The Sevan Podcast - FIRST TAKES: CrossFit Semifinals Programming // Shut Up and Scribble Ep #1

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

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Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. We're live. Wow. All right. First show. So this is welcome everybody to shut up and scribble. This is the first, the debut of me and JR's new programming show that we're going to be running on the podcast platform. So today we're going to be hitting our first takes on the 2023 semifinals programming, giving you guys our thoughts.

All right. So let's just get into it. Do you want to talk a little bit about semifinals in general? Like what we're trying to do here before we get into each event? Yeah, I mean, I think the simplest way to put it is that this is the test to decide who goes to the CrossFit Games. I think a lot of people think of it as a screening process,

which I think a lot of us do. If there are going to be certain tests done, certain tests done, are the people that succeed on the test at semifinals going to be the same individuals that are capable of taking and doing well on the test at semifinals going to be the same individuals that are capable of taking and doing well on the test coming up. And they shouldn't just be the random fitness

to a group of six or seven tests and then go to the games and do something that's not a progression. So essentially, we're just trying to find the right people to go to the crossfit games and we're going to determine whether or not this programming we think does that accomplishes that goal this is going to take the right people we're just going to break it down kind of in general and of course we have a limited perspective relative to the program the programmer can see into the future and has some idea, if not a full picture, of what is going to be waiting for whoever manages these tests well when they get to Madison in August.

We can speculate based on what we've seen in the Open, the quarterfinals, and now with the semifinal programming, what may be coming. And we can be hopeful that there are things that are coming that are challenging, but that the athletes who succeed in this, this group of tests have a high likelihood of being able to overcome. Do we have to read these now ourselves? Oh, the donations. Who does that?

We need AI to read them out. Dude, chat GPT for the donations this is already i mean i mean this is already a comment from barry simply because as brian just said the programmer also knows details that we do not still about these tests yeah and that goes along with barry's comment we don't know if their pirouette do three pirouettes in one box or if they're going to be do a pirouette, handstand walk 25 feet, do another one, handstand walk again, do another one, handstand walk again. That's what I think we're likely to see. But all right, let's get into it.

You ready, Brian? I'm following your lead. All right. Workout one. Let's bring it up test one how dare how dare oh yeah did i say workout or event test test one all right so test one individuals for time we get a 3 000 meter echo bike then 84 feet of a hand over hand sled pull, then two K or 2000 meters on the air runner, another 84 feet of a hand over hand sled pull thousand meters on the skier. And then finally a 92 foot hand over hand sled pull general thoughts.

J R Brian. Dude, are we sure it's a sled? Pull that back up. Well, that's a good question hand over hand pull wow because this is an element of you know that we'll see throughout many of the workouts you can read them one time and you might you know i have specifically thought about one or two of them in a different way than after i read it two or three times or had a conversation with someone that directed me to a little nuance of the way that it's written.

And there's a chance that there's, you know, there's not a reason that they wrote it the way they did, but there's also a chance that they did write it that way intentionally. Well, let's speculate. What could they be pulling if not a slut? Return of the Turtle. Oh, wow.

From Rogue. Yeah, so they could just load that up, load up and whatever the weight was 180 and they could do that it may make more sense you've got you've got what i think is the material that those sandbags sandbags are made up against uh um surface co company flooring brian's been down on a floor and felt it i've never i don't know what that feels like if it's comparable to stall mats if it's comparable to roll roll of rubber flooring but that might take away some of the oh yeah like my sled was just stuck and it really couldn't really wouldn't move there'd be no need for a concrete surface a turf turf surface yeah i mean i think that's a really cool speculation.

And the flooring is obviously a critical component anytime you're pulling something. And in particular, if it's a sled or something where friction matters, it's interesting that this, to me, it feels like this pull has to be somewhat difficult to account for the time period that you're going to be spending on the machines relative to the total working time. And I'm just not sure that this is one that the comparison event to event is going to be that uniform or competition to competition, because I don't know how you can guarantee the same level of friction in California as Orlando as um you know wherever it is in Australia etc you know truth be told the temperature and humidity play a role as well humid humid rubber mats quite a bit more difficult than a dry rubber mat you know we talked a little bit JR you mentioned how you weren't sure if they would be pulling it on like the concrete floor in between

the lanes or the spacings like they had in previous years regionals and i tend to think that that's likely not going to happen just because that would make it so much easier on that smooth concrete and then at the same time look at from event to event or venue to venue is that underneath uh surface going to be the same so i would imagine it's going to be on rubber and the turtle's an interesting speculation it may not even be a sled and that's something i didn't even think about will you bring that workout back up jr thank you we still can hear you yeah i can bring it back up okay so brian i think looking at the workout i wrote down a couple things we talked about you know the format, I wrote down a couple of things. We talked about, you know, the format, I would call it a chipper and I would, I would call it a heavy chipper,

um, due to the hand over hand sled pull weight. And I guess it's my assumption that it's going to be heavy and pretty important in the workout, maybe even a linchpin. Um, what would you call it? You, you putting this in the chipper category? what would you call it? You putting this in the chipper category? Yeah, I think it's okay too. But in terms of the kind of the sticking points in the workout, to me, that run jumps off the page.

I mean, once you figure, like, we're going to see in the first round that there'll be athletes who pull the sled or the turtle or whatever it is fairly well, and there'll be some that struggle with it a little bit. You'll settle up. I think that in the run, you're going to basically like settle into a pack. Like by the time you get there, you'll kind of know these are the guys that move this sled as well as me. And then, but it's tough when you're on an air runner, like you don't necessarily know how fast the person on your left or right is going. And if there are a few lanes down, you really have no idea. So you have to know, I think that if you have the chance to test, this one can be really critical for the athletes to know how hard can I push on this run and still do the back, you know,

third of the workout. Anytime you see over a mile of running in a workout, I think it just screams as that's a huge part of the workout. I mean, I think realistically, all of the monostructural elements are pretty important. Maybe the ski is the least important. I mean, depending on how much, yeah, the pulling, the pulling on the sled, right? I just think time under tension, I think the runs probably, I don't know, I think there are going to be a lot of people that make or break the workout on the run. Can you recover after going really fast on the run or are you laboring away at a slow pace and not able to make up ground or just falling behind? You're thinking that ski is really important just based off of the amount of hand over hand pulling

in combination with that? Yeah, like to me, I think the run, like the back half of the run is where the workout is going to start to take shape and you're going to start to see maybe who's in contention or not. i do think you'll see some people um disrespect the sled ski sled so those three movements being back to back yeah yeah i think you're you're gonna see some people implode on the last 500 meters of skiing and then get to that last hand over hand

do halfway and just almost get to lactic threshold and then someone else will pass them at the end and that's that's interesting because then that brings into conversation the sled technique and what the standard is for pulling it i mean me and you talked a little bit about yesterday that hip drive technique where you have a double grip and your arms are extended and you pull the rope to your hips while you extend your hips and then reach and get more slack. And for me, I can pull like that all day. And it's almost entirely metabolic rather than becoming muscular fatigue at any point. So this is like, you know, in some of these workouts, we'll see that it seems like details were omitted. In this case,

a specific detail was included. It says hand over hand. And if it's if it says hand over hand, It says hand over hand. And if it says hand over hand and it's not hand over hand, why would you write it that way? If it is hand over hand, how are you planning to mandate or enforce that? What happens if I start doing that hip thrust? What's the judge's directive and how to address that with me? I wouldn't even know how to begin to standardize that. JR, you did it at crash. Yeah. I think the people

who have reached out to me to ask me what we use for the standard, I've told them that we made the athletes keep their feet on a red line. So they were not allowed to walk backwards and use their counterweight to pull the weight at any point. Other than that, as long as their feet stayed on the line, they could use any technique with their hands that they wanted. What we did tell them was if their feet ever came off of the line, they would have to go down and push the sled back to the last 10-foot section they completed and then continue their pull.

And I like that. If you were able to put some 10-foot markers or 8-foot markers or whatever on the floor, and if you deviate from the intended standard, which reads as hand over hand, that that's the penalty. You got to go back out on the floor, push it back to the last one you successfully completed it.

And then pull. That's exactly what I'm talking about. If that's something that's been thought through and there's an easy to understand and enforce penalty for someone who deviates from the expectation. I love it. And push it push there's not i'm concerned i think i think if that's the case and at the same time pushing the sled

is going to be a whole lot harder than pulling it on rubber anytime you have any downward pressure on it like you think just simple mechanics if you hook the the rope up to it and you're pulling there's no pressure downward on the sled it's all directed this way whereas if you're pushing in in any way there's going to be downward pressure it's going to make it a lot harder and if it's a turtle you got to pick it up and take it back what do you think about the flow on that do you think that the echo bike and the ski will be on one end and then on the other end you'll have the runner there'll be a rope attached to both ends of whatever the object is they're pulling they'll get off the bike they'll run down yeah probably they'll pull they'll get on their runner they'll run back down they'll ski and then they'll pull to the finish that makes the most sense it

possibly the the thing is if there's you the way you're describing there's a rope on both sides of the object right so as i'm pulling it from you know i would do my bike i go down the other floor i'm pulling it that other rope is it going to be like how confident am i that it's going to uncoil in the way that i want it to not get in the way of someone else is not not up and be dragged to the side so that what i think is more likely is that there's one that there's the layout that you talked about with the bike and the ski near the rig and the runner near the finish line. And you bike the ropes already laying there for the first one, you pull it down, you do the run, you walk the rope, your own rope back down. And

it's somehow it's on this object, it just swivels easily, like it's a turtle, then that eliminates that. I know. But I'm saying like, if you're thinking about logistics of it, these these are things that you'd want to implement it could be that it's like a carabiner and there's a loop on one side you unloop it you put it on the other side and then you walk it all the way down you pull it back you finish the ski you walk it down and then the extra eight feet is to pull it not just to the first line but all the way across the finish line we can probably assume it's going to be none of these i wonder you know it's likely the dog slatter actually that one on the right similar to the rope chipper sled you think so and if they did that easily it swivels pretty easily so if you're just turn if you just get like if you run down to one end and it's facing the other direction you just give it a tug and

it spins towards you yeah or if there's just there's that one lip on this one if there's a dual lip if there's a lip on both sides and you can hook that thing in and out then you could do it the way i just described yeah yeah whatever the sled or whatever the object is that they're going to be pulling hand over hand i think what we can assume is that when the workout is over i would be shocked knowing boz is like um affinity for odd objects and his interest in strongman i would be really surprised if we walked away saying oh the sled really didn't matter or the pole really i think that it really will matter it will could it be the the alpaca sleds i i thought about that if he was like yeah let's bring the alpaca sled i don't think they could get him everywhere that's yeah it would be cool. I don't think they could get them everywhere.

Yeah. It would be cool, but I don't think they could do it. What do you think, JR, about the meters for the Echo Bike versus a calorie? I mean, I know they couldn't make it look pretty in that format, but could they put it somewhere else? To me, just whenever you're doing specifically that machine for distance and not for calories, the amount of time that you're going to lose or gain from five RPMs less is almost negligent. Negligible, yeah. And I don't think that should ever be the issue. I told someone the other day, I would be okay if we never did anything for distance again on a machine and it was only calories aside from

running or they just ran not on a machine sure yeah yeah um and you know we can get to this later talking about the first and last event having echo bike and while sometimes there isn't another substitution i think there's a lot of utility with biking in general. First event last year, right back, you know, was bike to work. I was kind of surprised seeing the last workout that the echo bike wasn't just biker and it wasn't just biker, runner, skier. But yeah, I mean, I, I think there's probably a handful of people. There's a handful of competitors that this is an event they're going to win. And whether they think there's another test in the weekend that they're not looking so much forward to, there are going to be a handful that don't care about just getting off the bike at the same time as everyone else. They're going to push the pace. They're going to dictate pace from the beginning. And I think they will be a little bit more aggressive.

Time domain? tape pace from the beginning and i think they will be a little bit more aggressive time domain i think it's gonna be high teens are gonna win it unless the slip that's the hand over hand is just way harder than i am giving it credit for and it's it's easy to be wrong because we really don't know anything about it i i think it's i still think it's, I still think it's high teens. I think it's probably mid twenties. What have you had anybody? Well, I don't know, man. I can't. What are you allocating for each spot? Okay. Okay. Well, here's, here's the other thing.

Here's the other thing we have to, we have to notice. It's the same distance for, for men and women. You know, on the skier and the echo bike, especially the times are going to be a bit different between women and men. So I think we can assume women are going to be a little bit closer to the cap and men will not. I think women are most likely mid, mid twenties. JR, if you look at, if you were looking at this, what would you allocate for each of these? If I just did four, eight, four on the machines,

and then three minutes for the sled, that's 19, right? Three minutes, a minute for each sled. Correct. And I hope that it's longer. I hope it's more like each sled takes two minutes or each sled takes three minutes. But doing a lot of hand over hand, doing a lot of hand over hand at different weights seeing a lot of competitors do it too i mean there's some people that can can do 90 feet in you know less than 30 seconds i don't want to be anyone in this field that can really manhandle it like that but who knows yeah but but i mean when you've seen that that's been on turf yeah

uh or or brent on the last sled hand over hand sled at the games, which was what five blues, maybe six blues. And what surface was that? Yeah. And that was a tennis court. So yeah, I think we can assume this is going to be, this is going to have the most friction of any pull that we've seen in a competition. Yeah. I think it's going to be pretty heavy. I mean,

I looked at it and I was like, okay, that's a heavy implement. Yeah. The answer to this question is it I mean, I looked at it and I was like, okay, that's a heavy implement. Yeah. The answer to this question is it depends on what you're pulling it across, how far you're pulling it and whatever else. But I do think that it'll be relatively heavy and there will definitely be some people that struggle with it. Yeah, I was thinking that on the far end, Taylor, that like where JR said 4.84, thinking like 510 5 would be like the upper

barrier or the slowest barrier for most of these athletes and that leaves 10 minutes to figure out the sled which seems like a lot of time to me you know so I think everyone like I think the intent with this time cap is for everyone to finish or get Dan close to it yeah I really like that because Boz has talked about it before but having a really long workout where some people can just wait on the time cap and maybe save some of that upper body pulling. Like, I'll just kind of take it easy, and that last 94 feet I don't have to deal with. And then when I get up on the rings, I'll feel it less than all these people that crush themselves just to finish that last hand-over-hand sled. Do you think there's like a linchpin sticking point in the workout? I feel like the run generally and then also the hand-over-hand sled pull.

I actually think the workout is going to start on the ski. Okay. I think more along the lines of what you said a little while ago, J.R., I think that towards the back end of that run is where the athletes are going to start to have to make a decision about how hard they can push or not. But I think most of the athletes will manage the ski. I think we're going to see some people, the thing you described happens on that last sled, and they will get passed not just by one person,

but I bet we see people in heats get passed by several people. Good workout overall. I like it. Yeah, I really like starting the workout. I mean, programming competitions, you know, once I've put the long on Sunday just to mix it up a little bit, but I think in general it's good to set the tone with something long early i like that too brian does this qualify for your long workout i think if most people are going to be hitting underneath your time that you

laid out right that you'd wanted to see yeah i was hoping for like 25 plus for everyone 30 plus for for some i think this is going to more be along the lines of what JR is expecting, 19 to 22 kind of for the men and maybe 21, 22 to upwards of close to the time cap for some of the women. I put 18 minutes in that article or 18 minutes or more. So I think this makes me happy for the long test. I don't know it all

depends on the sled i feel like it's not i don't i don't feel like there are going to be very many people going sub 20 but we will see what's going to be really interesting not to try to jump ahead too much but is linda going to turn into like the second long workout is it gonna turn into people getting time capped and people taking 16 17 or getting capped and then then we have two workouts over 15 i think linda's gonna be longer than the 2018 linda yeah i think so too let's go jump into two yeah let's go to two what do you think intervals i love it you want to read it out yeah so we got test two as many reps as possible in three minutes i'm gonna i'm gonna read it out the way i would have fucking written it because i get really

frustrated when i just see that one block so it's going to be three rounds of three minutes of work, one minute of rest. So the workout is going to end at the 11 minute mark. There's going to be nine total minutes of working time, two rest intervals in between the first and the second interval. So we have three rounds, three minutes on one minute off or three minutes on one minute off for three sets. You're going to buy in each interval with five ring complexes, and that's going to be one total ring, one muscle up plus a ring dip. So I think what I'm assuming is that you're going to jump up to the rings. You do a total ring, you do a muscle up. And after you lock out at the top of the muscle up that you re dip to the shoulder and then perform a ring dip

and your rep is complete. And that's one ring complex complex you have five of those and you've got 20 alternating single leg squats so it doesn't say alternating so maybe it's 10 on the right then 10 on the left like the teams that's something we can speculate on but we got 20 single leg squats and then max burpees over the box and men are going to wear a 20 pound ruck jump to 30 inches or get over 30 inches and women are going to wear a 10-pound rock and get over 24 inches. And again, it doesn't really specify how we're getting over the box. So score is going to be total number of burpees at the end of all three rounds. Well, yes.

It says as many reps as possible. We don't know if they're going to count the 25 rep buy-in or not so the score could be but you know ultimately yes whoever does the most burpees over box will win this workout jr what do you think about that first piece the ring complex do you think i'm reading it correctly they perform a muscle-up and the muscle-up is finished when you lock out and they go back into an additional ring dip? Absolutely. I don't think there's going to be any requirement to have the ring make contact with the bicep or the shoulder on the muscle-up portion,

but absolutely that's what I can imagine they'll be looking for on the ring dip part. It doesn't say it has to be strict, so I assume that most people are going to be practicing it both ways, but I think kipping would be a fair assumption there. how do you think they're going to standardize that you know last time we saw them they had the red strap in competition in the back of your shoulder blades had to touch the red strap at the lockout is that 2017 yeah and that's the last time we saw ring dips i i don't i don't expect them to have that strap up there because the muscle muscle up yeah so um yeah that that'll be that'll be interesting to hear what they what they're told on thursday right um because that's as far as we know when all the rest of the details are going to be announced as far as movement standards and and workout flow

what jumps out to me in this workout after seeing all the tests come out is that although there are three tests that have running, that have bounding, we have no jump rope. And I was one of the people that initially said, I think these burpees are getovers, like 2017 finale, assault bike, burpee getover over 30 and 24 using the hands and bag to shoulder. Right. And I thought that there would be great interference there, right? You're hanging for about 40, 45 seconds. Then you do some pistols. Then you go to the burpee and you press off the ground and you press onto the box. So there's just so much interference there with pressing, right? You've got the muscle up, the the dip the burpee and the get over with the hands but after seeing no jumping and knowing how

much Boz values that I'm starting to think that they may be box jump overs and with no touch or just touch the feet at the top yeah yeah like yeah just games boxes you know wider boxes but no use of the hands and jump instead the only thing is just like that terminology right for the teams it says box jumps alternating here it says burpee over box the word jump is not used at all so i i think that's purposeful too like you know brian said i think that there may be something to the coyness of leaving certain words out and making people wonder. And it's the same principle can apply to the pistols or the single leg squats is that the way they were written in the teams, we understand to mean that you're doing all of

them on one leg and then all of them on the other leg. I mean, that's what it says, like one leg two. Here it says 20 single leg squats and the contrast implies a difference. So we doesn't, even though it doesn't say alternating because they wrote it that way for teams, it seems strange to me that they would write it this way and, and then mandate one leg than the other leg. Do you think that they would allow people to just go straight through a round on one leg and not do any on the other? No, I don't think that they would allow that, no. But I'm saying I think that they would have written 10 single leg squats leg 1,

10 single leg squats leg 2 if it was going to be that way. So we can assume it's alternating. We can assume it's not 10 and 10. Maybe they do 5 on the right, advance 5 on the left, advance 5 on the right, advance 5 on the left, advance five on the right, advance five on the left. Who knows? Maybe with the ruck on, it makes sense to force them to do five in a row instead of 10 in a row.

And I like that. They found in 10 and testing that 10 was too difficult, too aggressive. Yeah. Yeah. Taylor is, is this, is this remnants of 2018 triple threes, mano, mano, mano?

We have that in test one with some weightlifting in between. Do you consider this GGG or do you think this is still not GGG because they're moving in on their body? It's a gray area to a degree. I think when we think weightlifting in the general sense, at least the way CrossFit describes it, is that's moving an external object around your body. And when you're putting a weight vest on or a go-ruck on,

you're not moving it around your body. It's becoming part of your body, and you're still moving your body through space or around another object. So I would still consider it gymnastics. I would consider it a triple G workout, a triplet. Gymnastics, gymnastics gymnastics gymnastics for sure brian are you are you guys thinking a minute for burpees for the fastest people or 90 seconds for burpees i think between i think i think for the best 90 seconds for sure yeah i'm yeah i think i think that too that's a lot of burpees so yeah it's upwards of

upwards of maybe 20 around 60 i i'm really curious about the sustainability across three rounds like i think the best people can certainly get to the burpee box get over or over box in 90 seconds in round one but i don't know i like i don't know what the fall off is going to be is that 90 seconds going to be 95 seconds in round two or is it going to be you know 110 seconds that's interesting i i wrote the question what is this testing for this workout and i put in their gymnastics, pulling, squatting, and I put in recoverability. And I think the athletes who train intervals or high power output, high power output, recover for a short period of time, consistent high power output, et cetera, repeat are going

to do really well. I think there'll be athletes that hold a really similar pace, but at the same time under competition, when you're forced into an intensity that's higher than something, you know, you can recover from, I think we're going to see a lot of people fall off and a lot of people blow up for sure. One of the things I'm really going to be looking out for is, you know, when, when, if you see this workout without the ruck, then everyone says, well, you know, this is going to favor the smaller guy or favor the lighter guy or favor the more nimble guy, which is typically the smaller athlete.

And what I don't think a lot of people really understand is that once you add a vest or once you add a ruck, what you've done is actually given the bigger athlete more of an advantage than they would have had previously. If you go out on a run and you're 195 pounds and I go out on a run at 175 and we both wear a vest, that's going to beat me up much more than it's going to beat you up. And I think that people who are already on the heavier side, they're going to feel that external load a little bit less than someone with shorter stature. I really think it's kind of clever in that way that it is kind of balancing

what a lot of people would see as a small, small athletes workout. And do you think it's right to balance a small athletes workout with the balance of more towards the heavier athletes when you have something like Linda or something like the first workout or the max snatch? Yeah. And that's, that's a, that's a podcast in its own right. Cause we could go through these. And I think what we'd find is that we'd maybe be two to one.

Is the competition overall a little more biased toward weightlifting? A big guy, yeah. Is it more biased toward gymnastics? But we can go over that when we get to six and seven because when we get to six, that's when it starts to shift a little bit to me. Do you guys remember the workout fast like an oryx from dubai this past december four sets 230 on one one minute off shuttle run burpee over box i think it was or jump over box and then some dumbbell thrusters but it was when i first saw this workout i was you know and i don't know how hard the ring complexes will

be i mean at varying degrees of difficulty obviously and then will you know and i don't know how hard the ring complexes will be i mean at varying degrees of difficulty obviously and then will you know will the pistols uh throw off some people with the weight in the back i don't know um but i thought i was like three rounds like i think there's going to be really small margins of air in three rounds i think if you make this four rounds even if it's 30 seconds less per round that you're gonna like i feel like that extra round would have made a difference do you guys think i'm totally off the mark on that so if we go based on what taylor's saying and let's just say like 60 burpees wins it right okay let's just say that so that's 60 pressing reps with the ruck and then with the intervals they'll do five complexes so 30 30 dips they'll do two dips so they'll do 30 and 30 yeah there's some trunk flexion there there's some there's

some crunching getting off the floor um i mean for some people depending on their mobility there's there's a lot of um there's a lot of trunk flexion doing the pistol. I could see it going either way. Where did it get done? It's like, ah, there should have been one more round to really show some separation. Or no, like the local stamina of that musculature by round three, we saw who was really in contention and who was just trying to hang on. I just think the five complexes with only a minute rest after going, you're going to have to go fast on the burpees. I think that it's probably going to be really sneaky with how many people

start those. I think three is okay. And I think there's a handful of people in the world who would have liked four, but they're going to be able to show plenty of separation on three. I think, I think someone like Pat Vellner or someone like Mal, like those people are going to be able to show a lot of separation in three. And I think they're good enough at recovering that they would have been able to continue for four, but I don't think four is necessary for the field. I think three, I think three is fine. Well, and I, you

know, I guess like, and it always comes down to, you want to look at the totality of the test. Are you hitting specific time domains, whatever, but you, you know, if you made it four four intervals and i would i would just be curious and maybe we'll see a you know a testing behind the scenes or something on this eventually if i had made it four rounds i would have reduced everything a little bit four complexes instead of five 16 pistols instead of 20 whatever and and the main reason is because i would have wanted that third rest interval like to do you know after one rest interval you're like you know it's only two rest intervals we have third rest interval in there I feel like it changes things a little bit and maybe I'm overthinking it but it's just a thought that I had what's really cool too is that we talked about not having a whole lot of data to like

see maybe what some um tendencies are from Boz from a programming standpoint. And I think here even like if you think back and maybe I'm just trying to draw these conclusions, but a lot of people said that with hat trick, right? They said, make it one more, make it a few more wall balls or maybe a few more snatches and the workouts better. And even with maybe the skill speed medley, right? That was just three, right? That was three chances, right? There was two eliminations and then the end. And this is three.

And some people are wondering if three is enough. So again, I think we come back to the primacy that's being put on execution, not having any no reps. And when it's time to move, you have to move and you have to take this. Do you think any athletes go unbroken on all three rounds on the rings? I do, but I think it's going to be very few. I don't know, dude, 20 with the ruck for men. I'm thinking for me, that'd be really hard in the third interval. The amount of time we're talking about the workout in different ways, I think probably speaks to how good of a workout.

Yeah. It's balanced. I love it. I love the workout. I just think that's so much time under tension on the rings. I wonder if. I think the last workout is so fast that even though you're cranking on the handles,

even though you're doing 20 fast toes to Barton, even though your grip is being fatigued there, I think that this may end up being the grip test. I think, yeah, for sure. But I think that's, I think this is intended to be maybe the first part of separation. So people that just can't hang on the rings that long. Okay. They're out.

You've got some people that fall apart on their pistol cadence okay they're out and then for the people who are the best it's just who's the fittest to do burpees without stopping yeah we did we did in uh you'll remember this beach town throwdown in 2020 they had in the finale a workout that started with 10 ring complexes it just was minus the dip it was one toe to ring plus one muscle up for 10 reps and i think in the so it was that then you did like a dumbbell some fucking like a death march a dumbbell deadlift walk then handstand walk back and then you finish with another it was pretty that that movement was a little dinky but then you finished with another it was pretty that that movement was a little dinky but then you finish with another 10 reps on the rings and they're brutal and i don't think a ton of people train

them i feel pretty good because i've had you know a bit of experience with these movements and these complexes but i don't know dude you know obviously people people talk about loose the hero workout being done at water palooza years back and a lot of the athletes that i've reached out to have all told me and even and even andrew has told us um in the chat that hey like these are not like doing vested muscle ups no so the ruck really really changed the the timing of the turnover and a lot of athletes that do a really good job staying long and staying hollow and really snapping over on a muscle-up may be um struggling a little bit more than the athletes that tend to pull through the rings more and transition a little quicker so that'll be interesting to see too the people who we just know of as being the best at muscle-ups are they the

ones that do the best on this workout? Or is it really just the guys that we know have amazing grip endurance? So typically me and you talk about, we consider a ring muscle-up more of a pressing movement. Like I think for me, if I'm going to fail a ring muscle-up, it's never going to be on the turnover or the pull. It's always going to be on the press. Do you think this changes that?

I think for me, it does. I think it turns it into way more of a pull. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I just think it turns into a more of a pull yeah yeah i mean yeah i just think it turns into a who can continue to hang hang on yeah yeah okay i love it i love this workout things so far first two pretty solid end of day one so we talk about the uh possibility of 30 weighted burpees and 30 weighted dips. And then what do they do first thing Saturday? They got to do 55 bench press, right?

Heavy as fuck too. That's awesome. Let's go to it, Will. Linda, semifinals Linda. Do you like this picture selection, by the way? I don't like how they only have three athletes depicted across the seven or four. I love Chandler. So, yeah, good picture.

I love this picture. Yeah, it's a good picture. He looks fucking yoked. That's what you're going to look like after this workout. And I like the name, too. Like, I like in 2018, they called it Regional Linda. And I like now it's a little bit different, and the format's a little different, and they call it Semi-Final Linda.

So I like that. It's 10 down to 1. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 reps for time of deadlifts. The women's weights changed a little bit, yeah? So same weights for men, though, on the deadlift, 295, 220 for ladies. Then dumbbell bench press, 90s for guys, 60s for ladies. And then squat cleans, 145 for men 60s for ladies and then squat cleans 145 for men 105 for women i think screams bench to me bench and for the people who can bench who can cycle the barbell on the squat

cleans fastest yeah and i think what you were talking about earlier you know the the dumbbells are the total weight of the dumbbells is lighter than the bench press was, but I think it's going to be more demanding, more time consuming. Yeah. And we don't, um,

we don't necessarily necessarily know the standard that will be enforced there of where does the rep begin? Where does it end? And, and think of this too. You've in 2018 on regional Linda, you failed a bench spotter picked it up off your chest back in the rack you fail a bench here you're fucked your dumbbell goes

bouncing into another lane you got to get up go get it like dude you're just this is going to be i cannot wait to watch this yeah i think this is going to be really interesting too um we know there are a handful or maybe a couple handful of athletes that are like, I'm only going to put the dumbbells down and pick them up when the set starts and the set's over. But for most people, they're going to have a breakup strategy. What's going to be interesting to me is as nuanced as at one time being smooth on touching goes squat cleans, and touching those squat cleans, who can pick up and put down the dumbbells smoothly and be able to get right back to it without fumbling around with them? Who's played around with it a lot, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think in a workout that has, you guys can check my math, but what is that? Is that 30 transitions total? The transitions matter in this workout. Yes. It's the fourth movement basically it's the five four three two one if everything is spaced out on the floor like it was in 2018 there's a fourth movement to this and it's running right it's like like those transitions running back to the bar or walking back to the bar in the early rounds versus the later rounds like those

will really start to matter when you get to the five four three two one you've only got 15 more reps to go of each movement yeah i man i think i was just thinking about on the dumbbell bench press like breaking strategy or people who played around a lot with benching dumbbell benching in particular and bringing them down to the shoulders rocking up sitting on the knees and i was just thinking of this workout i did a while ago with 75s and it was like a really stupid amount of dumbbell bench and at one point in the workout i just i had the dumbbells like resting on my knees and my arms wrapped around them just resting like this for like five minutes to relax my chest so i think smart people will do that it's a really smart way to rest i just wonder are they going

to have rules around where you can rest the dumbbells where do you have to put them down again you had them in crash you can speak to that yeah i think we were we were probably a little bit too strict on the standards there because the close proximity on the turf um and because the turf's my third child and i didn't want to get in damage that I made people put them down on the pads if they weren't being used. But I do wonder if the feet have to be flat, if they're going to provide plates for the females, if the hips are allowed to come up from the bench, if they're just going to say, Hey, start locked in locked. Other than that, we don't care, which I think sometimes less rules are better when you get to a subjectivity type movement like that and let's face it this is a movement

like strict handstand push-ups where there are going to be people that go to failure and there are going to be people that are a couple centimeters away from completing a rep they lock it out with one arm they don't lock it out with the other arm but we're going to see that especially people who aren't in the place they want to be after day one. Because you know, as an athlete, you do test one and test two, something happens. You're outside of a qualifying position. Everyone has you pick top five going into the weekend. You start to press. And instead of doing your breaks, you're like, I'm just going to go for it. I feel good. And then, I mean, I think this event to me, like in 2018,

other than the snatch, the heavy snatch in test four, to me this will be the reason why some people go to the games or don't go to the games. I have a question for you guys. We're on the third test here. Test one, we see something called hand-over-hand pull, that we're not entirely sure what it is, but it's potentially new. Test two, obviously there's new elements in the ring complex. There's potentially new elements in the, um, pistol. It could be, you know, five and five. We don't know burpees over box. Don't

exactly know what that is. Could be something new or different. Come, come here. We have a dumbbell bench, all those different potential variabilities to be taken into play with the dumbbell bench. And my concern is that it's so much new stuff, not just necessarily for the athletes, but for the judges, that is there, you know, is it too much new? More importantly, the judges to not be in a position to accurately enforce whatever the standards are at the expense of a competitive, you know, field of level competitive field of play. I think it's only too much new if they get cute with the standards. I think if on the hand over hand sled pull, it's like what we talked about. You can grip with two hands and perform a hip drive. Your feet just have to stay behind this line.

Maybe they have two lines. Your feet have to stay between this one and this one. If you step behind the back line, it's a no rep. You got to push it back, whatever. Same thing with the dumbbell bench. I think if it's essentially the rep starts with it locked out at the top and your hips can't come off the bench, your butt can't come off the bench, and your feet can't come off the floor, one head of the dumbbell has to hit the chest. I don't know.

So you can paint yourself into a bad position is what I'm saying. So you've got to be careful and intentional with the way you write these. The general sentiment is the simple is better. And this is like the thing I'm always saying is like make it as easy as possible on the judges. If there is something that's weird or new or different or difficult, I'm hopeful that they've sent it to the judges ahead of time, giving them opportunity to either ask questions, see videos from testing so they can understand what's going on and really set them up for success. It's so frustrating when it comes down to the judges doing different things on the floor and you think to yourself, well, why didn't they know with enough time to prepare for

this to be able to execute what's expected? Well, if you're going to withhold stuff from the athletes, you got to inform the judges. Yeah, as you guys are talking, I'm sitting here wondering, especially in the female field, doing weighted muscle ups, doing weighted dips. With the ring dip standard, right? Do the hips have to move? Do the hips have to go up and down? Or can they just crunch at the waist and bend over and count that? Because there are going to be competitive regions

where maybe half the field doesn't get to the pistols in two of the rounds. And those toe-to-ring and those muscle-ups and those dips are going to be the difference in a lot of spots for some of them. That might be why all the reps count and not just the burpee reps. I think they will count for sure. And even on the dumbbell bench, you know, like at the top, do the arms have to be in line with the shoulder or can they be wide? I think with the nins and the 60s

you're not going to have to worry too much about people pressing out to the side i i don't know i always finish with the dumbbells just touching each other really i don't ever touch i feel like if they touch you make it easier on yourself at the top i just i don't know i felt like this is i know they have to touch here i know they have to touch there was like easy standard for me to know i was meeting yeah but yeah while this is a weightlifting movement it's really interesting to me that i don't think the deadlift or the or the cleaner is going to be what really matters going to be how they make 55 bench press and the transitions we can kind of start to say what the limiter is going to be on these workouts. And it'd be interesting to see how many we say is upper body pushing and

pulling by the end. Yeah. It's the first three are upper body pulling and pushing to a large degree. That's for sure. And I think that whether you, however you want to count it or not, most likely we're assuming a little bit on the sled here, but that the weightlifting component of each is critical in each of these workouts even though it's three gymnastics movement the fact that that

ruck is there is going to change the outcome for certain athletes the sled i'm hopeful does have an impact on the workout and obviously the third workout is nothing but weights cool like it like it so far placement of this one yeah i think it was really purposeful again it is seems like kind of an homage to 2018 the last time we had standardized regionals um having having that linda in there um and i definitely don't think it's a mistake to see how you recover the next day after all the pressing to see how the bench press goes. And I think what a lot of people were hoping for, I know we were, was some sort of back-to-back, and now we get it in four and five.

Want to pull those up, Will? Back-to-back. So now test four and five. We're generally assuming this is going to be the last two events of Saturday. generally assuming this is going to be the last event of the last two events of saturday we've got a three two one go for load an 800 meter run buy-in then in the remaining time of the six minute window a max snatch we're not sure what stipulations are there how many attempts they have etc what kind of weights change plates at the six minute mark they're going to get a two minute reset and then at the eight minute mark they They're going to get a two minute reset. And then at the eight minute mark, they're going to start test five,

eight snatches, then 800 meter run for time. One 25 for ladies, one 85 for men. What do you think about the weights? What do you think about one 25 versus one 35 for the women? I think if, if it aggravates me a little bit,

we can, we can program one 35 for the women in quarterfinals, but not at semifinals? What's the overhead squat in test six? 125, is it? So at least that's consistent. Continuity, yeah. Maybe it's ease of equipment. I don't know. It is interesting, though. Like in the age group semifinals with the 753 the chief or dt variant however you kind of want to think about that

workout they use 135 which i thought was really good in all barbell cycling workout like um we don't know one of the questions we have is is this a good old-fashioned foot race displacement on the floor which we hope it is like a loop a two loops 45 you know so the teams do loop and visuals do too that'd be awesome it is it is it is odd to me that they chose to use 125 with only running with it like there's not something else in it that they may assume would slow people down. Yeah. I mean, if it feels, you know, I'm not entirely sure, but when it comes to snatching, I've, I'm actually like kind of probably in the middle of the women's semifinal

field in terms of my capacity. And one 25 is a weight that I could, I might, I can probably cycle all eight and take off running with one 35 is much more questionable in that regard. So if there're if you're looking for someone that's you know if you're looking to program something where it's like most of the field or at least the top half of the field is going to get get out the door at the same time whatever kind of run this is and i want them to have to earn it on the run it's probably the right pick i think that's the case i think i think all not all but i think most of these ladies will be cycling the 125 for touch and go. I think a lot of men will be cycling 185 as well for touch and go.

And I think it's going to be just what JR said. Like it's just, it's an 800 meter run for time, essentially. It does also place a little bit of that premium on execution that you talked about. If the top 20 guys, you know, for sure they're hitting eight in a row and you get a no rep on one and have to go again. It's only a couple seconds, but again, depending on what that run is, is that a couple seconds that puts you in a compromised position in the track or whatever else, or is it a couple seconds that you're not able to get back? So like we talked about on the last show and like we talked about

in the article we all wrote, this this, I think above all things, people want to talk about the gymnastics with Boz, his background and all the new elements that he's going to want to bring to the table. But this to me is classic Boz. This is Boz. You're going to lift, but only after you've done something else. You're rarely ever going to lift, not pre-fatigued. And then you're going to have to be able to run fast and lift heavy.

Like that's just like something that we've kind of seen now at many different stages over the last two years at semifinals at um quarterfinals online like at the games a couple times like we know that there's a value put on here what what's what's going to be interesting though and taylor you guys can push back on me too we know that that workout is probably not going to be done the second one in less than three minutes right i don't think ah man here's the thing it's going to be close right here's the thing yeah and i just want to bring hear me out me out. What if doing quick singles and getting to the run five or six seconds after is the way to go? Yeah. So I think you have to touch and go.

And then on the second loop, you just have nothing in the leg. Yep. After maxing, resting two minutes, and then doing eight reps really fast. I do wonder if the winner will be a touch and go person, or it'll be someone that like did four touch and go, took a breath, did four singles and then hawked everybody on the second. Yeah.

So I read, I read Chase's comments. Like if you're not doing touch and go, you're losing this work. And I thought, man, the power output that it's going to take from somebody to do eight touch and go reps is a lot.

And then are you going to have the juice to sprint an 800 and an 800 meters, not a short period of time that you could, I could easily see someone at the 600 meter mark, just fucking tanking. And that's at least 10 seconds, 15 seconds, maybe, maybe even 20 seconds versus somebody who still has the juice to push. And you can do quick singles. I from that 2020 was there 2021 quarterfinals workout the 963 burpee box jump over snatch there were people who did quick singles and did amazing in that workout they didn't touch and go all the reps there were people that did touch and go the first nine and then singles on the six and three and flew um so i don't know that touch and go is

the make or break i think by far the important part of the workout is how fast you can run that 800. And I think even more specifically than that, the last 400. Yeah. I think the reason JR is asking the question about the three minutes is probably because of the Christian shot quote that anything over three minutes, there has to be an element of pacing. Yep. Is that what you were referring to with that?

Yeah, I just think a lot of people are going to get caught up in the eight snatches in the first loop and they're they're well think about any 800 meter run that you ever watched at the olympics or olympic qualifier or something like that there are different ways to play it and there's some guys that like to get out to the lead and maintain a lead but there's also this like really really kind of popular strategy among some of the best guys that have ever done it to wait to the last 200 and then just turn on the jets from the back of the pack. And like Taylor said, if someone, you know, has the wherewithal and confidence to execute that plan and you couple that with someone who's got 200 meters to go and starts losing control of their legs. I mean, that's that has happened to me before running on a track where I have less than 100 meters left in a 400. And I've just pushed it so far that like I'm out of control crossing the finish line and forced to slow down because my body can't do it anymore.

You can see some big, big swings at the end of that workout. And this is, and this is something that I loved that I practice a lot in my own training and that we're going to see in this workout. And that's any time virtually in CrossFit, any time you're running, being able to modulate and build your pace as you go and finish with your strongest and fastest and best pace at a sprint finish is almost always the way to go. Rarely, rarely are you ever going to get a win or is it going to pay off for you to hit the jets and lose control of the gas pedal um and so yeah i don't know this definitely begs the question is eight touching go

the way to go i don't know that it is but i know the people that can control the throttle and can build through the first 400 or 500 and then once they get to the 500 mark start to really pin it are going to do extremely well on this workout. Yeah. Like, you know, to chase this point, like he, he may be right.

I know if it was a 400, I would say for sure that eight touch and go really matters. And if you can't touch and go, you lose. But I just think about like, if I know I'm a really good runner and I know I can run a six minute mile pace. And I know most of these guys can't run faster than a 610 well i'll eat those five seconds on the singles and i'll beat them on the run and and and then here's the other

part is what about the people who can touch and go those eight and are really great runners because there are a few of those in the field as well and they're going to win it so i think we should probably back up to test four and talk about what do you guys think number of attempts how big are the jumps and what do you think the winnings what do you think the winning snatches are going to be like this is wise compared to lead of people's one rep max there are a lot of comments i just want to address there are a lot of comments that are asking like what what is the max snatch and speculating is that max reps at 185 125 in the remainder of the window again it's unclear other than the fact that it says for load and max snatch um so we're assuming it's going to be who has the heaviest lift and that's one of those things that the way i originally

read this and i know that this is true of some other people as well was it was exactly what they those are people were asking yep run 800 max snatches at 185. And I was like, oh, that's interesting that they're counting it for load instead of reps, but that's cool. And then repeat and go the other way. But then I realized, no, that the wording there doesn't lend itself for that. Yeah. Yeah.

Because if, why would you, why would you bother to do eight times 185 when you could just say, I got eight. I think that you're going to see some different strategies on the run but for the most part it's going to be you know coming in in that around four minutes just a kind of controlled run knowing that you have um i'm assuming you can set your first weight on the bar before the run i mean i think it would be silly to not have that at least as an option and having something on on the bar that you know you can hit, that you know you can hit.

And then basically I'm having in my mind like two plans based on that. How did that feel? If it felt great, I'm going this way. If it didn't, I'm going this way. Yeah. So I'm thinking three to four, four attempts is the most anyone takes. Yeah, four for sure is the most.

To me, like in the male field, if you're between 270 and 280, I think you're safe. But if you're under that, I think there are log jams. And I really wonder if a detail that's being left out is, oh, you thought you could just run an eight minute mile warmup. No, you can't because the tie break is the time you need to run time. Yeah. And some people may just say, well, fine, whatever. If I can run 30 seconds slower and hit 15 more pounds, I'm going to do that. But there are going to be some ties. There are

going to be some log jams at some of those lower weights, you know, for the, for the ladies too but i don't think you can i don't think you can worry about the tie break if you're in the tie breaks to run or whatever yeah you got to set yourself up to maximize your snatch and if you tie with 10 guys and lose all the tie break that's still better than being five pounds worse i mean yep i agree what if they told you on this workout that you had to run the first 800 in 345 or four minutes? Like Jackie Pro? Yeah. I do think it's a possibility that we see something like that. That'd be fucking awesome.

And that's a great idea, Will. We don't know. But if they score these as two 100-point tests. Brian talked about this there's yeah i mean there's the the the fact is right right now we we see seven tests we don't know the scoring system two out of any two out of seven tests count as 28 and a half percent and that and if and both of these tests any way you want to slice it the athletes are running and they're snatching. And that would mean that almost a third of the entire test is based on the running-snatching combo if they're both worth 100 points. I'm not convinced one way or the other.

This is an interesting comment, and I've seen a couple of events do this where they have a workout that's for max load, and you can use a 95 pound barbell or you can use a 225 pound barbell and it's up to you how many reps you get at which and how much weight do you think that's a possibility no because everyone's just going to put 75 pounds in the bar does that shake out i've never done the math because that's the way you win you just do 75 a hundred times. But then are you destroyed for the second part? Yeah.

Yeah. Fuck it. But in most scoring systems, a win and a loss is better than two middle of the roads. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Can we get to this,

doing some house cleaning, this donation. Do you guys care about this? Uh, why is it that week one athletes are being put at a disadvantage when it comes to knowing all the details about the workouts, those on week two and three, we'll know everything. Well, they're not competing against you. So week one's not competing against week two is not competing. I think that's total bullshit. I don't, I don't buy that. Everyone says that. And you're totally right. But what I'm saying is that the level of, we have to consider the level of athlete we're talking about. They are so good that if you give them a day or you give them a

week, what can happen changes. And therefore the entire landscape of the competitive field in week two has, it has an, as an advantage. And I'm not talking about against each other. I'm saying they have an advantage coming into that workout that the athletes in week one don't have that will impact the – I think it will impact the outcome of who qualifies for the games because I think if you gave all of the athletes in week one a week to prepare for the standards, which the week two athletes will have, that there are athletes that would figure it out during that time

that won't figure it out in the limited amount of time that they have. And so that, and that's where I think it's, it's kind of a nuance. I don't know if everyone necessarily understands what I'm saying there. So it's not the fact that you have a disadvantage against the other people that have to figure it out. I'm saying that certain athletes with an,

with a week can do a lot and could change their potential to make the games. And the athletes in week one, don't have that chance while the athletes in week two and three do. And I, I don't like that because they had no choice in when we, what week they got to go. Yeah. Yep. I agree. I, yeah. You just changed my mind for me. Thank you. You know, I think about the athletes who, who went to rogue.

And now Brian's put this thought in my head that maybe they're not pulling a sled. And I'm thinking about the athletes that are in these semifinal fields that also pulled the turtle up the hill. And while you may argue, ah, that didn't really mean a whole lot in that workout, or it was all about the lunge, you know, whatever, but they still have something to draw on. If they see that that comes out and they're like, oh, well, I've already done this in a workout. None of you guys have. I kind of know that there's kind of a trick to it.

Whereas if you say what kind of sled you're using, you may have that sled at your gym. You may not, but you have a week to find it and find a gym in the area that has something comparable. And then you're not just like guessing. And if you get lucky, you get lucky. And if not, you're screwed. And, you know, there's, you know, I mean, if we're going to get to the next workout here soon,

where we have this legless rope climb from a seated position, which could mean a million different things. And there's a certain group of athletes that were at the games last year and got briefed on the alpacaaca workout with that a very difficult version of the rope climb has anyone else seen that or you know if that standard comes up those athletes have been able to to know that or they can draw back and or maybe they've been practicing it for a year almost and some athletes in north america east and and um africa are going to have 48 hours to know what it is and no chance to practice. Cause they're going to be busy doing everything else. I don't know. It's just kind of a, it's a weird thing. Like we want, we want, ultimately I want to see the best athletes perform.

And I know that being able to adapt on the fly is a, is a critical component of this sport. But at this stage of competition, if I know that the athletes in week three have two weeks to prepare for the standards and athletes in week one have two days it just something feels off about that if it's this really complex or high high demand scale standard you know and what a lot of people love about the standardized programming is that we do get to cross compare and what we normally see is as the weeks go on as the athletes have more time to prepare the you know the times get beat and while like brian would

push back and say you really think anyone in week two and three are going to beat roman on test one maybe not but if they know what kind of object they're pulling that's them up for more success to be able to do something that feels more like it. Whereas the athletes in the first week didn't know that, oh, I could have done this at home and really gotten a good feel for it, but I didn't have a good feel for it. The rope was actually thicker

and I pulled a half inch nylon rope in practice and after the ski, it felt completely different. That kind of stuff matters when you're talking about the best in the world. And then you're gonna have people that aren't as educated on the sport that say, oh, Roman's done. You know, he got beat by all these people on week three.

That's supposed to be his bread and butter, when really they're not thinking about the time to prepare and the knowledge ahead of time about what the test actually was going to be. All right, let's move to six. I love this workout by the way if we're if we're keeping track that's it now i would count test four as also being dependent on weightlifting yep and test five not yep okay so we've got test six a chipper monostructural weightlifting and gymnastics, a good medley. 20 overhead squats, 185 for the men, 125 for the ladies. A 500-meter row.

Three handstand walk pirouettes. Big asterisk here because we don't know much about them. Two seated legless rope climbs, another big asterisk. We don't know much about these. 20 strict chest-to-wall handstand push-ups. I'm assuming if they had decided to use a deficit, they would have denoted that here. I'm not assuming that.

You don't think so? I think it is deficit. You do? Why do they not? Because they're intentionally omitting certain details. And I don't think it's a deficit from the CrossFit Games with the blocks to an arbitrary target. I think it's beyond the plates.

Yep, plate plates. Okay. Bring that back up. All think this would be on the plates. Yep, plate plates. Okay. Bring that back up. All right, then back down the ladder. Two-seated legless, three-hand stand-walk pirouettes, 500-meter row, and 20 overhead squats. This reminds me a lot of King Arthur from Torian Pro, only in the sense that I think the last 20 overhead squats

are going to destroy a large part of the field. And I think those are going to play a whole lot bigger of a role than people think when they see that big chunk of gymnastics. I think everybody's looking at that chunk of gymnastics. They're like, man, that's the workout. But those last 20 overhead squats, that's heavy for 20, especially after all that gymnastic work. after all that gymnastic work.

So this workout, I mean, it's got a pretty long time cap. Only one more minute for the women. They're rowing the same distance. We still see the 185, 125. We see the same number of strict upper body pulling reps on the rope. See the same number of handstand pushups. I like that. I think it's good.

But when I see this workout, I think very, very, very few people are going to be able to make it aerobic at the end. I think so many people are just going to be blunted by their muscle stamina, their upper body push and pull, that it's not going to be, and there's really nowhere to hide, right? You squat in the beginning, you drive the legs, and then you're on an island for the next five minutes. Yep, yep. Spinning on your hand, balancing, pressing, and pulling. And there's a ton of questions we can get into on this. What would make sense to me is that on one end of the floor, you have your rower and your barbell. They're right next to each other. You have three boxes

that are about 25 feet apart. You kick up after the last, after you get off the rower, you turn 360, you walk, hopefully unbroken, into the next box, you turn again, you keep walking, you turn again, and you walk. And then on the other end, you have your rope and you have your plexiglass, and that's where you do your work. I really think that they chose to write the word strict. And while they could have easily just put chest to wall handstand pushups, which is what they always write or so far this season,

they made it a point to write strict where they could have just said, Hey, don't try to figure out a way to face the wall and kit because you're not allowed to. They could have just told him about the briefing. I think there's a good chance that while it might not be a big deficit, it could just be like a 45 and a 25. Like it could be like a three and a two inch deficit. These athletes all did 21 at the end of a very press dominant workout and 20 in the middle comparatively to the legless.

I don't know. It just feels like it could absolutely be deficit. And that's what I was thinking is like clearly, you know, to the legless, I don't know. It just, it feels like it could absolutely be deficit. Well, that, and that's what I was thinking is like, clearly he, you know, the handstand pushup in particular is something that is, is becoming a thread through the season. We see a new version in the open that we've never seen. He turns us around in the quarterfinals. Now he adds this word in here and it's the volume similar.

So it's, you know, I'm saying i'm saying well there's there's something's going on so i would say there's an asterisk next to all the gymnastics movements in here in terms of an element of unknown the way that jr describes the pirouettes is beautiful and i hope that that's how it is on the competition floor i hope they do mandate some amount of control afterwards walk a distance cross a line and that you can kick down at that point before you go into your next one. But there should be something that some element of advancing. I just think that based on many other competitions I've seen, no matter how good you are at the gymnastics or how bad you are at it, those 20 overhead squats on the way back are looming. And I guarantee you that there will be people that completely implode on that set

towards those last five reps. And they won't, they won't, they'll be, they'll surprise themselves that it's happening, but I, I can, it's definitely going to happen.

And I think you'd be surprised at how good those people are going to be. Like I can, I can already think of several big names that are going to annihilate the gymnastics and then get to that last bar and be like, fuck, I'm stuck here for a while. And look, it's okay. Like you don't have to do those 20 on broken.

You can have a plan there and, and, and execute your plan and it's better than risking it and suffering the consequences. Yeah. You, yeah. If you know you're not capable of those 20 overhead on broken than having a plan and sticking to it, even if it's more conservative than not great. But I think a lot of people are going to have a plan and they're going to get there and they're going to feel obligated to stick to that plan and it's not going to work and they're going to be fucked just like

you said there's already been so much pressing there's been a lot of shoulder people are a little bit rolled forward from the bench press and the dips right there there's a lot of there's a lot of movements preceding sunday that are going to set a lot of people up for their shoulders to already be feeling it going into this and i think that's 100 on purpose too um we didn't really talk about what the legs are going to have after 110 barbell reps hinging from the floor and squatting in Linda going into those going into that max effort run and max effort snatch like that's going to come into play so the workouts on Friday and Saturday coming into play here on Sunday I think we can't understate I mean there's going to be a lot of people who wonder if the barbell should be heavier

and we think back to what was it only 10 total overhead squats at 225 in a regional shipper, five at the beginning at 225, five at the end, and how hard those five were for a lot of people. Like these 20 at 185, I think are going to be as hard or maybe even harder. Maybe harder. I've talked about it on here before. Lowlands throwdown last year, 10 overhead squats at 225 for the men to end the workout, and it eliminated three people from the CrossFit Games. to end the workout, and it eliminated three people from the CrossFit Games. But not Enrico Zanoni.

He crushed him. Do you think that's the linchpin of the workout? Or too many men? There will be people that struggle with every element of the gymnastics. There'll be a group of people for whom the pirouettes and distance distance are challenging there'll be a group of people for whom the legless standard is possibly even too hard to complete there'll be some that maybe this strict handstand push-up i mean we know there are people that that they're they took a massive hit on the strict handstand push-up workout in in quarterfinals relative to everything else that was true for alex vignot it kept willie george out of semifinals.

You know, you got to think about someone like Laura Horvath here. How hard is that middle part of this workout going to be for her? And how much of a hit is she going to take there? I don't think it's risking her missing the games, but I think that this workout in and of itself makes her likely to not win the European regional or semifinal. Yeah, that unknown element is really going to keep a lot of people waiting, wondering what kind of chest to wall it is. Is it the open standard?

Is it on plates? You know, any of that kind of stuff. And just thinking about the road climb, I know we're trying to stay away from the team stuff, but you have to look for some parallels. The teams are required for each athlete at the beginning of their workout to do one seated legless. If it is only one followed by in their workout, two legless each, and then followed by three with legs each,

you can assume that that one rep is probably going to be as hard of a standard as you can come up with whether it's maintaining an l starting below a line both hands get to a line control the descent in the l all the way under the first line like the hardest way you could think about it is the way i think all the athletes should be practicing it because if there's that much value for teams he knows there's gonna be people that don't go to the CrossFit Games because of that first movement after the squats and the burpees. If that's the case, I think he knows that that many people may not go to the games because of these reps on the seated legless for individuals. And Taylor, what I was saying is, you know, the gymnastics will be

hard and there will be people that get caught up there. But anyone who makes it to those overhead squats, no matter how good or not you were at the gymnastic stuff i still think especially at this point in the weekend that that like don't take those 20 squats for granted it's a sticking point cool and last thing i want to say about that will can pull it up like when the alpaca was released and we didn't get to see those rope climbs happening, people were like, oh, this is another new thing. Guys, this is 20 years ago. This is 2003. The only time rope climbs were programmed, you can go back and look.

I've looked. They were almost always programmed from an L position. And these in this workout are 14, basically two for ones, to 25 feet. Like this is a games workout, this workout. When people tell me, dude, that workout you wrote is too hard, I was like, do you fucking read Mainsight ever? Like these are not new things. It's like this idea of like a seated legless and all that kind of stuff.

Like you just got to go back and look like there, there are workouts that you could, you would see on main site 20 years ago and just be like, did Greg write that because he knew probably no one could do it or it could, could he do it when he was a gymnast? Like, you know what I mean? It's like, there are a lot of, there's a lot of stuff in there and boss Boz has talked about, like, he knows.

He knows his stuff. Like, he knows his history, and he's pulling it all back. I was looking back. This is just a side note. I was looking back at main site a while ago, and there was a week maybe in 2009 or 2008 where every workout was, like, Nicole style. every workout was like nicole style it was a 20 minute amrap a 400 meter run or a 500 meter row and max reps of something or this amount of reps of something it was monday through sunday or monday through saturday it's crazy but have you guys ever climbed a 25 foot rope i don't think i've even been in a gym that has one outside of like ours do yeah he's our ceilings to 25 feet and let me tell you it's so it's not

necessarily what you would think one it's scary as fuck it's so scary getting to the top but the higher you climb with your feet the heavier the rope gets so your foot pinch gets harder and harder and harder and by the time you get to the 25 foot mark it's like you're pulling up a 60 pound weight with your bottom foot and trying to clamp it's fucking weird uh but we have them and i've done a bit you're not allowed to use your legs on these 25 foot rope climbs so it doesn't matter yeah i i would probably not try to climb the 25 foot legless if i was being intelligent all right last workout test seven finale three rounds for time 15 calories for the guys 10 for ladies on the echo bike 20 toes to bar 60 foot sandbag bear hug carry 150 for ladies 200 men. What do you guys think about this as a finale?

Enough of a show? Enough separation? Well, you know, I feel like the time domain is predictable for a final workout of a qualifier to the Games. I'm okay with it. It creates for drama, excitement, you know, close races and people, you know, risking it a little bit. A lot of times we see the decreasing style, you know, 30, 20, 10, three, two, one type, whatever it is.

I kind of like that. It's a little different here. That's three, you know, cause a lot of times in that last round, like things just happen so fast. This is like the, each round is the same. So even in that last round, there's an element of drama that can, that can, you know, play itself out. I mean, I know that it's completely different. I just like, I was really surprised to see the echo bike come up in two out of seven tests. I know, I know.

I will talk, I guess we can talk a little more about it when we finish with this workout, but running in three workouts, echo bike in two workouts. It's interesting. I'm not, I'm also, man, I love the thruster, the thruster, rope, climb, thruster, muscle up, thruster, whatever finale. Um, I don't know. I guess I think of the rogue sandbag carry workout. And there was a lot of drama in that workout people flying on the bag eating shit so that was cool and and i'm and i think there's potential for quite a bit of that here after the

20 toaster bar a lot of people when they go to pick up that bag they don't worry about getting a secure grip they just grab the bag like this and after you've done 60 toaster bar in your last round who's gonna drop the bag on accident and stumble over it i think i think there'll be enough drama i think i like it in terms of it's going to be exciting to watch but is does it introduce anything new that we haven't seen yet in the test and i don't know that necessarily it does we've got echo bike again we've got more grip i guess to the you know we don't have ghd so we have toes to ring which is you know kind of similar to the – we don't have GHD, so we have toes to ring, which is kind of similar to the toes to bar.

Moving a distance from A to B, we have the sled. So it's just – I wonder if it – Yeah, going into this – going into these last two tests, not knowing what they were, anyone that was asking me, of course I'm trying to think of things that'll support some predictions but i'm thinking to myself as much as he's harped on trunk flexion this year i said well there's ghd's left there's toes to bar left there's knees to elbow left and there's you know there's ghd's you know there something will come out and while i don't think it's a problem that you already have

some toes to ring weighted and then you do toes to bar i think it's fine i wouldn't have thought it would be toes to bar yeah neither would i have i or or else it i thought maybe it was a possibility that workout you you mentioned to me a while ago so fun you jr came up with this workout it was like a one two three or 10 20 30 rep scheme but it was a one minute l sit hold into 20 unbroken cleaning jerks or snatches at a certain weight like 135 or something like that and then 30 calories on the echo bike yeah i don't know you wrote that and i told the people that that added me i was like that that does not look like anything i ever wrote you literally okay well you didn't write it you talked we talked about it on phone, and you were just spitting it out of your mouth,

and I was like, man, I thought about it on a deeper level. I was like, that is a disgusting workout. That would have been cool, having an L-sit for time in there, like a set amount of seconds. Yeah, so this is what I kind of see, though. When I see this workout, I think it's really easy to overlook it, and all of us know that the workouts you overlook are the ones that are the most difficult and the ones that are harder than you think. I actually think this workout is slower than we think. I don't think it, I think the people who

pace this correctly will build as the workout goes on. Like I think the people who start out at a 95 or a 90 on the bike will lose. I think the three rounds of it really, really baits people with those small, Oh, only 15 cows. Oh, only 20 toes to bar. Oh,

only a six second carry. That's not going to be a big deal, but I think I'm under tension of all three, like by round three, some people will fade on this workout. It is a sub five minute workout. It's not an all out sprint. It is not an all out sprint. This is not 45, 60, 180.

Three rounds are complete. It's completely different. I think this, I mean, this workout screams Justin Madaris. I wrote that this article about him and his just ability to do this and I split every workout that he did at the games into thirds this one obviously splits nicely into thirds but in his heat expect them to be fifth after the first round third after the second round and first at the end of the workout and if you're the person that can do that do it in this workout yeah and what i think will be hard

is for the people who are like known in the community as being like oh the echo bike is going to be a separator right if you can get all five seconds faster every time you're not going to be able to make up any time on the 60 toes of our the carry those are the guys that are going to win it do they do they know that and do they say okay well everyone's expecting me to sprint this bike that's what i have to do or do you have someone that's like no no no that's not how you win it you win it by sprinting the last bike so i don't know i i when i saw echo bike like i said at the beginning of the show i thought that biker would have fit perfectly for event one. It's a longer, it's for distance. It's got that longer sustainable feel. I think echo bike is, is more suited for a workout like this. I think it's perfect, really rewarding power output,

rewarding someone that's going to take a risk. But yeah, I mean, now's probably a good time, right? You can add everything up. Yeah. Let's look at, let's look over it. Well, that's the last thing to, to just You can add everything up. Yeah. Let's look at, let's look over at, well, the last thing to just to consider is it's the last workout, which means that there's a lot on the line. People will understand what they need to do, what they can afford to do, what they can't afford to do. And so people will have to risk it.

So for certain, certain athletes, whatever the optimal strategy to maximize your time on this workout is, it might go out the window. Cause if, if you realize, well, that might not be good enough anyway so you're going to see you know you'll see some strategies in this workout that are dictated by circumstance and and in some cases it might pay off and in some cases people will take the risk and and then they'll plummet down the leaderboard because of it last workout two of the weekend the last 20 toes to bar maybe kind of a sneak attack too for some people yeah without a doubt um but on the subject of the machines i think it is important that we kind of we look at some things that people are talking about boz loves to go heavy when you're under fatigue bo Boz loves these high-level gymnastic skills. Boz has shown that he really, really doesn't leave out monostructural

until the games, that's for sure. So I think in the past that's kind of what we've seen. We can look back, 2013, 2014, two monostructural at regionals. 2015, 2016, 2017, three monostructural at regionals 2015 2016 2017 three monostructural at regionals two of those three were in the same workout both years the only year that there were more than three 2018 and one of them had three in the same workout triple threes and then it had calault Bike in the chipper on Sunday. This regional has seven. Jesus. With no jump rope.

With no jump rope. And usually in all those years, 2013 to 2018, Double Unders was one of them. And I think every year. So, I mean, I think it's great. I think one of the most frustrating things is to know that running is going to be tested in at least two ways, maybe three at the games. And we get a lot of people at the games that can't run because they were only tested on it maybe once. Well, everyone likes to gripe about the shuttle runs and maybe just, you know, justified. But he definitely values running. And he said in a podcast, you can't test fitness without running. What we see running is in three of the seven, right? Biking is in two, right? We see more machine work. And a lot of people, I mean, this is really polarizing too, just as much as some of the

things that are being brought back from the early years of CrossFit. Like, is there too much monostructural now? Is there too much machine work? Do you guys think that the machines matter in all of these? Or do you think they're just there to govern pace and to give opportunities for risk-taking? This is what I would say. I personally love the amount of monostructural in this programming. I think in some events, there's too much monostructural balanced with the level of

skill or however important the opposing modality is. Think about some of the macro syndicate workouts last year, which seemed to be just a high degree of machine and grunt work, machine, grunt work, machine, grunt work. I don't think that's the case here. You have the handstand pirouette. You have the seated legless. You have the deficit wall facing, the heavy overhead squats. You have a lot of weightlifting and gymnastic movements, the ring complexes, all those things that matter so much. I don't think the monostructural outweighs it or takes over the test personally.

In test six, do you think the leaderboard changes at all with the 1K of rowing? No. No. Zero. So what do you think the rowing is in there for? Make you a little more tired before you get to the gymnastics. Yeah.

See, I think it's put there because one of the things Boz has talked about a lot is the 10 general physical skills and those bottom four being things that when you're fatigued, when your heart rate is high, automatically can go away because they're not as drilled into your nervous system so like going from the row into your pirouette it's just going to make you a little bit more unbalanced right it's going to make you just a little bit doing that kind of stuff at a high heart rate is when you see

things deteriorate so I think like that's placed very purposefully right it's a good parallel with the first test of this season the 23.1 repeat we have 60 calorie row the buy-in you don't think too much about it but but what is the subtle way that it affects you

going into the rest of that work i mean there are a lot of people that will say man those cleans were the hardest cleans at that weight i've ever done and you look you said there's really nothing that crazy before it some maybe it just does have that sneaky effect. And, you know, I would be curious to know if he tested the workout without the row and with the row and got some feedback and decided, no,

no, we got to keep it in. I mean, the worst case scenario is, well, we need to make, we want this workout to be a couple of minutes longer. Let's just put a row in.

And I don't think that's that bad of a scenario because you get a good stimulus out of it regardless i think i think it does it it does add a little bit of um adds a little bit for the crowd while people will say they don't want to sit and watch someone row and be like oh well i know they're going to get off in like about two minutes but waiting on the hand in the air for two athletes that are rowing and wondering if someone's making up time and then they both get off the rower at the same time going to the last barbell who's going to pick it up first versus oh yeah they're just ahead they just got done with their handstand walk they're about to go back to the bar there's no suspense there it does add a little bit of uncertainty like can they make up five or ten seconds that

they lost on this row and will it pay off at rep 15 on the overhead squat or will it end up being the reason why they break the overhead squat i think kind of started the the trend of you know telling me for me it feels like the weightlifting component of test one is critical the added weight component of crest two is critical the weightlifting in test three is that's all there is in. In test 4, it's a max load of snatch. We're assuming there's two weightlifting that matters. So you're starting off with like the weights mattering in a lot of these workouts. And we look in the back end, I think the run matters in test 5. Test 6, I think the gymnastics is probably the most critical. I

know I spent a lot of time talking about the overhead squats at the end. And to me, test seven is how bad do you want it? Like, how much are you willing to hurt when everything's on the line? So I and I kind of see a little bit of a inverse relative to the games last year, where there was a lot of kind of skill and other things early on. And then you saw heavy, heavy, heavy at the end where the athletes that accept the weightlifting were able to climb the leaderboard a little bit. And so I don't know, it's just kind of a, an overall trend I was looking at. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm like thinking too hard about it, but you think it's balanced. It feels to me like, like, uh, it favors the stronger athlete, the totality of the testing, the, you know, there's some, there's certainly some big question marks about how difficult the gymnastics wound up being. And I think that the answer to that is somewhat critical before giving

a fair assessment of how balanced it is. So if you think the seated legless are the hardest standard and the deficit strict are, or the strict art deficit in that scenario, it's a balanced test. It's like the things that matter are how hard are the sled pull, you know, how, how much of a factor is that, um, is, you know, what, what's the limiting factor in workout two? I'm not sure what it is for the general field, which I think is great. You know, and are we saying, well, that's the gymnastics that's a limiter. And it's like, well, but if we took the ruck away, how much different would this leaderboard look? Then it's like, I don't know. And then, you know, I think that in the middle portion,

there's some more obvious things that are being tested from Linda and then test four and five. Test six to me is a giant question mark i'm hopeful that the gymnastics are extremely difficult and limiting there's still be athletes in both fields that will no matter how hard it is we'll be able to move through that steadily and show some excellent performances but it feels like it has to be relative to everything else that's that that appears to be the critical components of the workouts. So I don't know yet. Up in the air. Do you like it generally?

Looking at the programming, initial reactions or maybe not so initial reactions after sitting on it thinking about it, do you like it as a whole for semifinals to accomplish the goal of getting the fittest of the games? There were some things that I was really hoping we would see at least some of, and we did. But I would say I like it because it's so different. It's very different than anything that we've ever seen as far as a streamlined competition goes. There are things like, yeah, you can call those four and five a couplet,

but we're never coming back to either movement it's like they're not they're in boz he he's he's showing more of a kim in his programming right last chance qualifier thruster into max bar muscle up rest a second bar muscle up into max thruster it's the same format like it's presented little differently, but it's still a very similar format. And it's something that we never really saw in competition beforehand. So while he's kind of playing off of those, like an inverse relationship workout type thing like that, I think it's really cool because it's not like, oh, are we going to see a wall ball pull up into a pistol power clean, right?

That is not anything like that back-to-back workout is, right? They're both back-to-back, and we don't even know how they're scored. But it's very different. It feels very different. And I think because of that, it'll end up being a good thing. Because going into it, we can't say, oh, they're probably a frontrunner for that. They're probably a frontrunner for that.

There are a few of those, but Brian knows the athletes better than anybody, I guarantee there's a few tests that Brian's scratching his head. Like, I don't even know, I can't even draw from any other competitions on these workouts. I like it. And I think it's more balanced maybe than you initially may think. I think to Brian's point to a degree, I think it favors the bigger athletes, but I think it favors the bigger athletes who are also really good at gymnastics. So maybe not the traditional big athletes. So think of someone like Jason or Roman.

They're good enough at gymnastics to do really well at the games. They're good enough at gymnastics to win semifinals. So it's a really, maybe biased slightly toward an athlete like that, but I don't think it's biased generally towards the big athletes. Like I think of a guy like Zach Watts, who if it's just grunt work and conditioning and heavyweights,

he's going to crush it. And if there's any skills, he's fucked. I think there's enough skill and enough gymnastics. Maybe there's a slight bias, but I don't know. I like it. I think it's relatively balanced. And I think to what JR said, it's so different. There's so many things that are challenging and we haven't seen before in competition that make me love it. From the dumbbell bench to the seated legless to the hand over hand pull at the semifinal level, I'm excited. More than anything, I'm excited to watch each workout. It's been a long time since I've been able to say that about a semifinal. I think with two, three, and six, with the rings, with the dumbbell bench, and with the gymnastics in the middle, that's going to be enough to say, oh, you didn't deserve one of those spots.

Yep. enough to say, oh, you didn't deserve one of those spots. I think that's between those three, people are going to get weeded in that, hey, if it wouldn't have been for that one workout, we'll say that about a handful of people the first weekend. If it wouldn't have been for that one workout, they would have made it. And we don't know, but maybe that's what the program is really written for, is to make sure those last few spots are ones that are going to be able to go to the games and as brian said before take the test and do well on the test that they're about to take like hey you can't get through this ring complex

well you guys are going to do back rolls to support at the games like what why am i confident that you can do that if you can't do some toes to ring and ring dips like i don't know like maybe that's the reason the last element of the work that i really do like is that i feel like he's really testing the athlete's ability to recover yeah not just workout to work out but movement patterns that interfere you snatch heavy and you snatch fast then you overhead squat the next morning then you strict handstand push up in the middle of it and then you gotta overhead squat again and show that stability in the same movement pattern again at the end of the world like there's some sneaky components of that i

think he's hitting a good amount of time domains you know he goes long he hits it back to back there's an interval style workout like they're all i think there are a lot of different elements of that that i'm happy to see expressed here that my biggest concern is the presentability like you can really lose or win at the semi-final level the spectacle of it by the floor layout and what you're able to achieve I know that I mean in my mind I'm I'm like convinced that it's going to be shuttle runs for the 800 meter run and I which I would I would hate to see it but if you think about having it at seven different semifinals and seven different venues and seven different continents over three different weekends, do you have a space that you can actually snatch,

get off the floor, run some laps and get back to the finish line at each of those venues and make that happen? I mean, if you can, that's going to be one of the most exciting environments that I've ever been in at a CrossFit event. I mean, I could not imagine the excitement watching them run laps knowing it's on the line on a Saturday night. And if it's shuttle runs up and down the floor and that's all you can do with logistics. So they're like, that's an L it's an element of this stage of competition with a show.

And like we've talked about, there are certain things that seem pretty obvious that make it very easy to understand the storytelling, a nice appealing spectacle for people at home or at um that happen to go there and i hope that all they're all sold out and packed and in great environments um so i would say that overall i'm happy with it i really like that recoverability thing the the way that that's tested throughout this and i'm hopeful that there's uh there's plans in terms of the execution that allows for really exciting things that I think we're all expecting. Yeah, I think that for me, the thing I like the most is that there is a lot of monostructural being tested

to get people to the games. And the variance in all the different movements, I think, is really, really strong. In seven tests, you have a lot of grunt work movement, right? You have sandbag carry, you have hand over hand, you have burpees that are weighted. That's, that's grunt, right? You've got some really, really high level gymnastics movements, especially that are dense in test six. And then you've still got some like classic barbell cycling in two of the

workouts. One's only has eight reps, but there's a ton of barbell cycling to watch and test. And then, you know, there's 40 overhead squats in, in, in test six.

I think the variance is there too. Yeah. And like you said earlier, midway through the show, Jr, you have to be precise. You know, you, there's not a lot of room for error on some of these things and we know

he values that high level of execution and I feel like in addition to everything else we've talked about he's woven that in so I'm overall very impressed and super excited to see what the athletes do with some of these Agreed I love it

Any other final thoughts we good i would just say this because jr talked about it earlier you know it even though like it will just take the example roman that you use like roman in week three would probably be roman in week one but i feel that that some of the way these tests are, that we're still going to get, and this happened in regional too, where occasionally you'd get a specialist going in week one that was set a time that was never beat or a score that was never beat.

And just knowing that North America East is going first, especially on the women's side, I will not be surprised if between the men and women combined, which would be 14 total records in week one, if we see three or four last the entire duration of semifinals even though you think that they're at an unfair advantage with the standards yeah i mean just i'm just just looking like the level of athletes like it seems to me like between mal o'brien and daniel brandon and emma karen emma lawson alexis raptus amanda barnett like

there's that that's like six of the top 10 women in the world going in week one like one of them's gonna do something on some of these workouts that's just insane jason and roman are some of the best in the world jeff adler can put up some insane i mean who knows like jeff adler might set a score linda that just doesn't know in beats like we'll see you know it'll be crazy it'll be fun jr anything else any last words words of wisdom? A blessing maybe on the chat? I don't chat at all. You're not looking at that. I have a lot of polydent in here right now. I take out the two, but that's

going to happen. The best part is that sometimes when it goes quiet because you're on your iPhone, you can hear all the crickets in the background. It's like perfect. Frogs, I'm sorry. Frogs, yeah. The frogs go crazy. Taylor, any last words? It's going to be fun to watch. I'm excited.

Yeah, we're going to Africa. Taylor and I are going to Africa, flying out next week. We'll be posting a lot. Obviously, Taylor's coaching Michelle. We're following Michelle. Posting stuff on our YouTube, hopefully every day. Posting a lot for Michelle's Instagram account, so check that out.

Go check out Brian's website, befriendly.com. Posting tons of great content, especially as he's had all his takes on workouts as they come out and stuff like that. I'm sure there'll be a lot coming up. Go sign up for a free trial of Self Made Training program. We have our SMTP Compete and SMTP60

programs, so there's something for everyone so you can go to that self-made training program.com thanks to everyone that donated money i know we didn't really we didn't really have a uh ground rules on if what we're doing there but i'm sure someone says someone appreciates appreciate it appreciate whatever that word is however you say that, but we appreciate it too. Sorry if we didn't read your name. Funny.

We didn't make crude jokes about it. Apologize if that's what you're looking for. And if you guys in the chat have any ideas or topics that you maybe would like to see or have interest in being covered on one of these shows coming up, me and JR are not going to have a set schedule or anything. We're just going to do these when we feel like doing them and have fun talking about shit that we like to talk about so you know if you guys have any stuff that might spark an interesting

conversation and me and jr like it um we'll talk about it yeah we got this we made an instagram account we'll see you where we go with that but you you can also just DM either the self-made training program account, Taylor's account, JR's account. I don't know. Brian may be here. Who knows? Brian's a mystery,

but I think that's all we got. So thanks everyone for joining. I mean, pretty awesome to have so many people watching. Thanks Sevan for giving the platform and what a huge blessing to be able to do a show and just come in and have an audience that's already here. We know that you guys are all here have an audience that's already here. We know that you guys are all here because of seven's hard work. So we appreciate him letting us jump on his pirate ship.

So thank you guys. And bye-bye.