The Sevan Podcast - A Deep Dive Into CrossFit vs NSCA | Souza's Show

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

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Good morning. Almost at afternoon. We'll change up of the time this morning or today rather with Facundo on last Tuesday. And then my time slot got pushed back a little bit, which resulted in me having to go back to the gym and coach. Didn't really work out, but we're here today. We're going gonna dig into the CrossFit versus NSCA case something that has been buried and long forgotten but I want to talk

about it here there's a video we're gonna watch that was filmed in 2015 by uh Heber and Jay Vera at CrossFit HQ with a Russell Bergener. He's gonna be on the show the 20th Friday. A couple of Fridays from now. So we're gonna give we're gonna give that video a look and then we're gonna kind of dive into like what happened during that video, the timeline that they discuss. And then we'll just give some facts about like what happened since then, because we have the luxury of hindsight on our side. How you guys doing?

Are Dave and Don in jail yet? I saw those posts right before we came on. And then looking at all your guys's comments clearly. That is the topic of discussion. Not here though though I don't want to dive into that we'll be we'll be out in the NorCal classic the Northern California classic I realized when I typed in the website it's not called the NorCal classic it's called the Northern California classic going for the Pedro like is it is it seem dark in here? I thought it was the same.

Rider lower Pedro style. Bright style. I don't know. You guys tell me. You guys tell me. Anyhow, I saw I saw Lucas post will be out of the Northern California classic. Seven is on his way there right now with Taylor will be joined by Colt Mertens. I think we might have a few other people joining us as well.

I'll be picking up a pillar from the airport. And a few hours. And I think once we set up there and do a podcast, I'm sure we're going to talk all about that. So we'll live that. We'll live that. I read your comment at the same time I was talking. So we'll leave that be until we're all with those guys and I'm sure everybody will have lots of opinions on that.

Susie going to be at NorCal. I am. Yes. Yes. Nice mood lighting. It's the same as it always was. Hi, Olivia. How are you?

Dense after 40 I Saw you begin a lot of love from the CrossFit book with the with the CrossFit news. That's cool. Carlos. What's up, man? Hope you're doing well. Sleeky. Hi Hi, Judy. It's cool having everybody here in the morning with this morning slide. Omar, what's up? Although a lot of you guys are are here typically at 11 a.m. So I appreciate that. So he needs a new LEDs under that bookshelf set the mood.

You're the second person that said that, like if I painted the backdrop like a gray and then ran some colors, it'd be weird if I did them like pink or something like that. Just imagine the smell in that car with Seve in the thumb. Smells like. Smells like. That's exactly what it smells like. Did you read the post of Luca? I did. Yeah, I did.

I did. We'll discuss that later. Yeah. Meat and fruit. A percent. Okay. So real quickly, before we get into this, if you guys have made a video for the affiliate video contest, please submit it.

You can go to affiliate video contest.com and you can submit your video files there. Just as a reminder, we need like the actual original file of the video. So don't upload it somewhere. Then just send me the clip of the link of the upload. Like we need the actual video file because we're going to be uploading all of them to this podcast channel. I mean, this YouTube channel, the Subban Podcast. And we'll be playing them from there. So if I don't have your original video file for the video contest, then we cannot post your stuff and you will not be in. So please, if you guys have any questions about that, shoot me a DM. I know some of you guys have.

If you haven't already, you could go to school.com slash media launch and you could get all this fun stuff in here. This this right here will be important after this discussion. We had Dale Saran. He's been on the show several times here. He was the formal CrossFit general counsel and Joe Joe Neils, some of you guys know him. Remember him from the 30 for 30. Asked a question in one of the calls last week about, is somebody watching affiliates back in term of legality, like litigation and

legislation, which we're going to talk about here. And we got Dale Saranon. He gave us 32 minutes. And we basically asked him to give us a playbook. If you were an affiliate right now, what are some of the things that we could be, should be looking out for, everything else? So the whole entire outline of that 32 minutes is right there. You guys could jump ahead, whatever.

But anyhow, it's there. It's free. Just go to school.com slash sign up. All these cool people are doing it. We do a call like I said once a week and you'll have a bunch of information on the affiliate video contest. Not to mention much of other cool stuff in there. So whatever. Go there. Check it out. Get the stuff. Ask questions. I didn't see anything new or shattering only he is saying Dave was misrepresented. That's that what they wanted and when they

just didn't care. he said verse the thing. Yeah, Christina, I didn't really understand anything you wrote there, but you're right. The quick, uh, ten, you know, the quick hot take on the Luca post is that people are going to, um, wait. And I see a not NASCAR, but I can't tell if it's NASCAR. Did I write? Okay, oh, you're talking about a comment. I thought I misspelled that, sleeky, and I got distracted by everything.

Yeah, people are gonna get really caught up in the emotional side of Luca's post, in the semantics of the word choicing. And we're gonna get zero focused in on that, and it's gonna start to distort people's opinions. It's gonna, everybody's gonna lean towards emotional and just like attack. You could already see it, it's queued up the way it is.

But like I said, I'm sure we'll be discussing that tonight and dissecting that whole entire post and giving all of our opinions on it. So affiliate video contest, get them put in. This is the last day. We'll be uploading them after that. If you guys have any questions, you know where to go. I already did the thing. Okay, so we're going to dive right into this. It's going to play at a, um, we're going to play it at a 1.5 speed. So that way it moves quick, but we'll be stopping, uh,

we'll be stopping it every now and again, and just kind of giving some more detail. And we'll be talking about some of the stuff that is mentioned on this video, but this video is filmed in 2015. Um, we had, uh, the court order sanctions in 2019. And then we have what happened when Eric Rose and Eric wine, Eric Weinstein Eric Rosa and Andrew Weinstein took over in 2020 and what happened what happened with that case at the end. So we'll watch this video by Russell here we'll break it down. I'm going to have the live call in number up so if there's anything you guys want to discuss or anything like that please feel free to call in or throw it in the comments

will stop we'll talk about it we'll give a little bit more information if you guys want it. But I feel like this is really important just to understand the totality of the NSEA, that case and the whole thing that took place, as well as what may still be taking place now. But we'll get into a little bit of that conspiracy speculation later and afterwards. Um, if you're not an affiliate owner, you're not interested in this or not traded, this is probably going to be really boring. So whatever, just come back this afternoon. If you want the TMZ shit, we'll be here for it. Okay. So with no

further ado, here we go. This, uh, video is from CrossFit.com. This is called, this is called, Fighting the Good Fight. We got our buddy Russell here, and he's gonna be breaking down this timeline. I might speed it up even a little bit more than 1.5. We might go 1.75, depending. Stan, from this talk, number one is to catch you up and sort of give you the 10,000 foot view of what's happening within CrossFit in our current legal battles against the NSCA and some other organizations. And number two, I want you to understand that these battles that we're fighting are incredibly important and are really a noble cause. And I know

there's this misperception about CrossFit, it's a growing misperception, that we are a litigious company that's out there creating petty squabbles between our competitors and this is all just us being angry because we've been criticized and we can't handle that. It's a lot more than that. And I think once you understand the full story of this, you'll see that what we're doing is not just incredibly important for our company and for CrossFit Brand, but it's important for every single one of our 11,000 plus affiliates. And it's important that someone be out there doing what we're doing. Greg Glassman, I think in 2012 spoke. Someone be out there doing what we're doing.

Someone be out there doing what we're doing. And that just keeps rattling around in my head as I was watching this and as I was gathering some of the information to kind of present this for you guys. But I just thought that that was interesting. The other portion here is that you got to remember this was in 2015 when this video was shot and Russell's going to lay out this timeline here and CrossFit really got involved in like understanding what the NSCA was doing and the champ paper and all the things that were being published out of Ohio state with a fraudulent science behind it. But it's interesting how even in 2015, if you start to dig a little deeper into some of the information that's being presented as fact, all of a sudden you get labeled things. Now they weren't called the racist or fascist. Not yet. In 2015, it wasn't as popular, but they

basically were being said like, oh my gosh, here we go. Here's CrossFit just attacking for no reason. Look at them going after their competitors here. This is just a dumb petty fight. And I want you to remember that because Russell had said like they had said that. And there was just talk of, you know, people within, within the fitness and, um, uh, the fitness and wellness space that we're talking about that as CrossFit just got to be in these rebel rousers and just going after people and attacking for no reason. And just remember that because at the end, when we talk about 2020, when, uh, CrossFit sealed up this case after Eric Rosa purchased it, remember Eric Rosa, you bought it.

Um, they say something and they meaning morning chalk up, say something very similar to that. So just kind of just think about that. Um, yeah, he is Matt Russell will be on on a couple of Fridays from now, a couple of weeks from now. Yes. Russell will be back. Of our relationship across the HQ's relationship with our affiliates

is a, as a covenant. And he said three specific things that it was our role to do as our job in upholding that side of the deal. And it was to support the affiliates to develop and express the brand. And number three was to protect them. And that's what this lecture is going to be about. Support the affiliates, develop the brand, develop the brand and protect them. What we've done and what we've been doing to protect our affiliates from threats that they may not even be able to see or know about. Now, I've got this set up chronologically. I'm gonna take you guys through this from 2009 on.

It's gonna give you a picture of kind of how we stumbled into some of these discoveries and some of these problems. And then we'll give you overarching pictures of what that means. It's kind of hard to start this discussion without beginning in a really specific place. And that is a conference that happened in 2010. We called the CHAMP Conference conference and this was a meeting between.

Okay, at the bottom there for those of you guys if you're just listening to it's the consortium for health and military performance. So this is a big this is a big conference for like military training essentially to get those contracts and be legitimized. It's an NSEA fellows private contractors to the military and a couple military personnel where they basically got together, these are academics and professionals of the exercise science industry, got together and talked about CrossFit. And we have slides from their presentations, we know a lot of what they talked about and

it's incredibly disparaging towards the CrossFit methodology and was very critical of the CrossFit methodology. From this, CHAMP conference, the CHAMP paper was produced. This was published in 2011 on the ACSM's platforms. It was a paper that had a scientific facade to it, meaning it came from a position of authority, it had a bunch of different authors on it, it was peer-reviewed, and the paper itself was extremely critical of CrossFit and was circulated without our knowledge behind our backs throughout the Pentagon in an attempt to basically kill our chances of having any

military contracts and the military's fitness needs. Now, some interesting things about this paper. Once we finally got a copy of it, we were able to read some of what this paper said. And as I've already mentioned, these are NSCA and ACSM authors. And I want to go ahead and read to you one of the first things, first quotes from the paper itself.

It describes a potential emerging problem of musculoskeletal injuries caused by the CrossFit brand training, but immediately admits that the short and long term physiological functional and readiness outcomes or safety of ECPs, which is their way of characterizing CrossFit, extreme conditioning programs has not been carefully studied. So what do you have there? Potential emerging problems. I'm going to write that down.

Potential emerging problems. The funniest thing is, so side note here, we're going to digress for just one second. My brother graduated from San Diego State University. And if you guys have ever been to a college graduation, especially a very large college like that, when you come out of the graduation, like the ceremony and the walkthrough, there are just sees of there's just bodies just see of people everywhere. And you can hardly move and half of them are stopping and taking photos and you feel like you're kind of stuck and you're like doing one of these like penguin walks and you can't get through and um my grandfather was in a wheelchair uh and this was this was probably

right around the time that this came out and i remember walking with him and i i we couldn't move anywhere and like people were just not even paying attention and letting us through. And you know, I can't really move or weave through people with this man in a wheelchair. And so I literally just started saying, excuse me folks. And then when people still want to, well, when it, uh, move or look, I would just get louder and I'd say, excuse me folks, we have a potential emergency here, guys. We have an emergency. It's potential. It is emerging guys. We have, and I just started like yelling these like words and people like, oh my gosh, and like spread and like got out of the way.

But if you actually listen to what I was saying there, it wasn't actually saying anything which Russell will talk about now. This phrase potential emerging problems, the musculoskeletal injuries associated with crossfit training. This is what, does anybody here have experience with Wikipedia? Any Wikipedia editors? Have you ever gotten in there and added anything to Wikipedia?

Wikipedia has got a really, I think, very effective definition of what this is right here. This is called use of weasel words. And Wikipedia tries to stamp this out whenever they find it in entries on their database. And they define it really well. It's an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression

that a specific and or meaningful statement has been made, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated, enabling the specific meaning to be denied if the statement is challenged. So this is an editorialization on the part of these academics that is really specifically trying to make CrossFit sound dangerous when they have to admit in the paper itself

that they have no evidence to actually support that claim. So we have a big problem with this paper. And Greg Glassman pushes this over to our chief scientist, Jeff Glassman. And he reads it and basically does a fact by fact line by line analysis Of this champ paper as it's become to be known and writes and publishes an answer In the CrossFit journal that just systematically so that was a Greg's dad Jeff Glassman and The funny part thing is is the answer was actually printed on these massive banners that was a bunch of words in different colors.

And then as you got close, like when you were far away, it just said CrossFit, big CrossFit banner. But when you got closer, it was the actual email in a line by line to the NSCA from Jeff Glassman. It's a big, big ass banner. If you guys remember, we were on like Instagram Live maybe like a year ago or something at Sevan's house and he randomly was, when we cleaned out his studio

made it more into the podcast studio it is now. We found that a couple of those posters back there is really cool. I may or may not have it now. Just takes this thing apart and shows how every single claim in this paper about CrossFit or against CrossFit is baseless. And Jeff's quote on this is, it's an unscientific manufactured hit piece, was his conclusion.

Now, we didn't really hear anything in response to that. And some time went by, just some silence in terms of what we were perceiving from the academic world as attacks on CrossFit. Fast forward until 2013. In 2013, a paper came across my desk. And it was a study from OSU, Ohio State University. Had two authors on it, Dr. Stephen Deaver and Mike Smith. Mike Smith was then a PhD candidate under Dr. Deaver.

This is published again at Ohio State University. And the way this was published, this is an interesting thing about the publishing world. It was published ahead of print. What that means is that the Journal of Strength and Condition and Research, which is the NSCA's journal, published an abstract sort of a preview of this study that you could access, but you couldn't get the full text yet.

So we see this, and the title of it is CrossFit-Based Power Training Approves Aerobic Endurance and Body Composition, or something like that. And essentially what it's saying is positive stuff. You have this study that shows a CrossFit program will increase your VO2 max, and it will decrease your body fat. Great.

We all know that. So it's not anything shocking. However, there's this little piece of information planted within the abstract that catches our attention. And this study was done at a CrossFit affiliate, theoretically using CrossFit programming. And it claims that 16% of the participants in the study dropped out, couldn't complete the study because of something they refer to as overuse or injury.

Now here's where things get questionable. First off, neither one of those terms was defined by the study. We don't know what that means. Hugely important right there. None of those terms were defined by the study. And I'm going to draw a little parallel here. The beginning when you guys were discussing the post that Lucas said, I was like, people are going to get really caught on just the words and they're not going to actually understand

or be able to see the bigger picture. Once they get caught and like focused in on these individual words and what they mean to them, when we have no definition, it's going to be a he said, she said, this is when you just get this blunder of like nobody's on the same page. Right. It's just it's just a word salad to make you feel certain things. So then you just kind of get in your head and we're not we're not able to really see the bigger picture here. Anyways, we also have no breakdown in terms of which participants were overused and which ones were injured. So we have no way of determining whether or not they were all overused or all injury. We also know where these overuses and injuries

came from and we don't know if it's supposed to mean that they were from the CrossFit program or it's supposed to mean that they just got hurt outside of the CrossFit program and couldn't complete the study. All of that is left up to the reader's imagination. Even more ironically, does this remind you guys of uh something else here? You remember when people were dropping rep in light right light, right during 2020, 2021, you got hit by a bus on your motorcycle. Would you die, die from, or would you die with? You remember it's funny how they do that, right?

You could just tweak wording a little bit. However, any straightforward reading of the actual paper, once we got ahold of it, makes it abundantly clear that the author's intent in citing this injury data is to call into question the risk-benefit ratio, that's a direct quote, the risk-benefit ratio of the CrossFit program in terms of the ability to get gains from it and the possibility of you becoming injured. Guess what this paper cites? The Deaver-Smith paper cites the CHAMP document.

This gets more interesting when you recognize that one of the authors of the CHAMP paper, remember a lot of the authors of the CHAMP paper were either ACSM or NSCA fellows, was a Dr. William Kramer. Is both an NSCA fellow and is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, was one of the authors on the consortium of health and military professionals, the CHAMP hit piece against CrossFit.

And his journal is publishing ahead of print this study that shows that CrossFit is dangerous. Now, a lot of people see that study and they see the title and they say, hey, this is good for CrossFit. The title of the study says it's going to make you have a better VO2 max and it's going to reduce your body fat.

However, if there's anything, and Greg Glassman summarizes this really well, if there's one thing that you do not want to hear as a fitness professional, somebody in the fitness industry, the last thing you ever want to have somebody say about you is that you hurt people. And there's a reason for that. As a CrossFit trainer, as a trainer in the fitness industry of any methodology, your job is to build relationships with people where they develop a trust with you so that you can take that person's health and fitness in your own hands and improve it. If that person has an idea that you're going to hurt them or they have some concern about the risk associated with your program, you're done.

You're done in this industry. And so what happens is that even though this is just a small segment of this overall paper, that is exactly what happens. Yep. So if you start getting the the reputation and you guys know this as Crossfitters, if we start getting the reputation that Crossfit hurts people or Crossfit's dangerous, that stain sits on your shirt for forever. And whether it's true or whether it's not, you will always are going to have to constantly address it. And you guys will find in this video, uh, Russell will talk about it

shortly here that the competitors of Mike's gym, the guy who they, the affiliate that they did the study at wrote the paper at his competitors in his local area, literally use that study and said, see, this is why you shouldn't be doing CrossFit. Even the experts agree it's dangerous. And all as it takes for a little, for a really low level intellectual person is just to see a words or comments, not think about the totality of it, not look at the facts that are there and not try to understand the definitions or anything like they get super caught up on just the comments.

And then what happens? You end up like this dude Even savant can't defend Castro's comments It's that's exactly it. You're caught up on some fucking semantic of a word, dude You're the same people that heard the same bullshit on the news and then went over and wanted to flip everybody's life I'll upside down walk one way up the aisle in the grocery store, wear your fucking mask and tell on other people because you were so caught up on the words that people were using that you were blinded by the actuality of the situation and what was happening around you. You couldn't look at the facts because you were so emotionally caught up on the

words or the comments of it that it completely construed your whole entire thinking. And now you're just like one of these other people that'll see a report on a CrossFit affiliate somewhere that it's dangerous, and you're gonna run around and spread that all over the place because of the fucking words and comments and you're not even gonna try to understand

the totality of the situation. Don't end up like a low-level intellectual. The only thing that separates you from the fucking birds outside is the fact that you could sit there and think and you could respond and you could reprop and you could process. Don't just throw that away. So Luca was wrong to say that. No dude. is wrong to say that. No, dude, you're a fucking dumb shit. That just caught up in the semantics of it.

Just like these people knew that they could write something in a champ paper, then a CAAA, a CSM, they could circulate it around Ohio State gets picked up, but you guys will find out very quickly that Ohio State takes a shitload of funding from the American Beverage Association. Even Greg said in one of the things that if it wasn't for the American Beverage Association, Ohio State's exercise science department couldn't keep the fucking lights on. Dude, I'm more than thick. I'm long. I'm thick. Just ask your girl. And those type of things end up getting taken out of context with the champ paper or these other studies. And then they just go back and they just keep pointing back to the champ. When like, oh, see the experts. Oh, it's peer reviewed.

Oh, it's, it's, it's agreed. The jury's out. It's dangerous. It doesn't matter if we look at the study, at the definitions of the study understand what's happening here That doesn't matter we're just gonna focus just on the words and what happened Dude, I'm I'm I'm a huge man, bro. The biggest man, bro I go on shows and I comment and I tell me what do you guys think? Oh gosh Yeah, dude shut up sit down enjoy the show and follow the leader

It's gonna call your name, but I'm not gonna call your name Exactly what every author from a blog website major news sources picked up on and suddenly we saw this study everywhere We saw the abstract in social media. We saw people saying hey look We finally have the evidence to show cross. It's dangerous is what we've been saying the whole time We saw major news outlets like outside magazine military times and others picking up on this and citing it as an example of cross fit hurting people Now the problem with this is that it's completely false the 16% number When we looked a little harder we found out what this means is there were 11 participants

that didn't show up. And in the study, it says they didn't show up because of overuse or injury or time constraint. They said specifically that two of the 11 couldn't come back because of time constraint, and the other nine were overused or injured. When we looked at these 11, and we realized that the method for gathering data in the study, it was a blind study. If you have a blind study, that means you don't know the names of the participants in the study, you just have them as a number.

Essentially what this study was saying was logically impossible. They were saying that they got the participants who didn't show up to the lab to tell them why they didn't show up to the lab in the lab. You guys tracking? It's the exact same thing as me saying, hey, raise your hand if you're not here right now. Oh, nine of you. Okay. You guys get that? So they didn't even know who the people were. It was a blind study. Right? So they didn't even understand or know who is in the study. And then they're like, oh, well, hey, if you guys are injured and you're not here, let us know. Okay. There's six of us. Okay. Cool. All right. Boom. Put it on there. So the thing is just completely already screwed because the way the study is set up, they couldn't even tell you that the 16 people are who they were or anything like that. It's nuts. Cool.

And then I make up a number. They had no ability to gather the data that they claim they had. So when we looked a little harder at this, we had some questions. We talked to the affiliate owner, a guy named Mitch Potter, who had this program run in his gym. He was really, really upset. He told us that none of the participants in this program had been injured.

He told us he hadn't hurt nine people in the four years that he'd been operating his affiliate. And he told us that the authors of the study wouldn't return his calls. So we go to the study's coordinator, who is a volunteer that actually worked out at the gym. Her professional daytime job was coordinating studies, and she just decided to help out with this one.

She handled all the data between the participants and the researchers. And she told us very straightforward that she had no idea how these researchers got the data they did and how they came to the conclusions that they did because she knows for herself that no one was injured. So then we decided to actually call Dr. Steven Dever. This is a little later in the year. By the way, could you imagine that like you put this whole entire thing up, right? Like this whole study, you cite this whole champ and you guys are going to find out a minute

here that this William Kramer and Stephen Devere were like, they basically kept showing up in the NSCA and stuff were like, hey, we're not going to publish this unless you show up with data like false data injury. And can you imagine making that stuff up and manipulating this study to say that CrossFit is dangerous and inflicts all these injuries and then you're just sitting at your desk one day and Russell calls you. The phone just rings and you're just like, Hey, hello. And it's like, Hey, it's Russell.

I got a few questions. And you're like, Oh shit. Cause this dude's smart as a whip. And especially if you're caught off guard like that and a phone call, like he's in a Jackie. Hi, Elizabeth. How's it going? So he's a decaf next show. Yeah, Elizabeth. How's it going? Susan decaf next show.

Yeah, seriously. It's just it. Yeah, sneaky. I agree. It's infuriating to deal with people like that. Like they just like the whole purpose is just to get me wound up. I mean, I lean into it a little bit. It's fun. I enjoy I enjoy having a good rant. But. Yeah, some people just bring absolutely fucking like nothing to the table. Nothing to the table.

Anything is dangerous. Yeah, 100%. Slight echo in the video. Sorry, not really sure how to fix that. We'll see. Corey, soapbox Susie is my favorite Susie. I tried to not cuss that much too, because sometimes people have like sent something back or like have clipped in. I'll watch it back and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I swore like a lot there.

I don't even really. I didn't really realize that Adam bullshit. I say more caffeine. OK, well mixed here. John Young's rant about CrossFit not going away was unreal on the spin. I missed that. Check that out. Okay, so anyhow, we got Russell calling the people now.

And I did an interview with him in which he was unable to answer basic questions about the origin of this data and completely unable to explain how that data could have even been collected in a lab on participants and why they weren't in the lab. So he promised me after a 45-minute phone call that he would find out from his PhD, then PhD candidate, who is now Dr. Mike Smith, what had happened, and he'd get back to me. So we hung up, and I waited around,

and I didn't get an answer. I emailed him a few days later and didn't get an answer. And finally, I got a response from both of them that basically said, this has been approved by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. The NSCA's journal is above reproach, and we're not going to answer any more of your questions. We're done with you.

And I haven't heard from them since. I want you to put yourself in the shoes of an affiliate owner here. Because this is, again, the whole concept about why we're even interested in this is protecting our affiliates. Let's start with Mitch Potter. Mitch has invested the majority of his adult life

into a career in strength and conditioning. He has a thriving gym in Ohio full of people he has really close personal relationships with. And those relationships are built upon this trust that he's developed with him that he has their best interests at heart. That he's going to take care of them. He's going to improve their health.

He's going to improve their fitness. And then suddenly, he finds out about the study on social media because one of the non-crossfit competitor gyms in his town is saying, hey, look, don't go to this crossfit gym down the street. They hurt people. So here he is, a small business owner, having his entire reputation thrown in the trash can

so that this guy can get his PhD candidacy study published and the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research can get a nice jab in at CrossFit in their academic publishing. Now I want you to put yourself in the place of Strength and Conditioning Research can get a nice jab in at CrossFit in their academic publishing. Now I want you to put yourself in the place of every other affiliate owner in the world who has to deal with the constant barrage of press who is recirculating the 16% as evidence that their methodology, that their program, that their business is potentially hurting people.

Oh, but yet it's, um, this is just pointless. This is just CrossFit being, you know, being argumentative towards its competitors. It's trying to just bully people. So once you truly understand, and by the way, that was 2010 when that champ that champ paper was written in 2013, three years later, you start to see the consequences that are coming out on just this one affiliate. So now imagine that this paper written by, um, from the, the Ohio state paper written by Mike Smith and overlooked by, uh, uh, Devor, Devor, whatever his last name is in William Kramer, right?

Imagine that goes unnoticed and Russell will say it, tell us here in a minute that it's like another 31 papers were published on the efficacy and safety of CrossFit program based off of, or citing rather the champ paper and the original findings that these extreme conditioning programs had inherently more risk than other programs. So 31 papers. Now if you imagine that goes untouched in 2013, nobody does anything with it. Nobody pays attention to it. Greg doesn't do anything about it. CrossFit HQ doesn't do anything about it. And how many more papers do you think would be citing this paper that came out of Ohio State University. Let's just say it just doubled. So now 61 pieces of published literature, citing the champ paper, citing this Ohio State University study,

now start to go all over the place. And by the way, Russell talked about, I can't remember if it was at the beginning or at the end, but he talked about how those papers, the one from the champ in the Ohio State University study, were picked up by mainstream. So now all of a sudden you have these random, you know, men's health and all this other bullshit corporate media stuff, published like utilizing those papers as a source of truth in publishing it out now to mainstream. So think about the consequences of that now. Let's say 10 years later in 2023 2024.

I mean how many papers do you think in the three year span we have 31 that were published. So from 2013 that Ohio State one goes through a notice. How many more do you think are published in 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024? It just starts to build from that one piece of false information in it. And nobody really goes back and does anything about it. Because if you were to look, it's trust the experts, trust the authority. It's been peer reviewed. Consensus has been found by the experts.

They've all looked at it. They don't have the time, the energy, the ability to do the type of research into this that it takes to determine that that's a bogus number. And even if they did know that, they don't have the ability to go out and correct the record in the press and to correct the record in print.

So as a representative of CrossFit HQ, doing this is really more than anything. It's about protecting our affiliates. And the lawsuit that followed from this is just a natural extension of understanding just how unethical that this whole process was. So the first thing that happened here is we noticed all this issue with the study, and I sent the NSCA an email.

And this was in late 2013. Sent the NSCA an email, said, hey, you got a study you need to look at. It's got some fraudulent data in it. We're really concerned about this. Never heard back. 2014, this was in October, I actually called Dr. Kramer. On the phone, called his office.

Said, hey, Dr. Kramer, I've been doing some investigation in one of the studies that you guys have published ahead of print. And we have some serious concerns about it. We think that the data that you published is completely fabricated and needs to be looked at before you fully publish the study in your journal. So in a 30 minute phone call, I explain every reason I have to believe that you publish is completely fabricated and needs to be looked at before you fully publish the study in your journal. So in a 30 minute phone call, I explain every reason I have to believe that this study is

fake and he says, Oh yeah, well, you know, we know these types of programs are generally higher risk than other forms of exercise. These extreme programs hurt people more often. And so that doesn't surprise me. And it's been peer reviewed. So we're good. Do you think he knew he was talking to Russell from HQ when he said that? I'm guessing he did not.

But that's exactly the type of, um, uh, playbook that's ran here. Hey, it was, it was published. It was peer reviewed. It was done by the authority and the experts in the space were good. Oh, and by the way, come on, you, you know how these extreme conditioning programs are, right? It's like, okay, so you're not going to actually back that up with any evidence. You're not going to rely on the integrity of your study or anything. Nope.

It's just, hey, you know how those things are. And, you know, look, we have all this literature from this peer reviewed stuff. Like we're good here. He basically blew me off because this had been peer reviewed. He was happy with the result and he basically brushed his hands of it and said, it's not our problem anymore. So shortly after that, the Dever study was published. Published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in full print.

Okay, so look at that. Like, almost a year or so later, published out of print, Greg gets a hold of the paper, realizes there are fraudulent data in it, that they're claiming injury rate when they don't have any. They're looking back and citing the Champ paper, which William Kramer was involved with two years prior. Russell emails the NSCA thinking like, hey, maybe they're unaware of the fraudulent scientific misconduct inside the paper. a CIA doesn't answer him. He called Deaver, the guy who has overseen the study from Mike Smith here. And we're going to show you we're going to do a little then and now what happened to our old our old friend, Stephen.

And and then now he's calling Dr. Kramer. Got just blown off answer there. Ah, yeah. You know, Hey, it's peer reviewed. We're good. Everything's checked off. Now the paper gets published. So even no published, I had a print when, um, CrossFit got a hold of it.

Greg got a hold of it. You had Jeff Glassman writing articles to, or writing emails to them saying, Hey, this is wrong. This there's no, there's no evidence here. There's no, this study was done incorrectly. Didn't matter. It continued all the way down the line until it, until it got published. And so now you have the big issue.

Like I was talking about earlier is you have something that's in published and peer reviewed. And like you guys know, especially going through the pandemic era, that was the almighty, that was like God's word written in stone. If it was published by a scientific journal and it was peer reviewed and the consensus had been reached, if you tried to question that at all, you were a conspiracy theorist. And this outline here is bigger than just the harm it has on CrossFit and CrossFit affiliates. This playbook that we're laying out right here, guys, I really want you to pay attention to like, this is how bad science gets turned into published science gets turned into policies,

which then govern the way that we live. And some people like, oh, you're like, fuck it. You're too overboard on this. Am I really? You remember the six foot rule? We didn't even need to have anything peer reviewed or published for that. Once it just got crazy and you just followed the authority, you didn't even have a fucking you didn't even have a vote.

They didn't even need a fucking you didn't even have a vote. They didn't even need to prove it to you. It was just peer reviewed and good. Oh, I hit the button and my whole thing. G and yeah, Greg and Russell are still friends. Yes. And Russell still does stuff with broken science and different things like that. Writes articles for him. If you guys remember one of the first shows I did, I talked about the Dana Farber study and what was happening over at the cancer research institution at

Harvard. This same thing. And by the way, Russell was the one who researched that and and followed up and did all the like called the Harvard Institute and everything else. Like he went through all that. So he not only did he do it here for affiliates, but he's also doing it in cancer research. And this is why this is important. And if you actually pay attention to this whole layout of how this goes and Greg's involvement in it, you could easily see the leap that Greg made from where he was with CrossFit

to the DDCs to now where he's out with the broken science. Like it's a very clean line. that Greg made from where he was with CrossFit to the DDCs to now where he's out with the broken science. Like it's a very clean line. Okay, back in the video. Without any corrections, without any notes, without any investigation. Now there's a huge problem. I'll just pull back just ahead. The Dever study was published.

Published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in full print. Without any corrections, without any notes, without any investigation. Now there's a huge problem here. As an academic professional in the publishing business, the editor of a journal has an ethical responsibility to investigate any and all claims of what this is. The technical term for this is scientific misconduct. And this is not me making this up.

This is internationally recognized standards on scientific publishing require Dr. Kramer and his organization to investigate the claims that we presented them with. And if they didn't have the time and resources to do that themselves, their responsibility is to send that back to OSU, where their own officer of research integrity would do the investigation for them.

And they did neither. Come to find out, after requesting public document records from OSU, which I received a few months after dealing with the lawyers, we actually got copies of the back and forth peer review comments that happened between Mike Smith, the author, and Dr. Kramer's hand-picked peer reviewers. This is where things got really interesting.

It turns out that this study was rejected multiple times. And the original versions of it had no mention whatsoever of any injury data. But the peer review comments continually critiqued the paper by saying, hey, CrossFit's dangerous. We really need to have some idea of how many people were heard in this, until Mike Smith got the idea, added the injury data, which we determined was either fabricated or fraudulent,

and then from there cited the champ paper and finally got his his piece through the door. So we have the NSCA using this peer review manipulation process to craft the study into something they could benefit from that was sufficiently disparaging towards across the program before they would publish it. Once they were informed of that by us, they ignored us and went ahead anyway. Now, Dever continued to go to the press on this even after we had our phone call and it was without question apparent to him that the data that he was defending was completely and totally indefensible. OK, so then I have a question for you guys just to think about if you were

presented with all that evidence from Russell, like you were involved in that paper and they were calling you, they were clearly on the case. They were like, hey, this is all wrong. They're trying to point out the stuff so it could be corrected. Everybody ignored it, pushed it through and then publish the paper. What do you think their motive is? What do you think Ohio State University? What do you think William Kramer's motive is?

What do you think Stephen DeVore's motive is? Why do you think that they would ignore all of that and put their jobs, their reputations on the line to put data injury into CrossFit. And if you think about it too, this was still relatively early. Like there was a pretty big boom with CrossFit, especially like the 2010 to 2003 error. Right. But why would they do all of that just to get something published with injury data rates for CrossFit? Outside magazine said that this study was still not meant to be a complete survey of

CrossFit injury rates, but he still defended it. And at this point was actually telling people publicly that the first version didn't have injury data in it at all and that the NSCA had requested that. Now you might think that this is just a fluke. This is just one bad study and there's a couple bad apples in the peer review process, nothing to be concerned about. Well, we had another study that was published ahead of print, 2013.

The HACC study was published ahead of print. And this was another study of CrossFit injury rates based on a solicited survey that found that 3.1 injuries per 1,000 hours of CrossFit training was about average. Now, that number itself isn't bad. That's about on par with any other type of general physical fitness training.

So that by itself proves nothing about CrossFit being inherently dangerous, especially when you compare it to just other stuff that we do in the gym. However, the actual text of the study, when I got a copy of the full study, had some really interesting conclusions in it that seemed to point to CrossFit as still being dangerous because of the high prevalence

of specifically shoulder and low back injuries from the data. In other words, he looked at this and said, well, CrossFit has a higher percentage of shoulder and low back injuries compared to other programs. So we're gonna say that's because of the high rep, high weight, high intensity training that they do. So I got him on the phone in an interview and asked him, Hey, where did you get that?

How did you go from prevalence of injury to this is caused by high intensity, high rep, high load training of CrossFit? There's, there's no, it's a, it's a non-sequitur. You don't make any argument to provide any evidence to get from A to B. And he says, Oh, well, so do you guys get that there? They put in, they, they basically said CrossFit, Hey, it has the same injury rate, you know, the whatever, the, um, 3.1 for every thousand hours of training. If you guys listened to the interview I did with Dr. Sean Rocket, he cited that as well too. But the jump that they made, which doesn't make any sense if

they can't show us how they got there in the paper was the fact of like, Hey, we, we have this injury rate, but it's mostly going to be like shoulders and back stuff, which happens a lot because of the high intensity, the high repetition, the complicated movements, stuff like that. But they didn't actually show any evidence of how they got from a to B. So they presented you with one thing, Hey CrossFit as you know, kind of the same injury data rate as everything else, but it's really prevalent in low back and shoulders because, but we don't actually give you evidence to

support the claims that we're making. You guys follow that there? It's word trickery, which a lot of people get caught up in. It doesn't take much as you guys know. It doesn't take much as you guys know. Doesn't take much. Um, Heidi, it is the Ohio state. Thank you. Yeah.

You guys gotta be careful. Don't like just come down on a just Ohio state. Like I know they got caught up in this, but trust me, if you think that Ohio state is the only bad apple in the world of academia, especially when it comes to the universities, it's not all of them. Come on guys. But, uh, it was a typo. He legitimately claimed that there'd been a high rep, high load training of CrossFit.

There's, there's no, it's a, it's a non-secretary. You don't make any argument to provide any evidence to get from A to B. He says, Oh, well, uh, it was a typo. He legitimately claimed that there'd been a typo in this process. And then I started to get the whole story from him. Turns out Dr. Hack likes CrossFit. He does CrossFit. He wanted to show that CrossFit wasn't dangerous and was pretty confident that the data would a typo in this process. And then I started to get the whole story from him. Turns out, Dr. Hack likes CrossFit. He does CrossFit.

He wanted to show that CrossFit wasn't dangerous and was pretty confident that the data would express that, and it did. But he also had his paper rejected six times until the NSCA was satisfied with the amount that he called into question CrossFit safety. We actually have another author who submitted a paper to the Journal of Strength and Gestion Research

on a CrossFit program or CrossFit workout, who repeatedly had his paper rejected and repeatedly was told he needed to cite the CHAMP document and refused to do it and was never published. He's come forward and he's talking to us and our lawyers now. So you see that you have somebody else who's doing a study on CrossFit, goes to get it published, goes to get a peer review and the NSCA and the authorities that would review it and publish it are basically saying like, nope, you need to come back with some sort

of injury data rate. We need to like, nope, this doesn't satisfy our needs. So here we have a history and a pattern of the NSCA, specifically Dr. William Kramer, using our publishing platform and citing this original unscientific hit piece to create the sense that there's this scientific consensus out there that CrossFit is dangerous and it's all based on a lie. This paper has been cited over 31 times as of today. We see it pop up in media even today in news reports

that call it a reason to express concern about CrossFit safety. And it's completely and totally bogus. So what do we do? Well, in step number one, Mitch Potter sued Steve Endeavor and Michael Smith and listed the NSCA as a nominal defender. Their lawsuit is a little bit ahead of ours. But CrossFit Inc. sued the NSCA because we put them on notice

well before they published the DVER study. And they went ahead and published it anyway. They are intentionally manipulating incoming papers on CrossFit to create the perception that we're dangerous. There's no other explanation for it. You can't do it that many times in a row on accident. Doesn't work that way. So the question then becomes why? Why would they do that? Why would the NSCA force all these people to put in injury rates, uh, injury rates, manipulate their studies. I go back. This one doesn't look good.

Give us a little bit more injury here. You're making CrossFit look too good here. Why would they do that? And Russell's going to answer that question in just a moment here. Or we're going to speculate on that question. And here's the, here's the cool thing. This was in 2020, 2020, this was in 2015. You guys hear me talk about that at the beginning.

Um, and before CrossFit was sold in 2019, we have information on what happened to the case. My favorite part about this, and we'll do this in a second, is if you go down and read some of the comments underneath this video, this actually gave me a little hope because I thought people just became really like low conscious level thinking in 2020, but it turns out they were like that all along. They've been like that since 2015 and the comments will show it. But the funny thing is when you read these comments and you go back in 2019,

when judge Samarito who resided on the case, when she basically like laid the whole thing out, turned out CrossFit was almost under playing how bad it was rather than over playing it. And I was fortunate enough to be at a DDC. Um, when Greg, when this actually happened in, uh, they were doing the MDL one and the way it worked at CrossFit HQ from the limited knowledge that I have, um, people in the comments that no more, please feel free to correct me. But the DDC was something like this.

You had the MDL one, which was happening at the CrossFit HQ gym. This is also where Greg did the class for the underserved. You guys have heard him talk about this, the free class he did, uh, like he called, what do you call it? The old for the old and really fat people. So inside that gym, you had, uh, the MDL one going on, which essentially was just a, an L one, but everybody that was taking that course was a licensed physician.

They were like a doctor. And then right across the hall, you had a lecture hall. And in the lecture hall, that was the DDC, the darelike doctors club. And those are like the subject matter experts like the Zoe Harcum, Seema Holtra, we've had some of these people on the show. They'll go up and they talk, they present information that basically coincides with all the information that the M.D.'s were getting at the L1. And a lot of these doctors, a lot of these physicians, and especially the

subject matter experts that CrossFit would bring in, they were all having like these holy shit moments because they were finding all this evidence. They knew shit was just weird. It was just wrong in the way that they were practicing medicine. It just didn't add up. People were getting sicker. Costs were just going through the roof and they knew something was up. They knew that they were like sick management. They weren't at the actually health care. So once Greg would bring them into this room and you would give them the MDL-1 and they would hear these subject matter experts speaks, they would have this like, holy shit moment. Like I'm here. I'm finally with the

people that get it and they understand we need lifestyle change in these protocols that could be brought into cure chronic disease. And so during one of those times, I, I, the DDC got to shift over and during the break during the L one, um, Greg actually went up there with his lawyers and he gave us a little like debrief on what was uh, what was happening with the case and we'll get into it in a second here. But one of the things that really stuck with me that he said is like once they, uh, the court ordered them to like give up all their stuff so they could start going through, it's called like a discovery.

So it's just all the information and evidence that you would need in the case. And once that, um, once CrossFit and the judge got ahold of all the stuff and they started going through, through the information with the NSCA and these Ohio State University characters and everything else, there was something ridiculous, like 200,000 emails that were going back and forth specifically about CrossFit and these issues that are happening here. And I remember Greg said it got so dark that in one of those emails, they had it literally said, man, would it be good to have a mass shooting at one of their events to slow down this movement?

That's it. This is the type of people at the NSCA and the type of people at the Ohio state publishing this paper, that's the type of shit that they were on. That's where their mindset was. Which was crazy. I just remember sitting in the back of the room and listening to this whole thing. And I was like, oh my gosh. And wanting more information on it. Because all these really cool things were happening inside of HQ.

Like the MDL one, like these lectures with the subject matter experts. And everything else. But I felt that the media distribution behind it was really low. Like, man, I would sit inside that room and I'd be like, holy shit, why aren't we just pumping Instagram clips out of this? Why aren't we just putting this on YouTube? Why isn't it available on audio? All these things and a little side tangent.

When they posted one of the talks, I think this one was by Asim Mahotra. When they posted... When CrossFit published his whole talk in entirety, I wanted it in just audio form. This would have been back in 2019. And so I just took a microphone and stuck it up next to my computer and I just recorded it and then I published it on the same podcast that I had all the audio versions of the articles that I read. And it was funny because I got a call from Karin and they thought I recorded a scene inside the room without anybody knowing. And then when I was like, no, go and listen to it. I gave you guys credit and I cited it and said where it was from and then just played

your YouTube video and recorded the YouTube video. I didn't, I didn't get in trouble or anything, but that's how like dedicated I was to this mission into the information that was coming out. Like I found a way into the DDCs. And then as soon as I found a way in the DDCs, I tried to just to find ways to distribute more content. Cause I knew how important this stuff was. I didn't realize the, the level of its importance, I think, until after the pandemic. Then I was like, wow, like the stuff that Greg was doing and where his mind was on this broken science, the replication crisis, how that's trickled into the public health and got us into the situation that it was now, like just became so crystal clear. It was crazy.

So anyhow, just a little side note I want to share with you guys, because that was pretty cool to be a part of that talk. Nailed it. Thank you. Thanks. OK, cool. Yeah. DDC weekends were absolutely insane with the knowledge that was flowing around and also so freaking fun. They were. It was really cool. The group of people that was there were really cool.

Everybody that worked at HQ. You know what else is kind of funny when I think back about it? I was, I got to go to like three of them, I think. And then they ultimately got ended up getting shut down because of the pandemic when they started to close all the events down and stuff like that. But the amount of people that I know now that were all probably at those DDCs and we're all there at the same time. But like nobody knew like nobody knew who I was. Just kind of cool to like think about like sitting there and I'm like, Hey, now I know all these people. Okay. Anyways, we go back to the video. The big question is why? Why would they want to do that? Well, in order to really fully

understand their motive, you got to go back in a little bit. In 2010, the ACSM came out with a public statement that expressed their interest in making sure that personal trainers would become licensed at the state level. What that means is they wanna see every personal trainer, anyone who's teaching fitness to anybody, have to go through a state-certified process in order to be able to legally enter that profession. What does that process look like? Well, guess what?

Big surprise. You have to have a nationally accredited certificate from the ACSM or the NSCA and not from CrossFit. Why here? Why now? This is interesting. In 2009 to 2010, the ACSM increased their lobbying budget. 350%. They have currently eight... Let me guys, let me ask you guys a question here. Just a speculation question. Um, the ACSM and the NSCA increased their lobby lobbying budget by 350%, 350%. Yeah. Uh, Augusta, sorry. There's a little echo. Heidi was talking about it earlier and, um, it just kind of happens when I play the YouTube videos. I apologize for that. They increased their lobbying budget by 350%.

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Get 15% off with code SEVON at oneskin.co. That's 15% off oneskin.co with SEVON as the code. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Tell them SEVON sent ya. Do you think they just had more in a discretionary savings fund for lobbying? Do you think they just had a really good year? Like, where do you think the extra 350% like whatever the dollar amount is that

you could tie to that? Like, where do you think that money came from? It's specially because in Russell, we'll get into it here that the L one was taken the NSC's lunch money in terms of certification. Um, Graciano Rubio, Graciano Rubio will be coming to a CFL on October 19th and we'll be giving a weightlifting seminar a full-day deal If you guys are in the area and would like to attend Shoot one of us a message. You'll be seeing some more stuff coming out about it, too

So Graciano Rubio will be at the gym October 19th. Come on down. It's open for anybody NSEA doesn't even lift you're a hundred percent corrected when I was researching some of this when I kind of show you guys these characters 100% correct, dude. When I was researching some of this, when I kind of show you guys these characters, Dr. William Kramer, good for him. He just got inducted into the Strength and Conditioning National Hall of Fame. Dude doesn't look like he's ever seen a 400 meter jog in his lifetime. That's neither here nor there. But you're right. He doesn't lift. It's just them talking about studies of people lifting and all this other. It's hilarious. It's an academic version of exercise science and it's just a joke. Especially because the guy in the podcast that they have,

which by the way was only filmed 10 months ago or recorded 10 months ago, isn't even properly squatting. He's like in a Smith machine, like lean back against it, just going up and down super quick. So that pretty much tells you everything you need to know right there. Scott, we were big pharma. And soda. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Showed it. Yeah.

Yeah, Mike. Yeah, you nailed it, dude. It's literally he's in a Smith machine. It's so funny. Greg just talked about that yesterday, but it's hilarious. Alejandro. What's up, brother? Um, it's crazy to me how many people who feel proud about the NSEA credentials.

Yeah, exactly. Indeed. Cause they're the same. It's the same ones that look back at like these papers and they don't look into it. And they just think that it's the authority and like they have it. And now they're the authority. And the funny thing was, is like the L one was the only one that actually had, um, uh, time where you're seeing and

correcting movement in person, like the small breakout, big breakout groups, the small breakout groups that they have at the L one. I forget what the total time there is, but over the course of both days, I want to say it's like six hours or eight hours of seeing and correcting movement and having your movement corrected. Um, which to my knowledge is the only course that did that in person. Unfortunately, a lot of the L ones now are moving to online. So.

That is what it is there. OK, so we're we're back in 2009, the lobbying budget got increased 350%. Where did that money come from and what are they lobbying for? 1800 plus pieces of licensure on the table that they're lobbying for related to health and fitness. These guys do more lobbying than they do teaching about fitness. And in almost every instance, what they're lobbying for

is to have fitness trainers nationwide be unable to practice their profession without the ACSM or NSCA taking a chunk of change from them first. This is a magic year. And what happened in 2009? Just to get an idea of maybe what caused that. In 2009 right here was the year that CrossFit Inc. hit a thousand affiliates. Is that a coincidence? I don't think so. I think the ACSM and NSCA saw our growth, saw the efficacy of our program, saw the direct threat to their revenue as certifiers in the same business we're in, and realized that the only way that they could get ahead of us in this market was to use the police

power of government to lobby for CrossFit trainers to have to pay them money in order to do our job. The NSCA has since this year publicly stated that they're in the same interest. They want to see state-level licensure of personal trainers that excludes CrossFit certification. Now, to be real specific, CrossFit in 2010 had the Level 1 certificate course accredited through ANSI, the American National Standards Institute. So we have an accredited course.

But anytime you see the NSC or the ACC talking about what they mean by state-level licensure of approved nationally recognized certifications, they just kind of leave that detail out. They're not talking about us. They're talking about them. And it's really important to them that we not be included in those qualifications. Why? Because we'll still beat them. We started to see bills popping up here.

And I'll give you a better idea, too, of the timeline. In 2013, we started to see these popping up here, and I'll give you a better idea too of the timeline. In 2013 we started to see these studies popping up everywhere. Between 2013 and 2014 we saw what we called the Kramer Quartet. I guess William Kramer himself authored four studies, I'm not sure why he specifically said to do this, William Kramer himself authored four studies that were all related to CrossFit, and each one of them has been picked apart by Russ Green, my colleague who is responsible for a great deal of helping us get this timeline hammered out, did a line-by-line review of all these studies and found that they were littered with fabrications and inaccuracies related to the CrossFit program. To the point that Dr. Kramer was doing studies on CrossFit

that had positive results and he did the intellectual acrobatics to be able to say that they were negative results. It's mind-boggling. But you see the timeline. Around 2013, we see a consistent output of just junk science aimed at making CrossFit look dangerous and ineffective. Two questions. Number one, in the last minute of that video, did the echo go away? I think I was able to fix it. I just dropped a little sound here.

Judy Reid, I'd refuse to pay 1K online for the L1. That'd be crazy. The thing, the thing to me though, that is, um, most important about the L one being online is the obvious of the seeing and correcting of the movement. Like when you're in that small breakout group and you're getting your hands dirty for the first time, looking at a squat, correcting it, having yours corrected, being brought in the middle of the circle. All of those intangible things like being insecure, opening yourself up to criticism in front of a group, giving answers on seeing and correcting movement that might be wrong. So therefore you're having to put yourself out there.

All those things that happen in person, particularly in those breakout groups, mind is, is one of the most important parts of the L one. The second most important part in there is watching the way that the seminar staff conducts themselves, watching the way that they, um, lead the lectures, watching the way that they talk and interact with the other participants, watching the way that they interact and coach each other. When we watch that, watching the way that they interact and coach each other. When we watch that, watching the way that they interact and coach the other people, watching the way that they work out at lunchtime.

Like all of that type of stuff to me is how the CrossFit culture transmits from person to person because it's right there. It's in your face. You're immersed in it in a weekend and kind of like a summer camp or something like that where you don't know anybody. But by the end of that, that time, or in this case, they all won by the end of the weekend, you're walking away and you're like, Oh, I remember so-and-so. And you feel like your buddies with all the people around you and specifically

the seminar staff in the flow mastersters create that experience in that environment. Like they are the ones that they conduct that. It doesn't just happen on its own. Like some groups, sure, might be more interactive naturally or whatever, but each weekend these seminar staff people are conducting the way that we interact with each other. They're conducting the conversation. And so like you need to be able to take a small piece of that and watch it, have an example of it, and then bring that into your affiliate or wherever it is that you're going

to be teaching CrossFit. To me, that's a really important part in the professionalization or professionalization of the trainer. Because when you watch the flow masters and when you watch these L1 seminar staff, people do their jobs like they are doing it at the highest level. And a part of you leaves out week and you're like, I want to be like those people. Like I want to be as knowledgeable. I want to be as entertaining. I want to be as good with my material.

I want to be as like on time. I want my logistics. Like you, you start to say like, okay, there's the example. There's, there's kind of the gold, the gold standard. And that's what I want to move work towards. And when you remove that and you just bring it online, that chunk of it that I that I feel is important and I could be wrong here, whatever, you might disagree that it's maybe it's better to have a more

convenient online. That's fine. But for me, that that core thing could only happen in person. And another thing that I would do too is like CrossFit in its state that it's at now, like it needs to bring everybody back into one central office. Like, could you imagine conducting all this craziness that's happening, especially after the games like via zoom? Like no way I would need, I would need everybody in the same room. We'd have to be in the same room.

I mean, if you have 20 of these, you know, people that let's just say they actually know CrossFit and they had an executives and all the time that they bring to the table. Like if you were to tell me that you've you put 20 of them in a room together, they couldn't solve that problem or whatever the issue was within a shorter amount of time, you think it's going to be more efficient if they do it via zoom? Like, no, you wouldn't think that at all in terms of running the company. So why do we think that moving L one to an online is good when you look at the totality of the community and the trainers and the affiliate owners that it'll be producing.

It doesn't make sense to me. Okay, back to the video. What also starts happening in 2013? We started to see a lot of fitness related bills on the table. In 2014, we saw the first bill pass. So far, it's the only bill that has successfully passed that will license personal trainers. And this is the DC bill. It's an omn bill that has successfully passed that will license personal trainers, and this is the DC bill.

It's an omnibus health bill. The details haven't been hammered out yet, but this passed, and now we have a couple others that are on the table, in Georgia in particular. There's one that's up for vote. Florida bill came shortly after. Florida bill died on the Senate floor, but this Florida bill was another licensure bill lobbied for by the ACSF that would have made it, first it would be misdemeanor to practice personal training without proper certification.

So it would have been a thousand dollar fine or up to a year in jail for teaching somebody how to do an air squat. It sounds almost too ridiculous to be true. But we have a number of states that have either had these bills proposed and have been rejected or currently have these bills on the table. And we have two organizations that have made it their sole purpose to make sure that there is enough fear mongering out there about CrossFit and CrossFit affiliates that we will eventually, in their mind, be forced through the police power of government to have to pay them in

order to do our jobs. For the affiliate, this is an enormous problem for a couple of reasons. Number one, the only place that we can get regulation of the fitness industry from is through someone who's already in the industry. The government is going to look to our current industry and they're going to find a leader

and they're going to say, hey, you guys write the formula. Tell us what someone needs to have in order to be a licensed personal trainer. We'll stamp off on it. We'll start arresting all the people and finding all the people who don't do it. Why do you think the ACSM is spending $140,000 a year on lobbying? Because they want to be that organization.

They want to be able to tell us how and what and when we need to be able to do our job. These are also two organizations that have literally gotten every single thing about fitness and health wrong for the past couple decades. These are the same organizations that champion the isolation movements and long, slow distance cardiovascular training that was just a little bit better than being sedentary. These are the guys who champion the diet that was killing people, the high carb, low

fat diet. These are organizations that can't even consistently and effectively describe the mechanics of a squat. They're absolute failures in terms of what their practical fitness and training advice has done for the general public and athletes. And yet they want to be the academic authorities that step in to save the public from the dangers of CrossFit. Now another interesting thing here, if you argue for licensure, what's the argument?

Why do we need licensure? The answer is almost inevitably going to be protecting the public. But this is not a bill, these are not bills that are coming from a cry from the public, they're coming from our competitors. Big difference. The ACSM and MSCA are saying our certifications are so good, you should have to be forced to take them whether you want to or not. I wish I would have known how to get rid of that echo sooner. Sorry. It's a little knob here.

Roll it up and down. Kill my mic and then it goes away. So there you have it. So now we'll kind of look into what happened since that video was made there. But if you think about the implication there, so somewhere along the line, the NSCA got enough money to increase its lobbying budget by 350%. Now, two things that are happening there, Russell talked about both of them, but I just want to touch on a point here. The first one is the very obvious, the money in the market share.

So you have your course, it's done well for all these years. You basically have zero other competitors in the space. You have enough time now to now you are the academic authority, so therefore anybody else getting into the space, like you're kind of able to gatekeep it a little bit, right? Okay, so that's the first one. Now somebody pops up with another course that is better than yours. They start selling more of them.

Yours start, stop selling. You're like, oh shit, we got to fix this problem. Okay. So that's the first reason why they would do it, because then if they lobby for the fact of like, Hey, we're the expertise here, you could still get your L one. We don't care. But in order to do what you're going to do in your affiliate, you still need our certification. So then therefore, we protected ourselves against becoming obsolete because we're the

inferior product. You have to get us whether you like us or not. Kind of like cable TV now. You want internet through Xfinity or Comcast, you still got to have a phone line or you still got to have cable because we bundle them together because we're not going to lose out to the internet. Right. So similar in that capacity, meaning like, yeah, we don't care if a more superior certification comes along because now we have the, um, the legal

front handled and you have to get us regardless. Okay. So that's the money thing. The second thing is going to be the authoritative power. So they are the end all be all. So all everybody else could say whatever they want. And then at the end of the day, the state governing bodies, mainstream media, idiots that can't think or read are going to look at that and

say, Oh, well, they said it. They're the authority. There's no need for us to question that. Okay, good. We'll do what they say. Now, if you guys remember, there was a, a, a period of this in, in 2015 to when, um, the American beverage association, I think it was mostly pushed by Pepsi co, but they started doing this like movement is medicine and they were saying, Oh, it's not about, you know, it's not about what types of calories. It's just about calories in calories out. So drink all the sprite you want, eat all the candy you want. It doesn't matter because at the end of the day, movements, medicine, guys get up and get moving.

But the, um, slippery slope there with the movement is medicine is, Hey, now that movement's medicine, we need an authoritative body to govern it because if we're claiming it as medicine, you could be doing harm to the public if we don't have some sort of regulation. Happening here. And so that's why you just, these things are just such a slippery soap and you got to pay attention to the bigger picture of what's happening and not just in the semantics of like the wording or, you know, just the surface level stuff that you could see. OK, so so where are these people now?

OK, so you guys remember Stephen Duvour, he was the guy who was signing off on the paper coming out of Ohio State University. He was the one that was overseeing Mike Smith who is the guy who wrote the paper and did the study out of Ohio State University for his PhD. Well, Ohio State exercise researcher resigns after retraction of CrossFit study. Look at that. On June 2nd, we reported that the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research retracted

a problematic study because it lacked approval from the Institutional Review Board. The Journal had previously corrected the study, acknowledging it contained false injury statistics. Now an Ohio State University spokesperson has confirmed that as the first report by Columbus Dispatch, the former assistant associate professor, Stephen DeVore resigned May 31st. This was in 2017. The day after the retraction, weird, a spokesperson also confirmed that Ohio State University made several demands following the investigation into the CrossFit study. DeVore either corrected or retracted

the study that he take a 33 percent pay cut for the rest of the year and that he reframed from both serving as a principal investigator and contacting graduate students as long as he remains there. It was so bad, he got fired. Now he was able to resign. But we all know exactly what that means. He was found to not have an approval human subjects protocol. His pay cut and the other sanctions were leaving because of his failure to have an approval in the protocol. And then it talks exactly about all the stuff that we just learned about here. And there has been numerous lawsuits filed over the study last year in Ohio State University reached a six figure settlement with the

owner of the gym. So that was our boy, Mike. I don't know, Ohio. Where he got a little bit of money from that fraudulent claims that was made on the study that came out of his affiliate. The judge also ordered the organization to pay CrossFit just under seventy four thousand dollars to cover the lawyer fee. So that was just.

Steven there. That was just him. Right. So where is he now? And what is he doing well he's a consultant at American Electric power via his LinkedIn so there we have him associate professor from 99 until he resigned and then he jumped over here in the same year, same month as an American electric power consultant. Interesting right? Interesting.

Oh, he studied at Berkeley. Education, doctor of philosophy, kinesiology and exercise science. So that's where he's at now. Why was his R B I R B proposal proved if he didn't have human subjects on the foot of it yet exactly there's so many problems with the Ohio state paper. It was crazy. Um, a couple of you guys I saw had some stuff, uh, Jeff Butcher. I couldn't agree more with these, but now that I live where I live, I have to travel 60 plus miles to go get the L one and online version still may be a viable option. I would, I'm weird in this sense.

I'm weird in this sense. I would, I would force everybody to fly. I'd force you to travel. Um, I would just be like, no, it's too important. You got to travel. And if it took a little longer to get it, that's fine. And there's that cause somebody else said, um, Oh, Adam right here. I did a renewal online during COVID and it was um, Oh, Adam, right here, I did a renewal

online during COVID and it was good, uh, as it could be, but first timers I would say would need more in person. I think the renewal is probably the only appropriate, uh, online version. Cause like at that point you've had it for five years. So like, you know, you've already gone through the in-person one and hopefully you, you know, gotten involved across fit and a good affiliate and all that jazz. So you're like, you're good to go. But yeah, uh, Jeff, first of all, every study I did in grad school had to have a human subject

protocol in consent form. Exactly. And so, so the, to your point, Jeffrey, the, um, uh, study was like the double blind. And so at the beginning of that video, when he was like, oh, yeah, we had 16 participants drop out due to overuse injury. Russell was like, how? When you didn't know who they were. And the example he gave is he's like, OK, everybody who's not here because of injury, raise your hand.

OK, yep, I counted 16. Uh, okay. Yep. I counted 16. Mark that down. Yeah. And that's why, um, when I'll bring up this next article here, Jeffrey, like the judge who resided over the case was just like, holy shit. This is crazy. Um, so there you have there, Steven. Uh, that's what's up with him now.

So that, um, the lawsuit in the investigation, uh, Resulted in him having to be resigned and fired all L ones the same are the L ones, the same, the online version and then person, I think they outline the curriculum and everything else is the same. But what I'm talking about is like the intangible stuff that happens when you're in person, Rambler. I'm sure like the, you know, this, the different stuff is the same. I have three L one certs and three are signed by three different people.

That's kind of cool. That's kind of cool. Who do you have? Greg Rosa and Don or something? Who else is on it? Uh, was Nicole ever on it? Do you have like, I don't know. That's sneaky.

Who's, who's the three? I'm curious. Greg Rosa and maybe one more. Um, I was going to guess car salesman. Natalie's talking about, uh, Steven. That would be hilarious. He's like, now he works out a used a used car shop. Okay. Yeah. Greg, Rosa and Nicole. Okay. So when it switched over, Rosa was the one

signing them. And then I guess when Rosa left and the cat was out of the bag that Rosa didn't own it, that it was owned completely by private equity. They were like, okay, let's just bring Nicole out to sign it. So because she's head of education, that would make sense. I much rather and much, much like if I can't have a Greg signature on it, I'd much rather have Nicole's. The third is signed by Annette. That would be amazing.

Okay. Um, all right. So would be amazing. Okay. All right. So this is just another bit of information here. This actually came from CrossFit.com when CrossFit.com was cool. This is January in 2019. And what this talks about here is that CrossFit hired E.H. Moriam to, and she was, let me find it right here, she was a professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee. And for 20 years, her research and writing have explored medicine changing economics and numerous publications in journals of law, medicine, and ethics.

So this is who CrossFit hired. Oh, and guess what, guys? It was a woman. Yay. Oh, man. Who would have thought even in 2019, before it was cool. Wow. So ahead of our times. It was cool. Wow. So ahead of our times. Anyways, so she went through and looked at all the stuff and basically like broke it down in her report back to CrossFit and everything Russell already laid out. She just did in a more detailed fashion. Yeah. Only better if she was a person of color woman. Maybe she was. We don't know. You probably know. I didn't see a picture of her. But if you look down towards the end here, the NSCA failed to appropriately respond across its evidence, even after developments demonstrated that it had concerns

about the data fraud were undeniable. Not only did the NSCA fail to pursue credible, sustainable evidence that it's paper fabricated data, but the NSCA's late attempt to issue a correction is also exacerbated the damage to CrossFit affiliates reputation. He gets it. Like you got handed a shitload of information about how all of this was wrong, fabricated, made up, should not be published. And then you published it anyways. Not good. And then we have this here. So that was in January. What I just read to you guys was in January of 2019.

In this article now comes in December of 2019. So almost a year later here. And this is Judge Janice Samarito. She ordered terminating sanctions against the National Strength and Conditioning in the case of CrossFit Inc. versus the NSCA. With the ruling, the court ordered the NSCA to pay CrossFit just about $4 million as a sanction and then terminated the case in CrossFit's favor. The court also awarded numerous issue sanctions that concluded the NSCA's corrupt practices harmed CrossFit while benefiting the NSCA in the military, US, and international communities.

So when this got taken to court and Judge Samarito resided over the case. I think they even have a quote from her. Yes, right here. In 25 years on the bench, this is the first case that the court has ever had that has gotten to this point. Having carefully considered the record, the severity and frequency of the defendant's bad faith misconduct is as egregious as anything this court has ever seen or read. And this goes to the talk that I was telling you guys that I was lucky enough to sit in the back corner of the room and listen to Greg talk about when he was saying they had the 200,000 emails that went back and forth about CrossFit and what to do about it. Searchs in these papers that they were publishing and everything else. It was just so obviously a hit piece.

And as promised, we will to find this article here. They get rid of it. No. No. Oh, wow. I can't find in the archive. OK, I'm going to try to find the morning article. So Eric, I mean, I just call him Eric Weinstein every time. Andrew Weinstein used to be the spokesperson for CrossFit and was like a buddy of and was a buddy of Eric Rose's like they came in together if you guys remember Andrew Weinstein was also the dude who fired seven

I cannot find the the morning chocolate particle Wow Where'd that go? So I'm searching right now. I'm searching the NSEA case in the morning chocolate article that was written in 2020 after they had sealed the case. And I literally cannot find the Morning Talk Up article now. If you guys are pervy to the... Internet there, you can look that up if you like.

Oh wait, I think I found it. I think I found it. No, it's not loading. I even went through Reddit to like look at it. Are you kidding? I wonder if they pulled that. I will say I appreciate the online for test retakes. I'm a terrible test taker.

I felt so much better and focused taking it at home, not to mention that they were videos for finding faults, not picks. Yeah, that's cool. I don't like the test. I guess it's just a necessary part to say like, hey, you did the course, you understood the material, but I could care less about the test I guess is just a necessary part to say like hey you did the course you understood the material But I could care less about the test. I Care way more about how people conduct themselves. Yeah, so morning chalk up for sure got rid of this article

Holy shit Because now okay, I'll show you guys what I'm looking at here so you could just come along the journey with me. So when I typed in the morning chocolate plus CrossFit and NSCA, like the only thing that came up was this Reddit thing. And then this has the morning chocolate article here. And of course, everybody's wonderful comments about it. When you click it, it brings you to this.

A whole lot of nothing. It's not gonna load on your screen because there's nothing loading on mine. Wow. Wow. So I did a... Okay, so needless to say, CrossFit, once Eric Rosa got, uh, uh, involved, he literally just, um, close the case. They just agreed on some sort of settlement.

Is that true? Rambler five zero four means they took it down. Morning Chaka block, Susan. Justin LaFranco took them to the mountains with him. Yeah, that was nuts. I didn't I didn't know that that that was pulled down. That's fucking crazy. And inside that article here, there, they wrote Andrew Weinstein basically wrote and was like,

oh yeah, now that we're in charge, now that the adults are in the room, we're gonna be done with this type of stuff and get more focused on the real work of CrossFit. Like I wish I had the exact writing down, but I remember it being just something like, absolutely ridiculous like that. And I was like, what the real work of CrossFit? Like, did they even understand?

Okay, this is going to be, um, a little self-serving just because the, I do have evidence of what that article looked like, at least super briefly, um, which is going to be here. So I actually made I made a video on this. You guys will see something funny that 47 people watched three three years ago. All distracted by the juiciness of the rich frowning and Matt Frazier drama, something very important slid right past all of us as crossfitters and especially as affiliate owners. I want to drive That's funny Probably made some jokes in there Where's the

Anyhow, I cite the article that morning chocolate bro, and I can get it. You can see the little piece down there where it's highlighted. Anyhow, I talked about the article. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, and then what Morning Chocup said about it. And I even think I give them shit here. Plus it was a methodology, but what do I know that may be changing? The fact that CrossFit being a platform is kind of a...

Now the terminology of creating platform closed down, now we'll just hold out for that. Between you and me, you think that people from Weinstein here, the case were red. We had the people and we let them go. I'm going to read another quote from Weinstein here. The case has been settled in CrossFit's favor. The payment terms are confidential. Between you and me, you think that they're going to give some of that money to the affiliates that have been hurting due to the close down?

Nah, we'll just hold out for that government money. We are very pleased to have this matter resolved so we can focus on our mission of building the world's leading platform for health, happiness, and performance, end quote. Now, the terminology of CrossFit being a platform is kind of interesting there. I thought CrossFit was a methodology,

but what do I know? That may be changing. The fact... Some shit never changes, huh? I'm like, Suza the original Hilafit. If those videos weren't crazy embarrassing, I did a bunch of them like that. But my stuff is all focused on the same shit that I talk about now, which is. CrossFit methodology, not so much like the games or anything.

Here's on the business side of stuff. Um, I just wish I had that article because I was going to end with that punchline of that. But yeah, morning chocolate ditched it. So that tells you something right there. My conspiracy theory is. Rose's mental breakdown was because he couldn't take the weight of knowing he took soda money and contributed to the killing of CrossFit.

Could be could be. Don't forget his weird zoom with Dave. He did his zoom. So yeah, sorry I'm late question. No problem. Do you have links to the journal on your website? I've been trying to download all the best articles and save them before it all disappears. I don't but one thing I do know and these are the ones specifically that Greg wrote. I think if you reach out to Seth page, he found a website where it's just kind of like this bunch of just links and stuff that is the CrossFit Journal. What still exists from there? But outside of that, I know if you go here and you roll over to the brokenscienceinitiative.org,

they have something called the Glassman Archive and all the original articles, 2002, 2002, 2001, that Greg wrote are all archived back here, along with like a lot of the videos and a lot of this stuff, 2003, 2003. So a lot of the really great original stuff that was in the CrossFit journal is all here archived for free. Also too, one thing that I've been diving into, which maybe we'll do another one of

these video breakdowns if you guys kind of enjoyed it, especially the history portion of it, is this bad science threat to fitness. This here is the video that Greg was talking about at Whistler. A couple episodes back, he was like, I don't have much to offer the affiliates. Like what I do have to offer. I said it all at Whistler. Like this is what he's talking about. So if you guys want to go and listen to that, because you were like me and only had an affiliate for seven years at that time, you didn't get to attend that event.

And there was no possible way to sneak into it. Trust me. I tried. Then you could watch that video there. So you don't think it's a disappear gay as full ownership of them. Now, Greg has full ownership of Greg's intellectual property. So I do know some of those, like the best ones are written by Greg anyway. So you're going to have a shitload of stuff there, but there are some really good ones that are written by people that weren't Gregg's, obviously, that I don't think are in there, but you could definitely still find in the archived journal.

So in to brain pod, Hey, it's Chris Cooper from the two brain radio. Today my guest is Eric Rosa, the owner and CEO of CrossFit. You guys remember CrossFit Radio? If you remember CrossFit Radio and you remember who hosted CrossFit Radio, like you listened to it back then, put it in the comments. I'm curious to see if any of you guys know who that is. Okay. So if anybody has any comments, questions, or anything like that, we'll start this portion. I'm just going to hang out for a little bit while longer and and then I will be, um, headed to the NorCal classic to meet up with the guys down there. Let me turn this thing on to remember last time and the first call the whole entire roadcaster

just crashed. That was probably be exactly what happens again here. You could also just throw comments in the or whatever in the comments and there's something you want to talk about. Shit, I don't even think this is the right one. Okay, done. What is my phone number? All right.

It is correct. That is the correct number. And then I have this thing. It'll most likely, most likely just die when you call. Yes, Justin Judkins. Yes, CrossFat, Justin Judkins. Christian got it. Justin Judkins. Yes. Cross fat, Justin, just getting Christian got it. Justin Judkins. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. That was, I used to listen to that. I used to work at a warehouse too. So for a period of time I was bartending, I was coaching CrossFit. I was going to the community college and I was working a couple of days a week at a warehouse here in Livermore and it was just like wrapping pallets

You know, whatever just a lot of stuff alone in the warehouse moving boxes wrapping pallets getting orders ready stuff like that And I would always listen to the CrossFit radio with Justin Judkins. Oh, I wonder what happened to him Maybe he listens to the show. Hi Justin happened to him. Maybe he listens to the show. Hi, Justin. Someone called and take someone call and take that off. Arrogant. I know that was so weird.

You know, it's funny, too, is like, I just would just like just like leave it. You know what I mean? Like there was a whole section in that show when the somebody called it like dropped off the roadcaster where where to turn my mic

into the computer mic and everything else. And there's like a minute of it. And I was thinking to myself later, I was like, should I go back in the show and just cut that little piece out now? Oh wait. Uh, the guy I was thinking of was Savon's host dude for the podcast. Oh, where'd you, who'd you put, uh, Keeley grows articles are lasso gyms who own those. I have no idea.

Who'd you get? Oh, Matt B. Yeah, Matt Bischel, good old Bischel. He was the co-host with seven. Back in the day, Felicia, I must be living under a rock because I had no idea. He had old journal stuff on the broken science site. Yep. Yeah, it's all there. All journal stuff on the broken science site. Yep.

Yeah, it's all there. All the stuff that he owns is, um, there, there. Affiliate town hall was interesting. Oh wait, did you just, oh fuck, did I miss it? I don't get those emails. Don't put me on any of the email lists or something. Maybe. I don't know. Uh, I think someone said kids doing the tactical games.

The pot guy. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Oh, man. Oh, cool. I just got a we just got a tidbit of information hot off the press from Justin Judkins. Uh, we just got a tidbit of information hot off the press from Justin Judkins. Uh, apparently he was a, um, winning wrestling coach in Utah. Now a retired teacher coaches someone doing the tactical games and is still alive.

Cool. So there you go. Justin Jenkins. Shout out, dude. I used to listen to you all the time. You don't get the emails accidentally I know it's so weird like I swore I got all of them and I thought I did all the things to like get them but like I'll get Send stuff from the other guys that I talked to you that own affiliates and they're like, hey

Did you get this or hey, did you get this survey or hey, did you get like what I freaking I feel like I don't What I'd read is record was he talking about. So yeah so. Anyhow now I'm lost because anytime I do something for a length of time my phone looks like this and there's like 50 text messages. And majority of those text messages are going to be like, hey, you forgot to do this, you got to do this.

Hey, you got to do this. Can you do this? Hey, what about this? So once I open them, it goes into that black hole. OK, was that from Chase? No, it wasn't from Chase, but was from Jason. I want to tell you anyways, but it wasn't. It wasn't him. Wasn't him. Wow. The barbell spin has a disclaimer at the beginning of the show now.

Yeah, that's amazing. Right. It's that. Yeah, it is like what CrossFit said. It's a joke like Jackass. Yeah. Yeah. Chad off Jim down the road from us isn't listed on the affiliate map. Their owners aren't on the L one or L two list cross-fit assures us that they are an affiliate though. Why wouldn't you want to be listed on those things?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Whoa, Matt, that absolutely looks like grinder. That would be hilarious. Like I go to show you something and then like my grinder profile pops up. That would be hilarious. I go to show you something and then like my grinder profile pops up. Are you sure you're going to be in Sacramento this weekend? Ah, get that off there.

That's because they have someone inspired. Okay. All right, gang. I hope you guys enjoyed that. I hope you got something out of it. It was really important for me to kind of talk about some of the stuff that's going on in the past because all these things just basically get like swept under the rug and forgotten about. And when it comes to what I look for in terms of, you know, is your, is it worth it to pay

for the affiliate ship? I talked about it a little bit on the show with Emily and one of the points that I made across the seven points for me that are important, that I would like to see as an affiliate owner come from HQ, one of them was definitely like the legislation and litigation proportion of it because majority of the affiliate owners had no idea this was going on in the background. They had no idea this was going on in the background even when it was happening in real time. And that's the job of HQ to look out for the affiliates to be able to see way out in front of everything and make sure that we are protected. And Joe Neal's question that came in the school when I promoted that earlier with, uh, we

got that little playbook by Dale Saran. He was nice enough to, um, hang out in the morning with me and we went over some questions and stuff together to kind of talk about what that would look like now. And the reason why we're doing that is because I, I don't really believe that there is somebody at CrossFit HQ right now that's looking at stuff like this, getting way out ahead of it and paying attention to it. Like, I just don't think that, um, I don't think that that's happening today. Maybe it is, maybe I'm not aware of it.

Uh, but something, something just tells me it's not. And, uh, that sucks, but it is what it is. So anyhow, you guys have a great rest of your day. If you're in the, uh, uh, NorCal area at the NorCal Classic, please come over, say what's up. I'll be there with Sevan Colton, Tudor Magnet, and of course, Taylor Self. There might be an appearance from a few other people down there as well too. So if you guys are around, come say what's up. We'll be filming, shooting, hanging out over there, having a good time.

None of you guys called. As your pansies, but that's okay. I still love you. Adios. Thanks for hanging out as always be good to each other out there because really at the end of the day that's all we got peace and love