The Sevan Podcast - Greg Hammond | The Story of Concept2 - The Machine Man

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

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How you been? Awesome. So good. Bam. We're live. Hey, are you in your office at Concept2? I'm actually in just off my office. I'm in a little conference room. Is that where you do calls like this, podcasts and whatnot?

I mean, fancy ones like this I do. Normally I do them from my desk. Fair enough. I picked that as a compliment. I mean, I can show you it, but there's not much in it. It's a lot of old motocross jerseys and some CrossFit paraphernalia from over the years, stuff like that. What state are you in? Vermont. Are you close to Fraser? Oh, yeah.

We grew up in the same town. I mean, of course, I was decades before him, but yeah, Colchester, Vermont is where him and I grew up. And then actually Matt was just up here with HWPO and actually taught a couple of classes here for the employees, which is kind of nice of him just, you know, so they'd come up and do it. And so we did in our new workout room. That's crazy cool. What kind of classes? Like just like CrossFit?

He did sweat because we were, you know, there's a couple, there's people here that don't do CrossFit or even work out like regularly. And so they hosted a sweat class and jake uh and josh did um taught the class and then matt actually did the class so oh that was fun cool uh jake marconi and who who's the other guy josh what's josh's last name i forget um he's part of the hwpo crew but i mean yeah so matt when matt first started crossfitting it was at champlain valley where i was going like Like I didn't, I remember when he came in and didn't know who he was and then saw, he actually, he didn't even do crossfit at first.

He just went in the back room and was like lifting weights. And we're just like, Oh, it's just another new guy. And then we saw what he was putting on for plates and like, wait, that's just not another guy. Hey, um, is that gym still there? Champlain Valley? Oh yeah. Yep. Yep. Uh, so jake i mean jade and danny haran you don't remember danny yeah yeah yeah yeah it's their place yeah danny haran still pops up now and again oh yes right she's a beast still yeah she's still a beast and she's doing a

lot of other stuff too like they've been mountain biking a lot now and stuff like that but um yeah the gym is still doing great they're they're really they're killing it so what's a sweat class basically a cardio class a moving class i'm guessing you guys have a lot of machines yeah i mean you know thanks to bill and katie our gym is sweet we just actually redid it after covid when we came back to work um they asked me if i wanted to design a new workout room and we had built an addition. And so of course got ahold of, you know, Bill and Katie and, they helped us out tremendously with that. So yeah, our gym is pretty stacked, you know, That's awesome. How big is Concept2? Is there one location?

It's one world headquarters? There's one world headquarters here in Vermont, which we think we have like 80 employees here where we make all the carbon fiber racing oars and then we have a another subcontractor that actually does the assembly here too a former employee of ours that kind of went out on his own and they do assembly which we used to build them all like i used to actually build rolling machines back in the day um but uh take out the trash oh yeah i mean still do all i mean everyone here is cool everyone will do whatever needs to be done it's kind of a cool thing but we have offices in uh hamburg germany and uh nottingham in the uk switzerland australia um trying to think i'm missing some other ones um

yeah netherlands you know so we we are we do have offices in other places but we outfit the world so um did i meet you were you at the 2008 games yeah actually i was thinking about that last night i met you i met you there uh it was you and then again faster john gilson had a crew so you had the only two people with cameras i think was you and then pat that used to work for john gilson uh-huh um yeah but we met in aromas i think we had beers together that first year crazy dude were you at the 2007 games seven i wasn't uh eight and nine was still at aromas right yes sir so i was at eight and nine uh there and were you there in the capacity of um working for concept two at that time or were you there just as a crossfitter no it was for concept

two so i already knew about crossfit actually i met glassman and dave at um they needed someone who was prior service to teach some rowing at a seminar that was going on at bud school in san diego so they needed someone who was prior service just to get on base and so at the time i was doing like triathlons and cardio stuff and you know some weight lifting and like who wants to go to a navy seal you know training facility i'm like i'll go in a heartbeat so i went out there and actually met greg met dave got interviews to crossfit got my ass kicked in like three workouts. And I thought I was pretty fit. And then I came home with just like the fire that every new CrossFitter had. And I was like, man, I got a lot of work to do. Did he know, did, did, um, so you show up

there at, uh, in San Diego. Um, what's the Island called? Coronado. You show up there at the Navy SEALs training ground there and you had never met Greg and Dave before, but you had heard, had you heard of CrossFit? I probably heard the name like once before, like a couple of weeks before. Was this 2006, seven? Probably six. I was trying to think about it when Dave was on Jocko's podcast. I'm almost thinking that Jocko might've been in that class that i was at and i didn't know any of these guys um right it was my first experience i went into this podcast in the world at that time greg i mean how old was the internet then i don't even remember i barely remember youtube back then yeah but it was um you know i was cool because i

mean i what i knew about navy seals was charlie sheen and uh you know, I was cool because, I mean, what I knew about Navy SEALs was Charlie Sheen and, you know, Hollywood. And I get there and everyone looked very normal until I saw their fitness level and everything. And here's the other thing I thought was cool. So my degree is in health science. I had a four-year degree in health science with a focus on corporate wellness. And, you know, I'm not a great student. You know, I struggled through everything, but I got through with my degree, but I watched Greg talk. And in four hours, he said everything that four years of my college said, and he said it better, more articulate and got me more fired

up. And everything he said was like spot on. So I was, I went home and I'm like, yeah, this guy knows what he's, he's talking about. And, you know, after that, I mean, I've taken my level one and my level two years later, but I had listened to it then it wasn't a full level one back then. I think it was just Greg doing a seminar, but he did the whole health continuum and you know, all the, the usual spiel and everything. And I was like, wow, this guy's onto something. Which is even more impressive because you were an expert in your own right. And you, you probably had some pushback, like, okay, what's this fucking guy going to say? Like, I'm sure a lot, right. I mean, you're an expert also, but then here,

you're hearing a guy talk and you're like, Holy shit. I'm very self-aware in the fact that I don't know everything. So I usually go into anything kind of with an open mind anyways. But yeah, I knew, I knew right away, like, you know, we did a little bit of talk about nutrition, but, you know, keep in mind. So I grew up, I graduated college in, was it 93? So we were still doing like long, slow distance training, eating as many carbs as we could, you know, wearing heart rate monitors, all this stuff that I was told by my coaches that we needed to do. And here's Greg offering this breath of

fresh air saying, wait a second, I can eat, you know, what I want to eat for the most part, you know, meat, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. And, you know, I don't need to wear my heart rate monitor. It doesn't matter. You're only going to go as hard as you can. And I'm just like, ah, this guy's, this guy's got it. And then, you know, to this day, I still think, unfortunately, the cycle is coming back around. Of course, we're all wearing, you know, heart rate monitors now again and all this stuff. And I'm like, it's just like, I want to, I want to see it come back around. I want us to, to realize that we don't need all this stuff. I saw some number that the average, that the average person, when they, after they purchase

a wearable only wears it for like 45 days or something. And I feel like that about Apple watches. Like I have one and I wear it like two days every of the month and then I take it off again. It's weird. No, I I'm with you. I mean, I, I wear my garment and I wear it to bed for like sleep numbers, but I mean, I can wake up and tell you now I wouldn't wearing it long enough. I probably what my numbers are just by how I feel. Yeah. But yeah, I mean,

it's, I guess it is what it is. It's it's i mean it's more of a habit now for me than anything so uh dale king uh the owner of portsmouth uh cross new documentary just dropped uh sorry i don't use that word drop just came out just published produced just uh it's on live on itunes now anyway dale king says i want to go on record. It's saying Greg Hammond. Did I pronounce your last name right? Yeah. Hammond. Yeah.

Hammond is one of the most underrated, unappreciated people in the entire CrossFit space. He and Concept2 are rock solid. Love you, brother. It's great. At least I know we got the check now. That was cool. So yeah, Dale's one of that. Dale's awesome.

Actually, I was stoked when now I was seeing all the OG stuff coming back out, like with Chase and him and we uh we did see it see each other quickly at the games but i love this kind of culture inside the culture of the ogs you know yeah i really i love that feel it's kind of nice um what tell me what is the the name of the company is concept too right that's the umbrella company. Well, there's no umbrella. That's us. Yeah, it's Concept2.

Yep. And is it privately owned? Yeah. Two brothers, family owned. We're still a family owned business. Two great guys still work out every day. They're in their seventies and will probably beat most CrossFitters of any age in the 2K. I mean, these guys are solid.

And how long have you worked there? 27 years. Yeah. And when you started there, how many employees were there? Uh, probably 50 or so. It was already big. Well, because back then we were assembling everything ourselves. And so a lot of it was, so the way that flow went, you'd come in, um, you'd make, you know, like 30 machines from scratch from parts, and then you test row 30 or 60 machines.

So that was your workout. Then you'd maybe go make some ores or work with some carbon fiber. And, um, and then we'd all leave and go play outside after it was the owners are amazing people there they they want quality you sign everything that you make um and then when you're if you can get your work done in less than eight hours and your quality is still good go do something go have fun go you know whatever the only other rule was that a day that something's not going right and you're there for 10 hours don't bitch just stay um so they they're really good managers and they they would kill me if they heard me say manager they're just they're just the two brothers so um uh so were the only two items back in the day oars and rower the rower and how many rowers were there back then just one yeah uh when i came

in it was the end of the model b which had the wire cage around it and then the model c's which when crossfit first started that's probably what most gyms had these gray all metal around the flywheel model c's and if you have a model c and you look underneath the front legs you'll see a handwritten date and an initials and if you see one that says gh then i made your model c so so the parts show up to concept two and then you guys would start putting them together yeah yeah i mean the rule always used to be you know if we could get something from vermont first united states second and if we couldn't get good quality there then we would go overseas so there are parts from overseas but for the most part like the guy that bends our metals and paint him paints all the metals i mean it's right down the

road kind of thing so yeah i mean we could probably make a much more money and profit if we ever went overseas but it just will never happen we're very proud to be here so who invented the rower well pete and so pete and dick they're the two brothers um they first were like they were the innovators in going from a wooden ore to carbon fiber which will be there's a boys in the boat movie coming out you'll see a bunch of old wooden ores from when rowing was super popular like in the 30s and stuff so they came out with this kick-ass composite or that just revolutionized the sport these guys were well dick was in the olympics peter and dick tried to make the olympics together and missed it and so they wanted to make a machine

that could train in the winter time and so and there's pictures on our website they literally took a huffy bolted it to the barn floor upside down with a sliding seat and made the first rower on there so there was other ergometers back then but they were nothing like what you would notice now so ergometers uh company yeah so if you go to um where's on there there's one i should say like under contact or something you'll see history somewhere's on there you can't see the screen's too small right now let me see a photo gallery not the gallery so i want to say history about concept too yeah about concept too and then so that's pete and dick it looks like a really old picture but it's

that's just because it's black and white but they they started it in a barn in stowe vermont which is like 10 minutes from here and um this is before me but the original guys they would have to like feed the cows start a fire and then start making oars back in the day we moved into this building in the early 80s and you've been there since yeah we have i didn't get here until 96 so it's crazy i when i think of you i think of you as being there since the very beginning uh as people are retiring there's it's getting to be not a whole heck of a lot of people that have been here longer than myself, except for the owners. Right. I'm a very loyal guy and I'll be here as long as those guys are here.

Oh, wow. Look at these herbs. Yep. Um, so that's a model a right there. And that's the first, what was called the crash bees. So crash bees used to be the world indoor rowing championships. And it stood for Charles River All-Star Has-Been. Just a bunch of guys that wanted to row and drink beer. What you

couldn't see in the background of that picture was just a row of kegs. So it was like row a 2K. Actually back then it was 2,500 meters and then drink beer after with your buddies. I think one of the reasons I liked the original CrossFit so much, it was a lot like how we started. It's like you'd work out hard with your friends, and then you'd bro down with them after and have a good time. Nobody took themselves too seriously. What you're showing right now, people should watch that. There's some cool stuff on there. Why did they call it the Crash Bees, Greg?

We didn't start Crash Bees. The guys that started it in Boston, the river is called the Charles river in Boston. And so there's Pete and Dick when they first started this building. And because there are big dudes, are those big dudes? Yeah. They're like six, five or so. Yeah. So just, I mean, anybody who I've met before will realize that I'm not a tall guy. I didn't row in the water. I was a rugby player. That's how I found the rower originally um so when I go to rowing events they everyone's like you were a rower

skeptically as their eyebrow raises but there's the first that's the first uh rendition of the rower right there this is ridiculous it started Revolution man we started a sport there was no sport of indoor rowing until these guys did it. Same with the skier. There was never a skier until we invented a skier. I'm going to come back to how it got the name Crash Bees, but I want to look at this machine real quick. So this is a Huffy bike flip upside down,

sitting on its book rack. And then the guy sitting on a sled. Well, that sled is an old Tenturi piston rower. So there were some old piston rowers back then, but it didn't give you the feel of rowing. It was essentially like a lever arm that you would pull back and forth like a piston like would be on the hatchback of your car. So when he pulls that, does it pull him closer to the tire, the whole? No, I mean, even on the rower now and people don't realize is that you actually come forward on the rower not by pulling up with your feet it's the weight shift

of your upper body that brings you forward um that's one of the cues that we do to get people to row better is we actually make them not strap in so that they learn to come forward without pulling on their feet ah interesting okay so so god i don't even understand how that works i mean really and this is a great thing about this is why our machines last forever it's a it's a chain it's a bungee cord some gears and then all the magic or most of the magic is in the monitor although that model a that's actually a Napa auto parts, speedometer cable and an old bicycle speedometer. And there used to be a Napa part number for that cable. Seriously? Yeah. And there might still be, we just don't use them anymore.

Yeah. That's crazy. Do you have one of those in the office? Yeah. Yep. Actually just outside the door. I thought for a second I had one in here, but. And is it functioning? Can someone get on it and ride it? Oh, I did it. Yeah. I did it actually for an Instagram post. What was it for just this past winter? I was here and, or maybe, you know, it was in the spring. Something was going on. I just walked by. I'm like, I don't think CrossFitters have seen this before. So I got on it and people loved it.

That was like one of the most popular posts I've done. I don't know if you can see it on here, but this is the old, I can't see it. The old model B. And that's actually Judy gear. She's the wife of one of the founders here. And she actually was in the Olympics as well. Hey, how much was this? How much was this model a? So here's the crazy thing. Uh, it wasn't much cheaper than that. So I think it was like maybe eight 25 to eight 50. Okay. And, um, and most of our time, like the brothers believe in value. And so they try to keep everything as much as they can under a thousand dollars. It's always been that way. And so I think at one point we had more price decreases than increases. And the only time we

increases them is basically when our parts cost more. So. Did you guys have an explosion during the, the so-called pandemic? Did, did we, everyone, your mother? Yeah. It's, it sucked. Yeah. I mean, so I went back from doing marketing cause I wasn't traveling to helping with customer service and taking, and it was, it was like, I started hating people because everyone is freaking out. And like, I had this one woman that was basically telling me I was lying that we had machines, even though we were in an eight week backlog and telling me how she'd lost all this weight, but she's going to get fat again because she has no way to work out. I had to explain to her what an air squat was. And I said, listen, you do a hundred air squats a day. You

wait that eight weeks, I guarantee you're not going to gain any weight. And she's like, she was letting me have it. I mean, I might even hung up on her, which is pretty rare. So, but a good time though, also, right financially yeah it was it was good we were i mean it was it was hard to watch you know our friends that owned restaurants and businesses that were doing shitty and meanwhile we were selling a ton of machines um but you know it's also one of those things there's also a back end to it everyone bought then so like right now it's not like i mean we're not doing bad but it's one of those things that everything goes up and then everything tapers off you know on there so um are are the four are there four products is it the ore the bike the skier and the rower rower

yeah so that's it and those are the four yep wild uh wayne short um is pm6 is that that's one of the is that what the monitors are called yeah the monitors are pms and and everyone calls them pms but it's not it's just pm and it stands for performance monitor on there is pm6 on the horizon hopefully with bluetooth wi-fi firmware update capability appreciate the updates to erg data and look forward to future development um so right now if you have erg data which is our app and you have a pm5 i think most all pm5s you can actually now if you do the firmware update you can download more firmware on there wirelessly from your phone takes a long time but like 10 or 15 minutes but uh as far as a pm6 goes the way it works here is that we're always working on stuff

and we have a whiteboard in the engineering room and we put wish lists on it like okay you know because we all use the equipment ourselves so if somebody has an idea they get out of the workout room they have an idea like they can go on the whiteboard and say you know i think this would be something that would be good and it goes on the whiteboard and then the engineers look at it as they're working on stuff and like well that could work you know this and that um it's very open source here those poor guys usually hear from me about game stuff all the time like you know when dave asked for something my go-to is to say yes even if i don't know and then i have those guys try to implement it into the monitors and And, and that's

why we have like things like undefined rest in the monitors and all this stuff. That's very, that's, that came because of CrossFit because people wanted to get off a machine, go lift some weights and go back without the monitors turning off. And so we built that for CrossFit. So, so that's how big the community is. The requests from the, uh, CrossFit community have now made it as uh components on the um oh yeah but it's not even so much that it's like it's crazy we're like a i don't know if it's maybe i hope all companies are like this but maybe not like we really enjoy our customers like people who want to sweat and beat themselves up on our equipment will take suggestions from

anybody i mean if you're willing to do that then we then we're willing to put it on the board and see. I mean, maybe not for just one request, but if it comes up more than once, then we would put it on there and try to make it happen for them. Greg, I remember back in the day there were like these ideas and dreams and maybe it's there. It shows how out of the loop I am. But you could be on a rower somewhere racing a guy somewhere else through Wi-Fi. Is that that's. Yeah, no, it's possible. Actually, so what we're working on now and it should be within this year um there could be an indoor race say in like norway and then you and i could be at home racing but we would show

up on their big jumbotron racing from home but within that race so that everyone can yeah so everyone can race together and then then there's, you know, Are there events like that? Are there big ones? God, that seems like a charity event dream. So actually, so, uh, what's the big fitness festivals coming up in England? Uh, the fitness fest, fit fest. Yeah. So there's a large indoor race going on the same weekend at fit fest. And it's, um, it's called the brick it's

the british indoor rowing championships and i believe that they're going to use that technology there so speaking of it will that be the first time it's been used i know it's been tested and stuff but i'm as far as in a major competition that might be i mean i might get my hand slapped from the engineers but as far as i know i think that's gonna be it so uh speaking of uh um sourcing uh just now one of the listeners in the chat cave dastro sent me this isn't this crazy someone's listening to the show and then they send it to me they found it for me i don't even need anyone helping me yeah i'm even repping i think my jujitsu club shirt there that's great shout out to kingdom jujitsu that's a cool shirt hey travis that's what i want see that crown on top of that i want a crown on top of the ceo a gold crown oh that'd be awesome yeah that's

killer look at that thing that thing's humming so i probably shouldn't say it out loud but what always baffled me about that is like how many fingers got caught in those things yeah well you know a lot of us worked out have worked out with our little kids all over these machines and yeah you couldn't have your two-year-old wandering around the room with that thing going no no it's um it's a great machine though and actually it sounds amazing it's got a lot more of a whoosh than the new machines do but literally still is when it you can't see it when it's spinning but there's actually plastic cards in the spokes yeah that's what causes the resistance on there so it's pretty low you know so could you add more cards for more resistance is that how they did it that's a good question i don't think so i mean i guess you could uh but there was gears on it so i don't think you could i don't know

uh jedediah snelson uh oh geez competing at wheelwod yeah uh currently maybe he's on the floor with his phone right now one of the coolest events i did was the pace race when all the rowers were hardwired together at wadapalooza yeah that was a that was a custom build that cost us a lot of money to build that software to do that but that was specifically for that one event people loved it so basically if you didn't make a certain time cap you were out and so it got filtered down and filtered down so the guys that made it to the end like put in some meters and it was it was hard yeah, I've known Jed forever. I knew Jed probably before either of us for crossfitting from the old motocross scene

because I used to do a lot with motocross. I still do a lot with those guys. Marco Calderon, I love Concept2 Rower. I've done Marathon Row twice. Yikes. Twice? Yeah, it should be at least once a year. Yikes. No shit. You'll mess with that once a year? We do. It's going on right now. It's yeah. It should be at least once a year. Yeah. No shit. You, you, you'll mess with that once a year. Uh, we do it. It's going on right now. It's called the holiday challenge. Um, Katie Henninger is doing it. I think a couple other,

of the legends guys are doing it every year. But, uh, so you, you pledge to try to do a hundred thousand meters or 200,000 meters between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And, uh, I do it every year just to, you know, keep the IPAs and food, you know, from getting around my waist during the holidays. And, um, and so yeah, we're like today, everyone in the company here, we're showing diehard and you can row and watch diehard and you'll either get a, you know, one movie, you'll probably get a half marathon, two movies. You could get, you know, it takes about most people here. It takes about three hours to do a marathon headset on, or they have

it really loud, really loud. Um, I got challenged to challenged to uh by the guys at origin jeans to do 2 000 calories uh the first day on thanksgiving before you had thanksgiving dinner and i just did that on the skier again that was 32 000 so almost a marathon and but i had to go help my wife cook before that. So is that a less psychological war for you, dude? Oh, it's met. Yeah. So I always say CrossFit gave me exercise ADD. So when I was not doing CrossFit, I could just turn my brain off and do something for an hour trail run for a couple hours, you know, stuff like that. And then did CrossFit for so long that if I'm on a machine for 20 minutes, I start to get edgy. Like I gotta, I gotta get off. I gotta go do something. So this is a good practice to kind of just get my mind to get used to doing

one thing, you know, or even turn off. So. Hey dude, there's this spot around, I'm going to make this up 40 minutes that you just run out of energy. You're just, I just noticed from being on machines do you do have you been on rowers so much and these machines so much that you actually sense your body switching i guess this theoretical idea maybe it's not theoretical of energy systems like do you feel your body shifting like okay i'm now going to my gas engine now i'm going to my electric engine okay now do you feel that?

I mean, I go into these workouts knowing kind of how long it's going to be. Um, so, you know, I'm, if I'm going to do a marathon, I never get out of zone two. I just know that I'm,

you know, I'm not going hard. I'm just going, um, now like when Matt came up, we were doing the skier and, um, I forget,

I think we were doing minutes on there. I mean, then it's just all anaerobic all out. So I can't say I really feel it. came up we were doing the skierg and um i forget i think we were doing minutes on there i mean then it's just all anaerobic all out so i can't say i really feel it i mean i definitely feel the wheels come off like in any workout you know you don't ever feel yourself in the marathon row being like okay i'm just out of energy like this is just like i'm done because i mean you think about it it's not even an air squat you're sliding on a rail So as long as you can straighten your legs and pull your arms to your chest, you know, you might not have a great pace, but you can do it. Like remember we did the first year we did the half marathon or 2k into a half marathon and everyone lost their minds, you know, top elite CrossFitters were losing their mind about having

to do a half marathon. Meanwhile, we have 95 plus age group on our log book. And these 90 year olds are doing this like on a regular basis. And meanwhile, Doing half marathons. Oh, full, full marathons. Yeah. So we're probably the only sport that has age groups that go to 90 plus age group on there.

And it, and these guys log their workouts every day, you know? So. Dude, that's crazy yeah well you think about it we're one of the few non-impact other than swimming right you know it's like you know you should be able to do it forever i mean even even when you go to full straight leg in the row it's not under load so if you could have bad knees and bad hips and still get away with rowing you know hey this is going to be a crazy question bear with me i'm probably gonna get pounded in the comments do 90 year old sweat that's a good question i i don't know i mean i've seen a guy i think he was in his 90s at

crash bees one year pouring uh he was going for it what was cool is when you see somebody that old in their mind they're going as hard as any of the top crossers like when they sit down that rower he's got game face he's like i'm gonna tear the chain out of this machine now you see it real world it looks like he's barely moving but in his mind he's going as hard and i love it you know he's the kind of guy i want to be 90 years old if someone talks shit i want to say i could take that guy you know and that's what this guy was i love watching the old guys go so hey greg have you noticed is um you know when you're young and you're driving with someone who's old um they they think you're tailgating when you don't think you're tailgating and now as i get older i get it because i and i think it's because the

reaction time now that i'm getting older my reaction time is changing so but it's also when you walk have you ever noticed like um little kids five of them will go through the door at the same time some fat old lady if you get within 10 feet of her she gives you a bad look like you crowded her yeah just people's perception right of just like what they need yeah people are afraid they're going to fall off the sidewalk and oh yeah tumble off the sidewalk onto the street back on like they don't give a shit right but like a a 60 year old woman who's 70 pounds overweight she's freaked out by the edge of the curb and if you get close to her she'll flip you i mean i i get it it's it's um that's one of the things i like about you know seeing older guys do

things like jujitsu or gymnastics is you know i I am opting to twice a week, throw myself on a mat and roll and get back up. And, and so am I intimidated by a curb? No, I just assume I'm going to roll out of it. Right. Like I do then. But, you know, you see other people who've never done anything athletic in their life and they're, they're so tentative.

I think it makes it worse. Like they're almost unsteady because they're so scared of the potential of falling, you know, or whatever. What do you ever, you ever seen a hundred year old compete on a rower? You know, I think that guy I'm talking about, I think he might've been a hundred because there was three generations that all competed. So it was him, the son, who was probably like in his sixties or seventies and that kid's that guy's son

who was in college, all weres or 70s and that kid's that guy's son who was in college all were at crash speeds at the same time um i mean i had to check on there but i would remember he came he's wearing sneakers with like wool socks like the kind like your mom would knit you or someone's mom would knit him and then he had he had full-on leather like wood you know wood throwing work gloves on when he sat down but he walked up to that thing like like he was going out for a heavyweight title match i mean this guy was gonna go out there and just bust it it was awesome um do you have kids greg i don't know married no kids how long you been married 20 let's see, 23, uh, 23 years. Wow. Congratulations. I'm making up for you

because you've got what three. So we're at big, he makes that 1.5 that we're all right. Is she, is she a, uh, a she machine person? Does your wife row? Yeah. I mean, well, she also CrossFit, um, but yeah, and he's on the machines. Um, but yeah, she's been, she was actually, that's funny. She was always a runner. That's how I met her. It was a blind date. She was running around the industrial park at Concept 2 and I needed a date and someone dared me to ask her. So I went out and asked the running girl. That's a true story. Yeah. True story. Yep. And then she wanted to make sure it wasn't weird. So I had to meet her

for bagels first and we've been together ever since. So it was actually for our Concept 2 Christmas party, which is actually happening this Saturday. And our parties are typically epic, and we've been together ever since so it was actually for our our concept to christmas party which is actually happening this saturday and our parties are typically epic like she she didn't know what she was getting into when she came to our party we we we used to go hard back then hey um that's kind of unheard of these days yeah i mean to just see a girl and walk up to her and be like hey you want to go i think like everyone i hear it's like all on the computer now well i mean i mean i might be a little bit older than you we're the same age it's like i don't know it's like i feel bad for everybody

that has to do it online you know it's almost like yeah it's nervous to walk up to somebody and risk rejection but i almost think it's like it's like everything hard if you don't if you don't do it you don't respect it so my nephew grew up on a uh a hunting ranch in texas his his whole life and recently he's moved out to california and you know he's living in santa cruz and he's working and he's surfing he's a young man 20 years old and he's made a bunch of friends here and he was telling me a story that he was at the bowling alley and there was a pretty girl. And he was with like five or six of his buddies. And he went over and talked to her. And he said they were all completely freaking out, right?

Because he was there in person. Yeah. Who's the creeper? Yeah. Who's the creeper? He said the girl was cool as shit. She was completely blown away that someone talked to her. But he said that guys were flipping out like, dude, you can't just talk to a girl.

Yeah. It's nuts. It's nuts. And so, I mean, I probably should have waited. That's what I think you and I, if I said that would make a great podcast that just be two guys and just point out all the problems today versus when we grew up. Cause I feel so lucky I grew up when I did, you know, everything from the movies to, you know to people to you know but that's

how i know i'm getting old you know i'm i start to think about that stuff the the um i was actually talking with someone this morning about the uh the pressure of the um internet so when i when you and i went to school there were 30 other kids we had to worry about their judgment. Right. Just 30. Now it's your entire probably the entire high school knows everyone's Instagram. Everyone knows everyone's business. People are following your mother, your dad, your I mean, the social processing or what people have access to about you has got to be completely overwhelming. I mean, I'm going to do everything in my power to protect my kids from it until the last minute. And, and it doesn't even, what's crazy is it doesn't even affect me because I came from that. So like I, someone will be like, like, um, there'll be a Reddit thread with 800 comments saying the worst shit ever about me. It doesn't even affect me, but I think it's just because of where I come from that era. But even to like, think about it now, if you walked out without your phone, you get this like Yeah. That era. after practice they don't worry about you they just assume you'd be home after practice you didn't call yeah you know it's um yeah there's just a lot of stuff i you know and i don't want to talk bad about new generations it's just different um you know they just they just

handle things differently i i like it when i forget my phone um which happens frequently and i liked i do go through that i like that like 30 seconds of like, should I turn back home and get it? And I'm like, yeah. But I mean, I mean also too, with like your job, um, any, and in mind for them, for the most part, if it's something, if I'm waiting for something that's work related, you know, you got to get it done. Then you need the phone. And that is cool. Right. Because I can go like,

so when I'm done with you, I'm going to go to the skate park and hang out for two hours. But I'm also while I'm there going to prep for my podcast. And I love it. Because 20 minutes of just hanging out in the bowl with the kids. And then 20 minutes, I'll go sit over on the side and then work on stuff. I love it. my friends and I see how, what you're doing with your boys. And I'm like, man, that, that, they're so, they're so lucky that they can, they can do it that way. You know, that they can, they can live that life where they go from jujitsu to skate park to, you know, beating up their brothers in the, in the workout room. So, yeah, it's awesome. It's a good life. Ernie Gaza, um, Gaza, Ernie Gaza, uh, just an idea for the app. You've never heard any ideas for the app before. A new option to display what the monitor is showing. Wanted to do a video showing the wattage to show my members.

Oh, like in real time, kind of like the OneWheel has. Are you familiar with the product, the OneWheel? Yeah, oh, yeah. But I mean, ours can do that now. Okay, so you can look at your phone in real time, kind of see what's going on on the ERG? Yeah, so you could have the erg set for meters and then erg data the app with watts and you could see the real time watts to to meters

on there oh okay that's cool so in real okay how the one wheel you got to be pretty close to the one wheel that's the only shitty thing you got but i guess it doesn't matter you're not the erg's not moving around yeah the one wheel i've tried them a couple times what i don't like with that is to go faster you have to dip the front end which is completely counter to my snowboarding skateboarding like i don't want to have the nose of my board closer to the ground when i'm going faster that just seems like an accident waiting to happen so uh you know what's crazy is four people died on the one wheel last year what no i didn't hear that huh like 300 000 units sold and four people died yeah i mean i guess i mean the scheme of things for how many they sold i mean i don't know i mean

anyone ever no one's ever died of an injury on an erg though right i mean maybe a heart not that not that we know well no i mean a handle hit them in the head and they're dead right no no nothing like that but so remember so you were there at the year that we had the jumbotron and aromas yeah um our big banner was called roadkill r-o-w possibly d road kill and it was a chalk outline by a by a rowing machine we it was very popular but then we started working with the villages down in Florida, the old people's home. One of my coworkers went down there and brought posters that had roadkill on it. That's the one place where you probably could have someone fall off. I'm like, that wasn't cool.

No one got hurt, so it was okay. Safest piece of gym equipment out there. Uh, get with the programming, uh, chasing him. I did a million meters in 2019 was a hell of a year. I think I remember Nicole Carroll did that too. Well, Rich used to, I think Rich would do a million a year cause he was doing 10 K every morning. Uh, when Rich was winning, if I remember right. Hey, I mean,

that's 40 minutes in the morning. If you got up and just cruise for 40 minutes you you'd have 10k or thereabouts i mean depends on how fast you row but um i mean if you want a good cardio base it's a quick easy way to do it you use all the machines do you use them all i do yes i use all of them i have all three at home too not to mention here but the skier is my is my jam that's i love it and why is that i think i've done the skier twice in my life uh well so and people are probably losing shit on this so rowing because you're taking a long stroke if you're a tall guy with long legs and we do the same amount of strokes they're covering more distance unless i you know add

more pull in there so it's not as noticeable on the skier as it is on the rower um i'm not saying that's why i like the skier better actually the skier helps me more with like i feel like with jiu-jitsu and then in crossfit we're always doing hip opening movements the skier is a hip closing movement so it complements crossfit i feel um better for what i do um but also i don't like to sit like I might. I don't have a seat, a chair at my desk. I stand all the time. I don't I don't like sitting for long periods of time, even on the rower, even though I know it's good. I'll do it for for wads. But like when I'm going to do a marathon here coming up on the, you know, for the holiday challenge. And I'll do it on the skier just because I can stand the whole time.

What's your official title there at Concept2? So no one really has titles, but I gave one to myself that I thought was really cool probably about 20 years ago. I'm the director of motor and action sports. Oh, I like it. I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the very motocross of you. Yeah, yeah. Well, at the time there was, I would, I gave myself that, that was pre CrossFit. So now it says that and then like CrossFit apostrophe or comma CrossFit at the

end. So. Did you ever think when you started working there, you'd work there this long? Absolutely not. My dad was a 30 year IBMer. And I said that, I go, what poor bastard would ever work at one place for 30 years? You know, and I actually like, I just, I just had disdain for any company that would like lock their people down. But like, this is not a normal company.

I'm like, this is my business attire. You know, like I could come in, in my workout gear and, and work and do my day. And, um, you know, and everyone here, you know, especially for Vermont, you know, look at general population, everybody here is pretty fit. Some people are very, very fit. And so just the culture here is it's not like a normal business, you know, so. When you first started working there, your job was to put the machines together. Yeah.

Yep. I mean, now it's more marketing stuff. You know, it's working with CrossFitters. It's working with pro athletes. It's answering all the emails of people who want stuff, things like that. Um, so give me an idea. So if Rich is like, Hey, we're doing a charity event, does he, does Rich call you directly or Rory call you and say, Hey Greg, what's up? This is Rory. Hey dude, we're going to do a charity event and we're going to need a 30 rowers. Do you guys want to be involved with us? That's exactly what happens. And what's, I mean, not that we play favorites, but if Rory texts me or Rich texts me or there's certain people in that OG crowd, there's probably a better chance that we're going to be able to make it happen.

Because it's not always easy because you have to do something with machines. You don't necessarily want to take all the machines back. We're not like Rogue where a big truck pulls in and machines go off, the machines go back on and they come back to Vermont. back on and they come back to Vermont. Um, you know, we try to do it in a way that, uh, either they, they buy them at a little bit of a discount and then the money that they sell off where it can go to the charity, you know, try to figure out just a creative way to make it happen on there. And that makes sense. You have long relationships with people. Is the, is the biggest relationship, what is the biggest relationship concept who have? Is it with universities? Is it with CrossFit?

Is it with the Olympics? What's your biggest relationship? It's a good question. I mean, me personally, it's definitely CrossFit. But, I mean, as a whole, globally, I mean, the on-water rowing community, you know, they built us. We're very loyal to them. In the last Olympics, I think it it was over 80 of all the oars in the olympics were made here in morrisville and all across all countries um so i mean oh actual

oars yeah oh okay okay i keep forgetting about that okay yeah so i mean and then anybody who races on the water trains on our machines i mean any that's just like the standard we're the standard for them so i mean it's hard to say like crossfit's biggest what were we at like how many i mean how many how many crossfitters are there in the world right now four million worldwide yeah four million i mean it's got to be crossfit then because i mean i can't imagine there's i don't know if that's it could be two million by the way it could be two minutes but but um uh there let's say there's uh let's say there's 10 000 gyms that have 10 rowers each but then there's also probably um uh 10 000 hotels that have one rower each and 10 000 universities that have five rowers each right and oh harvard would have 200 growers you know

something like that yeah so if they have a large program i mean actually um things like uh texas dps the police i mean they probably have close to 200 rowers or at least over 100 rowers in their academy department of police services dps that yeah public safety because um but uh remember you might have been there. Orange County Fire, way back with, was it Mike Contreras? Do you remember that name? Yep. Back in the day, Orange County Fire had like 200 rowers that were all around the departments. And so that was like the first, it wasn't CrossFit, but it was CrossFit because they're all doing CrossFit at Orange County Fire.

And they bought like 200 machines to disperse around the different firehouses. And they would compete against one firehouse against another firehouse and stuff like that. And that was way back close to the start of CrossFit when that was going on. And that was fun because, again, I said I'm lucky that the guys I work with, the departments I work with, they're all people I'd hang out with anyways. So it's pretty simple. Do you know how many rollers have been sold? I don't actually. I get that question a lot, but I mean, I don't,

I bet you I'd have, I think the founders would even have a hard time. I mean, I'm sure we could look it up, but I mean, they probably don't know off the top of their head. But it's insane. Well, yeah, I mean, it's... What happens if a truck pulls up every single day, one truck, and takes them to the post office? Well, I mean, no, I mean, there's more than one truck.

I mean, when Rogue buys from us, I mean, they're sending trucks pretty regularly. Oh, Semi will just come there and just take fucking a semi full of rowers to Rogue, and then from there, they sell them. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. We're really lucky. Our lucky our relationship with well so when we met bill and katie was the year katie won the games and bill at the time i think was only making plywood jump boxes when we met those

guys and so as much as i'm completely impressed and you know with the founders of our company i would i would think like i hold build in very high regard like i put them you know with the founders of our company i would i would think like i hold build in very high regard like i put them up there with the geniuses of pete and dick dreisegacker greg glassman you know what he built in the same amount of time it's the base no shit of fitness it's crazy what an amazing website what a oh it's a junk food fucking hold on to your wallet before you go there, throw your, lock your wallet in a safe. It's, it's, it's amazing. And yet you can still talk to those guys at the games and they're just

still the same people that you met, you know, back at Aromas, you know, walking around with hard hats and moving shit. Yeah. I've gotten like some of the people I consider really good friends are all people that work for them too. That like, cause when I first started, like, remember the, you had the east coast championships at reebok and things like that you know for the so i would go down for my event but i would stay and help the rogue guys because i like i like turning wrenches i like moving heavy shit so i would help them and i got to know a lot of those

guys and to this day well like you know kenny castro yeah i mean i actually know kenny better than dave just because you know i met kenny working doing stuff with rogue and helping out when i could and stuff like that and in turn those guys if i ever needed anything at any event half their employees could could do what i do at an event on our equipment they're really knowledgeable so hey dude that is probably you take it for granted but that is really a fucking incredibly unique relationship that probably concept two and rogue have. Yeah. I mean, I don't take it for granted.

That's the thing is like, um, so the way that our company is like when we went out to the rogue invitation, what was in Columbus, we brought the founders or we brought the whole us biathlon team. That's what we did a skier, get an actual shoot event, um, there. And even the, the um the owner's son who's also an engineer you should have saw these guys geeking out on on bill's factory floor and all this i mean i mean it was like bill probably loved that too because he knows how cool it is and there's probably very few people who can appreciate it so oh yeah he's been here

too and saw our operation too so yeah he probably it's it's, you know, it's like being into, I don't know, flowers and 90% of people don't give a shit. You find someone who's into flowers and you guys geek out. He was probably stoked. Oh, yeah. And at the time, I think he had just got some like new robotic welders and stuff. And, you know, we're not there, you know, here. We still do a lot of stuff by hand and stuff like that. So, yeah, we were really into it.

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on the machine we're not going to nickel and dime them for parts we want these things to last forever and it's it is true like where was that we were just down at the rogue invitational we went to what was it uh oc cross not oc cross um i forgot that what affiliate was but they had a 20 plus year old machine that was they use every day in their classes in there and it just keeps on going so that's what that's what makes us feel good like our machines will never get thrown away hopefully so uh allegra r i'm in the street parking group and someone posted the first iteration of the rower on sale in facebook marketplace wish i could post pictures on it here oh crazy are those collectors items now they they've gone to be what here's a crazy thing

we sell a pm5 which is our modern monitor adapter kit for that old bicycle wheel rower so the cards on it yeah yeah and it's so there's someone with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on a machine that adds cards in the wheel, you know, and it's they just don't they just won't give it up. You know, so I think that's, you know, so you've heard engineered obsolescence. We're just the opposite. Like we want these machines to get passed down. When dad gets too old to row, it goes to their kid. When that guy gets too old, it goes to their kid um and so you know it's kind of unique we don't you don't see that very often with other companies either hey dude remember this daniel garrity i had to call my mom collect to pick me up from baseball practice and do emergency breakthroughs do you remember doing emergency breakthroughs you call the operator from the

pay phone and be like hey i gotta talk to my mom. You got to break into her, into my phone. I do remember that. Or even like call or collect call. Yeah. Making a collect call or yeah. I remember, I mean, I wasn't crazy. Yeah. It's well, actually, I mean, this is totally off topic, but we got a bunch of young guys that we just hired here and we had an old, remember the credit cards where you'd go slide it back and forth and it took an imprint of your credit card. So we had that machine and I handed it to him. I go, do you know what this is? And he's looking at it. He goes, does it plug into the phone?

He couldn't figure out. He'd never seen a credit card machine that actually had like the carbon copy in it. Hey, dude, those were my dad. My dad had a wine and cheese store. And I remember as a little kid, because you had to have some oomph in those. Yeah. They were kind of scary not that they could injure you but like if you did have your finger down there that shit would mash it and you had to make sure that the copy went through hard enough to get the numbers or you couldn't see it on there and my dad was always panicked if i would do it because um i had never seen this happen but he said if you put the card in wrong it

would just snap the card in half Do you ever see this This is our podcast We just talk about old shit all the time So many people Probably don't even know what we're actually talking about right now That's alright Sean Lenderman for any 300,000 mile Vehicles sold there are probably

More than four deaths oh for every 300,000 Oh yeah for sure For sure. That's a great point. Going back to the one wheel. Oh, here we go. Allegra R saw the first model of a C2 rower on sale in Facebook Marketplace this week. Amazing how far you've come.

Wish I could post a pic. Oh, sorry. Dang, I read that for you for free. Let's see. Olsen Dudes, absolutely amazing product, the Concept2 products. We've had two 24-hour challenges using the C2 rower and C2 ski erg, over 50 people using machines the full 24 hours. Yeah, actually, Dale King just did um with an affiliate over in the uk

they did it i think they both did a 24-hour row and to see who could get the most meters in 24 hours which i thought was an amazing idea i'd love to see gross gross that idea of like sister affiliates like just find somebody in the world and people rotating in on it yeah rotating in and out yeah yeah yeah i mean there are people We have world records for 24-hour rows for single people, single individuals. That sounds horrible. Yeah, it's worse than that. We have stuff that is even longer,

like longest continual row. We have all those records on our website. Is there any development you have from rowing that you think just of 20 years of messing with the skier, putting them together, rowing? Is there any development you have anywhere in your body where you're like, yep, that have from rowing that you think just of 20 years of messing with the skier, putting them together? Is there any development you have anywhere in your body? You're like, yep, that's from rowing. Like your hands or your back or your lower back or your glute, anything specific that you're like, yep, that's that's exaggerated growth there from just me being a row junkie.

I mean, not me, because I do a lot of different sports and lift and stuff like that. Not me because I do a lot of different sports and lift and stuff like that. But the guys that row sweep rowing sweepers, you know, when you row with just with two hands on one or and you're either on the porch side of the starboard side. OK, if you're an Olympic rower and you're always on the same side, you will notice lat development more on one side, depending on which way they stroke. But I mean, sweep rowers are going to be collegiate athletes. And then unless they go to the Olympics, they'll probably stop after the Olympics. But your hands definitely take a beating. But I mean, I lift weights. So to say if my calluses came from a bar or came from the rower, it's hard to say.

I mean, I just have gross hands. Cave Dastro says it makes your hog bigger. That's absolutely true. Yeah, it gets caught in the seat rollers. It's terrible. That's absolutely true. Yeah. It's, um, it gets caught, it gets caught in the seat rollers. It's terrible. You're in marketing. Just put that on the,

all the rows that makes your hog bigger. I don't know who that guy is, but that's great. He got the corn row picture. That's, that's, that's awesome. Oh,

a dedicated. Yeah. Uh, RB, anyone see the video with Brian Shaw rowing with Ben Smith? Crazy power. Yeah. So we worked with Brian way way back when he was when he and um on the original skier which is not the black one it was another one but yeah brian was probably the first strong man that i ever personally worked with and um still one of the nicest guys i've ever met just a solid

dude i just saw him in texas and he remembers you know me and talking to him and yeah just a great dude and uh and uh and ben smith's one of the nicest guys ever absolutely yeah that's not a bad place to be i didn't realize he did it with ben i know he's worked so i hope it's common knowledge but i think brian's actually going to do an mma fight coming out coming up which are... Are you kidding? I think. I think. And if I'm letting something out,

then I think it's been talked about. Wow. Wow. Which means he'll probably be on the machines more. MMA guys really do a lot on ergs, both the skier and the rower. Oh, yeah. It says it here. Shaw's MMA training has already begun high altitude martial arts in Denver.

Fuck. That's a good place to train. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine the size of his lungs and the amount of air that guy needs, but, um, wow.

Yeah. Uh, Molo, please, um, do squats, not drugs, karma donation for the rower.

Greg sent me during my brutal trauma rotation and residency. Oh, that's Mike. Yeah. So so yeah he's another cvf guy yeah he's great at one point we had probably more doctors on the floor at champlain valley because there's a medical school at university of vermont and actually uh candace frazier matt's mom worked out with us and so i think we had i was at minicon uh probably like six or seven doctors on the floor. Anyone work out you're safe, safest place to be was at Champlain Valley CrossFit. Um, Matt's mom's a physician. Yeah. Yeah. She's my mom's doctor actually. Yeah. Crazy. I mean, she's retired now, but yeah, she's very well-respected doctor around, around, um, you know, cold Burlington, Colchester, that area of Vermont.

around Burlington, Colchester, that area of Vermont? So this whole phenomenon, I don't know how to give it context. I'll take a stab. So there was a point when I was working at CrossFest where we had the loudest voice because of the blog. And then this thing came around called social media and we had the loudest voice because we had the biggest social media. And then slowly you started realizing each person could have their own social media account. So, you know, you would have these other big

accounts in the space. Now, I know you can't compare apples to oranges. Someone's 10,000 followers is different than someone else's million followers. you can't just say the million followers are more significant especially now but let's say it is that way um so now you have all of these uh powers powers that be out there that are influencing so the other day um i or or uh youtube videos like when i went to film with miko Salo, he was wearing wrist straps, and I immediately bought the wrist straps, and then 20 other people told me they bought them, even though we weren't even trying. I didn't even think anyone else noticed that besides me.

I never even used the wrist straps. The other day, Dana White's like, hey, when I fast, I take these electrolytes, and he just held them up for a second, and I paused the video, and I went on Amazon, and I bought them. Yeah, I agree. But other people can tell you that they're using shit like it doesn't always work like like not even close i feel like is that true i feel like sometimes yeah dude i would never like i don't i'm not even sure why i've cracked

the code on what works and what doesn't work but but there's lots of people where I'm just like, yeah, I would never buy that shit no matter how much, like, I don't know if you're, what your relationship was with them, but like there's shoes out there that no amount of people fucking, I could see God walking around in them and I am buying a pair.

Yeah. It's, I get, I think I get what you're saying and it is true. And, um, we'll see, and I don't know how the whole algorithm work is followers and stuff, but I've seen people with a lot of followers that will post something that you would think would just crush it for us.

And then you'll get somebody like Miko who people might not even remember anymore, but the, his followers are going to be more loyal to him because they know who he is and he has less followers, but the overall effect on us is going to be greater from somebody with less followers, but with a more loyal following. It's called, right. We call it the conversion. Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of, and this is another for our new podcast where we bitch about stuff. Um, there's a lot of, and this is another for our new podcast where we bitch about stuff. There's a lot of fitness influencers that genetically were gifted with amazing bodies and pretty faces. And the only time you see them working out is for two seconds, a clip.

And they have a lot of followers because people like to watch them and look at them for aesthetics reasons. But are they really going to put that much money of their hard-earned money towards whatever they say is on there? You know? And I think we're saturated right now with, with those types of people. And I still appreciate when they do their stuff and everything, but I, from the backend side, I definitely see who really holds influence and who doesn't on there. Yeah. Um, uh, um uh no no it's not rads i'd wear rads i wasn't referring to rads a seven you'd love reds i'd love to try on a pair of reds

i'm very picky about my shoes though what shoes do you wear so right now actually i either puma suede or uh i'm still an 80s guy so or adidas suede or what i work out in now but previous to that when matt was getting free shoes from nike he would bring in some free shoes i'd get free shoes from matt occasionally so i had yeah matt was very generous and then but before that and i heard you said it i still have two pair of nano twos when they first came out one was the custom ones where you could go on the rebox site and like customize the colors and I still think those are the best shoes ever made. Like if they weren't so ratty,

I would wear them as everyday shoes. Yeah. And I still like vans. I like flat shoes, you know, skates shoes. So, um,

uh, what was this? Um, Oh, Tanya Bowers. Uh, what is Greg's involvement with motocross? Our goals are a Loretta's laureatas next year yeah loretta

linds is the reference there so that's the like yeah one of two or one of three of the amateur nationals um so way way back when so our machines are great for strength to weight ratio so if you want to get strong and you want to keep your body weight down, you want to stay lean, like anybody in a horsepower sport, like a motorcycle is very important, um, to be light and fast, like a jockey almost think of that. Um, so motocross has always loved our machines. Plus it's a pulling motion, which you get on the bars and stuff like that. And then the skier too. So since I got here, started travis pastrana was probably the first guy we started working with with travis and then a guy named ricky carmichael and then it just all the top trainers in the world use our rowers then i know those guys those guys are like

i don't know what they do but i know those names yeah some of the best in the world and and they and they they gravitated toward the concept too they knew yeah well it's funny how it came about so i've always thought travis was great and um i think it was dirt rider magazine that's out in california i think it was a washerman original or something trans world maybe the guy went to travis's house and travis had a rower already his dad was a PE teacher and he would challenge anybody to a 500 meter sprint. And if you beat him, he would give you a set of motocross gear. And I saw this in the magazine, like, Oh shit, this is great. And it was an old machine. It was an outdated

machine. So through some friends, I got Travis's email. I said, Travis, do you want, you know, free machine? If you're doing this, this is helping us. Now that's an influencer. He's the influencer he's in the world. so i drove down to maryland and actually spent the weekend and almost died six or seven times they were filming on one of his nitro circus videos down there so i brought two machines down we worked out and rode uh mini bikes and dirt bikes and did crazy stuff um and while i was down there i was like thanking him for having me down and all this stuff he's like you know the fastest guy in the world at a dirt bike ricky carmichael uses your rower every day and i'm like no i didn't know that

so he puts me in contact with him and his trainer at the time was guy alden baker great guy great trainer who's still a number one trainer today then i got to know him and then it just kind of kept going and going from there. And it just kept, and now I would say the rower is probably one of the premier training devices for motocross other than road cycling. Road cycling is still the biggest. What year were you at concept two during this? Oh, that would have been not long after I got here.

That probably would have been in 2002, three, something like that. Maybe earlier. And did the owners did uh uh dick and pat is that what their names peter dick and peter dick and peter dick and peter um uh did they um did they just trust

was that just easy you're like hey guys i'm going here and they're like yeah go ahead and they're like yeah go ahead did they just trust you how does that work because the we were growing so fast anyone could fucking do anything like we i would just be like hey i'm going to europe they'd be like yep just bring back content so it's kind of the same way but i i myself and i realize i'm spending their money so i mean i'm not going to make any decision i think is foolish but right i'm explaining to these guys they don't own they never own tvs they didn't they

don't they don't own tvs they're kind of more of a i guess like a i don't want to say it like a hippie type okay vermont you know no tvs whatever um just really good guys so i i went to the local store and i bought a travis mitchell action figure yeah kind of the bendy arms yeah and i brought in i'm like this is the guy i want to go see he has an action figure have you ever had somebody with an action figure want your rolling machine and they're like nope very manipulative greg very manipulative but it was it was it was fun and uh and him like brian shaw being this big name and influencer was the most genuine person ever and and then worked with him, you know, after that.

And actually the car company that he still races for is in Vermont, Vermont sports car. It makes his rally cars. He still has some ties to Vermont. Who Pistrano. Yeah. So, so going back to the job. So you, you earned the trust of Dick and Peter. Yeah. But I mean, since they earned it, you know, if they hired you,

they trusted you. Like that's the other thing. When I got hired, I was a temp for almost a year. So I, long story short, I, I sold my business. I was doing corporate wellness in, in Maine. And I absolutely hated it because nobody really wanted to be get fit. They just wanted someone to hold their hand. And I was buying rowing machines because i could get people really fit in my budget i had to spend anything i didn't spend on equipment i could put in my own pocket so i was like oh i'm gonna buy rowing machines i can get people really fit they're not expensive

and every time i called to buy one everybody here was either out skiing or trail running or having fun i'm like this place sounds amazing and i was already from vermont so i ended up coming back to vermont but i was testing i also was in the air national guard as a firefighter so i was already from vermont so i ended up coming back to vermont but i was testing i also was in the air national guard as a firefighter so i was looking at being a full-time firefighter so i tested for a fire department as well as working as a temp at concept two and um and so for a year it's how they kept jokingly keep the assholes out if you work with somebody for a year and they're still a good dude then they feel cool with hiring you um and so you know you pay your pay your dues and some guys that were temps never got hired you know so so they did they do have this inherent trust of you when they hired you

you're part of the family um uh you were in the military uh the air national guard yeah paid for my college yeah so i mean it wasn't like yeah i was in the air guard. We have an F-16 unit here. I did crash rescue firefighting. And the only time I got deployed was to the Azores for the Bosnian conflict. And I was there for like, I don't know, nothing like it is today. You know, it was, it was pretty easy and it paid for all my college. And you're not in it anymore. I'm not. No, I, when I started traveling for work, it always, so guard weekends were always like first weekend of the month and then two weeks a year you know like they all the old used to be and it

always seemed like when it was a trade show going on or i was traveling for work so it uh i don't know not doing that but i i still miss it and i work a lot with the military guys now um which i enjoy i'm still i'm an incredibly patriotic guy So I try to do a lot with the military stuff. Um, do you guys still do trade shows? You're too big for that. It's too, it's not even necessary.

Like, do you guys even have a booth at the games? Uh, we haven't lately. I want to get back to doing a booth at the games, mainly because I'm always running from event to event. And so I feel really like, uh,

when you say running from events, event working, like sure bill and katie and dave and crew have what they need from concept too because you're okay yeah and you're like with the beer in your hand no no not till after right but no it's uh yeah because you only think about in madison i would have to run from the stadium to like that far park and a lot of times there's overlapping events and so you know i'm running going team going an individual going and they could all be using one of your pieces of equipment right essentially it's me and usually one other person or two other people um and so we didn't have a booth but people would try to stop me and like explain they're having a problem with their rowing machine and they're you know legit question and I want to help them with their

home. Like, Hey, are you the concept two guy? I got this machine in my garage, like shit like that. Oh, I get it all the time. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, on the weekends I get, I get Instagram messages from people I don't know saying my PM five's not working. And I'm like, but, um, but so I want to come back to a booth where they can go and ask those questions to my coworkers and then I can keep going back and forth. But now that we're going to be in, in Fort Worth, you know, in one place, I might, who knows, I might have time to do both, you know, work a booth and do the events. Right.

Right. Should be easier. I'm hoping it's going to be easier for us. So. God, I hope I, I hope they let me come back next year. I really want to see this new venue. I really liked the idea of it. What do you mean?

Not let you come back. You had, what the hell? new venue i really like the idea of what do you mean not let you come back you had you very very tenuous very very very have to be very strategic and tactical i have a big mouth and i have to be very careful you know what you did to talk about big mouth is hilarious you interviewed me in a tunnel was it but there's a marathon or was it the half marathon and i was so impressed like oh wow, oh, wow, Siobhan interviewed me. I'm a big deal now and all this stuff. And then at night, I'm watching it on my phone, and it said, Greg Hammond, owner of Concept2. Oh, I think in my brain still to this day, you own it. Did that get you in trouble?

Oh, I quickly text Peter, and I go, hey, you might hear I'm the owner. I didn't tell him that that's smart that is very smart but then peter's like he goes that's fine he goes i want people to ask you for free stuff instead of me so it's okay hey well the thing is is you for anyone who just maybe not for people who are in the audience but anyone who takes one step behind the scenes um at the cross in crossfit knows your affiliation with concept too it's i mean because you're just you're i mean you've been like i said you've been around as long as i have we both 2008 was my first games too and and and so like i see you as ubiquitous with concept too i can't imagine you and a lot of

people move around you know someone will be at hwpo then at reebok then at somewhere else and you just haven't you just like you always have like one machine on your back hey what's up you know what's cool though i was thinking about this too you know kind of run things through my head before i talk to you and it's like one of the cool things about well i mean i didn't want it to disperse, but when CrossFit headquarters kind of started doing this little crumble down and things were, were getting a little weird for a while and everybody left or got fired, it kind of helped because everybody that we knew were good dudes and good workers at one place went to some other place and you instantly had that connection, you know?

So it's amazing the number of people I am like, I wonder who works here. And they're like, Oh, Greg, we've met. I used to work for so-and-so. And I'm like, Oh, okay. and they're like oh greg we've met i used to work for so-and-so and i'm like oh okay it's it's uh it's pretty wild how people stayed in the space but just moved around to different companies you know in there you you get to see people be really successful too based on their metrics of how many machines they buy right so like you said bill was making plyo boxes now you're sending semis to him rich froney was just a kid um living in an apartment with uh and and being an assistant strength coach at tennessee tech and now he's got the mayhem empire uh you see tia young girl from australia now she's got these bought this massive awesome place in tennessee so it's kind of cool

right oh i love it yeah and you you get in you're associated with so many world class um eccentric people i don't mean eccentric eccentric in any negative way but just go-getters yeah i mean that's that's one thing we've been lucky is that we're you know typically crossfitters are very positive people and hard workers and if you're positive and you work hard i mean you can do whatever you want you know you're going to be successful for the most part, but. Anyone ever try to poach you? You ever get headhunted? Make me personally. Yeah. You know, it's funny. The closest it came and I don't even know if he was serious about it.

Tony buddy way back in Romis was kind of feeling out. I mean, he might not even been there maybe he's just making conversation he's like so you like you like concept too i'm like yeah like concept too and he goes but you like crossfit i'm like oh yeah i love crossfit i'm like is this guy asking me if i'd be interested but that was i don't even know what i would have done um but he was all he probably was trying he probably he was he was the company was growing fast then he needed people. He probably saw like your class act, you worked hard. He probably was trying to, you know, recruit you.

I mean, I would have loved it, but I wouldn't have had the longevity clearly that I did. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, I mean, it's one of the things I am a very loyal to my friends, very loyal guy into And for Peter and Dick to take the chance on me, you know, then, you know, something they'd have to get rid of me because, you know, I'm here for the long haul for those guys. God, congratulations. It's cool that you found your home, your calling. Alex Person. Hey, Greg, I love Concept2. I inherited some machines from someone in Naples.

That means they died. But they were exposed to flooding last year during Hurricane Ian. They don't work 100%. Can someone help with repairs? Yeah, we get it. So we help in the floods and stuff like that. You know, we're fully aware of this stuff. You really don't need anyone to help you.

Typically, the machines are fine if you just clean them out. it's just the electronics. So you might need just new monitors on them, but literally clean them out, get all the silt and stuff off of them and they should be fine. I mean, we have, these machines have been through fires. I mean, I have pictures of them on the mountaintops of Afghanistan, you know, with special operations units with dust and rocks and everything all over them. And, you know, they special operations units with dust and rocks and everything all over them. And, you know, they've been flooded and typically with a good cleaning and a new, some new, a new monitor and pickup wire, they're fine, you know, and seat rollers, typically seat rollers get all gross in there. So, but seat rollers like, you know, six bucks a piece. I mean,

everything's pretty inexpensive except for that monitor, which I think we're up to like maybe 200 for that. So Jake Chapman, Mr. Hammond, have you ever poured alcohol down your abs and had a lady lick it off? Do I know you, Jake? No, I don't think so. Your mom, Jake, just your mom. Oh, I should have said that. No, no, I don't, I don't think so. And actually, abs is being generous. Abba maybe is more accurate. Over the ab?

Over the ab, yeah. Patrick Clark, concept has become a huge part of military readiness. Thank you, Patrick. Especially in the Army with the implementation of the ACFT and the 5K row used as an alternate event. Oh, the rowers is one of the acft and the 5k row used as an alternate event oh the rowers is one of the tests uh all the services yeah we've been lucky um to some extent in all different kind of distances and stuff but yeah army gets a 5k uh forget what their time domain is for that um there's actually for the bike or maybe that is the bike he's referring to. We have the bikes in there for the army. Um, I mean the Navy probably of all the

branches probably buys more of our equipment than the other branches, but that's quickly armies get catching up. Um, Navy special operations probably had a lot to do with that. So because of CrossFit and stuff that like, you know, Josh Everett and Dave did once the, the SEAL team started using our equipment a lot. Um, you know, it's almost like looking at your heroes, like the other guys in the military were like, oh, I want to do what those guys do. And then it just started working up, um, from there. And we also with the military academies, a lot of the guys in the Pentagon were either road for an academy or they know somebody who rode for the academy.

So they know the company, they know what we do and stuff like that. And it's actually, other than CrossFit working in the military guys is probably my most enjoyable. Wow. I should say that I looked at motocross stuff too, but,

um, the military guys are great. Dude, you just basically have a great job. Yeah. I'm pretty happy. Pretty lucky. You love coming to work. Yeah. I mean, not every day, but yeah, most days. You're a great knob, dude. You just basically have a great job. Yeah, I'm pretty happy. Pretty lucky. You love coming to work.

Yeah, I mean, not every day, but yeah, most days. And when you don't love coming to work, it's because you're being a pussy. It really is. You got a good gig. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. I'm like everybody else. Some days you got those emails you just don't want to do.

And actually, the hardest thing is saying no. I mean, we get so many requests for everything. I mean, I generally would love to help everybody, but we're still a business and we can't do that, you know, for everybody. And so, you know, I let email stack up that are all no's. I'm sorry, we can't help you. I'm sorry, we can't help you. And those are the days that suck because I'd like to, and I don't know how they perceive me like, Oh, like Greg can't help with our, our CrossFit cancer benefit. Oh, Greg must love cancer. You know, it's like, I don't want that.

It's just, we just can't help everybody, you know? Right. Right. Um, and so I hope they don't feel that way. And I think a lot of times I've just put that on myself. I've never had anybody, you know you know you know mother f me for not being able to help them you asked well my son needed that rower yeah yeah it's oh we used to get that all the time too my son's gonna be the next great olympic rower and you look at his time

you're like i have i have bad news your son is not going to be the best rower i'm fine with telling kids that they're not going to be good at a sport. Sometimes they need tough love. So, uh, uh, my buddy, uh, Travis Bajan, the one who's son and his son. Yeah. I know Travis met him when I met you. That's right. That's right. Okay. So try, you know, Travis's son went to the NFL, right?

Oh, absolutely. That was amazing. So he's, he's talking to, uh, one of, uh, Tyson's trainers and he goes, Hey, I want to show you some videos. And he shows them some videos of my kids. He's like, what do you think these kids need to do to become professional athletes? He looks at Travis. He looks back

at the videos. Human growth hormone. Hey, I mean, genetically, what you give those kids? I mean, it's kind of your fault. They're fucked. Poor little fucking. The other day, Josh Bridges is telling me he wants his son to be 5'11". I'm like, dude, if my son's 5'7", I will fucking do a backflip. Yeah.

I tell people I'm 5'10". I'm not 5'10". I'm shorter than that. But I'm the tallest guy in my family. So, I mean, I was screwed. When I was playing rugby, my goal was to be 6'2", 15, and run like the wind. I ended up at like 5'9", like at my heaviest like 190 and i was slow as death you know so i never really never really did well um be the tall i think i was pretty much the

tallest person in my family too which is kind of cool because i never it truly wasn't until i went to college uh i went to uc santa barbara that i was shit, I'm short. So it was kind of cool. So I'll take you to an indoor rowing event sometime, you and I, and we'll go in an elevator and we'll be looking at belt buckles. That's how bad it is. Damn, look at that guy's hog. He's doing his hog. He just does.

Three inches from my nose. Don't mind my friend, Savan. He's just really looking at your belt buckle. Magnus Holmgren, Mr. Greg. And Greg fixed something. So I ordered a PM5 display to make. Do you send PM5? Do you send stuff to Mexico? I'm not sure. We have a reseller in Mexico City that handles all that. Yeah. Santiago Fuentes it's yeah. Remo

Mexico. Um, but yeah, they, they handle everything down in Mexico for us. Although I did, I did want to get the, uh, the resort market. That's my next marketing gig. I'm going to start doing stuff with the resort so I can go down to Mexico. Um, I, um, there's this, uh, hotel I stay at in, um, Arizona when I go there to visit Greg. It's called the Valley Ho, and they have a rower, and it's awesome. Really? I use the rower there more than I use my rower at home. Yeah.

Yeah, I love a rower. When there's a rower in a hotel gym, you're like, this is a serious gym. Yeah, I mean, a lot of times they're pretty rough shape but yeah it's always i mean because i mean what do you if you have a rower and a dumbbell yeah there's no excuse to miss a workout you know so um magnus uh go ahead and write whatever you were trying to say again and i'll try to reread it again i'll look for it because you deserve a better reading than that but i'm going to give you 50 uh blame for that okay um i hate to do this to you, Greg. What's that?

This really sucks to do this to you. What the fuck is a damper? Oh, man. You had to do it. How come no one can fucking explain the damper? Why can't you just be like, one is easy and ten is hard? Why can't you? Yeah, I know.

I can explain it. it's easy to explain it now whether or not somebody else can understand it that's that's different but it's it's literally like and so and this is a go-to i use like a chimney flu type of uh reference but then i realized that half the country doesn't know what a chimney flu is so basically so who cares i know what a chimney yeah so basically when it's open all the way on a 10, it gobbles more air in the more air that gets sucked in the faster that weighted flywheel slows down between strokes. Okay. That's the tricky way to say it. The faster it slows down. Yeah. Meaning does that mean it's also harder to pull? Well, that's the thing. So depending on your stroke rate, because if you take a higher stroke rate, there's also less time to slow down. So the damper really

is personal preference. Like how do you want it to feel, but you can end up with the same time. And that's literally, you know, if you're a bit, if you're Brian Shaw, you could put it on 10 and you could row and you have enough swing weight of your body going down the rail that that's, that's helping them. Okay. So he can, he can afford to have a high damper. It's gobbling a lot of air. He can pull it guys like you and me, we're going to be at our sweet spot at like a three or a four on a new machine, which actually it correspondingly has a damper, a drag factor number, which would be like a 117 so really it's just basically that damper has no wires that connect it to the flywheel on a rower it literally

is how fast it slows down between strokes because that's a weighted flywheel so if you remember inertia from yeah yeah whatever so it's a weighted flywheel that has a known weight and if it slows down as it's slowing down and you go for your next stroke, it's going to take more energy to get that weighted flywheel spinning again. Yeah. Okay. But if you have a stroke rate that's pretty consistent, it's not really slowing down all that much. Right, right, right. So remember when Lucas, what was Lucas' last thing that won the marathon row, Lucas Holbert.

No, um, no, no. Um, yeah. Um, Hobart. Yeah. He was from Switzerland. Yeah. Hobart, I think. So he won that with the weirdest technique I'd ever seen.

He was doing a series of two hours and 50 minutes of deadlifts with a rowing machine. He would pull it and he would stop at the end. And then he'd take another pull and he'd stop. And so he went the same distance and he got a good time, but he was doing it in a weird way where he could have made it a lot easier on himself if he just didn't let the flywheel. So let me, you're going to use,

see, let me see if, uh, if, if this is, uh, um, if I understand this, if I can put it application, if you're going to use, let me see if this is, if I understand this, if I can put it to application.

If you're going to use that technique, you would want the damper on one. No, the opposite. You're going to want it on 10 because- But then it flows down faster on 10. It does, but like- Not wanting to slow down faster? You and I could get two or three strokes in that same time it took took him to do the one and we would use less effort on it because we wouldn't have to pull as hard. Right?

No, but I'm saying for, for him, what do you do? Okay. Let me ask you then. What do you, what should he have had the damper on to do that?

I mean, he's a big guy, so he could have gone a little bit higher. What I would have done for a marathon is, um, you know, I'm about 190 pounds. Yeah. I would probably would have been on a new machine like that, probably like around a four or five. Um,

and then I would probably be at about 27 to 32 strokes a minute. What I think he was at was at a 10 and he was probably like 15 strokes a minute. So he still did great and he's strong enough to be able to do it. But like you and I couldn't do that. I mean, that's not the way he did it. You know, anyway, you actually understand. Let me go back. So do you actually understand the damper or do you have to do you have to make it up in your head and it's abstract? No, I mean, I understand it.

It's what I don't. I don't have the physics chops to understand it. And that's what it is. I can't convert what you're saying into practical understanding. Like I could make it up and like, and like trick myself into thinking I know it. Yeah. If you and I were together in the workout room, you'd get it. And I think a lot of people make it more confusing than it is.

Yeah. Especially for how they're using it. Yeah. On there. I mean, and it's the same thing too, is like, I'm not one of these nitpicky guys. Like I want people to have a good technique, but if their technique's not perfect or they don't understand damper, but they're still getting a good workout and they're not going to injure themselves. And I typically are like, what are

your goals? If your goal is just to get fit and have at it, if, if you're a competitor and you want to finish the rowing workout with some extra energy for the next workout then yeah you got to look at efficiency both on damper and technique so it's really what the athlete is looking to do um like i said my technique i think is pretty good over the years but i mean it's not compared to my co-workers that rode at a very high level i don't have the efficiency they do you know on there so who's the bike for for me i'm gonna tell you my bias like really like i love i love bike riding i used to bike ride like i'm like since i've been a little kid i've been bike riding but when i exercise if i had the skier and the assault bike next to each other i would or the echo bike i would all i would be like why would i do that or why would i do the erg bike yeah and and i and i agree so

you know we're all mountain bikers here and and and that sort of things so we we always do we make machines for sports we do the wrong machine came because pete and dick are olympic rowers the skier came because their kids were olympic biathletes and nordic skiers the bike came about because that skier i thought that was a joke that thing translates to fucking cross-country skiing oh absolutely yeah matter of fact that's what we made one a prototype ourselves for for us that raced and then peter or dick came down and saw it and you know he's an engineer and we just cobbled this thing together and he's like no we can make that better and then

the skier one came out and their kids were both training for the olympics and uh in nordic ski racing they call it skate skiing so it's not like the old nordic track it's different but um they would get compartment syndrome in their shins and so they needed something to keep their cardio up while they couldn't actually ski. So they would sit on a box and they'd use the skier and they could use the same muscles of their upper body and keep their cardio going. So that's kind of how it came about. I know we were talking about the bike, but let me take you back to the skier. What, what, when, who developed the first skier and why did they do it?

It wasn't even for sale. It was just a. No, no. We made it for ourselves to use to get better at skiing no shit yeah yeah matter of fact i think i remember that i think i remember seeing some pictures someone just like flipped up one of the other like the rower or something right i think i remember seeing some yeah it was really bad for the chain so people would do it they're like oh i'm just gonna flip my rower and it's going to be a skier. And it's not like that. And it's actually not great for the rower. Um, but we, we did it. So before there was a machine like that, we had a thing called a slide board. So you'd basically lay on a skateboard on this incline piece of plywood and you'd have two ropes and you would pull yourself up kind of like the old Chuck Norris, uh, total gym.

Chuck Norris, uh, total gym. Okay. Yeah. Um, but we wanted a monitor. We wanted to see how many Watts we were putting out. We want to see all this stuff,

all this stuff, the rower already could do. So then we tried to turn the rower up against the wall. That didn't quite work. And then Dick came by being the engineer. And if you want anything made here, you got to make it shitty. And then the engineers come and get mad at you and they make it better.

Oh yeah. Yeah. There's like a trick to it. Manipulation. Yeah. Yeah. So we got the skier that way and then because we're all mountain bikers and of course you know we're in vermont so it's like snow on the ground now we can't mountain bikes we wanted something for the off season initially everybody wanted us to make a bike with arms and actually we had a prototype to do that um because they wanted our monitor on that yeah but we also knew that bill and katie

had an idea of making the echo bike and we would never do anything to compete with those guys and so we actually said we can make a really good bike and we didn't like spin bikes if you notice our bike is going to be more like biking outside it doesn't have that that flywheel that continuously spins so your feet go flying around yeah so you can actually stop pedaling and the flywheel still moves on our bike so we made a bike that's cool that's yeah that's made for like real biking and so that's it's and that's the thing too so when i went to people love it dude people fucking love it i'm i'm blown away at how many people like really i mean people love that bike well yeah it's if you don't feel like working out it's great because there's no it's low barrier to entry you just sit on it and just pedal and then

um you know like erg desk made the erg decks top for it and now you see people on the bikes doing their work during the day and pedaling and and all that stuff so the erg desk was uh was a cool addition for people too if they weren't actually going to work out, but they wanted to burn calories and move. And that was a nice addition. Sean Lenderman, the skier makes you more efficient, uh,

uh, pivoting in the circle jerk. Oh, I mean, that's an, that's just an added benefit. We didn't actually design it into that. The by-product you have,

you have the penis, they have the penis. You can buy on what's it etsy that's the penis handles on etsy yeah um the the rower you cannot hide on the bike obviously you can't hide on you can always because you're sitting i don't in the skier you can't hide on the bike really for kind of also in in my opinion for like older people like like if you're an older person like me or you're just slow warm-up person or you have a bad back and you need to be drenched in sweat like i do before you start working out

the bikes for you although i've never hurt my back on the rower ever and it's so rare it's almost a myth at this point yeah it was a rowing spad for your back what i've found over the years is that even if you have horrible technique you don't you're not a decent enough body position to generate enough force to do that if someone hurts their back rowing it's pretty existing yeah yeah and you kind of have to be an idiot like you should the rowers if you're being spastic on the rower and the chain's doing anything besides being taught you have other problems yeah exactly and and well you remember the first year that we were in aromas we saw weird people and this is we still see this a little bit but if you look at the games the

progression of technique and rowing has gotten so much better than the aromas days i mean aromas days was pretty ugly and then people realize if you want to compete at crossfit at a high level one of the easiest things to do is improve your technique on the rower um but we had um oh who's the girl from nebraska uh way back then that was really good lizzie something anyways she was short and she heard that rowers tall rowers jill lesterlin's wife she's a cop now super hot chick she was pretty good looking yeah everyone was hot Um Yeah that's it Yeah well she would Row and she was pulling to her chin

And laying way back and I know I understood In her mindset she's she was Correct she's thinking oh tall people do good on the row Or I'm going to make myself as tall as possible That was a bad body position which Ended up hurting her in her strokes You know so but yeah We saw a lot of that back in the day i

think miko was the miko and sam briggs were the out of the gate like better rowers although miko had this weird thing where he'd rest the handle on his legs and i swear to god next two weeks everyone was rowing like miko where they'd stop rest on the legs and then go forward again and influencer well like the butterfly on the skier which is completely inefficient and and but uh rich butterflied i think in one video oh this thing yeah no you do like this which my shoulders are so tight i can't even do that anyways but um that became a trend for a while and luckily that's gone away not all not everybody some people do i think i think some people still do it i remember seeing it so but it's mouth mouth is rich is sold how many what mouthpieces i bet you he sold oh fucking gazillions i never talked to

rich about it but remember he endorsed that little thing called a whipper it was like this little box and it was could be used to be a rower and a skier and we will not talk about that we will not talk about that i hope they paid him a lot of money for that yeah i mean i don't blame any of these guys because you know you gotta you gotta you gotta pay the bills and stuff like that but i always respected him but he would i'd he'd pop up on my facebook on the whipper and then i would go to his instagram and he's training on the concept too you know and sam dancer um uh endorsed some product that like you like he said was equivalent to deadlifting or back squatting 500 pounds or something

some ropes coming out of a platform you stand on like come on come on I mean it's but you know we don't get our income the same way they do and they need to do it you know if you're going to be a I beg people for the on the internet for it $1.99 at a time right

they pay me to ask read questions to you. Well, I appreciate it. And I still think we need to have our old man fitness bitch podcast. Mr. Greg Hammond from Tyler Gregg. Tyler Gregg to Greg Hammond. Ask about the concept to dyno strength trainer. What's that?

Yeah, we had a strength machine for a while. Called. Yeah. The dino. Uh, and it was cool. It only did leg press a row and a bench press. Um, but you could get over a thousand pounds resistance just based on trapped air. And the whole machine only weighed about 120 pounds. What happened? I think, uh, functional fitness, uh, happened and, uh, nobody wanted to use a linear machine. So, um, yeah, there you go. It's still a great machine. We used to have a lot of fun. So we used to do, it was called centuries and you would do a hundred reps on all three movements. And it used to give you your average poundage. So like no matter how many reps you did, it would give you the average of weight that you moved. And so we would have like king of the gym. And so whoever could get the highest average

of the three movements was king of the gym in there. Oh, I like it. Yeah. It was, it was great. We used to take it to strength and conditioning shows. We sold a lot to the British military. They would deploy, they would deploy with it. with it um oddly enough a lot of them ended up in brazil not sure how that happened um yeah that's uh it was a great machine um i should have scheduled you for three hours i have to go you're you're awesome uh i have to have you back maybe i should um are you going to guadapalooza i'm not going to be at wadapalooza no i'm not sure next time i'll run into you um do you say i'm not going there either but i was just wondering if you were going to go there we can talk about i'm trying to find an excuse to talk to you hey did

do you do you go to you don't go to every big event you don't go to we we have a lot of blues when they used our equipment. Oh, they don't anymore. Oh, okay. No. So we're not going there. Someone else sponsors them, like someone else like Air Runners or Salt or someone sponsors them, so they use their stuff. Right. Yeah, exactly. So it also is a tough time of year for me to go down there anyways.

But also, too, like right now, Kevin Ogar and the Wheelwod guys, they're using our equipment. I would have liked to have been there, but I'm not there. So we do send equipment to events that we don't go to on there. But yeah, probably the next time I see you, you know, might be, you know, maybe games. I don't know. Hey, what about the semifinals? I mean, I'm not going to them, but do you go to those? Yeah.

I mean, if I if there's a need, if they're doing something with our equipment and they need us to be there, then I typically try to go, you know, traveling for me, I used to do like one trip a month, which didn't see much of somebody who's a travel a lot, but like the older I get, the more I like the quietness of Vermont. Like when I come back from the games or like rogue invitational, it's so nice to come to Vermont where there's just like nobody here. Like the roads are empty you know i can be on my back porch i'm looking at the woods i know i'm getting it's getting old i'm starting to look at birds now i get it yeah birds history books exactly yeah uh final question totally out of your um world so um or adjacent world

why can't the echo why isn't the echo bike or the assault bike solve the problem for pedals and have you guys solve that problem on your bike like I had a Tim Murray on here he's like the fittest dwarf in the world and it's like we're like my kids like like what the

fuck how come people how come that can't someone can't crack the code on that shit so our pedals We did it and they weren't always right Now they're they're pretty they're they're good They don't really have an issue but when We started messing around with a bike with a wolf And ride your bike or Little kid so

Yes they do we have a shorter Rear leg so for like middle school kids Or somebody who's short we do have a Shorter rear leg that Is one problem school kids or somebody who's short we do have a shorter rear leg that is one problem with a lot of our equipment and everything here is built for tall people because right right and i get it i'm not i'm not i'm not like hating on it but there's got to be a market for kids and dwarves dwarves are kind of funky i didn't know this until he was on the show the other day he got the torso of a man yeah so his legs maybe are even

shorter than like a kid's legs but there's got to be something that you can there's i guess like jeff birchfield said i don't have the physics chops so i guess i don't have the mechanical chops but you would think that there's something that could something you put on the handles of these bikes and then something you put on the pedals yeah i mean i think our bike's going to be better than than say a bike with arms for right that size right and and actually when we started messing around with building a bike with arms for somebody that size right and actually when we started messing around with building a bike with arms they have a lot more um torque issues than what we have on our bike because of the fact that they're going back and forth so like you know that rattliness that all the bikes end up getting i mean not so much echo echo's built pretty tough um but it sounds like

some of the fans loose yeah i mean because it has more torque whereas on our bike everything's going in one direction you know everything's um but also too it's like i never liked on those bikes how your arms assist your legs your legs assist your arms you know with ours you know when your legs are done you're they're done you know kind of thing so um yeah i mean that's like riding it for kind of fitness i guess i ride it just to get warm right that's why i have the arms it's just it's just a old man machine to me do uh do like all out like you know thousand meters and box jumps and you'll you'll fail every box jump it's awesome nothing but bloody shins for days uh i appreciate your uh 99 minutes today i i appreciate it man i i i could talk to you forever too i mean there's

fewer and fewer of us that have been around for the whole show yeah and um you know and there's a lot to talk about especially with like a lot of the changes going on in in the crossfit space you know and i feel like you and i can almost get away with talking from the outside we still love it as much as ever but the changes seem odd to me still compared where it was you know what 20 years ago now it's like it's crazy how long it's been yeah and kind of perpetual big change is always happening now we still haven't settled things haven't settled down in the last four years five years six years it's been it's been it's been a weird six years, five years. It is. And I don't envy like the, the, the decisions that Don has to make now, you know, I agree. It's there's no easy answer. And that's the thing is like, I'll never throw any shade on decisions being made because I don't have an answer either, but I know I want to see

it grow. And I know that CrossFit's helped a lot of people live a much better life. Um, I plan on doing functional fitness until I can't anymore. And I do think it's the answer. It's the business side of it that seems tough. So, yeah. Thanks for coming on. Let's give it again sometime. I'll bug you.

Great. It's the longest we've ever talked. I guess when I have people on the show, it's usually the longest I've ever talked to them. But you met my – exceeded my expectations. I don't hear that a lot. So thanks, Yvonne. That's nice that you said that. All right, brother.

Have a good day. Have a good day, man. Ciao. Bye. Greg Hammond, Concept2. Dang, he's cool. No, politics time is today at four o'clock i am going to uh read as many as the dms hundreds of dms i got from affiliates in the last 48 hours if you want to send any more send them in uh i will it is

surprisingly uh i don't maybe surprisingly i shouldn't start like that is very is actually much more positive than well yeah surprising than i expected uh I expected. Uh, the, um, and, and, and that's what people's initial reaction. So I think things are only going to calm down more and more, but I will see you guys today at four o'clock. I've invited a bunch of people on, but it looks like they can't do it.

Um, I really wanted to get Jr and Grundler on, but it looks like I'm going to, um, uh, it's going to be me and Sousa just reading, uh, DMS to you guys. we'll open up the phone lines

Don't be scared to call in Alright guys You will read aloud any DM we send you no not not No let's not get carried away Alright Bye bye 4 o'clock today