The Sevan Podcast - CrossFit’s Forgotten Past | Souza’s Show

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

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Having someone to talk to is truly a gift, especially during the holidays. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. Hello, Adam. What's up? How are you? Hi, buddy. Welcome to the show. Today we're going to

talk a little bit about CrossFit's forgotten past. We're going to look at the workouts that were posted years, years, years ago in 2002. We're also going to check out some clips that I took from some really old L1 seminars. and we're going to talk about the different changes over the years and why and where they occurred and how it got to us or how we got to this place today. But first, of course, we have to start with some drama, some enticing clickbait. Why would we not? Good afternoon, Megan. Judy, it's on X. Cool, that's good. Yep, Anthony and his band were live.

Okay, have you guys seen this yet? Oh, the saga continues. The drama continues. Okay, so the caption reads for those of you guys that are listening, Sevon's opinion on my motivation criticizing Chase Ingram's recent controversial video. So here's, uh, so what he's doing there, he is.

Okay. So that's just the caption from the clip. But the other one was, uh, what the headline read there. What's up? That might be how you doing, man. Justin, what's up? Good to have you guys here. Okay. So here we go. What's up? Play this clip.

Have you guys seen this yet? What he's doing there is he's forcing the hand of HQ to try to slap Chase. And this is where I get confused. I didn't create, produce, or even share this video. It never went on my page. It never went in my story. I didn't comment on the post itself.

I simply put in a Q and A. I had no input into the content and I honestly wasn't aware of his existence until multiple people started asking me questions about it. There's no expectation of privacy on the internet. So this is where common sense and personal responsibility come into play. We're all accountable for our actions and every single time you post an opinion, every single time you post a reel, every single time you post a real, every single time you post a meme, it's open to public scrutiny.

Now Savan and the Savan podcast to which Chase is a contributor from time to time has spent countless hours, countless hours dissecting and discussing actions of CrossFit headquarters employees like Don, Dave. That's true. I've never done that before ever. Jay DeKoon, Annette Revis, and so on and so forth. Not to mention highly critical of media personalities like Sean Woodland, Tommy Marquez, Lauren Khalil, Craig Richie, and as seen here myself included, here's all I would say. Saman, if you're upset that I took Chase's words and put them under a spotlight for criticism, just know that the door I walked through to do that

was the same door you knocked down with the sledgehammer. Okay. So that was a, uh, John will lose response here to, um, Sevan talking about the Q and a, there was a Q and a on Willy's Instagram. And somebody had asked what he thought about Chase's Instagram real, which I would have assumed until Colt powers here said he has no idea what's going on. Um, without playing the clip for those of you guys that already know what's happening is a chase basically came on there and said, look, if you're actively

trying to recruit people to leave CrossFit, to leave the open, to not try to pay their affiliate fees and essentially dismantle and destroy the thing we all love, then you should not be in the CrossFit community and essentially said, get out. Now, a lot of people assumed that he was referring to Luca and what was going on, but I think Chase wasn't referring directly to Luca after having a conversation with them and watching the whole entire show in its context. I think he was just referring to all the athletes that are trying to kind of

recruit here to boycott CrossFit because they're dissatisfied with the changes. Um, Cole powers. I agree with him. Who's him. That's like, yes, you asked two questions. Is it Matt Shindeldecker? What's up, dude? How are you doing, man?

Hey, we need to, uh, get you, you guys, you and Debbie scheduled for the show. Again, I talked to Savon, um, last weekend, uh, we just got do a catch-up show because you guys got a lot of awesome stuff going on all the time um what's up by the checkout that uh dys video i sent you in sebi okay we will check that out um probably bring it up and play it on the show here um so let's go ahead and real quickly dissect the wooly post it's hard to read in this. So I'm going to bring up a different screen here. Not that one, not that one. Sorry, get my show notes going here. OK.

One second. The. Wait, no, I want to keep this page. And we'll go here. It's important to note the nuances in which what was written about chase and what was said in conclusion, because like, I think we'll he's missing the argument a little bit here, missing seven's argument. Also, by the way, guys, a bad owner, he's going on coffee, bots and pods in like 50 minutes from now. That should be a Really exciting show here. I

Wonder what he's gonna ask him You know, I thought I had these YouTube windows pulled up here and I definitely do not Okay, and we'll have the the full thing up on here because I would hate to be Told I was missing context as we dissect this. Okay, here we go. Sorry about that. All right up in action As I suggested all my shows, hopefully you guys are watching this behind and doing it at 1.5 view. Natalie, I love Chase's pod yesterday. That's good. Okay, so here's what comes up in John Wooley's Instagram on the Q&A.

Any thoughts on Chase's Instagram IG reel posted yesterday if you don't like CrossFit, you could leave. Now the issue comes from well on the surface, I think it's fair to say that if something makes you unhappy then you should go find something that makes you happy. Okay, no one's gonna to say that if something makes you unhappy, then you should go find something that makes you happy. Okay, no one's going to disagree with that point. I do think it's a wild message for HQ, CrossFit HQ, to be sending, considering issues they are facing and dealing with.

Okay, so that's kind of what Tevan's talking about in terms of the framing, right? Because he side skirts the whole thing. He doesn't mention Chase's name. He just says, I do think it's wild message for CrossFit HQ to be sending considering the issues they're facing. Well, the issue here is that CrossFit HQ isn't sending that message. That wasn't their message.

That was Chase's message. And a lot of times, hardly last, yes, I will talk to you about the Jeff thing. A lot of times Chase says on the show,, these are my opinions, my opinions alone. They don't reflect CrossFit. They don't reflect CrossFit HQ. In fact, I know that it's always a tough line that Chase has to walk in terms of staying true to what he believes and what he knows is right, and also making sure that he's a good team player for the company as well. It's a fine line to balance.

And Tyler Watkins and I talked a little bit about it in the show we did last time as to why he would actually be a good person to be elevated in CrossFit HQ because his ability to kind of walk that line. So wasn't CrossFit HQ's message? So that was the issue. So if I'm reading this as Don, and I'm head of CrossFit HQ, I'm already saying shit. Okay, so now this is being Chase's words are being conflated with CrossFit HQ's overall message about the issue. Now we'll go on to the last portion here. Make no mistake, it's CrossFit HQ's message.

That's the part that Sevan's talking about. I can't imagine a well-run organization would allow a very public-facing employee wearing their logo, sharing opinions about the company they didn't approve or support. Okay, so that's what the whole entire thing is about here. It's about the framing of this. So it's not necessarily that what John Woolley was saying in his response to that Instagram clip that I played at the beginning is wrong. It's just that he didn't actually address the argument that seven was making, um, he side-scratched it and basically just said, Hey, all things that are on the internet are open to public scrutiny and public criticism.

And you guys do that all the time. I was simply doing that back to you. Okay. True. I don't think anybody's arguing that point. The point that Sevan was making here was when you force HQ's hands. What that means is when you say it's a wild message for HQ CrossFit HQ to be sending, now they have to come out and either say, no, we didn't say that. No, we don't agree

with it. Or they say nothing at all, which could to some people imply that they do agree with Chase's statements. So now it's tough. You kind of push them a little bit, right? Then it said at the end, make no mistake. It's CrossFit HQ's message. Okay, so that's you just like cranked it one step harder a little bit there by now really forcing CrossFit HQ's hand here saying that like, hey, not only did I claim what was said was a message from HQ, just ignoring that Chase had said it, but now I'm doubling down on that and saying, make no mistake, this is 100% HQ's message. And then goes on to say, I can't imagine a well run organization would allow a very public facing employee wearing their logo to share an opinion about the company that they didn't approve or support. So that's tough there because typically, you guys see it all the time. If you're sponsored by a company, if you work for a company, if you do something like that, there's a lot of typically media training

or a lot of stuff you can and cannot say if you're a public figure, so to speak. If you have a podcast, you have a media outlet. Because typically, stuff like this happens. Opinions expressed by Chase start to get pushed on to the opinions of CrossFit hq and I don't think anybody Pushed on that particular thing as hard as john wooly did here when he responded in this manner so if you read this as ceo of crossfit hq you really feel like Maybe I should have to do something with this. It's kind of being pushed back on me Are people going to conflate this with you know, the same messages that we have when they may or may not agree with what chase was speaking about

And this happens all the freaking time It's one of those Logical fallacies type issues where you start to have a conversation and you're like, hey We need to dress a and B and then they just throw in there out of nowhere like oh, yeah. Well, what about C? You can look okay. Well, we could have a conversation about that, but right now we're discussing A and B and then that's it. It's off the rails. You're no longer even having the same conversation. Um, and the same argument.

It's just two different, two different people now missing, missing the point most of the time on purpose, um, which is going to bring us to the history lesson here. Check this thing out. This is an old video. This was originally published in 2007. Okay, now we're going to go over a couple interesting things here. Number one, I'm going to show you these older videos and we're going to talk about the what and the why. Why were these made? Why is this important? And why is this lost now? And maybe it's important now too. And then we're gonna look at Google Trends. Are you guys familiar with Google Trends?

It basically shows you the interest over the years of topics that were searched for. So we'll kind of break down that data piece, but there's some interesting things there as well. But look at this. This was published in 2007. We're gonna ditch the shitty music, but you gotta also you gotta love that music choice. So this is Nicole Carroll here barefoot

looks like she's rocking some yoga pants going for bodyweight over overhead squats June 19 2007 you guys see it right there. Hey, at this time, 2007, think about how many people you start doing overhead squats, pretty much fucking zero, zero people doing overhead squats. The second thing you could see here is her depth. Now she's coming up a little bit from the squat. So I'll use squat critics out there. Um, just know that she was well below parallel. I just pause it at a shitty time.

out there. Just know that she was well below parallel. I just pause it at a shitty time. That standard was also not something that was used like that commonly found in the fitness industry. How often did you see people overhead squatting? Zero in 2007. How often did you see them going below parallel? Pretty much never. It was mostly Smith machines and it was mostly isometric movements. So this is a big, big fucking deal. And the reason why it's a big deal is because she's also doing body weight. So most people would say, hey, if you could back squat body weight or deadlift body weight again, 2007 standards, just as a typical gym goer, it would, you

would be considered really strong and fit. And here we have Nicole. If you were to just look at her, um, in terms of like seeing her on the street, you would never think, wow, she's super strong. She's really that fit. And so this was something that was novel at the time. So posting this type of media was like a, what the fuck? Like who is this freak of nature? Anyway, she goes on to do like 15 more reps here and then, um, makes multiple attempts at it. So different. These are all at like different

times. So you're just warring with the barbell here. Interesting difference right now. She's got the weightlifting shoes on, which by the way, those are like the do-ins, like the wooden platform ones, the only ones you could find way back in the day. And then you see her here making another attempt at it. But again, if you just notice the apparel, if you just notice like all that stuff about it, there wasn't this whole like ecosystem that was built up around it about this time. Okay, cool.

So what's your point? We'll get to the point. The reason why stuff like that was important and the reason like this one we're gonna see here. Now this, I thought there was more information on who Mike was and maybe it's not like the very end, but I want to say this guy was like either like a, an MMA fighter or like some sort of special operator or something like that.

But, um, okay, so this is a level one. Uh, you could see Greg is teaching the level one again. This was originally published like 2007 timeframe and what we have here is teaching the level one. Again, this was originally published like 2007 timeframe. And what we have here is 95 pounds overhead squat. I think Nicole's body weight and that last one was like a buck 25 or something like that, that she was overhead squatting. Now we have a 95 pound barbell. You got Nicole Carol buck 25 soaking wet and you got this grown ass man. And Greg essentially is what he's doing here is something that was done a lot at the old L ones, the original L ones, which is like, yeah, my methodology,

my way of training, my strength and conditioning protocol and program is better than yours. And you get a big strong dude like this Mike guy here and he's like, well, prove it. You get Nicole over here and you go, OK, here, let's prove it. And we see here them starting it out. So like call three to one, go. You know, he just kind of like is watching her. I'm guessing there wasn't too much instruction ahead of time. Greg's kind of given him some instruction.

I would play it, but it's just music over this anyways. Is there sound? I don't think there's sound, dude. I think it's just yeah. Sorry, Barry. We're not listening to the old school grunge there. All right. So now you could see him going back and forth here and it almost looks like they're at like some sort of training facility. they're at like some sort of training facility that looks like a tower behind him could be a tower fire department SWAT team, something like that. But they're just going back and forth and maybe Mike was a SWAT guy. Did Seve fill this film this possibly. Okay. But why is this important? Well, this is the first seeds of competition that we're seeing. It's it's proving that CrossFit is the ultimate straight and conditioning program. And we're taking Nicole Carol here who in no way looks threatening physically. It's not like she looks like the most athletic person in the world.

But then you take it next to this guy who looks tall, probably, you know, between five, nine and six, one, very much would be physically demanding and stronger than Nicole. But Nicole ends up beating him in this overhead squat deal. I think she does. Anyways, they're just warring with it back and forth and you can start to see he's his positioning breaks down. Nicole's reps look amazing. Also to there's a standard hip crease below parallel, which Mike is struggling to find. Also check the shoes out on both of them, Right. And Nicole just calmly just. Destroying this dude and they're just going rep for rep.

Oh, and he just has to fight it. I think at some point here. Let's see. Yeah, right there. He loses it. OK, used to do that also with the ring muscle ups and, uh, and everything else. It's, um, it was basically the way to show like, Hey, the way that we train here and stuff, you can go get your toughest SWAT team member, MMA fighter, uh, you know, special operator and I'll go grab Nicole Carroll and we'll have you just

overhead squat and see who wins. And ultimately when this guy got crushed by her in that workout, it was like, okay, great. You got our attention. Tell us what you're doing to train her. And the other, uh, the other portion is that for the first time you have a standard in workouts. Now, this was something that was new and it was something that was novel as well as well too because before it was just like you didn't really think about it in those terms like maybe like you know, hey make sure the rep kind of counts but now we have like boundaries of the sport. You got to squat low parallel. You got to stand all the way

up and in this case it was just the amount of work that could be done, which is just how many squats can you do in a row. But over time, this turned into the stopwatch. And what we see here, and I thought you guys might find this interesting, probably more or less for a programming show. But this was programming back in 2002. Now, if you look at this, there's not a lot of prescription in terms of weights. A lot of the prescription in the early days was just body weight or percentages of body

weight. Okay, if you look, there's not a lot of prescribed weights, not even on the thrusters. There is some prescriptions here on like box hype, 20 inches and things like that. And as the programming goes, by the way too, if you guys haven't gone back and looked at some of these old workouts and stuff like that, you definitely should on. Should have brought Seth Page on for the throwback videos. Absolutely right, Chris. I was actually, I just don't, I don't, unfortunately, I don't have a ton of time to prep for these. So I

kind of think about, okay, like, what do I want to talk about? What's intriguing? What's like on the, you know, what's on the up, like the bully stuff? And then, um, just try to backfill. But you're right. Had I put a little more thought into doing like this type of show, Seth would have been exactly the guy to have on. But anyways, if you look at it, there's a lot of redundancy in the programming to like bench press reps of 10 hang clean reps of 10, um, Tabata squats, and all these are followed by like thousand meter row at the 1000 meter row. If you look at the volume to the volume is a lot lower and there was a lot of, uh, strength training in the early days before some sort of met con.

And so you could kind of see over the years, if you jump ahead another two years to 2004, we're going to stay in the same month of August. Now we start to see some prescribed weights in options, 55 pound dumbbell swing, right? Like how popular were kettlebells in the US back in 2006, like, or four in this case, not very popular. But we're starting to see more universal stuff. We have now weights on a hang clean, weights more here, 45 pound barbells. This is also around the time that we stopped seeing

strain training before Metcons. So you're starting to see this programming evolve. We still have some body weight stuff. Body weight stuff never goes away, but the prescription takes a little bit to start to come in. Now if we advance ahead, another two more years to 2006, it starts to look more and more like CrossFit as we know it today. 20 pound ball, the first time there's weights put to the wall balls, 24 inch box, you're starting to see a delineation between male and female come up pretty soon here. But right now too, it's all just male prescriptive weights. Still in 2006.

For those of you guys that know, it's about 80% or 78% from male to female. Okay, so we got some more prescriptions coming in, some changes of the box heights, not exactly male or female yet. Go ahead, two more years. 2008, second year of the games. Weights are coming up a little bit.

One 35 starts to become a benchmark standard. 1.5 put on the kettlebell. Still don't have women's standards yet. Right. But now we're also starting to see the benchmarks come in. The benchmark names were there from early in the years too, but more or less now in the later years, you start to really see them solidify the Angie's, the France, Nicole, Diane, Helen's.

Okay. Then we make the big leap to 2008. I mean, excuse me, 2010. Now in 2010, we start to see the highlighting two of our games athletes times weights and these were people that were frequently in the comments as well. 75 pounds, 75 pounds, we still don't see very many women's weights come in yet. Even as we go through this. Okay but it's looking more and more hero odds are coming into play now.

And it's looking more and more starting to shape up as CrossFit as we see it jump ahead to 2012 another two years. Okay. Again here. Not a ton of the women's weights are in. Tony budding still around. I know that was Tony Bauer. I think by 2012 Tony Budding was actually gone. 135 pound thrusters. Still Boom. So as you guys can see here, we fucking hear what kind of, we're just kind of scrolling through old.com workouts and watching the evolution of what happens here. So anyhow, I encourage you guys, if you haven it in a while, go back,

scroll through all the old workouts from the two thousands, watch the way the programming evolution, uh, evolved over time. And you could start to see like how it started and why, why is this important? Okay. So I just took you through the last couple of years on.com starting in 2002, jumping ahead two years into 2012. The reason why that's important is because we start to see this change of experimenting with the workouts, making it about body weight. If you look in the original articles too, it talks about like if you've done, uh, grace for 30 clean times for a 30 clean jerks for time and you've done it

at one 35 and your time got below that now go take your barbell and your, and your weights and do it in the dirt or do it on a slant. And it used to be about even changing terrains and different things like that. So you're always constantly varying your training. And if you remember their original, um, training hierarchy pyramid, you had nutrition at the bottom and then you had a metabolic conditioning, okay. Gymnastics, weightlifting, and then at very top you had learn and play sports regularly. And what ended up happening was the conditioning started to become less about priming you for

life and more about just making you better at CrossFit so you could compete at the sport of CrossFit. And so I wanted to show that because as CrossFit's popularity with the game started to go, it started to affect and change everything. And now, there's so many people that just think CrossFit is a sport that we've lost the experimental portion of the training. It always feels like it has to be somehow connected to the games. Otherwise it's quote unquote, like not, not the same or not real CrossFit or something like that.

Okay. So let's look at the Google trends. So as you could see in 2004 here, um, as Google trends started, you could start to see this upward trend of interest over time. Now it's very peak was right. And I think it's like January 1st or something the way that this data shows. Come on give me my thing. Show me the peak. There it is. 2013. Now this is just Google Trends. So this is just how many people search for it. There's a lot of arguments you could make that less people were searching through Google for CrossFit. More people were going to social media. all that can be true. But if you look at this trend over time, as it slowly started to creep up, creep up, creep

up, it made this massive explosion from 2010 to 2013. And the first adopters were all competitors. Now as it goes, you start to see it fall over time. Now, it would always peak around that game's time. You would always see the interest peak back up, but over time, it's trended all the way down. Now, if we look at August of 2024, so just this last game season, the value that they're giving it in terms of interest is 27. The last time we saw that low

was in February 2011. So you could see that as the sport, as it got its first adopters and crested and went over the top and then started to digress in terms of its popularity, so did the ecosystem across it because those last five years too as well, you saw it when it got sold off. And so now the struggle has begun

because how do you change the trajectory of it and go from, we were all about the sport, we got our big growth from marketing that and everything else, but we built this community of rebels. And then after that, where do you go? How do you continue it on? And so I think that's a little bit now what CrossFit is we're seeing them struggle with as well as the sport itself, as well as athletes, because you know what else follows this trend

line is the value of a CrossFit athlete. If you don't have any, like an ecosystem of people that are going to buy from you that care about what you're doing, it's going to be even tougher and tougher and tougher. And now why is this important? Well, if you go back, you can listen to a lot of the interviews maybe from like 2012 backward to the beginning of the games and a lot of the people that are training at

the highest level say the same things. It's not about the money. I'd be out here doing it regardless. It's just about showcasing my fitness and being out here with friends. And then as the prize purse in 2012 and all that started to get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger over time. My favorite part about true nutrition is the ability to customize my own supplement. I've been looking all over for specific greens supplement that have the kale

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questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you Please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario The interest in terms of just showing up for the fitness are to slow over time as well, too And you end up trying to change that whole entire, uh, model. True. Uh, Matt burns true. That was mind blowing back then it was.

Okay. So why is this important? Well, you have to move away from the old school method of, Hey, our training program is the best and nobody could beat us. And we have this whole entire competition that proves that every year that mattered back then. That doesn't matter. Now we've proved it.

It's done. It's over with like, you're not shocking anybody anymore by bringing Nicole Carroll out, having her do those overhead squats and beating like some MMA fighter or some special operator like CrossFit has changed the way that we view fitness so much that when you see that video of her doing 95 pound overhead squat 25 times, you're like, yeah, whatever. It's not a big deal. And so when you think about that in terms of the marketing strategy, you have to remember that in my opinion, the majority of the reason why this was so popular is because it was

so foreign. People had never seen stuff like that in fitness before. We were so intrigued by the movements, the snatch, the clean injury, the one legged squats, like, you know, the handstand pushups, the handstand walking. I mean, it was just so foreign. And now that we're in 2025 damn near. It's, it's not that shocking anymore. And so if you go back to like, well, we were the rebels, we were the ones that are pushing the boundaries of fitness. You have to take a different angle because if you just do it as like the competitors and we make everything about them and how cool it is because they have these incredible abilities and fitness, it's lost its edge. But clearly health has not lost its edge because if you look at the Cali means and

like the Hubermans and All those other type people that are basically saying the Rhonda Patrick's that are basically saying the same thing CrossFit has been saying this whole entire time Their popularity has been skyrocketing over these last five years And on the spin show on last Wednesday I was listening to it. They were talking a little bit about competition in its place. Tyler had some great things to say about it. We more by and large agreed.

Um, but John Young said something interesting and he was like, you wouldn't have all these people that are interested in CrossFit if it wasn't for the games. And then he anecdotally was like talking about himself and saying like, Hey, you know, I got into it because of this. A lot of other people do. We'd like to train. We like to compete. Chelsea Miller, I started CrossFit in 2009. Those videos were so freaking inspiring and awesome. They were because you just didn't see anything like that. And now we just now you see it all the time. You can just go on Instagram and type in CrossFit, go through the support page and you're gonna see tons of people doing stuff like that, or, the weave, the competitors to everyday health stories was phenomenal. Pushing human performance was there regardless.

The games was a paid measuring stick for a small piece. Yeah. The weave of competitors to everyday health stories was phenomenal. Yeah. And that's how you, that's how you take that interest that of the games, of the competitors, of the people that are doing these crazy things of fitness and you like move that attention and weave it into the the stories of people changing their lives and regaining their health and regaining their physical freedom and then you could really use that as a powerful marketing tool but you like if you were to say

like CrossFit is a movement that pushes the boundaries of health and that is, uh, continuing to look at something outside of the system that's offered today. Um, you know, nobody's really pushing that those stories anymore. And that was happening a lot earlier. Um, lost my train of thought there for a minute, but going back to the thing that John said was he goes, Hey, I wouldn't be here for like, if there wasn't a competition and he kind of hyped up the competition side in my rebuttal back to that as an affiliate owner is I have made way more money pitching CrossFit as health, not even using the name CrossFit, just in

spite of the CrossFit games. So what I mean by that is if I go to a corporation or if I go to a fire, a department or a police department or something like that, typically I have to start with the defense of CrossFit and that I'm not going to do the same things that they see on ESPN. And then I'm not going to train them for the CrossFit games. Each time I have one of those conversations, I have to first get over that hurdle for them to listen to the fact of like, no, we're going to have a strength and conditioning program and this protocol that's going to make you guys healthier. It's going to make you guys safer.

It's going to make you guys fitter. It's going to do all of that. But we first have to get over the talk of I'm not preparing them for the CrossFit Games because it went so far in that direction that all that was lost. And so why do I say that? Well, what money is there to be made as an affiliate owner, as a coach that is trying to do this as a professional career? Like and here's what I mean by a professional career.

You want to make enough money so you could live out on your own, have a little bit of disposable income, put some savings away, like a freaking job that you could actually do full time and get paid real money for that you can live off of. And so when you think about it in terms of that, it's complete waste of time. Like, so, okay, put it this way. I'm an affiliate owner and I have two options. I could go pound payment in terms of going into bigger corporations, uh, departments.

I could try to pitch what I'm doing with my everyday person inside the gym and explain to them that this protocol is going to help their employees is going to help our first responders, whatever the case may be. So I could spend my time there or I could go grab some 20 somethings that have some really good talent or ability and athletic background and say, I'm going to train them to be the next CrossFit Games athlete. Now terms of this, which one's going to make you more money as the affiliate owner? Which one are you going to put more of your time in as a coach? Which one is going to give you a massive return on investment? As opposed to the other one.

Not a lot. Not a lot. Hey, I'm live on the air. Oh, okay. All right. I'll call you back here. Oh, okay. All right. I'll call you back here. But I see a new phone case. Y'all new phone.

Check me out. Don't get that orange one. I'll beat up no more. Um, I gotta wait till the end. Make sure you use it as a write off. Those 20 year olds can't pay membership or want it for free. Exactly mapper. And so the type of person in the demographic that you're going after as a person that is focused on the competition side of stuff, as an affiliate owner's coach, you're not going to make that

return. If you spend those efforts and focus on how can I bring what I do inside my gym to a fire department? How can I bring it to a police department? How could I bring it to a police department? How can I bring it to a school or a local soccer club or something like that is going to be way more advantageous for you as the individual to make more money in to support the ecosystem that is us as CrossFit

that it is going to be leaning into the competitive side. And so I commented on that show to John, I was like, Hey, let's compare numbers. How much money have you made chasing the CrossFit games versus how much money I made, um, selling the methodology to people. And then if you look at that on a micro level and you think about that at a macro as like CrossFit HQ, you're like, Hmm, are they the coach right now that is in pursuit of the 20 year old, some things that don't want to pay membership that are now telling everybody else, Hey, we found this other gym up the street, come here and do this with

me instead of staying at the CrossFit gym. Cause it feels a little bit like that. And so as CrossFit HQ, you got to ask yourself like, where's your return on investment? And to me, it's not appeasing the athletes and it's not leaning in more towards the, uh, the CrossFit games. Um, Jody, not Judy, Jody Lynn, new phone leads the new car. Beware. You don't know how right you actually are. I might be having to get a new car pretty soon here. New phone, new phone case, who dis? Whole new phone, actually.

You got a 16 fuckin' ballin' on you guys now. Check me out. Anyhow, just some, just some takes on the change in CrossFit, the trending over time. I thought that that was interesting. Another interesting thing is that that was interesting. Another interesting thing is that I was doing kind of a deep dive into the major players of the fitness industry. And the number one is New Honda Civic. Yeah. Yeah, I would definitely buy it. Probably

most likely. Right now I'm driving a little Chevy s-10 pickup truck really liking that hold strong to that Civic Matt yeah yeah balling out of control Cory don't you freaking know it don't you freaking know it oh man that's it. Short show today. Short show. I was cruising around. Okay. Here's what I got for you guys though. Hillbilly, Sevon Podcast Minivan. That'd be cool. We get one wrapped. Travel the country. What did I miss? Nah, nothing important. I was just just BS in my normal BS chase. We went looked at old school What we look at old school crossFit workouts, hey, what's up? Hi No, I have this text now thing in the last couple times I put up nobody called it

It was costing me three dollars a week. So I took it. I deleted it Yeah, exactly. Hey, I wish this actually would have been a great show to have you on because, um, I went through and I looked at like Google trends from the beginning, like 2004 till now, cause you could see like the, the, the, like bell curve of popularity. And then I went through the old workouts starting in 2002 and went all the way up to 2012. So you could see the different and changes of like programming and how it led more and more and more to like standardization, which helped kind of push the competition stuff forward.

Yeah. And that's it. There's no real point to it. I probably should add more of a poignant end to the show today, but that was it. You know, it's funny. I went to YouTube to see what YouTube would offer me. They don't even offer me my own show. I've never offered the Sevon podcast. Never. When it's live, nothing. I've never offered my own channel. Yeah, me either. And it's funny because I search it every single day and then I have to literally like find it on there and bring it up even though you're

alive. Yeah. I have to type it in. It's crazy. Yeah. There's something shadow ban. Are we shadow banned even on YouTube? Yeah, for sure.

We are. There's some weird shit going down. We were talking about that. I watched a wooly's, uh, rebuttal video. Yeah, me too. I talked about the beginning of the show. Every single argument he can play or has a pre-subposition, every single argument. I don't even know if like I can talk to him. Do you know what I mean? It's funny that you mentioned that because that's kind of what I said. I was like,

you're arguing on a, he's, he's arguing on a different sheet of paper than you are. Yeah, we're not even, he, he, he responded to what he wanted to hear and nothing, what I said, it's absolutely wild. It must be a trip having a relationship with them. I swear to God, it reminds me of a girl, a pre-menstrual girl reminds me of my high school day dating girls in their twenties. Hey, you know what? The week before you're like, man, it's hot outside and she's like, what, you don't like the way I dress. I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, I was going to say, you know what the week before you're like man, it's hot outside. She's like what you don't like the way I dress

I'm like what the fuck? Yeah, I was gonna say, you know It reminds me of like when I'm trying to go over like a movement or something at the at the gym and you get a Couple people that are just like talking off to the side and then I'll turn to him and I'll be like hey Sevan Can you give me a minute here? I just want to explain this and you could go back and then you turn quickly and you go, I was talking about the workout. And you're like, well, right. That's fine.

But that has nothing to do with the fact that you were talking over me while I was trying to explain something to the class. Here's what's amazing though. He even he did a great job. He even played the clips and then rebuttal to them. And so like the people in the audience can even see where he's missing, where he's like, Hey, dude, he didn't say that. Yeah.

And it's interesting because some of the people that are like, Hey, dude, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. And so like the people in the audience can even see where he's missing, where he's like, Hey dude, he didn't say that. Yeah. And it's interesting because some of the points that he does make, like you would, you would agree with you're like, yeah, for sure. But that has nothing to do with what we were talking about, right? Like, Oh, check this out. Colton Mertens, 499 to fund my new whip. Thank you. Oh, what a good dude. Yeah. Since it's given by Colton, it's actually worth a triple its value. Take a screenshot of that and send that on sell that on eBay. Hey dude, there's a there's a new, um, uh, Hunter Biden book out

and it was for sale yesterday. And then I went to Amazon today and I looked and it's not there anymore. No, shit. It's basically his entire laptop in book form. And then I saw the black and plain comedians that were lives and now conservative. They're big guys. I think they might have used to play professional football or something. Yeah. They I think they had a copy of the book, but it's a trip that that book went missing after just one day.

It did. It got pulled from the shelves or what? I don't know what's going on, but I talked to Greg about that Marco Polo guy and he said that he had a, when he started publishing like the diary and shit, the IRS, FDI, and CIA just turned his life inside out. Damn. Those agencies are going to be coming in hot. They buy it and part of the Trump.

Biden's. That would be hilarious. Wouldn't that be a gangster move? Yeah. Fuck you. I'm pardoning your boy, too. Ha ha ha. That's the ultimate power move. And this Bluetooth thing doesn't work.

I was going to hook up my phone to the road caster, set it up to hold it and the fucking the Bluetooth doesn't even work on it. Can you refuse the part? Probably just like now I want to stay in jail. Good. Oh my gosh, somebody Corey Leonard said, Colton um, uh, Colton has taken enough money from Kiel Taylor to actually buy Susan a new car. That's true.

That's true. What's that? Oh, I put your tennis bag in the trunk. Sorry. I'm talking to our driving the boys to Tennessee. Like our tennis bags. Hey, did you film? I got you.

I want to ask him, did you film? There is this old video that was published in like 2014, but originally published in 2007. And it's Nicole Carroll versus a guy named Mike. And it looks like they're at some sort of like a training facility. They're a fire tower, SWAT tower, something like that. And she's doing overhead squats at ninety five pounds. And so is Mike. And it's like a competition between the two of them. Did you film that, Benny James?

I did. Is it a black guy? No. I think the only time I ever filmed that was this really buff black dude, and it was indoors. OK. I think that that game was kind of coming to an end when I rolled around. I don't think I filmed that

one, which is weird because I was everywhere in 2007. It must have been Tony. I mean, there were only two filmers, me and Tony. Yeah, yeah. 50% chance it was you. Yeah. Those things were the best. Yeah. Did you hear my thing today? You would have been great on today's show too. I was trying to figure out when the economy takes a dump, you would think that gyms do better because more people, you know what I mean? People join the military or go back to college or take their L one. Yeah, we just went through four years and I feel like that was the opportunity for CrossFit to like get a reverse with people looking for a new dream career and it didn't happen. Yeah. Well, that's very similar to like what I was saying too, because I think a lot of the focus was like, it's just like when you look at the CrossFit games and the athletes, they look like money a little bit, right? Like it's like the shiny object. And you're like, dude, we can market and sell the shit out of this. And I think what ended up happening is, is kind of blinded by that a little bit.

Uh, what was left behind was actually finding meaningful work for trainers and in professionalizing the trainer. And that didn't happen. You could have, I mean, I mean, wasn't like part of the rise of CrossFit kind of in the wake of the 2008 when a bunch of people lost some shit and it shook some stuff up and they're like, fucking I've been into fitness. I'm going to go get my own one and train people in my garage and build a career. Hey dude, wouldn't that be interesting to see to take how many trainers

there are from the state of the industry report, the tube brain took out multiply that time, the average amount a trainer makes, and then take all the CrossFit games athletes and their prize winnings. Oh shit. And, uh, and compare the two. Oh, that, that would be interesting. That would be interesting. And it's always the top 1% of every sport that make 95% of the money. And I actually don't have a problem with that.

Well, right. Because those same people are also bringing in 95% of the attention. Right. You know what I mean? Like that's why Conor McGregor has paid what he, what he was back in the day. It's like he, he just brought attention. I mean, Jake Paul fight, Mike Tyson, what's that? Nobody's showing up because those guys are stud athletes.

Like they want to see the, the YouTuber beat up the old, the old, uh, uh, boxer, you know, but they just cultivated so much attention that we actually cared a lot more and then you watched it and you're like, yeah, this does suck. And it's like, well, yeah, cause it was just about hiding. Hey, would Donald Trump versus Joe Biden make more pay per view than Jake Paul versus Tyson? No, but I think Donald Trump versus like Putin would. I Know but I think Donald Trump versus like Putin would Dude

Trump would annihilate him. Are you kidding me? I know that's what would be great. That'd be crazy. All right. I'm going to wrap this. I'm going to wrap this show up and jump off before Pedro starts. You know, he's got Pat down there on. Yeah, I'm going to be.

It's going to be awesome too, because I'm going to be watching my kids play tennis for the next two hours. I'm just going to get this on chair and the next two hours. I'm just gonna get this chair and listen Trish just Trish just commented. This is like when your parents come to see you at your first job waiting tables 27th job, that's amazing bartenders Reasons for fired too hot to handle Okay, I'll call you after Alright, but

Beep beep. That's hilarious. Are we having 8am class on Saturday? Yes we are. Yes we are. Okay, so check this out. We got... Hold on. I got something for you guys. Okay, if you're a gym owner and you're listening to this, this really matters to you more than anybody else. Okay, so pay attention.

I just put this thing in the comments of the show and they'll also be inside the show notes. Yeah, you thought with the bumper transition, I was pulling something up. Nope, just me back again. Um, if you're an affiliate owner, uh, or, or really, if you're a coach that's building clientele, we are doing at media launch, um, a four week media sprint between December 15th until January 15th, where Jay Vera, who's been creating a ton of the, uh, content that you guys have been, um, seeing where he's done like old school mashups of like quotes and then putting in a bunch of B roll. Um, and if you check out CF, uh, underscore Livermore's Instagram handle, you could see how we converted a ton of like reviews, um, into content and different things like that.

Anyways, we're going to be working with, uh, five gyms. We're going to be working with you or coaches. We're going to be working with you to build up a strong media presence over the next four weeks. And so what does that mean? So that means you'll get access to a ton of different stuff as far as like graphics, go editing, help how to film the whole entire thing, whatever you need. And we're going to be rolling from this, like I said, from December 15th until January 15, kind of like a done with you service here. We're testing something.

I've been working on something in the background with Media Launch with Jay, a couple of other people and I think I found this nice media solution to a lot of the affiliates' problems. And right now we have nobody that's talking about the unified message, meaning the mess and nobody being loud about it. I've also tested a ton of different member testimonies, whether I'm pulling those from Yelp, pulling them from Google business, whether we're pulling them from the Facebook review. Also we've gathered up a bunch of forms that we've had select members kind of fill out that talk about their experience.

We take all of that and convert it into content. Why? Because you guys all know that the strongest lead generation generator in your gym is your members. So they go out and they talk about what they do at the gym and they try to bring their friends in. So what we try to do over the course of like July, we started testing stuff through CFL is basically what we're calling digital word of mouth. So taking those same stories that members would talk

with friends or family as they try to entice them to bring them into the gym and then turning those into pieces of content. What does that look like? It could be a picture of the member with like a quote. It could be a review that they did with, you know, a quote of what they said. It could be a video of them, some sort of thing that translates their message into content for you to be able to post on your social media. And we know how to do all of it scheduled and automated with a bunch of cool like AI stuff that's way over my head. But the people that are helping out with it are very smart with it.

So anyways, if you want to be a part of these gyms, this is going to be a done with you media service because we're going to kind of help coach you a little bit on what you need. But it's also kind of expensive. So if you guys want to or if you're interested in it, you could use that link right there. It's going to fill out the form and then we'll contact you to give you some more information on it. And then behind this, hopefully we'll come, um, the larger, uh, media offering that we have, which would be kind of exciting. And we've got two gyms right now, myself and one other gym, and we'll give you all the details on it later, but anyhow, if you want to go fill out the form, um,

put your information in, she's going to ask you a couple of questions about you, about your gym, Gabri information. We'll reach out and we'll contact you and then hopefully we'll make you a shit ton of money Like millions of dollars instantly just follow my morning routine Now it's turning into like just a bunch of other bullshit Tyler walk and just called he says a 1999 Honda Prelude is the best way to go Susan Yeah, him and I well his is like good and in shape. Mine just like putting along, you know what I mean?

Is this a free trial service or there? No, it's not free trial at all. It's going to the four weeks going to cost you. If you want the free trial version, just go to media launch and literally take all of the stuff that we've documented, why we built for free. You could learn all about it and you could do it yourself at your, uh, you know, at your own will. This is going to be something that is, um, is a paid for a service. All right. Thanks for listening to my pitch. Thanks for hanging out. Go over to a coffee pods and wads and go check out, um, Peter's guide

Pat Bell and they're on. So that should be pretty interesting. I'm curious as to see all the different, uh, places they go with it. So anyhow, thanks for hanging out guys. Uh, thanks for, um, chilling with my little history lesson on CrossFit and, uh, the workouts and how all the programming moved towards the games. And hopefully better days ahead. Peace out y'all.