The Sevan Podcast - SHUT UP AND SCRIBBLE / half rate or full price?

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

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That's BetterHelp.com. meeting with friends before the show we can book your reservation and when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of americam express visit amex.ca slash y amex benefits vary by card other conditions and we are live I'm just reading this text message I just got from my super top secret source detailing in crazy

detail the Masters CrossFit Games workouts event 1 5k run event 2 Helen event 3 CrossFit Games workouts. Event one, 5K run. Event two, Helen. Event three, Olympic total.

It looks like they just copy and pasted the CrossFit Games from last year into the Masters programming. What would you say if they actually did that? I'd say it's a false leak. Listen, Bob and Joe. We're 49 seconds in. You guys fucked up. And by fucked up, I don't mean that the workouts got leaked. By fucked up, I mean you called me half-rate

and you didn't even fucking mention J.R. Howell. Acting like he's not even a part of this fucking show. My guy over here is full price. Look at those arms. You can't get a discount on this guy right here. I am not. He's marked up. I wasn't prepared for this level of flattery.

Thank you, Taylor. Jeez. Today, we're going to talk about how you can screw up programming competition. I also want to talk about... We see a lot of people... We have a lot of people ask us about advice when it comes to programming live competitions, whether they use an online qualifier or not. We both programmed competitions, both in person and online.

We feel very strongly about some of the stuff that you should be doing and should not be doing in person or online. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about how you can screw it up, what mistakes you can make so that hopefully people don't make those mistakes. And this is 100% are unbiased, or I should say biased opinion, just like HDR CBD products being the best on the market. Yeah. I literally use this twice a day. This stuff right here. This is my favorite. I use their sleep shit. Um, and to be honest, I'm not, uh, I, I use it, especially on Wednesday nights, actually. So last night when I wake up to coach the four 30, sorry, the five30 AM class.

But I use this every day on my knee. I just massage my knee with it. It helps like keep the scar tissue loose. If you've ever had like a knee surgery, that scar tissue is just like tougher. And it definitely takes my left knee a little longer to warm up. Like I have to focus on warming it up. But that stuff helps a lot. I really love it.

have to focus on warming it up but that stuff helps a lot i really love it and um after i murder joe and bob from legends they're actually gonna get a nice fat life insurance policy from state farm patrick mitrovich is gonna send their families some dough after i freaking put these dude six feet under um and amy fritt of reaction gymnastics can fix all of your body weight deficiencies not like your weight deficiency smoothest smoothest segue i've ever heard yeah what a transition right you like that that and i don't mean weight you know she can't she's not going to give you guys lipo but if you are bad at moving your body weight through space, chances are she can fix that. Just really grateful that we even have sponsors. That's crazy, dude. Thank you, guys.

As grateful as it is surprising that we have them. Yeah, especially with being half rate. I wouldn't have ever guessed anyone would want to sponsor know being half rate you know just uh i wouldn't have ever uh wouldn't have ever guessed anyone would want to sponsor just a half rate ding dong all right i'm gonna start stop you know you know we need to like the overlay just uh those um i guess you would call them uh negative space drawings of our faces we need to put that on t-shirtshirt. We do. We do need to put that on a t-shirt. I like that. It's just really simple. I should have titled the show 50%

off. Should have been scribbled 50% off. Half rate. Holy fuck. Could you imagine how panicked these fucking guys would be if I were to tell them that I had the CrossFit Games workouts for the 2024 masters

crossfit games uh do you think they would freak out because somehow i got the semi-final workouts so you have to attune it to someone somewhere they would say that you're not being truthful would they somehow the semi-final workouts got out it's not uh too far of a leap to make an assumption that some people who shouldn't have the games workouts already have them you think they're done oh yeah he said in that podcast i know they're done not just from what he said in the podcast but but I know they're done. Oh, the games programming is 100% finished? Is it 100% finished? That I don't know. Are they apt to be changed slightly?

No idea. Well, after today, I'm sure they'll want to. Who knows? Just leave that out there. I may or may not have access to the Masters CrossFit Games workouts. I may or may not have access to the Masters CrossFit Games workouts. And with that, let's talk about how to fuck up a CrossFit competition if you're programming it. Something I've definitely never done.

Where do you want to start with that? Let's start with our number one, as far as like whatever we think as far as programming goes, the number one thing, the most important thing when it comes to programming, let's just say for the sake of argument, we're going to program a competition with six events. So six is the number, not eight,

not four. There are competitions that use a running clock. You do four workouts in an hour. There are some that are just one full day. There are some that are two days, some that are three days. Let's just say six events. Let's just start with the number one. The number one thing, the most important thing?

What's the most important thing for you in programming a competition as far as programming goes the most important uh the most important thing for me is that the fittest person there by crossfit's definition or by greg glassman's definition of fitness the person who is best across broad time and modal domains you put a ball on a hopper they perform you know they have five tests they perform best across the time and modal domains. If you put a ball in a hopper, they perform, you know, they have five tests. They perform best across the field of specialists. They perform as well as possible across all 10 general physical skills rather than specializing one, as long as they are the best or the most competent in the three metabolic pathways, whatever, whichever definition you want to go with, or there are three models to define fitness. The most important thing to me is that the person who

is actually the fittest measured up against those three models wins. And the person who is second fittest against those three models wins and third fittest against those three models wins. And the person who fucking finishes last is the least fucking fit guy there. I don't want someone who should have been in 10th place last. I care that each, right, you can't get it perfect because people make mistakes in competition. But generally speaking, the fittest person should win and the least fit motherfucker should be in last place. And I care about that more than anything else. And we're just talking about programming right so nothing else sorry that's cool that you went there i did not think you were going to go there first i thought you're

going to be much more surface level which is what i'm about to be i think it's time domains so i think that above anything else it's close close. Even with movement selection, I still think your movement selection can be amazing. You can have a crazy good spread of MWG. You can have a lot of complementary movement patterns, a lot of redundancy in movement patterns, and you can just have the best mixture of everything. But if you have four out of six of the workouts, the top three in those workouts are going sub seven. It's not a well-rounded test.

If you have four out of the six workouts that are over 15 minutes, I would say it's way too skewed to the long time domain. If you have three of them that are like sub two minutes, I would say that's too much power output. That's too much absolute strength or whatever it is in the way that you're testing those things. So to me, it's time domain distribution. If you have six events, you got to have something 15 minute plus. I would argue you should have some 20 minute plus. You need to have something sub five and then the rest, the other four need to be somewhere in between so that that's my biggest thing my bias

in programming okay first question true is it okay seeing events that are biased towards bigger or smaller athletes i think what i don't like i i don't i won't say that i program in a way where I say, ooh, I don't want a small guy to be good at this, and I don't want a big guy to be good at this. But when you look at a competition in general, you should see a balance of movements, time domains, formats that don't reward a specialist in any way, a specialist in terms of their fitness, but also a specialist or an outlier in terms of their body proportions.

I don't like looking at an event as a whole and be like, all those were short guy workouts. And that happens. And I also don't like looking at an event as a whole and say, oh, those are big guy workouts. I would say my bias in programming is to program like I really have an affinity toward like suffering, psychological tolerance, I would say. I really am big on if you want it, you're going to have to hurt for it. Yeah, and I would say over – because this will be the fifth year of Crucible, so just looking at Crucible over the last four years, I tend to be more biased to high-skill movements, and I tend to be very biased to not barbell redundancy. So I think in every single one of the workouts i've

ever programmed are all the competitions one barbell has been in the competition one and do i think it's probably time to put some of those high skill movements to the side because they're becoming a little bit too predictable or they're becoming a little bit too um niche maybe when it comes to separation in the field, even with some of the best athletes that come. Yes. So maybe there'll be a bias to weightlifting or maybe there'll be a bias to monostructural stuff moving forward. But for sure, for me, I have a bias to testing weightlifting, not with balanced barbells all the time, and then programming high skill movements that tend to expose weaknesses this is a hot take for me on jr's programming but his first year of crucible the year jason won

was probably the lowest skill and it was my favorite programming because every workout you had to hurt so bad uh i think except for maybe the 300 foot handstand walk, but outside of that, it was like every workout was so fucking nasty. And the year I won had much higher skill. I loved all the programming, but like some of those, like there's four of those first year workouts that I still think about.

And I'm like, damn, that was really hard. Uh, and I, I have an affinity to that. Yeah. And I think one of the reasons why it ended up being that is one,

I don't, I don't think I was, I would hope I'm better now than I was four years ago, just at programming and competition and not beating people up and having a better, uh, I guess distribution of, um, years ago just at programming and competition and not beating people up and having a better uh i guess distribution of um types of stimulus and types of formats and all that kind of stuff um but i think because we did the long workout the very first day i think everyone felt it the rest of the weekend yeah i so i i really like i'm i am into a groove now of i really like, I am into a groove now of, I really like putting the nasty grinder on the last day.

I really like that because I want everyone to be able to attack Friday and Saturday with a little bit more intensity, knowing that, hey, that one that's just going to be miserable, I'm not going to feel it till Monday or Tuesday. So maybe that becomes a little predictable, but also too, like, I mean, when I look at the old school regionals programming and I kind of look at this year's programming, yeah, you don't have that classic chipper that we were used to seeing, but typically that was on the last day, if I'm not mistaken. Typically there was a shorter sprintier workout as a finale. And then oftentimes the nasty chippers were definitely not on day one, but usually on day three. Yeah. I don't mind a stinky grind on day one.

I kind of liked that as the first event, it really set the tone. I think it's kind of like, yeah, at least that's what we have this year at semis. Yeah. That workout is so, uh, it's going to set the tone. And so is event two.

When I saw the workouts released, all I could think about was God, that first day is going to be so brutal. And then when the schedule got released and you're just doing event one on Friday, I was like, okay, uh, that's a bit, those three on Saturday is ten times easier than one and two on Friday in my opinion. But fucking up a CrossFit competition, easiest way to fuck up a CrossFit competition. We just talked about what's the most important thing in programming, and JR was talking about time domains. I talked about making sure the fittest person wins to me. I think both of those scream the general theme of a balance.

You need balance. You need a wide, broad range of things tested. The easiest way to fuck up a competition that I see is competitions don't vary their time domains. They don't look at balance across broad modal domains. So one, they fuck up the time domains. They fuck up the modal domains. Um, and two, they let money dictate everything. Sponsorships implements registrations, like overbooking themselves to where you have, you can't program a long

workout because you have a billion heats. As an event organizer, you have to ask yourself a serious question. Right now in the stage of the sport, there's a couple avenues you can go. You can run an event for just the elite competitor and to do it right, it's going to be extremely difficult for you to make money. You probably won't. JR has talks about this, or you can program a community competition for everyone. And you have a little bit of an easier time. You have way more registrations. You can still do it, right? You're going to make some money. Um, combining the two does not work well. In my opinion, I don't think it does. There's always

someone left with a bad taste in your mouth. Either the elite competitors are like, okay, this whole thing was a shit show, or the everyday athlete was like, they don't even give a fuck about us. All they care about is the elite athletes, yada, yada. So pick what your goal is. If you're an event organizer and your goal is to run an elite competition, you need to accept right now, you're not going to make money if you do it the right way. If you want to be a sleazebag and you don't want to pay out your athletes, um, and you want to fuck them over, then you can make money. If you want to make money off a CrossFit competition, create a community event and you can make an amazing event for people, um, and make some money. you can make an amazing event for people and make some money. So with that being said, an example of that is like a competition with, like you said, you know, four of the six events, people are going

sub seven and then the long one is 10 to 12 and the short one is three. Boom. That's dumb. I hate that. Also hate seeing a barbell. And like, like like you said three of the six workouts like ah use something different no it's interesting too that you say that and we talked about this and i think there's a lot of reasons i think the the whole season so far programmed by the games team has been all about simplicity it's been all about not trying to get too sexy or too fancy with movement selection and i I think that's great. And the fact that we see dumbbells only for a lunge and we see barbell and three of the workouts, but you would say, and I would say the programming is really well-rounded, at least it looks that way on paper so far. And the workouts are look fun and are, should be really, really good tests.

I think that's a really good testament. And a lot of people would argue, Hey dude, anyone can disguise bad programming with cool stuff, right? If you have flip sleds and you have hand over hand sleds to use, and you have a really, really heavy kettlebell deadlifts, and you have these weird pull-up bars that you're using that spin or that are thick pull-up bars. Like you can use that stuff to mask what the programming actually is because there's so much cool stuff in it in quotation marks. And for a lot of people, I would say that the more simplistic and the less, um, the less cool stuff you can use, if it's good programming, that really shows that you know what you're doing

because you don't have to you don't have to mask it with something else i do like cool implements like at the charlotte classic every year that i programmed it we've done something that's kind of like oh shit people aren't going to forget that like last year we built that log for burpee log getovers or sandbag log getovers in the the year prior we had people use these fucking military jerry cans. And then the year before that we had them run with a rogue ballistic block. I just love shit like that. That's like one implement or event that's like you would never have expected that and you have never practiced for it.

And it's unique. I really like that. Uh, the thing I don't like about beach brawl guys, unfortunately is another way to fuck up a competition is to let some steroid using performance enhancing drug using fuck who's currently banned by the sport of CrossFit to go to your competition and win money and take it away from people who are playing fair.

And if I'm not mistaken, that was Alana Fisk Cologne who did that at beach brawl. I don't know. I don't know. Some female athlete won while she was serving a band for CrossFit, took a bunch of money home. You're running an event. isn't you know i don't know no i i think it's a i think it's a topic a lot of people would argue about i think uh there are a lot of times of personal relationships and uh knowing people and having them come and compete in for years and

years and years previously. And then for them to make a mistake, there are a lot of event organizers out there that are okay with it. That will just say, hey, we know this person. We know they're serving a suspension. We're still okay with her competing or with him competing. And while I think that's 100% their call, what I think is important is that you be consistent with that.

Oh, shit. Let everyone who cheats i was just no just like year to year like if you're gonna let one person do it then you better be okay to let the next person that comes and says hey you let this person do it last year they're serving the same suspension why can't i compete yeah so i mean even stuff as simple as i thought it would be really cool to have Andrew come compete this year for Crescendo. But he knows because we discussed years and years ago when I had the female athlete that was serving the last year of her suspension from Mexico. I didn't even know who she was. She came and she podiumed and won money, and I didn't know about it. And I had to tell those other teams, hey, if I would have known this, I wouldn't have let her compete.

So Andrew is cool enough to just be like, you know what? Like everyone knows I'm using testosterone. I wouldn't want to put you in a, in a, in a weird situation. So, you know, let's just not even go there. And I think not only was it really cool on his part, cause he's, he's a friend, but also he kind of knows what I've stood for. And I've said no to people who have reached out trying to compete serving a suspension rightfully so, or because that they still think that, you know, it was a tainted supplement or whatever. So this,

uh, yeah, Taylor, you're correct. She also tried that same year to compete at another competition, but does then not allowed after the beach brawl backlash in reference to Alana Fisk Cologne winning beach brawl, making money,

serving a ban from Mike Olivas, AKA pool boy so yeah i just think that's fucked up and i don't forget shit like that um not paying your athletes out when you say you're going to pay them out yeah not paying not not paying out is huge and i would say i would even add timely like i know a lot of that the bigger the competition the more complicated that gets. But I mean, something that I've, I guess it's been easy for me, um, comes into one hand and I just shifted the other hand and give it out. Like, it's not really that big of a deal. It's just like, well, everything that's coming in, I'm going to end up paying out and I'm cool with that. And like you

said earlier, you have to make that decision early on. Do you care about putting on something for the athletes and for spectators, or do you care about doing it as a financial investment? I think that's where it comes down to, but it's easy to say, too. If you don't know for sure that you have the money coming in, why would you ever announce what the prize purse is going to be? Yeah, that's stupid. Sir Trolls a lot. His profile picture, i'm trying to really looks like he sucks cock not that that's a bad thing but if the comp is open for juicers

it's open for juicers what's wrong with that uh the thing is is they didn't announce hey our competition's open for juicers you're just assuming you go to a crossfit competition generally speaking the crossfit games runs as a clean event they test people if you test positive they kick you out and so you operate off the assumption that hey uh it's not cool to use shit to use pads to huff jankum and then go out here and compete um huff jankum yeah you don't know what that is? Yeah, you do, bro. Yeah, you do, bro. It's where you shit in a jar and you let it ferment on a hot summer's day or a few.

And then when you open that bad boy up, it's like that guy that- Sounds like stuff you guys do in rehab. That toilet bowl hooch, that hooch water. No, that's a good one. Next on my list is going to be movement selection so shortly after time domain is movement selection now it is very very easy for people to say movement selection at the end of the day really doesn't matter it doesn't matter stage to stage it doesn't matter within a competition. The fittest will always win. I'm not one that likes the argument of, well, Tia and Matt still won,

so it was great programming. When you have the best, you have the best, but there are a lot of spots under there. So if you have a competition, and I tell you there are six events, Taylor, and I tell you that there are toes-to-bar, there are ring muscle-ups, there are chest-to-bars, there muscle ups, there are chest to bars, there's hand over hand sled pull, and there's pegboard. And you would just say, okay, so the competition is all just going to be who the best puller is. And that's it without even

knowing the other movements, without knowing time domains, without knowing anything. Unless you are doing it as like a theme where you're like hey i'm gonna program a competition that's only single modality and there's going to be some single modality that single modality single movement and there's going to be some that's like mm and ggg and www whatever so if you're doing it as like a one-off okay you're doing it on purpose you're telling people you're doing on purpose otherwise it's very easy. A whole other conversation is, do athletes even care? I know you care.

But if you can look at a competition and just blanketly say, well, if my low back doesn't explode, I'll do okay because all the workouts have pulling from the floor or all the workouts have squatting or all the workouts have pulling from the floor or all the workouts have squatting or all the workouts have pressing that is not a well-programmed competition i agree because by by with your number one point it being well balanced and the fittest person winning you would not program the same movements in the same movement plane or the same loads, the same volume and say that the best person is going to win.

You wouldn't do that because you would know automatically. Well, all I know is that this person's great at pressing and I really didn't test any pulling. So they may have a huge hole, but Oh, well they won. I wonder how many competition or event organizers or programmers have taken

the online CrossFit programming course? The only reason I ask is because it was one resource that I used early on, actually, when I was getting my level three, that I feel like really opened my eyes on how to look for variants and how to prescribe intentional variance. And when you're programming a competition, a CrossFit competition, that's essentially what you're doing. You're prescribing a test and saying that whoever completes this test and wins is the fittest.

And if you are calling it a CrossFit competition or you're saying where this test is for fitness, then you're prescribing intentional variance and if your programming sucks you're not prescribing good variance but anyways in that online course if you haven't taken it you should take it it's cheap enough and you'll learn a fuck ton um but they talk about time domains they talk about time domains. They talk about modalities. So long, medium, short time domains, weightlifting, monostructural, gymnastic, weightlifting, moving in external load, monostructural being something cyclical and repetitive like cardio and gymnastic just being using your body weight. And then they talk about loading in workouts that with weightlifting, it's a heavy load,

a moderate load, a light load. And they talk about volume. Is it's a heavy load a moderate load a light load and they talk about volume is it a high volume a moderate volume or low volume all of these things kind of in concert and in that online course it's basically programming for an affiliate one workout a day but it's a really it's a really great way to learn how to spot variants, how to spot, uh, good programming,

bad programming, how to even fucking program in the first place, what to look for, what you should have an eye towards. Um, I, I, what I'm not sure,

I don't recall if they include this in there, but I don't recall them speaking too deeply on varying your implements, which I really love. Like, okay, you can go in the front rack twice is not a big deal. I don't care if you do a sandbag clean and then another event you have a clean and jerk. variance and implement is cool. And that's something people should, I also think pay some mind to in programming a competition. You do that very well. Uh, yes,

yes, yes. Ian Adams came here to see if they know the masters CrossFit games workouts. Jr doesn't, but I do. And, uh, I'll drop my Venmo in the chat. It's not going to be a cheap rate if you want the workouts for me. Sorry. I think that was actually Bob calling me

and telling me to not share the workouts with anyone. A big thing for me is probably number three, is to not test strength as a standalone if you only have six events. Single modality. Yep. Like, I don't care. You can do every three minutes for three rounds. So you get three attempts, and you can do a 400-meter run buy-in and a max clean and jerk. So you get three attempts and you can do a 400 meter run by in a max cleaning

jerk. So everyone just jogs and comes in and I don't, I don't even care. That's fine. Whatever. But if you're going to put a rested one rep max or two rep max or three rep max or a complex or whatever, and you're not also going to put a gymnastic standalone event and a

monostructural standalone event, or at least one of them to balance, do not put it in there because we are even to the point now that more and more people are kind of acknowledging that one rep max stuff, especially if there's like six events or fewer skews the leaderboard so much and make someone not very fit fit just appear a lot fitter because they're able to sit there and lift. People still program that way. People have been programming that way since 2010, 2011. How crazy is it that Dave finally admits that the heavy test in the open skews the leaderboard why do you choose now to admit that publicly

that's just crazy and as we can review you know what i'm talking about oh that he said yeah yeah we we know that uh one rep max like in the open is not the right time or in quarterfinals is not the right since fucking when bro he's acting like yeah i've known this all along. One rep max is skew the leaderboard. It's like, dude, what? You had a fucking one rep max a year ago. Yeah, and if you're going to do, hey, everyone hit what they can hit, you better be doing something before it. So like the 18.2, 18.2A style or 15.1, 15.1A style. I mean, they've done stuff like that before,

and it still does skew the leaderboard a lot when you have any kind of wonder at max and there's no stipulation like hey if you don't get this work done you you aren't even allowed to lift so you can't just like stand around for 10 minutes and then do a wonder at max true crossfit don't trust taylor you're gonna pay 100 for the master's games workouts and instead get a dick pic, only if you're a dude and definitely flaccid. Larry Young, totally understand, but us fat boys miss the part B. Fitness is hard. Is that John's dad?

No. No, I'm serious, dude. Oh, is it? Dude, I got no idea. How do you fucking zero? I don't know. Just looking at that picture, John said his dad power snatches 275, which is freaking awesome. Dude, I have no idea. How do you fucking zero? I don't know. Just looking at that picture, John said his dad powersnatches 275,

which is freaking awesome. Dude, I have no idea. There's a dude on – I don't know. Larry Young, are you John's dad? It is. That's awesome. Holy cow. That's crazy.

Wait. How long have you been doing CrossFit, Larry? That's nuts. Hold on. He's got those strong genes. What's your fourth thing, dude? Dude, Larry Young. I was saying there's a Larry Young on Sentinel,

or at least who supports the business, and he's been supporting it since early January. John Young's dad, wow, I really... John signed up for it under his dad's alias. No, that's not true. This is actually his dad, 100% signed up for it. John Young signed up under the name John Youngblood. But honestly...

I wish John would bring his handle back he used to be young guns something oh yeah change it to john young crossfit yeah i wish you would bring that back ah that's cool you're good dude john's a good dude okay so uh another way you can screw up is to not program monostructure in competition. So this was a little bit more prevalent, I think, in like 2013, 14, 15, 16, where there was just this huge focus on like Olympic lifting. If you're not strong, you're weak. Yeah, the 5K is fine, but you should rarely program that and we should be maxing out our snatch and cleaning jerk more often

because it comes up more in competitions and online stuff and all that kind of stuff. Prime Day is here with epic deals exclusively for Prime members. You'll feel like you just won an award. Oh, wow, I didn't even prepare a speech. I'd like to thank my family for always needing stuff. Also, Sam, my delivery guy, for bringing all my awesome deals so fast. You're the man, Sam. Shop deals on electronics, home, and more this Prime Day, July 16th and 17th.

If you're not able or willing or willing and able to spend money on cyclical apparatuses, so machines, you can run and you can run twice in the same competition. You can run long. You can do another workout where you run really, really short. That's like a sprint. If you need to, that's fine. You can program double unders and you can program double unders in a way where it's not just interruption between movements. Like if you program around 20 of them per round in a workout where it's just, hey, do this. Okay, now break your rhythm, go do the jump rope and then come back and keep doing something else. Event two for semifinal workouts this year is a

perfect, perfect example of this. Those double unders matter. Those hundred, those 500 are going to serve as a true monostructural element. So for all the people programming out there, you got six or seven or eight events and you have one with running and you have one with a thousand meter row buy-in to the workout that is already not balanced at all. You should have more than two out of 10 or 12 movements that are monostructural. I agree. True. Does swimming need to be tested at the CrossFit Games to claim the fittest on earth? I think swimming.

That's a great question. I think swimming 100% needs to be tested. I think swimming far more than biking needs to be tested to claim the fittest on earth. Swimming is kind of something that's to a degree fundamental to being a human being. Can you cross a river? Can you survive if there's a fucking flood? Bicycles are a man-made invention.

So I don't think it's fundamental to being a human being to move yourself on earth. I disagree 100%. Okay. Well, fucking let's hear it dude let's hear it mr fucking full price so i so i think that the discrepancy in skill between someone that just grew up swimming take their body type out of it they could be all shapes and sizes They can get out of the water and not be able to run a mile straight, but they can swim 30 minutes straight in a pool because they've been trained. You're not going to ever find. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Because of the skill, because of the Scott, dude, are you serious? Go to, you're not going to find somebody 70 and 80 and 90 year olds are in the water and can swim laps and laps and laps.

But you know, you could do a five K in the time that can swim laps and laps and laps, but you know, you could do a 5k in the time that it would take them to run water. Okay. But a 5k and I'm not being able to run a mile or different. Okay. So a little bit of hyperbole there, I admit, but what I'm just saying is the, it's so skill limiting and not fitness limiting that I think at times someone who is just amazing in the water can appear that there's just so aerobic, but they're not, they just grew up swimming. But if you have someone that grew up running and someone else that grew up running, the discrepancy is not nearly as big. So I'm,

I'm saying that in general, the lack of skill on a bike, that margin is much smaller, whether you were, whether you did BMX or whether you did like, I don't think like I think chase or you can never swim at all. Ever, ever swim and show up to a high level competition at whatever age and still finish top five if it was swimming dependent however you you could not do that with running and you could not do that with biking here's i disagree on the biking in the sense that you look at someone like jason who on a biker is leaps and bounds better than everyone on the planet. And yet he gets destroyed in that AMRAP bike workout because he's a pussy on the bike, uh, because he's not comfortable on a bike in terms of swimming. The thing is, yes, there's an advantage to doing it from a young age. There's also a massive advantage that Matt Fraser has Olympic weightlifting from a young age,

or Pat Vellner has a doing gymnastics from a a young age and just because there's not a swimming pool in every crossfit gym people touch a fucking barbell every day that's why there's not a big discrepancy a discrepancy in crossfit athletes between who can cycle this barbell and that barbell differently well if they would swim as much as they would fucking run or as much as they would snatch or as much as they would do fucking muscle-ups maybe you fucking idiots wouldn't look like retards in the water and you'd be good at swimming i get that argument but matt was snatching 315 right at probably his heaviest there were several other guys that were too he wasn't the only one i'm not saying he wasn't the best with a barbell, but he was still training that weekly.

Janikowski cannot swim and show up at the games with the fittest in the world and know he's probably going to win the swimming workout. Because the field sucks at swimming, not because swimming is like that. If he tried to show up against people who are equal to his skill level at swimming, he would get destroyed. But I think that's the point I'm trying to make. Think about how many people that are in the pool weekly, if not twice weekly, trying to close the gap.

Jason's a good example. He can get on a bike and do it weekly and improve a lot and close the gap. It's not like the field is so much farther away or further away that there's no point in him even spending time there. What I'm saying is you can spend as much time as you want in the water and the people that are just good swimmers that don't have to spend any time in the water are still going to beat you. You're never going to close the gap.

Well, here's the deal. You don't convince me at all. But I think it should be at the games. Yes. It has to be an element of testing people if you can't swim you're not fit sorry it makes me angry when i think like last year them not having it as as a one-off is fine like i think we've seen real biking a good bit recently i'm going to be surprised if we see biking this year um but i would be surprised if they don't go to

a pool a local high school a local college like whatever's in the area i would be surprised if they don't go to a pool, a local high school, a local college, like whatever's in the area. I would be surprised if they don't do some kind of swimming this year. No, I was just saying I saw this story on Sevan's timeline on Instagram of this German politician. And it came out that he was posting pictures and videos of him like licking public toilets and smearing feces on his face. And I sent this to Pat Lange and I said, Hey, I didn't realize you were running for office in Germany. Fuck you,

Pat Lange. Okay. Anyways, thank you for listening to the show, Pat. I really am a big proponent. Oh, and this is also cool i've always wanted a rock wall to show up at

the games like a speed wall where it's the same layout for every athlete in five lanes and it's just like i mean they could easily do it in like an obstacle course style event where it's a 15 foot high wall you climb a 15 fucking foot rope they can climb a wall and you get to the top traverse something else go down the other side whatever um i don't think it should be a workout alone but i think it could be an element of a workout you could even put a fucking rock wall a speed wall in like a crossfit workout like pair it with a dumbbell or a barbell or a biker dude that would be so cool yeah so you're saying instead of like the the um the workout in 2019 with the dumbbell split movements double unders and peg board to just have like a wall you call the speed wall fuck that would be so cool and who gives a

shit if there are people in the field that are going to have advantages on certain movements because they have a crazy background in them uh soccer players in a field they're gonna have an advantage if there's running because they run a 5k every soccer game and sprint it nonetheless so to say that like oh rock climbing is so much different than a pegboard well what if an athlete's never had a pegboard yeah then you're definitely gonna suck dick at pegboard. Well, what if an athlete's never had a pegboard? Yeah. Then you're definitely going to suck dick at pegboard. Go climb a wall. I don't know. Shut up,

Greg. That's not the real Greg Glassman. Is it just kidding, sir? All right. What else really grinds your gears as far as competitions? And when you see them you're just like oh that's that's a mistake and it might just be something really subtle too with

programming like it could just be oh it's everything's a couplet or everything's a triplet choose your own yeah choose not having variance in the formats couple of triplet chipper interval uh whatever single modality, um, workouts that are choose your own adventure for the athlete. Like max rep cleaning jerks in 10 minutes, choose your load score is cumulative load of the weight lifted. Do you know what I mean? Like you can go 95 on 35 or one5 and however much poundage you lifted that's your score i fucking hate that personally prescribe a weight and make everyone do the same thing do you ever see that do you see that much anymore i mean i used to see this type shit

yeah it sucks cock um or like that open workout 40 120, whatever break the reps as desired should never be in a competition in my opinion. Yeah. And I know you and especially bill has really been a, um, I like that workout been vocal about just hating that. I, I disagree when we did our mock quarter finals workout, I programmed to work out like, I like i know i know i think for an online competition that's fine i don't care because i i like it not from a standpoint of um i like it from a strat i like it from a gamesmanship perspective so hey it's online you don't know whether the fastest way to do this is 10 rounds of 432 or if it's you know five rounds of eight whatever the math is for that. And there's a little bit of like, I think I can go faster doing it this way,

but I heard this guy in the other gym did it this way and went faster. I completely get the argument. I think in an in-person competition, it would be the dumbest thing you could do. And that's kind of what we're talking about here. But also, it might be a cool segue a lot of competitions now are doing online qualifiers we've talked a lot about online qualifiers whether it be the open is online qualifier to quarters the quarters the online qualifier to semis so on and so forth should those competitions stand alone as competitions or should those competitions be screening aka um

foreshadowing what's to come for the big show for the in-person competition what what what are your thoughts on that when do you think it's necessary and when do you think it's not necessary i don't think they need to stand alone you don't think they need to stand alone. You don't think they need to stand alone as well-balanced tests? Or you don't think they need to stand alone as like, okay, that online qualifier in no way at all has anything to do with the next stage? I don't think it needs to stand alone

and say that online qualifier has nothing to do with the next stage. And it doesn't have to claim to find the fittest person. Like, I don't think the Open needs to claim that the person who wins the Open is the fittest person like i don't think the open needs to claim that the person who wins the open is the fittest on earth no that's the game's job okay um i also really hate programming movements that have like uh gray area or trouble judging in competitions hate it so movement selection in live competitions yeah single leg i mean there are a lot of squat variations that piss me off not because the movement itself is bad but because judges are horrible at calling them um wall balls is one that comes to mind for whatever reason

people just they're like oh it's close to parallel. Not going to call it. I fucking hate that single leg squats or another people that go up on the ball or their foot and their hip crease actually doesn't go below the knee, but it still looks like their butt cheeks touching their ankle. Well, you can't do a pistol squat. That's not hip crease below the knee, but they don't get called on it. I fucking hate that. I'm going to back up a little bit to the online qualifier question for you. If event four at semifinals this year had some sort of handstand pushup, handstand walks are out. Would you be able to say with good confidence that at the crossfit games if they

bring out a really really high skill just think about the one they did last year with the pullovers even but they've pretty much done something like that every single year for the last like five or six years do you think it would have been a mistake not to have at least some sort of handstand walking at semifinals no because i don't to have at least some sort of handstand walking at semifinals? No, because I don't think that the way they're testing handstand walking in this workout is going to correlate well to an event like that, like skill workout. If they bring back a 100-yard handstand walk for time, yes, this workout's great. But I don't think it's going to correlate to

obstacle and parallettes and shit like that no you can be a big motherfucker and just handstand walk fast and row hard as a motherfucker and do really well in that fourth workout yeah i think it depends on what kind of what the end goal is and what level of competition you're programming. If you have to have an online qualifier, but you're doing it for all levels, you're doing it for novice, for intermediate, for advanced divisions, for masters, for older masters, for teens, all that kind of stuff. I feel really strongly about this. You probably feel less strongly. If you on an in-person competition are going to program legless rope climbs, individuals have 13 of them this year at their semifinal.

And rope climbs were not programmed at all in quarterfinals. I would say that's a huge mistake and that it was poor programming on their part. That you are going to assume that these people getting to semis getting to whatever competition can handle this volume of legless rope climbs but you haven't test tested grip aka high volume upper body pulling yet what makes you think that those are the people that need to get there and do the test now i think this is a this is something that people will go back and forth on they they're just going to be like well well, you should be prepared for whatever's coming. You shouldn't, we shouldn't need to hold your hand and say, now, can you do chest to bar? Okay. If you can do chest to bar, we think you can do burpee chest to bar now and the next stage.

But I'm just thinking, depending on the movements that you're talking about, you need to do diligence to make sure that you have people that get to that stage that can at least do it at all. How does it look if you program a competition, Taylor, and you have 30 ring muscle-ups for time with rings? That's one of your events. And in your online qualifier, you didn't program a ring ring muscle up at all or bar muscle up at all and you have people that get there that are terrible at muscle ups just because you didn't test them that's a bad look in my opinion how do you feel about that uh you're you're a lot you're a lot less emotional when it comes to stuff like this

you're just like that if you can't do it you suck yeah i kind of feel that way if you can't do it you fucking suck look at look at the games last year i mean sydney wells couldn't get through one of the fucking ring complexes and she made the games or she couldn't get to the fucking burpee box jump overs or something obscene like that and she goes to the games is she supposed't get to the fucking burpee box jump overs or something obscene like that. And she goes to the games. Is she supposed to be at the games? She can't do a fucking ring complex, J.R. Howell. Sidney Wells, this is J.R. speaking.

I think it sucks that you didn't get to semifinals because of your major penalty. Please come to Crucible. Peace and love. October. Oh, my God. See, you hear that fucking shit. Muscle-ups were in every stage last year. And a lot of people are like, see, see, you can program the same movements in every stage.

It doesn't matter. Very true. But to your point, Taylor, Amanda 45 and that ruck muscle-up workout and quarterfinals workout, one from last year that had the 20-ring muscle-ups in the middle of the handstand walk on the wall facing handstand push-ups. Those are all different stimuli. Everything about those workouts is different. The way that the ring muscle-ups were put in there, all that kind of stuff is different. Yes, can you have the same movements in multiple stages? For sure. It's just like freaking painting. Everyone's going to use primary colors and not everyone's going to use the same amount of secondary or tertiary colors. That's just how it goes. People are going to program muscle ups

and thrusters and rowing and double unders. And then some people are going to program wall facing handstand pushups. Some people are going to program parallel handstand pushups, but just because you're going to use them in every stage doesn't mean that you have to use them in the same way. Alright, I got a little emotional. I'm sorry. You're good. Got our freaking fans going,

baby. If you're fit enough to compensate, that's cool. That's the game. Unless you're Alex Caron and you tear a fucking peck, then see you later, bitch. You can't compete. So Zach,

I assume Zach is, um, Zach goes to JR's gym is talking here though, about if you're fit enough to overcome the deficiency, that's the game. So like, what about the famous clip of, of Dave saying, if rich couldn't climb a rope,

he wasn't going to win the games. We were going to give it to someone else. Yeah. I think that, that seemed to be a little bit more of a pride thing, though. A little bit more of a, oh my gosh, how's this going to look if he can't do it one time? We're just going to tell him. Because at that point, they weren't told that. Hey, if you don't climb the rope at least once, you can't podium. That's just something he was thinking about because it's like,

how is it going to look that we're crowning the fittest on earth that can't climb a rope? I think that was the issue then i think it's a horrible look if you're a crossfit athlete and you suck so badly at something like that cringe cringe cringe cringe to zach's point if you have a hole and most people have one if you have a hole especially at a semi-final level that gets exposed and you are that fit i mean dude i use you as an example i know that the circumstances for quarterfinals workout two was very odd for that to happen but you were so fit at three of the four that it didn't even matter dude that is cool and to zach's point i think that is true that now would you could you have won no speaking for myself i think that's

super gay i shouldn't have done that on the second workout okay i would much rather be someone like justin or fucking matt who is just well i guess not even matt towards his later years um but early on where he's not like winning a ton of events but dude he's like top seven and everything that's what crossfit is about well and the way they do the scoring it is more beneficial to have like two or three things that you know you can finish top five on versus just having like a bunch of 13th and 14th like that's just kind of it's just kind of how the math works out um it'll be interesting to see this year in semifinals especially for the females like is there going to be someone that can finish bottom half at the snatch workout of the legless workout and still make it to the games because the field the fields are smaller and there's only six events

for seven i love how a stupid fucking rumor that Hiller starts. And that's the, like, for some reason I suck at bench all because him and fucking John Young talk about me being weak that now Pat Lange thinks that just because he gave his daughter three boosters and that somehow the MRNA vaccine included a performance enhancing drug, his daughter can bench more than me shut up ah yep i dude i'm not a bad bencher yeah i don't have a 350 bench press but i'm also i do crossfit uh has your bench gone up since the other total i haven't tested i've no i have not tested my one rep bench but i've been benching like 205 to 245 a lot in workouts i think it'd be really cool maybe the bench press of the games the max bench i've ever done is 305 and that was in 2019 and i'm definitely stronger than i was in What did you hit in 22? 287. 287.

What did you overhead squat? 347. 345. And you cleaned. 345. 342. Yeah. I don't want to say it was something like that. Yeah.

I, well, I don't have the best one and that's for sure i definitely don't have a great 1rm bench um compared to the field potentially i i don't know i feel like 305 is not crazy compared to the field but i can bench 205 and 225 all day like i have really good strength, endurance, upper body. What else? Oh, someone put in the comments, events that program a winner-take-all finale.

Ooh. Dude, that is an awesome one. I haven't seen anything like that in a long time. I remember back in the day, especially local competitions, you would make the final, and it's top 10, and they would just take you would make the final and it's top 10 and they just take all the points away and it's just winner take all for the finale so literally just depended upon what the movements were for the finale so and that depended like yeah no that's a really good one but that's one that gosh i think it's i feel like it's been so long since people have done it a big thing for me programming programming AMRAPs in a competition

unless it is at the end of the competition. Now, this is a mistake that I have made. So I programmed the year Taylor won. I liked those workouts. Well, you liked them because you did great out of them. But this is something that I learned. I was looking back on it. It does kind of make me cringe that I did it.

I programmed back-to-back seven-minute AMRAPs with dumbbell box stepovers at various weights. One was with 75s, one was 50s with GHDs and toes-to-bars, so those two couplets. They were just straight-up AMRAPs. The notion that it punished you for being more fit is 100 accurate and ever since is it it didn't punish me since someone pointed that out to me i've always been very conscious of am rap so i think one way you can screw up a competition and since the open went

away from just doing am raps a lot and started doing for time i think a lot of other people fell in line. But you program everything for reps. That's a way that you can screw up a competition. Because you have a guy that does three or four or five more rounds of a workout. And then in the next workout, he gets crushed because he can't recover. And these people that only did three or four rounds in the workout aren't feeling the same way at all.

I won those both events, and then I went and won the next event the next day. But I get what you're saying. And extra sloppy, according to him, smoking pole doesn't make you gay. And I would agree. You can try it just to see or to feel it. I've got to stop. Kissing the homies.

Holy shit. Oh, fuck. And with that, I don't know. You got anything else that really grinds your gears? Travis Brault is in the chat. What's up, Canada? That's our token Canadian.

Yeah, I mentioned it earlier, but when all the weightlifting movements, when all the weightlifting elements have the same movement pattern. So you have like deadlifts in one workout and you have sand deadlifts in one workout and you have uh sandbag cleans in another workout and you have um dumbbell snatches in another workout and it's like well yeah all these elements are different it's like yeah but you're you're everyone's back is gonna

break because you're programming a ton of hinging the entire the entire competition so that is something you see a lot you see like squatting that's just like dude it's so much squatting or they're squatting in all the workouts or squatting in all but one of the workouts so that kind of stuff yep yep uh all right and to finish the show michael malo shut up and scribble is like a clinical lecture in diagnosing adhd and i would agree with that because I definitely have it oh how we're so scattered and we just jump around I force you to jump around I like I don't even

I don't even I just fucking yeah it's not your fault bro thank you guys for coming and listening stick come back next week if you want to hear us drop the Masters CrossFit Games workouts potentially. Do you have an idea of what Kill Taylor is going to be?

Can you give a sneak peek at whoever is still listening? A sneak listen? A teaser? A hint? They are both two very athletic CrossFit movements. Well, there's not many of those guys, and he's already done Burpee Getovers. One is weightlifting, and one is gymnastics see you guys