The Sevan Podcast - Annie Thorisdottir | Rob Orlando | CrossFit OGs

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

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Good morning. Look at all these notes Look at all these notes Notes, notes, notes, notes Michelle, what's up? Mr. Reynolds, 6th, that's an interesting position Christine Young A friend reached out to me yesterday. Hadn't heard from the guy in about a year. Former CrossFit employee.

Dear friend, love the guy. Kind of guy you'd want to do a long road trip with. Very smart. He said, dude, I love your show. Don't ever polish it. I love the fact that it's not polished. I was like, um, okay. Okay.

Okay. Good morning, sexy savages. Thank you. I, um, he meant YouTube beaver when he said sexy savages. Thank you. I, um... He meant YouTube, Beaver, when he said Sexy Savages. Look at that. Look at that. Caleb is back.

Nice to see you. Morning. Is this from the Shattuckin? This is from the Shattuckin. Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Did you see who we have on today? I did.

Crazy. It's kind of exciting. Yeah, crazy, crazy, crazy. Did you see who we have on today? I did. Crazy. It's kind of exciting. Yeah, crazy exciting. Look, there she is. Bam. Hey. Annie. What's up, girl?

How are you guys? Thanks for doing this on such short notice. I'm great. I'm super stoked. Of course. I was trying for a late reply, and I was like, oh, my God. I haven't talked to Siobhan. And then I checked the date and the time. I'm like for a late reply. And I was like, oh, my God, I haven't talked to Savan. And then I checked the date and the time.

I'm like, that's actually perfect. I love it. It's my it's my favorite part of the I got a call. I don't know. Yesterday, some point, oh, Annie replied. I'm like, let's do it. I go when he goes tomorrow. I go, let's do it.

I love it. I love it. Cave Dastro. I annie was a clickbait uh yeah yeah so did i she she saw that we were clickbaiting her and she goes you don't have to do that i'll come on i'm here i'm here yeah where are you in iceland right now but i mean the actual scene you're like uh are you at a coffee shop what's up with the painting no i'm in my living room okay wait wait all right who painted that here is a picture that freya drew next to yes she she no knows how to use that like what's that called like that blue thing that you can put on pictures like or things to get them stuck together?

Glue? Glue. No, like – Adhesive. Adhesive things. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So now she will like draw a picture or paint a picture and then she'll just put it on the walls. So, yeah, it's decorative here.

I wonder how – I wonder what your tolerance is going to be compared to Frederick's. My kids completely covered one wall in my bedroom and my wife's tolerance is very high, but I'm like, you know, 20 pictures is good, but they want to wallpaper it. Oh, I gradually, this is the living room. So I gradually like just make them disappear. I don't throw the pictures out. I store them for way longer

than frederick thinks i should store them yes and just in case freya will ask for the picture i need to be ready i i um when i pull them down i feel guilty the same way i feel guilty well you don't really have bugs in iceland but sometimes i feel guilty for killing a bug instead of taking it outside and that's how i feel a little bit of guilt. Each one I pull down just a little bit. It goes away quickly. A new one will come up in a minute. So it'll be okay.

We actually just bought these like picture frames that you can put like multiple of those pictures into. I bought that too. Did Instagram sell that to you? Yes. Yes. Instagram sold that's me too holy i think so a lot of people are talking about this they don't want the phone to listen to you and all of that i'm like obviously i don't want like a person to be listening to my conversations but i love it when i suggest things that i like i'm like and then I forget a commercial that came on my phone or something

I like say what I'm looking for or what it was that I liked I'm like this hair tie hair tie that keeps it whatever and just hope that it's gonna show it to me again I love this feature technology's crazy yes hey what about the blaze pods they're always they're always um trying to get me to buy those do you know what those are no they're those you put them on the ground and they're lights and they light up and you work out with them like you um you put six of the lights on the ground and then you might be like oh these things and then you hit them or tap them or you put them on a wall they're training lights oh how fun so it's like agility and yeah just kind of just like a gimmick but but to keep you engaged you know what i mean kind of like to inspire you like how i'm guessing kind of like how a new pair of shoes would

do but here's the thing you have to you need to subscribe once you buy them then you have to do a ten dollar a month subscription and that's the only reason why i haven't bought them i'm like i feel like i'm being manipulated it's five hundred dollars for the lights and then ten bucks a month for a subscription i'm like i don't know that's a smart concept yeah great right i bet you that's the thing at the gym like a hotel gym that had those on the wall where you had to like press the lights and they gave you like a score or something afterwards and competed against my family in that. That's actually great.

I think it would be very good for you as an athlete also just to develop staying mentally engaged when you're under fatigue. Yeah, me, I actually had to do a shit ton of those. Do you know what Stroop is? No, spell it for me. S-T-R-O-o-p stroop yeah it's just like a game and it was like a specific app he even ended up buying like

access to with multiple games it's um uh i think formula one uses it a lot yeah stroop effect so then we would have intervals and yeah so you need to like press the right color of what the word is saying not like follow the color of the letters whatever it's like so you need to stay focused and there's all different kinds of games like this and he would have us play this in our so we were maybe doing a workout that took three minutes or intervals that were like two to four minutes and then in the one minute break we had we had to sit down and we had to play this game so your heart rate was super high and you're like trying to stay focused and do the right things in the game and you could just see your scores, it's like plummeting when you got more fatigued. And then we started doing this actually, like, the most, that's probably the most boring training I've done. But then he would schedule in like

twice a week, we had to do this for 30 minutes straight. So just sit on our phone and do like different types of games, like reaction with the hand or look or whatever it was like different games that you played, but it was mentally fatiguing. Like it was draining. Yami's been your coach for more than 10 years and he runs the training plan. Yami Tinkinen. Yes. Yeah.

We've been working together since I met him first. What was it? Semis it was called back then. Dave will be able to tell you the right things there if he's still listening. Yeah, so I met him at Semis in Halmstad the same time as I met Frederick for the first time. Oh. Sanctionals. Sectionals.

Sectionals. Frederick just told me it's called sectionals. That was 2010, right? Yeah. Sectionals. So maybe called regionals. Where was that? Halmstad, Sweden.

Right by Copenhagen. Was it... Was that Aleko's headquarters? No. Yes, Aleko's headquarters. Oh, I was there. Yeah. You were there?

Yeah. Miko was there, right? Yes, Miko was there. Yeah, I was there. Everyone had stars in their eyes watching Miko. He didn't compete because he was pre-qualified because he won the games. That's right. But that was a fun competition.

And that's where I met Yami. And just me and Sam didn't ask if he would be willing to train us, coach us for the games. And we've been working together ever since. Yeah, that's wild. Hey, is he ever going to put out a – you think about – it's got gotta be one of the most important things you can get from a coach is proof of longevity. If not the most important thing, right? So this, your success is undeniable.

And then the longevity, I wonder, you would think that people would be clamoring to get his programming like clamoring because he's kept you healthy and at the top of the game yeah it's absolutely amazing i feel like we've not gonna say that everything is the best that we've done but we've done mistakes and then we've learned from the mistakes that we make right and he's been really really good at continuing his education. He's so, like when you have people that are so passionate about what they do, they will excel in it. And he is so passionate when it comes to making the right training, doing the right training for the right reason,

with the right purpose behind it. And that's how we've had to like evolve with my career as well just like me what i did in 2011 that athlete would not have survived for this many years in the sport like we've had to evolve and change and he's always looking for expertise and like endurance programming and strength development and like all these different just see what he was doing with like the mental training and all of that as well like he is looking in different sports in different fields and trying to get the best equation for the best programming and i do believe he is one of the most knowledgeable guys out there when it comes to programming for elite athletes for you

to be successful and elite because he doesn't just think about like one movement but he thinks about the movement pattern behind that one movement how are we going to make you as efficient as possible and your body and health maintain as long as possible and there are health studies on osteopath as well so so uh look look at this uh you just pointed out something else to me so we have longevity we have success you can put on yami's uh resume those got to be like two of the most important uh but check out this one you just uh relationship. Yes. Crazy. Right. I mean, we see people moving all the time and you have to suspect, you know, there's the saying in business or in workplaces, people don't leave jobs. They leave relationships. Meaning if you really love your job, you'll stay.

And so you would, you would have either have left him or he would have left you at some point, no matter the success. Yes. So the relationship, so he's, he's able to maintain a relationship too, which is huge. Absolutely. And I think that's come with,

I'm, I'm brutally honest and I say things when I'm not happy with things. I say things when something feels off. I say things if, um, I don't think something is going to work out. I challenge him. I am. I definitely constantly challenge

Yami like we've never had an easy season but he listens and he doesn't always agree with me and then I will try he will give me his reasoning behind why he's doing it and then I will try

and we will like we have a trust we've built a trust um annie is there ever a time in the relationship where you've pushed back and he pushed back so hard that it gave you comfort. Like you needed to hear his passion more about it. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like that in my relationship with my wife sometimes. Sometimes she'll say something and I'll roar at her and she'll be like, okay, I get it.

Or I'll say something and she'll roar at me and I'll get it. It's not fighting, but it's like more adamant and like, hey, more conviction. So then you're like okay that's kind of what i needed of course yeah yeah yeah i would say we probably have that every year around the same time where i start doubting things and i'm like okay i make sense i don't feel like we've done enough of this or this year it doesn't feel right i don't think you're focusing enough on like the right things or doing the right things

in my programming and blah blah and then yeah he's he's usually have pretty pretty solid arguments right so yeah that's cool that you notice it around so the the um the doubt will creep in it's funny i do that to the producer of the show when the doubt creeps in. It's funny. I do that to the producer of the show. When the doubt creeps in, you'll start some, you'll start banging on him a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's cool. That's cool. That's cool that you recognize that. Oh, absolutely. Well, through this many years, you better, better know your pattern a little bit. So we've had the same conversation, but I feel like it's a conversation we've had to have almost every year but i think that's a part of our process and it's a part of me feeling like

he is in control of what he's supposed to be in control of and and you don't want to be right and he doesn't want to be right you want to win win transcends being right at 10 out of 10 times, right? 100%. Yes. Yeah. It's crazy. I wonder how many athletes have messed up. Because I see it all the time in regular life, day-to-day life, where people would rather be right than get the outcome they want. And it's a tragedy.

Yeah. Or people will listen blindly and follow blindly whatever their coach is saying or whatever the program is saying without voicing their concern. And then it will bring doubt in the back of their head when they then take the floor and start competing. And I think that's a dangerous part. And maybe resentment in the relationship. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. So that's always something for me that I've always like,

I obviously it's a team and I have a team around me. I would not be this successful and have this longevity if I didn't have my team around me. And that team is a small group, but it's a group that's been with me for a decade, over a decade, most of them. It is Frederick. It's my parents. They've been with me since 2009 at the games.

Every year they will be there and they're with me through the season uh obviously taking a back seat a little bit more and more with the years then it's been yami and then my chiropractor from london he's been with me since 2013 when i had my back injury yeah this is my circle of like the people that i trust to help me to get to where I need to be to win the games um and be the best I can be but I still acknowledge and make sure that I am also monitoring what I am doing and no one else is going to know how I feel, how my body is doing, how I am mentally doing. And unless I express those things, we won't function as a full unity to make me as good as possible. as a full unity to make me as good as possible so like me being able to be vocal about things that might need adjustments and not be too proud and always have to do everything just as it is like talking about it making adjustments that might be needed to the programming if i'm feeling really

really beat up or if i'm feeling too fresh and i can do more because I know ultimately it's me that's taking the floor and it's me that's going to win or lose the CrossFit Games. That's not my coaches. That's not my team. I am stepping onto the floor by myself. So the responsibility needs to be in my hands as well. I share it with others and I use others to help me. But I feel like it's always been important. I can't finish the year and be like, nope, we didn't run enough this year. It's also mine to say these things.

Right, right, right. Yeah, at the end of the day, it's all on you. Yes. The buck stops with you at the end. Sorry, if you of the day, it's all on you. Yes. The buck stops with you at the end. Sorry, if you hear the drilling, there is some drilling going on. I thought you ate something funky last night. My bad.

Ken Walters, Savon using corporate speak today. Don't be mean. Don't be mean. Not cool. Don't be mean. Hey, Annie, your gym is called CrossFit Reykjavik? Yes. And you have one gym or multiple gyms?

One gym. One gym. And tell me about that gym. Are you involved in the day-to-day? Is it a big gym? It's a big gym. I actually don't have a number on the amount of coaches no on the amount of members that we have like right now but probably around thousands wow wow um we

are a fairly large gym so we can run two classes well kind of three classes at the same time but like classes start every half an hour um and then we have another area where we have them beginners courses kids classes the golden age classes and we actually have like very strong kids program and golden age program that's going on which is amazing and then we also have mommy I love coming to the gym when I'm coming training in the morning it's usually just past nine o'clock and on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays we have like mommy classes so that's women either pregnant or with newborns most of them are just with their newborns there and then on the other side of the gym is the golden

age and just like seeing I feel like we just have the whole like broad spectrum there and then I come and do my training alongside all of them and I just like it's a special feeling it's pretty awesome um I want to go I want to talk about the mommy classes but I want to learn more about your gym. So who runs you? So you're out of the day-to-day. I'm out of the day-to-day, yeah. I am too busy, and I won't be able to give it enough attention. Is Frederick involved in the day-to-day or someone in your family? No.

No, not in the day-to-day. So we're three people, ultimately, that own the gym together. So we're three people ultimately that own the gym together. Shen, she is kind of the hat behind it, like the financial manager and has been managing like the schedule with all the coaches and all of that. We have another guy thrusted as stepping into a lot of those things now as well. And then Everett, he's been the hat coach for since we started so he does most of the programming and then we have coaches obviously and thruster is taking on the role of now managing a little bit the day-to-day like the coaches and everything on the floor and i believe he will become gradually a bigger role in a part of the gym uh and then Frederick

and me we are probably like the annoying ones that come and are like oh I think this year can be better this year can be better we've often been a part of like uh developing the coaches a little bit so just like meeting up with the coaches um talking about how we feel like that can be better and more fun for them it's just always nice like i saw it when i was teaching the level one seminars i learned so much when i was interning and then when i started teaching in i like i felt a little sad that i could never see any of those amazing coaches teaching anymore. Does that make sense? Dude, that's the best part of going to the L1s, watching the red shirts coach.

Crazy. And Frederick was a red shirt too, right? For like a little bit. He did the interning and yeah, never. And then just time travel. It doesn't make sense. Like me traveling from Iceland for a weekend seminar was just, it was just too much.

Like I loved it, but it was just too much travel with the training and everything. And you miss being around those coaches you were saying. Yes. So there you get to see them coach and there you learn to become a better coach yourself. So as soon as I got my red shirt on, I didn't get to see that much of other coaches. Obviously, I could watch the lectures and all of that. But like, it's so amazing to learn cues. And that's what I've learned, like going around the world, like seeing different coaches teach at different gyms when I was like, at some of those headquarters where you have like those phenomenal level one coaches, level two coaches that are teaching those seminars, seeing them coaching classes is so good. So when you become a coach in a gym, you're usually just by yourself and you don't get to see others coach. So for coaches to meet up and just like talk about some of the things that have been working for them and just

it continues to make being a coach fun. It gets you like excited, just like training. When you sit down and you talk about your programming, you talk about your training, you get motivated and you get like, oh, I can't wait to start this. It's the same with coaching. Like when you talk about the different things and the feeling that you can make other people feel when they walk into the gym and you're a part of possibly the best part of their day and you're supposed to make them feel special and their experience be good. And yeah, I know coaches are not supposed to be cheerleaders that's at least what we teach in level ones but dude i love having a cheerleader

like i love walking through the floor when people are in the class and just me standing behind the rower or whatever looking at the mortar they will go harder because you have like that little extra gear so like you giving a little extra it gives them a little extra so that's a little bit what we've been a part of and then when there's something that we're very passionate about then we get to do that at the gym so we really enjoy it like endurance seminars so we set some of those up at the gym we work with heart rate monitor are doing specific zones and threshold training and then now i want to start doing a little bit of menopausal seminars just helping women that are going through menopause knowing how they're supposed to be training and what's happening in their body and all of that that's something that

i've gotten very passionate about so i want to be doing that. So then we have that access and we can always do that at CrossFit Wreck-It Week. My wife, I think similar to you, she trained her first pregnancy, especially before the twins, she trained every day. She, you know, it was a little difficult in the beginning with the morning sickness, but trained all the way to the day she had the baby. She even set some PRs with some cleans. I mean, she doesn't have numbers like you,

but I think she cleaned and jerked 135 for the first time when she was maybe four or five months pregnant. And not even pushing, you know, just my wife. There were other things she stopped doing. She stopped doing pull-ups because she would say when she would hang from the bar, she would feel the tension in her stomach. But other things, you know, it is really remarkable, um, to have a front row

seat. I mean, women have been doing it since the dawn of time, but for people like Frederick and I, or for even women having their first baby, it's a remarkable front seat, front row seat to have, to see, um, uh, a woman, um, grow a baby, a human being inside of her, and then also stay in top physical condition. And I'm assuming women did that. The majority of women on planet earth have done that before we got to modern times, right? They still had to like get animals, get food, carry the other children around. And I guess you're kind of doing it now right you you were taking care of a baby and then you're you're growing another baby inside of you now right yes yeah i'm 18 weeks in did you mean to get um uh have another baby uh i absolutely meant to have

another baby um but this was not planned no it didn't end up just i never compete with a birth control i just do better without yeah and this literally happened like five seven days after the games um i was are you surprised are you surprised like were you being careful were you monitoring or or were you kind of come because i we are twins after we had the first, we got lackadaisical. And then with all that stuff, with all sorts of contraception. But also, I feel like the woman's body, after it has one baby, it might be in kind of the mode. Oh, okay. I make babies. Yeah, exactly.

It was definitely, well, obviously easier than with the first one. We were trying when we had the first one. And it didn't take long. It took three months. Yeah. But this time around, it just happened immediately where it didn't fit with my cycle, if I'm being honest with that. But I can never say that it's like of we're very excited. I've always wanted to have more children.

But I was very excited to compete at Rokes. I was super disappointed with the games. The physical shape of them. You did 13th at the games. Is that what you mean? Your placement you were disappointed with? Oh, no. Well, obviously, I didn't want to place.

I think I placed 13th. Right. That's definitely not where I wanted to place. When you said you were disappointed, what were you disappointed about? I just underperformed. Okay. Yeah. Apparently, that can happen.

I would say I underperformed 2016, and then I underperformed this year at the games. And I'm, I honestly haven't really figured out what it was that happened. Like I training leading into the games was pretty darn good. And like everything that I can compare with apart from the one at Maxis, that was the only thing I would say it was like a little bit limiting going into the games because i've had like this hip thing going on for a while um so that was the

only thing that maybe i hadn't done as much as i wanted to do was like a lot of heavy lifting but everything else i've never done as much running i've never done like i'm just gonna must like there was so many things that were like clicking really really well you were in showcase I just yeah and literally like I walk out

of the event and be like I do it like I did I did my best I really tried but I just don't know what happened like my legs were just giving in and it was just like my body just wasn't feeling right so the only thing I can put it up as is going a little bit over trained into the games and that is maybe me learning a little bit how I need to be like you need to evolve and fix how you're feeling. And I wasn't feeling great either.

I was potentially a little under. But then you also need to just... What about in episode four of your podcast? Fantastic setup, by the way. Nice. You and Katrin have it. It's killer. Thank you. And great podcast. Great audio audio great just raining good stuff

i watched episode four last night and you said you cried every morning before um before you would go and i can't remember what when but recent oh um i i was on a seven hour drive uh the other day and my wife was sitting next to me and 30 minutes into the drive and my kids were in the back my three kids 30 minutes into the drive the dog died in her laps just died oh my god so we had the dog with us for until we got home and i had to bury it so i cried and laughed for six hours and the i couldn't believe how tired I was. No. Do you think that there was an, so when I heard you say you cry,

cause crying as a kid is no big deal, but as an adult, it's like takes a lot of energy to cry. Yeah. So you think that, what do you think the expense was for a little bit of crying, five minutes of crying every, cause you were missing your daughter,

by the way, for people in the episode, she says she wake up in the morning, missing her daughter. Yeah. Do you think that, do you think that took the edge off no no no no because that was 2021 that was the year i came back where freya wasn't with me she was with me okay okay i got my story yeah so that was they can't blame them i'm crying i can't blame it on that. But how I'm thinking about it is that also like even it's so hard,

you can't dissect it properly. It is just like, I've been competing for, this was my 13th time competing as an individual, I think at the games and me having two years where I've been off is maybe just life like maybe you can't really blame it on any one specific thing maybe it is just like you're trying to peak at the right time and something is just off and it's just life like it sucks it's super frustrating and that's why after the games i was like shit like I I'm gonna show everyone what I can do at rogues like this is yeah this is not what I wanted and then I saw the Tio was competing

and I was like oh my god I can't wait to just like get to compete against her again and alongside like that got me super excited too so like I was so ready to just ramp and get ready for rogues and then I was like oh I'm pregnant so but super happy with it though like it was never a sad moment the only sad thing was like ah I can't get to show everyone but at the same time i think after performances like this it gives me the biggest drive to compete and it usually brings the best out of me so i think it will just increase the odds even more that i will come back from second kid even stronger dang yeah so you've already thought about that coming back I always do one year at a time and of course I can't say that I am going to come back and win the games again like I can't do that however the way that I'm

feeling right now I don't see why I wouldn't come back on the competition floor and compete again I am training that way through my pregnancy that my body will recover as well as possible I am trying to increase my vo2 max there were incredible things that also came with my pregnancy from less from being pregnant with Freya but of course you can't know how the birth is going to be like, it can't be a lot worse than when I had Freya. But what happened with Freya? You lost a lot of blood during the, during the pregnancy? No, during the birth.

It was a very, very traumatic experience. How are, how are. How are you now? My wife had a miscarriage and lost so much blood that she was like yellow for six months. It was crazy. It's insane. I'm so sorry to hear that, by the way. Yeah. It was a while back.

I mean, when that happens too, you're just happy that she's okay. She did good. Thank you for saying that. But as long as she was okay, it was like, we were good. And that was the thing. Like after having Freya, I wasn't thinking about like, oh, I need to get to the competition floor again. It was just like, it's fine.

And like, and thinking back, even though that was a traumatic, like birth, it was a beautiful experience still because i am healthy and my child is healthy it was just an injury that i had to recover from and i think that's kind of how you need to look at it like the pelvic floor just got severely injured and i know how to train after injury i know how to get myself back together after injury there There was just a very different one that I had to learn to recover from. But that's kind of the way you need to think about it. But like traumatic birth and a bad birth, it was very difficult. And it was really hard. But I would say the harder experience was also just like, not knowing if your kid is okay, if that makes sense makes sense like is she fine after

this like she was getting so lactic but that's making me even more determined that the right thing for me to do was to train throughout my pregnancy because Freya she like recovered they had like a heart rate monitor on her like on her head to monitor her uh while i was giving birth and just seeing how she was recovering every single time was amazing so and when she came out she's like so big and strong and just like could lift her head and everything just did you take her home annie when you went home when did you get to take her home when you went home oh yeah she actually graduated like awesome um like the day after like we had her she could have gone home but i wasn't allowed to go home for two days so she stayed with me for two days at the hospital

um so we so my wife had a miscarriage then we had a baby then she had another miscarriage then after that second miscarriage that when she lost all that blood, she was like, hey, man, I don't think we should do this again. I'm like, why? She goes, that was too much on my body. I lost too much blood. Then she got pregnant again and being careless. But she was scared for a little bit. She was scared for like 24 hours.

I'm not saying I'm scared. Were you scared when you got pregnant again thinking about the other? No. she was for like 24 hours. She could get her head. Were you, were you scared when you got pregnant again, thinking about the other, but no, you were just like, no,

because I would do it all again. Yeah. Cool. All right. Like I would do it all over because we're both healthy and she is the biggest gift I've ever. This is the most. Oh, ever. This is the most. Oh, that's you and the baby? Yes.

Oh, that's awesome. Wow. So I wouldn't. The only thing I can say is the doctor should have put me into C-section. Yeah. Sooner. I ended up not having it. We ended up getting everything done.

That probably would have been safer. Since everything went great, I'm not scared. You did have a C-section or you did not? I did not. No.

This time around, in Iceland, this is very different from the United States. You cannot just go like, I want to schedule a C-section. That's not an option in Iceland. You give birth. However, if you have a bad birth or experience like I did, then you're allowed to choose. So, well, it's very likely that I will have a C-section this time around. If Frederick or my mom would hear that I'm saying likely, they would snap and get pretty upset, but it is my decision. Just because you also have to

think about like the toll it takes on like the toll it took on you. Right. When your wife had this miscarriage. Like the toll it took on Frederick. Right. To go through this experience as well. He was worried for me and he was worried for our child. Right.

The only thing I'm nervous about is I don't want to have another experience like that. Yeah. Because of Freya. I don't want to come home from the hospital with a new child and so broken, not being able to take properly care of myself, her baby brother, and not give her enough attention either. That's what you're having? You're having a boy? I'm having a boy.

Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. One of each. So like, I don't want to do that to her. Yeah. Um,

so, so when you were, you were planning, you were planning on ramping up for rogue and then you get pregnant. How did that take you any time to process? Was there like a 48 hour window where you were planning on ramping up for Rogue and then you get pregnant. Did that take you any time to process? Was there like a 48-hour window where you mourned Rogue or 24-hour? No?

Excitement first. And then like, what the fuck just happened? And everyone around you is excited, right? You're the only one who's like, man, Rogue would have been fun. Couldn't have waited until after Rogue. I think Frederick understood because he's in it with me. But he was so ready.

He was just like, what? And your mom and dad too were probably. Oh, absolutely. But they weren't with me when we found out. So it was just us in the beginning. And once I told them, I was like perfectly, perfectly yeah i would say it was excitement in the beginning and then i was like oh shit that means rogue isn't happening so then i was like a little i would say give or take like 20 30 minutes where you were like uh less 5 10 minutes where you oh, no, but now I won't be able to compete at Rogues.

And then it's like, you know what? This was meant to be. This is what was supposed to happen. When is the due date for the baby? It's beginning of May. And so, theoretically, you could have the baby and be ready for the 2025 games in your head. Oh, absolutely. This is a you're going to be like, well, let's not go there.

But you're like, no, absolutely. Oh, it's more time than I had to get ready for competing after having Freya. And dude, I was broken. Like I couldn't run for seven seven eight months after i had freya so like me getting ready for the competing at the games that year like still to me what i did that year is mind-blowing like i competed at the games and i podiumed less than a year after having Freya and I was so messed up like did that bring back any of the messed upness any of the injuries you had any of the the stress you had on your body from the baby that you recovered from did the games damage you at all that year

were you like oh fuck oh no no no came out the other side like a boss. Yeah, stronger. And I came out the other side more confident that I was okay. So I went even stronger going into Rogues after the game. So competing in October gave me those extra, like every month there were changes. But I think the good thing in this whole big picture is that I was very patient and I took a really long time to help myself recover. I wasn't rushing into training. I wasn't rushing into anything. I really took my time. How long before you went for, let's say, a one-mile walk?

More than a month? Took my time. How long before you went for, let's say, a one mile walk? More than a month? Oh, way, way more than a month. Yeah, that's interesting because some women will get after my wife had the twins. And I say this with no exaggeration. She didn't leave the house for three months. Yeah, she just stayed in the house and was breastfeeding. People don't realize. And I think because after she had my first the first kid, she went on a walk like two blocks after like two

weeks and she started bleeding and she's like, well, I'm not doing that again. I'm resting. And like, she just gave her, she gave her body time to rest. That makes me so happy to hear you say that, that you did that. So you did not even so for people to realize that world-class athlete doesn't stay still has baby stays home for a month. Doesn't walk. Yeah. Right. Really?

And that's called taking care of yourself. Say that again. I would have gone for a walk. You would have, I would have, if I would have been able to. Right, right,

right, right. So much, but I literally like Frederick had to stand by the shower while I was showering. Yeah. Yeah. Just to make sure I would be okay. I would literally, like, Frederick had to stand by the shower while I was showering. Yeah, yeah. Just to make sure I would be okay. I would say.

Did you lose consciousness? No, no. Close though, probably, right? I don't know. Okay. But I was also just, like, my pelvic floor was so messed up that I honestly just couldn't really, like, let's say there was a tiny downhill or like anything. I like couldn't do that without discomfort. Oh, like if you walk downhill.

Yeah. The discomfort. Wow. Crazy. You still feel that? No, no, no, no, no, no. All gone? No, not at all.

It's a missile. I had to just like, I was severely injured, like very injured. So it's an injury that you have to take care of. And I went to see a pelvic floor physiotherapist and specialist and learned how to use my muscles again, then got control and strength again. And it's something I'm still working on. But it takes a very long time. I was told not to get pregnant for two years. Just because my body needed a long time to recover from the injury. But like, I started biking a little bit sooner. And it saved me mentally,

like maybe you guys had a big place, but it saved me mentally to walk out of the door of our apartment and go for a drive and seeing that the world was still out there. Yeah. And life is the same and life continues and time heals wounds like that helped me. I had to get out of the house. I am used to being active and on the move and getting the endorphins from training.

That was a big change, you know, having to just be lying down pretty much all day. You just get messed up. So, yeah. Going back to your gym for a second. So are you even aware that they raised affiliate fees? I am. And, but does that, is that even pop on your radar? Are you like, Hey, cause I was, I was talking with someone the other day. I'm like, Hey, if you, if you have 20 things going on

and you're in your time is really valuable. Right. So like you have two newborn kids. Yeah. So your time is really valuable to you and i've even heard you say that part of the problem the reasons why you don't like other countries as much as iceland is because you can be really efficient you don't get stuck in traffic you don't have to waste time i love that when i heard you say that i was like that's exactly how i am i cannot stand wasting time yeah yeah like just be on i don't like going over to someone's house and they're not ready and now i'm sitting in your in your living room with my thumb in my ass. Like, hey, don't do that to me.

But with you, is it like, hey, the Thor's daughter empire is so big that it doesn't – I can't even give that two seconds of thought. No, definitely not. No. Do you even care that it went up? Are you happy? You're like, good, charge us more. Get us some better shit. Or are you like, what are you doing? Of course even care that it went up are you are you like happy you're like good charge us more get us some better shit or are you like what are you doing here yeah okay definitely what are your thoughts on it um i don't know if i should be talking about my thoughts on it okay um well i would want to

have them done then what do people think that don't love i love crossfit like i i don't love everything in it i don't necessarily everything in it. I don't necessarily need to agree with how everything is run either, but I love what CrossFit has done for me, my life, my family, and for general public just health. I love the training program and what it teaches and CrossFit is going to be a part of my life forever.

So, of course, I care when memberships increase that much, because what is it going to do for the smaller gyms that don't have that many members? members for the gyms that have crazy rent that they need to be paying for the smaller towns that will never then are all the small towns going to lose affiliates now because they can't be paying that fee but of course they can continue to do what cross is doing but they can train it they just can't call it that yes exactly but i feel like it's such a big part of crossfit it's the community yeah and being able to participate in the conversations about crossfit the pride that comes with being crossfit doing the open and being a part of the season like that's some of my favorite parts of the season is the open not as an athlete but for the community because i'm like all of a sudden we're all doing the works together and

i'm getting to see how other people are when they're competing like the stress in their heads and like stress is good for us man like it's great it's not when people say oh i'm not gonna sign up because it costs money i'm just gonna do it and i'm gonna check where i'm at no no no you're taking away so much of the stress factor of putting your name down and putting in your score like you're participating in a competition and it's a different mindset whether you admit it or not you're gonna have a little bit different mindset you need to make sure someone is judging you and you're like judging how other people are doing it and like i feel like that's such a big part of this whole thing we're talking about the workout for multiple days everyone like we

remember so many i just want to say one thing real quick that's a really good point and i've done fucking god knows how many shows about to open no one's ever said that when you pay the 20 bucks you're bought in and it adds an element of stress you will not get if you don't you will not get if you don't pay the 20 bucks and i don't care what you say i agree with that wholeheartedly by the way that's like that's the difference of like um uh playing tennis at practice and then and then showing up and watching my kids play when when's the competition right there's a whole different stress when when there's something on the line even if it's nothing yeah exactly nailed it yeah yeah so that makes me a little bit sad and i don't that's why this is hard for me to talk

about because i don't have the right answers. Because at the same time, maybe this will reward that the gyms that are actually successful. Because I also don't like when gyms, when there's like insane amount of gyms and they're all competing against each other. Like there should be some proximity. Yeah, proximity. Yeah. Yeah. there should be some approximate proximity yeah proximity yeah yeah all right not my first language but i am getting better and better here um when they're too many too close to each other like there should be a like some distance depending on how many people obviously like iceland is different from manhattan you know or la or whatever where you have so many people obviously like Iceland is different from Manhattan you know or LA or whatever where

you have so many people but maybe you shouldn't allow in a small town to be multiple CrossFit gyms but then it's like how do you decide who's the one that should have it should just be the first one that does it does he have the right forever what if the other one is going to have a better so like it's really hard where I see problems but i don't have all the solutions and that's why i don't think it's the right thing to express too much about it but of course it breaks my heart a little bit that some of those gyms are not going to be crossfit affiliated anymore uh even for a gym like mine like it's bumping up a lot in price because we were one of the first ones. Oh, right.

So we're like, I don't even know if I want to say it, but we're paying you. Right, right, right. Well, yeah. I mean, if you're one of the original gyms, it goes from $500 to $4,500. Yes. And then the level two. Level two, I don't level two i don't mind you don't mind uh i feel like they should maybe give the level two to the ones that are uh the owners of the gym i feel like that would be

fair um but yeah i'm i'm not running cross And I, maybe there's more pride that goes into it, as soon as you pay for something, you will then, like put a little bit more effort into it. Don't know about that. But I feel like, I think it's fine to put the standard up a little bit higher, even though I've seen some of the comments that like, it's not the owner of the gym that's necessarily teaching all the classes. No, no, no, no. But maybe it's the owner of the gym, then you see understand a little bit more of the fundamentals and being able to coach their coaches a little bit better and therefore level two is maybe a good thing to have at least for head coaches i believe and that's not going to be an issue for my gym we have i think

a lot of our coaches have level two uh vindicate yes my hometown will most likely lose theirs so that's the gym with 60 60 60 members maybe all the coaches coach for free and they're just they're there kind of as a community org and maybe they go out but then on the other hand the gym that's four miles away those members may go there and that gym may benefit from that gym closing down. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. How is, how is CrossFit in Iceland still raging? I still doing really,

really well. Absolutely. I would say it's just like flatlined a little bit. I think everyone knows what CrossFit is and people continue to love it. Continue to compete in it, be in it, be involved in the community and all of that but it's the biggest shift i've seen is maybe like um we used to have a lot in the morning and ever since covid i think people have a hard time waking up early in the morning and getting back to that rhythm so we have more at noon and evenings than we used to have in the mornings but other than that like everyone knows where crossfit is in iceland at this point uh did you enjoy watching laura and tia go out at

rogue did any part of you were you able to enjoy that even though you weren't there yes a part of me wished that i was able to like compete alongside them yeah and you always think like how would i do in that workout how would i do that um but yeah i loved seeing them go against each other however i i've always thought that Tia is like just one of the best athletes I've ever competed against. She is just phenomenal. It's very hard to beat Tia. But seeing her do what she did six months after having her child, that was another level.

Like it blew my mind. I'm like, I don't even know what I was watching. That's absolutely insane to me. I'm like, okay, her endurance, I'll give her that. She's recovered quickly. She didn't have any issues with her floor, which is great, great was able to start doing you can start doing a lot of breathing and your endurance can even go up after having a child so seeing the first event i'm like okay amazing she still has her superpower and she that was incredible performance seeing her deadlift like what the actual app that's that's insane i know it's not her max

and deadlift but six months after having a kid that i don't know it's crazy right it's it's crazy crazy. Do you think she wins the games? Hard to bet against her, right? What? It's hard to bet against her. It's always hard to bet against Tia. I believe she can. I believe it's going to be hard for the other girls to beat her. But

I also don't think it's guaranteed that she wins the games. Do you know Laura very well? Yes and no. Yeah. She's pretty quiet to herself? Yes. Yeah, she is.

She and Gabby. She's like Lucero and Gabby. And I feel like I cracked a little bit into Gabby like I've gotten to know Gabby a little bit better but Laura's a little more closed off I I still don't know where we're at I right you can't tell if she yeah me neither I can't tell if she hates me or she loves me I'm starting to think maybe she loves me and she just she's having trouble uh processing how much she loves me so she has to keep her distance from me but I do have to think maybe she loves me and she just, she's having trouble processing how much she loves me. So she has to keep her distance from me.

But I do have to admit, I've always been a little bit of a Laura fan though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but for weird reasons, right.

She's kind of a weary. What? Say it again. Oh yeah. Her confidence. I really liked how she spoke in. I've really, um,

she beats her own drummer that's for sure I think it's so dangerous when girls have started being like just believing that she is going to win and you're never going to win if you have that attitude

so I've always loved that Laura just goes in with, like, she doesn't care who she's competing against. She's going to try to win. And I like that. I think you need to have quite a bit of that. And, yeah, I really like that about her. Not a taxidermy, dear.

Sevan, Laura hates you. Matt Burns, let's see if Seve has stones today. I saw what Dan Guerrero is posting. I'm not bringing that up. I'm not talking to Annie about that today. DM her. Leave me alone. I don't know what that was.

What? They're just, they want to rehash the past. They want to go, they want, the people in the comments are, there's a couple just, just rousers in there. Hey, I've done a lot of podcasts with Annie and he's been very forthright with me. She's come.

Oh, let me, let me talk. I love you guys, but shut the fuck up for a second. Annie, what did you think about? I know this is a little self-serving.

What did you think about me and catcher at the games? What'd you think about that? Like after the biking event and I walked over and you two were walking oh i thought it was great it was it was cool right yeah it was really good she wasn't being fake or i wasn't being fake that that was like sincere shit yes okay that's what i thought too and afterwards i was like did we really just do that no i think it was really good. Cause he has also been talking about like, I, I didn't really know why we even need to be talking about this anymore. It's just, it's in the past. It's done. It doesn't matter.

Okay, good. But I, but, but I'm, I, I was very aggressive towards her and I just wanted her to I didn't want, I didn't want her to feel, I wanted it to be okay. I wanted her, I want it to be smooth. I don't want anyone to like tripping in that to be okay. I wanted it to be smooth. I don't want anyone tripping in that situation. It's a special day. You know what I mean? Yes.

I know you do. Yeah, she was cool. And of course, this last year too, she gave me just... She gave me some incredible interviews. Just some incredible shit. Yeah, it was good. You guys are good. Okay, good.

Thank you. yeah it was good you guys are good okay good thank you does she um do you miss her now that she's she's uh uh in the states and you're in iceland oh yes i miss her quite a lot but we do talk because you called her from even like you called her from the hospital right before the baby came out i mean you're close to her yeah, yeah. We FaceTime probably twice a week or something. But then we talk text messages probably like close to every day. Yeah. Yeah. We're close.

We're close. We're also doing a lot of different things together. There's a lot of stuff we'll be doing that will be coming out next year. Will you be at the games this year, you think? This year? Yeah. Do you show up there? I don't know.

It all depends on how things go, how baby is and everything. I'll have what? June, July. I'll only be two months old. Yeah. Maybe. Rambler, Annie, I love love you what's your resting heart rate i think my resting heart rate is around 50 just just under just over depending on yeah hey uh thank you for coming on you're're so awesome. Appreciate it. Great catching up with you.

Yeah. So stimulated by your presence. You're awesome. Thanks for letting us borrow his wife for an hour and congratulations on the second baby. I can't wait to talk to you again. Hopefully, we can talk again before you have the baby. I'm curious how the second one, as you get bigger and bigger, how you feel. Sounds good. Yeah. I actually just went to see a doctor today. I'm 18 weeks in, and I just went to see a doctor today, just like a checkup, whatever. And he was like, it wasn't regarding the pregnancy.

And he's like, wait, how far along did you say you are? I'm like, 18 weeks. It's like, oh, I'm like, what does that mean? It's like, well, you look like you i'm like 18 weeks it's like oh i'm like what does that mean it's like well you look like you're 20 21 weeks i'm like oh thank you what a good dude tell you're pregnant when you're sitting down from my perspective i can't even tell so well thank you so much all right ciao girl talk soon bye you guys what the fuck are you guys doing everyone be cool everyone be cool look at this guy rambler or no who's this guy bringing up uh i'm not gonna i'm not gonna bring do you regret posting the black square for two dollars i'm

gonna ask her that that was fucking five four years ago and it's canadian two dollars fuck off with that shit yeah jesus man be cool me and her had it out man we had it out be cool look at you fucking dionysus with that hair did you get a perm or that's just uh that's that's you this is just my hair i uh it It's the beginning of a midlife crisis, I think. Dude, I can't believe how young you look. What the hell is going on? You on peptides? Negative, sir. No.

The only thing I'm taking is creatine. That's all I got. Human growth hormone? How the fuck do you look so young? It's this thing called CrossFit. It seems to work. All right. Where are you right now? the fuck do you look so young uh it's this thing called crossfit seems to work all right um where are you right now i am in my office in my new gym that we just opened a week ago uh in monroe

connecticut is it a is it a crossfit gym it is it is currently a crossfit affiliate since 2008 Since 2008. Ooh, currently. Yeah. How long have you been doing CrossFit now, Rob? I think I started in early 2007, just cherry-picking workouts here and there, and then graduated to doing it almost more full-time in 2008. That's when I started sending videos to the media team at CrossFit. Then I competed in the games in 2009. You're approaching 17 years. Yeah, for me.

What's the name of your affiliate? Hybrid Athletics. That's what it's always been? It's always been Hybrid Athletics. Yeah. Since the day we opened. It's when I started sending content into CrossFit HQ, that's when Tony Budding was there. And, you know, he was posting videos and he said, hey, you know, after five or six months of posting content of mine, he's like, we just realized that you're not an affiliate.

You know, can you want to be an affiliate. Um, you know, can you, do you want to be an affiliate? I said, yeah, sure. Like, so we, we affiliated, uh, but they were, they were kind enough to just start pumping content out there for me. Um, I, we, man, uh, uh, uh, whatever this guy's name is, uh, Savon would talk so much shit on himself if he watched himself as someone else well let me tell you who i did talk shit about we talked so much shit about rob

we didn't because we didn't believe any of the numbers we were like and so i would i i remember going out there with uh was that with my wife or was i with carrie that was with carrie peterson yeah yeah and then and we had him reenact some of the shit that supposedly he was doing, and it was crazy. I remember even being at Tonya Wagner's house, and we're like, yeah, we're going to go up and film with this guy, Rob Orlando, and he's going to be fucked. He's not going to be able to do that stuff he says.

And we're like, oh, shit. No, that was actually funny, because when you introduced yourself to me, you were like, well, we know you're a fraud, so we want to come and videotape it. Just straight up. Yeah. I'm like, okay, I'll see you tomorrow. Damn. I think you put us through a workout in that gym too.

I almost died. I did, yeah. And then we did this thing. It was your idea to do a mashup of Diane, Elizabeth and Fran. We called it Diana Franabeth or something like that. And it was kind of a mashup of everything, but it was scaled.

Everything was scaled up and heavy. It was a fun little workout we put together. Crazy. So, so how many years is the, how many years is the affiliate going? Since 08, we affiliated. We'll come back to that in one second.

CrossFit 845. Oh, this guy's going to come on the podcast soon. Ask Rob if he can still do King Kong. A hundred percent, yes. And I can do it very quickly. Hey, King Kong is, for anyone who doesn't know, it's deadlift. Thank you. Damn, you're fast, Caleb. It's three rounds't know it's deadlift thank you damn you're fast caleb

it's um three rounds for time uh deadlift one deadlift at 455 two muscle ups three squat cleans at 250 four handstand push-ups damn yeah i remember when that workout first came out there was whoever posted i think it was a canadian guy posted it up and um I, I want to say it took him like eight minutes to go through that. Um, and then I was in my gym, um, by myself one night and I was like, I think I can do six rounds faster than he did three. So I videotaped it and sent it to HQ and they posted that up. I want to say six rounds took me like seven minutes. Damn. That was then.

Yeah. What do you think you do? What do you you do what do you can you do that now 100 yeah um and it would be the squat cleans would you know that's the hard part of the workout uh the squat cleans would slow me down a bit but it's not nothing terrible it would be yeah there you go um rob do you care if people in your gym are on steroids um no i i don't care i think the what i do appreciate though is is honesty right right right don't sugarcoat it like do what you gotta do the guy next to you isn't hating himself for fucking getting destroyed by yeah like you know i'm i'm a natural guy and i've always been natural and i i um you know so when somebody is right next to me and they're they're hitting new

prs every time they touch the barbell and i know they're on but they won't say anything uh that's the the rub um if they just said to me like hey i'm doing trt because i feel like shit yeah okay great then yeah yeah you know let's let's all just be honest and upfront and we kind of have gone through we're in that era kind of i didn't think it would actually ever happen i don't know if it was mark bell or who did it but about five years ago it kind of became it became okay to be honest yeah know, like I just started paying attention to this guy, uh, Kenny KO, um, on YouTube and Instagram. Um, and he made this question famous. Like he just walks around at bodybuilding shows and gyms and he puts a microphone in somebody's face and he just says,

Natty or not. Um, and you'd be surprised at how candid some people can be. And then you'd see other people that just dance around it. Yeah, that's the guy. So he just walks up to people and he's like, Natty or not. And it's interesting some of the feedback he gets. And he's not natural, I assume. He is not.

He's doing TRT. He actually did an amazing video. It's like a one minute clip. It's a YouTube short, I think. And it's he goes into it and he goes, hey, you know, I just I wanted to put out a video talking about the the side effects of TRT. He goes, because I just don't think people talk about it enough. He's like, first, you're going to wake up feeling fucking awesome every day. He's like, that's that's the first side effect. And the second side effect is that every time you go to the gym, you're going to feel like an absolute Adonis. Like,

so the side effects are not what you think they are. It was actually a very creative, funny little video. My buddy, Andrew Hiller got on it, got on it pretty young. He's young. He's not even 40.

How old are you? I'll be 49 in April. Holy shit. Holy shit. young he's not even 40 how old are you uh i'll be 49 in april holy shit holy shit seriously i thought i was like is he even 40 god that's crazy rob you are timeless as shit well you know when i competed in the games you're 11 motherfucker like I ain't dating a little boy I was I was old At the 2011 games I was 36 I was a senior out there

By a good 7, 8, 9 years Over anybody else You're Walker with your tennis balls in the back Exactly right So Hillary gets on TRT And then I'm putting words in his mouth Exactly. Right. off of it so he could watch what his body goes through and I think part of the main reasons why he wanted to do that if I recall was he wanted to see he likes to see he wants to be able to look at people's pictures and see

he wants to know what cycling looks like in the human body what it looks like in performance but also aesthetically so he's experimenting on himself which I fucking respect like fucking crazy at one point he did say he got up to like 210 he's 108 he's a he would be a lean 185 pound man like crazy lean and he got up to like 210 and he said it wasn't comfortable

and so that was the one drawback and then the other drawback is i don't remember if he was off for three months four months or five months but by the end he's like dude i fucking can't wait to get back on he goes why he goes i'm like oh man i nap in the middle of the day now yeah so there i guess those would be the two drawbacks if you got too big and and i watched that guy sam sulik try to undress it looks miserable miserable yeah like when i was competing in exclusively in strongman uh the weight class was 231 and under for the lightweights. Um, and I would compete right at the very top end of that class. So I'm five foot eight. Um, and, and I would compete at 230 pounds. Um, and it's, it is miserable to 30 though. Not that you were fat, but you were, you were fucking, I was, I would carried way too much meat in the middle.

It was not, it wasn't a good look. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you did not look juiced up. You just look, you look more like you did. You did not look juiced up, but you look strong as a, you look like a SpongeBob SquarePants. Yeah, that's exactly right. You just look like a brick, you know? So it's like a TV with hair and feet. feet. Um, you know, so I, I got to a point though, where, um, you know, I, I went to my level one and Greg was talking about enter the zone by Barry Sears. And I started reading the journal and I was like, maybe, maybe let me try something different here with my nutrition. Cause at that point I wasn't paying attention. I was just eating and eating and eating. Um, and I lost, uh, 20 pounds pretty quickly. So I got down to about two. And then I thought, let me enter a strongman competition.

The next weight class down is under 200s. And I was like, so I had to diet a little bit to get into that weight class. And I just made it. But then once I started competing as a 200-pound guy, I mean, it was so much more fun because, you know, I was carrying all the strength from 230 down to the 200-pound class, and I just felt better. And you don't realize how shitty you feel until all of a sudden you feel better. Yeah.

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he just turned into a dick. Um, and I was like, you know, look, I don't need you at this point. You need me as, as a tenant. And and and i was happily paying him and um you know we had a nice little we had a beautiful space that crossfit hq used to come out and shoot at all the time um but i i it wasn't the place i visited you no no it's a different space okay okay yeah um so we moved out of that space in uh june of 2020 and I merged in with a friend of mine who had a CrossFit gym right in my hometown, just a couple of miles from my house. And he had way more space than we had. And so the idea was independently, we probably both would have failed because memberships were dropping and there was no end in sight. Like when it was, when the lockdown

was going to stop and when gyms were going to reopen. So I just, I preemptively just said, You're kind of in a retarded state, right? Like what state are you in? Totally backwards. It's Connecticut. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I feel you. I feel you. I'm on the one on the other side. Yeah, no, you get it. Sandwiches in full effect. You feel my pain. sandwiches in full effect. You feel my pain. So, so we move out of that space and I merged my gym in with my buddy George because he had the physical space to accommodate us. So we brought, it's funny too, before we made the move, I sent out a poll to my members and I said, Hey, I'm looking to know how many people will actually come with me and make this move. Is it, is this worth it? Right. And in my head at the time we had about 85 members. I know you're not corporate cause you called it a poll. If you were corporate, you'd have called

it a survey. That's great. No, this was, you know, I needed some information, right? So I sent out this, this poll and in my head I had, we had about 85 members at the time. And I thought we might get 20 that'll make the move with us because it was a 25 minute drive from where we were going and coming. And I was like, this is going to be a lot for some people. We ended up moving 55 people. So we merged our stuff in and we opened up July 1st of 2020. And in that time, gyms were still shut down. They were still doing the social distancing. They were still doing masking. They were doing, you know, and once gyms opened, it was all the ridiculous rules. And so we basically ran it like a speakeasy for about, uh, six or six or nine months where we blacked out the windows. George was cool with that. Yeah,

no, George was fully on board with that. Yep. And we actually lost people over it because they're like, Hey, you're not following the protocol. And I was like, well, you know, and I'm not going to, so if that doesn't make you happy, then this probably isn't the right place for you. So we blacked out the windows, and we just ran our normal gym from July 1st going forward. And so that worked out great, but the landlord in that space, the way the space was partitioned, he wanted to lease it out the entire back half of the building to one tenant, as opposed to leasing some of it to us and some of it to somebody else. So when it was time for us to exercise our three-year option, he just said, no, we're not going to give you the option to renew. so he gave us the boot and that was in the end of april of this year uh so we've had to find a space and it is move so you move together yeah well

so since that the merger george has actually stepped aside from the business so now it's just me um and you know so it was it was basically just me moving the gym and was that cool was that amicable or you you, you guys got in a fight? No, no, no. George is an amazing guy. And I don't know that I could have merged with anybody else. Cause I don't, I don't tend to get along with people, especially that I work with. And so it, it was, it would have been really difficult to do that. But George is just like, he let me take the lead on almost everything. Uh, from, from the moment that we merged in, he was like, let's call this hybrid athletics. You can take the programming. This is your ship. Go ahead and run

it. Oh, that's cool. Okay. So you found your match. Yeah. So George is great. And so anyway, we had to move out of the space that we were in. And that meant that I had to find a new space and do a huge demo and a rebuild. And this is now my seventh move in 15 years. And I just signed a five-year lease with a three-year option. So I'm never moving again. We're going to stay here until... Say that again? How many-year lease? Five-year plus a three-year option.

So that puts me at 57. You love your spot. I love where we're at right now. Yeah. Good parking. Great parking, amazing space. I've got my own office. Your members are happy with the location. Yeah, they love it. And it's a half a mile from our old location. So nothing changed for them. But you're also about to do your first winter there. Yes. Which is kind of important in your part of the country yeah it's i mean last winter somewhere like what if some what if like the like it gets so cold you can't work out in there some shit yeah well thankfully this place has heat and i and that's when you visited the space in stanford way back in the day in 2008, whenever that was. That gym didn't have heat for the first three years that we were there.

Damn. And you survived it. Yeah. And you had those stairs that kind of went, it wasn't like it was up. It was cold down there. It's cold. Yeah. It was a basement. Yeah. Yeah. That was a cool gym though. It was a great spot. And you know,

what's crazy is that one of my members uh from from back in the day um when we moved out he opened up a crossfit affiliate and he's still in that same space wow yeah that that gym was um uh uh it was clean but it fit but it's still but still gritty as shit yeah no and that the the new gym is like that the gym that you're looking at right there, that was my Bridgeport location. That's the one where my landlord was a dick and we had to leave during COVID, but that space was absolutely stunning to look at. It was a hundred year old post office. So you've got these brick walls and wood floors and like, it was just an unbelievable place to work out. What is that place still vacant uh no so a personal trainer rented it out for several years um and now it is a church oh okay rob how the fuck is it okay

to deadlift a 300 pound ball with a rounded back when they teach in the l1 that you're not supposed to have a rounded back when you pick things off the ground. So let's end this fucking once and for all. Okay. Um, how, how, how,

and why does my back always feel better lifting up round a hundred pound D balls than dead lifting? Why does my back feel like, like I love picking shit up like that. Okay. Because that is a natural position for you to be in somewhere along the line. I'm never at face down asset, Rob. How dare you? That is not a natural position for me. Like if you, if you think back even just a couple hundred years, right. Before people started to have back problems, um, it is, this is is this was the standard position like how do you

pick it up i need to pick it up i need to move it i need to drag it i need to push it you like know how your ass is there do you think it should be lower you like that that's good for you and like your your anthropometrics or whatever those things are called that's good for you that is if i look at that right there i say that my entire upper body is engaged and my glutes and hamstrings and hips are ready to roll. Right. Like that is that is a power position right there. Yeah, I feel so good like that, too. I feel so much better picking up heavy objects that are round like that than deadlifting. 100 percent. 100 percent.

And that when people come into my gym and they see the stones you're like oh my god i can never do that it's like you're we're going to take your lower back problem and we're going to fix that with atlas stones man crazy good you were kind you were the first no you go ahead and then i'll finish well so you know if you're looking at that video like when i once i get that thing in my lap, um, you can see like, I'm, I'm totally braced against the stone. So we'll go from, we'll go up. You can pause it, like go a little bit further, right about there. Okay. So now, uh, I'm braced up against that stone and my upper body is completely locked in the rigid shoulders are tight, um, biceps all the way

around. I'm trying to create as much tension as I can in my upper back. And then if you just go a little bit forward, you'll start to see my hips punch forward. And I use my hip and my belly. My hip and my belly are going to punch that stone and roll. So right there, that's just hips, punch that stone and roll. So right there, that's just hips, right? So there, there's no, there's no, uh, there's no better expression of violent hip extension than that, that I can figure out. It's like, how do I get this? That could go horribly wrong. Hey, someone just threw that at you and you caught it. Hey, someone just threw that at you and you caught it.

Yeah, exactly. Let's pretend that. So we have tons of pictures that I've posted over the years of people in these crazy extended positions with their heels off the ground and their hips forward, chin up. And it just seems to work. And we don't, if there was this long trail of injuries in 15 years of being an affiliate throwing around stones, I'd be able to tell you that that's the case, but it's just not. We just don't see the injuries associated with it. What we do see injuries associated with is people warming up on deadlifts, you know, where they're just out of position and not paying attention. We do see injuries where people are warming up on deadlifts, you know, where they're just out of position and not paying attention. We do see injuries where people are warming up on, um, on snatches. Like that's where we see, you know, where they, they just, they fuck it up from the start with Atlas stones. It's, it's, it's almost self-governing because if you can't get it off the ground, um, then you're probably not going to be

able to get it to your shoulder. So, um, you know, you, there's very little risk of injury and we just had, we don't have the numbers to show that, that it's, there's a lot of risk there. Um, ask Rob if he can do the Batman. What's the Batman. Yeah.

That's what I thought. Okay. It's a, it's a pillar posted. I'll go back and find it. Oh really? Okay. Yeah.

Cool. That'd be cool. I don't know what it is, but it's a, it's a, um, Oh, here he is. Here it is. Oh, listen andrew has it shit that was like uh so so andrew this is the buddy my buddy i was telling you about who was experimenting with the trt he wrote this on his whiteboard not thinking like thinking it was just kind of a pipe dream he said he'd like to

have it up there and then he finally did it three rounds rounds, one deadlift at 495, one back squat at 405, one bench press at 315, one power snatch at 225, 10 unbroken ring muscle-ups. This guy's really good at ring muscle-ups, by the way. Got it. And 100 unbroken double-unders. Jeez. Okay, so can I do that? The one thing that kind of jumps out at me is the power snatch at 225. That would be a stretch because I don't do that that much anymore.

The rest of it is a non-issue. I could do that. Okay, and I'll tell you one thing. I started playing around with this idea. Sorry, how would you snatch it then? You would do a squat snatch with that? Oh my God, no. No squat snatch. It's just like, could i power snatch 225 oh i think that would be that's right at the very limit of what i can do okay just because i don't do it very often um how are your shoulders how are your shoulders they're great except for overhead squat and squat snatch i just i just yeah um thank you

they're just they just don't like those movements so So I don't, I can power snatch, but, um, I don't do it often enough to get good at it. Okay. What were you going to say? Do you remember I interrupted? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it was probably six or seven months ago. Um, and he was even farther. It was right around my birthday. I said, uh, a lifetime squat, back squat PR. And I squatted 540. And, and I thought like, that was, it's interesting to be able to do that, like at 48 years old. And, you know, so I just keep getting stronger. And I thought to myself, let me do some squats every day, just a little bit. I'll just squat every day and see what happens. So I started doing this thing as a warmup to every single workout. So Monday through Saturday, I work out and, and every day I start the clock and I do an EMOM. Um, and I start with,

I only do one rep each. So I do an empty bar for one at the top of the first minute. I do 135 at the top of the second minute for one and then 225 and then 315. And then I do a couple of rounds at 315 and then I'll go to 405 all for one at the top of the minute. And then from 405, I'll build up to 500. Right. So, and I would, the goal was to get to 12, to get to 500 pounds by 12 minutes. So I'd go from empty bar. You do that every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday? Every day. Starting at what age?

That was like six months ago, so 48 and a half. So I back squat 500 pounds every day, and I do that as a warmup to every single workout. And what I noticed was that, A, that the confidence it builds is just insane. The strength and the testosterone gains and all the hormonal stuff that you get from it is amazing. But the most important part was that I was completely

and totally switched on mentally for every workout. And there was zero fatigue, right? Because it's only 12 reps. And most of those are under 315. It's not that heavy. So, you know, you go from zero to 500. And then now I'm ready to work out. And I use that as my warm up every day. your big thing in the early days people would be like rob how did you get so strong and you'd be just like oh i just lift heavy stuff every day that would be like i lift heavy stuff every day and why does it have to be more complicated than that like it this is this yeah this is my 540 did you know going when you woke up that morning you were going to attempt to break your pr um not by 18 pounds certainly no uh but i i felt like building up to that day it's not like i'm

following any kind of program either it's just like you know how much do you weigh there uh 202 yeah that's your gym that's your gym right there that's the old gym that we just moved out of oh okay yep lots of steel plates baby oh yeah no we we we have Lots of steel plates, baby. Oh, yeah. We have lots of steel. And you can see, if you look in the background just behind me, you see the bench press set up. So that's our cold bar bench press. Like, you don't warm up for that. You just walk over and do it.

You just do one rep with it. Are you happy with how low you went on that? That doesn't look like you break parallel. I mean, I ain't shitting on you, by the way. I'm just – Oh, come on, Stefan. Let's play that again in slow motion okay all right all right let's do it let's do it okay i'm glad i asked them i do it parallel all right let's see let's see here i even freeze framed it for you let's see let's see

yeah come on man all right all right all right all right my bad my bad all right good all right i want you to get a reputation i'm not dave whiffman i do all the range of motion damn uh someone oh my get g what's gof get the fuck out of get i think it's supposed to say god but what's goff god oh someone oh my god what oh did i ask him about that okay um uh yeah how dare you sorry i know and i see okay yeah you just got you gotta keep it up you guys wanted me to ask ann. I can't ask Rob about his fucking depth in the squad. Jesus Christ. Okay.

So you move to your new location, and then you get a couple days ago. You're a 15-year affiliate, right? A couple days ago, you get a notice saying – so you've been around for a bunch of affiliate fees. Yes. At least two or three so you get a notice saying your rates are going to go from 3 000 a month to 4 500 a month do you ever hear from hq at all by the way about anything no no okay so you're just over there minding your own business you're not you're not like in the craig howard circle like where you're on it like they ask you questions or like they parade you around for to score bonus points or shit like that you're not on any uh fake facade panels you're not on the pfaa or

the dei council or none of those uh nobody's asking for my opinion on anything i would say the only person who has ever reached out to me for anything is Dave Castro and who I always love to hear from. He's like, hey, I've got this workout idea. Can you test this for me? Oh, that's awesome. Well, he's the only person who knows you exist over there. He remembers you from the old days. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So the fees go up and has your immediate reaction and then maybe how it's changed over we moved into this location, we raised everybody's rates. Okay. But there was, I think the thing that that's different between the way it was rolled out with HQ and the way I rolled it out with my membership is here's the difference. Okay. Once I knew that we were going to have to move and we were going to have to move out of the space that we were in, and I started looking around at space, we kind of, we figured out, all right, we've got a building, let's go ahead and let's pursue this thing.

Before I made a leap of any kind and started going down the path of actually signing a lease, I had to bring my members up to speed, or I felt obligated to bring my members up to speed and say, hey, here's the situation we're in. We're moving a half mile down the street. It shouldn't impact you at all. We're moving into a bigger, better, cleaner space. And it's going to be stable for the next five to eight years. I'm going to sign a long lease because I'm never moving again um and if you're on board with me i need to know so i can transmit that to them face to face email how do you do that video that was um we did a like a zoom for people to get in but we also did it was like town hall style so people can sit into okay that's cool um thanks so that's some community shit yeah look that's that's what this whole thing has always been about right and it's not it's the community

it's interesting for me because i've been around long enough that in the beginning the community was huge in in that it was global for me and i was traveling all over the place i was flying the crossfit flag teaching strongman seminars um you know i'm showing up at the ar. I was flying the CrossFit flag, teaching strongman seminars. I'm showing up at the Arnold. I'm doing the Lake Tahoe throwdown. I was out there doing all of everything. Another road trip with you too. We didn't just do the Tahoe throwdown. We did another one. That California road, which is why I reached out to you a couple of weeks ago because I felt nostalgic. And I was like, why aren't we doing that? Why don't we do a where are they now with all the people that were on that California road trip?

Because I think there's a desire in the community to see that content. So anyway, I communicate this with my members that, look, we have to go. We can't stay here. We have until the end of October. And I need to know who's in. So almost everybody immediately, like, yeah, we're in. We've got a tight group of people. We've got about 90 members, which is funny because I've been in business for 15 years and I've always had about 90 members. It's never really gone up, never really

goes down. We're a plus one, minus one gym on a month to month basis. So I let some time go by. And then a couple weeks later, I had another town hall meeting, which was the more important one. And I said, hey, you know, for us to move, the rent is more expensive. And a lot of you have not had a price increase in 10 years. A lot of our members have been here for six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years. I was like, I just can't continue to eat that month after month. And so we're going to level the playing field. Everybody's going to go up to 200 bucks a month. And what was it? Well, and that was part of the problem is that we had some people that were paying half that, some people that were paying 175. It was a fucking disaster.

It was all over the place. Right, okay. And so I told people. So right now it's a similar, basically you're saying the same thing. Same. So let's just say, let's just give HQ a ton of leeway here.

They sent out a survey, even though that was a fucking disaster. But let's say it wasn't. just for the sake of this you sent out a poll they didn't even send out a survey they had fucking um retard bobs that went out mama dude well what a fucking mess okay they they send out a sir they send out a poll so that's what you did, parallel. And then they have people at all different fees. And they got a new owner who needs more money. Fair enough.

And the same thing you said, we haven't raised fees in forever. So right now there's a – This is parallel. Yeah, parallel. I'm seeing it as a parallel. Yeah, pretty much parallel. Right. Okay.

Now, the next meeting that I have – At Air CrossFit, it's RobOrlando at gmail.com if you want to do that. It's not surveys if you want to have them run your next one. Yeah, no, I'll show up and I'll zoom right in for you. It'll be great. So the next meeting that we have, I tell people, I'm like, okay, here's, we have to raise the prices. And for some people, it's going to first time why didn't you was it we'd be manipulative why didn't you tell them that the first time because i want you have to for me i felt like i needed to take the temperature as we were going

and as i was getting closer and closer to like i need to start knocking walls down in this new space and i need to sign a lease where i'm going to be on the hook personally for the next five years for the next three hundred thousand dollars i need to know who the hell has bought in. $200 a month. That's a lot of money. It's a bunch of money. Okay. So I said, but keep in mind this, when I opened up my first affiliate, well, my first location in 2008, they were paying $200 a month back then too. Oh, okay. Okay. So how did those people get in at $100?

Those were George's ding-dongs? They were grandfathered in to – they were family discounts. They were friend discounts. They were bro discounts. It was like, hey, I'm only going to work out twice a week. Hey, I'm – Okay. discounts. It was like, hey, I'm only going to work out twice a week. I needed to hit the reset button and I needed to do it when we moved. I tell people the rate is now going to be 200 bucks a

month. In exchange for that increase, here is the list of deliverables that you can expect. Here is the list of deliverables that you can expect. You can expect 24 seven access. You can expect a clean facility that is, it's better than what we're currently in right now. You're, you're going to get all the same programming. I will take whatever extra revenue I have and purchase new equipment. I'm going to sell off all the shitty assault bikes that we have and get some new bikes. I'm going to get some new X, Y, and Z.

So the revenue is going to get dumped back in here. And if you don't believe that all of this is going to happen, I'm signing a lease for the next eight years of my life. So I'm as committed to this thing as I've ever been. And I'm all in if you're all in. Okay. And we had a handful of people that kicked back a little bit and they were like, you know, Hey, can't you keep grandfathering me? I'm like, no, don't you understand? That's why we're in the position that we're in. And so I had to have some of those conversations, but eventually a hundred percent of the people in my gym made the move with us. We didn't lose a single person. No shit. 100%.

And so why did that work? Were your coaches fully on board? Were they toeing the line? Yeah. We only have a couple of coaches. You don't want a coach being behind your back, yeah, Rob's a fucking scumbag for doing this. Rob's a fucking scumbag for doing this. No, I'm way too honest, and I'm getting too old to sugarcoat things. And so now I just fucking say everything, and I'm just like, look, if you don't think that I'm all in, I'm the one who's going to be on my hands and knees for the next two weeks cutting rubber mats for the 10th fucking time in the last 15 years okay i'm

the one that's just gonna write over a year from that i could tell by the way he said that god flooring sucks i fucking hate i'm never doing it again too like i i will not i will not do it again yeah okay okay so you're you're supremely confident you're all in and if someone wants to question that they can fuck off go to another gym that's exactly right go find some of you guys but like dude i can't work any harder for you guys yeah this is i'm this is all i've got okay so we we have a hundred percent of our members that make the move over here and and once they get here they're like holy shit this is amazing these places it's dialed in it's clean we were by the way we were only closed down for 96 hours like i did i did all of and i had a lot of help from tunnel members that pitched in volunteer time but we ended up we we worked

right up until the day before thanksgiving we moved all the equipment and then thanksgiving through sunday we were closed we opened monday for businesses full hours, okay. So now we go back to the, why did this work? It worked because I communicated it and I was a hundred percent transparent and honest. And so I think based on the feedback that I've heard, and I've been listening to your shows and different comments, it just seems like the people at the top of CrossFit who are delivering this message are delivering it like a politician. And that's just like happy talk. Let me dance around it. And let me say how we're going to support the affiliates. And that's our only goal is to support the affiliates. But what are the actual fucking deliverables? what are you actually going to do to drive a dozen new members into my

box over the next year and i don't like you want but you want you want you want more specifics um then um we're gonna so so i apologize to don if i'm paraphrasing this wrong but let's say i think don said something like we're going to drive more people into your gyms. That's not enough for you. You want to be like, hey, we're going to relaunch the journal, and we're going to publish content in it every single day. And we're going to get – when people type in – our goal is when people type in push-up into Google, CrossFit pops up first. And watch us do that with our new media plan of publishing every single day. And then you'd be like, okay. Just the same way you said, I'm going to get rid of – hey, guys, one of the things – I'm going to tell you I'm going to buy new equipment. And specifically, one of the first things I'm going to attack is the assault bikes.

Yep, because they needed to go. Just so you know, of the four speakers, Nicole Carroll did do some of that. She pointed at some shit. And that's fantastic. but here's again but i agree with don's talk i want to give him some leeway because it was ceo but i didn't understand any of it yeah and i'll be totally honest like i didn't i didn't watch that i heard you talk about it but i didn't i didn't watch that conversation so i don't know what they said. Yeah, his was really – in the nicest way you could say it, it was really big picture. Okay, so 100,000-foot view. Yeah, we're going to do more for you.

Right. And when someone's asking you for money, that's kind of not enough. You need – what if they just would have said this to you, Rob? What if they would have just said, hey, guys, we haven't raised the fees in 11 years. It's time. Yeah, I mean that could be't raised the fees in 11 years. It's time. Yeah. I mean, that, that, that could be a thing too. Right. Yeah. That's what I kind of would have preferred. Yeah.

I don't have any skin in the game. I don't own an affiliate. Yeah. I mean, and who knows what financial position CrossFit is in, who knows what kind of pressure they're under to perform for the, for the, the owners, you know? Yeah, yeah. You know? So anyway, I think that in 15 years of doing this, like I said a little while ago, we're a plus one, minus one type of gym. We're never like a net up 10 in a given year or a given month. And so what, when I hear people at HQ say, we just want to support the boxes, it's like, well, support the box to me means one thing, put people in it, right. Put people in the box that have some potential to, to actually stay in the box for a long time. And part of it is this is, it's a, I'm jaded because

in the years that I've been doing this, I want to say that I've had, you know, call it 5,000 people have at one point been a member of one of my gyms, right? I have 90 members. What kind of, what kind of attrition is that? What kind of retention is that? Now, the people that I have right now, they're loyal. They'll run through a wall, right? They're that loyal to me and to the gym. But the amount of turnover is ridiculous. And now, what I've noticed in the last four or five years since the media team was let go is that we don't have new people walking in almost ever and when we do it's always word of mouth there's no search engine that's bringing people into my gym

um and i'm at a point now where well the search engine shit's a complete disaster for crossfit they they they some there is a complete disaster it's been a disaster since 2018 right okay so so like 2019 am i gonna get this sudden so now let's say my my fees go up to 4500 am i now gonna see this sudden influx of people walking into my gym gym i would argue the answer is no and so what about well let me push back on you right here really hard this one's gonna this is this is what i'm hearing from most of the people there's this sentiment i'm gonna i'm i might hyperbolize it a bit there's the sentiment like hey fuck you you're at 90 you ain't a professional gym anyway fuck we don't want yourself that would be my response to that yeah go fuck yourself here's what here's what i know right there's people out there saying that

people okay and they can fuck themselves yeah and i'll tell you why because at at 48 i i went to school and got an exercise science degree i came out of school and i've done nothing but fitness since i was 22 years old so for you to belittle the last 25 years of what i've done and how many coaches how many classes i've coached how many times i've watched somebody get their first muscle up how many times i've opened the fucking doors at 5 a.m how many times i've laid the fucking floor you want to call me a not professional? Go fuck yourself. They are doing that.

There's a group out there that's basically saying like, hey, you're not a professional gym because you only have 90 members. And because, hey, $1,500 should be nothing for you. It's not about money. It's not about money.

What's it about? It's about – so I actually heard someone – I think it was Sousa the other day. Dan Guerrero, Canadian, $2. Go fuck yourself. Agree with Rob. All right. Yeah, so like I've been doing this shit for too long for somebody to tell me that I'm not a professional at it. You can eat it, okay?

So I don't – You were going to tell me that I'm not a professional at it. You can eat it, okay? So I don't – You were going to tell a story about some lady or something. It came and went. It'll come back. Okay. This is what happens. Let me see if I can cue you up again. They're saying that you will up the quality and get the more professional gyms by raising.

Oh, you're saying it's not about the money. And I said, then what's it about? Okay. Yeah. So it's. Too old guys trying to remember shit. Too old guys. I know. I know. This thing to me has always been about the relationships and loyalty. Right. And, been about the relationships and loyalty right and and my my loyalty is to the the few people who are still in the community now at this point and to the 90 people who who came with me from location to location to location right so I like I said earlier for me the community used to be a lot bigger it was global because I was out there like literally shaking hands with affiliates in every part of the world. Now the community,

when I say that, it's much more local in that it's basically the 90 people in my gym, and that's family and friends. And there's a lot of relationships in here that I give a shit about. But if I look back on the relationships that I have in the CrossFit space with you, with Greg, with which is $375 a month, I need to see what are the deliverables? What am I paying for? Because if I pay $375 for heat and electricity, I can see what I get for it, right? I can heat my gym and I can put the air conditioning on, I can heat my gym and I can put the air conditioning on. At $375 a month to put the CrossFit banner out in front of my gym when Greg is at the helm and my loyalty is to Greg, that almost seems like a fair trade. At $375 a month without those people involved, it feels I'm less inclined to do it so there's a weird there's an interesting line you're walking here it's not about the money but you don't want to pay for something you're not

getting and so and you're also saying this thing that basically you're also hinting to the fact that if it wasn't for dave being there you probably you might not be an affiliate already because because the other two people you mentioned don't even work there anymore. Right. And so, um, so then at the end of the day, how will you make your decision? Will you just be, will you just be like, um, okay, am I getting value at first? You have to define value. And I think sort of you did already are people walking in the door and am I getting that value from paying that money? So it kind of it kind of is about the money. You don't want to throw money away. That's exactly right. It's like the sentiment, too, that's kind of like, well, what do you care?

It's only it's only there's a sentiment that's like it's only three hundred seventy five bucks. It's only $375. It's only $15. I heard – I think it was Sousa again the other day talking about maybe you've got a gym with 100 members, and he was almost talking about my gym. And he's like – and maybe that owner is bringing home $40,000 a year, which if you think about $40,000 a year for the number of hours that you put in to generate that $40,000. And then for- If you're getting a wife and a car, you're fucked. I'm sorry. You need five other jobs to cover the cost, okay? Especially with the $11,000 increase in cost of living over the last week. You're only going to have really immature people running your gyms.

Okay. So you've got this small income, and then CrossFit HQ says, now there's a 12% tax on that. We want 12%. And that stings, right? So if somebody's like, hey, this is going to push those boxes that aren't professional, it's going to go push them out out and it's going to let the cream rise to the top. Okay. But that's a sad thing, I think, because there's a lot of people that really give a shit about the community, you know, to the point that I think there's going to be a lot of people like me who are going to hem and haul over this

until it's time to make a decision. And thankfully, I don't have to make a decision until a year from now. So yet next year. So you pay your fees in December? I do. Yeah. Yeah. Same with Sousa. He's pumped. It's like a two-year decision for him. asuza he's he's pumped he got it's like it's like a two-year decision for him yeah and you know one of the things that i i i heard you kicking around or um i heard somebody mention it is that greg's non-compete is up in august of next year right and um you know so that gives i don't know what what he's going to do obviously we don't know what the plans are going forward, but like I said before, my loyalty is to Greg, Dave, and those people that helped me so much early on. I wonder if there will be a cultural shift. There was an interesting post made – I haven't talked to Greg about this, but there was an interesting post made on the CrossFit book where it said that Greg would actually pay the original affiliates $1,000 a year to stay on. Instead

of charging them $500, he would pay them $1,000 to stay on, to maintain that culture. But on the opposite side of this is, hey, if 10% of the affiliates leave, right? Let me just paint a rainbow situation. 10% of the affiliates, yeah, so here it is uh what's that next line the next line from that is i would pay 500 per year per affiliates i would pay the 500 per the affiliates that are paying 500 a year i'd pay them a thousand dollars to stick around is basically what he's saying they're they're so valuable in their contribution um and into what what is the brand that he would actually pay them to stay but But let me paint this other kind of picture. You bought the company from Greg, and it's yours now.

You own it, and now you're trying to make money. That's a fact. There's someone who the company is trying to make money off it, let's say. Or some people think they're trying to sink it. But let's assume they're trying to make money off of it. And so they raise the price, price and 10 of the gyms quit and but they actually increase revenue overall revenue let's say for for crossfit inc profit let's say even revenue by 20 and profit by fucking 10 and and let's keep painting the rosy picture

they improve quality and consistency across gyms because of this whole l2 thing this push to have the l2 right because in the l2 they teach you how to teach your classes and so there'll be continuity so do you see that as a possible outcome like hey fuck these guys maybe did make the right decision yeah i mean i i think it could be like we we just don't know how the community is going to respond how these 10 8 9 10 year affiliates are going to respond. Right. But I, maybe that, that could very well be the outcome is that, yeah, there's continuity in the level of coaching and that you pushed all the gyms with 70, 80, 90 members, you push them out of business or they're no longer an affiliate. And maybe that's what you wanted. You just wanted to thin the herd. And I don't, I don't begrudge you that and maybe that's what you wanted you just wanted to thin the herd and and i don't i

don't begrudge you that that that's your prerogative as a business owner um but i also because you got you you did the same thing but but you you and you did some of the similar things you move new locations well the only thing different is is is you are saying you're enhancing value. You got a bigger, cleaner location. Better. Yeah, okay. It's an interesting thing. Go ahead. Let me run this by you. What if they would have done this just on a pure psychological experiment what if they would have said hey i'm starting in 2025 affiliate fees are going to be ten thousand dollars for any new affiliates you have anyone who wants to be an affiliate now's the time to do it get in at three

thousand bucks as as someone who paid let's say you were someone who did pay let's just say not you particularly but just average joe affiliate who's paying $3,000 a year. Aren't you kind of excited that they raised fees for everyone else to $10,000? It kind of gives you some swagger. It adds value to your gym, right? Yeah, and the stud out there that's paying $500 because he bought in early, he just feels like he's made the best decision ever, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though nothing's changed.

Nothing's changed. nothing's changed. There's a psychological, there's a psychological fucking uptick. Little dope me. Oh shit. Yeah. Look at, look at me.

I made the right move. I bought in early. I'm an early adopter and it paid off. Yeah. And the guy who's paying 10,000 still getting a good deal. He just has to have a different, he just has to have a, the values there,

but you just got to have a different business model. You better figure this shit out. You better be fucking. Yeah. You're, you're not going to have five years to figure it out. You're going to have to – the value is there, but you just got to have a different business model. You better figure this shit out. You better fucking – Yeah, you're not going to have five years to figure it out. You're going to have to figure it out a lot quicker. So have you – in the weeks since they've announced it or however many days, have you gone through any changes? Have you gone from like, fuck this, I'm out to, okay, I just need to take some deep breaths? Have you gone through any changes?

Have you gone from like, fuck this, I'm out to okay, I just need to take some deep breaths? Yeah, I think my initial knee jerk was just like, and it's so funny that the timing of this whole thing, right? Because in 15 years, I've actually never used or capitalized on the CrossFit logo or any branding and any marketing. I've never called myself and made it public. We're a CrossFit affiliate and put that out on my sign. I've never done that. But when we moved into this space, and I realized that we had been an affiliate 15 years, and I was like, okay, that's actually something that I'm proud of, is that we've been part of this group. And I was an early adopter, and I've been totally bought in for that long. Um, we have a sign out in the road and, and on the bottom of that sign for the first time ever, I put a CrossFit

affiliate since 2008. And I got the email from HQ the same day. And I was like, what a kick in the nuts. Hey, I wonder, I saw a picture of that sign somewhere. I'm trying to find it. It's not at CrossFit Robo. Is it on, is that a hybrid? It's on hybrid wads, but let me, I'll send it to you right now if you want. The funny thing is, maybe Caleb can find it on hybrid wads. I wonder if legally you could leave that up there because you're not claiming you're a crossfit gym it just says that like you you you were once since uh 2008

yeah no it that's the first time i've ever used it in any kind of promotion ever and i was like and it was the same day that i got the letter from HQ. All right. So, so, so you're, you're, you're on the fence. Yeah, I haven't made any firm decisions yet. And I think part of that is, is just, you know, as much as that, I tend to fly off the handle way too quickly. And as I'm getting a little bit older and I think think you know to your point it's like let's take a couple breaths here and see how much does this really matter um and and and i have the luxury of time so i've got a lot of time before i actually need to process this decision yeah so so what's interesting is our affiliation is due in January. Some gyms get 11 months. Well, really, those gyms get two years because you could probably – you have a year to decide, and then you can probably lollygag for another year.

And what's interesting is – but this guy, his shit's due. He's got to decide now. Tomorrow, yeah. Yeah, he's got to figure that shit out. And that's a tricky spot to be in. He got to figure that shit out. And that's a tricky spot to be in. Yeah, that's interesting. Hey, why not – another thing is why not just de-affiliate, see how it goes for a year, and then re-affiliate?

Well, because I can tell you that – I mean, if I'm being totally honest, I don't think it's going to matter one bit. Because you asked me, do you hear from CrossFit? are you in the trenches? Are you out there doing this, doing that? No. And, and, and we don't use, uh, we don't use the CrossFit brand to, to recruit new people in it's all word of mouth. So like, do I think it would actually matter? It's just an emotional decision for you. Yeah. Cause I, because I don't think it's actually going to do anything, whether we affiliate or not. Uh, cave Dastro. No, you're not a retarded. decision for you yeah because i because i don't think it's actually going to do anything whether we affiliate or not uh cave dastard no you're not uh retarded maybe there's just a missing piece but i'll tell you so he put up a sign he can put up that sign he put up a sign for the first time in

15 years saying he's a crossfit gym and then now the same day um he's thinking about maybe not re-affiliating because the relationship with HQ has changed. So it says, hybrid athletics, CrossFit affiliate since 2008. The question is, we were laughing and joking that even if he doesn't pay his affiliate fees, can he still have that up there? Because it doesn't say he's actually a CrossFit gym. All right. No one's tarded. No one who listens to this show is tardy all right crazy it'll be fun to catch up with you in like a year six months or a year what

about the open do you do the open at your gym wouldn't you be bummed don't you want to do the open at your gym is that enough this is the first this past year was the first year that we actually didn't do the Open as a gym. And I don't know that my competition days are completely behind me, but I kind of feel like that. It's a great community event though, right? People pay $20. They get to feel the pressure of competing. People who normally would never compete and shit.

It's interesting. Leading up to the open this year, um, I was waiting for some of my members to come up to me and ask me if we were doing it. Um, and, and I would have jumped on board as an affiliate. Um, if anyone came up to me and it's the first year in 15 years that nobody came up to me and said, Hey, what about the open this year? Are we doing that? Wow. Wow. Yeah. Which I thought was interesting, you know? So I didn't, we didn't, we didn't do it because nobody asked for it. How does that strike you?

I mean, it's, it's the whole, the whole thing's fascinating to me. I just remember I was shocked how many, when I worked at HQ and the open would come around, and affiliates would realize that since they haven't paid their dues, Greg wouldn't bug them for their dues, but they would realize they can't log in and certify people's scores. So people would start paying their fucking like fucking hundreds thousands even you know they get up to date on their fees um it's a fun thing to be a part of it's a cool thing um uh it's whenever i think if there were ever a competitor to crossfit i would think it would have to have something like that i uh i did get

with the programming crew i'm gonna screw it up but chase and bill they always they call it the um your yearly checkup and and um as much as i always hated uh the open the times that i did it when i worked at um hq i was so proud of myself when I was done. Fucking hated it. I hated the tension. I hated all of it. But every time I did it, I was pumped. For me, I completely agree with you. The stress and the pressure of the Open,

when I was competing, it's miserable. It's made even more miserable because I'm a person that has never intentionally shaved a rep in my life um and i know i know that there are people that beat me in the open uh and i let let the couple times that i qualified for the games i qualified um i made the cut out of the open and then i made the qualifiers and then I qualified like dead last to get to the games and then these people

in my region or whatever that beat the hell out of me in the open and smoked me in the qualifier they all DNF workouts here and there so I always had a better show in person competition and they're

they're just like flies right and and and i'll call one guy out um you know my my fucking accountant smoked me in the open smoked me and then smoked me in the qualifiers right it's my fucking accountant okay and i'm like i here's the numbers were laughable and so for me it started to lose its luster when you're like these people that are out there just shaving this rep shaving that rep like it's it made it very difficult for me to to totally buy in because then i would go to the games and I would do really well at the games. And I had this good showing. I'm like, well, what happened to all these other people that,

that just crushed me and all these qualifiers. So it, for, for me, part of it just kind of lost its luster when, when my accountant was beating the shit out of me in workouts. All right. I got to have you back on in like six months or a year and figure out what what ends up happening to you yeah i would love that yeah hey you demand thanks for doing this what a cool show to have uh you and annie were both at the uh 2009 crossfit games crazy yeah i watched her get her first muscle up yeah nuts yeah man my what's

interesting for me that was probably the most memorable moment for a lot of people but for me the most memorable moment for sure equal to that was at the top of that hill sprint when i remember i was you came to the top and i was right there yeah you were your your breathing was crazy and most people collapsed but you didn't you just put your hands on your knees i mean there was bodies most more clapping than anything is the other event. And you were just like, and I was trying to talk to you. You're like watching you like regulate your breath. And I remember, I'll never forget that last breath you took.

You were like, Hey, and I was like, you know what I mean? Like that moment. I actually do. I remember it very well because you were right there with the camera in my face. And to this day, I would put that in the top five most uncomfortable moments in my entire competition career. And I'll ask you if you remember another one. It was at the regional in canton massachusetts uh in 2011 the event was a thousand meter run 30 handstand push-ups thousand meter row was that outside that was outside yeah yeah vaguely

remember that vaguely did you fall off the rower the row was last and it was me and Eric McGee was to my left and Travis Bajent was there announcing it. Right. He's literally standing between our two rowers screaming into the microphone. He's like, Orlando's at nine 73 McGee's at nine 65. And I knew if I took one stroke off, he'd whip. And I ended up winning the event. He finished a couple of seconds behind me and you were right there again with the camera in my face i i swear to you it took me a half a day to recover

from that yeah that's awesome yeah that was a great moment uh all right hey uh rob orlando uh hybrid athletics uh rob um what are you doing these days? What's your business doing? You had these. You had these. Yeah. Are you still selling these? Yeah, we still sell those. That's the barbell brush. It makes cleaning the barbell. I developed that thing during COVID. You know, you basically put it in the palm of your hand, wrap it around the bar, and you can clean the knurling in like two seconds. And I was just so sick of cleaning

the bars in between classes with a straight brush that I made a rounded brush that you just wrap around the bar. And so we sell it in nylon, brass, and steel, depending on what kind of bar you have. You can adjust the bristles. These things last forever. We're still using the prototypes. I actually think I made it too well because they just don't break. Hey, I heard – I don't know if this is true. I don't want to start rumors,

but I heard HQ is giving all the affiliates this year one of those. They're going to be ordering 15,000 of those from you and giving every affiliate – no, they're going to 15 000 of those from you and giving every affiliate uh no they're going to order 30 000 from you and give every affiliate too that's part of happiness that comes with the new affiliate race in that case i'll affiliate immediately hey uh um uh what else? Any other, you still selling the molds? Yep, still selling the stone molds. That's the thing that we started cranking out in 2009 or 10.

And we've been doing that since. And I started up another business. I like driving my car on track. I've got a couple of different race cars that I drive on road courses. And a couple of years ago, I organized my first event where I rented the track myself and then brought some friends in. And, uh, now we do about 15 events a year. Each event is two days. Um, no, this, this is the best part. It's a hundred percent word of mouth. There's no website,

no social media, no pictures allowed. It's literally fight club for guys that want to drive on track. So you have to be invited in by somebody that I already trust. And it means that the growth has been a little bit slower than other groups, but we've got about 700 people on my email list now. And you know, it's, the thing is just exploded in popularity because people want quality track time with less people on track. So. You do tracks all over the country? We're working on it right now. We're as far North as Watkins Glen. We do VIR, Monticello, Lime Rock.

Those are all East coast venues? Yeah. Those are all East coast so far. Yeah. But as the email list grows in different areas, it gives me the opportunity to go find new tracks to go to. Because it's kind of crazy. If you do 15 a year, that's a lot of travel for you. So you're on the road. Yeah. It's, it's interesting because all of the work is leading up to the event. Once we get to the event, I just hit play, you know, like it just kind of happens. Um, and I get to drive, you have time to drive. That's the best part is that I subsidize my hobby. Um, so no, it's, uh, it's been great. I've, um, you know, I've just taken this, this approach where I bring in the

right drivers and we go to the tracks and I keep the head count way down and try to maximize everybody's experience. Any crazy accidents? Any Isle of Man shit? No. We did have in May this past year or earlier this year, we've had a couple incidents here and there. It's basically just people that have like a mental check and they don't pay attention to it. And one guy sent his four hundred thousand dollar cup car uh into the wall at vir and just you know spun it up into a pretzel um is he okay he was fine yeah does insurance cover that does his insurance cover that um you can have insurance

but he didn't um he toasted his car so it i mean it did he come with the way to camry the next anyone bring anything like that does anyone bring like like fuck it here's my minivan i just want to see what it can do um we wouldn't let them on on course with that yeah they'd be like a four000 pound roadblock out there. Okay. All right. How about, uh, how about, uh, the new Tesla truck? Can you bring that out there? Uh, yeah, I bet, I bet you that thing would be interesting to drive on track.

We've, I've been on track with a Tesla plaid before. Um, and it's, uh, you know, the thing rockets past me, like I'm tied to a tree. What is a Tesla plaid? It's just the, it's one of their sedans it's like the the highest oh you know yeah i heard that there's a video out there of the tesla truck racing a porsche while towing a porsche yeah and it beat it yeah it's great yeah it's great it's just nuts it's nuts uh god it's hideous looking yeah i i watched a moon it's like how much coke was elon doing when he made that he said he wanted to look futuristic um dude it looks like it's 1970s it doesn't look futuristic it looks like it came from

fucking you know remember the del DeLorean? I do. Yeah, I do. It's great. Hey, there's not even an attempt to make it, um, like to hide the fact they're trying to make it aerodynamic. That's what I like. It's like here,

these lines that make it the most aerodynamic. We're not going to smooth any of them. It's a brick. Yeah. All right. Hey, um, love love you talk to you soon um come back on anytime uh call me stay in touch you demand love you too seven take care buddy you're you're the original uh uh josh bridges i'm seeing it right now you're the man thanks everyone all right bye i don't know why I never thought of that before

He's uh Josh Bridges is Rob Orlando 2.0 Wow Yeah Okay yeah I can see it Rob was the first iteration He's the Tesla truck With the current Tesla truck

We haven't seen the Josh Bridges Tesla yet So people are chilling out People are chilling Oh you fucking asshole There's someone I want to ass pound This count guy Where is this guy This guy who said he would tear you up

If you were watching Listen dude I'm not here to bring Annie on And make it so she's like Well fuck I regret coming on that show I ain't going on that show again Do you want to have her on again I'm not here to like to bring annie on and make it so she's like well fuck i regret coming on that show i ain't going on that show again do you want to have her on again i'm not yeah what the fuck you guys just want me to just to shoot my load and just like i never even thought about um bringing her on and ass pounding her well the whole show is supposed to be me just like enjoying her company hearing hearing some like

hear the um some unique stories and about the evolution of the depth of her character oh so um um now if she wanted to bring that up i would i i i guess now i'm reflecting a little bit it is it is something that i am curious about i am curious like hey uh what are her thoughts on that especially since she said uh oh fuck now you got all in my head and shit now you got me all frazzled because she did say that was the past let's let my head and shit. Now you got me all frazzled. Because she did say, that was the past, let's let it go. And then that got me all wound up. I'm like, well, I don't know if we should let it go.

Do you got some thoughts on it? That was cool, though. Yeah. At least, I mean, she acknowledged it. Okay, I'll meet you halfway. I appreciate you guys wanting to know. Like, hey, has her thoughts on that kind of stuff evolved? I'm also pretty sure we've covered it in other shows we've had with her.

So go back and watch the other ones. He's courting getting Catrin on. No. Last year I was courting getting Catrin on, and she said she would come on. But I've let it go. I'm not bugging Katrin anymore. I'm good. I like where it's at.

Maybe if they let me go to the games again next year and I'm going to cover the games, I will pursue having Katrin on again. You'll see in the behind the scenes. I had some great interactions with Katrin. You guys are going to like it. It's interesting. It's it. It's interesting. It's cool. It's intense.

All right. I'm most proud of that this venue, the Savant Podcast, is the place where we've been i feel like doing the most well-rounded best most complete largest blah blah blah all the good shit all the highest metrics for processing the community's response to the affiliate fees i'm so fucking proud of that look dude we just had two affiliates on this is the the fucking... This is the spot. Yeah, it was pretty wild. I'm proud.

I'm not humble at all about it. Yeah, and two affiliates from two different ends of the spectrum, too. You have, like, I don't want to call Rob, like, mom and pop, but... 90 versus 1,000. Yeah, exactly. the smallest and still successful with the biggest right and and i think that was the big talking point was the fact that people think that oh well the the smaller affiliates the ones who aren't very or aren't professional are just gonna they're gonna go away because they're not strong enough but

i'm i'm I marked that. I'm going to make a clip of that when he's like, go fuck yourself. Yeah, I like that. Fake-ass humble motherfuckers. Fake-ass humble bitches. Lesson for all you fake-ass humble motherfuckers online. All you guys online who actually have money and have stuff, have nice shit, have nice

cars, and you don't show it because you don't want to seem a certain way. Guess what? Motherfucker, you are that way. You have the shit. So if you're not showing it, you're actually placating people worse. That that's more, that's like the epitome of being facetious. You're, you're selling, you're not showing them your truth Because you want something out of them You don't want them to perceive you the actual way that you fucking are dip shit So the whole point is if you really do like rolls-royces If you really do have nice shit

You need to fucking show it and not hide it because why are you hiding it? You want something out of people or can you just be you motherfucker? Quick, let's yeah motherfucker. Why have those things if you're not gonna show people you're not gonna use them. You only have them fuck you guys Do it do my own shit placate you bitches Fucking extra set of toe spacers here. Look at this. I have so many toe spacers. I don't even need to wear them all.

That guy, Fern, and I are texting. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I saw his message yesterday and got a little excited. Yeah. I DM'd him yesterday with my phone number. Yo, we'll have him on the show. He said something about, he said he heard that I took a royal shit on him.

I saw that. Big old stinky shit I laughed when I read that and he even used the emoji yeah he gets it I was just assessing his video no hard feelings hey um so yesterday I went to the

um god for those of you who think I'm a pussy you're gonna love this I went to the – God, for those of you who think I'm a pussy, you're going to love this. I went to the butcher, parked my minivan out front, sent my wife in. Oh, my God. She got me eight – what am I supposed to eat? Rib-eyes? No. Bone-in – no. Bone-in rib- bone-in ribeyes no strip steaks new

york strips no where's some other meat not brisket steak is it ribeye it is ribeye is that probably ribeye those are the best cuts okay so my wife bought fuck gazillion ribeye yeah so good let me see if i can even call let me make sure it's a ribeye. Yeah. So good. Let me see if I can even call it. Let me make sure it's a ribeye. Cause that, you know, that guy keeps calling the guy with the huge dick. Who's five foot one, 175 pounds.

Do you know, have you seen her? Have you heard him call in yet? Have you been on any of those shows? I don't think so. I think I've missed that. Shit, dude.

We got a new regular caller. Hell yeah. Big dong. Love to hear it. Yeah. Let me see. Uh, Haley uh hayley hello hi this is seven leave a message oh shit i called my number oh my god what a douche that didn't even sound like you honestly what a douche

look at eric's like please don't let the big dick guy call him i like the big dick guy he's fake you think that's fake i gotta see it i gotta see it i don't think so he's 61 5175 pounds um a big huge dong hello you've user's clearly leaving my feed. You know when you call Danielle Brandon, she's like, you've reached, and she says her phone number. I don't think she should say that. Yeah, that's a horrible idea. Yeah. I'm going to call her and tell her that right now.

Use the automated voicemail. Because, oh, is it Colton Mertens? No, this guy's shorter than Colton. But anyway, this guy told me that I'm just supposed to eat. Oh, yeah. Eleven hundred testosterone. Look, Janelle loves that guy. Yeah. Who doesn't like a guy with a huge dong?

And yes, it's ribeye. Yeah. So yesterday. So yesterday I had a ribeye. And then throughout the day I had four Sogo sticks. And I felt guilty for having the Sogo sticks, but like I was fucking hungry. So jerky sticks, aren't they?

Yeah. But basically I'm going to only do my body already changed. When I woke up this morning, I already looked different. It was crazy. Like lean. Yeah. Just, yeah. Just didn't look like I ate two pounds of pistachios before I went to bed.

Yeah. The past week or so has been really bad. And so when I went to the gym this morning week or so has been really bad and so when i went to the gym this morning i was just shitting my brains out for like the first half hour oh that's fun yeah it was nice felt good by the way that video you made is awesome you make some really good content the one where you're standing with like your legs bent oh the tell me to pull it up. Yeah. On your Instagram. It's hilarious. My so my dad has a.

Proclivity to of sending just random gifts to us. Oh, that's cool. Just stuff. And we never really know what to do with it. But this was something that I just. Oh, yeah. this is so good. This is so good. How did you know I was talking about it? Because I was talking about the way you stand.

Yeah, and it's probably the only thing I've posted in the past month. Okay, let's watch this. This is so good. Move it a little bit to the right. A little that way. More. That's it, though. Stop.

That's your wife? Yeah, that's my wife. Fuck, dude. I know, right? Crazy, dude. Okay, go's my wife. Fuck, dude. I know, right? Crazy, dude. Okay, go on. That's a clip from the Christmas. I just figured it out.

But you actually own that lamp. Yeah, we actually own that lamp. It's literally sitting in our window right over there. Does your wife think your dad's a weirdo or she likes it? She thinks it's funny. Is she like, there's no way we're putting that up, Caleb? Or you're like, she's like, oh, that's cool. Let's do it.

No, she loved it. She thought it was great. She was like, we need to put it in the window. She actually said we need to put it in the window. And I was like, well, how do we do it? And then she propped up a chair in front of the window and that's where it's sitting. Damn Yeah, it's turned on Wow

Awesome Yeah If I saw that and I made the connection to the movie I'd lay on my horn like if I every time I drove by your house I'd give you a double honk that would be we leave that specific window the blinds open at night so that it

just shines bright through the window oh shit I gotta call this dude hey dude I think it's sunny today and I'm taking the kids to the skate park I'm gonna call you fuck I keep I wanna talk call this dude hey dude i think it's sunny today and i'm taking the kids to the skate park i'm gonna call you fuck i keep i want to talk to this dude fuck what do you think about this can i read you something sure i'm gonna see if it's a compliment meant Magdalene your husband is a keeper that's awesome she said that her husband gave her one of those like lamps for her birthday oh that's good that's cool Oh gave her yeah gave her her Okay, it says – oh, wow.

With a droid, you can't go back and look at old text messages. Or can you? Should be able to. Oh, here it is. My favorite part about your podcast is how unpolished it is. Please don't ever change that. And I said, thanks, I think. And then they said, it's definitely a compliment.

It's authentic. I hate that word. That's what makes it so much fun to listen to. I think a big part of it is that you do it live. Most people don't have the balls to do that. Well, everyone's doing it in our space now. Everyone's got balls. I'd say that's a compliment.

You do? Yeah. Somebody DM'd me the other day. Our shit's polished as fuck. What are they talking about? So polished. Yeah. But there's nothing smart about you, Joe.

See, we got sound effects. You're just straight up retarded. I got buttoned. Go ahead. Somebody said that somebody said that they appreciated my self-awareness on the show. That's all they said. They just said,

I appreciate your self-awareness on the show. Yeah. What the fuck does that mean? Hey, um, uh, I get so many compliments, uh,

about you. Oh, you're so lucky you have Caleb. Oh, he handles you perfect. Oh, Caleb's dope. Cool. Fuck off. Quit listening.

Okay. Oh, yeah. Where is my police siren? No. No. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Thank you.

I keep telling myself every night around 6 o'clock, go into your office, spend two hours, and just get this all dialed in so you actually can hit them at the right time. I will get there. That'd be perfect. Like, right now, it's just a mess. I don't know what each button does, and there's...

Did you ever set up any of your buttons? Does your roadcaster work? I did, but then I moved. So it's still somewhere. Still, it's in a I have it. I just need to set it up again. We have sound effects that I record by hand on my tape recorder. I'm not I'm not,

I'm not unpolished. This show is crazy. Polished. Look at my sign. Yeah. Come on. Look at my walls. Yeah.

Yeah. Look at you. Look at you. Yeah. And you change locations every day. It's cool. Yeah. Oh, Oh, wow. It's cool. Yeah. Oh.

Oh, wow. Look at my tool bench. All right, so day one of just eating meat. But I'm going to really try to stick only to ribeye. but I'm going to really try to stick only to ribeye and, um, I'm only, I'm going to try to just make it just so I just eat ribeye. I,

I didn't even need a piece of celery yesterday. Wow. Really in front of me. Yeah. Just, I'm just, just doing ribeye. I'm going to see if in two weeks,

if in two months, he said in two months I could take my shirt off with other people around two months. Huh? in two months I could take my shirt off with other people around. Two months, huh? That would be crazy. Alright. Great show. Thanks, Sousa, for getting Annie on. That was fun. Tomorrow, Tyson Bajent. Sick.

Yeah, crazy. Wednesday, Greg Glassman. God, I fucking love it when I'm excited about shows. Thursday, Rich Froning. Listen, guys.. Wednesday, Greg Glassman. God, I fucking love it when I'm excited about a show. Thursday, Rich Froning. Listen, guys. On Wednesday, Mayhem is releasing a crazy video. And then Thursday, we'll have Rich on to talk about it.

And then, dude, and then on the 8th is the two Jakes. Jake and Jake. Cool. Okay. Alright. Alright guys Love you guys talk to you soon

Caleb thank you See you guys tomorrow Bye bye