The Sevan Podcast - CrossFit Teams Are DEAD w/ Seth Page | Souza's Show

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

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Oh, Twitter's still not working. Maybe go live. Nope. Maybe. Nope. Okay. What's up, everybody? How you guys doing?

Comment plate. Sliding in through the door just on time. We're gonna have Seth Page on today. We're gonna talk a little bit about CrossFit Teams, speaking of which, I should probably send him the link otherwise. It's not going to work. Let's get him here. Somebody sent me in a, um, a, hold on, sorry, multitasking copy paste streamer

link to Seth. There we go. Somebody, um, Brady, what's up? Yo, somebody sent me a, uh, what you would call it startup theme song isn't that something special but I didn't load it in here yet I thought it was loaded up and it wasn't I went to go hit the button I was like, you know, it's not loaded in here. Let's see if I have it on my Dang I thought it was back here Already jacking up. All right, everybody. How we doing Adam? What's up, man? How are you?

Hope you guys are doing good today. I feel like it's not gonna be the same without music But we can't use the same exact songs. We've been using the whole time Whoa and just blow out everybody's frickin ears Sorry about that The knob was crazy John Young and Susan at the same time. What? What John? You know, this is my fucking hour, bruh. Minute 28. I already swore. Dang. John's got me fired up. No, I'm just kidding. What's he on? Where is he? Did he start his own show? Is it the Wodcast thing?

The Wodcast podcast. What's up, Dominic? How you doing, bro? There we go. Now we got some energy phone Chris. What's up, man? What's up? What's up? What's up? I can never keep up Dude, either can I? Wad prep podcast The fuck John. I didn't even heard of that. What is that? I'm gonna heard of that No new friends boy. What you doing? No new friends. Okay being being song is over I'll play that other one for you guys next time I thought I had it uploaded into here sorry John sent it to me I appreciate that think he made it made it

out of scratch you guys want to see something wild here check this out I know we're gonna get into CrossFit Games teams talk and stuff like that. We will. We will. But of course, first we have to start with something contentious. So imagine this. Imagine you borrow money from somebody and you were like, Oh, hey, whatever happened to that hundred dollars that I lent you so you could fix up your kitchen.

And then you go in the person's kitchen and the kitchen looks way worse than when you originally lent them the money. And then they tell you, well, I don't even know what happened to the money. What do you mean you don't know what happened to the money? Well, I sent it over here and then it got lost. Well, if that sounds like a crock of shit, then welcome to Gavin Newsom's leadership. Using $ billion dollars. That's what's happening in California this week, where under Gavin Newsom's watch, the

state spent 20 billion dollars over the last five years to combat homelessness. And the number of homeless people increased. So when auditors asked to see where the money was spent, no one had any idea. It turns out the state's homeless council just threw money at homeless nonprofits, but didn't track how much or how the nonprofits spent it. So lawmakers demanded a hearing and it was a hot mess. Watch. What's the money been spent on?

LICH is working on finalizing its half annual report and hope to have that published in short order. Why has it taken three years to get data? The system was implemented in 2021. So HGIS began in 2021. It wasn't fully implemented until 2022. Okay, that's still two years ago. So why is it taking so long? I mean, you're the one that said you're urgent. I don't know, maybe my sense of urgency is different from your sense of urgency. You can't tell us at all how many people we've helped. No, they can't. It's like a car accident. You don't want to look, but you can't stop. You're talking about what happened in those two years. A lot of that is grantees using a data system they've never used before, getting used to it,

getting substantial technical assistance, us getting back bad data, needing to go have further conversations, and then needing to go work on cleaning up that data. So they lost 20 billion dollars because of technical difficulties? Imagine losing... Holy shit, that's terrible. Listen, if you guys have seen the last like three posts I posted on my Instagram have them in like old white dudes that are mostly dead and well, that's not true Peter Thiel is not Neither is George Gild I don't think but Milton Freeman is and it's heavy on capitalism Why because that is what happens when you hand your resources over to the worst?

possible person to allocate those resources it's just absolutely asinine in people always like start harping on like capitalism or we should tax the rich a little bit more. Listen, the rich are rich because they know how to take their money, invest it and make more money. So why would you take money and resources away from people that clearly know how to allocate it in a way that is positive, that is going to keep growing everything around them to

a bureaucratic system that can't even tell you where the fuck it went. They can't even tell you like, Oh, well, so we gave it to a bunch of these nonprofits and actually all of that money went to administration fees, which actually means that they just, you know, beefed up their salaries and paid themselves from it. Also too, it's a dog chasing its tail. Like imagine literally sitting here and thinking that you're going to spend more money on a mental health and drug addiction issue labeled as homelessness. That's already the problem.

The label can't even be solved. So it doesn't matter how much money you put on something. If you're just running around for a symptom that you're never ever, ever going to be able to cure, then the whole entire problem and the way you're going about it in your solution is already completely screwed. So giving more money to a situation or switching out this guy with this guy or this gal with this guy or whatever the hell, and then using the same terms, allocating more resources to an ever growing problem is not going to fix it. It's not going to fix it at all. And if you take that subject and then you spin it and you ask yourself, if my name is

Dave Castro of the CrossFit games, and I only have a hundred dollars to spend on this year's games, how do I allocate that money? Where do I put that money to continue to grow the sport and continue to have enough money to where we could do this awesome promotions and make it still a really fun event. Give the athletes what they need to be successful. Well, you bring in Seth Page and you talk about getting right to the CrossFit Games teams.

That's what happens. Wait, wait, we're getting rid of it. We're not making it better. Yeah, we are. We are. I just, uh, I're getting rid of it? We're not making it better? Yeah, we are. We are. I just, I go for the drama. Like, it's funny how much that, that switched from like, hey, we should talk about different ways that you could do the teams, like how we can make it better.

And I'm like, yeah, how about we title the CrossFit teams are dead. Okay, I don't know what that has to do with anything. They kind of are like, I mean, I feel like all the eyes are always going to be on the individuals, just like they had a realization that the masters and teens weren't really helping the situation. In fact, they were kind of muddying it. I don't think it's much different for the teams

now that there are probably only four or five teams that are competing every year actually competing, and the rest are there as sort of participation fillers. Yeah. Because half of them are stacked and the rest are actually probably from affiliates and whatnot. Yep. I so I want to preface this to and I was really hoping I was going to have like a bunch of impressive research for you and shit like that. And I got zero time to do it. In fact, I was on the phone with Sevan discussing like our upcoming schedule for this week until one minute before the show started. I was like, dude, I gotta go. Like I gotta grab my coffee. But I wanted to give like a brief

little like look back at the teams. Right. And so I'm going to just kind of spew off here and then stop me when I give out like wrong information. So originally it used to be like the affiliate cup, right? So when they first started, you all had to belong to the same gym, kind of no questions asked. Yeah. Okay. So then it was more, they didn't even call it teams. It was, it was called almost referred to as the affiliate cup.

Wasn't it? Correct. Okay. And so at some point in that timeline, and I think rogue was the one that maybe threw the wrench into it or might not have been rogue, maybe CrossFit was doing this on its own to have like a in-between season thing, but they did like the pairs, right? It was an online thing where you could go like,

team series. Yeah. Team series. Thank you. And that was the first time we saw like a super team, wasn't it? Uh, yes. I, well, I think the, maybe they were super team is, but you still had to compete together. So like, uh, during team series, you had to get together and do the, I can't remember it was over two weeks. It may have been over two weeks. And I think they did

that intentionally to make sure that people weren't coming together for one long weekend and knocking it out. I believe it was over 2 weeks, I might be mistaken. I think they did it once or twice. Yeah, I think super teams were kind of born out of these other events like Wadapalooza and stuff. People started to realize the big pull of all these individuals getting together. And that's, that was a, probably as big of a draw at an event like Wadapalooza as the individuals were. So I think probably the idea was like, oh, look how many people are stoked for these people coming together. What if the CrossFit Games was like that? You could just stack these teams and let's see what these teams can do.

I think that was really exciting when Rich was involved in doing all that stuff. Froning is always going to be a draw. And who can beat Froning and all that? I think that led a really good narrative that kept it alive longer maybe than it should have. And then they trimmed it from six athletes back in the day down to four, which made it a little more digestible as well. But now we're at the point where you might be able to name if you're a regular CrossFit fan, five athletes across all the teams that are competing, unless you personally know of a team that's going to be there from your gym. And I'm not trying to insult these athletes. It's just not where the focus of the media

is. Like you and I do all these shows, everyone else has all these great shows online. How often are we actually talking about what's going on in the teams? Almost never. Unless like Noah's going team or Chandler's going team. something like that has to happen to make it notable. Right? Yep. Yeah. And so so perfect. Exactly. So we have that in between which was which us kind of ushered in the first super teams, but outside of rich deciding, hey, I'm quitting as an individual, but I got I love competing. I still want to work out. I got sponsorship obligations, whatever the case. He's like, I'm going to go team and win the team. And I think outside of the affiliate cup, because before you had some sort of like, you wanted us to know who is a fitness affiliate

and a long time is like Invictus, it was CrossFit New England, like these really big, you know, known James with gyms with a lot of like a superstar power coming out of them, especially in the individual field and stuff. Um, and so you kind of knew it from that, but at that point, it really, like you said, there wasn't really any like draw to watch the teams, unless your affiliate was like involved in it, then rich got involved and now that kind of pushed it more mainstream, but really we were all just watching us to like, can we rich get beat in this format, right? It wasn't even so much like, Hey, I'm interested in watching six people all

work out at the same time together. It was like, we just want to see Rich get beat. Or can he continue to win first place? Right? It was almost like a foregone conclusion. Everyone's like, oh, who's coming in second? Or like, you know, you'd have a team or two that would say they're getting together to like take on mayhem for the season. And like that was the only storyline of teams. Right? The only hype you could put behind it was like the rich thing.

Yep. And then they moved it somewhere in that era from six to four athletes. And I'm assuming that's just like cost and logistics. It's so much easier to do things with four than it is with a six person team, right? I think it makes it more watchable to an extent. Like I watched for years and years, different teams.

I was training athletes that were on different teams and I couldn't, I knew the workouts. I still couldn't figure out where they were, what was going on, when it was time to switch stations. Like it was such chaos out there with a lot of, anytime you want to combine a bunch of modalities with six people, complete chaos. And it's still challenging with four at times. Yeah. I remember watching, I forget which one at which event it was, but it might even

been like some handstand walk something. But like within two minutes of the whole entire event starting and it was probably like a 20 minute workout, it just looked like chaos on there. Like you had no idea where people were. You had no idea who was in first place. Like it was just in between. Then you had the mix of that many judges out there too. Oh yeah. Just the amount of personnel like on the competition floor was insane. And so I think watchability has always been, that's a viewership watchability. I think like being able to sit there and watch it has always been kind of the crux of the teams. It's really tough to know what's going on. I would agree and I think most viewers would agree.

If I were to, I think the only pushback you're gonna get for wanting to improve teams or change teams or maybe even make the cut to teams are the people that wanna participate in teams. The people that want to stay competitive, they're probably not gonna go individual to the games anytime soon, but they wanna stack their best athletes

in their little region of gyms in their area of the world together and make a run at the games anytime soon, but they want to stack their best team, their best athletes in their little region of gyms in their area of the world together, and make a run at the games or make a run at semifinals. And team allows those athletes to come in. And I do think that it also does, to an extent, allow gym members to support this team, right? If you have a team that's making a run, it's real easy to promote that within your gym, get people hype there to go watch you take on the quarterfinal workouts together. I know we did that years ago when we had a team qualify for semis out of Hawaii, like everyone was like, wow, this team has a shot to go to semis, let's go watch them do

quarters. Like, it was a cool little community thing. But it's only fun at that point in time, like for that little, yeah, it's just, it's not a, it's not as much hype built around as the individual who's making the push and you can follow along and do stuff like that. But yeah, now, so Von, so what we'll do is we'll just kind of talk about little points that we think might like help it, um, make, make it, make an improvement to it, or if we should even keep it all together. Originally, I, I like, you know, I got this like chip on my shoulder and I was

like, ah, no one watches teams. Just cut it, like cut it, save all the money, be done with it. So here was some on stake. He, he was like, they can't. And I was like, what do you mean they can't? And he's like, dude, think about the drop of intent in attendance. If the teams don't show up for athletes or fans, both, cause you, do you think fans are still back in the day?

I would agree. The sea of green from evictus, all that stuff, CrossFit New England have all the red shirts. I agree that was a thing at one point and it may still be somewhat of a thing at semis, but we didn't see it that strong this year. And I'm not sure we see it that strong at the games. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. But I think that's, I think we're seeing more fans go to the game now of the individuals than we're seeing community members of teams. That's my opinion. I have no data to support that.

It's just what I've noticed. Yes. And so that's exactly was my response to him. Like almost verbatim. And I was like, how many people are really going to like watch the team thing? And he's like, no, no, no, you're missing the point. He goes, um, each team member is going to probably have, let's say on average, each member of the team, and there's four of them per team.

So you could multiply all this out is going to have at least one person from like a family member probably come with them and at least like one friend of you on average. So if each team member has at least accompanied by two or potentially three people, like some of them, they'll have the whole, all grandma and the whole family and the clan come out, right? So you might have 10 people that are there to watch this one person that's on this team. But on average, let's say there's three people that accompany each team member. He goes right away, you've already multiplied all the people out.

And he goes in the way that the tickets are set up is like, you're going to end up staying and watching a lot of the individual stuff, as well as a lot of the team's things. And I haven't totally looked at the schedule, but if it's similar to like what they did with the regionals, the teams will be done prior to the individuals being done. Their competition will be over. He goes, and then at the top of that, you'll see all of them also spill out to the arena and everything else. So I just thought that that was an interesting take, but I agreed with what you said because my initial thing was like, no, people aren't coming out like they used to. And like you mentioned the sea of green, like you remember that, especially out here in

the West, like you would go watch them at a, at a regional and there was just a whole section of this place. Probably more people in that section that attended all of the West coast classic this year. Like all decked out in their that green color that Invictus has. Yep. Yeah. That's an this year. Yeah, it's crazy. All decked out in there. That green color that Invictus has. Yep. Yeah. That's an interesting point.

I guess when you when you play the numbers out like that, it makes sense. So if you so if you if we were going to say, you know what? Forget it. We're still cutting teams. Forget Savan's idea. You would have to change the venue of the games, right? You'd have to make it a more personal, smaller situation. You could still make it look really cool, but you wouldn't need all the space, a big venue to do it.

You'd have to be more, I don't know what you'd find, but you'd have to be more strategic with that. But after we talk about it, I have a pitch. I have a whole pitch that I have in my head as to how I think you could make a really cool, different team version. I've been thinking about it because I remember we were in a chat on another show one time throwing things back and forth and it got me thinking that day

about like what you know as a longtime fan and something that I would like get behind and have staying power and have me get excited for it the whole process what would I want to see and what would it look like and so I have a pitch whenever you're ready for it. So, okay. So then I got, I got one more question. Maybe this will segue into your pitch. Do you think at this point, now that we're starting to see the super teams and like, I don't even know the rules on how you can compete on a team, whatever. It seems to kind of shift a little bit, but, um, do you think that it should go

back to a more of an affiliate cup style or do you think it should move more towards super teams? And then if that's in, if that's embodied in your pitch, you could go ahead it should go back to a more of an affiliate cup style? Or do you think it should move more towards super teams? And then if that's in if that's embodied in your pitch, you could go ahead and rock it out. But it's not it's not part of the pitch. But it I would love it to be affiliate cup. That's what I could get behind it more to see what part of the world like, like big like macro and micro communities, right? What's really working for these like gyms and these areas to make to find first of all, a pool of athletes enough willing athletes to come into your affiliate to train hard enough to get to that level of fitness, because you're if your

affiliate has 80 members, it's unlikely you're going to have this big pool of high level genetic athletes to to train and pull from, right? But other bigger gyms do have that or communities that are more fitness driven as opposed to communities that are more sedentary will likely have a different demographic in your gym. And so to me, having it be a true affiliate cup seems more interesting. You get to see training philosophies, how different demographics are successful or not. Are college towns crushing it because all these younger kids are there living there training.

Like what's working and what's making it happen would make it more interesting than who has the sponsorship funding to go live somewhere for five months and just stack a team. To me, that has no storyline to me. And like the people that are good enough to go do that, I'd rather watch you throw down, laid on the line and try to be an individual.

Come up short or not at semifinals. I'd rather, I don't want to say respect, but I'd be more excited to see you late on the line like that. And so that's kind of where I stand on that. Yeah, because eventually, if you move more towards the super teams, I want to know all these people in the comments. Hi guys. Who's Stacy?

Entire gyms would travel to regions to the games if a team would make it. Yep. That's exactly what we're talking about. There's a huge pull from your local affiliate teams are for the community regionals and affiliate cup. Bring it back. Can't disagree with you there, Sarah. Sarah is becoming a rising star of the show. I don't know if you caught her on the last. I feel Taylor. So I think I mailed out some FID aid, not like physically from my apartment because I don't hold any inventory here, but we passed it along to the appropriate people. And thank you for being a character on the show. What

are you gonna say? Go for it. I was gonna say you, you, you, one of the comments brought up a good point. If it went back to the regionals format, where there's seven or eight of them, and you're trying to fill those venues, then team is crucially important, right? But with semifinals format, you're really only trying to pack two areas and travel is already an issue anyway. If it was more regionally located, like the California region with the Sea of Green we keep talking about, it was in Southern California, it was in Del Mar a lot of years, so Invictus was right around the corner. So they were

just doing their morning drive to fill the stadium up, which makes a very big difference. Very big a very big difference. Very big, very big difference. Janelle, this says, Hi, hi, dude. What's up? Hi. The game sold out so fast. I don't think selling tickets would be an issue either way. Good point. That is Barkley. Hey, what's up, dude? 120 team members plus 360 family and friends. Yeah. My math was over here. Did the game sell out before semi-finals even happened?

I believe it did. They did like the first run, which, uh, grace got a ticket for it because we were like, unsure was going to happen. And she's like, well, either way, I'm going to buy my ticket cause I'm going with it without you guys. So she bought it and it's, it sold out crazy quick. And I have a coach and a member of my gym that's been trying to get tickets for the last couple of months. And they've been there

for all the releases and still have not had any luck. So you may not need teams after all, because people weren't banking on teams getting there. Definitely not. And it clearly didn't interrupt their sales as Sarah pointed out as well too, which I agree with. Kim Walters, here we go. Just starting to get some of something done today. And the seven podcast alert comes through. And yeah, I know there is so many things happening all the time. The yesterday I was bummed because I finished working out and I walked over to to my phone and stuff as I was like catching my breath.

And I realized that Hiller had sent me a text with just a link. And he's like, I think you'd have something to offer on this. Jump in if you can. And I was like, oh, shit. So I hit the button and the show is already over And I went back and I was watching part of it And of course it was something that I definitely had a lot of opinions. I was like, yeah, I texted him I was like, sorry dude. I missed it. He's like no big deal. That would have been perfect I saw a little bit of that yesterday and I heard him say I sent a link to somebody hopefully I'm gonna have a guess

I'm like who I wonder who is gonna be it would that would have been perfect if it was you Yeah, I know I was pumped. I was like he's like, oh, it's okay. Don't worry about it I was like, oh, I'm just that's like an exciting thing. I'm going to have a guest. I'm like, who? I wonder who is going to be. It would that would have been perfect if it was you. Yeah, I know. I was. Um, I was like, he's like, oh, it's okay. Don't worry about it. I was like, oh, I'm just, that's like an exciting thing. I'm not not worried about you. I'm worried about I miss my chance. Stacy highlights affiliates to perfect marketing for an affiliate who can send a team to the games. There are some benefits of that. Okay. So before we get into my uneducated dumb opinions, let's listen to Seth's pitch here because I'm curious. So you have the magic wand of all the resources in decision-making for the CrossFit Games teams. What do you do with them?

All right. So what I would say is first of all, like a lot of people have been hinting at, you have to pull it away from the games. Maybe it's like a winter competition. So the games ends in August. Maybe this is like a November, December thing. And what I would do is I would run another qualifier kind of like almost quarter finals where it's like four, five scored events over four days or something like that. You open it up to everybody. You let the top 60 men, top 60 women qualify. Now keep in mind, there's going to be plenty of games athletes who have no interest in participating. You know, you're going to get some, you'll get some semi-final athletes, but you'll have this whole new list of athletes that you see. Maybe some of them, you know, some you don't. They get invited to an event. It's a, it's a partner competition. But they don't give any details. You get invited, you

get to go. And they can change the format as they go. So one of the things they do is they can decide once you get there after it's done, if it's going to be same-sex, male, male, female, female, or if it's going to be mixed-sex, male, female. You get there, and then they hold a live draft or a hopper thing where they're pulling pairs of qualifying athletes out of a hopper. So you don't even know who your partner is until you get to this event. And now people are waiting in anticipation to see, Who's Pat Valner getting for a partner? Who's Maderos getting? That you could see two stacked partners get together or two, you know, lower-level semifinal guys that squeaked in. You never know what you're going to get for a pairing. But part of it's fitness, but part of it's how fast you can

adapt to work together over those three or four days, because you have no practice like that. And so I think it would be really cool. You don't have to make it a huge event. You can make it something smaller where you're offering only like affiliates, chances to get lotteries to buy tickets or whatever, make it exclusive. But then you could sell like a stream. So one of the things that got me thinking about this was like I Watch a lot of like online poker and they just had the World Series of poker and so on YouTube They give you like a one-hour preview of who's playing what's at the tables and then they make you go to this app called poker Go, it's like nine bucks a month or something and you stream it Crossfit everything's moving In the direction of being online anyway

Crossfit needs to start to get some sort of streaming app service thing up and running beyond Just playing it on YouTube. They need to have more streams This could be the perfect opportunity for them to sell streaming subscriptions to watch these events Everyone can watch it from home. I would tune in for the draft It would give you workouts to talk about it would just lead up to this big partner competition that happens off season We don't know who the pairs are going to be. It's going to be a new champion, new set of champions every year guaranteed because the likelihood of pulling the same partners is next to none, especially if they change the format every year. One year it's same-sex, next year it's mixed,

back and forth. And I just think you could make an amazing, exciting event out of pairs. And the workouts you can generate for partners versus teams of 4 or teams of 6 are so much more exciting. The synchro work could be so much better. You'd have higher level athletes competing through the synchro work as opposed to the team athletes for the most part. So that's, that's what I think you should do offseason pairs with twists and turns along the way that make it more of an exhibition than a finding the fittest team or finding the fittest pairs. And I think there's so many opportunities and avenues you could take that that would make it exciting and give us stuff to talk about for three months leading up to it between a qualifier, teasers of announcements, who's actually going to participate, who's not who's showing like all that stuff. So yeah, yeah. I mean, you said a lot of good things there. I I think that, um, first off, moving it, uh, to its separate season or shifting it to give it its own spotlight, regardless of how you skin the cat, I think that's a great idea because you create other opportunities for a lot of really like high level athletes that may be qualified to, to go through

the process that you're talking about, but will not make it to the game. So their season ended early anyways, right? Um, so that would be cool because you're giving more opportunities in different parts of the season. The drafting is very interesting. You know, what's funny is my wife does a nutrition challenge every year here at the gym, and you get placed on a team like your accountability team, but you don't know who your teammate is. And it's drawn exactly the same way you said. So we just developed this huge like hopper and we're like, okay, this is going to be team number one. And we just draw five names or four names or however it works out out of it. And then that's your team.

And you just kind of like figure it out. And I will tell you that from that really cool shit happens, because like how you said, you might have two like high caliber athletes that are like, Oh, it's, you know, it's rich and Matt got paired up. They're going to do great. But then you find out that they can't work together at all. They can't see curl anything. They ended up arguing and they like implode and these two guys that like snuck in or two girls, whatever, snuck

in and for whatever reason they could just, they just seamlessly lined everything up. They were just on the same frequency and crushed it. Right. And so you'll see really cool things happen. But more importantly is like it creates a ton of conversation, which is the conversation in the hype before these things is what makes the thing. If you don't have to take very long to go through Dave's YouTube and read some of the comments or different things people are saying about the athlete interviews as if, oh my God, Dave's interviewing athletes. No one's ever done this before. interviews. I said, Oh my God, Dave's interviewing athletes. No one's ever done this before. And right. Like, Oh, create media and we develop a relationship with them. We're going to watch and I might even pay if you had a stream. How groundbreaking guys. But that creates more and more like opportunities like, like for that as well too. And when you have all

those stuff to talk about with something leading up, it's just going to create some more hype around it. That idea is very interesting. I very interesting. I would like to watch it. It would essentially almost make our CrossFit game season year round, right? There's no lull from August to February. And I know we have all these offseason comps, Wadapalooza, Rogue, all these other things that are awesome and great comps and want to continue those on. But I feel like it's no Rogue, all these other things that are awesome and great comps and want to continue those on. But I feel like it's no skin off their back to do a quick qualifier, see where they fall, see who else is on the list and make a decision if you want to go out there and throw down.

And if it's run by CrossFit, you're going to drag big sponsors in and you're going to have a decent prize purse, probably a higher prize purse than some of these other events. So you may miss out on like the super elites who want to go to Rogue and Waterpalooza because they have a shot to win and win real money. But most people don't have a shot to make that much money at those events, right? Only a small handful of athletes who would rather, I think, take a shot at something like this, continue to participate throughout the season, and maybe they get paired with who knows what games athlete and they're just crushing. They finish on the podium and they make a chunk of change. And yeah, so I think like to answer Pedro's question there, I think a lot of athletes would forego the likelihood of them not making elite water Palooza and definitely not qualifying

for a top five spot online for rogue. So I think a lot of people would forego that. And on top of that, that would be half the fun. Like because everybody's here is like who would do that and get like the random, like, you know, terrible person? It's like, that's what would create the tension that make it so exciting to watch. Yes. I mean, and you're allowing people willing to do that to put themselves in that situation.

Oh, absolutely. And you made a point about the like you said, like, hey, if CrossFit put this thing on, like you might attract a bunch of sponsors to get some to get some money behind it. That's probably one of the main gripes that I have against the super teams. Cause if they fully lean into a super team, then it just becomes the Yankees. Like who's got the most money, right? Because then if I'm like tier and I have all these really high level athletes sponsored and I'm just like, Hey, guess what guys, we're going to double what you pay because we want to own this. So if you're kind of quasi in that middle of the pack of the game, but we could put you together and we know you'd be an awesome team.

Like let's just go ahead and do that. And that's part of your contract. And they're like, great. Now we get paid more and I still get to continue to work out. And now nobody's going to beat them because you're never going to have this random ensemble of people that are collected in their affiliate that are going to go and like beat this super team. Yeah. And like you just kind of said, super teams in a way are like marketing

in some ways, right? These these collections are sponsored by whatever or they're representing a training brand or whatever. It's just a way to put out this like an extra marketing thing when they go out there. And so like, by representing individuals, you're, I don't want to say you're taking it away from them. But the individuals who are randomly paired, like, yeah, I just I can't get over how exciting it would be you think, I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing.

And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing.

And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing.

And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. to see how it plays out. You can predict how the CrossFit games are going to play out to an extent. You would never be able to predict how this is going to play out. Right. There's no way. And it would make an awesome prop bet at the Heat 1 app. Oh, imagine sitting there like placing your people and like, yes, you could do some crazy shit with the main sponsor. Be like, if you pick two teams in a row, you win a million dollars is like the statistical odds of that would be so low. Right. But yeah, that would be a lot of fun. And you would get a lot of live viewership, um, announced around that. That's a very interesting idea. I like it. I like it. I, a couple of good points about it was like you said it moved to a different time in the season. I think that's great. I love the fact that it just creates a ton of conversation around like mixing people up

to find out who's going to pair like with who. Um, but something you had said earlier inside your pitch was like, why doesn't CrossFit have its own like streaming thing? Yeah. Oh, you're with me. Oh, dude. Like, what are you taught? Like, it's so crazy to me that they're like, hey, you know, we should go ESPN because nobody has fucking cable anymore. Like, stop. Like, you could even if they did just a YouTube membership and then gave exclusivity to like, you know, broadcast it from there, with what we've done with a lot of these live shows,

now I get this technology has really come a long way in just these last couple of years, because we've seen it advance from when I was walking around with a cell phone at Waterpalooza to where we're able to live stream and what we're able to do now. But with that being said, like the fact that they don't have their own paid for streaming thing and would just load all the media like everybody that's watching this and I would

assume a large chunk of the people that would watch the games would pay a 9.99 a month or a 20 a month, especially if they had really good content that was going into their, you know, outside of just streaming the competitions. So it's beyond me why they haven't leveraged that to some degree already. Like the like an OTT thing, like an app that lives inside a smart team TV, like Savana told me that he had talked about that idea back in like 2017. Like if you would imagine if CrossFit did that and then it had all those movement demos there and it had everything prior to the lockdowns. Oh yeah.

Oh my God. It would have been crazy because it would have used, you would have gone. Yeah. The views you would have had on that thing. I mean, if you would have been living on that. Yep. Especially if you were loading it up with a bunch of stuff from the journal and different things like that.

That is the question, Sarah, about who's going to make that contact? Obviously Hiller, we would just take all of his stuff and he is single-handedly put the the road to the game style media on his back and has been schlepping it to the finish line for us. So, you know, it's kind of crazy. It's kind of crazy what he's been putting out. It's really, it's really crazy. I mean, the, I remember watching that the Haley one, um, a couple months back when he did it and I was like, Whoa, you, you broke into something

different with this style here. And he was like, yeah, I enjoyed doing it. And I was like, Holy shit. Like this is good. And to see him continue with that, like when he went to mayhem um underdog athletics the stuff that he did with uh with uh uh dolma what's it abigail yeah yeah it's like true blank on that um has yeah has been really really cool do you think savan was uh like do you think whether consciously or subconsciously savan has been a massive influence on Hiller's style because I get new school Savan

Savan vibes the way he like puts the camera and asks the questions and leaves it kind of with his voice on there and things like that like Savan all the old HQ stuff was him putting his camera on people's face and asking sometimes really good questions and sometimes super obnoxious questions to see what the athletes would respond with right right. Right. Yeah. So like just in your face and, but that's the best, most raw content is like, you ask the question, they give you the answer and it's right there. It's not like this drawn out interview, like where everything's highly edited and everything's really like perfectly cut together. I actually don't like that.

I can't watch documentaries like that. I like the raw stuff. Me too. Yeah. It feels more, it feels more real. And at some point you, you kind of get lost in the conversation as if you're almost there and like part of it, right? If it's highly edited and produced, you're kind of just like feeling like you're watching more

of a movie and it, and it doesn't give you that same authenticity doesn't come through. Um, to answer the question about, I mean, I think to a certain degree, like all of us in this kind of media space of this cohort of like this, this group that we have here have here, I think all of us are pretty heavily influenced by what Savanna did in the past because we all, you know, for lack of better words, like grew up on that media and the CrossFit space. And so we're like, okay, cool. Like we want to see more of that. We want that to be available for this next generation of CrossFitters and the next one

after that. And so I think that that's, um, probably where that is influenced by, at least I know it is, uh, for me when I was like filming back, um, at semi-final East, uh, Heidi, you lock, you like raw stuff, like a raw fish bar, different than sushi. Learned that the other week. Um, so getting back to the, the game thing, the teams, I think that there's way too many people on, uh, the field. I think that they should cut it down and maybe they already did. Cause then this tells you how much I paid to do it. But I think that there

should only be 10, a field of 10, Oh, 10 teams make it to the games and teams make it to the games. And I know there's gonna people like, I know the John Young is going to like listen to this And be like, ah, that's crazy. There wouldn't be enough points and it would kind of settle and it's like well, okay I'm gonna know it works just the same you have the same spread or you could you could take on different scoring system But for some reason I could be wrong. I think they did that one year one year. They had ten Super teams or 20 super teams. It was a really small field. I can't remember.

I might be making that up. But yes, I think you're right. I think again, unless you're looking at those people dragging their friends and family in with them, I mean, no one, no one's watching teams and no one's watching the bottom two heats or three heats of teams. No, right. So John doesn't care about teams. Look at that. How does Chris? So, Chris, how do you know? That's that's misinformation

Misinformation has to be the stupidest word ever. What do you mean? It's misinformation. It could be wrong It could be untrue but like the information the misinformation And there's disinformation too What's interesting missing disinformation? I don't know. I don't know. But apparently there is. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I think if you had one heat of 10 people, more people would watch because there's a lot of scarcity on it.

Like if you're telling me, oh, the teams are going and I got to watch two heats to get to that third heat. I'm not watching two heats. And then I'm forgetting to come back to watch the third one. Like, let's be real. And the workouts are long for teams because they're trying to, they're trying to get so many people through so many different movements and incorporate so many things. The workouts are all long and drawn out. Again, that's another reason why I like partners because you can make the

workouts the same length as an individual. And you're doing them together, or you're doing sprint versions back and forth, whatever. There's a lot of different variations on them. But so based on everything we've talked about so far, would you keep teams, even though with what Savan said, and what everyone said, like would you still try to keep teams?

What changes would you make? I would cut them completely. Really? Just dead. And in fact, I don't think people are gonna like my answer at all. try to keep teams with what changes would you make? I would cut them completely. Really? Just? Yeah. Dad. Mm hmm. And in fact, I don't think people are going to like my answer at all. Oh, I can't wait.

I would actually slowly morph the games to more of like the Arnold in the games. And I would still definitely make it about the individuals and like their events, but I would have a lot of other star power happening throughout the weekend too. Oh, okay. I'm not super familiar with the Arnold, but they have like weightlifters, strongman. They have all those different events, right? Yeah, it's more or less like a convention, right? Okay. Like there's all these different things happening in different stages. And so you could go and check this out or go check that out.

And I'm just doing this. I'm just referencing this from stuff that I've watched. I never went to the Arnold, but they have like the fit expo that was out here in a San Jose like years back and they had small local comps that were in it. And stuff actually competed in the same competition as a Roy McKernan and, um, and, uh, uh, I think it was Hebrew in the same competition back in like February 2014 anyways, it was, uh, yeah, Ken. Yes.

Yes. More like a circus. Absolutely. Because I think that there's a lot of these like, so it, that would be one option, right? If you wanted to keep it as a really strong marketing tool truly for the affiliates, because that's what I would do. I would move it in. Greg's even said this, like he wanted to be the Woodstock of fitness. Yeah.

So I would try to create that and they they do that with some really cool like affiliate offering stuff, right? Like with their, their education pieces, you go take a class like at like the affiliate that's there with the, with the seminar staff members, you could go to different talks and things like that. So you could already kind of see that happening a little bit, but I think you could even bring in other audiences and start cross pollinating stuff. Like if you were to have like a strongman expedition thing there, similar like they do at rogue or a powerlifting thing or a running thing or, you know, something else like that. And then,

and I knew that's why people weren't going to really like my answer because it takes it from this kind of little like bubble that is the games. And it starts to like dilute it quite a bit when you put all this other stuff into it. But I think too, like, here's the thing I would love. I would love to have honest information on this. Have we've seen a CrossFit event to any scale actually be profitable? I mean, I've run a bunch of local events that I've made a bunch of money on, but they're very local. Nothing big. I don't know. I mean, I've run a bunch of local events that I've made a bunch of money on, but they're very local. Nothing big. I don't know. I mean, water pollutes has got to be profitable.

I would imagine how do they make money? They're charging insane amounts for vendor booths. They have the city who I think pays them to run the event to bring in tourism. So I don't, at least this is what I've heard in the past. I don't at least this is what I've heard in the past. I don't know. I don't I'm not an insider with them. But I've heard the city like basically funds it in a way they want them to have the events of people come into town, state the hotels, eat all the food, support local business. So they pay and they let them use that Bayfront Park area. So I think you could make that profitable. And they use a lot of volunteers, a lot of volunteers. All these events run off a lot of volunteers. I think, yeah, yeah, I think that I agree. Craig had said three people watching.

I was like, no, we have almost 90. Was it three people watching? Come on. But he's talking about this also dreams to my personal YouTube channel, which like nobody watches. So he's referring and there's actually three people on mine. That's a frickin record That's a record. I remember oh, there's four I remember every now and then somebody would accidentally clicked it and we'd have one viewer for like one second I just subscribed to your channel. It got fed to my feed like suggested. I was like, whoa, he's go

And then I realized it was a cross-screen, but I just you a subscribe anyway. Oh, because that's the thing to do. You're a good dude, Seth. Um, and so I think that like the other option with the games, so I had said like, make it more into this festival, it would like dilute it, like there would be, and I know people are going to be against that. The other option is you completely sever the sport from CrossFit, the health and fitness program. I'm trying to avoid the use of word methodology because I know every time I say it, Hiller's ears ring somewhere and eventually he's going to like punch me. So you could, you could separate it and then this is exactly what I would do. That's exactly.

If I were being completely honest, that's exactly what I would do. I would go and get cheap, dirty sponsors that just have a shitload of money that want to be synonymous with the sport. And I would make a hard separation because in to what you were saying, like that's why I was saying I was curious as to like to actually share it to hack to get numbers from that. Right. Because an event could take in like, let's say the venue's free at waterplusa. Yeah. And let's say they get a lot of their stuff from volunteers, meaning like their, their

human resources are volunteers. So they're unpaid people outside of like food and some other stuff that they supply to them. And they could still take in $5 million and the event could still cost them $5 million and $1 to run for sure. And so that's kind of the, the, even with all that, you know, all the perks in the wind at their back a little bit. So I'm, I would just be curious about that because I know that I, I don't think the games would have survived on its own as the CrossFit games without money coming from affiliateship

in training, subsidizing it. Oh yeah. No way. I mean, it was it grew from such a small thing in Castro's property to such a big thing in such a short amount of time. There's no way it was generating income like that early on. So they basically had to go out and take a shot on that. I mean, I don't know what this was the Home Depot Center when it first started. Yeah, the stuff was a Home Depot Center.

Home Depot Center. Yeah. What did that cost to rent for the week? Like they just decided they're going to go from Aromas to Home Depot Center one year and there's like, that was as empty, if not emptier than West Coast Classic was this year, this first year. They didn't make any money on that. They, they spent a lot. Yeah.

They spent millions. And on top of that, the broadcasting back then you figured that was 2010. So that the iPhone had to come out the year earlier. Oh yeah. So, I mean, broadcast probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Definitely. Right. And it was, and at that time it was more impactful because in October, like in

between stuff before like, you know, playoffs for a baseball ramped up or anything like that, like when there was no sports on, they used to play it on Sundays all the time. And at the bar, I used to bartend at it would be up there and I'd be like wiping down glasses, watching like some event from, you know, the games that year. And people would come in and see it and ask questions about it and stuff like that. So I would, I would eavesdrop everyone's conversation to hear what they're saying. Oh, I could do that. Oh, you should go try that.

I loved hearing the side conversations in the bars about that stuff. What those women can lift. So entertaining. But that's that's what I do with it. If I if I kept the teams. If for some reason you you know, we looked under the rug and we were like, oh, shit, like there's a there's a like a strong enough revenue or some sort of draw that comes into it that we have like we we, we were going to keep the teams because it makes too much of a shakeup if we don't, then, um, uh, then I would, I would transform it.

I would, I think your idea about moving it to something to its own season and then giving some sort of really cool focal point, like the draft portion or something of that sort would be the way to do it because that would be a way to have to like make you want to watch it and there wouldn't be anything else going on at that time. So you kind of get this double whammy of like there's this lull in content plus there's this really exciting thing that kind of happens and there's a bunch of drama behind it so we want to like we want to see that. Do you think this just popped in my head do you think that CrossFit benefited in any way from having the invitational was

like their version of the All-Star game? Remember when they had the four? Yeah. Four teams. They had in San Jose. Oh, you did. Okay. Yeah.

How busy was that? How crazy was like, I know it was a short weekend of events or whatever, but like that sort of team event, did that provide any sort of value you think in any way to CrossFit monetarily or fan base wise? You know, I, I personally liked it. I went to it obviously, but no, it was probably like, uh, uh, it was probably a little bit of a loss for them. I think the arena that they chose in San Jose was probably a little bit too, too

big, they'd like bit off more than they could chew there because I remember going to that, it wasn't exactly, you know, crazy, there wasn't like, there was a ton of people there and stuff like that. Um, so no, I don't know. I was a ton of people there and stuff like that. So no, I don't know. I was curious to see how much of an impact that made. Clearly not a lot because they cut it relatively short. I think they only had it for like two years, three years, two or three.

Yeah. And then they dropped it. But that's where I would go with the team's thing. Either a massive reduction. So you just had 10 and their events were shorter. So you can kind of like squeeze them in as like this, like sideshow or just completely eliminated altogether. I wonder if they eliminated though, what would that do to participation in the open?

That was my next question, because there's a lot of people who think they're to say this nicely. There's a lot of people. This isn't nice. Slightly delusional about their own abilities and where they're gonna end up in any given season, right? And so they say I might not make individual but I'm gonna try but my backup plans team Even if they have no business being on both but people with that pipe dream are gonna sign up for the open They're gonna participate and they're gonna participate in quarters to see what happens. So there's always that like

stepping stone that team might provide somebody who's trying to get to the highest level. And I do know for a fact that those who are actually dedicated enough that go team and then go individual do gain a lot of good experience from that, right. So for like an individual base of growing as an athlete at the highest level, being on a good team certainly is helpful, but that is a very small population of athletes that actually benefit from that. So, but yeah, overall participation. I don't know if it makes gyms less interested because they can't even get a team to quarters or semis or something. Because it makes it an individual only sport at that point, so I'm not sure. Yeah, and even the draw of the open is becoming tough. Like I talked about one show and I basically said that like cross fits a pimp and the affiliate owners are whores when it comes time for the open.

I know. And like, it was funny because I was, I was having a conversation with a couple other people. Um, you guys would all know them, but when I said that they were, they're all like, they like stopped for a minute and they're like, damn, now that you said that, that kind of fucked me up. Like you're right. And I was like, yeah, because if you really think about it, we fostered as

like this big community event where we all get to be on the leaderboard at the same time, but certain those elements don't exactly exist anymore. And then on top of that, there's zero incentive for me as an affiliate owner outside of, cause people are like, if you use the two brain thing, you could, um, get shirts and you can maximize it and you'll actually make it profitable for your gym. I get that like, and I respect that you always want to take those little opportunities and, and use them to your advantage. Like that's great.

But by and large, in terms of like what CrossFit is offering to its affiliates, its cohorts there, there, there is no value proposition. It's a one way street. We promote your thing. People sign up for it. They pay you and we are left to host the party three weeks in a row or five weeks in a row back in the day. So it's like, and they're like, oh, well, it's good for you. It's like, yeah, so it would be like walking to the grocery store for you because then you can make the claim that like you're working on your health because you're outdoors and walking.

Like, yeah, it's like, I guess, but not really, you know? So I'm, I'm just curious as to like, will this whole entire thing see massive change to it? Like if really we're talking about the open is just to qualify people for the games now, like I wonder what the future of that even looks like in terms of its relationship with the affiliates. That's a great question. I don't I think about it in so many different ways.

There's been times where I've I've been years. I mean, I've been doing this a long time since the first open. There's been years that I felt legitimately guilty begging my members to sign up and do the open knowing they weren't really getting anything back from it. In terms of like, we could have just done these workouts in class and we could have pushed each other or whatever. So in certain different, and I've been at a bunch of different gyms where the culture at some gym is very competitive, and the Open makes a lot of sense to give them that extra push and get them fired up. Some gyms, they don't even know what the Open

is. And I'm trying to convince them to sign up for this when really, they're going to do the same workout on Friday, whether they're signed up or not. So I'm like, Ah, am I doing the wrong thing by asking you to sign up for this and whatever? So yeah, I've gone back and forth on that. But I don't know if overall, like you said, the team thing may be what if the team thing just ended online? Would you be cool with that if they like had so you could participate online if people were into it, the team quarters, and maybe they did like a I don't know it's kind of lame I know

but like yeah it's it's it's a it's like a consolation prize for people who want to compete together I mean I tell you I'd watch it as much as I do now right well that's kind of the point right yeah I think that's it it works for the little bubble the people who want to be in there but for the masses no one's paying attention to it anyway. So if you want to participate, it's there. It's like they had the team series and they had good participation of that 10 years ago whenever they had that. And then they just decided to cut it. But it didn't cost them anything to run an online competition. Really? Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're right. Other than the production that they do to like promote it and stuff. Right.

Layla. I like that name. Eric Clapton song, better Clapton song. We don't encourage anyone to actually sign up for the open. We encourage them to protest it by sitting on a freeway and blocking traffic on a bridge. Layla, the last part is extreme. OK, you don't have to block traffic to protest the open, but I get it. Do you encourage people at your gym to do the open? Do you use it as like a, because I can see using it as a chance like, Hey guys, we're ramping stuff up, like refiring a certain

group up to like really pick it up from post New Year's when everyone's been a sloppy holiday mess to leading into the open a chance to kind of like get people on On the right track again. Do you use it like that in any way? We do I would say it's definitely changed over the years So some years we were like really big on it like back in the day It was like five weeks of a party the last one on the friday was this huge barbecue and like all this stuff And we did that for a lot of years Um, then we started to see like participation falling a little bit, like

even with us promoting everything, just the same, like people were just being like, ah, I did it last year. I'm not really into being competitive. Um, different things like that. So we saw that kind of change quite a bit. And then we brought it back pretty heavily because we used to give you points for it in the nutrition challenge. If you are your whole team signed up for the open and kind

Of like did it together But we use that as a way to like bond those individual teams and like do exercise outside of their normal routine and like shake Things out for a couple of weeks And you know what ended up happening with that just to be fucking perfectly honest with everybody is we ended up with people getting little nagging injuries and sorenesses because all the intensity was way higher. The focus was on them. They're pushing themselves like really hard as people do in the open or men for a lot of them. That was their first time experiencing anything competitive, not cross the competitive, but

that was their first time in like all the eyeballs are on me. This whole room is cheering. I can't sit down this dumbbell. Then I didn't walk for three days because my back was just blew the fuck up. Right? Yeah. So we had, you know, we've had things with that. So we were like, okay, let's not expose the whole entire challenge to this in a way that like heavily incentivizes them to sign up. And so now we're at this happy medium where we do the Friday night lights.

We adjust our schedule to it. You're going to do the workout in on Friday, regardless if you're signed up or not. That's kind of our way of still staying attached to it. But yeah, we don't, um, you know what else it caused? I just looked over and I saw part of Sarah's comment. I just saw the cheating. Oh dude. Yes.

You know what though it does, but it doesn't for me. It's always created a little bit more of a headache because now you have all those people that are like, get these crazy fast times and you're like, I know Seth fucking skips half of his reps on his wall balls. Like there's no way he beat me on this. And like the open is going to be my chance. But then Seth wife shows up to judge him. And now what do I have to do? Because the other person that knows that Seth's been cheating is not going to go

to Seth or his wife and say a damn thing. They're going to come right to me and be like, are you going to let Seth's wife judge him? You know, he skips his wall ball reps. He's not going to put his thing as our Rex. Are you going to approve that time? And you're like, holy shit, I could, I'm just trying to make sure my churn stays low. I don't give a fuck about this. Right? Like I got 30 other problems. There's water coming out of the toilet right now and I'm worried about Seth's wall ball count because his judge is biased.

So it does usher in this whole entire other set of things that you have to kind of deal with. Yep, it does. And you're right. And then with that, it creates a little friction and tension in the gym, right? Cause so-and-so is talking about another member now and they didn't need that. Didn't, didn't make a difference when they were cheating in class, but now

they're kind of skimming reps in the competition. So now we're judging them a little bit as a person. And now, yeah, that's true. That brings a whole nother dynamic being a gym owner, man. Oh my goodness. We don't have to go down that road today, but oh my goodness. Yeah, there is a, uh, that that's a whole whole can of worms. So But yeah, that's just some of the stuff that you have to deal with

so for me over the years like going into it for you know, this coming open will be like our 12th one doing it or 11th one or whatever and like you just kind of you start to question like has the juice worth the squeeze and earlier I started this whole entire podcast with like allocation of money. And I think that we all are making those decisions in terms of like where we and how we allocate our time. And bye, Sarah. Bye. Bye.

See you later. I just love when people say like goodbye on it. And so like if I'm if I'm the gym owner and I have all these tasks that are constantly nagging at me, it's like how much time, effort and resources do I want to dedicate to promoting the open, putting on the open, dealing with everything that comes with the open, the extra stress, the added work and everything else, as opposed to maybe I just want to make five more pieces of really great content and put a couple of dollars behind that and gain 10 members. You could do both.

You could, if you have a good team, you could do both. Yeah. Unfortunately, most gym owners are so low team. And the way that I put it too, is I told Savon, I go, you know, what's interesting that this comes from the hub. And he goes, why? And I said, because if, if sport is the top of the pyramid in our crossfit. Program fidelity.

Um, if sport is the top of the pyramid, then the one major crucial event that CrossFit HQ puts out is only focused on the top of the pyramid. When we do our nutrition challenge, we end up making 10,000s of dollars off that event. It strengthens our community. It brings new people into the gym and we're focusing at the bottom of the pyramid with their nutrition. Yeah, you return a whole hell of a lot more for your community by focusing on that than

the sport. But the sport is I think we've gone back and forth on this a number of times. I mean, Greg used to use it as his marketing. That was his marketing budget, right? So he decided at one point before he started making big cuts that the showcase of what his program, not methodology, right?

Program does the showcase of that was worth being the biggest allocation of his budget for marketing for the year. Why he decided that and then why he changed his mind? I don't know. You'd have to ask Greg that. But at a certain point, he thought it was that valuable that people looked up to this and said, Wow, isn't that amazing? I want to try that sort of thing. But then you look back at like, the gym I'm at now in the North Shore of Hawaii, there is such little fitness experience in general.

So most of my athletes coming in are like moms after their third kid, like, okay, I got to get my life back together sort of thing. Like that's what we're working with. And they don't know who Rich Froning is. They don't know who Dave Castro is. And so me trying to get them excited about the open doesn't make any sense. Me trying to get them to come every Saturday morning to the community class and meet new people and throw down makes a lot of sense. Right. And so and I have another gym that's 50 minutes away. If I didn't host the open there, they'd burn it down. They can't wait to throw down and try to make quarters. Yeah. So they're an hour drive away and they're two completely different

populations and demographics. So I think, you know, whatever works in your gym should be the direction you probably lean the most. Totally. Yeah. I think, you know, whatever works in your gym should be the direction you probably lean the most. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I completely agree. Like for some people I know over at CrossFit Diablo with like Craig Howard, like they do, they divide people up into teams and they do this for the open and like, really like the really they go all out for it. And he has a really great system of making it great for his members but also beneficial for him and the community and the affiliates.

So there are different ways to do it. Don't take my poopy pants attitude about it as like the only end all be all. What did Denise after 40? Denise wrote every comment as one word. So that's okay. I'm used to this. This is how Sevan texts is. So I get it.

We used it to what Susa is saying. Nearly everyone signs up. Pass the open. I want to one members sign up. I like it. Um, we used it to what Susan's saying. Uh, nearly everyone signs up, pass the opening, one on one members sign up. I like it. It's like an annual in-house competition. I honestly think like, if you have the capacity to do it and you kind of already are with, uh, putting on the logistics of the open over the weeks, like you're better off funneling all that, um, time and everything and all that energy into actually probably just doing one in-house competition. And like you said, Seth, like you've done them and it have made money off of it.

So like you could foster the sport for that way. Now the programming is under control. So you could shift that to be more appropriate for your audience and the judging. You just have your set of judges and they go to their lane. So you can like, you could just be like, Hey, it's not gonna be Seth's wife on the wall balls because he got lame three and it's it's that guy, you know, and so you could eliminate some of that stuff. Some of that stuff with those.

To be fair, my wife would know rep me more than anyone else in the world intentionally over and over again. It was just he was just using as an example, people. My wife is wants to see me suffer. Yeah. And somebody else started commenting that they're like, I knew Seth Cheats is wobble. There's no way. Yeah, right. Dang it. You got me. Oh, my gosh.

Any any other points on the team stuff? They should do something instead of nothing. I think that's the last thing that is in my head is just letting it fizzle out to obscurity is probably not a good plan, and it doesn't sound like they have any plans to do anything. Whereas I guess maybe they had said something about, one of the athlete interviews maybe making it different time of year or something. I think one of the Panchenk brothers had said something to Dave about it. But I don't

know. But the way it's been going, it seems to me, is it's losing steam fast year over year. And so it'll be interesting to see if they announce any plans or shifts. And if those plans and shifts bring more life and excitement back into it will be interesting too. But yeah, it will be. In the way that I think about it, just final thought on this, is like um, obviously you guys know, I look through a lot of things as like a kind of this like business lens that I'm stuck in. I live through, but I would look at it as like, at some point the games had like four products, right? They have the individual, they have the team, they have the masters, they have the adaptive. And whenever you're making this decision as a

business, you would just look at all of those and say, which one's our breadwinner? Which one brings in the most money? Okay, can we eliminate the other ones? We can eliminate those other three products and put 100% of our attention and resources into one and make that really, really, really freaking good. And typically, and then once that one is settled and you have your flagship product, then you could start to do, as they say, other verticals. But until then, like you want to be able to actually like have that nut and make it like

really, really great. And so I don't, that's what I would suggest just looking at it, like all emotions out of it and everything else, like not to take away opportunities for athletes. But it's one of those situations where like clearly it's just not working. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. And I don't know if you've taken away that many opportunities. I don't think it's like that. I don't think it's just as notable or popular as people may think that it is.

Yeah, I think you get a bunch of these people that did the same thing with like the Masters in the in that adaptive where they all come out in waves and be like, they need more. We need more support. We more support we need to do this and they're like great here's their own thing go now buy a ticket and all those people that like stood up and said we need this we're just basically like oh well we're not actually gonna go and buy it or watch the event but you know we just wanted to make sure that they had their setup and it's like well guys come on it'll be pretty telling what happens this year with the teens, the masters and adaptive, right? Like who shows up, who participates, who,

like even I'm very curious out of the athletes, a lot of athletes got invited this year, whereas the field was much thinner in years past. Who's gonna actually pay to show up and compete? Nevermind who's gonna pay to show up and watch or stream or buy the shirts or whatever. It'll be very telling if there's any value in anything outside of the elite individuals.

Yeah. Yeah. Great point. Are you going to the games? I wish I have a personal commitment that I have to make. So not this year. I wanted to. I think I'm missing the first games in like 10 years.

I've been to like 10 of them or something. But no shit. Oh, yeah. Since the first Home Depot Center games I've been pretty much every single year I just missed COVID year. That's cool. Yeah we obviously missed COVID year and then the first couple years in Madison. But we went, Grace and I've gone every year since like 2013 I think was the first year we went. Oh man I'm bummed I thought for sure that you'd be going. We I was planning on it but yeah this year has

been not in a bad way all good things But just personally challenging a lot of a lot of things going on in good ways just busier than I'd like to be that's all Yeah, I get that I get that well awesome, man. I appreciate you coming on and doing this I don't think this will be the end of our Discussions on here because we could go multiple different ways and probably talk from multiple different hours, but any time any yeah I appreciate it. And if you get any cool ideas and want to rock them, just put them by me always. And we'll, uh, we'll get on here and discuss. Okay. We'll do. Thanks, Chase. All right, everybody. Mr. Seth Page. Thank you very much. You get applause

on my show. You like that later, dude. Appreciate it. All Alrighty, gang. That was a cool conversation. Um, I, you know, obviously we have a couple different ideas and opinions about it, but I think at the end of the day, we're all kind of in agreement that like, you know, that sometimes these things aren't as popular to keep around. Thanks. Thanks for sending it chase that the material of the the pukey one that gray shirt where it's like puke ease and it's like It's like an advertising of our something. I love the way that shirt fits You guys should definitely get that Bernie Seth is an excellent guest if he could just clean up his wall policy be untouchable Use it as like a random example. I'm sure his wall balls are fine. Um, Heidi come make sure you have that net Yeah, you know what I mean? James, for most competitors, the open became obsolete with the introduction of quarters.

Yeah. That's I mean, that's exactly what I was talking about. Like they accidentally pulled the importance away from it. Like it's not it's kind of fizzling for the affiliates. There's not much there in terms of like excitement or a reason why I would do that. As there was in the past, it's no longer that important for the athletes. They're just checking a box to get the quarters to actually start their competition so they can make it to semis for some of them.

Quarters isn't even that big of a deal. It's just a formality as well. So I think there probably need to look at the overall structure and its ability to still have value for the affiliates and still have that connection. I personally, I don't think it does. And I think it would all be better off if you severed the games off and just said sport is it is own entity, refined it just the individuals got sponsors that maybe CrossFit HQ or like CrossFit shouldn't necessarily go after because they're supposed to be tied

to the health and fitness. But once you release it as a sport, whatever, and then could get some more money into it to make it to make it start to grow a little bit. Just my two cents. Anyways, thanks for hanging out guys. I appreciate it. No double show like last Tuesday. Last Tuesday was crazy. I like screwed up my own scheduling on there. YouTube user, which athlete retires and then goes to dance, can't enhance games, 100K salary to commit and sign up to compete if chosen. Any of them. That's what I would do. Laila, we get around the judging thing by paying our coaches to judge at FNL. No members judge.

That's a great idea. But then you have to then you're like losing money for that just to pay. But I guess you're essentially what you're saying is you're like paying to not have the headache and deal with that. Do you read love the read act? And see the things I get animated sometimes. Pukey's Athletic Club T is probably my favorite material. And we fit. We've made it so far.

Exactly. Yeah, that it is a great. I love that. I love that T-shirt. Jay's still sitting at the side of the pole from Saturday. That's funny. That's funny. That's funny. Uh, Fondle CEO, CEO is considering all options for the games. Thank you, sir. I'm sure you and the team are looking into it, exploring all the possible options.

And we'll see what happens. Uh, Craig T day. I've never thought of the games as the top of the pyramid. What an amazing insight. Thanks. Yeah, that's the way that I see it. It's like they're pushing a sport. You know what else I was thinking too is if you had programming at your gym that like truly followed CrossFit programming in the way that it's intended to be,

like your warmups should probably include like kicking around a soccer ball, shooting a basketball around for some free throw practicing, throwing a football around, um, different things like that. Because if you actually like, if you read through the actual stuff for the programming, a lot of it is like not only constantly varied movements and modalities, but also like trains, like weather, in there's in there regularly learn and play new sports. So I'm always curious about like, you know, if you really a draw adopted, cause like what, like as the games became more of a marketing tool, also more

people became more about like sport. And so like the programming even almost shifted to making more like a complete CrossFit games athlete, which in my opinion, and this would be a great discussion maybe with like Jr and like Seth would just, I'll just bring out all the star power, but like programming for like, like general prepared fitness for the general population, um, that could be fit and be competent in any physical tasks that's put in front of them is like a different set of programming similar to, but a different set of programming than if you were to say like, Hey, I want to be able to be competitive at a quarters or semi final level.

Those two programs are, are different. And, um, and I treat them differently. Like when I put the programming in front of my fire departments in my academies, versus if you came to me and said, I wanted to be successful in the open, like it would be, it would look a little similar to people who weren't really like in the know, but they would also be two different programs. So kind of doing that at a CFL, you know what else we've done now? I'm just rambling, but whatever you guys go to this project, what, you know what else

we've done? That's just been kind of cool. It was like every time I go to the L two, which according to the records was never, I'm just kidding. Um, I'll play my own. Yeah. Like that. Uh, but when I go to the L two and like we had a couple of coaches that just got back from getting their L twos as well. And they're like, man,

like what do you think about doing like trying and testing out just like a heavy day? You know, when you come in and it's just like five by five back squat, that's the only thing that you guys are doing for the day. And I was like, man, we've tried that in the past and it's so tough because like people come in and like, they want to sweat, like they want to get to the point of the workout where like, damn, this kind of sucks. And like, this is hard and like, I'm sweaty.

Like that's what they're kind of showing up for. And if you just do strain training, um, people who are seasoned and, and really confident and have doing straight training for a while, it could take themselves there with a really heavy set of five by five backs. Why don't get me wrong, but for the majority of the members, especially like the newer ones, like typically, um, they're not going to feel like they got the most out of like their workout. Right.

And, uh, I'm not saying that I agree with them in that statement. I'm just saying that's just the reality of it is. And, and so what we did is a couple of weeks back, one of my coaches, um, threw this idea out and we, we flipped it around and we actually did the metcon like metcon before we did the workout and I'll show you guys real quick and so what I did is like we put together this workout and it's like a low key partner metcon that's mostly based off of, um, boom, boom, boom. That's, that's like mostly based off of, uh, just like getting people warmed up. So it's like an extended warmup, right? So we did 10 minutes, one partner did this like suicide sprint when they came

back and finished one partner road, 10 calories. And then the partner who did the shuttle sprint did the kettlebell swings and then they just keep alternating movements and just keep going around and around for 10 minutes. So you start relatively slow and then you kind of build into that pace over time. So that just takes 10 minutes. We get them moving a little bit before the class. We do a little bit of mobility, some dynamic stretching, and then essentially we kind of prime the kettlebell swing and jump right into this.

Now once that 10 minutes is done, everybody's gotten nice and sweaty. They've worked out. Some of the people that really wanted to go hard and feel like, oh, this sucks. They get to feel that. They take themselves there. They finish the workout. We don't want to cool down walk. When they come in from that cool down walk, we'll do more specific mobility or priming

the position. So in today's example, we had a deadlift. So we came back in real quick, opened up the posterior chain, did a couple things like fire up the hips, grab that empty barbell, gone through a little drill, some points of performance with it, got a little weight on the bar, did a few empty, what I call like empty sets or just primer sets. And then we started a timer. We did every two minutes for eight sets, three deadlifts as they build it up, built up to their max. And so we flipped it in by having that warm up, get sweaty, it kind of checked the box in terms of like all those things I mentioned before, but, um, we still got to really drill down in focus on the strength portion of it.

It's because you have to teach people how to weight lift, right? Yep. Yep. So you people how to weight lift. Right. Yep. Yep. So you still get to accomplish that. You still get to make the main thing the main thing. But you know, you kind of trick them. You slide a little, well, fast one in there, you get them all sweaty and stuff before. And really, you've just given them like a super awesome warm up.

It's not necessarily a conditioning piece. And typically we'll do movements that will reflect a little bit of the movement, the motor pattern of the lift that they're going to do. So like the rowing set up similar to a deadlift, the kettlebell swing set up similar, the shuttle run is just in there to get the heart rate up. And so we'll do different things like that. Like we have front squat coming up, it's bike and then they do goblet squats on a slam board, a slow tempo goblet squats, and they just keep alternating rounds as partners.

And again, we'll do that for like 10 minutes, eight minutes, 11 minutes, whatever the case may be. And then we cool down and get into that. Um, there's a huge mental aspect that people don't talk about focusing and intensity. And most people just goof around during the weightlifting and across weight classes do totally right. And so that's what I mean by that. Like you'll like when you go and you try to dedicate the full hour, just to

that five by five back squat, you might get some people that are like super into that and we'll get feedback after every set, we'll take that ample rest. We're really challenged themselves. But the truth of the matter is, is like a large percent of your population is going to come in there. They're not really going to push themselves that heavy on a back squat. Um, and then they kind of, you know, lose a little focus as you really try to drill down on like some points of performance and have them move with intentionality. And typically like if they don't even want to go that heavy,

we'll turn it into some sort of tempo for them. So like a three countdown, three count pause at the bottom and then back up or something like that to where you could still have more time under tension and build that strength without just having to increase load on the barbell to do so. Um, anyhow, Chad, if people might find that they actually enjoy lifting, if they're taught how to do so and do it consistently. Yeah. Agreed.

Agreed. So you're saying this for when you have only a lift programmed. That's right. And then typically if we do like a strength component before, it's more or less like a technique and then just really increasing the groove, getting more efficient with the barbell, whatever the lift or the movement might be, and then taking some time to slowly build up to the weight that they're going to use in the class. Um, and then we give them a lot of feedback and instruction on it. So it's not a dedicate, like, you know, you might have power cleans before

the Metcom that has power cleans in it, but truly there wouldn't be like enough time in there for you to like build up to a really heavy power clean. We would save that on the day where we would do the opposite little warm up, long gated warmup before before and then the lift afterwards. So anyhow, I don't really remember why I got on that ramp, but figured I'd just share that with you guys anyways. Okay. I'm sure there's another show somewhere who's on Pedro.

Is he on? I'm going to look it up real quick. Tomorrow. We got great glassman coming on the show. Is John still alive? Yeah. John John still live. Yeah, John still live. He's talking about how he's going to be on a white Peter. So you guys go check out John on the wide prep. He's over there with Travis in the movement doctor.

So he can say what's up. I gain audio. I'll see you later. Peace out, bye bye.