscle-ups at the end, and there's a time cap. And some people get the first one. Some people get numb. Some people get through them and go back again. Savant, can you do ring muscle-ups? More than you.

Twice as many strict as you can do. So however many that is. God, I hope you can't do that many. That's like my only thing I can do. Why would they do kettlebell? Why would they have kettlebells and dumbbells if the only workout they were going to use the kettlebells for would be farmer's carry. Do you know what I'm saying? Why do you even need kettlebell?

Is it that different than the dumbbell? You could do all those things. The only thing you can't do with the – yeah, you could do it all. I mean, they're definitely not going to do kettlebell swings, right? I don't know. I think about like the alpaca workout from the games this past year. We had kettlebell clean and jerks. Kettlebell clean and jerks are very different than dumbbell clean and jerk. And it requires a little bit of

practice with that implement to do it well. The weights sit differently. Like the way that the weight is actually distributed within the object is different from a kettlebell to a dumbbell. The grip's a little bit different. So several, you know, there's a lot of different, I think there's small variations, but also variations between those two things. Sometimes I think the kettlebell might just be a gimmick. I mean, look, I think the kettlebell is a phenomenal training tool. Is it the best thing to use for competition? I don't know.

All right. Can you pull up the list one more time, Mr. Beaver? I want to say this. I think it's great to have the list of equipment put out early. As far as the locations and giving out that stuff, it's cool that it's out early. I don't think it's as necessary or deserves any sort of kind of like major props because the truth is i don't think just making this up i have no data on this i don't think even half of the people who go to these events will even decide they're going to go until after the semi-finals are even over you mean after the quarterfinals are over once the summer yeah yeah sorry right right i don't know i think

that's i think that's a little different than it was last year. I mean, one of the reasons why something like a Torian Pro in Australia would sell out so fast is because they know everyone's going to be there. Okay, okay. In North America last year, we had no idea. You did not know. It took 39 days after quarterfinals before they announced a semifinal list and then they were making backfills and then they were still making changes to it it was getting ridiculous how could you possibly expect people to plan for that what crossfit has promised this year is that by the

time the open starts you will know for sure what semifinal you or anyone else will compete in if you make it there okay i like that okay i you Okay. I, you know what? I'll buy that. I'll give that a chance. So we just did the old, um, a horse and carriage thing, which came first. You're saying that maybe it was the, we have to be open to the fact that maybe it was the delay and knowing where they were going to be that affected attendance. Whereas I was saying, it doesn't matter because people only go based on the athletes that are going there. Okay. Yeah. So I'll buy that. We will, you know, for example, if you're thinking about going to the North American West semifinal, unless these people move within the next six weeks, you're going to get to see Justin Medeiros, Pat Belner, Brent Fikowski, Cole Sager. I mean, I'm not, I know I'm missing some people, but you know where they're going to be.

And if you know, if you go to the East, you you know you're going to get most of the top women in north america and if you're in europe you're getting everyone so you and by the way someone asked in the comments if berlin is a good host for crossfit games yes and they've hosted major events there before there's some uh competition organizers that are very experienced and also well ingrained within crossfit that are in germany uh and i expect that german i personally think that the german semi-final will be the best semi-final this year i buy a lot you because of the competition everything about everything about it yeah the organizers the competition i think it's going to be like extremely extremely good and if i was in europe i would be trying to find a way to get there for sure uh you know what's interesting too though is you do the games in a city like madison and the games take over you use the games in a city like berlin and the games don't take over i'm

very curious what it's going to look like in pasadena because the games could take over that city it is it's a suburb of los angeles um but it might be a really cool place to have it because everywhere you go in every hotel will be full of crossfitters where it won't be like that in necessarily berlin or uh or maybe even rio it's a good a relevant question from Anthony TPA. Will Roman be forced to go to semis in Asia? What if Russia keeps him? So the details of surrounding this rule are not perfectly understood yet, but no, there's answer for Roman. I mean, they've already been pretty, they've actually CrossFit. I think either Justin or Adrian has identified him by name as

an example of someone who they want to make sure to be able to accommodate for so i think that there's a 99 chance that roman will be at the orlando semi-final on week one and so here's the thing because you didn't ask me this earlier that's the reason why i think that the distribution of the game spots this year is flawed. And I asked Adrian and Justin about this on a press conference. If it were me this year, I would have guaranteed every semifinal one game spot for the men, one game spot for the women and the teams. I don't have as strong an opinion about. Reason being, if Roman doesn't compete in Asia, you cannot make any argument to me outside of participation numbers, which I don't really put a lot of value in, that they deserve

two spots on the men's side at the games. And I've put something up on my Instagram the day they announced that showing this. Additionally, if he is competing in North America, instantly, instantly the North American is semi-final. He's competing and should get an extra spot. And that spot should come from Asia, but it's not because the only game spots that they've taken away to redistribute are from North America and Europe. It's a five each from tech, you know,

technically from the ones they got rid of altogether. And they kept the three in Australia or Oceania. They kept the three in, or the two in South America, two in Asia and one in Africa. But they've also introduced this ranking system that we don't know about. And so to me, it's like, it's year one, everyone gets one. People have the opportunity to petition, to compete in regions where they're not necessarily citizens based on these extraneous circumstances, which we know exist out there. And there are other athletes besides Roman that will have an opportunity to go through that petition process and be granted the ability to compete somewhere else. Everyone's complaining. Oceania needs more women. Not necessarily. Not necessarily.

If Tia is approved to compete in the U.S., if Cara doesn't compete this year, if Jamie Simmons is approved to compete in Europe, and if Ellie Turner is approved to compete in the U.S., which some of those might happen, we don't know yet, then absolutely not. They do not need any more game spots. But if they're all competing there, then they definitely do. But we don't know yet. So just give everyone one. This is what I thought they should have done. Give everyone one and let the open and the quarterfinals this year determine where the other 33 spots go for this year. And then you can build onto that system for next year.

Stefan, are you doing the open and age group or adaptive division? If they do, if they have a genderless division, since I don't have a gender, I will do that. I mean that with all sincerity. Brian, can anyone take advantage of the fact that if Roman competes in the United States, could someone who is concerned about their qualifying in the U.S. go to Asia and compete over there? Pretty unlikely. Now, we don't know for sure, but pretty unlikely.

And I know that you said we were talking about where the games are going to be in 2024, and you were saying that you weren't certain on it because it hadn't been published anywhere besides Morning Chalk Up, and you haven't heard anything from the games yet about it being in Birmingham, Alabama. But you do seem confident that Roman will be staying in the U S to compete. Yeah. That's because I think it was Justin Berg spoke publicly and brought him, brought Roman up by name without being asked about him by name, that that's clearly a person that they considered when they were writing this rule to allow for whatever these circumstances are to compete outside of the country where you're a citizen in or outside of the continent where you have citizenship.

And I personally like this. I don't know what the amount of time should be, Vancouver, Fort Vancouver, Washington, that she has to, and she's, she has a domicile there that she has to go back to Australia to compete. Do you have any thoughts on that? I agree. And I think that the system that I just outlined accounts for all of that. I do too. Because then no matter what it is, whether it's a relationship, a new coaching environment, just the fact that you want to go and live somewhere else and you have the means to do it, that you can live freely wherever you want to live, train freely wherever you want to train.

You register for the Open in a location and you're locked into that location for the season. The Open and the quarterfinals in some capacity, which everyone has to do the same test at the same time, will determine the allocation of the rest of the spots. And that's already accounting for where everyone is, which you don't know ahead of time and you won't know ahead of time. Johnny says Chandler should go to Africa to compete.

That would be fucking, I would love to just, I would love, there's things I would love to see just for the sake of the drama. I would love to see that him try to do that. And I also would love to see if I really want to see a man try to compete in the women's division. Just dying to see how that unfolds. It's going to be fun. I have to go. Okay. One more question.

Will you be commentating any of the semifinals this year? If I were a betting man, I would not bet on that, but I would love to. And I would – I actually – I was hoping to do Australia, honestly. I think that would be really fun to do with Jeremy Austin. So I'm just putting that out there. Okay. Brian will be going to Australia this year for the semifinals with Jeremy Austin. We will speak it into reality. So just putting that out there. CrossFit has said that they're working intimately with Europe, North America, like basically they're managing all of those and the others that they're giving people in those areas the opportunity to do them or work with them on them, which I don't know exactly what that means. But we've seen a variety of different quality of live streams coming out of some of the other semifinals.

OK, the past two years. When will we do the rankings? When's the next rankings coming out and which rankings is it uh i will do top i think top 100 men and top 100 women heading into the 2023 season that'll be in early february before the open after wadapalooza okay after wadapalooza and will you be doing it on this show? That's the plan. I'll probably publish an article on Bar Bend and take a deep dive with you. And the top 100, do they have to be active? Do my best to have, yes, active and only participating in the individual season. Is Kyle Kasperbauer top 100 of all time?

Of all time, for sure. But we're not talking about all time. I know. I heard his name earlier. I just want to say. Okay. And who is going to win the CrossFit Games in 2023? Tia.

And what guy is going to win? I think Roman. Fair enough. Bye-bye. See you guys either later on tonight. I don't know what's going on i haven't looked at the schedule uh for sure you'll see me tomorrow morning at 7 a.m brian friend thank you for coming on always fun brian when are you going to do a pro disc golf uh show or tournament too

late we're leaving he's not answering bye