The Sevan Podcast - NEW 2024 CrossFit Game Announcements

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

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all-you-can-everything. Book with your local travel agent or... Hey, hey, hey. Bam, we're live. I was too early there. Oh, my goodness. Oh, hold on. I wanted to tell you guys, I'm six months pregnant. But, you know, I'm still going to drink 300 milligrams of caffeine. I knew you were transitioning.

For the show. It's completely unrealistic to ask me to stop drinking bang i'm only pregnant hey see their name on the bottom here oh bang oh no they're not i just had this is like this sits in my this is like uh this sits in my refrigerator as like a i know i just brought it in here my wife's like you're gonna drink that i'm like no it sits in my refrigerator this is like break in case of emergency do you have anything like that in your refrigerator um heavy cream i bought the heavy cream you suggested yeah oh what did you think so i did i i had the heavy cream for a couple days and then i went back to the whole milk and it's it doesn't didn't taste

as good after the heavy cream so you've basically you've ruined me now. I was happy with something that was satisfactory. And now it's not satisfactory anymore. Now it doesn't taste good. The bar has changed. Oh, that must be a typo, Audrey. Was that supposed to say, call me, Brian? Okay. Announcements made.

You can watch detailed explanation of it that takes fucking way too long between Chase and Adrian on the CrossFit Games podcast. You can hear Bill Grundler hear about it for the first time as Chase presents it to him on the Get With The Programming podcast. Bill's reaction, I think, is going to be very similar to mine. There's an incredible article with all the details if you just don't want all the like bullshit you just like okay hey this is like i just need to know what's going on and i'm a um uh an athlete and i just want to get down and

like start being able to get my head wrapped around what's going on or an affiliate owner affiliate owner athlete i guess anyone if you want if you just want to get your head wrapped around it you're interested in the open, go over to BeFriendlyFitness. It is the premier article right now. It's called 2024 CrossFit Game Season. And we're going to go over that really quickly. I'm going to try to give you guys the information so that we can get to the reactions.

We only have JR and Bill for a short time. JR Howell is the owner of an affiliate and a competition director of the Crash Crucible, the Crash Crescendo, and CrossFit Crash. Bill Grunler is one of the longest affiliate owners, although Mr. Howell's had his affiliate for a long time. Bill Grunler's been around since the dawn of time. He knew CrossFit before I knew CrossFit. He owns a gym called CrossFit Inferno in San Luis Obispo, and he's been a commentator at the highest level for the sport. Then there's Brian Friend, who appeared out of nowhere many, many, many, many moons ago and has been absorbing every little bit of information he can about CrossFit, and this is actually his website to get the information.

Every season there's new tweaks, which is cool. I don't have an issue with that um i the crossfit games are amazing the open's amazing and today um they released new information regarding the season i'm going to uh briefly run through some of the the really big bullet points some of the stuff you guys already know it's going to be the finals will be the crossfit games will actually be in texas this year at dickies the dickies sport arena a wheelwad will be doing the adaptive division we're not we don't know where the dates pit team will be doing the teen division we don't know where are the dates and legends will be doing the masters we don't

know the where are the dates but those um will be separate from what most we can glean from the CrossFit Games, which will be at Dickies. The biggest implications of the changes so far to this date that we know is more competitors, more competitors all around everywhere, except for maybe a minor place or two like the team competition in the finals. And the biggest semifinals. Explain that to me. We'll get there.

Okay. So there may be some tuning errors in my presentation. The boys will jump on me quickly after I'm done. The Open starts on February 29th and ends on? March 18th. March 18th. March 18th. Let me go through a little bit more here. Announcements will be the same.

Thursday announcements, Monday due date, and then Wednesday validation of scores. The Open will be three weeks long. We don't know how many workouts. Well, three weeks. Nope. Adrian Bosman in this podcast he did with Chase said three weeks is a no brainer we will have a big battle

there here soon on this show I think that that's a complete wrong thing to say I guess we can stop there and just start digging in you guys want to start digging in? Dig. Let's start digging.

Brian, is there any other big picture stuff you want to lay out before we start digging in? No, I'm probably going to lay out for a little while and let JR and Bill kind of take the lead, especially with the opening quarterfinals as affiliate owners that need to manage those parts of the season, and they have limited time relative to us today okay uh i'll go i'll go first the the part that's really pissing me off um is this there's a point in that

conversation that adrian and chase uh have where adrian says the quarterfinals basically this year won't be take we'll be taking 25 of the individual open people. Meaning if you're in the top 25% in the open, you get to go to the quarterfinals. And what I don't, I guess I don't have a problem with that, but then he says it's an extension of the open. I think that is complete horseshit. I think the open is sort of the community event.

And then everything after there, I consider the CrossFit games. It's no longer quote unquote, the community event. And then everything after there, I consider the CrossFit Games. It's no longer, quote unquote, a community event. And all I wanted was the open to mean more. And now it means like nothing. And I listened to the podcast that Bill and Chase did. And this is where maybe I disagree with Bill, but I'm willing to be unfucked. He's like, hey, with 25% of the people going, it means the open means nothing.

Check. I agree with Bill. Open's a joke. Even more of a joke now. But he says the program is going to be really important. I disagree. I think the program doesn't even matter anymore. Like, fuck it. Do anything.

And Bill kind of alluded to that when he's like, hey, in the open, go ahead and put heavy lifting or whatever the fuck you want now. Like, nothing matters because the chunks are so fucking big. Anyway, J.R. Howell, let me roll it back just a tiny bit. What do you think about the – let's start with just something simple. Are you happy with the dates? Yeah, I mean I kind of wanted to start with something positive. Okay, go ahead. I mean it is exciting.

It is positive. Sorry, sorry. But I just really want to open to mean something. Go ahead. Well, I mean this is just like logistics is positive. Sorry. Sorry. But I just really want to open to mean something. Go ahead. Well, I mean, this is just like logistics type stuff. Adrian even mentioned it on the show I listened to today with Chase, where Dave has been really, really committed to trying to make things simpler. And that goes for like the numbers you have to remember. OK, it's top 25 percent all the way around. OK, cool. All right. It's 40s and 30s and it's's 20s and just even the numbers you have to remember during the season are easier um but one of the

things he also said was trying to make it simpler for people to think about the season as it corresponds to the calendar year so other than it's starting on like a leap year day, you can think of March as being March is the open. Then you can think of April being as April as the quarterfinals. And then you can start to think of may is like when semifinals start. So in, in that respect, some of the changes made a lot of sense when we get into the logistics of the competition itself.

That's where as an affiliate owner, it's going to be even more challenging than it ever has been. I'm not complaining about having a super fit general population. I think it's a great problem to have. However, it being a much lower barrier to entry, I can tell you right now that I bet if I went back and looked at the scores for the people that put in scores for all four scored portions of the Open last year, comparatively to how many people even signed up, I'm willing to bet over 50 people would have qualified to quarterfinals. There are gyms out there that have over 100, already had over 100 maybe, and will. Great. We still run seven classes a day we're still going to have people that take it seriously they're going to want to redo workouts once or twice

not only during the open but into quarterfinals and you know logistically it's it's just going to be it's going to be really tough so that's that's you don't agree so you don't agree with this no brainer comment and i want to push back on if you want to make it simpler, get rid of the fucking quarterfinals. Just get rid of them. Just go fucking open five events. Fourth and fifth events are fucking hard, dude. There's 300 pounds on the bar.

Sorry. Tap out then. Who cares? But it's five fucking events and get rid of the quarterfinals. I really understand it from a growth standpoint. Like, not to get too far into the weeds of the masters and teens, but them expanding significantly is only going to grow that portion of the sport. I agree with that wholeheartedly.

I didn't understand that. Say that again. I'm not following you. Letting it be a casting, letting the funnel stay bigger for longer all the way down to the games is only going to get people that may have been on the fence about even signing up for it or on the fringes because they're like, dude, like I can't make semifinals.

It's like top 60 or top 40, but now they're going to make top 200 semifinals. Okay, cool. I can do that. And think about how many people are in that boat so i think in that respect it will help the masters division not only moving them to a their own competition at the end of the year oh the the masters i'm okay i'm okay with matt i'm okay with everything

i heard just to be clear everything i heard about masters and uh and teen but i think you have you have to think of it all together though from an individual and even a team standpoint I get what you're saying for sure you know what I'm thinking the games to me is 51% community and 49% games and because of that I think the open should be 5 weeks

and I think just because it's hard on the affiliate owners to make it 5 weeks you've already done the argument for me, right? I wasn't going to say, well, the quarterfinals – you made the quarterfinals hard as fuck. Thanks for making the Open easier. I mean that's basically what you said. But just because it's harder and it's five weeks, I don't think you get less participation. I don't think that's true at all.

I think that this community is used to doing hard shit. I think you make the Open five weeks. Everyone knows where they fit in. A lot of you won't be doing so good on event number four and five. They're kind of for the good guys. And then you go straight to the semifinals. Bill, do you have any thoughts? Yeah, I agree with the idea that I like what JR is saying about having wide funnels for growth.

You buy that argument? You think that's true what you are saying you you agree with that you think you open the fund you think that more people are going to be like okay i'll do the open because there's a chance i'm going to make it to the semi-finals no no no i don't think that i think the idea that's how i understood what you're saying after that stage so like i think the same people are going to do the open because they always do the open right then i think that next that next 25 percent really really attainable and then after that the top 200 per age group is really really really attainable so there's i see i mean let's i like and i like that it's

20 but can't they just do that 100 bucks like we can get into the why can't you do that from the um why can't you do that from the – why can't you do that from the – just go straight from the open to 200 people to the semifinals? Well, you can, but then the gates are – there are not multiple gates, and there are not multiple opportunities to make money off of it. I'm not even worried about the money part of that necessarily,

but for that particular thing uh for like the masters if you go from whatever thousands to 200 the amount of video review that you would have to do to get to those 200 to get the right people into that 200 to move ahead because i mean that there's i mean when you have when you have events where you're sitting at 200 maybe you do good on one of them but no one's looking to events where you're sitting at 200, maybe you do good on one of them, but no one's looking to see where you are. No one goes to check out that at all. Maybe you are like the Wall Street Lifter. Yeah. And you're one of those guys that comes in and you wreck shop on one of the lifts, throw the entire thing around.

So I don't want to go from the worldwide open to 200. I like the fact of having them open. Now, I don't agree with the 25%. I said this even on our show. I think the idea, if your only reason for doing that is because the numbers sound right, I don't buy that. That, to me, is a weak sauce reason that's whether it's a quarter nothing burger as they say in the hood 100 but let's let's put some numbers behind it then well i mean brian you're the one that you're the one that did the numbers when we were when we were

talking about this last year of the 10 that made it how many people actually paid and participated and i think you said it was like 3%. No shit. It was more than 3%. What was it? How much? They qualified for the quarterfinals and actually participated? No, it was closer to like 50% of participants. 5% of the 10%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. I see what you're saying. But here's the thing. What has been the biggest challenge with the online quarterfinals the last three years? Something, doing it in the affiliates, for the affiliates to set up the floor plans and to execute on it? The review, the video review? The video review. How do you review an online competition that has so many people participating in it?

an online competition that has so many people participating in it. And in the most critical regions in the world, you've made that stage of the season more important. If we used last year's open numbers, just to put in perspective, 80,000 people would qualify for the individual portion of quarterfinals this year, 80,000. Now, they might not all sign up. Like Bill said, maybe 50% sign up. That's 40,000 participants in one week in those divisions,

and that part of the season is happening two weeks later than it has happened ever before, and it's leaving about a month, given the timeline that Adrian talked about, until the start of semifinals. The first time there was quarterfinals, it took a month to review the quarterfinals. So the timeline that you're imposing on your team,

the stress that you're imposing on your team for the quarterfinal dates, there's the numbers right there. There's an additional 48,000 that would have qualified in this model compared to last year with the same numbers from last year. You're making the stress.

It's the opposite of what I've been asking the CrossFit Games team to do. Make decisions that make things easier for you. So now you have this many more people that you have to deal with potentially in that stage of the season with a smaller amount of time to turn it around before people need to know whether they've made it so that they can start making plans. There's no chance. The best possible outcome here is that a small percentage

of the quarterfinal videos are reviewed in a week and that you give three weeks maximum for the first slate of semifinal athletes to plan their trips to semifinals. Go ahead, Bill. No, go ahead. Go for it. What are the chances they bring back peer review? Those are details that are unknown and potentially some of these answers are going to be released with the rule book next year what is peer review like

you so let's say the quarterfinal you just open it up to the world but you go in and just say hey take a look at this hey no this one's good and you just go and you look at the ones that have a certain number of thumbs down. Which I think is valid. I mean, I like how the community cut some of the extra work down. And I said this in our show is the problem that I see with the changes that are made is they seem to be made in the dark. It has yet to have happened. It has yet to have happened. I've said it a handful of times before that it appears that there almost the quarterfinals is now the real open the open or like what the open used to be the open is now this i don't know free for all thing because i mean 25 i just i don't see the purpose of doing

that that to me what is the purpose does anyone see the purpose to that? That's the question. That makes no sense to me. It used to be it is the worldwide test of fitness for everyone to jump in, and those high-end people get to advance from there. So if that becomes the case, well, now you only – if you're going to only have three events, okay, there's an element of qualifying. And again, I'm not talking about the top the top athletes i'm talking about the community side of it um 25 to move up to the next one to then what happens like is it going to be harder in the quarterfinals is it going to be more skilled in the how many workouts in the quarterfinals traditionally five is five so you're so you and

bill are going to have to set this up in your affiliate three workouts three weeks in a row you get you get how long i'm on four i'm four weeks off and then you're going to have to set up five workouts yeah and again i mean i and i'm i'm i'm you know i'm really frustrated by the news just from uh like i already sent a message to all my coaches hey this is the plan i'm going to go ahead and start doing this now. I'm going to post all the dates. I'm going to post blocks where people are allowed to do the workouts. I'm going to post blocks where they're allowed.

Why are you frustrated? Because it's just going to be really difficult for an affiliate. That's going to have so many people that move on. I'm not going to deter them from doing it. I'm not going to tell them it's going to be difficult. If you don't know what the workouts are, I just, just let me push back here. Adrian and Chase made it sound like the workouts are going to be like stand in a one-by-one-foot square and jump rope for five minutes, workouts done. They're saying they're going to make the workouts easy.

I think the open to what Adrian said is going to – I think it is going to be a lot easier. He had said minimal distances between things. Like you can't put your rower right under the pull-up bar. It needs to be at least three feet away or whatever. And, you know, and there was a workout last year with dumbbell snatches, lunges, and crossovers where you didn't need anything. You didn't even need tape on the floor.

All you need to be able to see was how many steps you were taking in one direction. And that's it. So I do think they'll do their part in making it easier on the affiliate owners. I'm not worried so much about the tape on the floor. It's time. It's time.

It doesn't matter. If you have a 10-minute workout with eight pieces of tape on the floor, you have a 10-minute workout, you need a judge. A lot of them need camera setup. And you need probably more than two or three areas to do it in. So again, I mean, I'm – and maybe I'm really paranoid and really like overly concerned with making sure everything runs smoothly.

But that's just kind of how I do it. And you'd be a fool not to be thinking about that right now if you're an affiliate owner. I think what JR is saying, to put it easy, is they talked about how five weeks for an affiliate owner is tough. We just did the exact same thing. Because with 25%, you're going to have a large group of people that are going to do it. And honestly, if you have that many people that are going to do it, probably everyone's just going to do it whether they qualify it or not. So here we are right back to a five-week setup. And one thing I'll add, too, that I think was a little bit lost.

Typically it was a, like a four day window. It's now five days. And a lot of people are quarterfinals. Correct. And a lot of people will be saying, well, that's good. That means the athletes have more time. They're not as rushed. The people that work, which is the majority of the people that are going to be doing it, have jobs that still want to try to get them in you they have more time to do it now they have more time to do it exactly meaning they will use that extra day and probably redo just do more

that's just what people do hey i think i can redo this and get five or six more reps in a 15 minute workout and as their coach and as an affiliate owner, I'm not going to say like, Hey dude, what's, what's the point? Like you're not moving on. Like I'm not going to burst through a bubble like that. So you just acquiesce and you say, Oh, got an extra day. That means another day that I need to plan for this stuff. Does anyone have a good reason why they would do the 25%? Yeah, because it's 25 quarterfinals and it's –

But we already kind of established they already know that they can't make more money from it because – They can make more money from it. The potential additional earning during quarterfinals is $4 million. Potential. But Brian, didn't you say only half the people? Yeah, so they're likely going to make an extra $2 million. Okay, so you're saying instead of it being 50% of 10%, it's now going to be 50% of 25%.

Yeah. What kind of math? Napkin math. Frontside napkin math. that's a little more i just i just don't think i just don't think that increasing the amount of percentage yes it's a potential of that but i don't think that you're going to have that many more people do it than you would have had if you would have left it at 10. That will be a super interesting thing to track for sure. Last year, Mike Halpin and I did a study of this because there were a large percentage of quarterfinal qualifiers that couldn't do the movements or the lifts that were required

at that stage. Now you've added another 15% of qualifiers that are less skilled, less strong, and less qualified, quite frankly. I think Halpin actually in the comments said something to your point. I think he said something about the 25% mark was like one muscle up for the men. For the men. Who had a muscle up. Whereas the 10% was less than one muscle up for the women last year.

Oh, that's what he was referencing? I couldn't figure out what he was referencing. Let me see if I could find it. Which is odd to me. So it's like that is now what's advancing right i mean i want i want what i loved about the open was that people could get their first muscle up or they try to get their first muscle and they got a lot of prs like that but it just seems very odd to me that in a worldwide competition for fitness that if you are unable to do that that you should be jumping

from the methodology of fitness which is the open this is our one time to test yourself for the year where you now jump into the element of sport the sport of fitness because it's not the community test anymore once you get past it kind of like what you said like it's 51 community then 49 games like all that's the open and now none of that stuff's going to happen because we're going to be advancing people over to the quarterfinals well now that line gets really blurred because who's really moving up there and is there going to be a list that says hey here are the skills you should be able to do well i qualify but i can't do that let me put this is a trip these are tripping numbers for people who don't know what they're looking at in regards to these numbers what mike halpin is uh

so generously done with a smile on his face in this uh profile picture is he's basically saying the if you know what the workouts were for from last year if you remember this is what you would have had to have done for 23.1 you would have just had to have gotten one muscle up i can't remember what the workout is but you can just just imagine. That's a pretty low bar. And then he goes on and shows it for all the different workouts. Let me say this. What about this argument? I just thought of this.

Tell me if you buy this. You make it so more people qualify for the quarterfinals, and therefore they end up becoming more invested in semifinals and the games because they can participate longer And therefore, they end up becoming more invested in semifinals and the games. And because they can participate longer. Because they know people who can participate longer. So in a way, it's generating more fans and more intense interest because people can continue along longer. You buy that?

No. Oh. Brian, you buy that? I mean, these guys got to go in a minute, so let's let them. Okay. Do you buy that? No, I don't buy that because like, you think it's just a financial move then you think it's just like, I, I don't want to, well, I actually don't know.

And one of the things we talked about on the show a little earlier was if it was truly financial then if you were going to be uh if you made it in the age group and the open division for quarterfinals you don't have to pay for both divisions you only have to pay once and then you can go on either one and be on either one of those sides so if it was a money after the open if you qualify quarterfinals this is one of the problems the programming for the quarterfinals for age group and for open division is the same. It's exactly the same. So now I can choose to go either this way or that way.

I don't have to do two workouts. If I was if I qualified in the open in the open division and then I qualified as the masters, I would have to do two. But, you know, a lot of the workouts were very similar or exactly similar. This year, it's exactly the same. That's another thing to me. It's like, okay, well, if the programming now is going to be the same at that level,

what is the programming going to look like for Masters and age group and then the Open athletes that are going to try to move on and then what did it look like in the open for these guys to get there i mean i'm i'm terrified with i am terrified what the program is going to look like i think it's i think it's going to be an absolute shit show honestly well you know in the last year it was only the 10 qualified to quarters and they received a ton of negative feedback about

them not being accessible enough. So you had workouts where it started with handstand walks. Essentially you had workouts where, you know, you're saying that the, the, the 10% was complaining. The workouts were too hard.

Correct. The bottom of the 10%, a lot of them weren't even able to do the workouts. So you're, so you're, did you agree with that? No. Did you you're – Did you agree with that or no? Did you think that was a good idea for them or no? To make them that – no, no, no.

I mean I think it's going to – I think it probably deterred a lot of people from wanting to do it this year. Now that it's 25% and the programming is the same, it really has to be appropriate. And that's something Adrian said. He was focused. to be appropriate. And that's something Adrian said he was focused. Yeah, but there's an implicit challenge that counteracts that, which is that in the most competitive parts of the world,

there's less people advancing to the next stage, but there's more people potentially participating in what is being advertised as more accessible tests. Those things don't work that well together. Let me ask you this just to be clear for the people listening at home and myself. You'll do the open. You'll qualify whether you're an individual or master. You'll qualify to this next section that's called quarterfinals.

In the quarterfinals, though, there will be five workouts. You're telling me that these five workouts for the individuals the best male and female athletes in the world will be the same as the masters from 35 to 112 years old well if it's if it's based on how the open has been it'll be the same for the teenagers that are 16 and 17 and the masters that are 35 to 54 and they'll just be altered versions of those workouts probably skill and weight for the so a 54 year old will do the same workouts as jason hopper and tia claire to me in the quarterfinals yeah if it's the same now i see you i didn't understand your concern bill now it's i understood what i thought i understood one part i understand one part of it i didn't know but there

is a there there is a potential because now we see that they've made some changes to the distribution of masters qualifying spots at the games and it's cut off at 50 at 49 where 35 to 49 have the same there's always the potential that the games programming team, or in this case, yeah, I think the games said they're programming the first two stages of the season, could recognize that there needs to be some more gradual tapering within the Masters divisions. So they could always make that change, but historically they have not.

And I think people that are, I mean, I know this isn't a programming show at all. Wait, wait, wait. Sorry, sorry, JR. Before you say it, the problem with that is brian then people who qualify for individual and whatever place they break the age off will now have to do all the workouts in the same week meaning people the whole reason why they're doing this is that so someone who's 36 years old can do one set of workouts and plug their scores into individual and masters. That's the way I took it.

But what you're saying is, and I guess there'd be very few 50-year-olds who are- Yeah, well, what I'm saying is that since Bill Grundler did it in 2014, no one over 45 years old has ever qualified for those divisions anyway. So you can probably cut it off at 44 and 16 and still get get everyone who would have made it through either way i wish i had needed a cheer button okay go ahead jared go ahead go ahead no i'm just saying uh if people can think back to 23.3 where there are gates right gated workouts starts with wall walks, then goes to strict handstand pushups.

Then if you can get through them, there's a moderately heavy snatch. If you think of workout one from quarterfinals last year, it goes from handstand walk to ring muscle ups, to wall facing handstand pushups. The last workout goes from chest to bar, to bar muscle up, to dense rope climbs. People like, that's the blueprint if

everyone's doing the same workouts you can expect lots of workouts that have natural gates natural places to bottleneck natural parts of the workout where everybody can play and then not very many people can play and then only the contenders can play. Which is a smart way to do when you have such a large group of people that are competing anyway to do that, because then you have your natural splits to move on, which is fine.

And again, I hope... We just haven't seen... I haven't seen enough good programming, especially in the quarterfinal stage, where that goes that direction. I haven't seen enough good programming, especially in the quarterfinal stage, where that goes that direction. I haven't seen it. And knowing that they're going to have this many people that are sitting 25% move on, I don't see that being any easier or being more inclusive or fire people up more than it is by keeping it even the 10%. I like the fact that they went up the numbers for the Masters in the age group to the 200

to go from there to the games. Great. I think that was probably the best thing that they put on there because now you're going to have Masters that can actually compete and actually kind of get after it, which would be great. Instead, I think last year was just 30. Yes, but that's appropriate for the lower age division masters. I still don't think that they need 265 plus if that many even sign up for it. Well, that's what I mean. Well, I mean, it's an online qualifier.

It's an online qualifier. Yes, but the difference in ability from the best to the 200th in the 35 to 39 is extremely small compared to the best to the 200th in the 65 plus. Okay. I don't necessarily disagree with you. I will. I need to head out and go pick up my daughter, but I will throw this out to you just for just on that point. So they're increasing the number of games level athletes in the Masters from 40 to 30.

Well, 40, 30 and 20 based on the age division. I think that that's cool i think that there were also why i competed when there were 20 people in the division and there was a vast difference between the top 10 and the bottom 10 that make it to the games and that was for 20 if all of a sudden now you have 40 athletes in the lower age groups and then you have 30 in the middle age groups and you know 20 at the at the lower age groups. And then you have 30 in the middle age groups and 20 at the upper age groups. You're going to have just what you're talking about, this vast difference between the two. And that's going to be live in person on the floor.

I totally agree. I have basically advocated for it last year that the 35 to 39 can support 30. I think the 40 to 49 can support 20. And I think the older divisions only need 10. And the 65 plus might only need 5. Possibly. If you want to have relatively competitive fields

that are still representative of their open registration numbers, because that's how it tapers off. I don't have any problem. I don't have any problem. Why cut them down? Why not let it go up? Well, because basically what you're going to see now at every stage of competition is a certain percentage of people bye bill thank you for coming on bill grunler from get with the programming crossfit inferno thanks bill yep uh go ahead seven what

what you're going to see now is that at every stage of competition there's going to be a percentage of athletes that have qualified that are unable to do the workouts or to perform them uh very well. Now they might just not sign up for it. Like I, uh, I would have easily made it in a top 25% last year, but there's two of the quarterfinal workouts that I couldn't have even started. I couldn't do the first rep of them. Right. And that's fine. That's fine though. Right? Yeah. So I would wait until the workouts come out and then I would make a decision. Do I want to pay 50 bucks, 40 bucks, whatever it is to do three workouts just for the hell of it and take a zero on the other ones. Maybe I do, maybe I don't, but this is going

to happen for, for masters athletes and individual athletes at quarterfinals. It's going to happen for masters athletes at semifinals. It might happen for some of the lower division or the lower qualifiers in the, in the weaker continents or the, you know in the in the weaker continents or you know the ones that had 30 last year at semi-finals and it could potentially happen for some of the uh the back end qualifiers and some of the masters divisions at the games but i thought you were the implication was that you were suggesting it was something negative like uh the semi uh well it's just it's just this you know there's this saying in CrossFit, program for the best, scale for the rest.

But when it comes to competition, what am I going to do? Advertise the competition and say, hey, guys, I have an RX Intermediate and Community Division. The Community Division is super accessible. Anyone can sign up for it. Come on down. And then the first workout has cleans at 225. People are going to be like, fuck you, dude.

What are you doing? Let me get this clear it says uh more people will qualify uh for semi-finals than ever this year top 200 at semi-finals per division online age groups online age groups are you saying you have a problem with that not at all i actually think that's a good thing for the growth of those communities i think i like it too i think it's gonna boost sign for the growth of those communities. I like it too. I think it's going to boost signups. And then I think if you have 200, you can have a not so great workout or two and still probably make top 40.

In your top 30, if you had one workout that was not good, you were not going to the games. And a lot of those guys in the top 30 last year could have gone to the games and made noise just because it the the the margin of error is so much smaller while their group got bigger the individuals got smaller and if you're someone who's just trying to crack that semifinals you want that individual semifinals on your resume which for a lot of people is like just as good as making the games 10 years ago. You have to be top 40 in North America. Now you've expanded the quarterfinals field.

You've given the opportunity for much more people to do it. Think about a strength workout. If there's a one rep max tested and you are someone that's on the bubble and you are not a very strong athlete. Now your chances of cracking the top 40 gone went down considerably because there are a lot more strong people than there are really, really, really fit people.

So it's going to really be interesting for those bubble semifinal athletes. It's easy for people to be like, who cares about them there? They don't matter as far as who's going to the games, but you can play that game all the way down to the open brian do you have any issues with 200 going i like i like it that 200 get to get to do the um uh i mean i i had no i i just i addressed this last year and i it's to me it's like why not actually look at the number of people participating in those divisions

we have all these years a decade of studies that we could do to reflect this. And last year in the lower three divisions, there were 15,000, 25,000, and 35,000 men that signed up, 10, 18, and 24,000 women. And the next three divisions, so 50 to 54 and going down from there, it's half of those numbers at best. And then it descends and descends. I think it should be 200 for the first three and 100 after that. But why?

Because then you're going to have a greater percentage of the qualifying athletes that can do the workouts that should – the difficulty of the workout that should be present at that stage of the season. I would just program it and not care about them. That's what I just said. Who's going to have a competition and say, yeah, yeah, come on. You made it to this competition. Come on in.

First workout is a 50 wall facing strict handstand pushups for time followed by three, three deadlifts at 505 pounds. You're going to be like, why did I pay money to come to this? Why did you mean I qualify? I qualified for this. This is the one I signed up for. I don't want to say two wrongs make a right, but we do see, we've seen that at the games a lot.

Also, we've seen that at the games. That's the CrossFit game, right? Oh my God. OPT can't do handstand walks. You know what I mean? Yeah. And they've made some adjustments to that over the years. You know, I thought it was ridiculous when they were qualifying one person from Latin America, taking him to California, saying, OK, we have an ocean swim as event one.

Oh, you can't swim. You're out. You can't even participate in the rest of the events. But they stopped doing that because it was clearly ridiculous to have someone travel, represent a part of the world and then eliminate them after not being able to do the first skill. Who was that? Do you remember who that was? Orlando Trejo. Oh, that's crazy.

I don't know. I actually don't have a problem with that, but it's crazy. But that's the CrossFit games. That is different. That is elite. That is meant to be. Yes.

There's going to, like, if you go there and let, you know, every athlete that goes there for the most part runs into something. We're like, fuck, this is hard.

Whether it's the totality of the volume, the ability to recover a weight, movement, a skill. Like that's the point of the games is to expose the best athletes in the world. That is not the point of the quarterfinals. In my opinion, that's not the point of the semifinals. What is the point? So I still don't understand why you care. A hundred people can't do it. If a hundred people, let's say the,

let's say the final debt, let's say there's some deadlift workout and in the, in the final, the final bar, 150 of the old people can't do it only 50 of them can do it the ones that are juiced up and got away with being juiced well look the like we said we have i wouldn't be upset if i was competing would you um no it depends on how the workouts are are designed and it sounds like he's going to have a much simpler design or at least a lower barrier to entry to begin the workouts which is which is good if that that is needed in the current system that they currently have let's go because i have to leave in like two minutes

um i think chase was probably the first one to bring it up this was a long time ago but from an affiliate owner standpoint, you want people to get excited about the open. You want them to challenge themselves. For a lot of people, it's the only time they will compete all year. They'll take it a little bit more seriously. They'll talk junk to their friends, whatever.

Awesome. Why not in the future do something like for the affiliates, a kickback system. So I'll just say, okay, Hey guys, get your, you know, get your members excited about the open, get them to sign up. Instead of it being 20 bucks, it's now 25 bucks. You get a $5 kickback for every person from your gym that signs up. Quarterfinals is expanded to 25%. That means more of your community is going to be able to move on

and test themselves again. It's going to be 50 bucks to sign up. For every person that signs up, you get $10 kickback. Any people that make it to a semifinal stage online, adaptive age groups, it's going to be 100 bucks to sign up.

You know what? We can give you a $20 kickback for every person that does that hey dude once they open that door they can't close that you know that maybe that i like your idea and again never be able to close that door once they open it and maybe maybe that's just me you know being foolish and just being like oh man come on like if your members no it's not hard and your members they want you to sell the open to people why not yeah so anyway it's just it's just something that i think an affiliate owner

that has 50-plus people doing quarterfinals, needing to find time to judge them, to video them, because they want to take it seriously. You don't want to brush them off and just say, oh, you don't matter. You're not Jason. You're not going to semifinals anyway. So I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to treat Jason just like I treat the person that barely got in 25%. So it's just something to think about maybe in the future to maybe incentivize it a little bit. Are the corner files or the open? Both. Well, your idea is not foolish in the sense that, like, hey, you're asking these people to do something, you should pay them.

And I think a lot of the people would actually sign up knowing maybe the gym would get some juice. Right. Whereas normally they wouldn't. They just, but you know what, man? That's a really good point. So not only do more people sign up, but they also are just like, you know, you do a lot for me. I didn't know you were going to get a little kickback.

Sure, I'll sign up for you. Right. Yeah, I really like that. I love that idea. I just know once they open that door you can't close it i'd be scared if i worked at hq i'd be scared to death i would try to figure out some other way to incentivize people but but it's a fucking great idea i gotta go buy all the all the 3m tape that lowes has all right see you bye is that really what he's doing i don't think so and that was it that was a joke in reference to the fact that you need a lot of tape

to mark the quarterfinals and open workouts to map out the floor, right? The floor layouts. That's what he was getting at, yes. Brian, let's move on to actual semifinals. These will be live events for the individuals and the teams. And each semifinal will have 30 teams. Instead of there being 38 teams that go to the crossfit games this year there'll only be 30 teams and last year at the semi-finals how many teams went well it was different based on which competitive region you were in there were either 20 or 40

so and now it'll be the same it'll be so the same Yeah, more or less the same thing has happened on the team and individual side of things for semifinals, which is that there were more individuals and teams that qualified in what I have called the major regions, North America, East, West, and Europe. And then there were less in the other four. And this year they've uniformed that. So everyone gets the same. Europe and then there were less in the other four and this year they've uniformed that. So everything, everyone gets the same,

but, but, but the North American semifinals will, even though they will have fewer people in the same amount will qualify more or less within one based on the strength of numbers. We can assume that, yeah, we can assume that,

uh, I mean, I think Adrian said in his, um, show with Chase, a pre-recorded show with Chase today, that it's going to be a very similar system. Hey, that's crazy. That means in some of these semifinals, 25% of the people will qualify to the CrossFit Games.

And in others, 5%. One out of 40. Is that five? That's less than five. Two. Whatever it is. Two and something. 1 out of 40. Is that 5? That's less than 5. 2. Whatever it is. 2 and something. 1 out of 40. 2.5.

Wow. 5% in Asia. Oh, there was someone in here that I think agreed with you. I think this was the sentiment you were giving extra sloppy Seve that's me I'm a class RX guy

meaning they write the shit on the board and he does it like the way they write it how are you going to incentivize me to do quarterfinals from what I've seen out of quarterfinals in the last time, I'd never sign up for that. He's

implying that they were too hard. He's really strong and capable, but they were still too hard. Yeah, and he wants to see your best on the spot sales pitch to him. Quit being a pussy. But that is what you're saying. That's what you're saying that's what you're saying too

you're saying it's good like you're saying like how are they going to make programming that's going to incentivize these really good people like extra sloppy who are really good at crossfit but also filter out for the the the ricky mac correct and it's not and it's like, and I would even say, take them, take the extremes out of it. You know, if as helping has shown us to make the top 25% with the style of programming we had last year is a pretty low barrier to entry for an experienced CrossFitter or someone like a Mr. Sloppy that goes to the class and does mostly the prescribed workouts. At the very top end of the field,

you have Ricky Max and Jason Hoppers and these guys. The open is an afterthought. The quarterfinals, they might have to put a little bit of attention on this year because the margins for error is small. There were some athletes that did very well at the CrossFit Games and Rogue this year that wouldn't have made the semifinals last year. Do you see those yet? No. Where's that? Did I? Maybe I saw that. Halpin

identified them very quickly. It's on his Known and Knowable page. He tagged the Be Friendly Fitness. We reposted it, but a yellow host is one of those. Is that on Instagram? Mm-hmm. Hold on a second. I want you to explain this to me. Ooh, I like this hold on

hold on Mike Halpin known oh I follow the known and knowable page yes you want to be in the know it popped up very quickly for me Mike Halpin thank you for your okay here which one is it

stories oh okay here we go these 2024 season changes Which one is it? Stories. Oh, okay. Here we go. These 2024 season changes. CrossFit sets a state. Okay. This one. It looks like you've been missing this feature by going too fast.

You've been temporarily blocked from using it. Wait, what? What? Did Halpin just block me? Wait, what? This is the one. What was that? Oh, shit.

The next one. The next page? What was I getting blocked for? I'm in a panic. I don't know. Okay, here it is. Yeah. You're temporarily blocked. It looks like you were misusing this feature. They're watching you.

Okay. Okay. Now explain to me what happened, Bethany, Rebecca, and Jelly. They were not made semifinals last year under this format. Are you Dave, a claims-free hybrid driving university grad who signed up online? Well, Dave, this jingle's for you. Who saves with TD Insurance? Because he's a claims-free hybrid driving university grad who signed up online.

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Ready for you. This episode is brought to you by PC Optimum. If you like a curated playlist, why not try a curated grocery list? With Swap and Save, the new feature in the PC Optimum app, you'll get PC Optimum's best price for your grocery items. Simply add products to your shopping list in the app, and it'll show you similar items at a lower cost. Add coffee to your list, then swap it for one that's cheaper. Craving chips? The app will suggest some on sale.

To get started, just open the app. It's as easy as that. See the PC Optimum app for details. is that? See the PC Optimum app for details. Therefore, they would have had no chance to qualify for the games. They wouldn't have competed at the games, and therefore, Yellow Host and Bethany Flores also wouldn't have qualified for

Rogue through the CrossFit Games. Maybe they would have through. I understand Bethany Flores because she probably went somewhere where 80 people were accepted, right? No, they all went somewhere where 60 people were accepted. 60, sorry. Okay, they all went somewhere where they were 60. Okay.

Their qualifying positions, as you see there, were 52nd, 55th, and 44th, which would not have been good enough to make it on first glance. Now, possibly with a backfill or something, a yellow host, it would have got in. But the reason why I mentioned that the margins for air at the quarterfinal are going to be smaller for the top athletes is several things first of all what jr said is that there's the potential for uh a workout or a scored event to show up that could skew the data with a large pool of athletes the way that happens in the open secondary you know and so the programmer must

be conscientious of that. Secondarily, we had the problem with the V-ups last year, a new standard introduced at a stage of the season with a big group of people. And so there was a learning curve in terms of athletes making mistakes with that regard. Thirdly, you had the crossover single under where, you know, opinion that was not that was not so much a fitness test for some people as just a skill adaptation that they were forced to do under a small period of time and all of those things you know you can have your opinions one way or the other but there are things that adrian and the programming team must consider carefully when programming for quarterfinals because they put an increased premium on the ability to qualify

for the most competitive regions in the world where even if you were outside of those qualifications last year you could have been a yellow host day who got went on to make top 10 at the games he was the highest placing rookie there he got an invite to rogue he's got an invite to fit fest his whole life changed because of the 60 and now they reverted back to the 40. the 60 and now they revert it back to the 40. You're, you're, you're not weighing in on if it's a good thing or a bad thing. You are pointing out and hoping that these are conversations that were had in the decision-making process. It's really easy. And it's really easy to look at this and say more athletes participating at more stages of the season. Great for growth in terms of more competition within kind of the marginal CrossFitter and the affiliates.

Great for revenue for CrossFit. They have the potential to earn a lot more money, which would be great for them to be able to support higher elevation of maybe a prize per set semifinal that's reflective of the quality of the field or increase of a broadcast that's going to be available for some of the, you know, teenage games and adaptive and age group games this year. You know, obviously, the more money they can potentially do more things with it. So it's not bad to have more earning potential. I think that the thing that we're kind of questioning is how does that weigh against what you've done to the quality of the competition?

Because that article that, um, Halpert and I did last year about the true strength of field was basically getting after this idea of is each stage of the season vetting for the appropriate group of athletes to take the next test with the ultimate goal of finding the fittest group of people to take the ultimate test to find the fittest person. And we pretty much decided that was not the case last year. And the numbers kind of speak to that.

Now it's even more difficult to do that in this format. So that's the counteractive side. Like those are the things that you need to weigh. The only thing that I heard in the podcast with Adrian and chase that explains the 40 male and 40 female athletes that will compete at every uniformly across all seven regions, the same seven that they were last year is that they wanted continuity in the

deployment of the workouts, the actual workouts, the deployment of the workouts, and the scheduling of the workouts. They wanted uniformity across all of the events. I can't think of any other reason why they would not make an exemption for North America, East and West, and Europe, where I believe you're saying we had 60, which it would make sense to me. Why not just let them have 60 again? It is more money for them. It's more people. It's more fans. It's more everything. The only thing I think of is is the scheduling and the the

logistics and can you think of anything and and they and adrian said that but but it seems weird that you wouldn't make an exemption for that well and you know another thing that was unknown is who is governing those competitions so crossfit took the responsibility of the the big three semifinals last year and outsourced the responsibility to the other competition organizers in those parts of the world, Torian Pro, Asia, South America, Africa. We don't know how that's going to go yet. There was obviously a cost associated with CrossFit having those big three. And because of the number of participants on the team and individual side, they had an extra day of competition means they have to reserve the venue for an extra day. So there's extra costs potentially there. But again, the counter, the balance is what does

it stay about the state of competition? Because in the study that we did, I think there were two women and five men from Africa, or it might've even been less than that, like one and two that actually proved good enough through the individual opening quarterfinals relative to the global population who took those tests to advance to the semifinals. And it was a bit of a crude study that we did where we had some pretty strict cutoffs, but it ended up yielding a field that was very similar to the total number of qualifiers that they had. Now they've allowed 40 of those in. There was other studies that we did last year, and obviously this is a lot of new information today, and I've already done a lot of finding old information and making comparisons,

but there was something like a hundred athletes that didn't ever get a single rep of workout number two around the world last year. Now you're from the semifinals and semif-finals workout too which was you had to do the it was the weighted muscle-ups into the pistols into the burpee box jump overs or get overs and you know there were like it was close to 100 athletes that were unable to get to any burpee box jump overs which was the scored thing now you're taking away a 60 men and 60 women from the most competitive regions and you're adding in 40 men and 40 women from the most competitive regions, and you're adding in 40 men and 40 women from the least competitive regions. Another way of saying that is you're diluting the quality of

the semifinal participant globally. So you have more people that are less capable participating. So while yes, on the logistics side, everything is going to be more equally distributed, what's going to be drastically altered is the disparity from best to worst person participating in there. And at this stage of the season, you absolutely cannot be doing these types of things that he's talking about, which is, oh, well, we need to make the programming such that people can participate. No, now the game is on. It's real. There's a limited number of spots at the games. We want people at the games that are good enough to show up and do most of the things there and be competitive and affect the leaderboard from day one through whenever they're cut

or the final workout. And we're going to have probably around 35 women in Africa now, 30 at least that are just, there's no other way to say it. They're not good enough to be at the semifinal based on what the level of programming needs to be to assess for that level of athlete globally to advance to the crossfit games you think we're going to see a lot of people standing around with their thumb in their butt not if those events aren't live streamed wow hence your piggyback hence bill's uh apprehension about seeing the programming

of course a lot of itension about seeing the programming. Of course, a lot of it is dependent on the programming. And this is where, you know, I would love to be in the rooms for some of those conversations prior to these decisions being made to see if these questions are being asked. If there is someone that's providing some pushback to say, hey, I understand that 25 is a clean number. I understand that having 200 is easy for people or whatever. that 25 is a clean number. I understand that having 200 is easy for people, you know, whatever. Are we sure that we need 200 athletes competing in the semifinal stage of competition for 60 and 65 year old divisions? Let's take a look at what those divisions actually produced last year. There was a really dramatic drop off after about 60, you know, like I'm just making that up, but like, do we need 200? Can we do, you know, maybe do we have 200, 200, 200, 100, 100, 50, 50.

And now we're taking a percentage of athletes or a group of athletes from that demographic that are actually representative of the style of athlete that we want to be testing at that stage of competition for what the intended goal is, which is to find a specific number to advance to the final stage. intended goal is, which is to find a specific number to advance to the final stage. Do you have any problem in the adaptive with the finals, the CrossFit Games, let's say that Legends will be in charge of this year with so many people? The first three divisions from 35 to 50 each have 40 people in them now. Do you have a problem with that?

I think you just switched from adaptive to master's question. Mid question. Sorry. Sorry. I meant to thank you. Let's do masters first. The masters are 35 to 50. Do you have an issue with that?

If I mean, just to be clear, sorry, let me just be really clear real quick. By the way, the mat, the adaptive also, the adaptive has 15 divisions,

man, 15 divisions, female, and at their championships at their crossfit games they'll have 10 people in each division correct just there okay we'll come back to that okay now to be clear the masters men and women 35 to 50 they will those three divisions will have 40 in each yeah do you have a problem with that those three divisions will have 40 in each. Yeah. Do you have a problem with that? I mean, yes and no. I think that it is appropriate, and I was asking last year to have increased representation in specific Masters divisions at the final stage of the season.

I also think that it's appropriate to have increased participation for certain divisions at earlier stages in the season if i were just giving carte blanche to do this for the semi-finals starting with the 35 and going up to 65 i would have probably done 200 200 200 100 150 50 for semis and then the games i probably would have done 30 maybe 30 30 20 20 and 10 5 something like that i still don't know why oh because you don't want to see people sitting around not not being able to do the workouts and you're concerned that there's going to be some influence in the programming to make sure that everyone's moving on the floor as opposed to crowning the fittest and making it challenging enough.

I mean, 35,000 people sign up for one division. They get 40 spots to the games. Less than 2,000 people sign up for another division, and they get 20 spots to the games. It's less than 10% correlation with 50% representation at the highest stage of the competition. So I just would say I would look at the numbers. And then I would, you also could look at the number of people who are actually

not just signing up, but completing all the tests at semis and quarters in the previous year. And you could look for certain thresholds and say, Hey, what kind of person do we really want at the semifinal level? What kind of person do we really want at the games level? And how many of those people existed in the 35 to 39 demographic that next year, last year, plus that demographic, the 35 to 49 range is only continuing to improve. Still, we haven't reached the peak limit of what's kind of expected because there's continually people that have been doing this for five, eight, 10, 12 years that are getting into those age ranges that are increasing the ability there. At the upper ends, we could say that's also true, but I think that we have a clear,

there's like a really clear drop-off in those divisions where there's a certain group of people, maybe it's 100 to 150 at most, that can actually do the stuff that we would want them to be doing in quarterfinals, and then a lot less that can do it at semifinals i was just thinking about frisbee golf and about how fucking deep the the field is to where it's just like like the dudes at the bottom are just well yeah the dudes at the

bottom can't even compare to the dudes at the top right but the tech the barrier you have a high tolerance yeah the barrier to entry for that sport is very low throw a disc until you get it in the basket it's one objective there isn't an increased demand to do a dozen different lifting variations a dozen different gymnastics variations all these things in combination mobility range of motion weight the weight increases, et cetera. It's a very different sport in that regard. Let me read through some of these really quick. Eduardo Montiero.

Eduardo Montiero. Last year, Guimarães lost his spot in South Africa. Just kidding. In South America for an event terribly programmed, and there were not plenty of good athletes for him to come back in the standings. Oh, yeah, there were only three good dudes there, top-tier dudes, and there wasn't anyone

to help him get in the mix to get back. Would you say that that was terribly programmed? That was going to be my question to you. I mean, this is, I'm not really sure what he's hinting at i mean the problem he's saying this the first workout was programmed like ass and on top of that this is the way i'm understanding on top of that he had a great rest of the week but there weren't enough people good dudes there to fucking give him the ability to come back yeah i mean he's he's using a specific example to talk about what JR highlighted earlier and what we've already reiterated, which is that the bigger the group of athletes, the more critical the

programming. Because if you program even one event that has a low barrier to entry, 5k run, um, max snatch, you know, something that like, there's going to be a group of people that will excel at that discipline that might not expel at the complexity of CrossFit otherwise. They have a general physical fitness that's good enough to get there. And if one of these superstar athletes is average at that specific task that was pulled, I don't know if it's random or intentionally to be tested amongst a group of other tests, limited number of tests, deep field, easy entry point, that's the recipe for potentially missing out on someone like that.

Sam Briggs and hand Sam walking 2014, right? One thing she couldn't do. If she had been able to do that one thing that year, she may have won the games that year. A lot of people think she would have. We don't know how he would have done it this year, but he did great on five of the workouts or six of the workouts. He did terribly on one and he missed out on a spot at the games because of it. Now there's going to be 10 extra guys in that it this year, but he did great on five of the workouts or six of the workouts. He did terribly on one, and he missed out on a spot at the games

because of it. Now there's going to be 10 extra guys in that field this year. Which could be good for him? Probably not. If there's a long aerobic event again, it could mean that he has less chance to make it back to the CrossFit Games.

crossfit games unless those guys push down the top two guys who beat him out last year well basically what you're saying what happened was he was the best by a large margin at the more complex oh but the guys we're going to get are going to be below him they're going to be ass right so so he might, I see. I see. Thank you for explaining to me. It took me a second. Yeah.

All of a sudden, 10 dudes aren't going to show up who are fucking beasts. Yeah. So we already, we already know the caliber of athlete there. Okay. Right. So the fact that he,

that he had, and I'm making some stuff up here, but the fact that he had three world-class performances at semifinals that totally obliterated the field, he competed again, was negated. And then some by the fact that he had a below average workout on one of the tests that would just happen to be something that a lot of people are good at. And you would expect him to be better at that too, but he's not.

And it didn't. And it was so influential and detrimental to his overall score that even elite level performances on several other tests wasn't enough to overcome it. Because what he was excelling at, the other guys were not. They were a lot worse than him at it, but still better than the rest of the field. Dude, that's a great list to put together. Athletes who didn't make it the top 10 best athletes who didn't make it the top 10 um uh best athletes who didn't make them to the games like like sam would be number one and gee would be number two or something you know what i mean and then as a list it's just like what the fuck like what the fuck happened athletes

yeah i mean there would be some that would be a tough study actually because you'd have like uh you know there was those two years that fukowski didn't make it by one spot in back-to-back years then he finally made it and he finished fourth at the games next year he could be done twice well we don't know how good he would have been because we didn't have a previous data point whereas for sam briggs she won the games then she missed for gee he made it top 10 twice then he missed so we know that we're missing out on a great athlete that can do it at the next level whereas in the case of fukowski we didn't know yet how good he could be uh cave dastro uh seve just became adaptive for a second it's called neuromuscular division uh jedediah snelson brian are you brian friend coming to wheelwod games this year jedediah not only well i i am planning to come

there i don't have a place to stay there yet it's been a little complicated but you also don't know what if it's the same days as the CrossFit Games no no no no Wheel WOD is happening in three weeks in Raleigh, North Carolina December 1st through 3rd oh Jedediah Jedediah is coming on the show this Friday

Jedediah make sure we bring up your shirt on the show on Friday but Jedediah I am bringing with me some models that were sent to me make sure we bring up your shirt on the show on Friday. Okay, go ahead. But Jedediah, I have, I am bringing with me some models that were sent to me from adaptive rowing in Sweden for lower extremity division athletes to test out. And Tom has told me that they are game changing. So I'm super excited for the limbs and shit like legs. It's an attach.

It's a rowing attachment. Oh, it's real. I got a chance to test it when i was in sweden and they asked if i knew tom and i did i do know tom and i reached out to him i showed him tom missing tom is the i think he's the best athlete the best male athlete in lower extremity division over the last i think he's won almost every workout not just the competition that he's done so he doesn't have legs he does have legs he can't, he doesn't have full function of them.

Is he better than Jedediah? It's true. I'm not actually sure if they'd be in the same division or not this year. Cause there are not be having Jedediah on and be having this dude Tom on. Should I swap out my adaptive? They're both great, but they have, now they have next year, lower impairment, above knee, lower impairment, below knee and lower impairment minor. They have seated without hip function and seated with hip function.

I don't want the second best, dude. Anyway. Friday, ladies and gentlemen, may be Jedediah S. Nelson's last appearance on the 7 Podcast. Mike Halbin, how many... Oh, yeah. What's going on with the Occupational Games? I haven't heard any mention of that yet. Do we know? I have also not heard any mention of that.

Hmm. Patrick Clark always has something interesting to say. Halpin, simple fix. That is, you choose the winner of the Occupational Games out of the quarterfinals. Use the same workouts. Yeah. But they have to,

they have to, um, they have to, uh, they have to let us know like who's the cop and who's the nurse. They have to sign up for that. Right? Like we need to see that we need that leaderboard.

Do you know anyone who can make that happen? No. Well, I could talk to someone. I, I know a guy. Oh, I could talk to someone. I know a guy. I should ask him. He works on the games team.

He used to be in the Navy. Dave Borders, 499. Thoughts on just counting open scores as part of quarterfinals? That would make the open still matter a lot. Oh. They used to do this for the age group semifinals, where the first scored event was your open score, your open ranking. And then you would have, you know, four or five other ones that would be factored in as basically 20 percent or 25 percent of your overall score.

There's some just blanket inherent challenges with that. They're a little bit negated this time because the playing field is so wide for quarterfinals. But, yeah, the field of the field of play is dramatically different also the timing is a month apart which is a little weird if you were to do that so i don't think it's the best solution as some someone asked if um bill grundler's been oh uh yeah jan clark has Bill G been on yet? Oh, my God, Jan. You look like you're 12 in that photo. No, Bill hasn't been on. That's why the show's running long. We're just waiting for him.

We're just shooting the shit until Bill gets here. Slater, are they making a light skin and dark skin division for black people? Brian. I haven't seen anything about that. Well, it's an indoor event. I don't know what that has to do with it, but they need an event for the northerners.

What's next? What do we find out next? We barely even covered. We fell into a hole, a rabbit hole, but I'm glad we did what's next what do we find out next from uh um the crossfit games i i did hear adrian say that the rule book should be coming out in december and in december that's hopefully when they will have the dates for us for the seven semi-finals yeah i mean the the big things that are missing are the dates and

locations for the live in-person semi-finals and the dates and locations for the live in-person semifinals and the dates and locations for the CrossFit Games Adaptive Masters and Teenage competitions. And those are big things. People want to start planning their stuff accordingly. Fans, judges, media. Let me ask you this. Is Wheelwad in the same place every year? I don't know. It's in Raleigh, North Carolina this year. Isad in the same place every year i don't know it's in raleigh north carolina this year is legends in the same place every year no is um team pit in the same place every year it is and i and i i would be surprised if that was not happening at the pit some in or or at or around that area okay a mac uh thaudy

seve will you do the open i have no um i i i don't think so i've no unless something was like dave tells me to i i don't think i'll thank you heidi tells you to uh heidi groom mac uh seve basically invented the opening that's correct hey um what Hey, what? What? I am going to work out. The next place I'll be working out publicly. Oh, now I have your attention

huh next place I'll be working on publicly will be I think November 18th at 7 a.m. in Livermore California at CrossFit Livermore Dallas is gonna be great dude Dallas is gonna be absolutely

the whole games this year is gonna be amazing it's gonna be fun we have so much fucking drama and crazy shit going on in CrossFit it's going to be amazing it's going to be the best male and female competition in the history of the sport I mean that hands down male for sure the build up to it is going to be

the best ever I can tell you for both of them it is going to be something else I'm going to have a laura horvat and tia toomey week where they'll alternate coming on every other day for 20 days straight in 15 minute segments 20 minute a week 20 times uh i i guess i'll announce this now you got this is kind of big news laura and tia will be coming on 20 days in a row but alternating days for 15 minute segments with me and it'll allow them for me to bounce shit talking back and forth off of them

do you know what I mean? so we'll interview Laura then we'll interview Tia we'll do it as a team together I would love for Emma Lawson I would love to if Tia gets sick or Laura gets sick Emma could be a backup fighter but we'll go back and forth now listen just imagine or Laura gets sick, Emma could be a backup fighter. But we'll go back and forth. Now listen,

just imagine... What about if Mal O'Brien signs up this year? Then I would have to kick... Then we'll do 30 days and we'll alternate 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. But here's the thing. In all honesty, just imagine

how easy it would be for someone to set that up. And if they did set that up, how much fucking insane hype that would build. I thought you already had it set up. No, I was lying. Sorry. I was lying. Dreaming. You were dreaming.

Dreaming. That's what I mean. Dreaming. I was in a dream. Okay. Final question for you because I want to go work out. My fitness is important to me. You interviewed Alex Kazan today on the Be Friendly Fitness Podcast.

So I think that's the first interview that's been done with an athlete since the announcements were made. Did you get any feeling from her how she – not that I give two shits what the athletes think, but let's just pretend like I do because I do love Alex. What did she think? We did talk to – that was not what we were planning to talk about. Let's just pretend like I do because I do love Alex. What did she think? We did talk to her. That was not what we were planning to talk about. What we did probably spend the first 15 minutes with her talking about it a little bit. You know, she immediately saw the less qualifying spots for quarterfinals or from quarterfinals to semifinals amongst a bigger group of athletes

and noted that that would put a little bit of a premium on the execution, even for the best athletes in the world, and could potentially be costly for some of them, depending on what comes out. If there is a test amongst the quarterfinal tests that a lot of people who have no chance of making semifinals could do very well on that event in isolation. And she saw that right away. Did she give two shits? I mean, she mentioned that last year at quarterfinals,

she had a couple of workouts that didn't go great for her and that would have been a lot more stressful with two-thirds of the available spots. Look at this. this is not you not me kind of bummed it's not me though great hair on that guy there we go there we go

sweet fisher oh my god look at her hair she had just finished an echo bike workout you would have been very happy oh my god she's like the hot version of Medusa. My God, she looks amazing. The reason why I'm asking is I kind of want her to be like, I don't care. I just fucking work. I do shit. I lift heavy shit and run fast. I don't care.

Does she have any of that to her? Yeah, I mean, you know, she's one of the best in the world. And she did express an element of, you know, we train through the open. We do that workout and then we get on with training for the day and whatever. But quarterfinals, you know, maybe a little different this year because there's fewer spots available. So I don't I didn't get the impression that it was like a super stressful for her, but definitely something that she's conscious of. super stressful for her, but definitely something that she's conscious of. And she did also mention that like for, for that bigger group of people that make it through the open to the

quarterfinals, that could be kind of a fun month for them and their training. What are you? I'm listening to you. I'm just looking at her different. I'm scrolling through the timeline and looking at her different hair. And then she just got ugly. Look at bam.

How is Dan? He's he's coming on my podcast how was thursday yeah yeah how was he he was great no he might be coming on tomorrow oh is tomorrow is thursday yeah thursday i was it tomorrow or next thursday yeah i think he said next thursday oh well that would be awesome because he's not on the calendar for tomorrow but yeah he was great he spoke about his fundraising uh event that he's doing on january 20th and just the entire initiative behind that but i'm sure you'll flush it out more than i did okay why you didn't want to flush it out no we just we told him we'd have mine for about 15 minutes and i don't know that you've ever done a podcast that only lasts 15 minutes. All right.

Thanks for coming on. I know this is the last minute. I appreciate it. Now, people… Well, just the last thing that I want to say is… Please, in summation. Yeah, I mean, the couple things are, at the same time today, CrossFit sent out an email. They released a podcast.

They released an Instagram post there. You know, and even in those things, they mentioned the fact that they are taking note and they are listening and they are attempting to respond to the requests from the communities. Last year, one of the big issues in terms of communication was inconsistent information at differing times across their different platforms for releasing information. Big win today in that regard is that they got out the information that they wanted on multiple platforms at the same time. Similarly to when they announced the changes for the CrossFit Games having multiple locations and different hosts in terms of competition organizers for the different divisions, there are always, always going to be questions to be asked. There's

always going to be people that immediately choose to look at the negative, the critical, the I could do better type of perspective. But you just have to keep in mind, like, these are these people's jobs. They might not do a perfect job every time with every decision, but they're trying. They're trying to make this a better, more successful thing for the people that are in it now. You can have your opinions about what their ultimate motivation is, whether it's to make money, to improve the livelihood of the people in general from a health and fitness and functionality perspective or somewhere in between.

But you and I have talked about this. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. And if you do have an increased stream of revenue, there's good things that can be done with that i want them to get rich as fuck i want everyone i think who works at the games to be filthy make three or four or five hundred thousand dollars a year be able to buy a nice house swimming pool uh get their wife pregnant so she doesn't she could raise the kids at home like or get their husband pregnant the way they're doing it over there at crossfit hq just whatever yeah i'm totally open i love it and there's and that's why i don't like them

when they're like it's just a money grab fuck you they got to make money i'm totally okay with the money thing yeah and it's and it's like uh it's totally okay to ask questions it's totally okay to make observations there are inherent challenges that will come with the decisions that they made for certain people bill and jr identified some of those from the affiliate perspective and how to manage those weekends. You want to provide a high quality of product for the people at your affiliate. You're going to have an increased premium on time and what that looks like during quarterfinals this year because more people will make it. And now the onus kind of shifts back to CrossFit. Adrian talked about it today. They are, you know, and I think Dave even has alluded to it, that they are being intentional with the design of those things

and hopefully the implementation of them to the point where they are accessible, they are challenging, they are sufficient for finding the next group of athletes to advance through the season. And hopefully also that they are something that their team can actually manage and process in a reasonable time. That, to me, is a massive, massive critical component of their execution of the game season this year. Can their review team score these workouts for these percentage of people in a reasonable amount of time and get the information turned around and out to people so that they can make their plans for semifinals?

That, to me, is going to be a huge if until I see it happen. Alright, thank you. I do just want to play this really quick. Here's some of the, I haven't seen this yet. Here's some of the content that they're putting out. This is, do you know her name? Becky Harsh?

Becky Harsh. Super kind and helpful person last year with semifinals for me. Yeah, I think she might be a flow master too, right? I don't know. She's been around for a while. Yeah, crazy highly respected with the people, HQ, the OGs. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Highlights of your season structure for the 2024 CrossFit Games.

Individuals and teams look basically the same as last year. We start online with the opening quarterfinals. We move to in-person competition for semifinals and the games. For our age group categories, which includes the masters and the teenagers, your competition starts online with the... Oh, wow. This goes on and on. Okay.

All right, cool. So there's tons of information out there. Yeah, and very much in line with what they said. This was one of the feedback that people were giving last year is, hey, you guys control the narrative. Put out the information at a consistent time across your platforms with consistent information on all those platforms.

And today they did that from what I have seen. I've got the lowlights for your season structure for the 2024 or CrossFit games. Dave hinted at some exciting changes coming this Wednesday, and boy, was he wrong. First off, if you were holding out some faint, irrational hope at a longer open, you were

wrong. We're getting more bang for your book. Dude, what is wrong with my fucking computer? I got a reboot. Brian, thank you for coming on. Sorry. Sorry, Pedro. My shit's not playing right. See you guys tomorrow

morning. No guest. Don't forget to watch the Chicago Bears game tonight. Not tonight. There's no football tonight. Don't forget to watch the Chicago Bears game tonight. Not tonight. There's no football tonight. Don't forget to watch the Chicago Bears game tomorrow night. It's so great. I've been a Chicago Bears fan my entire life, and now all my friends are suddenly enjoying the misery alongside me.

Isn't it? It must be crazy for people like you and Hiller. All of a sudden, everyone in CrossFit is like, what are the Bears doing? It is quite comical when you guys are watching the games and people are like, what the hell is the offensive line doing? It's like I've been asking myself that for 30 years. Dude, did you see that snap last week where it rolled to him? I mean, it fucking rolled to him on the ground.

I was like, how is that? You're not., you're not, are you not allowed to hit the guy who snaps the ball? There's a, for like an extra points and stuff like that. No, unless they, unless they attempt to block, but in the flow of the offense, yes, the center does become involved in the play. Okay. Okay. But not, but not if it's a,

like you have to give them a chance to snap the ball. Okay. Okay. But not, but not if it's a, like you have to give them a chance to snap the ball. Okay. Man. Oh, someone wrote something in the private chat. Oh, okay. It was a J it's a no fun.

J.R. Later. Seven. I love you. That's cute. Okay. See you guys tomorrow morning. Thank you.

Bye. Bye.