The Sevan Podcast - #772 - Rich Froning & Brian Friend from the Mayhem Empire

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

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Oh, I see. You think you can just bring anyone on the show with you, huh? Damn, we're live. I asked and you ignored me, so I sent an invite. Oh, did you ask? Yeah, good. Oh, yes, of course, bring Facundo. Of course.

I assume that was your answer. Forgive me. I like the way you've just moved just to the side enough. Facundo framed it so I can just look at Rich the whole show. Rich Sr., that is. What's up? Good afternoon. Yes.

Are you guys in the same room? Can you guys see each other? Nope. How close are you guys? I'd say 50 feet. And separated by doors and walls and hallways and stuff? So this used to be our former conference room. And now it's part of the shop.

And Brian is sitting on the conference room where actually generally you have the podcast with Rich. Yeah. God, Rich is such a needle mover. Every time he comes on the show, it's just crazy what it does to the show and the numbers. Are they doing a podcast at Mayhem or they stopped doing that? They're going to start again. They have stopped doing it last year because we didn't have enough time to do that. That's very time consuming, as you well know, Sevan. I do, yes. Yeah. So I think that they're going to start doing it very soon with your permission no you not my permission absolutely not hey facundo is there

um is there a good drama around the podcast like people like who just like they stand around the door and they're like uh you know maybe i should be on it sometime or like you know some guy wants to be on it no one wants to have that guy on it. Like you just see every time like it's 10 a.m. and Tyler Cristofal is standing by the door. So what are you guys doing? I think that Brian already knows Mayhem very well as to answer that question.

Yeah. Are the people just jockeying Rich to get on the show? But, you know, it's just the him and Ellie show and it's like, yo, everyone else back the fuck off and there's an interesting dynamic here everyone has their own uh the way that they fit in here's what i think here's what i would be doing the whole time if i was at mayhem i'd be trying to pretend like i was cool but didn't care what where rich was or what he's doing but i'd always be within 10 feet of him but But just acting like I don't give a shit. You know what I mean? Oh, Rich, what are you

doing here? I think that we all spend so much time with Rich that we do our own thing. But he's here, and he's a super fun guy to be around with. So when he's here, we enjoy his company. And here and he's a super fun guy to be a guy to be around uh with so when he's here we enjoy his company and actually he has a very um structured way he's having his breakfast

in the coffee store every day at the same time so if you want to run into rich you know to come at that time at the coffee store and he's going to be there oh that's cool i wonder if there's people who've been going there like three years and they've never seen him like they don't even believe he's real he's like snuffleupagus you know what i mean are you sure rich works out here what surprises me is that people not foreigners from europe or from south america that said oh we were on the on the area and we came to see if rich was around oh really where were you Where were you? We were in New York. So we drove back down here. But that's like many hours. Yeah, I know. But, you know, maybe Rich is here and sometimes he's here and it's a bit of a, you know, they get very nervous and stressed instead of going and said,

hey, Rich, I'm a big fan or whatever they want to say. Start like, but, but, but, but, but, and they don't dare to take the picture and after 10 hours drive so to ask for a picture at least some many years ago i don't remember what the number was but it was thousands of dollars someone told me that they told the people at their gym that they were going to go to pass by cookville actually i think they drove like 90 miles out of the way to cookville just to um stop at mayhem and they had collected money from all the people at their gym to buy shirts and it was like in the thousands of dollars and they stopped there just to buy shirts for everyone at their gym i was like that is awesome that's that still happens i think yeah yeah it's so freaking cool that was the last time I was here was 2015.

And it was something like that. I actually didn't even really know where Cookville was in Tennessee, but I was driving from my grandmother's house in Johnson city, which is in the Northeast all the way across the state to make my way back down to Texas. And I saw a sign for Cookville. So I was like, you know what? I might as well drop in, see if I can work out there. And I did and bought a bunch of shirts for my friends. And that was eight years ago. Yeah, yeah. That's about when I heard the story. And it probably still happens every day. I want to buy stock in Mayhem, in the Mayhem Empire.

Is there a Mayhem Empire shirt? No, no. We are working hard. I don't think we have an empire empire an empire shirt put that who designs the shirts who can i talk to you're not the right guy facundo no certainly not you're too humble for a mayhem empire shirt yeah no exactly and i will not be the sort of enough no the you know dre dre some uh our champion, former champion 2018, no, 19, sorry. He's still the designer of most of our t-shirts, so he's

very talented. I'm going to DM him. Yeah? He doesn't have Instagram. He doesn't? He doesn't, no. Wow. He's the only person working at Mayhem that does not have an Instagram account. I thought that he did have it. I thought they tagged him on something the other day.

Is he a Scientologist or a Jehovah Witness or Amish? What the fuck's up? What's he doing? No, I don't know. I think he's just Dre. I got you. Okay. He's just like that. He's happy.

Manny Serrano. I had a few drinks with Manny in Newport a year or so ago. Facundo, I keep celebrating Argentina and Messier's World Cup. Congrats. Me too. Me too. I mean, it's funny.

You know, I was telling Brian the other day, I was in Argentina for the World Cup. And during the match between Argentina and Netherlands, people, we were entering an Airbnb and people up in the floor above us start jumping and the ceiling came down on us. We just saw, we were sitting watching the match. I can show you a picture.

We were watching the match with one of my athletes and she's from Spain. And she was like oh that's a weird noise and it it sounded like like they move a table right from from above and like 30 seconds later she started crying it's cracking it's cracking up and we saw a massive crack on the ceiling like running through and we jump and i really believe that you know i thought well this is it you know what had a great life yeah let me see the picture uh but uh i'll but um i uh i need to wear my glasses sorry i mean i want to be decent for the camera but i will not be able to see anything without the glasses um facundo one year uh at the uh cross Games, this is when it was in L.A., one of my staff members at the after party got so drunk.

Wow, let me see that. So. Holy shit. I was sitting on the gray couch and Rita was sitting on the sofa and she started shouting, you know's falling apart it's falling apart and we jumped i mean it doesn't look so bad in this picture but it looks pretty bad dude it looks pretty bad when you see a massive crack on the ceiling opening you didn't know you don't know what is the whole building falling on you with people there yeah just the you know a part of this the ceiling but yeah um thank you for the 499 anyways manny uh jonathan ortega

hola facundo hola jonathan what do you think about i want to tell you the story about uh carson real quick but first i want to ask you is what do you think about the is is if i see someone and i think they're mexican is it okay to say hola to them? Just like, like just around Santa Cruz, like I'm in Starbucks and I'm like, you know, like if I saw like some random guy in Starbucks, I might be like, hey, what's up, dude? Just like, you know, just ran.

But if I look at him and I'm like, yep, that dude's name is definitely Paco. I should be like, hola. I think Spanish people are amazing. Latin American people are amazing. I would be happy if somebodya. I think Spanish people are amazing. Latin American people are amazing. I would be happy if somebody speaks to me in Spanish. So I'm not sure why would somebody get upset to be mistaken with a Mexican. We have a Mexican here this weekend, a guest of our camp.

He's one of my favorite people that I have met recently. I think he's going to be a mayhem athlete someday. I mean, Brian? and uh i think he's going to be a mayhem athlete someday i mean brian do you guys have an age limit on how old someone can be when they come in he's going to be old by the time he gets to you like sorry your window closed it's like the military if you're over 25 we don't take you no no we had 17 masters this year the games okay we we don't do that jason grubb yet yeah um yes okay so there was this employee that worked for me and um she got wasted at the after party that that crossfit would throw i think it was in carson i think it was LA. Yes. It was, it was at that Marriott there. And so that night she went up into her hotel room and she started a bath

and she climbed into the bath and she fell asleep in there. And a couple hours later she hears banging on her door and it's security. And she had passed out in the bathtub and the bathtub had overflowed and started draining floors down, many, many floors down. And it was $30,000 damage to her hotel room. I signed off on it. Eh, whatever. It's only 10 affiliate fees for a year, whatever. Exactly.

Yeah, just pay that shit. You don't fire someone for that, right? One fuck up drunk in the bathtub? Oh, no. At least you need to have three of them. On the fourth, then you can consider it. But everybody should be free to, you know, Miranda. No, it was not Miranda.

She never worked for me. I don't think she ever worked in the media department. But I think if I worked for Miranda now, I think she'd give me a pass. So Brian, are you tired? I'm doing some media now. I am exhausted. Yes.

He looks a little tired. You know what? I was going to ask him if he's been drinking, his eyes look a little puffy, but his eyes look a little puffy. I'm exhausted. Yeah. Super.

You don't look bad. You don't look bad. You just look vulnerable. I mean, I'm here with two of my good friends, so not upset about that. So what happened? Why are you tired? Just working out 24 hours a day? No, but it was a lot more volume in four days than I would usually do.

And it's Saturday there and it's 3.30 for you guys, 3.20? 2.20. Okay. And why are you tired? You stayed out late last night and got up early this morning? No, I've gotten a lot of sleep, but we did another big workout this morning. Just tired. The volume here seems to be catching up on Brian.

I thought Facundo was throwing me an alley-oop right there. I thought he was like, Brian, you look tired. Like, get him, Sevan. No, I'm not even close. No? He trained. He trained. I'm very surprised.

I'm very proud of him because he did like 95% of the work we did in the last days. No? I would say less than that but i'm being generous and um uh and he he he man up and he you know he's been working up with the big shots here with the big dudes with the big girls too strong girls and mostly with the girls mostly with the girls but strong girls you know in any case have you been and mostly with the girls mostly with the girls but strong girls have you been jumping in with the girls like trying to keep up with some of the girls yeah uh almost all the workouts i would do the women's weights or the women's calories um and but in terms of uh like partner work work to rest some with the guys some of the girls and is there any do you have you beat anyone there in any workouts?

It wasn't really a competitive atmosphere in that regard. At least that's how they communicated it up front. I think some of the athletes were a little bit competitive with each other at times. But my main objective was to make it through all four days of training. And I kind of tried to make sure to approach every session and every set within every workout. Do you think you beat Bailey Rail in any workouts this week? Maybe on some of the intervals on machines.

No shit? I don't know. It's hard to tell, but I on the the first conditioning piece we did i was next to i think britney weiss the entire time and our paces were very similar that's good you must be proud of that that's crazy I mean, there's a lot of factors in play, but I'm taller and heavier than the women, so I think on the machines I should be okay. Yeah, but you're just a normal human. I'm a normal human, that's right. Have you gone in the pond over at Rich Seniors?

No, it's very cold here. It's very cold. Does that pond freeze ever, Facundo? No, it doesn't freeze, but it gets very cold. To be honest, maybe it does. I'm not sure. I've never seen it frozen. Maybe I should have gone in there before this to wake myself up.

We still have a couple of hours. It's just going to be dry from here. Hey, have you played Frisbee golf with him, Facundo, with Brian? Have you guys gone out and played any Frisbee golf? He went yesterday. He didn't invite me. He said he was going to work and for a nap, and I was here working, and then he came back, and he was with all his –

No, you were hosting that optional skill session, and I thought that was very valuable for some of the athletes. But not for you. It would have been very valuable for some of the athletes. But not for you. It would have been very valuable for me, but it was 65 degrees. I brought all my discs on this trip and I hadn't used them yet, so I had to go play.

Did they have a course there? Yeah, they had a good course. They do? Yeah, it's a college town. Of course they do. There are a couple nine-hole courses, including one at Tennessee Tech, but this course is just in a park in the northwest side of town.

Oops, Brian looked insulted about – no, he doesn't get – I don't think Brian gets insulted unless – no, he doesn't get insulted. Tries his rich son, for those who don't know that. Yeah, he got beat by a four-year-old. How old is that kid now? Four, six, eight? Four. Four. Facundo, it's official.

Roman is part of the Mayhem camp now? It is official. Roman is part of the Mayhem Athlete family, and we are very happy to have him here. He's been around. He has a tooth infection, so he's been around he he has a tooth infection so he's a bit struggling at the moment with that but he uh he came a couple of times and he he's having a great time and we are very uh happy to have him here because he's

Roman is a very nice person to be around to have around and, you know, an amazing athlete. So we are cherishing the time we're spending with him here. Where does he live? Does he live close by? Is he in an apartment? He rented a house. It's close by. Well, this is not a big city.

Cookville, you know, everything is five, ten minutes drive. And so he rented a house with uh his wife the son the two two dogs and uh he uh he the whole time here actually mayhem training i'm sorry did you say two dogs two dogs yeah how long has he been in the country i don't know how that happened how long has he been in the country? Well, he came here just before the games, maybe in May last year. So I don't know how many months. He did not get the dogs here. He brought them here.

Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Are you fucking kidding me? They're Russian dogs? That's what I've been told. No shit. How does that... You come from Russia and then you just pack your dogs up and bring your dog, I guess.

I think it was difficult to get him here, actually. But it was important to him that he was able to. Like they get quarantined. I can imagine that it was more complicated to get the dogs a visit than Roman. Yeah. To get a dog into the States, it's not easy. Sevan asked Philippe Borowski. Borowski.

Borowski. Sevan asked Roman to come. Thank you, Mr. Facundo. Sevan asked Roman to come on the podcast. You can ask him about that. I did, and he was going to come on, and then he uninvited himself. But I think I just have to invite him again, right, Facundo? For sure.

But as I said before, he's struggling this week with his tooth, so he's not doing very well. hopefully next week is going to be better he has a bad tooth yeah it's fine he he wrote back to me in the um dms he said i said well thanks for responding and we'll try again later and he wrote back no problem but when i read it i read it in russian i hear it in a russian accent no problem like like ivan like drago and rocky no i must break you the first morning that he showed up he walked in and uh he looked at he said i ready let's go oh yeah that's great the business yeah he doesn't he just comes in and wants to get the work done he he doesn't you know many people here take the time

that the mobility they prepare themselves have their coffee and roman is like okay let's go and the first the first workout that we did it was uh sets of ghds and rope climbs and wall balls and it was it was intimidating watching his pace. Just being there. Yeah. He was with Agustin Riquelme, and they lapped us. Jay Crouch had, like, someone put mushrooms in his food after working out with Roman. You could tell that he was, uh physically inspired uh by that team between him and willie

george's jay crouch was like thought he had died and gone to heaven he really liked and he told a funny story you know before the show started facundo before the event started i don't remember who it was i think it was brian or john young was like dude Jay Crouch is world class at muscle ups. And then we interviewed Jay Crouch afterwards. And he's like, yeah, I wanted to do the we all wanted to do the muscle ups and sets of five. And Roman's like, no, 10. And they're like, no, five. I would say that Roman is a guy that enjoys much more competition than training. I work with artists who love the process of training,

spending time in the gym and talking and even doing the fitness part. And I feel that Roman is a guy that really does that just for being able to go to compete and achieve what he wants to achieve. It's really pure work for him. I'm sure that if he could not come from time to time, he would gladly stay home.

With the dogs. With the dogs and his son. But yeah, I mean, I believe it's going to be a good year for him. He feels very well. He feels very happy. bit here for him he's he's he feels very well he feels very happy he's um he feels that he's now his mind is solely um occupied in training and his you know fitness and his skills uh so we'll see hopefully uh this year he shows what he's able to do hey is oh shit that's great.

Wow. Hey, dude, his neck's gonna be hurt. You gotta push him up against a wall or something. Is that chair on wheels? Is that poor Patrick Clark? Why is he so tired? Tell him to do this. He's good.

He's alright. No, that's... He's gonna fixate himself hey um how about this facundo um is gee there he's here man there um did did gee shit the bed at um what happened to gee did gee shit the bed there was all we were speculating he had a rough day and then he had a great lift and and then he ended strong, right? He ended strong at Guadalupe? Yeah, the second day was really good. There were these questions that, like, my interpretation –

You don't have to sugarcoat it. Go for it. Was he just sitting around doing blow and fucking bitches in brazil or what like what was he doing over there like yeah uh he like what he just the speculation was that he just came there without unprepared that he just rolled in off the street like just scratching his nuts through on a shirt and got in the mix well not true okay good but uh yeah i mean he he was home. He was dealing with some family stuff, some personal issues. Nothing negative, but, you know, he was busy doing something else. Life, like everybody else have. And he was still training, maybe not with, you know,

the dynamic that we have here because here we just live for that. So we just train. But, you know, sometimes I feel as a coach that it just that it doesn't work like okay competition time three to one go and then you are your peak some people you know get a little bit time a little bit of time to warm up to the competition mode i think at the first day he might not have felt very inspired i he was not fully healthy, which is not an excuse, but he was not feeling I can give the best of myself today. So I think he, he was a little bit holding back and I was thinking he went to bed and he realized, okay, man, I'm here. We better, you know, make it happen, make it work.

And he, he had a very good second day. I think that the handstand walk, the handstand hold was a bit of an accident, a problem. But otherwise, he would have had quite good overall placements on the second day. Is 395 a PR, clean injury form? Apparently, yes. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy and did he express any concern about the environment that he was doing it in that he was sandwiched between a hard rock and a and a eight ball or a rock and a whatever that is kitchen sink however that saying goes look for that he is very clever he's very aware what his body is up to do with a barrel on every given day so i think he warmed up he saw where his strength was

and he went for it and uh it worked out well very well for him very well there was there's i mean people i mean the jackasses in the chat where i hang out were like he can do 4 000 pounds he should have gone for 400 and i I'm like, dude, he just did 395. Like what did we just – sandwiched in between the railing, crowd on two sides of him, and then people lifting all around him. I mean it was – I mean it was the kind of environment where Daniel Brandon would punch someone if they got that close to her. You know what I mean? Like while she's lifting. Yeah.

And you would think that Guy would have some of that being that he's so good at lifting you know like have some sort of crazy ritual or prima donna shit nothing can be in his eyesight and he's just sandwiched in there on the side of the cage doing 395 I mean were you blown away I was blown away no no okay no but uh I was blown away with that he's how he swam he swam very well it was a good walker for him and uh you know yeah i was surprised that he was able to have a such a bad day go to bed and wake up with a completely different mindset and was ready to say okay i'm not going to let what happened yesterday you know uh happen today once more or i need to change my whole thing and And, you know, honestly, it's not very easy to do that. We know of many athletes that go to the games,

whichever competition with a lot of, you know, self-confidence and after one bad, two events, one bad day, they never recover. And we all said, yeah, well, you know, when things don't go their way. And it is a good skill to be able to, you know, sleep, wake up, change everything and go and, you know, do whatever you have to do. I'm trying to find the Wadapalooza leaderboard. Hey, he had to deal with medical the first day, twice. We saw medical with him twice.

As a matter of fact, after one of the events by the bay in the alleyway where the on the right side of the stage where the athletes come and go everyone had left and he was actually just lying in the alleyway kind of like cockeyed with medical around him i think i saw someone pour water on his head ryan i just wanted to work in the word cockeyed, by the way. That was a great use of that word. Thank you. Go ahead, Brian. Sorry.

Celebrating my word. I didn't know that, but I know the first two workouts were very difficult. And I think I'm not entirely sure what happened in the first workout, but I think that physically his body wasn't responding as he was expecting it to so maybe just you know um wanted to make sure everything was okay so he got some attention from those guys that's what they're there for no no no it wasn't like that i'm telling you he was laying down in a spot where you don't lay down unless like you like well that's the first that i've heard of it so okay back to you facundo facundo don't throw and don't don't throw he's only five six and you threw him an alley-oop

brian couldn't dunk that one he's a three-point shooter through pass to the outside well we were happy to have brian here uh this weekend i'm asking you about fucking geese collapse i know i know i know i know i wasn't there i didn't go to miami this year so you weren't there wait you weren't there no i was not there oh that's right you had to choose one mayhem or wadapalooza exactly so um uh i chose mayhem and uh but i i mean of course. That was a no-brainer though, right? I mean, this is home for me.

This is my second home. I enjoy it here very much. Most of my friends are here. And I was very excited to start the 2023 season with this camp, with our athletes, to talk to them, to see what they were up to, what their plans were for this year, and to set out some guidelines for the training. And that's what I came to

do. And he went, I'm happy on the result. I can't find fucking, I can't, I don't even know how to do the leaderboard. I am just a ding-dong. Ask one question, I'll send it to you i'm here

um what is this camp uh facundo is this like a is this is this time of year always the time of year that you guys do a camp or is this kind of just like spur of the moment like what what what brought all these people together i think it was a good time after without a loser to you know to meet and talk to our athletes and say well guys what are you up to what are your goals some people want to go team some people want to go individual some people really want to work with specific aspects of their training. And for us, it's very important to have the space of dialogue with our athletes and, you know, start the season as it should somehow. So it was more like a gathering, like let's meet in Cookville and have a talk.

There are some South American athletes that came, Brazilians, Argentinians, from Uruguay, from Chile. As anybody knows, it's my biggest pleasure to be able to go to Latin America. Don't break anything, Brian, please. The Latin American CrossFit world.

And yeah, so it was just that. It was just a get together and start training for the season. And is it, you let them know a month in advance, like, hey, you guys are going to be here for, you guys are traveling from all over the world. You might as well,

if you can stay an extra five days, come out to Cookville. Some people came to Guadalupalooza and then it was kind of maybe a right time to say, why don't we spend some days after that in Cookeville? Right, okay. And it's not necessarily, so what I'm hearing from you is it's not necessarily a training camp.

It's a time for you and the other coaches to get some face time with your athletes. Exactly. Okay, I like that. So we're looking at gee he got a 20th a 36th a 10 a 10th, a 26th, and then a 1st. And that was at the end of day one, right? I think that the 1st was the first event of the second day. Oh, okay. And then he got a 36th, a 5th, and a 4th, and a 12th.

So all of a sudden he just started kicking ass again. And that 36th, as Brian taught me, doesn't really count in the big scheme of things because it's probably he's probably four seconds away from six right because it's it was such a short time domain exactly you can't no that's the uh that's the handstand hold on the parallettes oh so it's one that was 1.5. That's a second and a half. Poor Guy. Yeah. Oh, shit. Yeah. I mean, it's still irrelevant.

Judging his health. If you're looking at the second day of competition and you take the other four workouts are certainly workouts that you could definitely see show up in any given competition. And fifth, you know, fifth, fourth twelfth and first is very good day of competition all right uh and when is guy now in uh so prior to wadapalooza guy was in um the great country of brazil and now is he in at mayhem for good until the games exactly he rips off semifinals well because then he has to go back there and to compete Until the games? Exactly. Until semifinals. Oh, because then he has to go back there to compete?

Yeah, I mean, I assume he'd keep going. He would go to Brazil for maybe 10 days, depends on the weather, before Copa Azul. And then he's going to fly immediately back to Cucubil to prepare himself, if that's the uh, to cook bill to prepare himself. If that's the case to the CrossFit games, I want to have a very, um, Oh,

okay. That's great. So, so, okay. So we're going to get another look at him for the open. And, and he,

that is the water please was just to knock the rust off a guy, some Brazilian rust. Yeah. But I mean, like, yeah, obviously he'll do the open in the quarterfinals he'll go to the

semifinal in south america and and we still won't know how good he is because it's the semifinals in south america yeah the next big benchmark for him will be the crossfit games he's had two top finishes the last two years he took a small step backwards last year in terms of the overall rankings i don't think he wants to do that again. From the time I've spent with him here, he's been very straightforward about the fact that he's setting himself up this year to try to focus on the things that he feels have held him back the most. He has a lot of intentional parts of his training that are built towards that. But I don't think we'll really know until the CrossFit games come around.

Um, okay. Let's have three very honest, uh, conversations. Okay. Very difficult, but very honest.

Okay. Uh, here we go. Uh, what's the champ's name? Justin. Justin. Justin.

Okay. Number one. This is the easy one. This one's hard for you guys to be honest about. Then we're going to have a tough, we're going to have a long hour. No, Noah,

Noah, fuck that lift all up. He, he, he, he tried for a clean and he tried for, was it a clean? Oh,

he was going for an overhead squat number three rep overhead squat and i saw him the next day at his gym and he was still feeling very bad about that yeah let's make him feel worse for it what the fuck is going on that is like one of the most seasoned capable that if someone would have told you six years ago that guy's gonna win the crossfit games no one would bet against it. I mean, he was always a fucking threat. I mean, are you guys – how does that happen? Why didn't he just – what do you think happened that you could be just one of the greatest ever – I mean, he's the top ten best ever of all time to do it, right? Sometimes it just happens. I mean, I think he felt very confident with the first lift

when you only get two lifts and you miss the first one things change quite a bit and i saw that happen to many athletes over the course of the 12 heats some of them ended up backing off to a very conservative number just to get something on the board and i think he felt confident that with the second attempt that he would get the new weight that he chose and i quite frankly i think he was shocked that he didn't i think he was totally shocked he looked like he had seen a ghost both times he really did if you're what would you tell do you as a coach do you tell your guy after he fucks up the first 325 even if you've seen him do 375, do you be like, hey, dude, just do 300? Yeah, no, I mean, I'll try to create situations during the training period in which athlete is able to make clever decisions when that's the case i mean uh you know i i think that these things are spoken

before between coach and athlete uh but it may happen many times i remember at the games uh remember um zeban we used to work together 2014 the swim event and immediately you are so far below me then i wouldn't have even talked to you don't ever say we worked together in 2014 please yeah maybe you said give me coffee that's fine yes uh all my coffee's cold but um uh i there was a 3rm uh of her squad event at the game after the the swim and many people felt confident on the first lift and then they failed all the following lifts some people never get a lift uh i remember jordan trojan just won the swim event and that's right he didn't score anything at all and he kept using the same way going up back and down with the weights so and they got three tries right is that what you said for kundo

yeah that's crazy uh annie almost fucked that up too right yeah and i think that well then then rich i think rich tied with Fraser, and then he wanted to put 400, and then he failed. But it was, you know. Was it Fraser or was it Hackenbrook? No, it was three of them. The three of them were going back and forth. Hackenbrook went for 400 and missed it.

Fraser and Froning ended up tying on that event. I think that it was Jeff Evans, actually, who was 375. And then if I remember correctly. But anyways, yeah, I mean, it was Jeff Evans, actually, who was 375. And then if I remember correctly. But anyways, yeah, I mean, it is important that an athlete face those situations in training. So, you know, it comes very natural for him to decide in competition what's the most clever thing to do. But yeah, I mean, it's a pity. And Noah is such a great guy. Did he give you a reason when you spoke to him, Brian,

like when you said he was feeling bad, like, did he say my shoulder hurt or I don't know what happened or. I didn't, I didn't really pursue it. He was, like I said, pretty sad about it. And for Kundo, that, that event, Fraser and Froning had 377 pounds, Hackenbrook, 376, Jeff Evans, 375. Yeah. Crazy. Oh. And I remember they were playing that game. Froning had 377 pounds. Hackenbrook, 376. Jeff Evans, 375. There you go. Thank you.

Crazy. Oh, and I remember they were playing that game. They were looking at each other and fiddling. I think Tommy Hackenbrook started it, like fiddling with his weights. Like, fuck you guys. I'm going to get you. Because he was going first every round relative to them. And he definitely put 400 on the bar and tried to get it overhead, but he was unable to complete the lift.

Okay. Fair. Noah, we love you no uh tia claire to me what what a uh absolutely remarkable uh human being we'll never know really who she truly is until she comes on this podcast and let me do a full examination of her uh with all of my medical tools but until then we must speculate with her gone what types of things does it do to the women's field uh if anything but but i have to assume even the people who are acting like no it's no big deal i'm still gonna work my hardest anyway i'm i'm guessing it does something it has to like she's like oh it's it's it's open now it's doable especially for someone like annie think of the mindset annie's in annie's like fuck man i can i can be like i know she's a two times champion but now with tia gone it's like okay i i really might be able to do this i just got to deal with lauren

mao well one thing that you know you've you have actually brought up a couple times is that if the the defending champion or the multiple time defending champion steps aside it can be encouraging because you can say, okay, there's an open spot at the top, but it can also be deflating because sometimes the pursuit is to try to beat the best. And now the best isn't there. You know, you've been the one

who's talked about this in the past. And so now it's like, even if I win this year, would I have won if she was there? Like that- Oh yeah, everyone's, we're all gonna say it by the way. Let's just be very clear now. If you win the games this year we get where everyone's gonna be like yeah but if tia was here you still get the check but we're all gonna say so and so mentally if you're someone i think and i would say this is probably more likely the case for

someone like laura who's been on the heels of of tia for four or five years now than mal who's just recently entered into the conversation as the two women that seem to be most, uh, most likely to win this year at this point that she could, you know, for Laura, Tia might be that thing that she was chasing since 2018. And then to do it again in 2021 and be close and to think like, am I narrowing the gap? Am I doing everything that I can? And now this year, she, she might, she doesn't get to answer that question this year. Now she has to refocus and say, okay, the new target is now the only person who beat me last year. And it's a different target that I've been chasing for four years. So she has to deal with that shift of a

mindset. I think, I think for Mal O'Brien, it's a little different. But I think for pretty much everyone beyond those, those two, it's, it's, I think it should be very motivating to say, like, you know, there's a big chance for me to make a breakthrough in my career this year. And I think that that would be the advice I would give to any of them is to focus more on, on the opportunity for them personally and not worry about who is or isn't in the competition. Mr. Facundo, any thoughts? I agree. I told him everything he knows. Facundo, I'll add this to it, then the mix. There's two athletes that I think of in particular that when I think of Haley Adams and Danielle Brandon, I think of it for two separate reasons.

I think Danielle Brandon probably sees Tia gone. And my thought, just looking from the outside, not that she thinks this way, is her window is not very big and it's fucking do or die. Like at all costs, be the best fucking performer now while this fucking bitch is out of the way because now is when i got a fucking strike and for hayley adams it's like wow i'm the greatest fucking female crossfitter ever and no one knows it because i have this fucking hole and if i can fix this hole and take that spot while t is gone i might start building my legacy now and so when i see those two i get like what like i just feel this pressure for them. It's time. It's like, and what do I know? Maybe they've been trying 120% the whole time anyway, or maybe, maybe Haley has a gummy bear habit and it's time to quit.

Like she just pops THC gummy bears every night before she goes to bed. And it's like, all right. Look, the only thing that I can tell you about that is I think, and I hope, and I think that this year people are going to see a very different Hayley than the former. I'm not saying that she has gone much stronger or less strong, whatever, but her overall mindset towards competition and to herself and her achievements has changed for the better.

And I think that that will have an effect on her performance at the for the better. And I think that that will have an effect on her performance at the Games this year. A personal appreciation on her work so far this season. So I'm looking forward to see her. But I, you know, on the other

hand, I think that there are a couple of artists that they are not very well known that have a chance this year to show uh you know a great performance and and be in the top five top ten of the crossfit games and we've been talking with brian every single time i'm i'm taking brian every day to crackle bar for breakfast he's been having a lot of calories like a lot you think you're manipulating him like uh like he's an outside he thinks you guys are friends but you just see him as an outside journalist and uh

and you're just manipulating him to write nice things about your athletes he doesn't he no he doesn't i wish i think that um brian is far too honest for for that um i mean i'm not going to replicate but yesterday he said to Rich something that I would not have dared to say in his face. Is it because, was it like that autistic gene in Brian that said it, or does Brian know that he's pushing Rich, or is it just a little lack of social awareness,

or both? I mean, I cannot repeat it, but... Why not? What did you say to him? Ryan? I think, you know, it was a private conversation, but Rich appreciates authenticity. He doesn't want to bullshit with him.

That's true. If he doesn't agree, he'll let you know he doesn't agree. Maybe it's just a look that he'll give you, but he's not going not gonna be upset if you're being honest all right if you say so by the way i told rich that i was coming and he says to say hello to joseph oh thank you did he really say that did he really say that yeah okay i'm gonna make a note he didn't say that rich said to say hi you just made his day for yeah yeah that smile he's like a five-year-old kid.

I'll say something really superficial here too, which is very unlike me. There's this thing about Danielle and Haley. I'm looking for the comments. Someone said, holy shit, if Danielle won the CrossFit Games, can you imagine what that would do to her star power?

Those two women right there can transcend the space in a way that we haven't seen other women do it hayley adams and danielle brandon i don't think people realize yet that we're staring at and i apologize for anyone who's gonna get mad at me for this but hayley adams is a supermodel she got a supermodel face she got the big old fucking eyes and just that young look and like if she starts getting, if, if, if they discover her outside the space, man, hang on,

she is going to fucking catapult. Um, I, I think it's pretty obvious when you're around them, Brian, what, what are you tripping? Like,

is it different than watching them on TV? Like on TV, we watch Bailey rail and she, and Christy, a Rama O'Connell. And we, they just look like these skinny little girls. Right.

But when you're around Bailey rail, she's not right you're like oh this is a fucking powerhouse or no i mean she got like traps and shit right and like that women i mean i've spent time around the the top athletes to appreciate how big or not they actually are but it's different when you see them training over a period of a couple of days than when you see them competing. And especially when you watch a competition, like I'm looking at a lot, so many different things that it's difficult for me sometimes to hone in on the details here because there's just the way that the training is set up. There were times that not everyone was able to go at the same time. So a group of us would go and then then another group would go and so i'd really be able to watch some of the athletes a little bit

more closely and get some information about just nuances in the way that they approach workouts and um you know if i'm being honest like no bailey just isn't she uh does not seem to be that big she's actually she looks like i mean she kind of looks like a bikini model sometimes when you see her yeah and then she's fucking dead lifting 400 pounds and you're like scratching your head what exactly said again then when she starts throwing a sandbag or a barbell around it's yeah i'm sorry yeah yeah i can't tell because my baseline's all fucked up like i like just from being around crossfit girls so much like people will be like you know stop my wife and ask her about her arms what she does and like i i don't i just don't see it you know what i mean because i watch wadapalooza for two weeks it's like i do you think that sometimes

facundo your baseline for what the human body should look like has changed in the last five years ten years i mean it's very complicated i mean i bailey remains kind of slender girl yeah she's very very strong and very powerful in her movements too you know and so but also bailey's is a very technical girl so she uses a lot of her technical approach to manage weight so therefore you know it's not just i'm strong and i'm lifting something from the front the way it comes naturally she just is very technical and so she uses that for for her benefit so um but yeah she remains i think that in an average body of a girl she she she she she looks very slender very very you know uh i need to be careful with the words here no i think i know I think Slender's right.

Slender's fair. You're not, you were going to say petite, but she's obviously not petite. No, just for a CrossFitter. No, she's a tall girl. She's a beautiful girl.

Oh, she was a collegiate golfer. Holy shit. Um, I got to get her on the show. You think she'd come on the show? If, if she, she hasn't been on the show, if brian asked her i think there's a chance

all right good use brian like that double your pay this month brian um uh what about a page powers and bailey rails relationship i'm getting um page and i were talking about how um um, she's a little bit under Bailey's wing and that Bailey's very, uh, nurturing to her and maybe even motherly to her goes back and forth between motherly and sister. Have you witnessed that Brian or Facundo or do you see that? In terms of training, they seem to be inseparable. You know, they're, then they thrive off of each other. Um. Have got plenty of chances to watch them. And I was just even talking with Paige earlier today.

I mean, she has a way about her of making things that I know are difficult for her look relatively easy. She moves very well. Rope climbs very efficient. Sandbag very efficient. Rowing. Those three in particular that I got to see over the last couple of days. But everything she does is excellent, but it doesn't look

exceedingly difficult. It was actually quite impressive. They are very good friends to start with. They've been working here together for working out together for more than a year, and they spend a lot of time, and I think that Paige benefits from the experience of Bailey. Bailey went toiley went to the games the team member before

so she's been around for for a while now and she she she's a very clever girl and uh i think that page profits from her friendship and uh the experience of bailey but also beige in terms of strength and qualities that competitor she's she's. She's starting to be a very well-rounded athlete. So strength-wise and performance-wise are quite different, but they work out very well together, and you can see the level of friendship, companionship they have throughout the day. Noah, Tia, Justin,

we've arrived. Justin is starting to get dominant. Right? In what regard? He wins. In terms of winning, yeah, he's one of the big four. I mean, you could say five if you include semifinals,

big events that he's done in the last two years. Obviously, two years ago, he did not win at semifinals. But since then, he's won every competition he's entered, but he has not won in a dominating fashion. there's a little bit of a nuance if if you win um uh you bunch of fucking ding dongs the only reason why i sent rich a link is because crossfit mayhem said to send rich a link that that's god that's the only reason the rest of you ding dongs don't tell me what to do it's my show is he

like people like after he wins events there's all these pundits who are like well he barely won or if the score of the judge or this or that, like there's all these ways that, you know, Ricky could have won or,

or a Roman could have won. But the truth is, is like that we're seeing, we're seeing glimmers of, uh, of, uh, rich Froney.

Oh, Hey. Oh, thanks for coming dressed appropriately. I appreciate it. Oh, Hey guys. I thought you were coming to help fix fences.

Look at that. No. Rich, I got a question for you. What's that? Has Brian been offensive at all? By the way, that lighting behind you with the light behind you to make you seem angelic, I know what you did. You weren't even working on the fences.

They're like, Rich, put these fucking gloves on. We're going to build your brand right now. That's why you have media people. And thank you, whoever's holding the phone. It's Scott. Scott, you get 5% of anything we make while Rich is on. What are you guys doing? Did Brian say anything offensive while he's been there?

I don't know if I can say it. He told somebody that it would be better off for them to train with a different crew than us. Wow. Holy shit. I didn't even expect that. Yeah. Like you're overtraining them? We had a smaller window to train with said group than with our group.

Incredible. And I know this is a very sensitive topic, so I'll be very delicate in how I handle this. Was it a boy or a girl? Female. We needed a team member. Wow. And he said this, and you overheard this?

No, no, he offered it up, apparently. Maybe it was a trade. Was it a trade? Was he going to send someone from the team that he was suggesting this person go to, send someone also back to the Bahamian Empire? Ryan, do you want to rebuttal? Rich, I know you would much prefer a person who's willing to say things behind your back than you would also say a person who's willing to say things uh behind your back but they would also say in your face i would never want to say something about someone that i wouldn't also say

if they were around i'm just giving him crap now brian's been great uh he's a good dude to have around he's uh jumped into every workout minus minus one that had too much time between today he said he don't want to hurt himself, which I respect too, so letting that ego go. He scaled everything appropriately numbers-wise to hit the stimulus. I mean, he's about as smart as they come with his analytics, but also with his fitness. So good dude to have around.

Scott, Rich looks young out there. Are you using a filter? Golden hour. Golden hour. good good dude to have around scott rich looks young out there are you using a filter golden hour golden hour rich what are you doing why why can't you make scott do that like what are you doing right now we are putting insulators on the fence um we have a couple of hillary's highlands that like to Um, we have a couple of Hillary's Highlands that like to venture out pretty regularly. And so, um, today when they try to venture out about four or five o'clock, they're going to get met with a little bit of a little jolt of electricity. Okay. So explain to me.

So when you say an insulator, that's a wire that's not normally there. That's so the wire. So if you look here, the wires are metal and instead of coming in contact with his metal T-post, there's a little plastic piece here okay dad's going through on the wood and putting uh an insulator on the wood as well okay so that the poles won't be like uh get the electrical charge yeah or it won't short it out coming in or you're staying over there it's not gonna kill me hey scott is that just an iphone you're holding yeah it's just my phone oh that's pretty good yeah what do we uh what do we interrupt you guys can continue talking

well i'm i'm just curious what i'm so we talked about a noah's um disaster the three things were that i wanted to bring up was noah's disaster uh at the event okay hey what do you think happened there let's get your two cents What would you have done if you had two lifts, Rich? You had two attempts at that overhead squat. You did 325. What would you have done? The hard part is, at any of these events,

you warm up at whatever weight and then you've got to wait another 30 or 45 minutes. You've got to be smart and at least get a lift in. But it's also hard because you want to put on a show. So I actually hate when they only give us two or three lifts like if you guys like especially an off-season event where it's really about the show it's not about we're not trying to find the fittest let them lift you know give them 10 minutes to get as heavy as you want like people want to show i think i think sometimes we get too cute with

what we're doing and want to make it about us, the programming teams. And so, yeah, I mean, he screwed up, but it is what it is, you know, like. So that's interesting. You're an athlete and kind of, you see it really, even though you've thrown events, you're, you're, you're giving a strong athlete and fan perspective, which is like, Hey, why not just give them 10 minutes and uh and let and let and let the guys work and put on a show yeah like that's i mean that's really what we're about especially an off-season event we're not like i said we're not i mean we are trying to find the

fittest or best at crossfit but it's really like if it's not fun for spectators to watch then what the hell's the point in doing it we're not gonna be able to keep doing it you know right and if you would have given him a third lift and he and he put up 325 the next time it's like yeah of course he did give him give him five or six minutes like is it that big of a deal to give you know make it a 15 minute event each person has five minutes to get as many lifts as they can so um what did you think about um uh gee's's 395 clean and jerk? That kid's just something special, man. He's strong. It just looks good, you know? Like, I've seen some other 395s from CrossFitters that don't look as pretty.

Yeah, we didn't even see where his limit is, right? We weren't like, oh, that was close. We're like, oh, shit. Well, that's the same thing, you know? Like, they had, what, two lifts? No, I guess they did have some time to kind of keep going up barely though it was weird it was weird so i mean it was weird i mean you want to see get 400 or 395 you know like give them some time and uh i don't know i just have mixed mixed opinions on all that really what uh what did you think about the proximity of all those guys lifting so close do you like that challenge or do you think it's it's also a little weird i thought it was weird

it's a disaster waiting to happen okay good me too that's what i thought yeah i'm okay with it from a fan's perspective i kind of want to see like you tip over and it go into the crowd yeah that would look real good for us right i mean i would have a fucking blast that shit would go viral i'd probably my video would triple in views but um but yeah it does look a little sketchy yeah yeah man i like yeah we got to start being smart about that especially like the the lifting and not being able to lift for 40 minutes and then asking somebody to go to a one rep max because they're gonna want to you know one you want to put on show one you want one, you want to put on a show one, you want your teammates, you want the best for your teammates.

And so you probably push a little harder than you should have. And you know, it is what it is. And then, and then we talked about Tia being gone, how that's going to affect the women's competition. And I, and I guess, pardon me. It's going to be awesome to watch. Do you think that changes people's mindsets? Like anyone who wasn't giving 100%, only 98% knows that this is the year

to tighten everything up? I don't think anybody out there was only giving 98%, but I think it'll be cool to see. You know, like there's going to be a little bit more. I mean, not that anybody was, you know, like you're saying,

half-assing it or anything like that, but they, I don't know. It's just going to be a little bit more... I mean, not that anybody was, you know, like you're saying, half-ass it or anything like that, but they... I don't know. It's just going to be fun to watch. Scott, you're a media guy? Scott's the media guy. So let me ask, why have you chosen Portrait over Panoramic? I don't know. You just click the link.

Oh. Rich, Rich, please. The media guys are talking, Rich. Stay in your fucking lane, please. I can't even figure out click the link oh Rich please the media guys are talking stay in your fucking lane please I can't figure out how to get this camera flipped oh alright to be fair I'll go easy on you Scott I want you to lose your job while your boss is there

nah Scott won't lose his job Scott will go any and everywhere without any complaining whatsoever scott scott has a job as long as he wants a job he's a good dude uh scott what's your last name vander slut oh yeah we met before you were in the car yeah yeah that's right um i only know you by your last name i'm very formal that's the only way Ficundo knows me, too. And then,

Rich, the last thing we just embarked on was, there's these guys who are just really good at CrossFit, and they just find a way to win every fucking year. And there were these two guys in particular who just found a way to win. Matt Brogan and Rich Fraser?

Yes, exactly. You've heard of them? Heard of them. And, like, is that what we're seeing in Justin? Like, has Justin just found a way to win? I mean, not just. Is he not only a great CrossFitter, but he finds a way to win? Yeah, it's impressive.

You know, I think there's a lot especially earlier days it wasn't um you know everybody tried to say oh i'm just staying within my lane and doing that and so i think me and matt were kind of the first two to like it's a it's a sport you know it's a game you're playing a game there's different things you're doing different strategy things you're watching and i I think Justin's kind of figured that out and, and learned it pretty early and has done an incredible job with, I mean, he's fit, he's well-rounded, you know, he's not going to hit any home runs, but, um, it's been, been great. Yeah. Um, could, can you teach someone that? Could you teach Roman that?

Or, or. I think so. Um, you know, it just it just really depends like I think I don't actually know Justin's sport background I mean I just learned a ton through playing sports and um I always preach that to kids we talked about this morning like there's just so many intangibles you get by playing sports like team sports uh whatever it is. That's what I think you're going to see and miss with some of these younger CrossFitters is none of them really played or did high school sports. And so I hope we don't lose that. And I mean, that's one of the,

one of the things you're supposed to do is go learn and play new sports. So I think it can be learned. It might be tough, you know, for somebody that's never competed in anything other than CrossFit. But we'll see. Yeah, awesome. All right. Well, I know you guys don't get a chance to talk to Rich very often. Do either of you have a question for Rich?

I really thought they were going to be up here helping us, but I guess not. I'm waiting for his message saying that dinner is ready. Uh-huh. All right, buddy. Thank you, Rich. You the man. Thanks for coming on, dude. Good luck with the fence. When do you turn it on, the electricity?

Once we get all these insulators on. Will it be today? Yeah, probably, hopefully. And will someone get shocked by it today? I'll send you a video if they do, please, please. Hey, how many minutes are you away from getting it turned on?

Uh, it's probably about an hour or so. Oh, we won't be on then. Okay. It would have been great live to like have Scott to keep his job. He's got it. No,

I have Scott touch it. Yeah. No, I'd send a cow into it. Perfect. Later, guys. Thank you. Scott, you da man. Thanks, brother.

What a fucking special podcast that you get to watch Rich Froning build a fence. I mean, what do I do now? I have to go cook. I don't know what i have to say for uh richard a wife uh for facundo being so patient oh thank you well i mean i mean i've yeah uh so um touching to hear uh rich acknowledge justin right like even in that subtle way like he acknowledged him as like yeah he's he's figuring touching to hear Rich acknowledge Justin, right? Like even in that subtle way, like he acknowledged him as like, yeah, he's figuring it out and at a very young age. I mean, I think that's what we're about to get around to.

And you were alluding to it. If you look at the way that Rich went about winning and the way that Matt went about winning, they look a little bit different on paper. Rich realized, like he was saying there, that this is a sport, it's a game, and my objective is to win the game. And he always seemed to find a way to do that. I think that his performances at the CrossFit Games really replicate someone who came from a sports background where, you know, a lot of times the best teams or the best athletes are able to turn it on at the end of the game in the fourth quarter,

and that's when they make the big difference and pull away from their closest competitors and that's what he always did that's why rich on sunday is a thing matt had a different mentality he was sick of losing and even after he won he wasn't it seemed to be happy because he hadn't won very many of the workouts and he wanted to win more and more of those workouts and so you saw well the other kind of dominating performance, which is big margins and locking up the victories earlier in the competition. Justin, whether it's because the caliber of the field is better or maybe he doesn't, as Rich alluded to,

have the home run potential that those two guys did. I mean, Matt's numbers are a little bit skewed, but 29 event wins in his career. Rich has 16 in his career. And then there's a big drop off. The next closest guy in their entire career winner when the games are not as eight. So if you're not a guy who's that, who's that Brian? Josh Bridges.

Okay. Wow. And there are more women than men that are over 10 events wins. But if you can't, uh, if you can't win two to four events every year, then you have to find a way to be really, really good. And Justin's the one who's been able to do that. The things I've written about him since he's won the second time are highlighting that it's consistency and it's a lack of execution errors that have separated him from his closest competitors. In some cases, we have guys coming up this year,

particularly Roman and Ricky, who I think have not reached their ceiling yet and that they'll build off the confidence that they got from their experience at the games this year and some of the stuff they've learned at the offseason events they've participated in, where if Justin's able to fend those two guys off again next year, then we're talking about something that's in my mind, very, very impressive. It won't take away from what he's already done if he can't, but I think that he's dealing with two guys right now who are in the primes of their career and building on that both mentally and physically. And that Justin will have to take another step forward and pretty much every

way. If he wants to win a third one this season. Do you agree with that last statement, Facundo? What did he say? I do agree. I do agree. Actually, I told him that five minutes ago. He's just repeating my words. When I hear Rich say that it's a game and it's a sport

and I played sports and and like you have to figure it out and like that like just so you guys know for me i don't have no fucking clue what he's saying like that's so abstract i know he knows what he's saying but like for me i just have to be like okay rich but like i fuck i didn't play any sports i don't even really know what he's saying it's just some abstract idea that like okay there's something more going on here than just being the best at working out you know i think that i always think about it honestly and i i always realized my idea this is it was always very natural for rich to be the competitor he was you know he didn't have to change his life enormously in terms

of lifestyle and whatever other elements just to be whoever he was. He was not following a specific nutrition. Back then he was eating what he felt. He didn't have a coach or many, many different things like people do have now. And, you know, Rich would prepare himself, go compete, finish, go back home, have a pizza, watch a movie, and that was it. And, you know, there was a time maybe the sport was pretty much like that. I think that nowadays, you know, people are, which is fair too,

it's not so natural because the demands are so extreme now that you need to be able to go out of your normal lifestyle, whatever, to be able to abide to those. So I think that Richie sees it like this. It was very natural for him to do what he was doing. It was very natural for him to train the way he was training. And he's a natural born competitor. So nothing changed pretty much for him when he was doing that.

He was doing it with a lot of, well, you you know you know very well how he did what he did uh this is an interesting question off topic a little bit um but since he paid money i must ask it uh homer homer simpson for five euros seven did you start the carnivore diet uh i done it before and i really liked it. I think in the month of March, I'm going to try just to eat a steak every night or a couple steaks and water. I'm going to try eating a steak every day at 6 o'clock. I think

my wife said she'd help me do it. Then, what does Facundo think about the carnivore diet? Facundo. Do you want to say something about my breakfast, Brian? Facundo. He likes having steak and eggs for breakfast. Side of sweet apples. Okay.

So he's a fan of it. Hunter McIntyre was saying that that's a great way to get lean, eat as much meat and apples, just eat apples and meat. We're talking about fried apples, which is not maybe the same apple that hunter meant oh wow but uh i am from argentina and our our diet today is mainly uh you know a lot of meat sarah said richie i rich just made a video the other day where he i saw me eat a chick-fil-a he has it he i mean he didn't pig out on it but he had a little little chick-fil-a he loves chick-fil-a I remember the first time I came here

He said hey bro I'm about to go for dinner And I thought well we're going to a nice restaurant And he just followed me with the car And I was following him and went to the drive-in Of Chick-fil-A And he said to the Microphone there just get whatever The guy behind me wants and I'll pay for it

And that was the first dinner Each of us in our car Eating Chick-fil-A whatever the guy behind me wants and I'll pay for it. That was the first dinner. Each of us in our car eating Chick-fil-A. Brian, you had Chick-fil-A already? They provided Chick-fil-A at the end of the athlete camp last workout today. That's so nice. Was there sauce?

They had Chick-fil-A sauce and honey mustard sauce available. That shit's unedible without the sauce it's too it's too dry it gives me cotton mouth guys i will have to leave you because i do have to do a shooting myself now from something that we are working on shitter you have to go to the shitter shooting i can shoot something like oh shoot oh oh oh shoot something okay uh but um i have to shoot something too no no no and uh but anyways thanks for having me uh brian uh call me when you're done so we go for dinner play again brian uh

wait for that seven thank you very much and the next time if you want um we can make a tour through mayhem so people see what it really actually because you asked about the rooms and so on i would love that okay let's do that next time i would love that it's gotta be gotta set aside a couple hours it's a big place all right facundo very nice seeing you thanks for jumping on very much guys have a nice day thank you bye uh hey that's gonna make a great clip which uh uh some clickbait shit what does uh what does rich think about uh uh josh maderos justin maderos yeah yeah justin maderos man i need some fucking sleep my brain is not working i need some sleep it's just the two of us okay so so how did you end up at mayhem what happened how do you so you're at waterpalooza and did you know when you went to waterpalooza you were going to go to mayhem

yeah uh i told you you could bring patrick clark on i didn't mention facundo so we i apologize i guess we could trash the episode. I'm just fucking with you. Facundo needs to drop a deuce. Yeah. How did you end up? How did you end up? Yeah. How did you end up? I don't know necessarily what the conversations are like between all those guys, but Facundo contacted me last summer actually, and asked me if I wanted to come up here while like the, you know, 13 or 15 games athletes plus their

teams were training for the games and between his kind of life schedule in mind we just couldn't make it work and he said that's okay we'll find another time and then I don't know four to six weeks ago he asked he told me about this that they would be having several athletes come here following Guadalupe for a little training camp and to get some you know face time FaceTime with the coaches, some other athletes that are around the world and offsite that would be in the United States. Obviously they have a lot of athletes here onsite as well, but I knew that it would be tough because it'd be a back-to-back trips. I mean, by the time I get back to work on Monday, it will have been gone 12 days. And I don't necessarily, yeah. And I don't necessarily like asking off that many days in a row from work. So I spoke to my boss there and he's like, yeah, man, that's a, that's a great opportunity. Like you got to

take that. So he was very generous in that regard. I said, Facundo, yes, I would love to come and didn't necessarily know what I was getting into on a training side or media side. I didn't know all the athletes that would be here, but I just came with an open mind and tried to embrace the experience. There's this just crazy lack of pretension from these people. What do you mean? Notoriety is a hard thing to deal with because you start to act different it's like when it's like i am not when this camera goes when i hit the go live button this isn't like i i i sense a different sevan than the sevan that's will go away as soon as i hang up you know and and those people um

and what i guess that that change in me is it's like a little bit of pretend it's a little bit of what i don't let me look up this word before i fuck it up everyone's just so there's a go ahead go ahead i mean i'll just say this about being here that it's. I mean, attempt, sorry, pretentious, attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talents, culture. Yeah. Like there's a piece of me that's trying to, you know, sit up straight, even if it's a subtle sit up straighter, not breathe through my mouth. Bring some energy, even if it's fake. Like, but I never get that.

Like those people have been in the spotlight so long at mayhem. But I never get that. Those people have been in the spotlight so long at Mayhem, you don't get that. You don't feel that from them. If they're doing it, they're so good at it, especially Rich, right? I think it all stems from him, is that he's very authentic. The way he interacts with his family, with his dog, with his training, with the other athletes that are around here and have been around here for a while. Nothing's forced. Everything's just kind of natural. And I think that there's definitely a level of respect that everyone has for him and the culture that he's created.

But because of those characteristics that he has, everyone feels a little bit more comfortable just being their authentic self too. And I genuinely think he wants people here that are that way that are not, um, you know, like he doesn't want the person here who's going to always be 10 feet away from him, pretending that they don't know they're 10 feet away from him. Right. Right. Well, I would do it. I would do it. So good. He wouldn't even know. Hey. Oh, and, and I've heard them say, um, I think I've heard rich say stuff like, uh, And I've heard them say – I think I've heard Rich say stuff like he – one of the reasons maybe why he's a homebody and one of his things he's most proud of about the Mayhem Empire is that it's people with like values.

Yeah, one of the elements of the camp this week, they had Jim Hensel come in and do a little – he talked about what Mayhem Mindset is and how he got involved with that here. Funnily enough, he doesn't really like the word mindset. He prefers mental conditioning, but I, I personally have had a big eye opening year this year in terms of how critical where I like that term actually mental conditioning is for athletes in CrossFit because, you know, there are some athletes here that I've gotten a chance to talk to that I haven't known too well. And they, they know, like they remember small things that made a big difference in their last competition, whatever it

was. And what you do when those things happen in competition is critical in terms of, I mean, in some cases, their entire career in this sport. So what Jim has been able to do here and build up with Rich First and then many of their other athletes is address life circumstances, figure out what the most important values and identities and routines, those are the things that he talks about, in their life are so that they're capable of dealing with maybe unexpected or less than optimal circumstances on the competition floor. And he thinks that if you're not really dialed in outside of that, that you're going to have a lot more difficult time dealing with those circumstances in competition. Yeah. Have you did you have it sitting through that? Have you had any insights about your own life? Like in that short time there being with all these great people, are you like, Oh, these are some things I'd like to tweak. Have you tweaked some thought? Have you been

moved by the experience? I felt really fortunate that I had some struggles early in my life that forced me into that environment when I was, you know, 19 through 23 or four years old. I think that time can often be a time that young men in particular stray far away from their values and identities, and then they have to come back to it. During that time is when I really sought out trying to have some guidance and then understanding what that meant for me. And I think it's allowed for me to deal with difficult circumstances, not necessarily in a competition setting, but just in my life in general over the last decade or so. And having that little conversation there or hearing him have that conversation with us was, I kind of, I'm thinking, you know, it might be a good time for me to check back in with some

of those things that I learned and had applied to my life a decade or so ago and see how I feel about the now or if maybe there are some things that I would like to reevaluate in terms of my most important pillars for trying to live a good life or values. You have those like thought out? Yeah, I spent maybe five years, what I call gathering or accumulating information, and then decided that I wanted to do something with it, uh, you know, synthesize it into something that made sense for me that was succinct and, and impactful. And so I did that 2012 or 13 and have been basically trying to apply those principles since then.

Do you have it written down? It's written somewhere, yeah. It's formalized like that? Yeah. Have you ever shown it to anyone? Yeah, but not very many people. Anyone you're not related to? Yeah.

Anyone with a vagina? Yeah. Wow. yeah anyone with a vagina yeah wow um uh has anyone come up to you while you're at mayhem that's just a little bit of foreplay of a podcast that brian and i have uh coming up everyone settled down so everyone get back in your seats everyone's like getting out of their chairs for a second standing on their chairs um uh has anyone come up to you brian and been like hey i didn't appreciate you putting me at this ranking or hey i heard what you said about me okay and and and if someone has or some of them you're like fuck i don't even remember what i said patrick's here as you know and he

has been going around and talking to many of the athletes while we've been working out or in between sessions and he's asked them uh questions along those lines i know he was telling me that that he had and showed me some of the stuff last night um so maybe we'll maybe we'll have some uh content in regard to that to put out there at some point is it um that what what rich was saying about you um you told an athlete, hey, this might not be the best environment for you. Did you really say that to an athlete? Not that it wouldn't be the best environment. I thought in this case that that person had two really good options.

And so you're poaching people from the Mayhem Empire to other camps kind of your poacher. No. I mean, poacher. No. Oh. I mean, it's very easy, you know. So, like, coming here and training with these two dozen athletes or whatever, I could easily, you know, now I have the proximity bias that we often talk about. If you spend time all the time training with Ricky, you think he's the best in the world. But if you just spent the same amount of time training with Roman, you probably think he's the best in the world. Same thing with Pat and same thing with Brent and same thing with whoever these athletes are. So I could come back from here and just move everyone that I've spent this time with up five to ten spots on my power rankings because I just spent two weeks with them. But that would be me assuming that all these other

people that I thought were slightly better than them before have been doing nothing for this period of time, which is obviously not true. On the flip, on the other side of that, there's some athletes here that I spend time with. And then I realize the things that have been holding them back, they're not even physical things. It might be a mental thing. And then I also have that mayhem mindset class. So I know, well, if they're here more regularly, they may have more opportunity to address those things. And perhaps the season could end up being a lot different for them, not necessarily because of the training, but because of some of the other things that mayhem offers here. In the case of this particular situation, I had not spent any amount of time training in either of those

environments. And so I was coming at it with a blind perspective, double blind perspective in that regard. And I thought that there might, like Rich said, I thought there might be a more limited opportunity for the alternative option than for training at Mayhem. I feel like Mayhem has established a very consistent thing here and that even if Rich is, you know, never never competes again that he still has will have a presence here and will continue to build a community here that uh there will be an

opportunity for people to come train here in terms of wait wait there's no audio wait wait what What? What? What? No, you can't lose both. Oh, good. I hear just fine. Thank you. Kenneth, are you are you, Kenneth, are you up to speed on the show, though? Maybe something happened. Maybe maybe you're back. Are you up, Kenneth? Say yes. If you're if you're it's back. God damn it. OK, sorry. OK, sorry okay go on yeah so so you were talking about rich and there and regardless you think this will be a place for athletes to change regardless of his status yeah and i mean if if rich retires from competing in crossfit um from what i've been able to gather this this week at least it doesn't seem like he's not taking an interest in investment in the mayhem athletes that are part of their community. He, he, he wants to continue to have an influence on them,

on their teams that will be competing on the individuals, especially that are here on site. And then some ways, now that I'm thinking about it, that might even be more valuable, you know, because he, you know, he'll have a one less distraction in terms of his own competitive pursuits for a year that he can invest a little bit more in some of the, you know, top athletes, whether they be team or individual that are here with him every day. God, it sure would be fun to, uh, to, to know what that looks like.

to know what that looks like. Yeah. And it's, you know, and I think about like Matt Fraser has made a very clear decision to remove himself from competition and enter into the realm of coaching. Right. What I've seen here with Rich is that even though he doesn't necessarily declare himself as a coach is, is that he is coaching in some regards, athletes that are here, and it might be really subtle and it might be really short cues or commands or observations, but he's watching what's going on. You know, it's, uh, I don't really know if he was watching me or not this week, but I heard what he said about me is that I made good decisions in terms of scaling

options to find the intended stimulus, which is what I was trying to do. The fact that he said that makes me think that he is in fact being observant of everyone who's training here this week in a, maybe a more, you were observant of his observance. Yeah. And he, maybe he's paying even a little bit more attention than I realized. I was going to ask you, um, I got so excited that you were being observant about his observance everyone just take a deep breath and let my mind settle oh here it is i got it i got it i i enjoy the parts where i forget what i'm gonna say and it gets really uncomfortable Oh, here it is. I got it. I got it. I enjoy the parts where I forget what I'm going to say and it gets really uncomfortable.

It's my show. There'll be as much silence as I want. This is an athlete camp of sorts. Is it also a media camp of sorts is it also a media camp of sorts are there other people there besides you and patrick clark from the outside world no just you you were the only observer so okay so this isn't some sort of like okay guys we're gonna let the ding dongs in for a week everyone like make sure you flush the toilet and like don't piss on the seat. It's just you and Patrick. Yeah. And I asked if Patrick could come because I knew that he would be able to help me out a lot in terms of telling the story about what happened here. Cause you know, he has a lot of equipment and he's good. You know, like I said, he's pretty good at talking to the athletes

and having some good conversations with them. And I would say that's not necessarily my best skill set. And both of you work for Bar Bend? Yes. So it's kind of a slam dunk, no braider. And he was your homeboy back at the Morning Chaka? Yeah, we've worked together for several years now. Okay.

So it makes sense. And so you were going to Mayhem and you're like, yo, Patrick, you want to come? But it's not some sort of like media. I asked Facundo if it would be okay. Okay. And so you asked Facundo. But this is not like some sort of media event thing too. No.

Mayhem's media was out there capturing a lot of good stuff. They said they'd have something coming out middle to end of next week, which i'll be excited to see and other than that it was and patrick only came here he was here he got here friday morning so he's been here about half the time that i was here and in that same way um that you offered you said hey i'm going to be in mayhem let me know if you want to do a podcast so in the same way that you uh asked if pat the same way that you asked if Patrick could be here, you asked if I could be here. Yep. You're a good dude. You're okay.

Rising tides float all ships. You weren't afraid that Patrick and I were going to steal your thunder. Not at all. You're a good dude. All right. How many articles do you think you're going to write from this? One, two, three? You've been inspired to write some stuff. Well, I put that poll up on Instagram yesterday. Do you see it?

No. I asked if I should write an article about my time here. There were 1,166 votes for yes and 46 votes for no for what for what if i should write an article about if i should write an article about my experience in cookville oh anyone who said no is a moron that was an i he didn't really care what your answer was that was an iq test and 48 of you failed uh seven in all seriousness it's pretty cool the rich continues to come on here you're telling me and along with his crew he wouldn't do it if he didn't like you and your team dude uh all right yes and i can't even tell you what what it means to me it's really cool

and it's not just rich too although trust me that's it's like um i will be on a high for the rest of the day because of that. But it's even just my relationship with Brian or Patrick or the people who trust to make comments in the show. I can't believe. Yeah, it means the world to me. It really does. All these people. Judy Reed.

Why are Ariel and Jorge there? I know training, but are they mayhem athletes? I didn't think so. Yes, you want. I have that question, too. Like, yeah, obviously they're, they're training, but why? Like, and in the most sinister way, like why allow them in there? They're, you know, if they're like, Jorge's Invictus and, uh, and, um, Ariel is just a regular affiliate.

She's a peasant. She just trains at an affiliate. Why are they allowed at Invictus? Mayhem? At Mayhem, yeah. I think in both cases, there was an organic relationship that developed. I know that Rich and Jorge competed against each other in Italy earlier this year. Oh, that's right. They also have some similar background.

They hot tub together. They hot tub together at the hotel. That's how I was going to say they have some similar backgrounds and hot tub thing together. Now they both, I think we're, we're baseball players. And I think Rich invited, you know, said, you know, we'd love to have you out here at some point. I know that Jorge is considering pursuing an individual career probably after this season and you know this as far as i know there's there aren't very many

i mean there may be this year actually because i think it's possible that danny spiegel maybe chandler smith that so invictus might have some individual athletes but they've been mostly focused on the team stuff for the last several years. And I think Jorge just, I don't think he was, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of like what happened with a bar bend for me. I wasn't necessarily looking for something else, but the opportunity came, I decided to look into it a little bit. I liked what they were offering. I think Jorge found a, you know, good, good, just camaraderie with Rich in Italy,, hey, come out and check it out what we're doing sometime. And Jorge said, yeah, I think I'd like to do that. I think it's really wise.

It's like when I graduated college, I didn't think about what I was going to do when I graduated college. All of a sudden, college just ended and I had nothing to do. But I have other friends that were much more forward thinking and they were like 6, 12, 18, two years out. They were already having internships that would set themselves up for jobs and trying to create the next path for themselves. So I think Jorge is just here looking at what it's like here and is this something that I might like to do remotely or here on site when I do make the switch to be an individual competitor. Now Brittany Weiss is here with him. They were in Guadalupe together. She also, I think, has some in the back of her mind, some aspirations of potentially

competing as an individual eventually. Maybe she's thinking similarly. I can't remember exactly what Ariel said. That would be cool to see Brittany Weiss standing next to to uh uh oh it's fucking it's wrecked bail what's her name bail christine god damn it bailey rail chris create what britney weiss and bailey rail that those aren't easy i'm gonna give myself a pass you're massaging that space heater like it's a dog it's

fucking cold here it's fucking cold it was 36 degrees this morning although it's sunny now and i'm gonna go to the skate park in like two minutes okay yeah and i've been burning the candle greg's in town so i've been like trying to spend as much time and as late as i can with him and my mornings with him and then and then all day with uh the kids and so i just have no sleep i know i need to care it i know and you carved out 90 minutes for us thank you so yeah no uh you know well i only do podcasts when i'm bored someone's like hey someone you shouldn't do podcasts just if you're bored you asshole like do i was it kind of again i don't know who said it they were trying to be nice i did i regret it every time I start to ask for advice

from the audience, and they start saying shit like that. No, I don't know if I'm doing that. That's a good question, Bruce. Am I going to Arizona next month? I don't know. Okay, so that was a good answer in regards to Jorge and Ariel.

If you're a competitor, who wouldn't want to go to mayhem, it's a friendly place. They're open. They kind of have their doors open after a water Palooza. It may get a little tighter around there as you get closer to the games, but, but Hey, were you there when Ariel met Hillary Froney? Did you get to see those two first meet? That'd be kind of cool to see that. Hillary was around last night that was the first time i'd seen her we had they had smoked a brisket the previous night and

through the day and so a bunch of people i didn't know you could smoke brisket me or in general just in general i thought you cooked it smoked it cooked it whatever they did and so last night we had a brisket dinner. Hillary was there with some of her friends. I didn't see an initial interaction between her and Ariel. Because I think they'll get along great, marvelously. But there were a lot of people there. So sorry I didn't see that for you. Don't act like you don't love us.

I love you guys. I love you guys. Even those of you who get under my skin, I know it's my – I let you, I put you there. No one crawls under my skin. I put you there. All right. I have to pee. Maybe that's why I'm not thinking clearly. Brian, any, any other memories or stories you'd like to tell that you're just like, wow, that was. I'll write an article just about some of the um the workouts and the lessons that i learned from them i think that it might be a good way to summarize some of the things that happen here i was impressed with uh facundo's in-person coaching i had not really got a chance to see him

do that before i was impressed with uh jake lockard who communicated as often as facundo did the intent of the workout and the camp as a whole i'd love to see facundo in action by the way that's so cool that you mentioned that let's talk about that again some other time i don't have to be so bad yeah so those two i thought made a really good team in terms of running and facilitating this. And, um, I was just overall impressed with the, the entire environment and, uh, the way that everyone approached. I mean, there's some challenging things that these guys were doing, girls were doing, and, uh, I thought everyone handled it very well and with a lot of grace and hard work. So it was a very positive experience

for me. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Friend and Patrick Clark to his side and Facundo and Rich Froning and Scott Vandersloot all made a appearance on this wonderful Saturday afternoon podcast. Thank you. What a special treat we got. We will see you guys soon. Bye-bye.