The Sevan Podcast - Open, Taylor vs World, and What's Coming in Quarterfinals | Shut Up & Scribble

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

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That's BetterHelp.com. meeting with friends before the show we can book your reservation and when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash y amex benefits vary by card other conditions apply for that anymore i don't get paid for that anymore i'm using earbuds those earbuds that you struggle with to put on you know the wraparounds what are you talking about i put those on like a champ dude happy belated birthday i mean you proved your age when you're trying to put those on have you do you go how often do you go to the dentist uh as less often as i possibly can probably like every two or three years have you had a cavity filled i've had two in my life do you remember what the experience is like

yep but i have had um i've had a couple root canals and i had one i had one done where the uh intadonis was can was convinced that my tooth was completely dead. It was on my front tooth. So he went in to rip out the remaining root. It was not dead at all. So I felt everything. And from then on, I've been like scarred from the dentist. I'll do anything not to go to the dentist.

Every time I go to the dentist now that I've moved and I don't go to my childhood dentist, for some reason, I guess I brushed my teeth. I've tried floss, but I guess I'm just susceptible to cavities. And I didn't just either. I blinked out that part of my childhood or this dentist just does a completely different method of filling cavities. Cause it hurts every time. freaking bad and every time i go i'm like oh this is just encouragement i'm gonna you know brush my teeth three times a day i'm gonna floss twice a day because i never want to do this again and i just end up back in that chair mouth wide open he's like i've never seen so many sets of different pliers he's like cramming

in like molding in my teeth the rubber bands i'm like this definitely did not happen as a child maybe it's because i grew up in you know oklahoma and they just didn't have that type of technology no i don't know i feel like uh i mean a lot of people have told me like either you're susceptible to cavities you're not it's very much a genetic thing because like i mean i take good care of my teeth but my wife is way better about doing all that stuff and she always gets cavities and i never get them okay sema you can remineralize teeth look up dr bloggett this is the funniest thing last time i went to get the reason i got cavity or that they can't find the cavities i went for my checkup and they're doing cleanings they're like oh you have cavities and my hygienist is like

out of the blue I haven't said anything she says well just make sure you're not brushing with any toothpaste that like doesn't have fluoride in it or anything like that and I had this is the first time I've ever gone to the dentist where I had switched my toothpaste to a non-fluoride toothpaste. And out of the blue, she just says that. And I'm like, holy crap, that is weird. And because you said remineralize, and that's what she was telling me of why I should use fluoride was to remineralize my teeth because I have soft teeth. That was a weird experience.

I went to the dentist this morning and got cavities filled. My whole right side of my mouth was numb until like about an hour ago. And it just hurts so bad. My jaw is really tight too. So when they're like open wider, I'm like actually in pain. Well, here's coming out of my eyes.

Cause it hurts so bad to keep my mouth open. Well, the whole point of them giving you a numbing agent is so that you don't feel it. So maybe you should just tell them to keep giving you more. I don't know. And then, yeah, I just they eventually put in like that block and to keep your mouth open. And that is fine.

Once I like start breathing nice, like and relax my jaw. But when I'm just like, ah, this my jaw tightens up and it just hurts so bad and they're like a little wider a little wider and i would not have i would not have slept last night if i were you like there's there are very few things that give me anxiety and one of them is the dentist so like i will do i will do anything not to go which is why i'm still wearing a denture for my tooth and i haven't gone in to get the post put in so that i can get a prosthetic tooth so that i don't have to take it out every night and have my wife laugh at me hysterically like she's never seen it before i'm just putting it off so yeah yeah yeah i'm seeing

the comments maybe i should do some swapping and you get some matuthean i'm scared of matuthean to be honest i'm scared of just the the the texture the feel yeah powder and i feel like it's gonna be like sand just like yeah like you know when you're a kid and you get sand in your mouth at the beach how how awful that is do you remember that about your childhood yeah i don't want that feeling me neither have you done your taxes yet uh yeah i use this new app it's called fly fan and ai because i need to file 1099 on top of my w2 and in the app it'll like connect to all your places that you spend money and so it'll pop up your expense and you can just swipe if it's a deductible or not

easy to keep track so yeah i filed taxes uh last week you i'm supposed to do that every year oh yeah uh no my mother-in-law does that she's actually really good about it oh nice um and are you scared of getting audited yes i was gonna say i really but by really good about it i mean like she is the biggest stickler by the book ever but it is very nice when i think about possibly getting audited that yeah everything would be good to go i'm so scared of getting audited it's like well you probably will get audited they only audit the rich right it's like it's like whenever someone says something and you did like someone makes an accusation general broad accusation and you internalize it you're like what if i did something it's like i don't knowingly know that i've done anything but i'm also not so meticulous that i am confident i haven't done anything wrong

sure but like hey uh mr how it seems that uh two or three times a year you go to orlando florida i'm seeing a lot of transactions for disney. Can you explain to me why these are business-oriented trips? I'm like, oh, yeah. I always do podcasts down there. I visit gyms. I blah, blah, blah. Yeah. See, we're going to have to.

And then that's what I think about happening. Yeah. So that's been my experience recently. So we're done with the open. It's over. It's been talked about're done with the open. It's over. It's been talked about in the audiseum. What's your takeaway? Give us your honest opinion on the open, JR.

My honest opinion. My unbridled honesty. I would say that I don't really have anything unique to add that everyone else that's already done shows on it has said, um, when it's happening during the moment, of course, like everyone has a bunch of critiques,

but at the end of the day, I think you have to just accept that the open one is not for the elite athlete anymore. And Dave even said that, Hey, the open's not for you guys. Cool. All right.

We're not sending anyone to the games where I haven't sent anyone to semifinals based off of that performance. So that being said, it was super accessible. I think if the goal was to get retention and not just have a bunch of new signups year after year, where the number just kind of keeps hovering around the same thing and they want to retain like half of the people that signed up this year, I think it was mission accomplished. I think to have two weeks straight that are like very accessible where people feel like they can play is probably the best thing they could do to get people coming back from like a geeky programming standpoint. And people have already said this. If you would have had week one the same and you would have had week two be what week three actually was. So you threw in some heavier stuff and some higher skill movements and then

had week three just be what week two was with the more accessible thing. I think from a programming standpoint, a lot of people would have just been happier. Like the, the nerds out there that say, ah, we shouldn't be pulling from the floor and jumping two weeks in a row like you do that in your gym two weeks in a row is it a little bit um repetitive sure so if you just did that would a lot of other people have been happy probably but yeah i think like in general it's fine. It did seem a little bit really drastic of a swing from weeks one and two. And then week three, like we're going from like, Hey, as long as you can do some double unders and deadlift 185,

you can pretty much do everything in the workout and keep moving for 20 minutes. Are people justified in complaining still that people that said we need to see something harder in week three for me to be happy to see the complete picture that whole conversation you think people are justified in saying that it was too hard if they had that critique before that yeah yeah i think so because because there there is still a line like um i think just for instance on that last workout if it would have been thruster toes to bar and then thruster bar muscle up, those same people would have been like, yep, that was it.

Perfect. Because a lot of people can do singles on toes to bar. Some people just cannot, if they don't have the strength, they cannot get hard enough to do a chest to bar pull up. So when you have something that starts with a skill like that, I still think it was easy for the people that said, ah, we need to end with something heavier and harder. But that was a little bit too out of reach for most people. Again, I think it's just a little bit like nitpicking, but from a, from a programming standpoint, it felt like the jump from week two to

three was really big. And maybe that's just because of how accessible weeks one and two were. So when we saw week three, normally we would just be saying how cool of a workout it was for the open, but instead people were just like, wait a minute, wait a minute. You've had people do nothing difficult for two straight weeks and now you're going to make them start the workout with chest of our pull-ups how dare you so yeah i think it was it was it was probably uh you know just a product of um circumstance let's play pretend you are on the programming team for crossfit so you're in the circle and you're doing an audit of your open workouts that you programmed and presented to the public would there be a good

do you think it'd be a good practice to look back at percentages of people that completed certain movements and be like okay only 20,000 people so the the number for 24.3 was by behind the white board 22,000 women and 71, 000 men completed a bar muscle-up so of the people signed up that many people completed all the chest bar and got to bar muscle-ups even if our perspective or even if some perspective is a chest bar is too hard do you think that number is too low like that uh 71 000 men 22 000 women were able to complete all the chest bars that too low for an open test no i don't think so but would you still say that chest bar is too hard for the opening movement opening challenge of that workout i would say that if they if their goal was just to make it

more accessible broadly and their goal is not to test and to see what people are capable of doing then it started a little bit too difficult yeah so would you say would you think it would be helpful if there if you were auditing let's go back to this scenario and you're on the team what do you think about a an i like a way of analyzing their programming of saying hey we have some percentiles to hit if we don't cross if 25 percent of our signups aren't able to get to this point in the workout something was wrong with it would that be a good way of of quantifying the yeah i think it's useful to do but i wouldn't say it should be what makes the open successful or not you know there's um there's a lot of arguments to be made and i'm

one of those people i'm really glad that they put like a bar muscle up specifically because people really want those open moments that That's what people know the open for are the moments. It could be the moment that you snatch 135 for the first time. It could be a moment that you got your first chest bar. It could be a moment, but for most people, right, it's the muscle up, right? Like that's the unicorn. It's the, I got my first ring muscle up for the open. I got my first bar muscle up for the open and almost taking that opportunity away from people makes it feel very much not like the open used to be or what the open is all about in quotation marks, right? It's about the community, but it's

also about those moments that people get to experience. So from that standpoint, I'm really, really glad to see that they put some harder movements on the last week, because I think for a lot of people, that's the only competition they're going to do all year long. They're not going to qualify for quarters, but they still want that kind of a moment. Yeah. So I think for a lot of people, that's the only competition they're going to do all year long. They're not going to qualify for quarters, but they still want that kind of a moment. I think some things shouldn't really be measured and some things can't be measured. I think it's really easy for people to say that in week two, the deadlift could have been or should have been a little bit heavier. I'm not going to disagree with that because I think it still would have been accessible for people. For week one, I thought for what it was meant to do,

it was great, but I do understand and I echo some of the sentiments from the high level athletes that are still doing it to see kind of where they're at. They're doing it because they have to, but some of them are doing it to win money and they know that they can do really well in the open. That week one workout, it was just all about burpee speed and cycle right in the dumbbell. Why not just flip the rep scheme and do it ascending? So you do 9, 9, 9, 9, 15, 15, 15, 15, 21, 21, 21, 21. The workout is essentially unchanged other than as people at the top start funneling, there is more separation that's able to be created ending with the bigger chunks of movements. So like when you have however many people tie at six minutes and there's no tiebreaker, like, yeah, that's a little bit frustrating at the high end. Right. And so for every second,

after six minutes, you have all these log jams and all these ties. And for the people that may finish top five in the world, it's going to end up being a little bit of cash. Well, you could have just started the workout with the smallest number and ended with the biggest number. It would have just created more separation just based off of the fact that you're doing the big chunks of burpees when you're the most tired. Okay. Emily Claw, have you come up with a solution in your head that you're like, this makes sense to me? Not in this situation, but going forward. Do you want a solution?

Do you have a problem with it? Or what are your quick thoughts on that? And I'll give you mine. Yeah, sure. I don't think, I don't think people should be berating her because she didn't know she was going to do that well. So she didn't video it. Like, I think that kind of stuff happens and I think it's unfortunate, but because there is a lot of pride, not even talking about money that goes along with saying you want an open workout like worldwide, like it's a really, really cool thing. I think especially at the end of the open, but for each workout, I think requiring a video for like the top three on each workout being mandatory should be like just kind of what we do. It's just a best practice type thing. I also think that at the end

of the open, because based on where you finish each week, you may not have any top threes. I think the top five, the people that win money, you should submit all three. They should review all three. And then that should be, that should determine. So if you have someone that's got a workout, that's not great. Okay. Then they get penalized for it and they don't finish top five. They don't win money, but I think you should have to submit all of them if you're going to win any money. Okay. So two things on that. What should happen if you don't have a video in both scenarios? Wait. Yeah. In that scenario, you're top three in a workout. You don't have a video. What should happen? I really am thinking because that's tough because if I know I'm not competing and I don't have a

video because I didn't video it I still don't want my score to be completely wiped off the leaderboard but I think in that situation you kind of have to okay I'll give it so here's my thoughts on it in this situation I CrossFit did not do anything wrong. There's no right, wrong, in my opinion, in this situation. I also don't think they should have given the second place person money. That's just dumb, in my opinion. The first place gets money, and the system was a little whacked up in the fact that no one got money. Don't like that, but I also don't think it should have gone to the second place person

if they could prove their score. I think that there should just be a penalty clause that says, if you cannot present video confirmation and you're in the top, let's say 3, 10, 5, whatever it is, then you're automatically going to have a 15 penalty applied to your score because it has to be something substantial so that people don't know they can just get a score and then get a penalty and get higher than what they would have done without so that's kind of my thought going forward put in a penalty that's you don't have if you can't prove it here's your penalty

15 we're going to knock you down the leaderboard until we get a winner that can prove it with a video that passes the criteria for for movement um so that's my thoughts on it i had one other question but i can't remember um i also don't think that it's going to matter people are not going to remember this like we might remember this next year the majority of people that did the open probably have no idea that the emily claw thing even happened i don't think it's going to affect things going forward and in the case of this of this uh of the open i think they can have the solution probably still going to have some some weird things that could happen no matter what solution you put in place but just with the fact of the

open being a massive participatory event i think we just kind of have to it's just going to be a reality that we have to accept that things are going to go wrong right and i mean this is we probably don't need to go down this road but part of what's so cool about the open for everyone other than the best in the world is that they can say, Hey, like I was able to be on the same leaderboard during the same workouts as all these people. that when you sign up for the open, there's just a little dropdown and you're going to sign up as a pro or, or as an amateur. And that doesn't do anything other than put you in a position where if you do a workout and submit a score, they can't ask for a video.

Yeah. So like, Hey, if you just sign up for an amateur, okay, cool. You're an amateur. You're going to be on the leaderboard.

We're not going to ask for a video but you can't win money yeah okay heidi said why wouldn't it just go to the second person so crossfit just keeps the money because it's just a contradictor you can't have they can't allow emily claw to win the event and then assign the first place prize purse to the person who got second because they're crossfit you're saying they can't do both you both they can't do both they have to do one or the other they either have to get rid of emily claus score uh or keep her and not give anyone money so okay let's move on quarterfinal good you have anything else yeah i was just gonna say one thing because uh i'm sure most people after a couple weeks of doing tay vs. the World,

wanted to hear Taylor talk about Taylor vs. the World and give all his opinions. He wanted to be here. He is actually in Virginia. His mother is having surgery today. So keep her and everyone's thoughts and prayers that everything goes smoothly. And also, before we go any farther, I just want to give a shout out to our two sponsors. We've had a couple weeks kind of using Shut Up and Scribble as a way to do the open announcements, so just want to give them some love.

HGRCBD.com, great products. Go check them out. Those of you that have been training, overdoing some of those movement patterns during the open, repeating workouts a bunch of times, if you're feeling a little bit banged up, uh, head on over there. Uh, you can use the code recover better, all one word for 15% off. And then I want to give some love to Patrick Mitrovich from state farm. He is a weekend warrior to the highest extent. He sent me a picture of his foot after he ran like a three-hour marathon on sunday and was like 24.3 isn't gonna go great but i'm gonna give it all i got he still got like one rep short of nine full rounds on that workout which is pretty impressive um and if will can pull

up the picture i don't know if he's able to or not, his foot is that of nightmares for anyone that's ever gotten a blister on their foot. It's pretty crazy. Shout out. Shout out Patrick, aka Beast Cakes, supporter of the show. We really appreciate him.

If you're located in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and you're looking to save some money on some personal or business insurance, shoot him an email. I think I might have it. Viewer warning. Graphic images ahead. This is crazy.

And I hope he's okay with me showing this, but that is crazy. I don't want to think about walking, much less doing thrusters or I don't know anything like people that endurance athletes that are just used to stuff like that. Have you ever watched the documentary? Savon was a part of desert runners. Have you ever watched that? I have watched some of, I have watched some of,

I have watched some documentary stuff on those types of events. Yeah. Watch desert runners and like they follow all, you know, like four or five people that are from all over the world that are trying to do these like ultra endurance races on consecutive days and their feet like look just like his. It's terrible.

Yeah. It's not crazy. Quarterfinals. what were you gonna say uh actually why do you think people like taylor versus the world so much i think they like taylor versus the world and that's presumptuous but because it seems like the general reception has been extremely positive because Taylor is extremely polarizing because you either watched it because you wanted to see him get embarrassed or because you watched it because you wanted to see him put up a fight or actually win.

Like he's, he's an, he's an underdog for sure. Um, partly just because he's been hurt, not able to kind of show maybe his full capability as an athlete. And also because he's a brash dude and he's, he's confident and he says what he feels. And a lot of people don't like that and don't like his takes on things. And, you know, you watch the most popular athletes sometimes because you want them to fail, not because you want them to fail not because you want them to succeed and i think there's probably as many people that watched it for each reason yeah i think it's the same appeal that hillars hayley adams video had in some in some ways that video is so appealing for a lot of reason there's other reasons but in my mind people see that

in their youtube algorithm and they're like hitler and hayley adams like you just don't put those together you don't expect that and people love the unexpected of like you're going to click on you're going to click on it you're going to see a car crash or uh what's the opposite of the car crash i don't know what the opposite is a perfect self-driving a perfect self-driving car that's navigating between cones beautifully in and out and uh and uh those are the two opposites but yeah i agree i think uh and just yeah taylor's willingness to put it on the line the excitement of storyline and i was thinking of like the open announcements themselves and i think there was a lot of great things in the open announcements this year's this year and uh quite a few negative things as well and i think one thing that would make them better is I was watching

this brief video. And I don't remember if it was buttery bros, maybe when they capture the workout happening at proven, the audience is going crazy, cheering, yelling. And I just never got that feeling that that was what the environment was like as I was watching the broadcast. And I think that that is so key to as someone sitting at home watching it. Like it reminds me of there's times in broadcast commentary where the commentators will stop, won't be talking for 20, 25 seconds. And all you hear is the energy from the crowd because that's the moment. And there's nothing they can add that will be better than the viewer at home engaging that moment. And I was just thinking that's one thing. And I think that excitement. And I think

in the future, if we keep doing some broadcasts like that to figure out how to capture that energy a little bit better it was the audio i mean jamming things together it's just interesting but yeah like i mean i'm i have no clue what i'm doing as far as that kind of thing goes and like even week two and they're like yeah we just want you to like watch and just kind of walk around and say what you think there were times when i was just thinking to myself, you've got to stop talking, dude. Like, because you just feel like you need to fill the air with a 20-minute AMRAP when they're on the rower

for 10 minutes of it. And like, to your point, just to look up at you and you just be like, let it, you know, just let it be. Because there's no feel, like I don't have any feel for that. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm sure someone like Chase or Bill or, you know just let it be because i there's no feel like i don't have any feel for that i don't know what i'm doing i'm sure someone like chase or bill or you know sean or you know any of them would know like hey this is this is when you don't say anything just be quiet and that's uh that's something that i mean obviously takes a lot of experience to know yeah and i tried to capture it running the audio between uh people and then in person create some weird audio challenges. So hopefully we can I can figure that out.

Just to answer your question a little bit better. The real reason why I think people enjoyed it is because there is this story of Taylor now. This character has been created and developed and whether you have now grown to really like him after the Taylor versus the world, or maybe you didn't really have an opinion of him, but you had heard of him and it was just, just this character. And now you actually got to see him do the thing against people that most people are not going to ever assume he could beat, then you were invested in it emotionally in

some way, right? You knew a little bit of the background with Taylor and Jason kind of competing against one another, training against one another, doing some videos together. You knew that Taylor and Colton were pretty cool because they competed against each other at Granite Games. Or you knew that Dallin had finished fifth and he was going to come into Taylor's house and do the first workout. And Taylor was the ultimate underdog and all this stuff. There was some kind of story created ahead of time that made you want to be a little bit more emotionally invested in it. And I also think that the post workout interviews were another opportunity for people to feel something. So you're not just looking at them work out and okay, that's it. That's all we got. everyone got to see the tiger today

it wasn't asleep it was walking around in front of the glass and hope you guys enjoyed it see you yeah you're not wondering like oh i wonder how down felt about getting beat by taylor right on the first week like you get answers yeah like everyone wants to everyone wants to go to the zoo and look at how pretty the animals are but it would be nice if they like do something that's more than just oh yeah i get to see him that's it yeah you want to see that the line snatch up yeah a little little gopher or something yeah you yeah you want to you want to you want to see him but then you you kind of want to go in there too and you want to see them, but then you, you kind of want to go in there too. And you want to pet them or you want to do some things that maybe feels a little bit dangerous. Like, you know, week two is a perfect example. Like everyone, everyone thought they tied or saw that they tied, but they're like, we'll probably get to hear what they say. We'll probably get to hear Jason say whether or not

he was feeling what we thought he was feeling when he was kind of like falling apart toward the end of the workout. Like that's really cool. And it's more than just like a two minute interview. It's like, nah, you can sit there for 20 or 30 minutes and, you know, John and Savon and Hiller can kind of dig in a little bit. And as you recover, what happens? Like Taylor gets more and more sick, the more sick the more recovered he gets after that workout. I just think in general, the storytelling aspect of it was there, and it sounds like it's going to happen again for quarterfinals. Sounds like it.

You just got to cancel your work trip. I think that's all that matters. How did you know about that? I didn't tell you about my work trip. omniscient what can i say yeah unfortunately the only time i'm booked to travel for my work is the first two days of quarterfinals well i'll tell you guys one thing i am not going to be the one that that that gets uh taught how to run that because will has seen me around electronics enough to know that i'm i'm as useful as uh as my five-year-old yeah okay let's see um

anything else we should talk about on announcements open how'd you feel about the um the guest announcers like did you think it was a good spread of people did you and we're not even gonna talk about really the leak like let's just kind of act like that wasn't there like do you think those those three people do you think it should have been dave for the last week do you think um it should just be the same person every time regardless of who it is do you think it should always be dave like every time, regardless of who it is. Do you think it should always be Dave? Like, what did you, how did you feel about that part of it? Here's my assessment. Dave was great.

The year previous where they had like Rich and T announcement, announced it virtually was bad. And I don't know if it was because it was them or just because it was virtual and they were just opening a letter and there was no excitement. I wasn't interested in that. I thought the thought the like everyone a lot of people have said i thought uh seth rollins week two i thought it was great i was entertained the environment was not set up for that and i think the jocko was a fail uh but in that i do think Jocko in person I would have been happy with for sure yeah but it was just like really I mean I would have a hundred percent rather have Dave announce it or

Rich was there I'd rather have Rich announce it than a virtual pre-recorded than a virtual pre-recorded jaco yeah i mean i respect what davis said and and and take him at his word about it kind of like doesn't need to be all about me and i don't i don't need to do all of them like i wanted to do the first one but i think general consensus is that everyone loves it when he does it and i don't know i don't know what they're i don't know from HQ's side of what their thought is behind it. Is it, hey, we want to bring in these bigger outside names to attract attention? I don't know if that's a thought. That's what people seem to think. In my head, I'm like, if that was the case, then you would do it week one.

Because why would you be trying to draw an outside audience outside of CrossFit to week two and three of the Open? It's not a viewer experience. It's an announcement of a workout for people that are signed up and people that are in the CrossFit community. If that was the point of attack, I wouldn't be interested in engaging an outside audience on an open announcement i would say that's pretty exclusively for the games or semi-finals

uh whereas the open from an hq perspective in my mind you're one week one your goal is to get people to sign up that's the ultimate goal outside of that your goal is to provide value to your sponsors that have paid money and so you can do that in a lot of ways and i don't think it was done super well but you the games needs to make money they have a limited pool of sponsors that will be interested in a big enough sponsorship for a spot like that so you want to over deliver value wise and have them come back every year and a lot of them seem to no matter what value they seem to get out of it but you mentioned that you mentioned that they didn't you didn't think they did a great job of

like uh propping up the sponsors putting them on a pedestal how would you have done that i think though you can't just have a general shot of what's going on, have a voiceover background, pop up a QR code and say, and this workout is brought to you by go wide, scan the code on the screen now for 50 for a free open trial. And then that's it. And it goes away in my mind.

If you're going to do an ad read, there has to be a face to it to give some credibility. So in my mind if you're going to do an ad read there has to be a face to it to give some credibility so in my mind if they're like our goal is to make money this year which i think is a primary goal of the games and that's why they're cutting costs is to make it profitable then i would be like well you should have adrian dave or even uh whoever was doing the announcement that week i mean we had sean annie miranda pat all those people it should be a shot of them talking about it it doesn't need like there's just there was no commercial i think people are still confused about if go ruck is a ruck company or an apparel company or a shoe company and and

i'm talking general audience like we all know that because we're deeply invested in crossfit and follow it day to day but the general population i don't think knows that go rucks i mean it's in their name so they're fighting against their name in all of this so having a commercial that's you see that as an issue, like, hey, we're gonna have to break into this market. People don't know that we're a shoe apparel company as well as a rucking company. You know that going to the open, you know, this is the first big introduction of GoRuck as a sponsor.

I don't really understand even still what the levels of sponsorship and what they actually are sponsoring. But you know that. the levels of sponsorship and what they actually are sponsoring. But you know that. So you know that week one, we should hit it hard on just explicit on that message. You know, we've been doing rucks the best way for 10 years, and now we're ready to break into doing delivering the best shoes and apparel for the CrossFit space. Something like super explicit that tells the audience.

And so there was no real commercials. It was just overlays of general stuff that doesn't really convince me. I was never interested. So I downloaded GoWod from the Heat1 app. That's where I was interested in it. I was never interested in doing it when they flashed a QR code on the screen

and said, go Ruck or go odds a sponsorship for 24.2. I was, I bought a go Ruck shirt, the CrossFit go Ruck shirt when they announced the partnership. Cause like, oh, this is cool. We've been coming from Noble, not a big fan of Noble, go Ruck from what I've heard and know of the people there and the company.

I was interested in that. So I bought a shirt, but I was never interested in using their promotion promo code during the open. And in my mind, I'm like, yeah, just missed opportunities. So do you think it's the volume of like how many times you say it or how many times you have the commentators like on the camera, not a voiceover speaking about the product? Or do you think it's more about the delivery? Like if it's funny or if it, um, if it moves you to like, you know,

like if you see a really cool, creative, intense commercial or whatever, like what do you think is the biggest needle mover if you want to use like that term? In this situation, I think it's credibility. Someone speaking with credibility that convinces you subconsciously as the viewer that they're not just reading it as an ad read. Okay. So you think almost like as a less in a less polished form, like, Hey guys, listen, like I can tell you, like my shoulder was just locked up. It was locked up for like a year. I got go odd. I started doing the protocols and I'm telling you, I didn't change my diet and change my sleep,. I started doing the protocols and I'm telling you, I didn't change my diet. I didn't

change my sleep, but I started doing the recovery protocols. I started doing the stuff before and after I work out and like my range of motion is so much better now, but just in more of like a authentic, personal kind of way. That or could also be like, Hey, GoWOD has been this consistent partner for us. They've partnered with semi-finals they've partnered with the games for years they partnered with us on the open like they are deeply invested in the crossfit community and they and they provide a great product and like it can be both ways it doesn't have to be like goad saved my life it can also just be like hey this is this the open is the crossfit community and go on has been an enormous supporter of the crossfit community through the crossfit games for years

and so that yeah there's a lot of avenues i just think it was a miss and and uh and without and i also recognize like i just don't know we don't know all the factors that go into all these things yeah um and so if like if i was on the if i was on the hq media team i might listen to what i said and be like oh well you didn't think of this and like that's i totally get that but i just think you want to over deliver for them there's no point in getting 200 000 live viewers to over deliver for them there's no point in getting 200 000 live viewers on week two if you don't accomplish one getting people to sign up which week two i don't think was it was not a priority because who's going to sign up week two that wasn't signed up week one so really you're just looking at how can we over deliver for these sponsors that have given us money and make it

entertaining and make an entertaining show and so there's just some weird things where I felt like, why Pat and Miranda, awesome, big fan of Miranda. She's been a big supporter of CrossFit. She spoke at the CrossFit for Health Summit. She was awesome, supported CrossFit amazingly there. It's just interesting. I felt like street parking got more mentions

and I was more convinced of street parking in Lynchpin because there was credibility because the owners of those two companies were speaking to me about that. And so I'm like, that's a big miss. And so that's just my thoughts, rambling thoughts on, on that. No, that's good. I mean, that's like, I mean, your area of expertise for sure is like that side of it. And it's, it's interesting to me to hear you talk about it in that way. And like, even of the Taylor versus the world stuff, like just understanding that just adding another camera and switching a view makes you feel more like you are there, like on top of them, watching them. more like you're there like on top of them watching them like you told me week two um we need to move them closer together no no we still need them to be closer and you need to tell all the fans that they need to be like on top of them like right behind them you said it needs to feel like like like fight club like it needs to feel like a mosh pit like that's what that's what's going to make

the people that aren't there feel like they are there and it made a lot of sense to me and to me i wanted them to be no they need to have they need to have a lot of room then to be able to hear their judge you're like no no no they that that's not what they need they need they need to feel like they're uncomfortable i think maybe and i have not been around in crossfit for a long time but going back I don't know what year was but it was Jason Kalipa and Rich Froning Sam Briggs and Camille LeBlanc-Besnay in California they had a stage set up in the middle of the I think it was the Santa Cruz Civic Center yeah and that to me is like the quintessential how an open announcement should be set up it should feel like there's a fight ring and the whole crowd is around it and and that that was a perfect I think set up it should feel like there's a fight ring and the whole crowd is around it and and that that

was a perfect i think setup it was like an elevated stage you could see that was built and that it was like bowing underneath them as they were doing movements and dropping the bar and i think it was incredible and i yeah it's just whenever you get whenever you it's just so interesting because whenever you pay a ton of money and if you have a super produced well-produced show you just lose on some flexibility uh especially with if you're using legacy uh ways of broadcasting and streaming you're just kind of stuck on some things and so i want the open announcement to feel like a fight if if they did it uh in the way that they did you know semifinals last year you can say in the way that

we did it for taylor versus the world do you think they just lose hundreds of thousands of those live viewers because people still want the professional broadcast yeah i think they're i don't know i don't think they necessarily lose they will get i think i heard seven on say so the other day too is like they will get so much hate and that's part of the advantage of doing what we're doing from seven's channel with seven's audience is people are have this expectation so whenever you exceed their expectation for production quality which we've set really really low people like this is amazing oh that thumbs up yep people are like this is amazing so well produced if we put the same thing on the games channel there would be people that say what's happened crossfit i mean people actually still say that so people are already saying that they i've seen comments

all the time that are like crossfit content used to look so much better the broadcast used to look so much better than it does now what happened blah blah blah blah so maybe not maybe people would be like this is what we're going to expect but there is a challenge where when you engage a wider audience like that people you're gonna have a lot more people that don't like it. Yeah. I mean, you kind of said it yourself, too. It's like, yeah, there's a fine line. There's kind of a balance between look at all of our live viewers, like how many people watched versus who's putting their necks out for us, who's funding it, who's a part of this.

who's funding it who's who's a part of this it'd be better if 10 000 people saw it and like there was a big kickback for the sponsor versus 100 000 people and none at all so it's like a you know like which one do you value more yeah from the people putting it up bobby asked what are mainstay methods uh that are still useful here's my analysis to some brief of things I've thought about and without knowing all the details. So Hamilton Road does production for CrossFit.

They always bring in a big production truck. You saw it in the back of Justin's shed. All we ran is an Ethernet cord to the lock top that I was running stuff on they have all this infrastructure and what do we see week three the feed drops out six times for you know 30 seconds to two minutes at times and i also so that's one thing is like, is all that infrastructure that you have used previously, is that really benefiting anyone versus just going through a direct streaming? Because you're just going to YouTube.

You're not broadcasting the signal to a television station. And the one thing I really want to see implemented is a switch from the on-camera, on-field broadcast cameras to using mirrorless cameras. Like you'll see in the NFL when someone scores a touchdown, you have that shallow depth of field. It looks like a video game. It looks like a video game. It looks like a video.

It's a hero shot. CrossFit is made for the hero shot. And so what I would like to see switched is switch everything on the floor to a mirrorless camera. You can send it through a receiver, a transmitter, much smaller footprint can be done wirelessly. You get that hero shot, shallow depth of field,

makes them look beautiful, strong, exciting. And so little things like that. I have a lot of things that like that, that I think of, but yeah, i don't know that's just a taste of some thoughts i have will be a be a media spinoff show media spinoff show so uh hosted by will brandstetter who critiques all the i'll go back to one thing i meant to finish up was the viewership numbers were incredible on the open shows i think i said right it doesn't really matter if you have high viewership if you didn't deliver for your sponsors

like let's say they got uh ten dollars from go ruck in their overall deal for their open partnership. And they say they want to renegotiate. They say, well, that was based off a previous average of viewership and concurrent viewership. And then this year, we went from our peak ever being $130,000 to $200,000. And if I was a company that's been in it, I would be like, no, like you went from, we got the same amount out of 130 that you got out of 200 or we got less. So whenever people feed you these numbers of, look how great we did, we got 200,000 viewers. It's really needs to be contextualized. And like, what was the conversion on that for your sponsors? Because what your sponsors should have gotten out of that open is that you, uh, they paid a very cheap price on the dollar for what they got out of it. And my inkling is that they should have gotten way more based on what they paid for based on previous numbers. And they actually didn't. And so you're kind of why we should celebrate and be like, yeah, great job getting that many viewers.

Maybe it was great. They did some good pushes through notifications, push notifications, emails, reminders, pushing the times and things like that. But from a value add to sponsors, it's actually kind of a negative if you didn't deliver on that. And that's the dangerous part of getting more viewership

than you were expecting is if you didn't deliver on value for your people that are paying for it then it's uh gonna be a downer yeah that's all i got there always happy to learn from you i mean i could be wrong i might change my view on things uh three weeks from now I'm just a humble student. There you go. Yeah, so quarterfinals coming up. Do you qualify? No.

Everyone's like, oh, you're definitely going to qualify. 25% is so easy. It's going to be so easy to make quarterfinals. You're going to qualify. No, I did not. Yeah, so it's coming up in about a month top 25 i mean obviously from a programming nerd standpoint like i can't wait to see the workouts um i can't wait to see the workouts and then think back to what dave said about them like yeah he was right you know

everything like all the stuff that he said about, you know, if you have the equipment, you should be able to do it. If you are in a garage gym, you should still be able to do it. Even if I don't qualify, I'll be able to at least start all the workouts. Like these are all things that he said on his weekend review, and he's qualified for quarterfinals. So it'll be interesting to see the workouts and like see the the the stories or the scores that that he's able to put on them um i thought about this and i'm curious what if you think it would add anything to it or take away if you don't want

to do the quarterfinals and don't give the money like don't do it. Cool. But there is more of an opportunity now for them to bring in more people to do it because the field is a lot larger and more people qualified for it. They've said that they are going to continue just to release all five workouts right when the submission window opens. And so you'll have all five and you can back, okay, I can do that one or nah, I can't really even do that one. I can do three out of five. Sure. I'll sign up, whatever. How the open this year was like two very, um, friendly, accessible workouts for the first two weeks. And by the end of the, by the third week, you're just kind of expecting to not be able to do something. So the taste that it leaves in your mouth is pretty good. How would you feel? And I think it would

add a little bit to the competition aspect of quarterfinals. They give you three workouts when the competition opens. They give you three workouts. You have that first 72 hour window to do them. And then when that window closes, they give you the other two. Let's just say that the floor plans are very easy and accommodating for gym owners because a lot of people right now are saying, well, we have the floor plans on the Monday before, so we don't really know the workouts, but we kind of know what the workouts would entail. There shouldn't be a whole lot of pushback finding out the workout and having 48 hours to do it. You just had 72 hours to do three. Those first three workouts, they make a little bit more accessible. Hey, I can see these three workouts. I can, I can kind of do these, like I'm feeling good about it. I'll sign up. And then during that second window, uh, you know, the bomb gets dropped and it's like, Oh, I don't think I can do any, either of these,

or maybe I can do like the first movement of this. Come out with, what was it? The box jump to 75 cleaning jerks. Sure. Like, do you think that would be a good idea to one promote signups to make a little bit more money? And Hey, even the elite level athletes, you, you don't get to see all five workouts you only get to see three of them and there's a little bit more of a a game that has to be played and a little bit more of a oh i can't just redo these twice you know what i mean yeah i don't know i don't know if they would ever do it i think it would almost just be a way to to satisfy both both ends of the spectrum yeah i do think that would be good and even if people were frustrated

that they signed up and couldn't do the last two i think they would forget about it by next year so i think it would be good and it is definitely right there aren't they splitting uh revenue from quarterfinals with the events for the age groups yeah they are and i mean like i i have no i have no desire to to compete at at any level like quarterfinals, semifinals, whatever. But I'll sign up for both just as almost like, hey, man, I'll put some more money in the pot for those people. I think that's a good thing. Yeah. If you can do it, why not?

Just like, hey, I know it's a little bit, but if 100 people do this like maybe they can give a thousand more dollars to the third place finisher like at the at the games like who knows yeah we'll see what they do yeah we'll have plenty of shows where we just sit here and speculate about what movements may or may not come out will specialty of course yeah i'm always here for speculate about what movements may or may not come out. Will's specialty, of course. Yeah, I'm always here for those shows. What really makes him want to not have a work meeting scheduled? As a senior analyst, as a senior CrossFit analyst, I will have a lot of input on that for sure.

Sure. Let's see, what's next? So team quarterfinals is next. That's like in a couple weeks. And then individual quarterfinals. And then crescendo the week after. So it'll be cool. That's coming up. And yeah, so remember everybody,

the age group quarterfinal workouts are the same as the individuals. In years past, they had two separate. These are going to be exactly the same workouts. So those will be happening exactly the same workouts. So those will be happening at the same time, which would be cool. It'd be interesting to see people like Will Morad.

I think he won the 35 to 39 in the open, and I'm guessing he's still planning on competing individually. It would be cool if he and people like Bronislaw can qualify and Sam Dancer. I'm just thinking of the people who have said they had aspirations of competing individually. If they can qualify for both individual semifinals and then age group semifinals, and then moving forward,

how many of them, because they'll have the opportunity to compete individually as a semifinalist and compete at the games as a master. That'd be cool. I mean, stories like that are cool like hey i'm the first person that because there are different times now hey i was the first person ever to compete at the crossfit games as an individual and at the crossfit games as a master yeah i mean i think technically you could still do that and i think that you brought up will morad i think that they've been pretty public that dave's been trying to get him to do both i think will morad posted on a story maybe the other day it'd be cool and i think that if i don't even know if these

events are streaming but if they are i think the difference in their attention just by having one games athlete would be massive sure so good on dave for uh trying to push some people because it doesn't really benefit dave and other than it benefits the events i mean after the open i was looking at the 35 to 39 leaderboard because it's always cool to see like especially for me like watching throwdown at Tahoe videos, which is like that stuff's gold, and watching all those really old behind-the-scenes and being like, oh, man, Craig Kinney, Nation. I see these names on the leaderboard.

I'm like, that's so cool that if they went to the games, you just see so many people that have just, I don't know, you kind of develop these weird virtual relationships with because you like them as an athlete or you don't. And then games is top 40 now. So if some of those people decide to compete, I mean, there could be 10, 15, 20 former individual games athletes that end up competing at the Masters games. And it's just an opportunity to watch them again, which is fun. Maybe when you watch him you're like oh you don't move like you used to you used to be way better dude you suck now so that'll be cool sweet all right dude i have i have a list of

topics on my phone so next time things you could look forward to, uh, why you can't call someone to DI hire just because they're not white. Um, why you can't say the, that CrossFit should just produce more media. Uh, transformation content does nothing on YouTube.

Uh, what do you think the game should be going forward as a mission statement and what are they trying to achieve and what would make it more exciting that's just a taste can't wait we're going to get hundreds of views on that video hundreds see you everybody wait we're gonna get hundreds of views on that video hundreds all right i gotta go get lilia see everybody