The Sevan Podcast - Rich Froning - Top of the world

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

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Amazon special. Was it just like that already just cut with rich and a buffalo on it you could customize it customizable option on amazon prime hey are you on your phone right now yeah oh damn i'm gonna i'm to try to share a screenshot with you, but I'll read it to you, and I want you to tell me if this is kind of accurate. So it's a secular person. I think that means someone who just doesn't have religion in their life. And they say, I want to do X. And the Christian says, you're free to do it. And then the secular person, but you think X is wrong. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then the secular person says,

because you want to control me. And the Christian says, no, you're free to do whatever you wish. And then the secular person says, But you think X is wrong. And then the Christian says, Yes, but only because I want what's best for you. And then the secular person says, But I want to do X.

And then the Christian says, You're free to do it. And then the secular person says, But I want you to say that x is good and the christian says i can't say that and then the secular person says why are you such a hateful intolerant bigot that's pretty pretty accurate yeah it is right it really really is. It's wild. I had Paige on here yesterday. I have not found God. I have not been asked to follow Christ. I have not been asked to, but I've been just so, especially in these times, seeing the value of flying with the Christian flock because so many of my

values align with them. And just because I don't believe in, I, and I understand why people would think, Hey, this is just Harry Potter land or it's just their imagination. But it's like, Hey,

the whole thing is just Harry Potter land and just imagination. Like, do you want to follow fucking Nancy Pelosi's values or do you want to follow the values of some Christians? Right, man. It's, it's a crazy, fucking nancy pelosi's values or do you want to follow the values of some christians right man it's it's a crazy it's crazy that he is so divisive christ yeah when when you know it's it's exactly what you just read but you could you could almost put that logic to a lot of different

people you know like like everybody, just because you don't agree with somebody, as long as I'm not forcing it on you, then, you know, like, it's hard, man. It's, it's, uh, let's use something, let's use something like, um, um, uh, there's no, do you, do Christian Christians don't think that you should be gay? there's no, do Christians don't think that you should be gay? Is that in the Bible somewhere? You know, that's the, there are verses that support that for sure. And, but here's the deal. But you have no, you would have gay friends in a second, right? You have no issues at all, right? Here's what my mom has always said is is is love the person. You don't have to agree with the sin or whatever they're doing in their life. There's you know, at times I have jealousy issues.

At times I have pride issues. With Hillary, like looking too long at other guys like you ever get jealous of Hillary? You're making eye contact with Jock Locker. Hey, knock it off. Yeah, knock it off. You know, it's and so we're not perfect. And that's that's the need for off. Yeah. Knock it off. You know, it's, and so we're not perfect and that's, that's the need for Christ. Right. And that's the need for, and why I lean into the relationship side of it versus the religious side of it, of all the rules and stuff. Yeah. What does that mean? What does that mean?

Like, you know, the prayer side of it, the, you know, I, I believe in Jesus and I believe in the Holy spirit and I believe in God and I lean in the Holy Spirit and I believe in God. And I lean into that and try try to pursue that every day and try to have a relationship where open line of communication and confess those things that I feel like are, you know, if you're a jealous person, if you have pride, if you have these different things, you're not getting the most out of your life. Right. And so that's that's the way I try to connect. We're going deep this morning. We started like straight up this morning, huh? Oh, Wadzombie, Angelo isn't gay? Jury's out.

And also Rich is jealous of his wife. Yeah, I'm jealous. And my pride gets the best of me with angelo too you know it is what it is i saw a comment um on youtube that said uh hey stop with the guy had page on here yesterday yep and um she had a a very a lot of times when people talk about god it doesn't sound like a very, they don't seem like very sober takes something like, especially when I hear it from the athletes, it feels more like mental illness than like searching for just like a healthy grounding. But when I heard, when I heard Paige talk about it, it sounded like a healthy grounding. Like, Hey, I'm just, I'm just recalibrating on what makes me feel whole. Yeah.

And I'm going to take this opportunity of not making it to sort of recalibrate, readjust my focus and get realigned. But someone in the comments wrote, hey, I'm from Europe and stop the God babble. And I was just, it bores us. Or just then stop listening to the podcast. If you're watching a podcast on somebody and that's what they believe in and how they feel,

then let them, like, they're not trying to force it on you if you're the one asking the questions. It's your podcast. You do what you want. I agree with that, but in the last five years of my life, I found this just immense value for Christians in terms of – just look at Western civilization of all the countries you'd want to live in. You don't want to live in any of the ones that don't have Christianity as their foundation. Or weren't founded on Christianity. I would say there's a move away in every country from Christianity. You don't want to live in one of the Islamic countries, though. Their values have made some shit really uncomfortable for people. And the godless countries, they basically – countries that are godless, those people don't have rights because the Christians are holding down the unalienable rights for us.

The shit that lets us have the gay pride parade and party and not kill gays. We need the Christians in order we need the christians in order to do the naked parties in the streets of san francisco like why not here's the utility in them and just roll with it well what i would say is and this has not been the case throughout history there's been radical sex of sex not sex ses of christianity that have done really bad things but you know for the most part, man, it's tough. Anytime you get into any of that stuff, there's so much just kind of warfare of words and twists and all that type of stuff. And I mean, you know, it's well documented that I'm a American history

nerd and I'm moving along in biographies. And so, you know, there was definitely some Christian foundations, but Hey, what did we say to is religious freedom and separation of church and state. Um, but there's still that foundation of Christianity in it, you know? So that's, it's tough. A lot of layers, man. There's, and that's the hard part. Um, and would you say that, um, I guess the word religion also need would need to be defined, but it seems like a lot of people, their religion, they think that they don't have,

I think everyone has religion just like some form. Yeah. Just like you get horny or you get hungry or you get sleepy. Right. These are like things that like as human beings biologically yep yep everyone has those i think everyone has religion too and what makes me but no one would deny that they're hungry or horny or sleepy that those i think we could you agree 100 that all human beings experience those but for some reason some people deny the fact that they have a religion bucket that's just tantamount to those three.

And they fill it with pseudoscience or science or they put something in that bucket, but they refuse to call it their religion. But I really think it is their religion. Yeah, I think – Dr. Fauci is their head priest. I mean that. I'm not even – What religion? Is that Fauciism or is that – I mean that. I'm not even – What religion?

Is that Fauciism or is that – That's like TVism or something. Vaccinism or – Yeah, it's just whatever the TV tells you. They're taking their higher order power from – From science or from – Yeah, I mean I don't – I wouldn't know the – I don't know the actual definition of religion,

but it's a set of rules that people live by is what I would think, right? And so, yeah, you're going to fall into some type of religion even if you don't believe in a higher power. You're still going to believe in something, right? You're going to believe in that there is no thing. That's from you. I listen to that podcast. Or you're going to be an atheist. By the way, that's how I keep the bucket open, by the way.

No thing. That wasn't a jab. That was a joke. That wasn't a jab. I didn't take it as one. I think God fits nicely. I think the Christian God fits nicely in no thing. Like I was reading the Ten Commandments yesterday with Paige,

and she said something along the lines of, or we pulled them up, and it's like, hey, you're not supposed to have an image of me and that's no thing yep you know that's a thing yeah yeah that's no thing yeah because then you start the idea is that you would start worshiping that idol and that's not what god looks like because we don't know what god looks like right right i mean god looks like everything or you don't know what how how god works right yeah and we don't know how God works. Right. Yeah. And we don't.

And that's the hard part is when you try to like, how does a good God let bad things happen? And how do bad people get ahead when good people don't? And that's the hard part. And that's when you really dive deep into the Bible, into scripture and try to. the Bible into scripture and try to, and here's the deal is that's still our human minds trying to put what we think onto something that we don't understand. That's the hard part. And that's why I feel like the Bible is so important and getting in the word every day and trying to, we're never going to figure it out. Right. And even having doubts about some of it isn't a bad thing, right? You've got to lean into that and try to figure that out.

Yeah, especially if it inspires you to do that. You're not going to like this next comment. Stephen Flores, God looks like rich. He's beautiful. No, no. There's this – and by the way, that question is like a false question, by the way. That one that people ask, why does God let bad things happen? Another problem, the guy who taught me the no thing idea is this – also said that human beings have no idea what good is.

And he tells the story about someone who – there's a snail crossing the sidewalk, and so it doesn't get stepped on. Someone picks it up and sets it in the bushes well the bushes he sets it in was a an area that some gardener had just snail baited and he killed the snail so in the guise of doing something good he kills the snail and i think we i think that's like we see that happening all over the planet now people think that they know what good is and and and people get hurt yeah and i would you know my thought process is god gave us this world right gave us free will and all this stuff and if you go back in the beginning of the bible and adam and eve we gave up our rights to the world to satan and now we live in a fallen

world and that's that's the need for jesus and you know we're getting in a fallen world and that's, that's the need for Jesus. And, you know, we're getting real high level now, but that's, that's in very simple terms. That's what I believe happened. Um, I was on the phone with Dave yesterday, the Castro. Yeah. The Dave Castro. And, um, I said, Oh, so you, I said, you made it through the old Testament. He said, yeah. And he said, now I'm at the good part. I said, what's the good part? He said, all the Jesus news, man. Yeah. He said, all the Jesus parts are good. I'm like, you like him? He's all, yeah, he's the best part. He's good, man. I, man, I listened to something this morning about, uh, Psalm one 10 and it kind of talks about, uh, just talks about different things, but the commentator that I was listening to was talking about jesus and we see that jesus has this like kind of weak

soft um dude and man he was not jesus was awesome and is awesome and was aggressive flips over tables and chases people out with whips, you know? It's this one? Psalm 110? Psalm 110, but the commentator I listened to was just going back and talking about how it's quoted so many times in the New Testament and basically talks about Jesus in there. Here's the part that sounds pretty aggressive. The Lord is your right hand. He will crush kings on the day of His wrath.

He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way. And so he will lift his head high. Yeah, that touches to my hippie roots. He'll drink from the brook. There you go. Peace, peace and prosperity from the brook. I just, I just don't understand.

I guess I do understand because I used to be there, but my life is so much more fulfilling now that I don't look at Christianity as something like to always be defensive. Take over. Just don't be defensive of it. Yeah. See its value. You know what I mean? See its value for civilization as a tool. Love God, love people, man.

All right. Bible. Let me get that off my head. Bible talk. Bible talk. Bible talk. Take that off your notes. Check.

Check. Check. You had Hiller out there. We had Hiller out here. It was a good time. Yeah. Did you see the video by any chance? People have sent me clips. I, um, Hiller don't make a video about how I don't watch your

videos. I just don't have time, you know, like I'll skim through and kind of like, see what, what is in there and, um, listen to mainly, I listened to the pieces that I wasn't in. I just don't like listening to myself talk. And then, uh, and I wanted to hear what everybody else had to say. It's's it's pretty cool because he takes he did a obviously an extended interview with you and then he just chops that up and spreads it out over the whole 90 minutes as kind of the glue like the continuity to hold the whole thing together and then uh intersperses like parts of just like what's going on inside the mayhem empire oh cool yeah and and it's it's, it's, uh,

it's, it's crazy. Cool. It's crazy, crazy. Cool. Um, what did you think of him?

Is that the first time you've met him? I've met him, um, you know, in passing at Wadapalooza or we've texted every once in a while. Um, you know, we've talked shit on,

on the internet too, which is fun. You know, everybody's like, I can't believe he, you let him come out there after, you know, we had that little fun interaction with, uh what was it semi-finals when we screwed up

the burpee standard and we did the whole villain thing with um the joker and oh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's all in fun you know like if people are going to get too offended but i don't you know i don't agree with 100 of what everybody does, but also I think for the greater good, I think he's trying to do a cool thing and trying to – what we all are trying to do, make CrossFit better, right? And so I don't understand why everybody has to get so up in arms with what he's doing. Well, he definitely puts so much energy into the space that if you go to the, I don't know, the 100,000-foot view, it would be really hard to say he does anything bad for the space because just on this generic level, really big picture level, I mean, he's making a video. He's putting out content every day that keeps the CrossFit world engaged, right? I mean, it's just engaged and talking and feeding an energy to it. Yeah, I mean, any – what did they say? Any publicity is good publicity or any whatever.

So, yeah, I think as a whole, he's doing good things for the community for sure. So that was – you did get some pushback from people? People were like, hey, why is this guy here? I just looked through some of the comments. Or, yeah, you'd be, oh, Hiller's here. Why is he here? And I'm like, why not? It's not like we're trying to hide anything within these walls.

It's a public place. It's filmed a lot more than most places. So, yeah, we're're pretty open book around here. You know what I think also, like politically, I can tell from talking to him that his perception of you and Mayhem has changed. Uh-oh. And when you have FaceTime with people, that happens, right? Yeah. So there's people who might be bothered by the fact that they're attacking him, but pushing him away makes you less real to him and easier for him to attack.

Yeah, it's an easier target for sure. If you do feel like, oh, this place is guarded, they don't want me here, there's something to hide. It's just human nature to start thinking. Your brain starts spiraling and you think, oh, take one little thing as spite. And then it just kind of keeps snowballing. So, yeah, no, I mean, I enjoyed having him here. We got a fun interview, but then we worked out a little bit.

And then I sent him home with some elk and bear meat too. Maybe I can get him to start making some pro hunting videos. That was my main goal really. To start taking down the anti-hunters. I'm going to take him out west. Did you think he was awkward at all?

Did you think he was a weird dude at all? I didn't have any weird awkwardness. Any, you know, no, not at all. And easy to get along, like you felt close to him, like there were no walls up? Yeah, nothing, you know. I've also been around a lot of people, right? Yeah. And I've had to kind of figure out how to get away, get around awkwardness. Cause at times I think people put, um, you know, think that I'm not a real person.

And, um, so I try, I will say, you know, over the years I've tried to kind of learn how to, to tear down walls, but at no point did I ever feel like, you know, there was some weird, you know, weird thing between us. He said, um, I said, Hey said hey what was rich like he goes wow and i go wow what he goes he's really cool and then throughout the and then throughout like i i just asked him a million questions about his time there and he must have said 10 times how cool you were and i remember that and i remember you as being cool too it's been a long time since you came out and hung out here for a long time so i remember i remember thinking oh this guy's so fucking cool man back then that was not that cool

you know like the camera was awkward in front of the camera and you know now i'm like it i don't even see the camera you know when i'll go out to the you know i'll have members come by like yesterday or two days ago i was doing one of the class workouts or something. And then right after we had to film some promo and one of the ladies is like, doesn't that ever get old? And I'm like, really? I don't see the camera anymore when I'm hanging out with Scott. It's just hanging out with Scott or hanging out with Ben. The camera's there.

The only time I get awkward is say we go into Chick-fil-A or Chipotle on a trip or something and they bring in the camera, that's the only time that I'm like, all right, put the camera away, you know? So, right. Because it's other people. It's not me. Like, I don't care anything about it, but I'm like, these other people are going to say, what do you, cause every time you guys on YouTube or what are you guys doing? So, um, I agree with that. It's weird when the camera's in public, that's, uh, definitely more difficult to get used to. But the thing is, is that people hold you on this pedestal and then they meet you. And like, I don't ever want anyone really to meet me because I don't want, like, I think it, it can only go downhill, but you really do. I'm like, ah, dang it. Yeah. But you really do live,

you're cooler in person than you even are on camera. Well, here's the deal is people hate me regardless, you know, like you're either going to love me even are on camera. Well, here's the deal is people hate me regardless, you know, like you're either going to love me or hate me regardless. So, you know, I'm just going to, and that's,

that's something over the years that I've just been way more comfortable with is you, you're going to get what you get out of me. Um, cause 50% of the people are going to hate me no matter what I do. 50% are going to like me. So I might as well just be who I am. Right.

Yeah. Do you think you have a thick skin around, um, uh, negativity on social media? I think I've gotten to where, you know, when I was younger and, you know, more worried about that type of stuff, then yeah, those comments and stuff would get to me, but you know, you can only hear so many comments about how bald you are and how much you should shave your head. And then you're just like, you know what? It's my hair. I'm going gonna do what I want. Yeah. So,

so you think now you have a pretty thick skin? Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, Hillary at times we'll get, um, did you see what so-and-so said about me? And I'm like,

Hillary, it really, you know, it doesn't matter. You know, like I've, I can guarantee I can, uh,

drum up a meaner comment and I'm like, it doesn't bother me. I kind of like it and i get into it at times if i see him um did you see the one the other day where it was on some video and i was tagged in it and i just happened to be reading it was uh i think it was my snatch from the invitational in 2000 shoot 14 or 15 and somebody said uh in the comments at original froning which is my my dad. So they didn't even do enough research to look up mine. My handle was like at original froning is I'm paraphrasing

is a terrible person. He kills animals. And so I commented back and I was like, yeah, original froning sucks. And so, you know, it's just like those types of things that I I'm like, ha ha, that was clever. You know, like I feel good about myself when i get them back uh savon's dog oh well you got a new picture say wolf all right wolf um the it is uh it's all just uh theatrics now um but i think that the i i trip on these on people who are kind of i just say younger younger people i suspect their skin isn't thick no it's tough you know and that's the hard part is social media when i started doing what i was doing social media was there, but it wasn't this huge thing.

And so I've grown up with it, as old as boomerish as that sounds. I've grown with it, and it wasn't an overnight thing. A lot of these athletes or younger people, social media defines who they are. They can't see themselves outside of what their social media is defines who they are like they don't they can't see themselves outside of what their social media persona is man my kids don't give us two shits how many likes i get on social media right or you know any of that type of thing and really that's all that matters to me is what hillary thinks of me and then what my three kids and then obviously the circle expands from there right yeah um and I've got my people here that I and I trust and I feel like are pretty

you know obviously they're in my corner but will give me an objective perspective um and I care about what they think but outside of that you know it's it's um that social media and the hard part is the internet gives every idiot a voice. You know, it gives makes them feel like, oh, I what I'm saying really matters. And so that's the tough part. When that when that Bud Light thing went down and they had that the the Dylan Mulvaney character promoting their stuff. And then you see Bud Light recoil and fire their chief marketing officer and then try to then sign with the UFC to change their image it's it's kind of like

it makes it even worse yeah it's like I kind of wish they would like just double down and be like fuck you we support trannies we're the new drink of all trannies but instead they they they pull back and then then it's like what is who are you what is your business what are you trying to do your money's the water your brand is like a 19 year old kid you care what social media says i see that you know what i mean instead of like like you're like uh like you might post a picture of yourself like you know bringing in a um uh an animal to your family for meat and all people see there, they start saying you killed an animal.

And it would be like, if you made a post, be like, hey, what you guys said to me really concerns me about my program sales at Mayhem. I just want you to know I'm vegetarian now. Yeah. It's just like... Or 40,000 people unfollowed me on Instagram after I killed a bear and i'm like

yeah i'm good you know it is what it is the if you were that passionate about what i'm doing you don't really care you know like that's just who i am right and i've had people on there be like hey i don't really um you know hunting's not my thing but you do you and i'm still here you know like for the 75 of the other content i'm still here, you know, like for the 75% of the other content, I'm still here. Right. And when those 40,000 people leave you speaking from like a marketing perspective, really, it makes your Instagram more powerful. So my Instagram only has, uh, how many do you have? You have 1.5 million? Something like that. You have over a million. Yeah.

And I have 4,000-something, right? But all my followers are like… Are passionate. They're the same person. Yep. It's like the same person clone. And from a marketing perspective, anyone who wants to talk to 4,800 people who have… You're back. Yeah. This is to talk to like 4,800 people who like have – You're back.

Yeah, this is it. These are 4,800 people. Like I think a lot of my listeners are Christians. So for some reason, someone who wanted to sell something specifically to Christians, like this account is the one. Go for it. And it's the same thing with subscribers on YouTube. So you kind of culled the herd and made you actually made your account more valuable what type of people buy in followers and buying views that's crazy to me

i don't know clout thing maybe i guess um there was there was a guy the other day we covered goob did you know who goob is on instagram have you seen this guy goob you got to follow this guy's account all he does is go around he's basically it's very similar to hillers hiller does it with people in the crossfit community this guy basically will just he just scours instagram accounts or people send him people send him um accounts where people have photoshopped their bodies or or even people who've been busted for pedophilia or tried to change their name or anything he basically just scours it and just exposes people so it'll be a girl a girl will have an accountant like she'll have like a hundred

thousand followers sorry sidebar can you say pedophilia in california i thought you had to say like minor attracted person or something like that oh shit they're at my door oh yeah california sorry go ahead um they so basically she'll have a program that she sells and the program will be how to make your butt bigger and then he'll go to her account and he'll be like look every single one of these pictures she made her butt bigger with photoshop and he exposes her and um the going to the buying the followers. So the other day he exposed someone who had 11 million followers and he showed that they had just been buying millions of followers. But Rich, people used to respond when I had a blue checkmark and I had over 50,000 followers or 80 or 90,000 followers. People would respond to my DMs much quicker.

Yeah, I mean, that's true. And I don't blame them for that that's the nature of it right if you're going to spend time with someone you don't want to go on a podcast that gets six views you want to go on a podcast where you can that's worth it yeah where you can yeah it's an hour an hour and a half of your time and so people yeah people just do that um but i do think that there's i do and i think that the marketing companies are fooled by that too. I think there's people in our space who have over a million followers who can't sell shit. Yeah, that's the hard part for me is what's real and what's not. But I mean I guess that is the internet, right?

What I really want to know is if the girls who are – what used to have been soft porn in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up. Yeah, there's a there's just like it's all over Instagram now. There's just these accounts and it's just girl after girl after girl with fake boobs and hardly clothed. And it's just pictures and videos of her just doing just things that you mean you don't push. You don't click it and say show me less of these you don't do that no no no should i okay i don't know that's what i do no but i but i i'm like but i i do this okay sebi don't click it don't click it don't click it don't click it yeah you like the temptation i get that i don't know if i like it's strength

it's strengthening you you know i don't know i I don't even know how to do that. How do you do that? Don't show me these. I don't really know. I think you can click the bubbles or something maybe and put show me less posts like this. That's what I've done. I don't know where that is. I don't know. Oh, right now.

I just went to my search now and I don't have a lot of Beaver in here. Oh, there you go. All right. Yeah, which is rare. You've been clicking less. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. You're. Yeah, which is rare. You've been clicking less. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

You're just doing it for science, though. You're just trying to figure out what's fake and what's real, right? Absolutely. I'm a media guy. You're a media guy. I wonder if those girls can actually sell anything, how they make money. That's the hard part because you know their following is just a bunch of perverts behind a keyboard right they're not real follower or they're not loyal followers per se because anyone who's following them i have to imagine spends too much time looking at girls

and that probably doesn't make a lot of money because i don't think people who make a lot of money spend their time looking on instagram at girls yeah i don't i don't think people who make a lot of money spend their time. Looking on Instagram at girls. Yeah, I don't think they do that, no. Probably in a basement somewhere. Yeah, it's a trip for me. By the way, speaking of making money, did I hear on the podcast with Hiller or the show with Hiller,

your contract with Reebok is coming to an end? Coming to an end, yeah. We've actually been talking to them a little bit about future and we've got some, you know, we've got to wait. So that's up to kind of figure out what the next plan is. How long were you with them? 10 years. So 2014, 2014, June of 2014. Um you have a contract with them? Yep. Like something you signed? Yeah, from June of 2014. And what's in a contract?

How much they're going to pay you? How many posts you have to make? Yeah, that contract was so long ago. much they're going to pay you, how many posts you have to make. Um, what's it, do you, do you ever, that contract was so long ago that contract was so long ago that there weren't all, you know, social media posts in there. There wasn't, it was more like on the competition floor. This is what you have to do and a certain amount of events, or we can ask this of you and that type of thing. So now a lot of contracts are, hey, social media, hey, YouTube, hey, podcast, that type of thing. But back 10 years ago, there was a lot less of those types of requirements.

And do you have a point of contact there? Like a guy who manages you? It's changed over the last couple years i think that's been the hard part is um they've had so much change at the top and so i think you know getting people in there now i feel like they're getting a little bit more structure and so rory has a lot of contact with them um i've got a buddy tal over there that designs shoes and tal's been incredible and we've been friends um for a long time long time. So, um, yeah, towel's still there luckily. And so hopefully, you know, we'll figure something out.

Uh, Manny Serrano. I love the froning, uh, twos, black and red. Thanks, Rich. Nice. Absolutely. Yeah. The X one is probably my favorite one. And so there was talk of maybe bringing that back in a lot of different colors, which would be awesome. We've had a lot of people ask about that. So when you, when you step down from individual competition competition did you ever rework your contract in the 10 years did you ever renegotiate it no that contract kind of stayed the same or has stayed the same and when you um stepped away from individual was that one of the did you lose money or lose not lose money lose opportunity for money like when if you won the games, you got a bonus from them?

I don't really remember. In that contract, I don't think there was. I think I got rid of performance bonuses and tried to get more guaranteed money. Wanting the longevity of the contract. You know, family, security, that type of thing. So I feel like I didn't have any of those bonuses. But in the later years where we started getting bonuses for wearing Reeboks just at the events, I feel like we made a lot of money doing

that. Okay. So they added that in as an incentive. Yeah, but I don't think it was just to us. It was kind of a blanket one at the games for a couple of years for everybody. And we just happened to win like 10 events or something like that. Looking back um are you glad you signed a 10-year contract yeah i mean there's parts of me where i'm like oh i probably could have gotten a little bit more juice out of the squeeze and you know i could have went with nike back then but i feel like nike's completely abandoned crossfit at this point reebok tried and has been part of the community for a long time. You know, right now, they're kind of in and out and trying to figure that out. And I think they're wanting to make another push back into it, so we'll see.

But, you know, for my family at the time and knowing, you know, knowing what I knew now, you know, who knows what I would have done. But at the time, it made the most sense for sure. Do you think you will sign with another shoe company? If the right one comes along and it's something that I really like. The older I've gotten, back then, it was all about security and money and family security. Now, it's like, all right, I want to align with brands. Yeah, that's worth my time supporting or being a part of,

but also aligns with who I am and the message that we're trying to push. So if there was a scale and it was about making money earlier, now it's sliding more towards values. Yeah, and more of like, hey, this is who we are. And you're going to be okay with me being who I am and me putting dead animals on my Instagram. It's going to happen. Dinner, dinner. Let's call it dinner.

Putting dinner. Dinner, dinner, dinner. Sorry. Dinner on your Instagram. Yeah. The first pair of fronings that ever came out um i was so excited but i couldn't wear them because super flat well i didn't mind that it was that um the the tongue my foot was so thick from top to bottom i couldn't get the tongue in

the laces without it down without hurting and you have a pretty stout foot too did any of that foot yeah did any of the shoes they ever make for you you're like fuck i can't wear this one it's just it hurts my foot so that first one the compete was supposed to be literally just for competing was kind of their push on that shoe so it was very kind of rigid very it wasn't an all-day walking around shoe yeah um and then've, they've done a good job over the years of listening and doing better with them. I just, man,

those wider, you know, the nano two to nano four were incredible. Yeah. The nano, what was it? Nine, eight and nine were awesome because they were wide.

And I feel like they're towards the last couple of years, they've tried to get back more into the narrow thing because people like that look better but man the older i get man it's all about feel and um and you know i want something that's super comfortable that i'm gonna wear all the time um was the nano 2 their best-selling shoe of all time i don't know i don't know it's one of my favorites the two and the four i love that american flag four that we wore at invitational a couple times yeah i mean i have i i probably have 20 pair of the old nano twos just uh probably 15 in boxes and five and um they also last forever which is crazy i wonder if they regret that like you could wash them you could i mean there was they just lasted forever and the only bad part about the two was

the rope climbs just destroyed it yeah and i don't do very very many of those there you go and now um uh i i've been wearing the born primitive and it literally is just like the nano 2 but i think the sole is thinner. Oh, I like that. So you just feel a little bit more. It might not be good for like walking out with the buffaloes, but everywhere else it would be awesome. Man, when I, I've switched to like a more minimalist type boot when I hunt, when I do a lot of work around the house and stuff.

And it's basically just not a moccasin because it is a rubber bottom, but it feels a lot like a moccasin. And man, you can feel the ground. You know, everybody's like, oh, it doesn't hurt your back standing around on that all day. But no, because you kind of shift your weight a little bit more towards your midfoot. You know, the whole hippie, you'd love that because it's hip, super hippie, like grounding your feet feel like your feet can be your feet and your feet are actually working man i i'm i'm sold on kind of the the minimalist um type shoe or boot are do you go barefoot a lot uh like if i'm playing around in the yard with the kids football wiffle ball whatever i do a lot of barefoot stuff i just that's kind of the way i grew up and that's the way my kids are and they're outside

and running around. And so, um, yeah, a lot of barefoot. So you don't have rules like that and you're, Hey, you're going outside, put your shoes on. Your kids are allowed to just free range. My kids are feral. How many kids do you have now? Four? I wish no three. I would do another one. I just can't do the baby stage. Hillary went to Africa on that mission trip and she came back and she's like, I'm bringing home five kids. I'm fine with more kids. The hard part is we'll have to get different vehicles because we can't fit. And then also the baby stage. If we could, or if we do end up adopting again, I need someone about a year old or like 18 months old.

Because of the sleep? Yeah. I'm a really good dad from about 6 a.m. till 10 p.m., but between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., you just leave me alone. Yeah. That's interesting. I'm like that too. Yeah. I'm like, they could be coughing in the middle of the night and it's not their fault. And I'm like, be quiet, knock it off. They can actually do anything about it. And then I wake up and I'm like they could be coughing in the middle of the night and it's not their fault and i'm like be quiet knock it off like they can actually do anything about it and then i wake up and i'm like what happened i'm a i'm good till i'm not even good till 10 i'm good till like so yeah i'm like seven i'm like all right hayley there's everybody everybody yeah i uh i if i stay up past 10 30

like that's the mark 10 10 to 10 30 i feel like I've drank a bottle of Jack and smoked a pack of Marlboro reds. And I've never done either one of those things, you know? Yeah. I just feel awful. Cause you can't sleep in anymore. The older you get, you're like,

well, sun's up. I'm up, you know? Right. So, um, how old are your kids?

Lakeland will be 10 in July. Trice just turned seven and Violet just turned six. And have you been in any altercations with other parents? Yes. Oh, can I hear some of those stories? Yeah. I saw an expression on your face that I don't see very often. So with Lakeland's basketball, she was playing basketball, man.

That was fun to watch. She'd never played before. She went to one practice. So first game, super raw, just very like run to the block, run to the block, that type of thing. And then to watch her kind of just blossom. What's the block? Down low, there's like the blocks on the baseline, or not on the baseline,

but on the lane i don't i don't even on the lane i guess and so she was just run to a spot run to a spot run to a spot run to a spot that's it and then to watch her at the end of the season be like standing there reading plays and like hawking down balls and just to see competitiveness come out of her was one of the coolest moments as a parent um to watch and so you know they're they're end of the season tournament it's a city league it's not even a travel team there's this younger kid he's probably early 20s maybe even less than that but he is freaking out at every referee call and kind of yelling, not necessarily at our girls.

It's nine-year-olds, seven, eight, and nine-year-olds. He's the coach for the other team, Rich? No, he's in the stands. And so he's just – everything is, oh, you could call a foul. You could call a walk. You could call a double dribble. You could call anything on any play throughout this whole game, right? And so everybody's

kind of like mumbling under their mouth like hey man this guy's annoying like just keeps going both teams teams that are waiting to play and finally i was like hey man cheer for your team and that's it like don't talk about our girls and we can call foul any play well then the whole place sounds like you could drop a pin and my voice is loud and kind of carries. But my thing is like, yell at, like, cheer for your team, do whatever. But there are seven, eight, and nine-year-olds. Don't yell at our girls. And so, yeah.

And so it got a little bit more escalated when, I guess, an uncle or somebody got involved. My brother-in-law got involved. And it eventually de-escalated. But the guy's like, oh, just because you're rich for owning, you think you can talk to people? And everybody else around me is like, thank you.

And so it was, yeah, happens. Wow, that's interesting. That's going straight to victim. So he was tough guy and went straight to victim. Yeah, yeah. Straight to victim. Isn't that amazing? The loud to victim yeah yeah straight to victim isn't that amazing the loudest guy at the place the second you push back he goes straight to victim yep so is what it is did he have a kid out there uh i don't know if it was a niece kid sister or

something but yeah was hillary at that game oh yeah and did she say anything to you like rich don't say anything? No, she was over it. Everybody in the area was over it. We weren't even sitting. We were sitting on the opposite side of even our team. So we were kind of with the other team's parents. Because you get in there, and there's another game that just got off the court.

And you're getting on. And so you're just like, find a seat, right? And then there was other teams, like I said said coming in that were watching waiting for their game and everybody was over his this guy's aunt because it was obnoxious it was too much you know do you um once you get outside do you close the loop with them like do you shake his hand or do you do anything they they they took it outside i you know i can't do anything in those situations so i think that's why my brother-in-law was like oh i'm gonna say something i'm not letting this go and so austin austin kind of went out like I'm going to say something. I'm not letting this go. And so Austin kind of went out.

I'm standing there on the court, and I'm getting Lakeland, and all of a sudden I see that Austin had disappeared. And I think to myself, oh, he's about to throw down with this guy. And I go outside, and they're going at it a little bit, and then finally it de-escalates. So it was interesting, that's for sure. I was like, damn it, why do I got to be that guy? It was interesting, that's for sure.

I was like, damn it, why do I got to be that guy? But someone has to – what's crazy is someone has to be that guy. Yeah. It's worse when no one's that guy. Yeah, and that's – the older you get, those things kind of happen. Younger, I'd probably been like, ah, just let it go. But it wells up in you and wells up in you. So this was Trice's game a couple of weeks ago. And this is funny because the guy that I said this to, we have,

we have some miles together and he's a really good dude and goes to the gym. And so wait a second, the guy you said what to the guy, the guy, this is, this is another story. So this happened a couple of weeks ago. Right. So I'm a pitch or I'm coaching Trice's pitch trice as well i'm coaching trice's coach's pitch team and so this is seven eight pitch team basically he plays baseball everybody plays baseball and i throw the ball to our hitters you can't field your position you just throw it and then you know that you've got the wherever they put it in play the kids play baseball from there but instead of watching dangerous that sounds it's pretty fun you've

got a glove so you can protect yourself i've been hit a couple times like it but the ball's dead and they have to redo it so okay um it's seven eight nine year olds we i think have maybe one nine nine-year-old the rest of our kids are seven so we're getting sorry we're getting our shit pushed in for lack of better terms every game i mean run ruled before we even get through one time through the lineup like they're just really young and so you can only score seven runs an inning and so my buddy's coaching this other team or helping coach this other team and he's coaching third base they're up i want to think 15 runs or something like that so it's going to take us two innings even if we have the best inning possible to even get close right right and so the ball happens at seven rich you just switch you switch you switch sides and so it's so they've done that already a couple times to you. Exactly.

And so it's a training league. Like, hey, I'm a – not everybody gets a medal. These kids need to learn to lose, that type of thing, right? So my rules are play hard, listen to your coaches, nobody cry, and let's have some fun. That's my rules, right? And so we'll get the ball into the infield and we kind of have a kid that a catcher if you throw it to him maybe 25 of the time he's

going to catch it that's just what we've got right so the ball will come into the infield and most levels of baseball you're not going to run from third right so he's just sending kids around third and he keeps sending, and he keeps sending them, and he keeps sending them, and it's starting to well up in me. And, you know, like we're down bad. Like there's no chance we're going to catch him. And finally I'm like, Ben, how many runs is enough, man? He's like, what?

I'm just trying to teach him baseball. And I'm like, and this is me in our dugout on the first base side. He's coaching third, and I'm yelling at him, like, what's what's enough and he's like I'm just trying to teach him baseball and I'm like in no level of baseball do you keep running when the ball's in the infield yeah and so eventually he comes up after he's like I'm sorry man I just got caught up and you know blah blah blah I'm sorry he apologized and he's texted me a couple times and I've seen him at the gym and he's he's a good dude so there's no like ill feelings but I I was hot, you know, cause these kids are just getting their brakes beat in.

We're getting one at bat before they call the run rule of like 15 runs and however many innings. So it's just, and then they'll say, Oh, well, we'll turn the scoreboard off and, and let your kids hit around and no kid wants to do that. You know, as soon as the scoreboard's off, the kids are like, oh, we lost again, you know. So it's just hard. And so we finally won a game the other night.

And watching those boys, like there was another team that was super young, and it was back and forth. And we won by I think it was one run. And at the end of the game, you know know they're doing flips in the outfield and stuff and so that that makes it worth it because every if at the end at the end of every game I'll do a little speech hey you guys played hard you listened nobody cried and did you have fun and they're always like yeah and I'm like you know what would be more fun and they're like what and I'm like if we win and so when they finally won they were like this is awesome

we should win more often and I'm like finally you know it clicked so uh and then we got beat 15 to nothing last night so it's what it is what's the worst loss you guys have had I think probably last night 15 to nothing they were man they hadn't played in a week because of rain and then they found out they were getting out of school today because of flooding and so they were just not in it whatsoever you know at that age you can tell in warm-ups uh how good the night's gonna go and last night went about like you think it would when i said all that stuff um uh are all the kids gonna play sports is it do you Do you just sign them up? Are you just like, will Violet start? Is Violet doing anything? She's six.

So she played T-ball last year and just didn't love it. So this year I was like, do you want to play? She said, nope. And so she took a ballet class. She really liked that. Lakeland liked softball. Flag football is coming up, and all three want to play that. So I encourage them to try things,

but I'm not going to force them. All of them do, CrossFit kids here, Lakeland's in the preteens class. They love it. And so as long as you're doing something, I don't really care. I think there's an incredible value in youth sports for kids and just learning how to handle failure, handle success, handle people, be a part of a team, lead a team. There's just so many life lessons that can be learned handling a difficult coach or a difficult supervisor or learning from a good coach or, um, you know, I think there's just, there's a lot of, a lot of life lessons to be learned. Do you, do you ever go to the ballet class? Do you think it's a good place or you think it's more like a babysitting? That one was babysitting. I hated it.

They colored for the last 10 minutes of it. I'm like, what are we doing here? At least teach them something. My kids were in ballet for a year, my boys. After a year of doing it, I wanted them to be able to dance. Right. And they still able to dance. Right. And they couldn't, they still couldn't dance. So you're like, what's the point?

Yeah. Show some progression. Yeah. It's crazy. It's, it's, it's hard finding places. Like, so my kids were like five minutes, jujitsu, there was jujitsu yesterday and we didn't, we didn't take all, I had to go do some, set some stuff up atreg's house and we rarely missed jiu-jitsu class we rarely miss any classes and there was five minutes after the class started and one of the coaches texts me and goes where's avi and that's that's what

you want some accountability yeah yeah i want to feel bad like oh shit oh man i should have brought him yep yes makes sense uh yesterday my boys went to tennis and they got there 10 minutes early. And there were two of the two best guys in the academy playing in the main center of the academy. And my boys were playing instead of sitting down and watching the two best players in the academy play. And so when class started, he said, hey, did you guys see the best players were out there? And all the kids are like, yeah. And they're like, and you didn't watch, right? And he goes, yeah.

He goes, so you're going to learn your lesson now your lesson now you're gonna run and he made them run line sprints he goes when the best players are playing you sit down and watch yeah watch yeah and i'm like damn yeah i mean that's that's what you want that's how you eat goldfish exactly you know i've i've started um i bought mlb tv and i'm a tigers fan and as a kid wished i could have watched more Tigers games. So me and Trice and now Lakeland and the girls sometimes at night, you know, it might be the sixth inning.

It might be two or three innings, but I'm like, Hey, let's watch for a little bit. And now they've gotten into it, which is cool. And I've, I've noticed Trice picks up things and Lakeland has picked up things in

softball by watching pros. Cause I mean, that's how you get better, right. Is, is watching and seeing. And if you don't have that, you know, there's only so much I can do in the. Because, I mean, that's how you get better, right, is watching and seeing. And if you don't have that, you know, there's only so much I can do in the yard. And, I mean, we play every, I'd say, four to five nights a week.

If we're not playing baseball, they want to play wiffle ball. At no point am I, hey, let's go outside and practice. I'm like, do you want to go outside and practice? Let's go outside. Or they're like, Dad, come out here and throw wiffle ball to us and if i can and i'm not doing anything work-wise or whatever i'm right there so that's it's been fun to see them want to get better um but it's funny like kids they just want to hit the ball right and so i'm like hey let's go throw and they're like nah can we just hit And so that's the hard part, right?

Hey, do you make them hit both ways? Trice hits both left and right-handed. We've not yet in a game. He hits really well right-handed and hits pretty damn good left-handed too. Lakeland is a lefty, and there's such an advantage in softball to being a lefty that I haven't really forced her to do right-handed yet. But you do demand it from Trice. In practice. In practice.

I'm like, hey, three – like, especially when he was super young, three swings from the right, three swings from the left. And then he hated left. And then now it'll be funny. He'll be missing the ball right, and he'll switch to left, and he'll hit a couple couple and then he'll go back to right and start swinging so there's some type of like connection or he has to actually concentrate on it and it flips his brain it's pretty it's oh pretty cool fascinating yeah that's cool okay wow yeah so it's uh it's been fun and so he's now started asking hey in a game can i start hitting left-handed and i said all right if we get to a game where we're up a couple of runs and you want to hit left-handed, let's let you try it. So it's cool.

Yeah, that's cool. Um, I don't play a lot of baseball with the kids, but I got a few like different machines and like, and I throw pitches to him with tennis balls and I always, and the whole point of it is to hit both ways. Yeah. I mean that for us, it's such a valued skill, man. Hey, do you own a a ball machine no but we're i'm putting a batting cage in the barn i i like throwing you know like i i don't mind throwing to the kids and makes me feel like a kid again it um you could uh i have a couple i have i have two ball machines i have a tennis ball machine and then i have a um this machine that fires little tiny wiffle balls oh yeah yeah i've gotle balls oh yeah i don't have the machine but i have those tiny like wiffle balls and then the stick the hit stick

yeah yes that's fun to watch them try to use that and dude trice i'm telling you um lakeland has an incredible swing she i think where we just started her so late her like hand eye isn't quite there she's an incredible athlete and moves like on the trampoline will do backflips i'm never she never even learned how to do a backflip she's like hey dad will you spot me and then i do one and then the next time she's like all right don't spot me and she just starts busting out backflips so she's an incredible athlete we just got to get her hand eye there uh but trice for how young he is or how young he was, I mean, he's probably one of the best hitters on our team because he hits the ball. He puts the ball in play 99.9% of the time.

It's crazy. This, this, this wiffle ball machine that I have, I'll send you a link to it. Yeah. Send me a link. It's pretty cool. And you can crank it up. You can crank them like 60 miles an hour and it does come with that little stick and you can put a hundred balls in there and you can set it. It can do curve balls, sliders. It's not even expensive yeah that's cool it's

like a couple hundred bucks and the problem is is then you got to pick the balls up afterwards and picking up 200 of those balls it's crazy not not fun especially if they're in the grass you're like oh missed one right but but if you did it in a batting cage at least they would all be like confined yeah in a certain area. And it's kind of cool too. You can do other games with them too. You could fire them up in the air and make the kids catch them. Or they swing and then they run and have to touch something

and then come back and grab the bat. And you could delay how often the balls come out. It's cool. That's cool. So that's the hard part with mine. They always want to – hey, I got to practice running the bases. And I'm like, just stand here and hit 10 balls and then you can run. They want to hit the ball and run the base every single time. And I'm like, we're wasting. And then I'm like, all right, well, at least they're running around.

Right. So it's pretty fun. Um, how about, how about you want to play with them, but Hillary wants them to go to bed. Do you ever have that issue? Oh yeah. You're getting them fired up right before they go to bed. And I'm like, nah, I'm just getting them fired up. So they go to sleep and that never works. Right. Yeah. In my relationship now with my wife, that's the most contentious thing because at like eight 30, me and the boys are ready to go. Oh yeah. Ready to go in the garage. We're ready just to do something. And, uh, but for her that's bedtime and it's all, and really it's kind of fucked because it's all on her. She has to do it at bedtime and at waking.

Yep. So, um, yeah, you're just making it worse. That's our job though. I feel like his dad, right?

Just make everything harder. Well, yeah. As a husband, as a father. And I never want to say no to them if they want to do something physical, like never, ever,

ever. Like you want to train at nine o'clock at night. Let's go in the garage. Let's go work out. Yep. Yep. That's the, that's the last, you know, couple of years, about a year. I'm like, if they ask me to do something, I'm going to try my damnedest to do it. How's the, how's the gym? How's like just memberships and how's just the affiliate? Stronger than ever, man. It's um we we run out of parking a couple nights a week uh that's our biggest problem right now is we don't have enough

parking which is an incredible problem to have man it's cool when you walk in here uh especially a wednesday afternoon you've got you know our crossfit class traditional crossfit we've got our life class which is geared a little bit more towards seniors. It's still CrossFit, but it's less intimidating to them. And then you'll have some type of either CrossFit kids, CrossFit preteens. And it's, I mean, and there's open gym, you cut, you know, high level athletes in the back and, you know, we've got no parking. So our, our membership is the strongest it's ever been. i think we've hit high marks the last couple months i i think people probably by the way congratulations that's cool thank you thank you josh does an incredible job josh and tj josh malone oh and tj what's tj's last name tj carver

he does a lot of coaching and helps josh out and Laura does too. Are those the people who run the affiliate? Yeah, yep. And what is the success to an affiliate? Is there any part of it that's like, hey, well, you just have to win the games four times, and then another six times on team, and then you'll have a successful affiliate, or is that just a total misnomer?

Total misnomer. Honestly, most people in here could care less that I've ever won the CrossFit Games. Granted, it's given them an incredible space. And we have huge opportunities here with the space that we have. But no, man, it's the same thing that's always made affiliates successful. It's good coaching. The programming is CrossFit. It's good coaching. The programming is, you know, is CrossFit. It's good coaches, incredible community. You know, the stories that you see that come out of here and

really it's the, you know, people telling other people, we don't do any local advertising. It's just kind of word of mouth. It always has been. And, you know, obviously I think the initial swell of it, but hell, I haven't competed in two years and you. And, you know, obviously I think the initial, um, swell of it, but hell I haven't competed in two years and you can't, you know, it's been our best two years that, um, since then. So it's, uh, it's pretty cool. You know, I I'll jump into a class like the last two days in the afternoons I've jumped in. We'd had Murph prep on Monday. And then yesterday we did a 20 minute AM rap and before the kids I'll either hop into a two o'clock class or like yesterday, Hillary was getting the kids.

So I got I jumped into the three o'clock class and man, it was fun. It was a good time. Are the which one of those people would be the one if I wanted to have on a show to ask like, hey, if I wanted to do an advice show, like I have this show called The Affiliate Series where I have affiliate owners come on and talk about the affiliate. Which one of those people would be the one to Josh, Josh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Josh is the kind of the Josh Malone, Josh Malone, two shirt, two small shirt Malone. Oh, that's the guy. Yeah, that's him. Okay. I'll put that on here in my notes. You'll get him. He'll cry. So be, be ready for that small because he's that passionate, passionate. Awesome.

Do you have any thoughts on what makes a successful affiliate? Yeah, I think, like I said, it's the coaches, for one. They know what they're doing, but also can relate to people. Man, I will say the one thing that I miss the most is having Darren around here. Darren Hunsucker was the best. Him and Josh are probably the two best coaches I've ever been around. From what I'll give Darren the leg up on is Darren is an incredible coach, even to the high-level athletes, where Josh is incredible with the members,

new to experienced, knows how to relate to people. But Darren had that knack of like could motivate somebody who just walked into the gym, but also figured out a way to motivate me or piss me off more than anything. And so, you know, when Darren comes back, it's awesome. And he kind of laid that laid that foundation here of what what it was to be a member here at Mayhem. And so Josh has just taken that and run with it over the last couple of years and built even more upon that. So I think it's people. And, and like I said, having a community, we have got an

incredible commitment anywhere, any gym you walk into CrossFit gym, that's successful. It's all about the people and all about that community. And, and, you know, we use that. I feel like people mean an incredible community, like the people in there are friends they're yeah they're friends you know you it's funny you almost have this like uh class war right so like the 815 class like they're passionate they're it's one of our biggest classes it's kind of that uh group of you would think it's all soccer moms but there's a bunch of dudes in there too at 815 and they're just getting after it and they're protective of their 815 status and they're welcoming to drop-ins which is funny you know because that's probably one of our biggest drop-in classes that and some of that

earlier afternoon classes and then you got the two o'clock and they're kind of passionate they'll get here at the coffee shop at say one ish and they'll sit and hang out in the coffee shop and talk and then they go work out then they may come back out in the coffee shop and talk and then they go work out then they may come back in in the coffee shop and talk and so yeah i think it's it's those are the unemployed people that's the unemployed people or the rich ones yeah it's definitely not clicky um but it is funny they get a little bit competition uh oriented with their classes which is cool you know like they they there's some um ownership to to who they are and what it means to be a, be a mayhem member. What's a big class. Like how many people shoot. I mean, I just looked out there and the main gym space is what, 10,000 square foot. And it was like, there were people

on both rigs. There's probably 30, 40 people in there. Wow. Yeah, it's cool. Uh, Anthony, uh, Rich, is that your barren moose slaughtering room? This is one room we just cleared out. It was a kind of storage space for Buffalo Brew, and now it's about to be my office, Scott's office, and I think Ben and Bird, who is running the ham hunt for us. I want to ask, I've got,

I have so many questions. Rich, will you be attending semifinal event this year? Yes, I'll be at, well, I'll be in Europe next week at the French throwdown. That's a semifinal,

right? French starts next week. Yeah. Next week. I think I'll be there the next weekend. I'll be in Lyon, France. We'll be going from going to hang out, work out with I'll be there the next weekend. I'll be in Lyon, France. We'll be going from – going to hang out, work out with some people in London, Brussels, Paris, and then also in Lyon.

So looking forward to that. Are you really looking forward to it? I just got sick to my stomach thinking – It's hard. It's hard. That's the hard part. I feel like I lose power as soon as I walk out of Cookville. So, yeah, I mean, it's been a while since I've been over in Europe.

So I am in Lakeland is going with us, not going to take the little two, but going to take Lakeland. So I'm excited for her to. OK, so that's motivating. That's motivating. OK, so so you're going to show your daughter the world. Yeah. Yeah. So she's pretty fired up about that. Has no clue, you know, any, anything about what's about to happen. She got a passport already? Oh yeah. Yep. I was the one that I couldn't find my passport up until about two weeks ago.

So that was a little touch and go there for a little while. So. And then I'm going to the, what is it? The East semifinal in Knoxville. Me and Chase and Henry Sales are going to do the community three-person event on that weekend. Who's Chase? Chase Hill. It was on our team in

2021. And you're not going to Carson? No, I don't think. When is that one? I don't know. I know for sure I'm going to that one. That's the West semi-final. No, I won't know, but that's the only one. I know for sure I'm going to that one. That's the West Semi-Final. Oh, that's the West Semi-Final.

No, I won't be out there. And how do you choose not to go to that one? You just don't have enough athletes there? I don't have enough time. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll be pretty wore out after going to Europe. And then luckily the one in the East is in Knoxville. And Chase lives in Knoxville, has a house there,

and he owns an affiliate there too. And Chase lives in Knoxville, has a house there, and he owns an affiliate there too. Refreshing Froning Farms apparel for months looking for a large bison tee would do anything for bison tee, would eat a ghost pepper. Any idea when they restock? I can ask Kelly.lly kind of runs that and keeps everything up and up all the the large bison tea all right do you know what he's talking about i'm not sure which one because a lot of them have bison on them i don't know he's talking about the hippie looking one with the american flag bandana or i'm not sure. Oh, probably the bison. It says bison on the front and then has some faith family stuff in the middle.

When Andrew was there, so Andrew visited street parking and he visited you and we're all aware of what's going on at HQ in regards to media output and the effort that's put into communication and he said and when he he said he was just completely blown away when he went to street parking he said he was completely blown away and then when he went to visit you and saw the the media um empire that you guys have he said it was just on a whole nother level he said he couldn't even fucking believe what he was looking at he said there were just rows of cameras there's six full time media guys um uh he basically he said he hasn't seen anything like that what is your what is your relationship mayhem's relationship with media and is is it odd to you that you've

become the like i heard hwpo just has one guy i don't know if proven has any guys um but it sounds like you guys are way more invested in media than anyone else in the crossfit space yeah i think i mean media makes the world go around right that's people are consuming media at a crazy rate. Yeah, I think it's super important. I would argue that we are a fitness and media company at this point. It must be expensive. It's a huge part of your budget.

Yeah. I mean, it definitely is the largest part of our budget. I look at it and I'm like, oh, we'll count media. We get X amount of dollars from youtube and that offsets maybe one one person then i'm like oh no it doesn't really and then we got to buy cameras and all that type of stuff but i mean it is what it is and you know how it was back when crossfit was kind of at its peak that's what that's what kind of sustained it and then kind of got cut off at its legs so um yeah here. Here's what I think is happening at HQ. I think that they have this thing there, ROI. Yeah.

Return on investment. Can you justify your media or you can't? You just have to – is it one of those faith things? Like if anyone would have – anyone with a brain would have said, hey, if you're starting a podcast to me three years ago, and a lot of people did, they said, Hey, you're never going to make it. Like there's, there's 3 million podcasts. You can't show that your time and money are going to be put in a good place. Like you can't, you can't look and be like, Hey, all this media made this money.

This is a brilliant choice. You can't do that. That's the hard part is if you look at like, if I just, you know, put media in a column, you're like, oh, that's a big negative. But who knows what mayhem athlete would be without it? You know, would the community, would we have that community aspect of all of our remote coaching and remote stuff? I say no, like you can't have these other things. I would rather pour more money into our media than buy Facebook ads where you

can see or Instagram ads or whatever, because yeah, I can look at those and be like, our ROI was X, but I, I just, I feel in my heart that that media is more important and we're telling better stories. We're telling real stories. We're making connections with athletes. We're making connections with the everyday person that just wants to get fit and wants to hear stories or be a part of who Mayhem is because we have some super talented media people. It truly is like this. If If you buy a Facebook ad, the second you do it, it's gone. Yeah.

Gone. So if you spend $10,000 on advertising that's here today, gone tomorrow, or $10,000 on making a video, that video will keep giving back to you as long as YouTube's around. Yeah. It'll get a view every single day. One person will see it every day. Ten people will see it every day. Yep. It'sleshy money down the toilet to do facebook and instagram ads yeah i mean if you look at you know you're like oh well you know you spent x on media but yeah it's just yeah there's no you can't i don't think we i haven't found a way to quantify it but

it's super valuable you're in that bump oh yeah sorry that's that's my shitty roadcaster sorry my add was kicking in there and i couldn't hear anything or think without it someone called in on the phone just now and it's a uh i can't tell if it's a spam spam it's telling the that someone needs to go to court it's a pretty funny message oh nice it's like you missed your court date did you missed your court date. Did you miss your court date? No. This phone has a different state area code.

The best to ever do it. Hey, thanks, ESC. When Facundo invited Hiller out there, does he ask you first? I think him and Jake had talked about it, Jake asked me and I'm like hey I don't think they're like I said there's nothing to hide so um yeah why not so is it just a short discussion yeah yeah I don't think it was you know I guess you could be like all right what, what's he, what's, what's his underlying motive. But once again, we have nothing to hide. You know, the hard part might've been to like, Hey, is he trying to come on quarterfinals weekend when the athletes are,

you know, a little on edge already and you know, anything that's going to throw them into kind of a tizzy already. So that was, that might've been the only like, Hey, when's he coming? Yesterday I was at Greg's house, and we were hanging out, and we started talking, and I was talking to – we're setting up some sound equipment there for an event he's doing on Thursday. And I was talking to one of the guys who was setting up the sound equipment, and we started talking – I started talking to him about Paige Powers

and about her quarterfinal score yeah and greg walks over and he's like wait wait what did you just say and i was showing like why i thought she got dinged she stood on the box and she had full extension with one leg but the other leg wasn't fully extended and greg's like that's a rep and i go what do you mean i go the rule is is that you have both legs extended he goes it doesn't matter he's all crossfit's not about crossfit's not ballet where you only you get points taken away for having your toes pointed crossfit's about showing capacity he's like what if the athlete would you if someone was doing a max back squat and they did 600 pounds but they only use one leg

do they still get the rep he said if someone's doing one he says if they did one-arm pull-ups do they still get the he said the person stood up all the way their hip their center of mass wasn't going to get any higher with both legs extended he's like that's that's a misunderstanding of what crossfit is and i was like oh shit oh and he's like don't tell me that that actually happened no it happened my you know he started going off, dude. And he usually doesn't weigh in on the CrossFit shit, especially game stuff. Game stuff he hates. And then he's like, hey, dude, you should have had me on for that.

He's like, I'm the fucking foremost movement expert in the world. He's like, if someone stands up all the way on the box, and he's like, you can't not give them the rep on some sort of weird technicality like that. Yeah, I i mean the hard part would be to that is in the writing it said both legs extended uh i would i would assume i looked at the standard but he would argue that that's complete completely ridiculous when he said that that's the whole thing with the burpee too it's all about just lowering your center it doesn't matter how you do it it's lowering your center of mass to its lowest point and then jumping to the highest point. And that's the rep, but there's

no way you could do it any way you want. That's what I've been trying to say for the last couple of years is take all the nuance out of it. You know, like we did. So just to give you an example for everyday hero games that we did, the qualifier, get over the burpee or burpee over the rower. I don't care how you get over the rower. Just get over it. Like step over it, jump. Like as long as you jump over it, you know,

one foot comes off before the other one or lands before the other one, as long as both feet are in there at some point, we're over it. And I would even argue that, Hey, if you want to step over it, step over it. Um,

you know, I think you're right. After listening to Greg talk yesterday, I was like, Oh yeah. I remember hearing that in the original L1 I took from him. It's all about showing capacity, work capacity across broad time and modal domains. And not turning us into gymnastics.

Simplify. If you're not smiling, you get deducted a point. Yep. Yeah. You know, and I think we did a good job of that for a couple of years or for years was like, hey, let's try to eliminate the judges as much as they can like as much as we can we want to hold some type of standard so people aren't you know skirting the line um and so we've when we're putting on any type of event i look at all right how would somebody cheat this and how can we make this as simple for somebody to see it and just count the reps basically not you don't

want to make them a glorified counter but there needs to be you know some movements just are not really good movements for competition they're great training movements they're good in a crossfit workout but like a push-up you've seen those push-ups that you can't explain why somebody's not doing a good push-up but they're not like their hips aren't moving or whatever that is. And it's just not a good movement to use in competition. Like it just isn't. And so, um, yeah, that's the hard part is that we've put so many of these kind of weird standards in there, or like even I get some of them are safety, like, Hey, you can't jump off the box in the burpee.

Um, but that was kind of a weird one as well. So if you didn't read the front fine print on that, or like somebody was talking about the neck and you know, if their neck was looking straight or whatever that is. So, yeah. I saw a clip today that was a perfect example of that. I wonder where that is. And the hard part for me, too, is the fact that Paige got moved down behind a bunch of people that didn't even send in a video. That's my biggest.

Yeah, that's a logical fuck up right now yeah that's that's like if you don't send in a video you immediately move behind anybody that sends in a video to me logically but the page the page thing is the most um i don't know what the word is it's it bad. It's bad. Something's – at first I was feeling like, hey, the rules are the rules. The rules are the rules, yeah. But then how could the girl who took 10th at the Games last year, who's only growing in her capacity, she was the healthiest she had been in a long time, go down to 660th. Not even make semifinals yeah something it's um

something's broken there yeah something is uh something's fucked up uh egregious is that the word yeah that's egregious egregious craig richards egregious okay uh adam blake said okay okay okay egregious egregious it is um is. It was really interesting hearing Greg talk about it yesterday. Do you think that the fact that Hiller's made so many no rep videos that it got in someone's head over there? I don't know. Even if it didn't get into CrossFit's head, maybe it got into whoever's reviewing those videos.

But, yeah, you know, the hard part is, like, we do want people held accountable, but that's like, that's, that's egregious. But, but you wouldn't. So let's say, let's say the rule said both legs had to be extended. So does that mean that someone with one leg couldn't do that workout? Yeah. I mean, that's what it would sound like to me, but then it would be a box jump at that point, right? Yeah, there's no reason. Oh, one million percent, it's all because of Hiller. Yeah, I'm starting to think, I mean, not that it's his fault, but his influence. No, but he's drawn attention to it.

Yeah. What about the Open? If you could have your druthers would you do you like the open that it's just like a warm-up for the best athletes in the world or would you like to have it um have more of an impact on uh make it so that the games athletes actually have to put more uh effort into it i like it as a community event kind of warm up for the season i think quarterfinals we watered down a little too much, having seven days or however many days to get in four workouts. I feel like you would have even bigger problem with the open with videos and all that.

I like the fact, and this is me as an athlete, but also speaking as somebody who's retired, it made the open more fun to see the, like to see the athletes do the workouts, but not be so hyper stressed about it. I feel like quarterfinals, um, was way too lax this year. Well, uh,

with 20, 25% getting in, not, not, I don't even mind that. It's the fact of like, they had, you know,

for top level athletes. And that's what we're trying to do is get them to the next stage they had i don't i don't was it six days or whatever to do four workouts yeah i saw some of these athletes do the workouts two and three times i feel like you're getting out of the the spirit of what we're trying to do is test these athletes you get one test one shot at it one um you know i liked the five or six workouts in four days like you do you're gonna have to double up on a day because hey at the next level we're gonna double up we might even triple up you know and at the games level you're gonna quadruple up maybe on a day so um

yeah i i'm fine with 25 getting in i think it cool it's cool it gives everybody or it gives more people a chance to feel that competition type feel. Uh, but I feel like we also went too far. So what would you do? Shorten the days? Yeah, I think shorten the days and maybe throw five and two and it's not all volume isn't always the answer. So it doesn't have to be a crazy fifth event. Um, but something that, you know, could be short and fast, but also, you know, so athletes aren't redoing the workouts two, three, and then some cases four times. And now semifinals must be the most stressful time of year for the games

athletes, more stressful than the games I'm guessing. Yes and no. For me, every stage was stressful because I wanted to win every stage. Are you pretty stoked now that you're two years out and you look at it, you're like, Oh my God, I'm so glad I'm not doing this. Yeah, when I got to the games last year and was just hanging out and didn't have that impending dread, that was nice. But I also got that feeling when I did Leadville, man,

that a couple nights before, it felt like the CrossFit Games, just impending doom, which I feel like we need every once in a while, right? It's a little bit of a gut check, a little bit of, Hey, you know, this is, this is going to hurt. This is something that kind of tests where we're at mentally, physically. Why are you doing Leadville a second time? Oh, I just enjoyed it last year. And I've got some other people that were wanting to do it kind of on the fence with it. And so I was like, ah, I'll do it with you. And it gives me something to aim for. I, you know, know me i have to have something to kind of to look forward to to train for um like i said a minute ago have that kind of impending doom and

and a hard test and um and someone was saying it's the same week of the games same weekend as the games i didn't know that when i signed up and then the games can't figure out when they want to do that so i wish i mean i've competed at on my birthday which was july 21st and then the games can't figure out when they want to do that so i wish i mean i've competed at at on my birthday which was july 21st and then this one's going as late as august 12th that's something we got to figure out too is like hey it's the first games are august 12th something like that or 10th or whatever it's it's like we've got to figure out is it the first weekend in august is it the last weekend in july like just stick with that so you won't be at the games i will be there i'll be there on saturday as soon as i finish first weekend in August. It's the last weekend in July. Like, just stick with that.

So you won't be at the games? I will be there. I'll be there on Saturday. As soon as I finish the race, I'll get there. The race is what day? Saturday. But isn't it 24 hours or some crazy? No, it's as fast as you can get it done.

Hopefully sub nine hours again this year. So, and what time does it start Saturday? 630, 6-ish, something like that. So you'll be with just one day of the games this year sunday probably yeah uh does that um bother you are you kind of excited about that no i'm bothered you're like okay no i mean um i'm glad i won't have to like last year i had to travel to the games i was there for a week and then had to travel to leadville was there for three or four days um this year i'll just be traveling once but it'll be um one set of days and you'll be able to enjoy sunday probably more than you've ever been able to enjoy it because leadville will be over over yep i won't be

worried about that and so that'll be cool, is mayhem partnered with the games last year? We partnered with the games last year. Yep. Purdue, the, the fairground or the campground. And, and what, and what's the point of that?

Um, you give CrossFit some money and then they let you put, um, have a presence at the game and like showcase like what you guys offer as, uh, the mayhem empire in terms of programming, community, all the things we've talked about.

Yeah. And you, and you do we've talked about. Yeah, basically. And you do that via the campground. We did, yeah. Basically, we paid CrossFit money to pay to put up all this stuff and bring our equipment and run CrossFit. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. It was good, man.

That was such a cool thing. I'm not saying this to be a dick but in it would have made equally as senses that they paid you to do it okay because that's okay so okay that that's funny that's awesome yeah what a great but it was you guys you got we pulled one over no it was great man it was such a was cool. You guys, you got, you got, we pulled one over. No, it was great, man. It was such a cool, like people had a ton of fun. People still talk about it. Um, it was,

are you guys doing that again this year? Are you partnering with CrossFit? I can't set up. I'm not camping in Texas heat. You know, there's no way we're doing that. And there's no real campground around there. No,

we'll be down there. We're going to, uh, partner with a local affiliate and run some mayhem classes and hang out down there so looking forward to that we'll announce that in a little bit do you do a booth or anything like that i think we might have an apparel booth at um in the vendor village but that's about it yeah have you have you been to dickies i have not been to dickies i've heard it's cool but never been there and and when you hear the discussion about the heat, do you have any thoughts on that, or are you just like, it is what it is?

I mean, selfishly, I hate it because I sweat so much, and it's so humid down there. It would limit my performance, that's for sure. But they're saying a lot of it's going to be inside, which the hard part for me with that is, I mean, I have not seen the venue, so I don't know. I just don't want it to look like a glorified semifinal, which I don't feel like it will, you know, like, um, to me, peak CrossFit was, was the tennis stadium. So that's hard, you know, knowing, well, how cool that was. And,

um, that was kind of the standard for me for everything is just being at stub hub and having the outdoor events uh but you know a lot of people thought that was hot but there was no humidity so it wasn't wasn't as bad i didn't feel like i mean in a way how could it not be a glorified semi-final what do you think was different about carson the fact that there were multiple venues there were the three fields there was the soccer field then the other soccer field the soccer stadium and then the tennis? The fact that there were multiple venues, there were the three fields, there was the soccer field, then the other soccer field, the soccer stadium, and then the tennis stadium. You liked that there were different venues. Yeah. I don't know if that,

it probably is just that I had some really good memories there. And so that was just, you know, and people would probably argue that had some really cool memories in Madison, which we did on a team and it was fun, but the Coliseum just never quite felt like the tennis stadium. You know what I'm talking about? Like the tennis stadium was special. It was special.

You know, even the being out in the soccer stadium or at the track wasn't that special. It was cool, but it didn't feel like that intimate, you know, the tennis stadium at night, some of the coolest moments

competing i've ever had hey i heard torian pro uh speaking of tennis team i heard torian pros almost uh sold out that's cool and i know in the u.s in the past the in the last couple years the semifinals and the regionals have had been like ghost towns yeah. Why do you think that is? Do you have any thoughts on that? Man, I don't know. I don't know if... I don't know. It's hard. And you could argue that it was Tia. The argument was that it was Tia selling out Torian,

but she's not there this year. She's not there, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think they're just super passionate to watch live CrossFit there. I mean, I think they're just super passionate to watch live CrossFit there. I mean, I went to Australia and a couple to Australia a couple of years ago and it was it was in that tennis stadium and it was a really cool feel. And there were a ton of people there. And, yeah, I don't know, some of these, you know, I feel like Europe when we went to Sid, it was it was packed. But semi back when they had what was it, sanctionals, a lot of those were super packed.

And I don't know if it was the fact that people had a little bit more skin in the game because they owned the event and they were pushing it a little bit more. Yeah, I don't know what the answer is to that. I don't know if people overseas are just kind of starved for big CrossFit events or what it is. And we're here, we're just spoiled. We're like, ah. It's another competition.

There's another competition this weekend or doing whatever. I know your gym's doing amazing. Do you ever miss the old days though? Do you feel anything different? Were there people who wanted CrossFit to progress? Do you ever get this feeling like oh shit you

thought the grass was going to be greener on the other side of the hill but it's not like do you have any do you have any thoughts about private equity owning it like obviously a sale is imminent right i mean because that's what they do um do you ever think about that or no you're just in your You're just chugging along doing your thing. If CrossFit does better, CrossFit as a whole, here's the deal. I feel like we've got Mayhem, there's Proven, you've got HWPO, you have street parking, you have all these. And we're all doing well. We're all doing well in the space. But CrossFit as a whole, if it does better,

then we're all going to do better. And I do miss that part of it. Right. And so, um, you know, What do you think, do you think it's not doing well right now? I mean, they, I feel like if you just, every, every day, somebody, there's either turnover or somebody leaving or, um, you know, I think the community is getting smaller you think there's uh i don't think so i don't it's hard i feel like we've kind of been at a stalemate since honestly i feel like we've been at a stalemate since greg got rid of media right um

i think that was the point where everything just kind of froze. And there was this, we couldn't have the games and we couldn't have CrossFit health or whatever. We couldn't do both, right? Right. That there was no importance on, we might have shifted a little bit too much importance on athletes and a little less importance on, um, the affiliates or on educational stuff.

But I feel like instead of wiping away one and trying to pursue the other, we kind of lost, like we can both. And I think it's proven here. They can both, and I think it's proven here, they can both exist. We can still do cool things for members and still put out cool games athlete documentaries, but also showcase the everyday person. Right. Here's the thing, too.

uh here's the thing here's the thing too i've always little little league kids basketball is flourishing but there's no focus on it it's just focused at tip of the spear yeah and and in our roots crossfit always focused on tip of the spear yep and what happens is is that those of us who are crossfitters they got older then we're able to see oh the message was always there, that it adds a longevity to your life, makes it so you can play with your grandkids. It's the cure for the world's most vexing problem. And you realize, I never thought that there was too much push for the games,

me personally. I never thought that at all. But unfortunately, I do feel like HQ is just in paralysis. I don't feel like there's just anything coming out of there that's inspiring to me. And it's been great for me. This podcast is absolutely murdering it. It's a vacuum at this point, right? For them.

They're not, like we said, they're just kind of stagnant and stalemate. Not that there's anything bad or anything good. they're just playing it safe they're like this oh shit don't like don't don't rock the boat yeah don't rock the boat and at least at least when that that couch was built it was like okay what the fuck is going on here and i just felt like that there i feel like that there would have been an evolution regardless i felt like with greg that it was dynamic it was changing it was cantankerous you may have not liked where it was but it wasn't going to also going to stay there and there may have been a reduction in the games but the games were still huge right maybe the rhetoric for the games had come down and and and you're right getting rid of the media team was an absolute disaster.

Man, it's hard for me to, you know. Maybe you and I don't even have a good perspective on it since our CrossFit worlds, our little worlds are so great. Yeah, they're different. And they're so great. We're both just flourishing in the space yeah yeah no it's hard you know it's it's um to you know it's almost like complete where right now like you're saying it's it's very like hey don't rock the boat too conservative and then it great with greg at times it was too manic right and it's like what what are we doing what am i i can't get behind this because i don't know i don't know what we're doing right now is it is it going after coke is it high level athletes is it some dude on his couch with um jugs of antifreeze or whatever it is and that at the so i don't honestly i don't i don't like either spots that we were in, you know, at that point, um,

it was just, it was, you know, if I was to show, and this isn't a knock, but if I, you know, people that walked in the doors, Oh, Dave Castro owns CrossFit. Right. And I'm like, no, it's this guy. And they're like, that guy even works out. That was the hard part for me. Like I never once saw Greg do CrossFit. And I never once, um, I'd talked to Greg two, maybe three times in my 10 years or however many years it was to that point. In your life. In my life. And it was just, it was tough. And so not to say that was good, not to say this, neither one. We've got to find a happy medium in there.

And that's the hard part right now is it's just a vacuum. And let me propose this too. Since he created it, there was a different level of care, I'm going to say. I mean – It's his baby. Yeah. I mean so let me say this. Okay, so media goes away in 2018 2018 and that was always a big point but basically the second he sold the company uh messaging stopped from hq yeah so we were

always getting messaging from him whether you liked it or not yeah now there's just like no there's no messaging there's no it's like coca-cola messaging it's like yeah look at the polar bear drinking coca-cola we just don't have any there's no identity yeah like like hillar's that's why hillar's so potent in the space because he has he's doing all the messaging for the space yeah that's why you are that's why we are yeah there's no one being like like we don't even care what someone says we like whether you agree with hillar or not people are just excited that someone's at least someone's saying something yeah someone's saying something someone's talking about what you should eat or what a good rep is or no there's just no messaging no but and people are also just they want validation for what they're doing you

know like hey i've been saying this for years so they attach to something right and we just don't have that right now right it's hard i i mean and hey let's we we've just got to figure out – we, you know, and you're doing it, we're doing it, Hiller's doing it, other camps are doing it. Like, let's just keep doing what we're doing, and hopefully CrossFit figures out their way. And if not, guess what? We're all here, and we know –

I don't think other camps are doing messaging, by the way. I don't think they're messaging for what they're doing but yeah there's a difference between messaging and like just marketing yeah yeah promotion like like um uh that's why i chose hillar hillar's like just messaging like you know what i mean like he's he's like hey this is what a rep is hey this is what you should eat hey this is how you should lose weight hey this is what you should be locked out hey like he's basically just taking the mantle of the boss yeah let me see that you know what i mean yeah nobody else is doing like i don't see any um you guys have put out a bunch of pieces i'm showing stuff that's going on in your community or you're doing you do um events to raise money or awareness for things

and that's all messaging too of like the potency of what crossfit is i just yeah it's interesting by the way i i guess i've evolved and probably you have too it used to be depressing but now it's exciting for me yeah do you know what i mean it's like fuck yeah we're just out at sea and the sails are down more opportunities right yeah we're just getting tossed around yeah yeah yeah it's it's a it's the wild west at this point right and so it's been rocky you know it's been uh for crossfit as a whole i think for us like we've said we've all kind of stepped up in that and um and it it's gotten better for us but i want as a whole i would rather like i said more people to learn to learn about CrossFit, but it's just,

it's just not there right now. Yeah. It's not coming from the mothership. Okay. Last question. I could see, I see your body needs to move. What would be the goal at Leadville this year? Is there a goal besides completing it? Like you had a goal last year? Definitely. Um, definitely want to beat my eight 32 from last year. I would love to be somewhere under eight, but that's going to be a, uh, that's a, that's like big picture goal, I guess. And then, you know, I've got those two and I'm not a huge goals guy. So I'm just like, all right, I don't really know how I'm going to get there. I'm going to go like two days ago. Um, you know, you've been up to my dad's. So that first kind of hill climb up to my dad's it's super steep and it's less than a mile and it's on the

road, the road part. Yeah. It's probably 300 and something feet of elevation change or less of less than a mile. And I'm like, all right, for an hour and a half, I'm going to do that 10 times. Right. And so it's, uh, that's just how I'm training is like, all right, I'm just going to climb my nuts off and see what happens and hopefully get there. So yeah, I'm doing a little bit of combination of road riding and mountain bike mount. I'm riding my mountain bike on the road. Would you do anything crazy? Like be like, okay, I'm going to show up there at 174 pounds. I just can't get there. You know, like I, I biked my butt off last year and I think I got maybe down

to like 187, 188. Um, but I just, it, one, it would not be good for my training to try to cut that much weight. And I just don't think naturally I can do that. You know, like I'm still crossfitting every day and still like I'll do one bike session. That's usually an hour and a half right now. Um, I'll start bumping that up probably two days a week. And then usually an afternoon CrossFit or strength session. So my big thing this year is like to last year where I still did a ton of CrossFit, but a lot less legs CrossFit. It was more like upper body, a lot of core type stuff. I'm like, all right, screw it. I'm going to still hammer the legs this year and see if I can maintain some strength throughout and see how that does. I kind of want to use my training as like,

all right, could somebody do this at Leadville and do well? But the dudes who are beating you are 6'2", 150 pounds, right? 145 pounds. Yeah. I don't know about 6'2", but they're definitely wiry, a little bit more wiry than me. Some guy made a joke that i got passed by a linebacker um coming up one of the hills so i usually make up make up my time on the climbs and then get passed on the flats and when it's super windy i just i'm like a sail at that point yeah wild all right hey thanks dude thanks for coming on appreciate it good to see you say hi to everyone there and uh It sucks that I'm not going to run into you in Carson,

but I'll be in touch. Love you. Bye. Thanks, dude. Love you, too. See you. Bye. Rich Froney. John George. The games will grow CrossFit without the sport. We are just another fitness studio option.

It differentiates us. OTF. I don't know what that is. An F45 would kill to try and make their exercising a sport. Yeah. I mean, just that that mantle of being able to crown the fittest person on Earth is huge. Being able to have that authority. When I have Greg on next Wednesday, I'll ask him about that thing.

Man, he was so convincing yesterday. He started giving all of these examples of how could you take that rep from Paige Powers if she did if she? Stood up all the way If her center of mass was as high as it could go then it's a rep. I was like oh shit Dean Phillips And that's how you keep the rich froning podcast premiere from poaching viewers, oh interesting they had a premiere too That's how you keep the Rich Froning Podcast premiere from poaching viewers. Oh, interesting.

They had a premiere too. We went against his own podcast. Orange Theory Fitness. Okay. Is that really what it is? OTF? That's a ridiculous name. If we're crowning that, we need someone to beat Hunter and High Rocks. I kind of wish I lived closer to him.

You know what would be cool to do is um that bike thing that he's doing if like if you know he's going to do that right up and down the same hill 10 times you just go there and you ride every other one with him so you ride up to the top of the first one and then you ride down and you wait for him to do his third one right and so you pace with them every time and you do five and he does 10. If I lived in Cookville, I would totally ask him if I could do that. That'd be awesome.

I should take my kids to meet his kids. I know. At some point, I just got to drive out there. But it's going to be like a month commitment. And him and Hillary have always been so generous to me. They always invite me to come out there. But I'd have to drive and then hang out and get situated. Carlos, what's up, dude?

I wonder if I'm going to see you today. I'm going to the skate park at 11. I didn't even ask him any of the questions I had in my notes. what's up with Kendrick and Drake I didn't follow any of that beef I'm getting pretty excited about the semifinals. When you see me look this way, I'm looking at text messages. When you see me look this way, I'm looking at my notes or the internet. I would fly in someone's G5.

Corey Leonard, I have a semi for the semis. I wish I could just play a song right now and YouTube wouldn't. I just need to hear maybe some music and chill for a second. I should have asked him what he thought about the whole Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Yeah, I don't like flying. I haven't liked flying in a long time i don't like leaving my house i got a little bit of stress uh t-bird says i must have missed it if uh if you've ever said you do not like flying anymore yeah i don't like it and um i don't know if i just like started not liking it as a joke and then i talked myself into not liking it i'm not sure what happened i don't know if I just started not liking it as a joke, and then I talked myself into not liking it. I'm not sure what happened. I don't like going to the airport.

I don't like doing any of that stuff. I don't like parking there. I'm just building a mounting case for reasons I don't like to go. One of my friends went to the San Jose airport, and they flew somewhere. I can't remember where. And they came back, and their catalytic converter was gone. And ever since I heard that, that kind of started this like – I just can't imagine there being theft at the airport, at the parking lot at the airport.

For some reason, that just seems like sacred ground. Like shouldn't there be enough security there that no one can steal there or cameras or like how does that happen? there that no one can steal there? Or cameras? How does that happen? Dildo. When Seve lays down on the beach in public, people mistake his nose for a Boeing plane tail.

Hiller's destroying the whole European contingent this morning. Really? On Instagram? Let me see. Oh, Hiller fit 2.0. Is it on... Oh, is this... I see he's got Bronislavski. Bronislavski.

Let's see. That's good to me. That's good to me. That's good to me. I don't know. These all seem good to me. What's he talking about? He thinks he's not standing up all the way at the top? I mean, I caught that a little late. He's already coming down.

What's wrong with this? This is good to me. Yeah, look at... Oh, that's the last rep where he repeated the workout i'm the one in the bottom right commentating it i said it on the live stream but it was in spanish though this was his first attempt all those reps look legit as fuck yep i agree uh i don't have a problem with those sarcasm is not strong with

this one can't no rep if you can't see really that sarcastic it's fine all those reps are fine. Like, what do you guys see there that makes that a no rep? He's looking down, head stacked over shoulders according to standards. Fuck the standards, as Matt Murski says. There are no fucking standards. That's good. Give us a fuck what the standards are good good

good good look at good he's already he was already on his way down and look how straight his knees are how the fuck can it be anything how could that not be good super soft at the knees the The fuck are you talking about? What do you want him to do? Hyper extend his knees? No, look at, I stopped another one that you,

that is not soft at all. That's not soft at all. Yeah. Tell me, I don't, his, his torso is bent over. Yeah.

But, but did the, show me someone they deducted for that. I haven't heard one deduction for that. show me someone they deducted for that. I haven't heard one deduction for that. Show me someone they deducted for that. Muted hip. These are all good. Hip's fine.

Look, he's on his way down. He was already on his way down. Those are great. That's fine. I see no inconsistency. Look at, look at. That's too straight. I'd dock him for too straight there.

Look at, that's the second rep. So now I've gotten two. Both of the, look at, look at. He can't get his knee any straighter than that. Look it that's the second rep So now I've gotten two Look it look it He can't get his knee any straighter than that There you go again Third rep in a row How the fuck could his knee possibly get straighter than that These are good

I don't know what the fuck hillar's talking about oh i guess hillar's just saying that there's people who've been knocked okay okay maybe uh um i've seen athletes knocked out of semifinals for better looking movement okay fine maybe but i'm saying that these are fine that's a that's the third one in a row and and and you shouldn't be able to freeze it anyway. Fourth rep. And he's already on his way down, and look how straight his knee is. These are great. I'm fine with this.

So who gives a fuck where the head is? Another one. He's on his way down, and I don't know how his knee could be any straighter than that. That looks uncomfortable. If you're straightening your knee that much, you're fucking an idiot. Not like you're fucking an idiot, like you're having sex with an idiot. I mean, you are an idiot. Lots of us have sex with idiots.

Yeah, I'm good. Good job. Okay, let's see this one. Oh my God. How could that guy's leg... Oh, I don let's see this one. Oh, my God. How could that guy's leg... Oh, I don't know about that one, but... Currently seventh in Europe, two reps and we're judging him?

Look, but Hiller doesn't even tell us what standard he's breaking. Currently in seventh in Europe, received no penalty um which is which while yes these reps by guillain are not to standard which is something the entire crossfit community is now well aware of this does not look good for crossfit it's worth noticing that sam stewart blah blah blah yeah but you didn't even tell us what he's doing wrong i don't see anything wrong these are fine once again yeah all good to go

these are great reps are perfect. Let's see. I don't know what the... I don't even know what we're supposed to be looking at. What is this shit? Oh, yeah. I saw this. This is funny.

It's something like FitFest. We just got done with our final event here at FitFest. I'm going to say I think this is an incredible opportunity. You know, we didn't see a lot of the stories or behind the scenes. It's something like FitFest. We just got done with our final event here at FitFest. Damn. event here at fit fest and damn technically he said we didn't see a lot of the behind the scenes okay uh

here we go i should just get off i'm hungry I didn't snack last night before I went to bed. Normally, I snack. What do you want? What's up, Stefan? Can you hear me? I can. I can. It's Tom.

How you been, brother? Hey, what's up? Good. I'm in a weird mood today. Like, not in a bad good mood. I just I don't really recognize myself right now. I'm kind of just feeling around till I find myself. That's fair. That's very self-aware of you. Thank you. Very enlightened. The reason I'm calling, I've been away for a while out of the chat and stuff like that. I just started coming back around to hang out with the cool kids again. You mentioned the Kendrick Lamar thing. Oh yeah.

You are a West coast guy. How much money do I need to give you in the chat for you to react to this, to this song live right now? Uh, the, the, Oh, don't you think I'll get dinged if I listened to it?

No, everybody else is doing it, bro. He's, he's not copyright striking it. They, every other channel with else is doing it bro he's he's not copyright striking it they every other channel with reactions is doing it playing it all it's the number one song in the world it passed the most downloads on spotify of any song in history where do it what's it in one day is this uh what's it called it's called um they not like us and who is it the cool west coast beat you're gonna love it dude uh they not like us

yeah they he's calling drake a pedophile and he goes with little kids and wow going hard on an old school two-pack style you're gonna love it is right up your alley wow and i and i don't like kendrick lamar either i think he's a fucking complete you think you don't like Kendrick Lamar either. I think he's a fucking complete douchebag. You think you don't? But listen to this, man. Hey, dude. Well, I mean, as a person, who knows? They all suck. Right. Whatever.

Don't forget, he called that girl on stage to sing a song. And then when she sung the lyrics, he almost got her killed. He humiliated her in front of the whole stage, saying she's not allowed to say those. I totally forgot about that. That is a bitch move. Oh, he's a world-class bitch. He's the worst of the worst. I don't doubt it.

Yeah, he's the worst of the worst. But that's kind of what I think of everybody at that level to some extent. But the music's good, so. Okay, hold on. Let me see. Did you, let me see. Let me see. Let me see.

He dead, people. Is this it? Yeah, bro. Hey, bro. You can hate me, fuck em all and think mama How many opps you really got? I mean it's too many options I'm finna pass on this body, I'm John Stockton Beat your ass and hide the bible if God watch you Sometimes you gotta pop out and show niggas Certified boogeyman, I'm the one that up to score with em Walk him down the whole time, I know he got some hoe in him Pull on him, extort shit, bully the floor

on him Say Drake, I hear you like him young You better not ever go to cell block one To any bitch that talk to him and they in Damn, he's going hard on the pedophile shit. Yeah, there's one line coming up in two lines. Listen to that and then stop it. And then you can get it there. It's like a six-minute song. Why you chillin' like a bitch? Ain't you tired?

Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A minor. Damn. Damn. Bro, does it get harder than that? They not like us. They not. They not like us, let's go I wish I had more time for this Hey, if you could do a whole thing on it

I guarantee you, you'd get a million views on it I'm just telling you, you hashtag Kendrick Lamar Reaction, Sevan Podcast You're gonna get the views Ask Sousa It's going on right now I'm just telling you, you hashtag Kendrick Lamar Reaction, Sevan Podcast, you're going to get the views. Ask Sousa. It's going on right now. Hey, so how many songs are there?

There's like six or seven total right now, back and forth, two of them. Okay. So you could play, you want me to send you a list of every song in order that you should listen to, and then can get the views off? I just listen to those. Yeah. Do you have my phone number? Uh, no. Can I give you mine? Or you have mine now? You have mine now? Cause I call text me on this number. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. All right. And I'll message you on LinkedIn too, but, but text me. No, no, don't message me. I don't do LinkedIn. Okay. All right. right i meant instagram but whatever

yeah text me on this number damn you're a dork tom you confuse linkedin with instagram that is awesome well i've been away i've been selling stuff making money feeding the fam you know what i mean making so uh but i had to come back yeah that's right baby you know i had to come back that's right hey are you a 928 number are you a 928 number it's a 574 yes it's uh 8546 is my last four 8546 oh that's interesting i don't see it on here can i text the podcast phone yeah and then you can text me off that yeah hang on i'm texting it right now and then I'll just text I'll punch it into my phone and then I'll um oh

is it a 985 number no oh okay I see I see it's a 574 number oh this is an android you got an android for the show no no no no oh my god no no no no maybe because it's it's hooked up

to wi-fi oh okay i don't know or it's it must be set to use sms instead of iMessage oh really that would suck i should unfuck that yeah because like yeah if there's no other reason it'd be green it says text message it doesn't say say I message. You should. Because obviously you're more tech bro than that. All right. How come no one's ever told me that? All right, buddy. Okay, I just text you.

All right, cool. Oh, someone just text me Tom sucks. Wow, that's not cool. Yeah, well, I was the best one on the birthday video, just saying. All right, thank you. I cried the most when you came on. Yeah, exactly. No.

Yeah. You were like sniffling. There was snot and everything. It was great. All right. I'm going to breakfast. Greg just gave me the location for breakfast. I'm out of here.

Have fun. All right. Later. Okay, guys. Maybe later on today we can play all six songs and we could get our Kendrick and Drake beef thing going. All right. All right.

Talk to you guys soon. Bye-bye.