WHOOP Podcast - The Buttery Bros discuss their travel tips, performance and nutrition, and what's next for CrossFit

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Marston Sawyers and Heber Cannon, better known as The Buttery Bros, are some of the kings of content in the CrossFit space. They are documentary filmmakers who travel the world to capture the fittest people on the planet in action. That work has resulted in a massive social media following and has made them two of the most recognizable people in CrossFit. They sit down with our resident CrossFit expert Mike Lombardi to discuss how they use WHOOP in their lives (2:26), the next generation of CrossFit (5:34), tracking respiratory rate while traveling during the pandemic (7:25), their favorite destinations on the CrossFit map (14:35), becoming the Buttery Bros (19:00), nutrition (20:55), workout philosophies (23:26), Mat Fraser and Rich Froning (27:40), studying elite athletes (31:10), the new era of CrossFit (32:42), finding creative inspiration (36:34). Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks, welcome back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. We got great guests this week. Before we get to them, a reminder, you can use the code Will Amid, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D, to get 15% off a W-W-P membership. That comes with hardware and software and analytics, and it's designed to help you improve, improve your health, improve your performance, get more sleep, lots of good things.

If you want to hear more about whoop, too, we've got two great guests talking about it, Marston Sawyers and Heber Cannon, better known as the Buttery Bros. Marston and Heber are some of the kings of content in the CrossFit space, and these guys know a thing or two about fitness. They are documentary filmmakers who travel the world to capture the fittest people on the planet in action. That work has resulted in a large social media following and has made them two of the most recognizable people in CrossFit. The buttery bros, as they're known, sit down with our resident CrossFit expert, Mike Lombardi to share their stories from the road, how Woop helped

keep them safe while traveling during COVID, their thoughts on nutrition, their diet, how they go about programming their workouts and what is next for them and for CrossFit. These guys are a lot of fun. I know you're going to enjoy this episode. So without further ado, here are Mike and the Buttery Bros. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Woop Podcast. I'm Mike Lombardi.

I'm here with the Buttery Bros. Thanks for having us. I'm stoked to be here, man. It's cool to see your secret layer up here in the city, just overlook in Boston. So for those in the CrossFit space, you're very well aware of the Buttery Bros, but for those that haven't met them yet, I will let them introduce themselves. All right. My name is Marston Sawyers. Heber Cannon. And we're known as the Buttery Bros. We're documentary filmmakers, but we're also YouTube personalities that travel the world featuring different fitness people and kind of eating a lot of pancakes.

And we got our start by covering the sport of fitness or CrossFit back in 2009 through 2008. team working for CrossFit and then they've kind of started our own thing outside of that since then whoop's been in the space the crosswood space for a while obviously we started working together when you guys kind of went solo what's been some of the cool stuff that you know you've seen over the years with your own whoop data and sort of interacting with it in the community so we have like a spot on our show that where we talk about you know whoop and feature our community on there called the butter gang which is a really big community that we're really proud of that uh we do a lot of shoutouts and giveaways and stuff like that,

but we also analyze our data and analyze theirs, and it's been really cool to be able to break down basically how involved that community has been. I think for me, one of the coolest things is, like, what got me excited about CrossFit is it's like creating the ultimate superhuman. And, like, I've always had this weird fascination with superheroes as everyone does, which is why there's a successful big movies as possible. and to create like the ultimate person you have to know what the right training modality is and also there's a lot outside of the gym that people are doing and I felt like what I learned

about metrics and data and recording HRV and things like that whoop seemed to be the most accurate brand that was interested in CrossFit you know like that wanted to be a part of this community and so I started seeing athletes wearing it and being like oh what is this tell me more about it I'm like as someone that covers the sport or I'm interested in what kind of things people are and athletes are doing to maximize their potential, and this seemed to be a thing that was regularly appearing on top athletes' wrists.

And so when I got the opportunity to wear it, I was super stoked to just kind of geek out on the data and geek out on how to maximize Rye Recovery and my performance level and capacity and potential through just looking at how my HRV is or respiratory rate or whatever. whatever other data points we look at. And so it's been really cool to see it from some of the earlier generations to now

what you can use the app for is absolutely insane and super beneficial for people. Yeah, I mean, the apps changed so much. I was thinking, I think the first setup we had at a CrossFit event was Wadapalooza, 2017, and it was literally like a pop-up tent and a baby table. We had about 10 straps there. So it's unbelievable to then go to Wad Bluza last year and then see, you know, 25% of the population just rocking their whoop strap. Yeah, and it's crazy not just like we get a lot of experience outside of CrossFit, too,

going to other events and just traveling so much, I see it all the time now. Yeah, it used to be like a Boston thing. You like see people in the airport or around the time. It's like, oh, yeah, Boston whoop. And now it really is just kind of everywhere. Yeah, you guys have exploded. It's awesome. So thanks for being here.

you're making the road tour. Is it a never-ending road tour with you guys? Yeah, it's a never-ending road tour, yeah, just always on the go. Went from, we were in Miami, and then stopping over here, and then we're gone on to the country of Iowa. Lovely this time of here. And every year you kind of profile different athletes, and the sport is seemingly, let's call it, getting younger, new faces.

Obviously, there's, I don't want to say it's the end of a generation because people's careers are longer, but faces that we're used to seeing from 13, 14, 14, much further along in their career. Who are you most excited about seeing over the course of this year? I'm excited to see what Justin Maderos does just because it was a phenomenal mullet, you know?

I should have said magnificent. That's an alliteration. Magnificent mouly, yeah. The M&M, yeah. But I think that guy moves really well. I think he's got a great haircut. And he's just like a golden retriever. He's just smiling and he's like always up for a good time, you know?

He's only, what, 21, 22 years old? I think he's 21. Yeah, I remember just meeting him at the Granite game. back in 2019 and like I didn't know who he was on the floor but his parents screaming off to the side of the floor I was like I want to go hang out with that crew so I just went and embedded myself with his family for like a whole workout of Justin working out and we screamed together as a crew at Justin to help him win that event I don't know if he did but yeah he seems like a a really fun excited guy it's good to have different faces in CrossFit that not that aren't so

serious but are exciting to see where they go yeah and have a real personality yeah and him and his coach adam like their dynamics really cool because uh their story was kind of unique the the fact that like adam was done coaching and i think you wanted to step out of that role and then there was some people from the gym that were uh kind of trying to tell them about this kid justin you know and they're like hey you should really take a look at this guy and i think that justin like wrote up a really long like thought out paper of like why you should coach me and then he was like wow this is this kid has a lot of a thought behind this and and after reading that and after meeting with him he's like okay maybe I can step back into this coach's role over the past year it's obviously been challenging

probably to create the content with COVID restrictions and ability to travel and people's willingness to kind of get in how have you sort of gone about that have you how have you kind of utilized your own loop data one to make people feel comfortable and also make yourself feel comfortable. That's one thing that actually, like, at the beginning of COVID, that when you guys started telling me, actually, like, you can track your respiratory rate. And that is a really good indicator of what, that you have COVID.

And so, like, and I know people that have got COVID and they have whoops. And they've said, okay, what does your respiratory rate look like when you first found out? And all of them were like, oh, it skyrocketed. I was in the red. and so now anytime I'm traveling and I'm going to athletes when I wake up as like a concern of hey I don't want to be the person spreading COVID the first thing I check is my sleep data and my respiratory rate and anytime it's skyrocketed I've either tried to go to find a test or not do anything that day and try and stay away from people and see what happens the next day if I haven't immediately gone to get a test I wait and if it drops back down I'm like I'm probably okay but that's in something that's like, if we're on the road, luckily I haven't had a big spike when we've been traveling to people. And so I haven't been worried about it. But being home with my family, I've had one or two spikes where I was like, I think there's a fluke because I feel fantastic

or I have COVID and I should go get this checked out and gotten a test and had a negative result. Yeah, I mean, aside from just the, from the data and everything, like when we were making all this stuff, we were traveling almost every weekend. And when everything went into lockdown, And we're like, hey, we've got to pivot and we got to be creative now and try and do some, you know, science experiments in our backyard. And so we did that for a little while. And then we had a local dealership sponsor us a truck that we call the butter truck, the butterwhip. And we've done a lot of road trips, gone and been with a lot of different athletes in a lot of different states. And the whole time it was like, you know, especially leading up to the games, it was like, okay, we're good.

We're in the clear. We don't have COVID. We're being responsible. and we were always checking the data and checking the whoop, and it was almost like one trip would lead to another trip, and when we'd get to that place and get everything filmed that we were trying to get done, we'd be like, okay, should we try and go to another one?

Yeah, this was right before the CrossFit games, and so it was like we wanted to produce, we've produced a 2020 CrossFit games documentary, and we hadn't 100% inked the deal with CrossFit to do this, so we were, one, trying to get a lot of content for the documentary if we do it, and two, maximize this short window of time, between stage one and stage two of the CrossFit games to build content for our YouTube channel.

And so every trip was like, do we roll the dice one more time and go on another airplane and be surrounded by other people or do we go home and be safe and road trip to California when the time's right for the CrossFit games? And so we rolled the dice and specifically like checking the pooped out every day to make sure that we were no respiratory spikes. And luckily we got really lucky, I think,

and didn't have any problems at all, had negative COVID tests the whole time and got to eight out of the 10 CrossFit Games athletes that qualified for the games before the CrossFit games happened. That's really impressive. Yeah, it was a lot of trips. It was a turn-and-burn type of situation, and I'm really happy with the content that we got with them

and also the stuff that fed into the documentary that will be coming out later this summer. With all that travel, do you guys do anything to plan specifically or are you just like, this is the best, cheapest flight? We're getting on it, and maybe I slept, maybe I didn't. Well, it's usually like, like, we still don't even have a flight home, to be honest. We're supposed to go to Iowa tomorrow, and then we don't know if we didn't go to Denver after that. So it's usually, you know, travel and, you know, Heber's my travel agent.

Yeah, I'll say this. When we were traveling in October, because that was the most risky time period, right, was going to the CrossFit games. I was going only Delta because at that time they weren't using middle seats. Yeah. So it was just like, let's take every precaution we can. and then I've tried to avoid really early flights unless it's like the best option for what we're filming. And so it's also a fine balance of like,

hey, we've got to have these COVID restrictions, but I also want to make sure that I'm home for family time as much as I possibly can for how much we travel. And it's probably harder going the east or the west east. So you guys are basically burning a day every single time. But like we've gotten really lucky. That's the only time we've taken an early flight was we took like a 6 a.m. flight from Salt Lake

to a. Atlanta, but it's direct. And I think both times we've taken it, we've been upgraded to first class, so we've been able to just sleep the whole flight. And so you get there actually kind of refreshed, and it's only noon, and you're able to, like, hit the ground running. Yeah, you guys went to Aruba not too long ago, right? Yeah, that was a real rough trip.

Yeah, real rough, you know. But, you know, so Matt was going to go, and he was like trying to, you know, Matt Frazier, he was like, hey, I'm going to Aruba, you guys should come. And we're like, well, you know, yeah. so we went and that was our second time going and we'd been there and worked with the local affiliate there and there's a really good crew there and it's crazy though because it's basically at a quarter capacity so you'd be walking around with Matt Fraser and people would be like do you want a cabana and I'd be like yeah so I just we would uh you know take full advantage

take full advantage of Maddie Fraser's uh you know upgrades so he was readily uh recognized in Aruba or just it happened to be that the affiliate people also worked in different areas of yeah that's what it was so like people from the affiliate worked at the Ritz Carlton or they had connections at the Renaissance Aruba hotel and then the owner of the affiliate there Javier's like he's connected with everyone down there and so we'd be like hey we want to go do this and he'd be like okay let me get you over there and make sure you have a private cabana set up on like the best location that you could yeah we went to this private it was called the residence island Renaissance Island

Renaissance Island. Yeah, and they have like flamingos and everything and they take us through these cabanas and they have Matt Fraser's name like etched into the sand. So it was very nice. It was very welcoming, you know. I was feeding him grapes and he was pouring champagne all over me. It was a lot of fun. I mean, how do you take another trip after that? You just say, hey, Matt, when do you take another?

We're available. And that's the only international flight we've taken since, you know, lockdown and everything. And I think the Aruba is ready to have people, you know. It seemed like an amazing spot. Yeah. So much so that I was looking into burning some miles. Oh, yeah. Get over there, man.

Yeah, they got to use them. A lot of stuff to offer. And that affiliate down there for Crossfitters is awesome. Yeah. It's beautiful. Favorite gym ever? I mean, aside for my home gym, sure. Muscle and Lung's CrossFit.

So they have a couple different locations. But the one that we really like is their outdoor location. And it's like you can do muscle ups underneath a palm tree. And, you know, there's, it's just sunshine. and it's beautiful there. So as far as location goes, that's one of the best. What's your favorite place you guys have been to in the Buttery Bros era? I would say Aruba's up there.

Aruba's up there. I mean, there's things that make me like places better. And a lot of it's just the experience in the people. Like the Hawaiian Trail Run in Kauai, that is one of the coolest events. And we had a lot of fun doing that and covering that. And I can't wait to go back. The other one was Wollongong, right? Wallong, we went to an event called Tribal Clash, and we actually won that event.

Yeah, we won. We're world champions. We're basically the world defending champs. Yeah, because they haven't had an event since COVID. So we won the only event in 2020. Yeah. And we hold the mask. Yeah.

Come get it. Yeah. Are there any competitions that really jumped out at you? Wadapalooza. Wadapalooza. Wadapalooza. Wadapalooza is my favorite event. Just always.

Just because of the vibes. You're outside. you're not like confined to an indoor convention center that's just like dimly lit so it looks beautiful on video but it's also like the people are beautiful the surrounding location and you know we're we're just out there kind of just you know we're gathering content but we're also just living the lifestyle you know like kicking back and enjoying having a booth there and it was a lot of fun let's go back a little bit in time so you worked at crossfit that whole era ends when did you guys society were going to one form up again and they guys did a lot of work together and then where

does the name come from uh so we basically when we were let go like we took a few weeks marzin was down in south america he got home and we kind of connected and we were we had been talking to companies that had reached out to us that wanted to sponsor or not to work together to create a documentary the 2019 documentary and this big production company out of the UK and some other brands in space reached out and they're like hey we want to work with you on this um and so we were talking at that time about like okay what would this look like how do we cover this and the big production company after talking to crossfit and us and seeing just how crazy the landscape was at the time we're actually like they were like we want to do this documentary but you guys can't guarantee that

you can film this because you don't know that you'll have access to the game so we can't put any money down on it because we don't know what the outcome's going to be and so they kind of found their way out and by that time it was like it was like six weeks since we had been let go and events were starting to happen sanctionals were starting to happen and so we hopped on a flight to Dubai and we tried to cover that with the intent of we're going to try and create a docu series of the crossfit season and ending with like two or three episodes at the crossfit games and still kind of figuring out what this looks like and how are we going to make this a financially successful thing for us. Like I got a family that I got to feed. And going to Dubai was like a huge money

suck. Like we didn't make money there. So then we started doing commercial work. And I was like, I think we should document some of the fun things that we're doing outside of making these commercials. And that led to us doing one of the events that we had seen in Dubai called Acid Bath. And we did it with Matt Fraser coaching us through it with Chris Henshaw also coaching us. Oh man, he was he was super on the Hebrew trade. Yeah, he was on the heaps team. He was like not giving me any credit. He's a big heber fan. Yeah, he also always brings these free shoes. Thanks, Chris. But let's just set the record straight that I beat you. Yeah, you

beat me on that workout. I was like a pool of a man on the ground afterwards. If you've ever done it, what is it? It's a 500 meter ski, 500 meter row, a thousand meter C2 bike, all on concept two machines. Hintzah's back there, like yelling out split times

to him about where I'm at and where he's at. He's just like totally ride on the heber train. There was only one machine of each, so I would go and then Marzen would did it after me and so he's yelling at me like you hold a 145 pace here there's no way he can beat you and I'm like he outweighs me on every machine of course I can get this but anyways it was a really fun experience and we had this footage

and so when we got back I was working on the commercial I was like hey Marsam why don't you go through this footage and see if you can create like some sort of vlog about what we're doing and we ended up releasing that episode right before Wadapalooza like literally two or three days before we got to Guadapalooza and walking around that event, people already were recognizing us as the Buttery Bros. Yeah. So you can tell them about the name.

So Buttery Bros is back when we worked at CrossFit, we would always like hit a nice composed shot and I'd be all stoked about it and run over to Heapro like, do check out this spot. You got to look at this. And he's like, oh, dude, that's super buttery. So there was just like a term we would like pump each other up with with like, you know, composition or, you know, whatever it was, being smooth, you know. And so we knew that we were like, let's call, you know, this thing,

buttery something, buttery guys, buttery dudes, buttery boys, buttery bros. Yeah. And then I was like, okay, we'll just call the YouTube channel that. And then, you know, it turned into a whole pancake extravaganza now. Yeah, how'd the pancakes get pulled in?

That was actually his wife. In the same hotel room over, like we're like uploading the video and we're like, how do we name this? I need a logo. So I'm designing a logo. My wife's a graphic designer. And I had seen Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

and there's this like, they go to this world where all the food has come alive, and there's butter frogs on top of pancakes that look like lily pads. And so there's this great scene where a mosquito comes and sucks the blood out of the butter, and the butter just kind of melts. And so I was like, babe, like, I want a butter guy with a face that's going like, ooh, but he's melting on like a stack of pancakes, kind of like that. And she was like, okay. And so she made the original logo that we use still to this day,

that, like, within a day or two of us kind of pitching that idea. Yeah, and then shortly after that, we're like, well, I guess we should probably, like, eat some pancakes on it, you know? And so we did, like, in one of the early episodes, did, like, a pancake testing. And then, you know, now we've, I would say we're, yeah, we're, you know, it's not every episode, but it's like every other episode, we try to do a pancake thing. Yeah. Not everywhere has pancakes that are worth getting.

No, stay away from the Dutch. Yeah. The Danish pancakes, yeah, I mean, they're crepes. Just call them a crepe. Yeah, call them what they are. They're not a pancake. So despite the fact that, you know, the pancake piece is tied to the name, it seems like you guys still pretty tight on nutrition, though.

Yeah. Relative. Relatively. Like. I mean, he were tracks. I mean, it was funny. It was last night. He was, like, trying to track all of his stuff.

I'm like, how are you tracking that stuff? You know, because we ate like, what do we have? Well, we went to this place out by. Jane M. Diner. Yeah, J&M. Dider. They had a Reese's pieces, waffeeces, waffee, with like all sorts of fixings on there. And I'm like, that's a shot in the dark.

I don't know how you're going to track that, but he knows some sort of algorithm. Yeah, I would just like ballpark count macros. So when I'm on the road, I'm trying to, I haven't done this regularly throughout the Buttery Bros, but since November or October, I've been tracking everything I've eaten. And usually if I'm on the road a long period of time,

I'll let that slide. But when I'm home, I'm pretty accurate on like hitting every macro. And so, like, it's not always the cleanest food, but I'm hitting those specific numbers and trying to make sure my fiber stays up is really, like, the only other thing I focus on. And when I'm home, I'm just a meat and veggie guy. Like, I'm a big Trager guy. So I'll go to this local meat market, and I'll pick out a bunch of meats, and then I'll just grill those up with some veggies. And I'm like, I don't need to know what all the numbers are. I just know it's clean, real food that I'm eating, and I'm not, you know, trying to geek out too much on it.

Yeah, see, I like to have my fruity pebbles, so I can justify that I think by at least, making sure it fits in my window of macros. I like fresh fruit around the house, so. Great drop there. Really good. Would you say that this is the fittest you both have been in your life? Ooh, the fittest. I mean, we've been working out with some beasts lately, you know, like Caddy D and Chandler Smith.

I mean, I would say that, you know. I think there's elements of yes and no, like. Maybe not the strongest I've been, but I feel like as far as well-rounded. and being able to do whatever I want to do and feeling like I can throw down against, well not throw down you know, scale it down. Yeah. And then do the workouts that these other, you know,

professionals are doing and I feel capable and I feel healthy and and, you know, yeah, capable. Is this about the best of each of you has done in the open? Oh, actually, I don't know. I haven't looked at the where I ranked overall

and compared to previous years. Because I think my best years were back when I was, like, training with people every day that were trying to go to the CrossFit games. And now, like, I'll spend the majority of my time doing just lifts. Yeah, he does a lot of accessories. Yeah, accessories. The gym we go to, there's, like, an upstairs where it's all just, like, the clanging bang, you know, like, with all the machines and stuff. And I just hear him up there just dropping shit all the time.

And I'm always like, yeah, that's heaver up there, you know. I'm just, I'm the type of guy that, like, I show up. I don't ever really know what I'm going to do. And I kind of, like, ask my buddies around the gym because everybody's either doing comedy. train or they're doing proven or they're doing hard work pays off and i'm always just kind of like i like cherry pick yeah i definitely cherry pick i like to do what i'm good at you know like i'm i'm 33 i don't need to you know be doing pistols and all that stuff you know so i like to just get in enjoy it and get out it's not just pistols it's any weakness oh no no no i don't want to do that well there's not many weaknesses

you know i've had multiple knee surgeries i don't need you know i have two legs i'm going to squad on both of them. That's fair. So Buttery Bros. started as a way to potentially make a content series about the CrossFit season. Yeah. And now it's incredibly successful. You've done multiple docs. You have another one coming out.

Yeah. Yep. And you have an emerging supplement company. Yeah. Where does that? How did that, that's like a big jump. It was a big jump. Well, we had been talking to a handful of supplement companies about working with us and

going back and forth. And then I randomly got a DM from this guy named Jeremy. I think it was Jeremy that reached out first. Who was like, hey, me and my buddy are starting a supplement line. Like, we want to talk to you. And I was like, I was like, who's this guy? Like, I'd never heard of this guy. I went to his Instagram and tried to figure out who he was.

And he had like zero identifying things on his gram that signified that he was in the supplement companies at all. But I was like, hey, it's worth a shot. like, if we're going to do this, this sounds really fun. I've been an entrepreneur building the Buttery Bros. Like, it would make sense to try and do something like this. If we're going to do it, it'd be cool to build something that's ours as opposed to just being a part of another company. And so I sent him back an email and said,

hey, I'm going to introduce you to our manager James, but I'd love to hear what you guys have to say and get to know you guys a little bit more. And so we hopped on a phone call, and I met the other guy named Paul who has had experience with this company called Cellucor, which for years, my favorite BCAA has been their extend line. I love all those flavors.

I thought that's like one of the best tasting and best supplements out there. And then he also did this other one that's newer called Ghost Life, which I haven't ever really tried, but I've loved the branding of it. So I love the imagery here. Yeah, they have like the candy. Yeah, exactly. It was Swedish fish. And I was like, I had actually reached out to them like two years ago.

And I was like, hey, we should collab. I think that like your taste buds and my taste buds are. are very similar. Eight years old. I was like, a six year old. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, had reached out to them in the past. And so when I found that out, and then I figured out who Jeremy is and what experience

he's had, I was like, oh, this could be a super team. Like, I think we could do really cool things with this. Let's, let's have this conversation for sure. And it's taken since that was like August of last year. And now it's taken until now to, like, we just announced, what, three weeks ago, two weeks ago that we're doing this. And brought in Matt Fraser. Heard of them?

Yeah. make goat noises, you know? Yeah, yeah. So it's been a really fun process to get to where we are now through that. But that's been an exciting venture for sure. Yeah, so we're, you know, scheduled to release and have a presence of the game. Like, we're going to have a booth there for podium, and then we're also going to have samples and everything.

And I think we're going to be able to launch come July. So will Matt Fraser's return to the games be selling protein or selling supplements? One would hope he comes back. He's just going to be like one of those cute girls out in the parking lot, just slinging samples. So there's a lot to look forward to. Obviously, you're not going to tell when the documentary comes out, but pre-games.

Pre-games. Pre-games. And that was quite the challenge just with the whole thing with, you know, like we've already talked about with COVID and everything, but then also just being at the games and, you know, being in a bubble. And then, you know, it was really cool to be able to have Matt's last year be at the pinnacle and be at the ranch and aromas

and everything and the 5 and 5 was really cool just because it was super intimate the fact that there was no fans or anything it was such a different experience because we've been going to the games I think that was like my 11th year going and you know you're used to them crossing the finish line and hearing the roar of the crowd and seeing this big spectacle and then you know Matt you just hear Matt breathing and crosses the finish line nobody says

anything you're just like hey good job dude very casual very casual yeah and it was just funny it's just like he just dominated and it was like it was almost like all the men were like man we got to get put our heads together trying to beat this guy you know it was like you're going to work together as a team yeah who said that adler right adler kept pushing that he was like fired up about not letting him win every event yeah so you've been in it in the sport long enough how would you say that rich froning is different than math Fraser. Ooh. I think they have very, that's interesting.

I think there's different takes on how they approach the sport. Rich has a little bit more of a classic crossfitter thing where he's doing, and they might have an opinion about what I'm saying here, and I might not be accurate because I haven't followed Rich closely for a while, but looking at what they do on Mayhem, and when I've been with him in the past, it was Metcons every day, and then some. form of a longer endurance thing. And Matt has a very regimented thing where I would say the biggest factor is

Matt takes off a huge and almost ridiculous amount of time before starting to train again from the CrossFit games. In fact, I think, like, I've heard him say, like, from the time the games gets over, he doesn't even, like, pick up a barbell or anything until the, I think his first workout back

is usually the first workout of the open. Yeah, or right around that time. Like, he'll start doing, like, I think that's his first me. but he'll start doing like bike intervals or other things and then um i think to an effect like they would matt wouldn't do as much crossfit until closer to the to the games or to the open but does a lot more endurance training and and that type of boring stuff where a lot of other athletes are doing met cons multiple metcons a day and so you you start to see that like that happens

more now where you see people in Zone 2 training much more regularly and I think that's something that Matt did pretty regularly in his training leading up to the game. So do you think that the sport is fundamentally changing in the way people train that they're looking at it as yeah we're still going to do all these different things

combined but it's really important to train the bike and train multiple versions of the bike and spending the time building the engine. What I'm fascinated by is to see like I haven't done this yet but I would like to look at what HWPO training looks like, especially as it continues to build

it out because it's just something that's dropped recently and I think he's got just like one track versus proven because I'm interested to see what Tia's been doing and what Matt's been doing because they've been collaborating but now they have what seems kind of different programs and how they ramp throughout the year because that's a really good like you have

two people that have been on the top and dominating the field for years and they like you can now analyze that training program and see what works for you. I think every athlete has different weaknesses, right? So you can't program the same thing for everybody, but you can learn from really important, you can learn for people that have been there and see like, oh, I've got a similar body type to this person. What have they done to be successful? And how can I also then grow as an athlete by learning from this person

as well? And so I think it's a fascinating time to be a crossfitter coming up because you have all this knowledge that's out there that wasn't there five years ago or even three years ago. And really just the platforms too. It's just, you know, And like even ComTrain's programming is really fun to follow. A lot of people at our gym-ed-up do it. But I feel like just with the technology, with the apps and everything, I think that a lot of people are, you know, finding things that they like to follow and, you know, taking what they leave and, you know, taking what they like

and leaving what they don't. Yeah, we cherry-packed real good. I was going to say, you talked about the cherry-picking. I think that each programming option out there has a certain athlete that it's, you know, it's made for, basically. Yeah. Yeah, and then people, oh, I like that. Oh, I like another one.

And then before long, they're doing that programming. I'm surprised how many people I know that are, that are subscribed to like two or three of those applications. Like, they're paying a lot of money every month for programming and all they're really doing is cherry picking between the three as opposed to like following one and getting the actual benefit of following a program. Yeah, I mean, and I just, you know, I do that for sure. I cherry pick, you know, the, the, you know, the group at the particular time of the day.

Yeah, you're like, what are you doing? That looks boring. Okay, what are you doing? Yeah, I'm all about the glitz and the glam, you know? What do you think of the new CrossFit so far? Man, so we got this awesome opportunity to go hang out with Eric Rosa in Vail for like a weekend and skiing. And it was literally like the three of us, Eric. Shout out to Mr. Blue.

Yeah, Mr. Blue's his cat. We got to know him real good. We had an awesome experience. I think he's super fun. I think he's really smart, gets the community, gets the culture. and as someone who is, like, you could say that we were kind of jaded by CrossFit because we were fired by him, but, like, I love this community. I love this sport.

I would like to see it grow. And I had really good friends, like childhood friends that knew Eric, that don't CrossFit, have nothing tied to the community. And they reached out when they found out he bought the company. And they were like, hey, you should support this guy. He's awesome. And I was like, cool. I trust you and I value your opinion more than I do most people.

And then when I met Eric, it lived up to the expectations. And so I'm stoked about where he's going. But that said, I haven't seen what's happening behind the scenes and what's going on. But I like that guy. And I have hope that I have more hope now than I did two years ago or a year ago about the future of the sport for sure. Yeah, I met him at the games. And it was on Saturday night right after they did The Happy Star. And he comes up to me in Hebrew, we just met him.

He's like, hey, you want to go ahead ahead in this workout right now? And I was like, yes, sir, I do. you know and then we beat him yeah let the record straight that i did beat him but then oh no it was crazy so he takes us to veil to go skiing dude is a beast on the hill like he's a really good skier and like you know we skied from like nine till you know lunch time and you know like a logical person i'm like i'm going to sit here and enjoy this meal i'm going to take a good hour 10 minutes goes by and he's like all right we got to get back on the hill we got to get going and like we skied, I've never skied that much in my entire life. Dude was just up and down and he was just

all about the powder and getting all the enjoyment out of the hill. The next day, one percent recovery. You got? You were one percent recovery. And I think it's because we hadn't eaten enough. Like I also, I didn't track carbs that day, but I, I know looking at the day, like I did not eat enough carbs and I burned through all the, all that I had. And so the next morning, I just ate as much as I could and felt better by noon. And what's cool about Eric is the fact that like even just driving to and from the resort, he was asking us questions and, you know, really open to hearing our, you know, feedback and taking, taking constructive criticism or, you know, like, things that we've learned or things that we've come to, like,

realizations that we've come to over the years. And it's cool just to have somebody that'll take that type of feedback, you know? And I'm not, I didn't ever feel like that was the case in the past and it's cool that he's open to hearing all different opinions yeah it's i think the start has been really great the initiatives and i think eric'd been great as well so what's uh where is where we taking the buttery bros where you guys taking the buttery bros like the sky's the limit now right we're outside of the the realm of just making content yeah i think there's there's for us it's like there's a lot that we can do and and we're just trying to figure out what's the best route to do, like I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of lifestyle I want to have in five to ten years

and what kind of things do I want to be doing. And so I just picture you as like Kevin Costner on a boat off of the coast, you know, just fishing with your long hair. Is this like a water bowl, Kevin Costner? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're drinking your own urine. Yeah, I got it. As long as we have a good filtration system, I'm sure. But I'll have to have web feet to really be able to get those groupers or whatever. Yeah, gills behind the ears.

but yeah like and and i think when i'm when we're doing that we're thinking of things we want to be doing and also when we find ourselves in those scenarios i think is when we create the best content because we're having fun and that energy comes through on camera um i've always thought like my time in the gym is like my adult recess and that was like you know i'm here to have fun and the energy we have on camera is the energy that we have in the gym because it's like the best part of my day and so when we're thinking of what we want to create on on our show. That's what's going through my head.

What do I want to do? Yeah, going to Comtrain and doing a week of training with some of the top athletes in the sport sounds really fun. Let's go do that. Go into Aruba with Matt Fraser. Sounds like an awesome time. And so finding opportunities like that

that present you with both challenging situations and also bucket list items of things that you want to do in your life is one thing that we want to do with the show and then also figuring out how to get beyond just the CrossFit audience, but just a general audience, you know? And I think that's what as content creators you want as an audience that's as broad as possible, but also supportive as possible. And so there's a fine balance between getting outside of CrossFit, but also

making sure you're paying homage to your roots. One of the things we do is, like, not take ourselves too seriously, and I actually prefer finding scenarios where I can kind of look like a fool. Like, you know, wearing women's leggings with Whitney Simmons and doing a butt workout, you know, like stuff like that where it's just like, okay, this is a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I feel like that's where all the growth happens, you know, living on the edge and doing that type of stuff. And I feel like people see that and they're like, oh, these guys can have some fun, you know, and we were just talking about country line dancing.

I'm like, yeah, I could do that. I could boot up and get a hat. I told him he's got to wear, he's got to wear jorts. Yeah, you know, eat peanuts. I don't know what they do. Peanuts for line dancing? Yeah, I feel like, it seems like it makes sense. The floor is covered in peanuts.

Floors are like Crockerbell? Yeah, yeah, something like that, you know. I could see that. Yeah, banjos. So the plan for now is to see where this takes you. Yeah, plan for now. And then find ways to grow that. Like we've talked about, you know, can this be a TV show?

Is that worth it? Like, YouTube has such an amazing reach right now. Like, where do we want to invest our time and energy? And the sky's the limit with that side of things and then growing things outside of it, like these business. this has been like the coolest part about what we're doing to me is the life experiences and then the cool people we get to meet like the rooms we get to be in are absolutely insane and and that is something that I don't take for granted anytime we go to a show because it's

it's been super fun to just meet incredibly cool and successful people that I've been able to just learn from well the show's been outstanding it's an exception so it's been a lot of fun it's been awesome to watch the progress, and it really is in an amazing spot now. So, congrats to you both. Thanks a lot of us. Thanks to you guys. You guys were one of our first big sponsors to come on and work with us and believe in us. And so, like, we've got a special place in our hearts for whoop.

And sorry to everyone that missed out on the butter kit. Yeah, it's gone. Yeah, if you didn't swipe up, you're not getting it. Yeah, we told you. But, guys, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. Thanks a lot, man. Thank you.

Thank you to the buttery bros and Mike for coming on the podcast. A reminder, you can use the code Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D to get 15% off a W-W-P membership. Check us out on social at Woop at Will-A-M-A-Mad. And stay healthy, folks. Stay in the green.