The Sevan Podcast - What Will 2024 Programming Look Like? | Shut Up & Scribble Ep. 12

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

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That's Better p.m. with alerts. Voila. I won't be getting carried away and staying out till 2. That's stop loss orders on Kraken. An easy way to plan ahead. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. We're live and I've got 30 seconds until i can swear officially um if you guys are in the comments please let me know if my wi-fi is worth a ding dong it sounds fine dude okay sounds good all right what's up everybody so today the thumbnail um would leave most of you to believe that we are going to go event by event uh sorry one second through the crossfit games so the 2023 crossfit games workouts um we're not gonna do that

but we potentially have a really big guess that we don't even want to mention their name until we know that they're going to come on for sure we should probably save that conversation where we can tussle with him a little bit. Yeah. So we're thinking about, we're probably going to wait on that. And I wouldn't even, I'm not tussling with him.

So I want to get in there. I want to dig a little bit. You want to tussle? You want to tickle his arms? Okay. So we're going to save that today. We're going to talk about implications for training for the Crossfit open games quarter finals semifinals based off of this year's workouts this year's programming um so that's what we're going to talk a little bit about to start um a couple things crash crucible 2023

coming up october 9th and 10th and 11th no No, October 13th, 14th, and 15th. Okay, close. Still looking for more partners and sponsors. If anyone's interested in that, let me know. I'll send you over the tier information. Starting to release some of the competitors from the semifinals field, which has been pretty cool. Chloe Wilson was an addition just as of yesterday,

so I wanted to go ahead and get her out there. It's pretty cool. She's really, really high placing finisher from the semifinals field. That'll be here, but it's pretty loaded. I'm really excited about the depth of the field, especially,

and a lot of really cool names on the qualifier that I didn't even know, knew about crucible. That looks like they're going to qualify pretty easily. Who? I don't want to talk about it yet. Come on, give me a name, bro. So do you remember the name Breonna Evans? Breonna Evans.

Yeah, didn't she train out of Emily Bridgers? Emily Bridgers. Yeah, very OG. Wow, see, I know my... It's been two and a half hours. I know my fucking shit, bro. Yeah, so she... I know it's coming back from recently having a child

and I think maybe this is like her... This is her first season after that, so I'm really excited to see her here in person, especially on some of the gymnastics workouts that are coming. it's going to be really fun to watch her and then Hal Fisher wow did the qualifier and I think someone told me he competed on a team this year because I didn't remember seeing him um in person live so that

makes sense and uh yeah based on his qualifier scores, I mean, I'm really excited. I think he's one that can come in and, like, push for podium for sure. That's cool. I love that. Cool. Crash Crucible, Charlotte Classic, which is the event that I run at CrossFit Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina. It's going on November 17th through 19th.

Me and Brian Friend are running that out of CrossFit Charlotte with Andy Hendel. Spencer Hendel's dad. He's my boss. So, same thing, looking for event partners, sponsors. If you guys are interested in getting a good kick out of that event, sign up as well. We've got four divisions, elite, which level of competition last year,

there were several semifinal athletes, not as deep as JR's field. Programming's on point. There's an RX division and a Masters 40 plus division and then a community division, which is pretty trimmed down if you're looking to compete, haven't done it much or haven't done it ever.

Check it out. Seven-day free trial for self-made training program if you guys want to try my program, that as well. And then lastly, on Shut Up and Scribble, we are going to be having guests on more frequently um and we've been thinking about

having a third edition potentially to the team we won't talk deeply about that but we are looking for sponsors so if you guys are interested in working with me and jr specifically reach out via the instagram page jr's personal page, my personal page, whatever the case may be. But we're about to take this shit to the moon. So, all right, let's get into it. What do you think? Where do we start?

Open? I think after 2022, it was interesting to hear people talk about the way that training should be prioritized based on Adrian's programming at the games and how there seemed to be a little bit more emphasis on high skills, on new things, on execution based workouts where you may only be given one or two opportunities to separate yourself from the field, the bottleneck programming style where, hey, there's like an obvious crux of this workout. And this is where everyone's going to get to. And there's going to be a huge log jam. And can you separate yourself from that bottleneck? It was really interesting to hear a lot of people in the space talk about it and how training was going to change. And then we go through the open, we go through quarterfinals, we go through semifinals. There's a lot of things that we see, Hey,

you need to be able to run fast and lift heavy when you're tired. Right. We kind of see that trend from the games into quarterfinals, even in the open where you have the shuttle and workout into the max thruster. So everyone just thinks, Oh, semifinals, you're going to have to run and lift. And then what do they do at the games? They lift, they lift rested. Right. And it what do they do at the games? They lift rested, right? And it just kind of pulls the rug out from underneath everybody. So you look back at 2022 and you look at the programming,

I think there were eight or nine new movements to the games. And everyone's scrambling around, I've got to get better at these wall-facing handstand push-ups, deficit or not. So everyone works all year on them. He comes back, he tests everybody in quarterfinals, tests everyone in semifinals. So everyone kind of knows that they need to have that tool in their belt. And then we see some more things trickle out double under crossovers. Everyone practices them. They don't show up again. We get singles and quarterfinals and that's it.

Single under crossovers. But still, people are practicing more with a rope for more than just double unders which i think was the whole point and it's great and a lot of athletes are really good at it now will that stuff be revisited who knows so we go through all these new things from 2022 and people are practicing them and this year we get the pirouette on top of the box right to start essentially a scaled press to handstand into a pirouette we can just call it that right we get that and we get the pullovers and do you consider the p-bar pirouette a new movement if you do there are only three movements that are new at the games which were just those so you have like that box pirouette the bar pirouette and the pullovers which most people are going to think of that as

a new movement yes they were in the original they're in the original obstacle course that spencer won at camp pendleton they had to do a pullover to start the race. But four reps, that's the first time they've ever really come up in competition. So after all this new, new, new, new, new, it just kind of goes back to the same old stuff did, we did see some biases, but does that just mean everyone's going to go back to being able to do three straight days of upper body pulling? Or does that mean that people are just going to go back to like training volume, training intensity? How do you see that moving forward? I, a couple of things. I think a lot of, I think to start, I think a lot of i think to start i think a lot of the programming was 100 changed and i think you share this belief too uh with dave coming back when he came back just every everything games this year just didn't really make sense which is you know

something that you've talked me through quite extensively um when looking at the bigger picture of boss the past year open quarterfinals semifinals etc dave coming back in the program was just vastly different at the games um and we talked last week even down to the names of workouts so but is is that hey you guys you knew, but you really had no clue or do you think that there was clear progression? There was, there was going to be things that were revisited. I heard through the rumor mill that the parallel bar pull was supposed to be double under crossovers and not weighted rope double unders. But after the demo

team messed with it it was kind of decided that the double under crossover was just going to be what the workout was all about i would push back and say i don't know if those athletes were as prepared to do big chunks of them as the games athletes were maybe that was fuck no dude that was a that was something that when it came out i I was like, P-bar pirouette. Beautiful. This makes sense. There's progression there. Heavy rope.

Yeah. Hand over hand sled. They did it at semis. He's just doubling down on it. This makes sense. But why is this Zeus Pro in here? This feels like it should be. This is where we come back and see on the final event of the games,

the most polarizing movement from 2022 we get to see if you've been doing your homework and working on it and then it but it wasn't there yeah so again i i do that there are a lot of things like that right the age groups did a freestanding handstand hold the teams did a ring support hold the individuals did no static hold. That just doesn't – like that sequence doesn't make sense to me. Why would individuals not do it? So I would love to know, were they just in a room going back and forth? I like this. Well, I don't like this. Well, let's compromise.

Or is it just, no, this is all Boz. Dave was just there to kind of look over the floor. No, no shot. No shot. It's all Boz. No shot. It's all Boz. No shot. Yeah. I don't think

in any sense of the world this is that Boz goes back to a rogue pro heavy rope. There's just no way. I don't believe that for a second. I think that's 100% Dave's like, nah, we're going to do heavy rope. When I think that scaling the reps down or bringing the reps down on the crossover and keeping the crossover double under, and there would have been way cooler and way more effective.

And also, you know, I initially hated the crossover, and then I learned to do them, and then I like it. So I think that would have been better. how to train, it did not seem to me that many athletes made massive changes in their training regimen based off of last year heading into this year. And what I mean by that is something that my coach pointed out to me, but there didn't, a lot of people just look tired, like on the first couple days of competition and like there were events where you thought that people should be smashing and going really hard and it just seemed like that wasn't the case and it got me thinking about training volume and you have this you know when you know it's only boss programming or it's only Boz writing the program um it's a little bit of an easier pill

to swallow and kind of leap to take to commit to maybe a little bit less volume with the addition of Dave back and this fucking three days straight of upper body pulling um it's a little more risky because in the past it seems like Dave is this you know bludgeon you to death on certain muscle groups and Boz is more articulate with what he's testing, where and when and how, and the volume and less concerned about beating people up. And I think Dave kind of takes the road of, Oh,

it's the games. They'll be fine. But think about three events a day, right? Ride pig chipper. And then what was the Friday night event? I can't remember. Skills. Skills, right. That's not a lot of volume. Same thing for day two. Dude, I think that bike set people up on day one, but even on day two and day three,

like the turnaround from the 40 minute- For sure. ... effort to the pig chipper, like just that amount of recovery. It just looked like people weren't able to recover. What it looked like is think about a long training session. Like somebody is doing a two a day, two, three hour sessions or a four hour and a two hour session. You're hitting pieces back to back to back with not a lot of recovery in

between them. And because of that, like think about games training, like somebody's eight to 10 pieces a day, a lot. And the recovery between those to hit them at max intensity is minimal. It's you are, you are for sure sacrificing intensity for the sake of volume. Um, and that's so relative because when you're a games athlete to your, you know, passer by or, you know, to your passerby or standard crossfitter,

that intensity still looks obscene and outrageous. But compared to what a games athlete can perform three pieces separately a day, like if a games athlete went into games training doing three pieces a day with a couple hours in between or just saying, I'm going to do three pieces back to back to back, but I'm not going to do anything else and I'm going to hit them at max intensity, I wonder if that's a pieces back to back to back, but I'm not going to do anything else. And I'm going to hit them at max intensity.

I wonder if that's a better approach to training for the games rather than massive amounts of volume, eight to 10 pieces a day. I'm not saying you only do three pieces, three separate evolutions, right? You have some strength, some skill work, some practice.

But do you need five workouts when you're sacrificing volume for intensity? I just say that because on some of these events, it looked like some people didn't. They lacked a bit of intensity. Do you think that there's been a shift in the competitive landscape that you have to be so volume adapted that it's swung too far that direction and maybe people keep that mindset too late in the season

where like, hey, up until two or three weeks before semis, the focus has to shift. We need to peak for semis, even if you know you're probably going to qualify. Then you can start at the beginning ramp back up again for another cycle leading up to the games do you think maybe some camps ramp up deload ramp up deload ramp up deload more so than other training camps that just kind of slowly ramp and then they get to their peak volume and then they just deload right before the games. Like it would be a,

it would be a good question for someone like you that programs for several really high level athletes leading up to the games. And I know you're learning this too. Did it seem to you like people were too, were over-trained coming in or under conditioned? I don't think, I think, you were over-trained coming in or under-conditioned coming in? I don't think. I think it's an odd combination of both where it's not that athletes are going and beat up, but athletes are going in at a volume that's so high

that they've sacrificed intensity to train at that volume, and they get in the competition and they're not accustomed to hitting the lack out intensity or go to failure intensity, recover, repeat that intensity. They're more accustomed to 80% intensity, recover, 80% intensity, recover, 80% intensity, et cetera, et cetera. I 100% think that Dave's method of programming and style of programming has 100% driven the training methodology for games athletes

over the past couple of years. And a perfect example is Atalanta. When you know the guy programming the CrossFit Games is bound to do something like fucking that, you kind of have to. You have to be ready to handle an insane amount of work. But then you go back to last year, and what Boz programmed was like,

whoa, this is totally different. Totally different. So I don't know. It's an interesting thought. I think it's good that everyone's scratching their head now because they were expecting to get a little bit of rhythm and get a little bit more of the same. Hey, year one had four interval workouts. Year two had two or three interval workouts. There were still some new stuff that came out.

There was some evolution of some new things. But then now there isn't. And do you think it's actually better that everyone's wondering where it's going and there isn't much predictability? better that everyone's wondering where it's going and there isn't much predictability? Do you think it would be better as a trickle down to the community to have that cohesiveness? I mean, look, we got Dave programming main site right now. They're going to be programmers on main site. There have been a lot of talk about how do we make sure that the message we're sending to the community matches what the top tier of the sport is doing as far as priorities. Should they be mirroring each other?

Should there be any cohesiveness between game season programming and what we expect our affiliates to be doing? And that's a whole other podcast. Yeah, a whole other podcast. Yeah. You know, it's tough for me to say. I do think this. Someone commented, whatever Ariel does works.

I know for a fact that, well, I know from what she has said in the past that it seems, my perception is that she trains at a bit lower volume than a lot of those top females do. And I would imagine gets pretty raging intensity. I think when you're an athlete at that level and you don't have the opportunity to train at a really high volume, when you do train, you fucking smack it. I think and I've experienced that in my own life and how right now I just want to go to the gym and murder myself in every piece that I do. And I think to a degree that is far more important than eight to 10 pieces a day and running yourself into the dirt for a 12 event weekend, right?

If it's going back to 2017 and there's 15 events and it's 500 squatting repetitions, being accustomed to high volume is beneficial. If it's last year, being accustomed to super high volume is maybe not as beneficial as being able to hit things at an extreme intensity and with really good execution and have really high skills. But I think that carried over to this year as well, where there were some muscle groups that were taxed way more than others. But for the most part, the volume was not out of control.

There were some quick turnarounds, but it's three events a day. I mean, remember that. Yeah, there are some quick turnarounds for sure, but three events a day, that is. So the point you're getting at is that two or three weeks out from the games, doing a bunch of zone two or four or five days a week is probably not the best place to allocate your time versus coming in, hitting something really hard, recovering, going to sit around two or three hours later come back warm up again yeah again and actually simulating what you're going to feel if anything maybe only doing two a day as you get closer and closer to it and a lot of skill practice um i think there's like a lot of balance agility proprioceptive work that athletes could probably be doing to set themselves

up for success on the event like uh inverted medley, which I think is clear with Boz at the helm. We're going to continue to see things like that that challenge athletes. Yeah, I just don't see – I don't know. I just think there's been maybe potentially a bit of an overcorrection in the volume department, and we've only got 214 live viewers. Hopefully this show doesn't get that many views, but I don't expect many of the competitors watch this to begin with maybe a handful but the handful that do watch more than happy to help my own personally driven and jealous reasons well if there's some things that you look at where you can say hey this

this does kind of fit right this does still kind of flow like if you look at where you can say, hey, this does kind of fit, right? This does still kind of flow. Like if you look at the season, look at the open, right? We had the repeat of 14.4 that had a chunk of 40 wall balls. And then we have the quarterfinals where there's really not any squat volume. And then we have the semifinals that have the 40 overhead squats and the squat cleans in Linda. So there's still a fair amount of squatting there.

Not a ton, but still a fair amount. Single leg squats as well. But then at the games, once again, there was a lot of legs, and I'll push back and we can go at it with people who think there wasn't any legs in the games. Oh, there was. Yeah, there was, for sure. It was presented in a way that most people aren't typical yeah they didn't do murph

okay and they didn't do a squat clean pyramid ladder and then they didn't do this and they didn't do this but there was still that chunk of 100 wall balls there were still the thrusters on the last workout there was sled there was a lot of carries they had the sand workout. There was sled. There was a lot of carries. They had the sandbag squats, which was super high intensity for those 50 reps. So yeah, it might not be some of the lower body volume beatdowns that we're used to seeing at the games. But in total, I do think that there was a lot of squatting. A lot of squatting or a lot of legs?

You're talking about the season as a whole or the games? A lot of legs. Definitely not a lot of squatting a lot of squatting or a lot of legs you're talking about the season season as a whole or the game definitely not a lot of squatting in the yeah yeah but at the games the squatting was still there yeah it was still there but you again like you said you have the bike event the sled and alpaca um the hundred wall balls ski bag tea bag plenty of legs for sure um still had to run the 5k hard yep yep so non-traditional and i like that a lot of different ways they tested legs and but again i think i think to me the major the big question mark is how are these athletes getting prepared going into competition and is it to your benefit to train at a volume that has been pushed on that community the crossfit games athlete community um by some of the best is that necessary and is that sustainable is that beneficial even um and let's be clear there's

i would say every coach out there that's coaching high level athletes, games level athletes, or multiple ones, whether they're following blog programming or do it individualized, they're smart. And they approach the season in cycles. And there are cycles where they're base building and there are cycles where they're working on just power lifting. And then there are cycles where they get into weightlifting and they're probably doing skill work year round there's some development that needs to be done where they're just doing the skill and only that skill to build capacity

and then as the season goes on they're layering and interference whether it be with machines or whether it be with weightlifting movements or whatever you know there are progressions and i'm sure that they're all using it my biggest biggest question is, as a coach, how do you know when's the right time? How do you know when the right time is? That probably depends on the level of athlete you're coaching. If you have a, you have an athlete that it's easier for them to make the games and the biggest risk for them sometimes is just getting out of quarterfinals, then you have to prioritize that way. If you have an athlete that you know is going to make the games, then do you just,

are you just okay with a fourth or a fifth or a sixth place finish at semis? Because the bigger picture is performance at the games. Like someone like you, if John came to you and you were like, you know what, Taylor, I know that you're built for the games. You can swim, you can run, you adapt well to new things. We're going to take a risk. And I just want you fit enough to make the games. If we ramp you up too early and we peak you for semis, then I don't know if we're going to be able to ramp back down and then go through another whole training block. Would you just say, okay, that's a huge risk? block would you just say okay that's a huge risk or would you just say no i have to be at my fittest at semifinals next year i think that's an even different conversation

than the one i was initially leading us into uh that's i don't i don't think you can take anything for granted at semifinals and i i don't know that john would ever come to me and say that um i don't think he would i i think it's far more likely that that would ever come to me and say that. I don't think he would. I think it's far more likely that that would be some sort of hubris that I would push on him. He would be like, no, I don't think that's a good idea. You just never know what's going to show up for semifinals. And if you get caught with your fucking dick in your hand,

that's not a good place to be. So I don't think that's worth it. I think what I'm, I don't think at the level we are at in the sport, especially with the depth of field and the strength of field in some of these North America semifinals and regions, that that is a card you can afford to play in most cases um i don't know if justin and there can't play that this year uh i think overall people are kind of scratching

their heads at his performance both at semifinals and at the games i think people were probably thinking at semifinals that that's exactly what he was doing and then he comes out and performs the way he did at the games and it's like well was that what he was doing because he's not winning the games so i i don't think you can i don't think you can bank on qualifying regardless of how fit you are um to just train through semifinals i do think that my main point is not every athlete needs to train eight hours a day leading into the games. There are some that do, and great. But there are also athletes who I know for a fact

that don't train anywhere near that much that were on the podium this year. So the question being, what is the right recipe for success i also think the sport is so young that that is still being created um and might continue to evolve for the next several years and it's also very challenging to feel like you nail that recipe down when the programming is changing and the style of programming is changing from year to year um it's it's challenge it's a It's the hardest sport to prepare for because you have to be prepared for everything. Saw Colton in the comments.

It would be interesting to know how he approaches the season, not knowing some things that we're all wondering right now. Is there going to be some kind of pro card system? Are there going to be more opportunities to earn points for your worldwide ranking? Is it only going to be open quarter semis but like someone like colton who at this point like we all expect him to make the games does he still prioritize his season and his weakness work so that at semifinals when there's only six

or seven workouts he makes sure that there's no stone left unturned or is he so confident with the progression of some of the things that he used to consider a weakness that now he's like i'm only worried about the games that's all i'm worried about i don't i don't think he approaches semifinals like that i would be shocked if he did i wouldn't approach it like that and i don't think most of the top athletes approach it like that um i think he's training and fighting tooth and nail at semifinals just like i think he did at the games. I think what's impressive for him is it seemed like he went through quite a

bit of adversity in the off season with some medical stuff and with injury. And that's what he said. He was super sick and at semifinals, super sick and pulled out an incredible finish at the games. And I, I think that is, I think Colton is a great example of how mental the sport is and how much a lot of, a lot of athletes take that for granted. Um, in terms of it's, it's not just the physical beast, especially at the games, but semifinals as well.

Um, and how calm and collected you need to be. Um, yeah, a lot of, a lot of questions for me going into this year. Yeah, so let's unpack that a little bit. There's a lot of speculation now. But if they move away from open two weeks later, quarters, whatever, a month later, semis, and they're still using the world ride ranking system. They're still allocating spots based on how many are in the top 100 in the world. They're doing all that stuff. Maybe they make some small tweaks, but essentially you're still looking at somewhere between

nine and 12 spots out of each North America region. You're still looking at a lot coming out of Europe. All that stuff is kind of the same. Introducing TD Insurance for Business with customized coverage options for your business, because at TD insurance, we understand that your business is unique. So your business insurance should be too, whether you're a shop owner, a pet groomer, a contractor, or a consultant, you can get customized coverage for your business. Contact a licensed TD insurance advisor to learn more. Do you think there's going to be other point earning opportunities where they take this circuit of competitions, Guadalupalooza, Dubai, Rogue, all this stuff, they say, hey, if you go here and you finish in the top 10,

you can accumulate this number of points. If you go to a tier two competition that's like Beach Brawl, Monster Games, Crash Crucible, Charlotte Classic, and you compete there, there's an opportunity for you to get this amount of points. And then at the end of everything, we're just going to take all the points you've earned and that's going to be how you get through the games do you see that happening or is it just being nope semifinals is the only way you can

qualify do you see those other do you see those other competitions being ways that you can get into semifinals so like you can do quarterfinals and get in, or you can do these out of season competitions, not put all your eggs in the quarterfinals basket. Maybe you're sick. Maybe you're just not having a good training week, whatever. And you can still find yourself in the mix to try to qualify for the game. Well, they tried that in 2019. Did they not?

A similar system with sanctionals, national champions in the open etc and i don't think it worked well for the reason being that when you have one group of people programming for the open quarterfinals semifinals and the games they know what we want to expect the athletes to be capable of at the games when you involve all these outside competitions that don't have regulation over their programming it's what if this athlete squeaks in and has this massive hole that we would have accounted for through the open quarterfinals and semifinals um and i don't think they want that and i think in 2019 it was pretty clear that there were a lot of athletes who qualified that probably didn't

that were not at the level that the typically of the typical top 40 in the field that comes from open quarterfinals, semifinals, regionals, et cetera. I mean, that was clear as day in those workouts. Yeah. I mean, most of the athletes that have spoken publicly about it, they kind of liked that structure. They liked that if they got sick one weekend, their whole season wasn't ruined and their opportunities for sponsorships and their earning opportunities lasted more than just a couple months out of the year. That, hey, yeah, they gave the power to other people. The programming was a little bit hit or miss here and there, but still, it was more opportunities for people to see you, more

opportunities for you to do something special where you could possibly make a living. And I kind of think they might come back to something like a hybrid of both. I think a resounding feedback has been, hey, we can only watch the people we care about like once a year. And that's it. That's the only opportunities we have, unless they're the cream of the cream of the crop that get to Rogue, which is invite only top 24 you know get to wadapalooza elite like the year that 2019 year were you supposed to go to a couple sanctionals that got canceled no i qualified for the mac yeah i qualified for the Mac. Yeah, I qualified for the Mac. And then two days before, I had my skateboarding fiasco.

So that was when it was in Washington, D.C. And I think the guy actually who backfilled my spot won it and qualified for the games. Yeah, he was the guy who trained with Josh Bridges out of California, a younger dude. Fuck, I forget his name. Absolutely ripped. He's built like a Greek god.

But it was like snatching in four of the six workouts. Lopez? No. White dude. White dude. And not Pat, sir? No. John something I want to say.

Fuck, I don't know. I can't remember. Oh, yeah. Did he have two first names? Was it like John Michael or John? Yes, it was something like that. John Paul? Maybe it was something Paul.

John Paul. Sean DePaul. No, it wasn't that. I don't think. Yeah, I remember what you're talking about now. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. But that's a perfect example because that year in the MAC, they had hang squat snatches in a workout at like 135.

MAC snatch. They had a MAC snatch. They had the heavy squat snatch with ring muscle-ups in the final. And then they had ski Isabelle. Four barbell snatches in a six-event competition. That's the exact reason why they won't go back to that system, in my opinion. I just – maybe they have these other ways of accumulating points but you're still mandated to do the open quarterfinals and

semifinals and if you finish below a certain place within those competitions regardless of the points that you have you're excluded from being able to qualify for the games maybe something like that works um but we have done enough shows on enough competitions about enough sets of programming for me to feel pretty confident that unless they had a regulatory body and it was pretty stringent and they took away a lot of creative freedom from these programmers that they are just not capable of putting together a test that is super cohesive and translates to what they want at the games. It was not Joseph Flynn. I used to train with Joe Flynn at CrossFit Reston, different guy.

No, it wasn't John Parrott. God, I got to look this fucking up. I mean, I'm pretty sure this guy had like two first names or maybe his first and middle name is what he went by. But Josh Miller was at that competition i remember him i remember the programming coming out and those hang squat snatches were 185 because that was in like a chipper that right and marquand jones yeah i was at yeah marquand was probably there um and josh just being like it's heavy dude like it's and that's kind of i guess the cool thing about it,

because if me and you program a competition that are giving spots to a semifinal or something like that, and three other people are, you're going to see our biases in our programming. And what I thought the cool thing would have been about keeping the sanctional model year to year is you would have these competitions that do have a clear identity. And if you, Taylor Self, know you're going to get to swim at Wadapalooza and you're going to get to swim at this competition, you probably are like, hey, those are the ones I'm looking at because I know that's a bomb. I know that's a home run. But this other person

really, really is good at high skill stuff. And they know if they go to Crucible, there might be a pegboard or the obstacle or whatever. So they put their eggs in that basket. I think that would have been cool if we had these 10 to 15 competitions and you saw the people try to pick and choose and take risks based on the previous year's program. I'm trying to find this guy's name. Cause now it's fucking eating me alive that I can't remember it. I'm going deep in the Mac. John Paul Hethcock.

That's right. John Paul Hethcock. Uh, JP Patrick Clark texted me that just now. Thank you, Patrick. You saw me staring at my phone. JP Hethcock.

Yeah. I withdrew. I fucking was riding down a hill going like 30 miles an hour on a skateboard like a retard and just jumped off and bent my leg completely backwards and then i was like in the er and i like messaged wilson i was like hey i'm not gonna be there to three days so if there's anybody you could send a backfill invite to like that'd be cool um and he sent an invite to jp who you would imagine is not training to prepare for a semifinal or a sanctional at that point,

which goes back to my idea of what truly is the best way to prepare for a competition like that. And he comes in and he smokes them all and wins it and earns his ticket to the games. So you're welcome, JP, for that. Speaking of that kind of opportunity, opportunity I mean look at Ant Haynes this year I mean he gets like a backfill spot right before and performs yep awesome at the games yep it just shows you at the top of the sport and when I say top of the sport I mean

really anyone who's top half at semifinals how good everybody. And I've heard some other podcasts talk about this as another show that we could do. I know Sevan wanted us to do a show on this, but how much programming really does matter and how much at the very, very top, like maybe the top three, it might not. But I mean, I would still argue that like even who can win a semifinal can come down to programming. Look at the East semifinal when you have Jeff, Jason and Roman, and then look what happens at the games. Like just look at, look at how much different a seven workout competition or a 12 workout

competition is. If the programming is skewed to a power strength athlete versus super, super dense gymnastics workouts where the gymnastics matter more than anything else. Like the programming at the level of the games, I would say there's five to 10 athletes on the male and female side that depending on the programming have a chance to podium. For sure. I would go for even further and say that there are maybe three athletes in the world right now, maybe four that have a chance to stand on the podium regardless of programming. Who is that?

Tia is one. Okay. On the men's side, I would say Tia is one. If we expect Mal to follow the current progression that we had assumed she was following, I would say that is another. And the third, I think, for me, it's safe to say is... I say no matter what the programming is, you still have to put Laura in that group. I disagree. I think you put Pat in the group because he's shown his unreal ability

to take massive strikeouts and someone that's podiumed what four times now yeah he's for sure one of the guys he's he's podiumed four times with like the most massive fuck-ups and like god bless you dude i'm not shitting on your fuck-ups i'm like like, it blows my mind how he can climb back onto the podium after some things that happened to him at the games. Speaks to his resilience and his, yeah. Massive amounts of resilience. I, man, maybe Adler, but we just don't have enough podium data from him

for me to feel confident in saying that. But Tia, Mal, Pat. Do you put roman in there yet because it's that's two straight years of i mean i'm not even thinking about the injury like we know he would have podiumed had he not injured it's just a matter of would he have won or taken second he would have won if he didn't if he didn't get injured i'm pretty confident to say um has he done enough to where you say it really doesn't matter what the programming is? Like people think of him as a, like a workhorse,

right. Like a bigger, more powerful guy, but like, he's kind of proven that the skill stuff doesn't bother. I think, I think Roman and Laura, you can likely put on that list.

I think it's just like, and they're going to get offended by it, but like it, it feels a little soon for me to to bank on that and maybe maybe that's me being hypocritical because i have mal on there um but definitely tia definitely pat and then outside of them rich at one point in his career matt obviously um you would have thought justin at one point in his career but it's it's a very small and exclusive list where the programming doesn't matter they're going to

be at the top extremely exclusive there's some incredible like storylines and the games were awesome and i still look back on it especially on the female side and i say okay you have all these people that are obviously coming. Like Emma Lawson was super impressive. Alexis Raptus was super impressive. And they did all that without Kara Saunders, Tia, Haley, and Mal being in the field. So if you insert those four back in,

who's to say that all four of them will ever compete again? Maybe it's just Tia. Maybe it's Tia and Haley. Maybe it's all of them. Who knows? Are those same names that wore the leader's jersey, are they still up there? Are they now past those people? Or are those names still just better? That storyline, Ricky coming back is huge. How will Justin bounce back is huge. How much longer can Pat still prove that he's got plenty left in the tank? Can Roman take the next step?

Can Jeff defend? Like there's a ton of question marks going in outside of just the things that we always talk about and think about, which is how the programming will go. I would agree that very, very few does the programming not matter. Yep. Which begs the question, who's actually behind the helm? Um, who's calling the shots? I think my gut instinct is that, you know, Dave is back to being the boss and it's calling the shots. Um, but you said something pretty profound to me. And, you know, prior to Dave leaving, I was like, oh, Dave is the fucking all powerful programmer. And like anything that's not him is going to stink.

Last year wasn't my favorite in some ways, but it was massive proof and evidence that Boz was more than capable and actually like excited for what's to come with that. and actually like excited for what's to come with that. And I think that they both have things to learn from one another. I think the big question mark is, I think, I don't know either of them well, so I don't know how much they will be receptive to actually, is it just this compromise they're making between the two? And as soon as one of them rests total control of the gig they're going to go with what they want or are they going to take bits and pieces from one another and implement that um i don't know what do you think do you think they do you think i think i think at this point it's all speculation which kind of sucks because you

would love to to know how the creative processes work. Are they sitting together at whiteboards? Are they just working alone separately and then coming together? Is Adrian being like, here's my season right here. Tell me why it sucks. And Dave's going in and is like, I don't really like that there. I like this better here. I hate this movement. Why would you put this in here?

And he's like, yeah, I know, but I've been wanting to do this movement for five years and six years. And like, I would love to know little things like that. The P bars come out last year. They come back this year. To me, it's like, it's just an apparatus you have to be good on. You have to be good on low P bars. You have to be good on high P bars. Was that something Dave really liked? And he was just every year waiting to bring out, or his boss kind of tapping and being like, dude, I'm telling you, P bars would be awesome. I got this elevated Elizabeth workout that I've been thinking about for years. And then he gets the chance to do it. And everyone's like, damn, that was super cool. So like, I would love to know little things like that. And maybe, maybe we, maybe they'll go on

and, and speak openly about it, but it's probably just as good for talking points if they don't versus if they do. It would be cool if they did. I think it would give people a bit of clarity. I don't think it would give anything away that gives anyone a competitive advantage, but I would think it would give the community clarity on where things are going and what we can expect.

And maybe they don't want us to have that. Yeah. And one thing can be said if if last year was the only 100 percent totality of control that adrian had over the programming at the games it was a needed year for athletes it was a revisiting of intensity over volume it was the idea that you shouldn't only be training movements the way that you think they're going to show up in competition and that you should be exploring other ways of expressing work capacity across across broad time and modal domains that maybe goes against or maybe turns in another direction based on what everyone was used to. I think just that year alone was like, it was also for the community, but it was also really good for the competitors to say, you know what, maybe I do

need to like do 10 to 15 minute skill sessions where I practice backwards double unders, or whether I practice different things on my hands that maybe I hadn't thought about doing before that maybe I really do try to progress toward a press to handstand, that that's just something that will carry over to other parts of my training. I think that that message was sent and delivered. And I think if that's all that we get from it, it was a success. Yeah, I do think the press conference where Dave talks a bit about grooming his successor can maybe give us some hope that there will be a day when there is just new everything. Last question. Last question.

Yes or no. Is the games better programmed by one person or a group of people? Programmed by one person or a group of people? I think the games is probably better programmed by one person with, with feedback and critique from others that helps drive. That's the same as a group. Improvement. I don't know that that's the same as a group. That's, I disagree. I, what, what you're saying or what I'm interpreting it is when Dave and Boz are

programming and both of them are putting things that they like in there and they're making compromises with one another. Is that better than if Boz runs it entirely by himself with feedback from the team or Dave runs it entirely by himself with feedback from the team? And I think alone is probably better. I don't think too many cooks in the kitchen is a great idea to quote you um in terms of your euphemism not saying that it's bad but all right that was good went by fast so yeah we'll uh we'll keep

everyone updated we'll try to put out some instagram posts more frequently about what the show topic is going to be on week to week if we do have a guest coming on make sure that you guys know who's going to be coming on what we're going to be on week to week. If we do have a guest coming on, make sure that you guys know who's going to be coming on, what we're going to be talking about, and we'll still keep our freelance style for sure. Thanks, everybody.