The Sevan Podcast - #367 - Talkin' Team Quarterfinals & Individual Semifinals with Brian Friend

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Talking with CrossFit Games analyst about the team quarterfinals leaderboard and also talking about the individual semifinal invites going out. Partners: https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://www.barbelljobs.com/ - WORLD'S #1 JOB BOARD FOR THE CROSSFIT COMMUNITY https://thesevanpodcast.com/ - OUR WEBSITE https://sogosnacks.com/ - SAVE15 coupon code - the snacks my kids eat - tell them Sevan sent you! https://www.hybridathletics.com/produ... - THE BARBELL BRUSH Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So, okay, let's just do it we'll just do a rehearsal okay so tomorrow we're having on justin nunley he's got like three million followers on tiktok i don't do tiktok but maybe i wanted just to go over and look at his shit i came across him on instagram could you pull up his uh account suza no no no wrong wrong supposed to be the dude right it's supposed to be the guy and then okay go ahead let me see you got it okay go maybe you have it perfect fuck what am i i'm micromanaging sorry go ahead we have this guy i'll do it up again we have this guy coming on tomorrow justin i'm really excited to have him on. He's really creative.

He comes from the lineage of people like Where's the Beef, What You Talking About, Willis, and he's just really good one-liners, and he's got this really cool one-liner that he always uses. Okay. Could you play the clip susan a bra listen did you know there's a thousand people living in the tunnels under las vegas oh my god you know what i need right now a bra listen did you know there's a thousand people living in the tunnels under las vegas now you do. You know what I need right now? A bra. Okay, that's good.

So that's how he's found this niche where he shows something, and then he cuts it off, and then he drops a fact. Like, do you know that cheetahs only fart when they're asleep or shit like that? So I'm excited. uh we have we have uh shirts um in stock uh ceo shirts uh your mom shirts uh politically homeless shirts we got it all you should go check it out i don't know how fast they're shipping i ordered my red one i don't know why i don't have it yet but i'm i'm actually really really pumped to get it i don't know if i'm more excited oh yeah those are cool those are cool you know which ones are really popular the excited oh yeah those are cool those are cool you know which one's really popular the tank tops yeah the girls love those tank tops but uh you're a good dude

oh and that comes in green did you get sure i sent you shirts taylor did you get them i didn't get them yet oh perfect well i didn't check my mailbox either i check it like every three days i'll check it so so you so you, when you, you, you, when you come out of the trailer park and you go over to like the, where all 75 boxes go over there once every three days. It's group mail and I lost the key. So I got to wait for that. You have to stand by there.

Casual sender. Huge Taylor self fan fan thank you for sharing your story peace and love um brian friend is here today you get to pick his brains brain brains brain is it plural or is it singular fuck it brains and uh about quarterfinals and semifinals and uh and and i want i want to start with this and i brought this up before and hopefully taylor's on my side i forget where brian falls but how many opens how many games with championships equals team games championships let me say that again how many individual is it is one individual win worth two team wins? So if Matt Fraser

has five wins and Rich Froning has four but he has six team wins, how many team wins does he have? Do we know? He has five currently. He's going for six which would be ten total if he's able to pull it off this year. So let's say we give him only, he has to win two teams to be as good as one win of individual.

Then he would still be better than Matt. Shit, if you made him three and he won this year, he'd be better than Matt. Which is my champ. It's interesting. I mean, you know I used to be on the total opposite side fence of this about even comparing the two, but it's getting ridiculous, right? I mean, he's proven.

He's proven. No? Taylor, you just want one. You're not greedy. Just want one. Chalk one out. Pretty much everyone just just wants one it's hard to win one though um so so uh but before we get into the um uh the exciting fun stuff were there any problems um did hillar attack over the weekend um anyone screw up anyone anything worth noting

did the workouts leak anything that was absurd listen can i just preface this by saying why does no i don't get why these athletes aren't putting their videos as unlisted taylor self has just talked more in the first in in three sentences than he talked in the entire last appearance on the show let's put that in the record books uh why why taylor why wouldn't they why wouldn't they put it up just so they don't get drilled yeah like what i mean yeah that's a good point yeah why make it public brian i don't have an answer for that at first i thought it was a dumb question but that's actually a brilliant question. I get why Mayhem does, right? They're a brand. But why would some just...

Like Juan Alfredo Ortiz from fucking Argentina have his video up? Same reason that I have videos up is... Cloud? No, to just... If there is some random

person out there that thinks it's worth watching me do a 15-minute workout, they can. Also, as a point of accountability, I think that the athletes should – every athlete who is especially considering the possibility of making a semifinal shouldn't really have anything to hide. The obvious reason they put it up there is to promote their YouTube channel. Yeah, but some of these guys, they don't have anything really to promote. Do you know what I mean? They're promoting themselves just for their family, friends, community, whatever. I guess.

I guess. What do you think, Taylor? You buy that? Is it worth the 600 subscribers you have? I don't know. I used to put my open workouts up on YouTube, and I had like five subscribers. But you have nothing to lose, though. But you have these them i don't know i used to put my open workouts up on youtube and i had like five subscribers but you have nothing to lose though but you have nothing to lose you're not you're i think what taylor's saying is is that we're talking about people who want to

move on to the next round why let some random dude in his fucking garage in front of his black suburban that he cleans every day uh call, call your reps out. You know what I mean? Like my only problem with it is, well, that exactly, but you're opening yourself up to criticism from people in my opinion, who I just don't fucking care what they think. And I'm a really good mover. I know I'm a really good mover and I know my reps are good. You know, my boss at my gym would be the first person to know rep me in any qualifying workout oh yeah yeah spencer's that yeah i mean he dude he fucked me up last year um in one workout we had to like do three um i just yeah i i just envision a lot of these i mean i i like

i would just mine's unlisted that's all i'll say about it how many subscribers do you have like four yeah can you go can you bring up his youtube let's see if we can get him six yeah i just found brian you can't even find mine oh yeah we can taylor does look like a butcher um and b, what you're saying is like, hey, it's pointless. You're going to get caught eventually anyway. Is that what you're saying? No. There's people who we know didn't have good scores this year that are, you know,

being allowed to maintain those scores. Through these comments. Oh, you found it. You got six now, brother. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah subscribe to that shit yeah nice you turn the camera sideways we got yeah yeah like like i put my i i put my uh last chances all unlisted um i don't know why who's blake shelton who's blake shelton we can see who you're subscribed to here blake shelton am i oh dude scroll down let me see let me see

this who is blake shelton theo von do you know who that is that's how you should get on your Blake Shelton. Am I? Oh, dude, dude, dude. Scroll down. Let me see. Who is Blake Shelton? Theo Vaughn. Do you know who that is? That's how you should get on your podcast. I've tried. I've tried. Really? Oh my God. I told him he could sit on my face. That didn't do it? Damn. No.

I should tell him. I should send him a picture of Taylor and say you can sit on Taylor's face. Fuck it, Taylor. Will you cut me a steak up back there? Go back in the kitchen and just cut me off a picture of Taylor and say, you can sit on Taylor's face. Taylor, will you cut me a steak up back there? Go back in the kitchen and just cut me off a piece of steak. Looks like if Woody Harrelson grew up, man, some guys said it looked like I was competing in the wild West over fifties division.

I see it. A thumb with a mustache. Yes. division i see it a thumb with a mustache yes listen a guy named johan lopez called you a thumb with a mustache wow i'm gonna shit myself that's so good hey dude that's actually pretty funny to go with that next halloween have someone like make your forehead a fingernail just go with the thumb dude that would be amazing okay we have a whole show to just fuck with taylor stop making him laugh okay let's let's look at these quarterfinal scores brian do we want to start by region

and then go to the worldwide leaderboard just jam through the regions real quick okay let me know how i can fuck it up so just go ahead and tell me where to start at and and i'll do it wrong uh let's let's do north america last since it's the most fun is that true brian let's do that let's do south america south america men or women we're doing a team court team quarterfinals i told you i'd fuck it up um south america well it's not disappoint i don't know sorry go ahead brian i'm not sure what's gonna happen in south america it's um obviously there were already four you know four teams before the season started that were disqualified out of Argentina. And I think that there's a potential for more teams in South America to be disqualified at some point.

But we'll see what happens. And so at the top here, we see one Argentinian team, kind of a surprising team from Paraguay, and then a bunch of Brazilian teams. But in general, the team competition in South America, I don't know a ton about it the like two teams that i you know kind of thought would be the ones to beat there um aren't probably participating this year in the capacity that i thought they would

the team that kind of what does that mean they got disqualified is that what you mean okay those are those are those that happened early we talked about that right that was uh like for kudos teams or something or mayhem to mayhem teams got of the four. I got one mayhem team, the South American team, but all four, I think all four of the teams were kind of using the same affiliate listed affiliate as their training base.

And it wasn't a legitimate training space or something like that. Um, but I don't, I just don't know a lot of these teams. The cute one cross cross the team. Our Argentina is a recognizable, but we'll take over from here brian brian are are any of these teams in the top 50 worldwide no no oh damn and how many of these teams will go to madison two okay and do you think that um and how many of these teams will go to the semifinals?

Oh, well, this is a good question. Thank you. Shit. I knew I'd get one sooner than that. After this, let's get the fuck out of South America, Matt. No, no, it's a good, it's a good question because I was noticing this, uh, this morning really, when I was reviewing the quarterfinals to semifinals advancements for the teams is that a really high percentage of teams is making it through this round because there was a

pretty low percentage of sign up in some of the continents relative to the number of spots they get. So in North America gets 80 spots, Europe gets 40 spots and the rest of the continents all get 20 spots but in the case of south america for example only 37 teams signed up so more than half of the teams that signed up for quarterfinals are advancing the semifinals okay and it's not it's not there's only really one continent where it's like kind of egregiously weird i I would say, which is Europe. They had obviously every continent gets 25% of their teams that advance to the quarterfinals, and 25 or less percent of their teams that advance from the semifinals to the games.

But in the case of European teams in quarterfinals, 74% of the participating teams are advancing to semifinals which almost makes it like a why like a question of like why is that competition even there only to eliminate 14 out of 54 teams wait for what for for south america europe okay sorry then you need to tell. How many teams? So 40 get to go to the semifinals, but you're saying only 57? 54 signed up. Wow. Wow.

So it's even weirder than South America. Give me the numbers for North America for that out of the 80. 80 advanced, 98 are cut. Okay. Okay. So they had 178. It's about 50% in all the other continents. Asia is like 65%.

And then Europe is 74% advance. So just to give people a perspective of how I heard this and see if this is right. In North America, there were 178 teams that entered the quarterfinals that tried to make it to the semifinals. And only 80 will be moving on to the semifinals in europe there were 54 teams in the quarterfinals and 40 will make it to the semifinals and then um south america it was 37 teams tried and 20 will make it yep and it was exactly the same numbers in oceania as south america 20 of 37 advance okay in africa there were actually 40 teams that participated, 20 advance. Okay.

And in Asia, only 31 teams participated and 20 advance. Okay. How many participated in North America? 178. And 40 advanced. 80 advanced. 80 advanced. Okay.

So it's just under 50%. So kind of what I think, because obviously CrossFit wants participation in these competitions. They want people to pay the registration fee, and more participation is just generally better for the sport and for the communities that get excited about the team competition, the Affiliate Cup. of is that you can say you get this a maximum of 40 spots in europe but it but you can also you can't have more than 50 of the registrating teams qualify so if only 54 qualify then they only get i guess you know just 27 teams but you could just say like they'll make they'll get uh maybe they say 14 and 14 that go to the two semifinals or whatever. But that didn't happen. No, no, no. They still get the full numbers.

But I'm saying it could be an implementation that CrossFit makes in the future to say, if you want to get your full number of spots, you need to have more teams registered. Because 200, 200. Gotcha, gotcha. So you're not saying something that can be fixed this year, but looking forward, it's worth noting. Yeah, it was just when I looked at it, it was an outlier. Europe was the biggest outlier. Asia was another outlier.

And so I just had this thought that it could be something CrossFit could do to promote participation. If you want to get this number of spots, then you guys need to have more participation. Significantly easier if you're a woman coming from South America as an individual to get to the games than Europe, but significantly easier if you're a team and you want to go to the games coming from Europe. Not necessarily. Okay. The semifinals, not the games.

Yes. The semifinals. Right. Sorry. Fuck that up. Thought I was being smart. Okay. Well, that's good to know. I wonder if there would ever be a time where there would be everyone who signs up gets to go. Then they could change the name to the Special Olympics. All right. Let's move on. Let's move on to Africa. I'm not going to have that much to say about Africa. I just want to know if anyone's in the top 50 there.

No. And how many teams will be at the games? I don't know if they're in the top 50 on the worldwide leaderboard, but in a games-level competition, if 100 teams participate, I wouldn't pick any teams from Africa or South America to make the top 50. Basically what I'm saying is there's teams in in north america and europe that will get cut that would still beat the qualifying teams from those countries that's okay right how it is right how many teams total go to the games 38 there's no last chance qualifier for teams okay

all right and the most come from north america it's distributed the same way and then half as Okay. All right. And the most come from North America. It's distributed the same way, and then half is – Yeah, and I mean what you can say here about the South African teams, which is – it's Africa, but you have to go down. There's a couple other countries represented, but mostly South Africa. Probably one of those top three teams will make it through. Look at the points relative to everyone else. So I would expect that this is a three-team race.

And I mean five points across five workouts is a clean sweep so this team is obviously the favorite going to the semifinals but i don't really know them so i guess i'm looking at their their roster and i don't know these people so okay let's let's let's move to asia asia is a fascinating situation uh because i had heard that the teams um from dubai were not really happy with the selection of south korea as a place to host a semi-final it could be twofold one obviously we know that the uae can host host events because they had the dubai championships there in december. And athletes from all over the world were able to travel, so it would be an easy spot to do it. Whereas in South Korea, which we've talked about before,

there's still some travel restrictions there. But these two teams in second and third, CrossFit Yas Black and CrossFit Alayath, are very good teams. And then you have the team at first, which is this. Actually, I'm really interested in this team in general, and obviously it's super unfortunate what's going on with Russia right now. But the Kleshnikov team in Russia is basically, I think they're like the equivalent of mayhem over there,

meaning they're just like congregating a bunch of athletes in one spot, not necessarily even in one division. So they have a team. They have some athletes that are competing masters. They're doing like local or like a national level competitions throughout Russia and representing this Koleshnikov team. They have some individual athletes that are trying to make a run at the game. So it's just, it's a cool training.

It's like, I view it as, and I haven't been there obviously, but as like kind of like the premier place for CrossFit athletes to train in Russia and their team is obviously in first place here and will have a chance to make the games. But between South Africa, South America and, and Asia, the percentage of participation at the games relative to qualification in the last couple of years has been so bad. It's like, I'm just want, I don't, I love that we have the representation for these teams, but if you make the games, like come to the games. And if you're not going to come to the games, if the representatives from those continents, like last year they had a team that didn't go, a woman that didn't go,

two guys that didn't go. It's like. Which country? Asia. Oh, well they can't come. Right. Well, yeah, this right, right now, obviously there's, but it's like there's always a different reason why they can't get there. And I'm kind of, I would, I just want to see a full games field. I don't care where they come from.

Just give me 40, you know? Can Russians come to USA? They can't even get their flag on the leaderboard. They ain't going to let them in to compete. For the person, hey, Susa, let's show people how to see the team rosters here. So we can just click on any one of these teams. Yep. And then go to view profile.

And then you're going to scroll down to the bottom and it'll go past this leaderboard and at the way bottom, keep going down, all the way down. The top four are the ones that competed in the quarter finals and then anyone who's listed under that, which will have the same four people, are the alternates.

So you can see who competed and who the two alternates are. And you can see who, who competed in who the two alternates are. And you can do this for every team, I believe. Well, now you guys know, Hey, can you travel?

Can, can, can any Russians travel to the United States? Travel from Russia? Google search it. USA, I guess. I mean, Russia travel advisory. Okay.

So, Brian, do you have a solution for that, or are you just expressing frustration? No, it's not. I mean, there are potential solutions for it but uh you know like one of the things hold the games in russia no but you could say um i don't know there's different things that you could do i don't necessarily know what the best solution is i just know that it's been pretty frequent that especially the qualifiers from asia have not been able to make it to the games and i I think it's, you know, it's just disappointing. Like you want to see the best from all over the world.

And if you can't see them for whatever reason, then we want to see someone there that's filling out the, you know, roster of 40. Right. So basically there should be some backfill planned. So it's not wasted. Yeah. You know, I think everyone will want to see that. Like it's already obviously incredibly hard to, to qualify. And when you have, you know, we can just, when you have like 10 guys in North America that are just like, I'm already here.

Like, give me a try. If there's a spot I'll go. And it's like, no, we're just waiting to see if this guy from Russia is going to come, even though he hasn't come for three years. It's like, it's normally, I would say, no, I would disagree with you. But why I agree with you here is also not only are they ready, but they're better.

They're better than the dude that they would fill out. Meaning that there's teams, like you were saying, that there's teams in North America that won't make it, that'll be better than some teams that no show that made it. Yeah. And I mean, it's going to happen no matter what where there's going to be like clear distinctions and inability even at the games the top heat looks a little different than the second heat looks a little different than a third or the first heat

or whatever but there are i think ways that we can increase the overall level of caliber of athlete or teams at the games while still having global representation and opportunity. And Tyler Watkins and I talked about this recently using one of his new metrics, a weighted rating system on a bottom line episode for morning chalk up. I think it's going to air this week. And it was along with an article that we co-wrote about this exact situation. Oh, I can't wait to see how that affects subscriber rate at the morning

chalk up a Tyler Watkins article on scoring. scoring fantastic chubbing up now um okay uh sorry tyler you're a good dude um did you have to chub up aren't you just full chub every time you have that shirt on yeah every time every time it's a synthetic it's a synthetic viagra uh brian do all of these people go to the same semifinals? Does South America and Africa only get one semifinal? Like the, hey, you gotta go to this one. Africa gets one.

South America gets one. Asia gets one. Oceania gets one. Okay. So they're not cool like us where they get a bunch of different ones to choose from. Okay, so we did Asia. We did uh south america let's do we did africa well we're crazy okay uh oceania you can do those two tight taylor if you want

oceania actually so this team uh in first place here across itself when i've actually put a little uh feature of them up on my Instagram story today, this is a team that I don't think was really well known. And that's why I kind of didn't want to talk too much about the teams before this or during the competition. Even I just wanted to wait till it to finish up because we basically now know what the team rosters are. And before quarterfinals, we didn't. Obviously, there's still some things that could change with alternates, but we have a good idea. This team has Marnie Sykes and Madeline Schelling on it.

They were on Army 64 that placed in the top 10 at the game last year, and now they're competing with this CrossFit Selwyn team. This is a team out of New Zealand, by the way, not Australia. Can you click them, Sousa? Do something, Sousa. Do something. And they've paired up with Ben Fowler and Luke Fowler, who are two guys that I think if there were five spots available for the men in Oceania,

that especially Ben Fowler would have a good chance to maybe make it through there. But they've decided to go on a team with these two women, who I also think could be sneakily into the four or five spot if they competed individually, even with the depth and caliber of the women in Oceania. So this is a pretty good team that I actually think has outside podium potential at the games this year. Okay, I shouldn't have told them to click anything. When you say the fourth or fifth spot, you mean though in that region? You mean in Oceania?

Yeah, I don't think they can crack into the Tia and Karas. Jamie and Ellie Turner are probably the next two. can you know crack into the tia and car is jamie and ellie turner are probably the next two but they were like the three of the four athletes at least on their team i think would have a chance of finishing in the top five individually in that continent if they competed as individuals and the girls both competed at the games last year and made it into the top 10 and you know that you have to have strong women on your team to to excel at the games and these guys i think are up and they're young. They're up-and-comers, and they're really good.

And I actually think that in the way we saw guys like – even like Pat Fowler who competed at the games before making it as an individual, this might be a really good opportunity for them to get some experience on the teams at the games while they're in their really early 20s. And I think that in the next couple of years, you'll see Ben and Luke Fowler threatening for individual game spots as well. Scroll down a little bit,

Susan. I want to see how come I don't see any flag New Zealand or any of those flags, New Zealand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They look almost identical.

So the main difference, the ones that have the big white star under the, the red crossing, those are Australians. The red stars on the right are New Zealand. Okay. You have to zoom in a little to like see it they look very similar let me see scroll all the way down is there anyone

who's not new zealand or australia no and there's no way i mean that all of the islands okay could could be that but i don't think that there's any teams out of those um small islands what is this good new zealand team i keep hearing about who's's the best New Zealand team on this list? That's it at the top. Okay. Okay. I assume they were Australia. My bad. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. They took fourth worldwide. Is that their deal? I think so. Okay. Okay. I think that.

There are other good teams here too. I mean, this team in third place, CrossFit Urban, that's Catlin Vance, Sal and her husband, and Adam Mancy and his wife that are very good. They were also, I think, 10th at the Games last year. And then the team in between them, Christy Bishop is competing on that team, I think. She's

pretty good. There's probably three or four teams. Our side is a good team, but they get three spots. The three teams that qualify out of this region will be relevant at the Games. but there's they get three spots so all the three teams that qualify out of this region will be relevant at the games okay so they get three oh okay so from here they get three africa gets one asia and south america get two of all of those teams the ones from oceania are the ones that i think will be relevant. The rest of them, probably not. However, it's kind

of a, got to see what happens with the teams in Asia. But these top 20 teams here that we're looking at, 11 plus 9 more, they go to the semifinals. Yeah. Okay. All right. Awesome. Any of these teams out of Tia's gym there or

Cara's gym there? We've got CrossFit Frankston, Rob Forte's gym down in 9th. Is he on that team? I don't think so. I feel like he might do Masters this year. I'm kind of waiting to see. Okay.

And how about where Ricky trains? Benton? I don't think they have a team. Are these Fowler dudes related to the guy? There's a Fowler in the united states i remember brooke and swent to go train with i'm trying to remember nick fowler he's a coach of brute strength uh i don't think so okay i thought matt torres was the coach of brute strength they got a bunch of coaches yeah nick yeah yeah they have a bunch of coaches okay

all right not related just same last name. Sevan has the long COVID. No, no, no. Sorry. Wrong one. Racist. That's a save that for a seven has the long COVID. Lots of brain fog. Your mom has the long one. Okay. Let's let's move on to man. Individual teams are tough. Let's move on to, um, man, individual teams are tough. Let's move on to Europe.

I can't, we just like, can we, where's rich Ronin's in North America, right? That's where I want to get. That's where we're going, right?

No, not yet. Not yet. We got to, we, we need to take a stop in Europe for Taylor's not Taylor's going to miss the best part of the show. He has to go in one minute.

He's going to miss the rich Froning part. You got to go Taylor. Yeah, man. It's 10 PM. It's one minute. It's got to feed your man it's 10 p.m it's one minute you gotta feed your thumb you have one minute you have one minute okay uh we're here in europe well okay so no surprise it's crossfit oslo right that's is that where uh kristen holt is playing their gym they have two they have they have more than one team competing but this is their top team this

is the girls uh that competed with her at wadapalooza along with one guy that they've had last year uh ivan i think it's his first name and then nicolai bilodel who's probably the fittest guy in norway still um and this is a this is a podium contending team for sure the crossfit nordic team in third is going to be better than they were last year and they were a top 10 team crossfit reykjavik is obviously the team with annie and all those guys that's been getting a lot of attention are you like oh shit they're fucked no no not at all no no uh no i'm not worried about them at all they're are you kind of like wow that's that's how good they are they have a 30th and they're still in fourth i mean they got first in every way hey what happened what how do you get a 30th

in four firsts? They're probably the only team that did the workout right. I think that's a burpee shuttle run workout. I'm not worried about them at all. I'll just say that. I think that they have their eyes set on one thing, and they'll be there and contending for that thing. Right before the show, when I was driving my kids home, I was listening to the Talking Elite podcast that they did on what we're doing the day after them.

And they had Con Porter on, and they were interviewing him in the first part of the show. And what he said was that they were being really, really meticulous about their movements and everything that they were doing and that it caused them to like maybe slow down they were trying too hard to be perfectionist or too precise and i was wondering if that was when he said that i was getting like i wonder if that's the hiller effect i wonder if like he's gotten into people's heads that's what a list of things yeah there you go. They're too, but, but I don't really think that though.

I I'm not, I'm just saying that just cause I haven't talked in a while, but, um, for first place, it's like, you know, well,

it also depends. You think about a team like that? They, you know, they might very well say, uh, synchro burpees is something that can really mess teams up at the highest level.

And we don't want to have that happen to us. So're going to practice doing it perfectly now and we're going to make that the priority i mean i'm just speculating whereas other teams that might be on the you know nervous about making it through to the next round they might say well they didn't specify where our head has to be there you know we'll just risk stepping on the line and if they give us a penalty give us a penalty but we're going to go all out for it here and see what happens. And if enough teams do that on that particular workout and you don't, then yeah, you could easily slide down the leaderboard.

Taylor does team in the bedroom. But if they take a 30, if they take a 30th at the games, they're toast though. You can't do that. Obviously not a 30th at the games, they're toast, though. You can't do that. Obviously not a 30th, but you can't. Well, there'll be judges there. They won't have to worry about being so deliberate.

That'll be on the judges. Hey, do they have a video? Did they put out videos of their stuff? Nope. Weak. Unlisted, baby. Interesting. All right, I got to head out.

Love you, dude. Thanks. Thanks for being a target for comedy you're a good dude come on anytime so we could just rip on you that's your thumb they call him the thumb the thumb i didn't really see his thing so short i want to say something so crap it's not even crass it's just it's just not it's just so inappropriate i'll have to make a note and say it on the live calling show thumb it's about the thumb the thumb's a fascinating finger you have to have it right but in your finest moments in life it does not get used which is fascinating

to me okay i'll leave it at that i'll leave it at that right brian it doesn't get used in some of the most fascinating moments in life right hook grip underutilized I guess you carry six pack with it or twelve pack you know Brian you don't drink do you very rarely yeah but when he does

he quit drinking and his sense of humor both went away at the same time he just you out, you out. Get out. OK. Do you think Reykjavik can win the games? No, but I think they can get second. They can't, you think?

And does anyone on this list can get third? Do you see a third place? Oh, yeah, for sure. And I don't think that they're a lock for second by any means. I mean, I think that besides that, I think that one team in Oceania, CrossFit Oslo's team, CrossFit Nordic's team, CrossFit Reykjavik's team,

and maybe two to three other teams from North America all have a good podium potential this year. Okay. The team I'm really curious about is the Spanish team. And I've mentioned before that there keeps being an influx of Spanish names and flags on the leaderboard. That's the second place team right there, training culture? Yeah. Well, they were first place after the quarterfinals last year.

And then they didn't compete in semifinals because some other athletes decided to compete as individuals. I think based on the roster they have here that this team will compete in the semifinals, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them compete there because I wanted to see the first place team complete last year, obviously, and see if they could. No, because it's still an online competition. There's still some obviously critical elements of teamwork that weren't tested here. So I really want to see the Spanish team go up against some of these other teams and see how they look um but there's a ton of good teams in europe the teams out of uh the uk are pretty good the crossfit port team out of finland is good

there's two other teams from norway in the top 10 um butchers labs there in 11th uh it'll be like this will be actually an interest like once the semifinals get seeded for teams there will be teams in europe also that don't make the games that are like would be fine and hold their own at the games maybe not in the top 10 but you know 15 to 30 range you don't see another 30th place finish until you get to 11th place so i guess that shows how great uh crossfit reykjavik is that they can be in fourth place and have a 30th hey um i will tell you this about the spanish team um i bet you it's the best looking team i seriously uh i'm gonna click on just one

of their names i'm gonna click on this guy alexander anaskazi because you know who he is oh no i don't oh we going to try this one. Oh, yeah. Nike Van Overville, obviously, by the way, is not Spanish. She's from the Netherlands. She's probably one of the two fittest women in the Netherlands. I think we got the whole team here. Let's check this out.

A picture of the whole team? I bet you they're so damn good looking. I mean, not that there's any teams that aren't good looking. Yeah, look at them. Yeah. Just some beautiful people kicking ass. Anything else about Europe teams? No. Exciting, though.

We're getting closer to the big guns. I'm excited. I don't want to forget to bring up the South America teams that got disqualified later on in the talk. I want to ask you at some point what's the best they could have done at the games? Like, did we lose any top 10 teams? No. I was going to say, I mean, there are a lot of good teams with a lot of experience in team competitions from Europe and especially in the United States and in Australia and New Zealand.

I don't think that the team competition that the world has, I still think they're even further behind than some of the individuals in that regard. I still think they're even further behind than some of the individuals in that regard. But that team from South America, the Mayhem-Liberty-Todd team that was supposed to be, that would have been a good team that I think had top 20 potential. At the games? At the games. It's crazy. What's the most amount of teams any gym has ever gotten to the games?

To the games? An affiliate? Definitely definitely two probably three is my guess i feel like either invictus or like salt lake city might have had two teams one year um mayhem usually has two mayhem's definitely had two but i think that there may have been some three teams i want to take it i want to take a short break um just uh off subject here a little bit there's this guy in the comments and um let me see if i can uh his name is dick butter this is not his account hold on no and it's not let me see all right just started look at look at do not follow this guy whatever you do do not follow dick butter do not oh should i follow him all right well i'll tell you guys if he posts anything good i just want to let you guys know that okay disgusting name inappropriate okay let's go let's now now we now we go big time

now we go big time north america brian i had North America. Brian, I had a, as a kid, I had this beautiful glass bong, just a single chamber sitting on my dresser. And my mom walked in one time and she thought it was a vase. She commented on it as being a nice vase. Did you really think it was a vase? Yeah, totally. And what brings this up is that I was able to talk about the thumb. I feel like in a matter that most people wouldn't understood, but then Chase or Bill understood it and commented. Well, now that we're bringing up the most exciting part of the show here, we want to take a moment to thank Paper Street Coffee. Go to paperstreetcoffee.com at 40 minutes in. Brian, did you get Paper Street Coffee? Yep.

Did you get shirt? No. Oh, oh geez we'll get to the shirt stand by one of there was one of these stickers in there though oh that's nice that's just keep popping up everywhere it's terrible could you put it on your car put that on your ceiling put that on your ceiling under a bathroom mirror so you could just brush it off um brian any um before we dig in here any penalties anywhere assessed that you know of isn't there some sort of penalty sheet that crossfit keeps for any of the teams i don't think they've released anything about scoring adjustment for team workouts yet and i don't think it's necessary or realistic for us to expect them to yet i'm sure that they will release that eventually. And my hope is that they release it when it's finalized.

Okay. Okay. Did they give us a date for that? I think that they're intending to finalize the team leaderboard this Friday. And so far on the three times that they've been intending to finalize something on a Friday, they've done it one of those three times. So I think,

I think they'll probably be able to do it again this time, though. That was convoluted. Okay. Were these workouts, are the team workouts cousins of the individual workouts? There's definitely some similarities, and that's okay. Obviously, there's some stark differences. And, of course, like we mentioned, there's certain things that can't be programmed here in the capacity that you might want to, but that's what the semifinals are for. And so considering everything, I basically agree with what all the other analysts and experts have

said is that this was a pretty good slate slate of workouts for individuals and um i really don't have anything like there's i don't have anything critical to say about this uh this competition stage of competition really well then this show isn't going to rank very high in the youtube uh patrick clark says have you ever seen hobart and dick butter in the same chat oh wow wow wow that's how we don't do conspiracy theories here patrick clark says um uh mayhem got a 30 second penalty for event two yes that's the the shuttle runs and burpees they might have got a penalty for stepping on a line they might have got a penalty penalty for laying down when they weren't supposed to lay down waiting for their partners to come back and i'm sure that there'll be other penalties that come out, but I don't think

it's going to have any significant effect on the leaderboard. Um, and how does he know that? Is there like some sort of like place he looks on the internet where he knows that, or he talked to someone at mayhem? How do you know that? How does Patrick, how do people get these details? And, these details and that's a lot of people yeah and is this is this um is is that time 11 41 that's with the penalty oh no sorry he said sorry event number one okay that would make more sense then and where they have an 856 we see uh one yeah there's a lot of synchro stuff so thank you patrick i think that was the dumbbell workout.

Maybe they got a penalty for hip extension or something. Okay. When we spoke to Rich on the show, were you on that show, Brian? No, you weren't on that show. No, no, it wasn't Rich. Oh, yeah, it was Rich. Rich said this is the best team, mayhem team, that's ever existed. Does that also mean in your opinion brian this is the best team ever to step on the floor at the crossfit games

andrea and andrea nissler uh taylor williamson rich froning and samuel cornway yeah once they do that then i think so once that once they make it there okay we don't want to we don't want to it's like tennis i mean i don't want it's going out you don't call it out until it hits i mean it's one of those things it's like you know obviously the hacks packs teams were very good and won two years in a row but it's a different era it's a different generation obviously the team of wasatch that beat mayhem in 2017 was an incredibly good team all six of their athletes were phenomenal that year and they i mean mayhem was second, first, second on every event

on the weekend. The problem was so was Wasatch. They were just slightly better than them and a very good team. We've long said that Andrea and Taylor are the best or most lethal duo of women in the team competition and have been for the last five years probably um rich is obviously the best male team competitor that we've ever seen and uh sam cornway is uh you know he's got incredible potential as an individual and he's choosing to compete on the team this year whereas the the previous members of that team as good as they are chase hill and dray strong

or nowhere near the level of individual athlete that Cornwall was. And there are some workouts where that individual prowess really matters. And then as long as he can fit in on the team stuff, the synchro stuff and the worm stuff, which he's in the perfect environment to practice that, he's clearly a step up from those guys. Who was on that wasatch team in 2017 i always i always struggle to remember all of them but adrian conway uh mitch spute was on that team the girls are all so good i should definitely know their names i feel bad that i don't and the and the um don't don't worry i'm sure suze is on it brennan fjord was the third guy i think i'm sure suze is on it and those were six-man teams.

Yeah, three men, three women. People in the comments are saying that basically Rich hates a pistol. A lot of athletes aren't huge fans of pistols. And, I mean, they are extremely demanding on, obviously, the knees especially. But, you know, I think it's for the best athletes in the sports, it's like one of those things where you don't do them that often, but you just keep, like, you know, I think it's for the best athletes in the sports. It's like one of those things where you don't do them that often, but you just keep like, you know, you know, they're going to come up in some competitions occasionally. Are, are, are anybody who are on, uh, Adrian Conway, Mandy, Jan, Janowitz, Tiffany Hendrickson,

Brennan, oh, I remember him. Hey, bring up a picture of that guy. Brennan Fjord. He looks almost like,. Hey, bring up a picture of that guy, Brennan Fjord. He looks almost like a – He's a Chippendale, right? He looks like a G.I. Joe's type guy. Yeah, totally. He's a freak. Okay.

Hey, was he on Hack Pack? No, this was a Wasatch team from 2017. But, I mean, before at any time? Brennan, I don't know. Adrian was. They had a team. Tommy Hackenbrook had this girl on the team and I remember we were at the yeah yeah this guy's a savage yeah yeah I think this guy was on one of Tommy Hackenbrook's team

he might have been yeah they had a girl on the team and and it was at semi-finals and it was like in a city south of denver somewhere oh go figure his wife's hot too that's weird and um they the girl in between the events would go breastfeed her kid and they won it was nuts it was absolutely nuts i fully approve of that. Can you imagine that must've just been like salty, like salty and sweet. Anyway. All right.

Well, thank you for sharing. Yeah. That guy built Ford tough. Yeah. He, he's a savage. Is that guy still competing or any of these people on this team still

competing? Brian, Adrian Conway is in the master's division. He podiumed last year behind the Hobart and Casper Bauer. And Mitch Butte, he was actually one of the guys who had a really, really good score on workout number three that ended up getting taken off the leaderboard in North America Men. I haven't seen his name otherwise than that in a while. This year? He had a posted time of 132 at one point but then he

has received the penalty like a lot of other guys i thought it actually could be a legitimate score because i recognized his name but he got penalized eventually did they do did he only do half the shuttle runs was it that same issue we can find out probably the uh yeah conway's a savage hey can he beat Hobart? Okay, different show. It says yes. It says completed half the required shuttle runs. But they still haven't updated this scoring adjustments list completely.

There's penalties that we know that were assessed and people that still aren't on that list. So it's not a perfect resource yet. Okay, and we'll talk about some of that as soon as we're done here with North America. And I want to just really quick just a quick two second can is adrian conway is that master spot going to be a battle between adrian conway and james hobart is that we're looking at 35 to 40 and others there will be more than two uh there'll be more like it's going to be a tough field so there's guys coming up from the bottom who are going to be savages this year yeah yeah for sure sam dancer

at the forefront oh right right we got to get him on the show oh i think we have we should get sam dancer on and i think we had bethany shadburn and christy aramo all like on the hook like we threw lines into their water like they looked at our hook and we tried to reel them in but we i think we we didn't get them but they're close. Yeah, they're there. They're there. Okay. We see them? We netted them and put them in a bucket?

Yeah, they're in the scope. Okay, good, good. All right, let's go back to North America. This is fun. This is going to be great to look at. Are these people – this is a whole different league of animals, right, right here? Yeah, that's just so – obviously, we talked about Crossfit invictus's team this is a very good team um cj martin still the guy over

to invictus he's yeah so this is joshua chama he was like seventh in europe in the individual quarterfinals corinne hernandez actually finished like 13th in north american quarterfinals for men i think he's improved from last year and they have britney weiss who's been a part of their team for a while came out of chapel hill cross CrossFit in North Carolina and moved out there several years ago. And Devin Kim, who is very, very talented,

strong young woman. So this is a very strong team for sure. Top 10 contenders at the game for sure. Mayhem Independence will be good. The team CrossFit PSC in fourth place, I think. Who's on that independence team? Sorry,

just really quick. Luke Parker. And I can't remember the other guy, some weird guy. I don't know. And then, um, Angela,

Angela's on. Oh yeah. Angela. He's probably slacking off on a cruise somewhere. No, they'll, yeah, they'll be fine.

This is a very good showing for them. Obviously. Um, I'll be excited to see them. Uh, you know, it's a big deal to be able to, to move the worm.

Well, I would expect all the mayhem teams will do that. So I'm looking forward to seeing, especially that independence team and then there's 13 justice who's sitting there in seventh place at semifinals where we can see, see how they handle some of those implements that you can't test in the online quarterfinal stage. But I, one second, give me one second. Give me one second. Sorry.

I want, I want to make sure I to make sure we don't overlook these guys. Is this the Invictus team right here? Oh, well, that is two of the – no, that's only actually one. Brittany Weiss in the top right is the only one of those four that are competing on their top team this year. Okay, so this is an old picture? No, it says three days ago. It says meet the rest of the Invictus team competing in the team quarterfinals this weekend. Oh, so they have multiple teams.

This is their other team. This is – yeah, where is their other team? Because that's, I think – I think that's Eric Carmody for sure. Is that – what are they tagged on here? Think of all the big names that have come out of Invictus. I think that's Allison Weiss. I think that's Brittany's younger sister that's competing on that team. Who's come out of Invictus? I think that's Allison Weiss. I think that's Brittany's younger sister that's competing on that team.

Who's come out of it? Josh Bridges, Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet, Lauren Fisher, Garrett Fisher. I'm sure I'm missing some. This is their top team. Okay. Oh, they're a little blurry.

And their second team is Unconquerable. And yeah, that's Eric Carmody, Alison Weiss, Lalo Torres, and Emily Rathwell. Any, or those,

any of those former individual athletes, I think Alison Weiss won the games as a teenager one year, Eric Carmody's, uh, you know, I don't know if you ever made the games maybe once, but he's, we're very recognizable.

I really liked this picture. I really liked this picture. Which like this picture which one the one where the the dudes are just waiting their turn it's just cool it just shows like that it's on right like and then they're gonna the dudes are gonna do that and those chicks are gonna go stand over there and watch them be like don't fuck up and that's basically what you're saying the whole time, right? Pretty much. All right, cool. Sorry, Brian. Okay, let's go back to the board. Sorry.

Who were the two girls on the Mayhem Independence team with Angelo and Luke? Anyone I know? Yeah, Sasha Navis and Alexis Johnson. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do.

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To get started, just open the app. It's as easy as that. See the PC Optimum app for details. Alexis Johnson, was she an individual for like Misfits or something? Many years. She also competed. She's competed on teams before she's extremely well rounded and experienced why well isn't sasha nevis uh an individual athlete last year she was is this like her saying that she's done individual or is it more like a samuel corn why i just dip your foot in for a year and then come out. I think that I think that. Okay. All right.

Sorry. So CrossFit, uh, PS and I kind of actually kind of like that decision for someone like her because you know, like it or not, like international travel isn't, isn't like kind of a nuisance these days and competing on the teams.

She doesn't have to travel back to South America for a competition, whereas someone like Guimayros will. Oh, wow. Wow. That's a great point. Holy cow, that's a great point. It's just less stress for her in the course of the season than she'd have to deal with otherwise. And there's no guarantee that she makes it. Like, there's, you know, the women's field in South America has a couple other really, really good women that could potentially bump her out.

They only get two spots competing on that team. She's almost guaranteed to make it. So this really is an affiliate competition. Everyone on the team could be from Canada, but if you're training in the United States, you're good to go. Yeah. Yeah. So we saw that Spanish team had a woman from the Netherlands on their team and the teams in Dubai none of the like maybe one of the four athletes are actually from the UAE the other ones are just international athletes that are coaching at that gym

I wonder if you even need and you probably don't even need one person right okay all right cool I mean Joshua Alchama he's from the UK he's he's living in LA and competing on Invictus' team. I was just thinking, what if all four were from a foreign land? Yeah, okay. That's usually the case with the UAE teams. Right, right. Do you think we could see two Mayhem teams on the podium this year? I don't think so.

I think that the team composition is too deep otherwise. Mayhem Independence will be good, and I think that they'll – Mike, if I had to see them right now which i still think it's way too early to do i would say they're like a six to ten team wow that's still pretty amazing yeah yeah yeah very good so so there are there are three mayhem teams in the top seven yeah they got justice down here and who's on the justice team sorry go ahead oh the justice team has um ben davidson then there's a young guy i think seth is his name seth stovall maybe uh aniston something is want to coach at mayhem and then i don't know why i'm blanking on the other woman's name but she's actually jessica kaladian i think and she made the semi-finals last year as an individual yes she's and she sounds armenian yeah no uh this is a good team i mean ben's been on the cusp of making as an individual jessica did like i said aniston coaches at their gym i don't

know for sure but i think they probably have pretty high-level coaches at that gym. And Seth Stovall is a pretty good, talented young athlete. So this is a solid team. But, like I said, I want to see – I'm not that surprised that they did great in this environment. There were a lot of – this was a good team test, but there's still things that need to be tested. So while I think that they'll do well at the semifinal, based on their finish here,

you would expect them to finish second place at the semifinal they go to, and I think it's more realistic to see them finish fourth place at the semifinal they go to. This team. No, this is just the other one. That wasn't the team. I know, but the team that she's on, Justice. Yes.

Okay. Yeah, I'm looking at her too. I was just but the team that she's on justice yes okay yeah i'm looking at her too i was just thinking she looks like she's cut from the same cloth as uh taylor and andrea nistler i don't know why i think that but just like look at some of the pictures of her she looks like she could be a sister like the third sister in the group she sure as hell don't doesn't look armenian but she got armenian name but she's strong like an Armenian weightlifter. Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. Brian, sorry if you answered this already while staring at pictures. So you do think all three will make it to the games? Wow. Yeah. I think that'll be a first time and that'll be a first.

I don't know that for sure. Okay. All right. Let's go back to the board and check that out. And even if it is, it's possible that CrossFit Oslo could send three teams this year as well. Yeah. Wow. And Invictus could send two. I mean,

it's yeah. So anyway, I just, it's a team in fourth is like the top Canadian team here. I really think the team in 13th is probably the overall best Canadian team when things are done at the games across the pro in Montreal. But this PSC team has a guy in it. I think his name is Nick

Anapolsky or something like that. And he did really well in the open. Caitlin Anapolsky is also on that team. Anyway, brother and sister or married? I should know that because I actually had a conversation with him on instagram and he's really reached out to me as a nice nice guy a nice gesture um but i'm not sure but you

guys hear that if you reach out to brian and you're semi you're in the top 10 you will get mentioned if you're not in the top 10 you might like like taylor self's just charity work just charity anyway um this was, I was impressed by their performance and especially kind of when you look at the points there, you see the top three teams have a lot less points than them. And then there's a 20 point gap after them to the next team, which is CrossFit move fast lift heavy, which is Christian Harris's team, obviously a good team.

So that's a pretty impressive performance and it's team out of Canada that I'm intrigued with after the semifinals. All the teams uh trina all the teams with the american flags are uh diversity equity inclusivity that's what the american flag stands for it's the only country i know you know that already but it's the only country with this melting pot of people who get along so well the only one on this planet it's a great place um brian anything surprising in this list? Anything in, in, in, in, like even, even are you surprised mayhem got a fifth? No, no. I mean, especially if we know that they were assessed a penalty and the other thing is

we don't know, like there could still be more penalties assessed. This is not a finalized leaderboard, but at the end of the day, it's not like, if they got all fifths, I wouldn't even be that concerned about it and why is that why not because this is just checking a box for them it is so this is an this is another open uh yeah damn it uh for that for that team in this competition yeah for sure 80 teams get through i mean they could have done it backwards and made it. Right. Is that workout one the one with the pistols?

Maybe. Okay, because that's the move that like 10 or 20 people in the comments were just piling in, Rich hates pistols. So I'm curious if he was the – excuse me, weak link in that one. Going back to... I do want to say that this comment that Breakfast Talk just put in about NorCal's team from 2015, they should definitely be mentioned amongst the best teams that we've ever seen at the games.

That's the team, Kalipa, Miranda. Who else was on that team? Man'm not 100 sure i think ben alderman maybe uh i don't know but they were very very good i think it was your miranda hurt her knee and they didn't let her continue right yeah they'd already made the top 10 so they end up finishing 10th kind of by but they basically forced them to DQ the last several workouts. Yeah, man, that was, I was,

that was heated. That was gnarly. There's some great behind the scenes footage of that, of Dave and Jason talking that, that conversation got nasty. And now they're friends. Now Jason goes to Dave's ranch and they shoot guns. Perhaps it's an exclusive content that you will see only on our newsletters. Subscribe on your email.

Yes. Yes. You may or may not be able to see that do you do you think that team can beat um uh uh rich's team this year that norcal team brian well it was team of six and it's a team of four so it's a little different but i think even if you took the top four from that team against this mayhem team probably not but but but but but you still respect the comment yeah yeah i was just when i was like thinking about the best teams in history and relevant you know relation to your question i should have remembered them and so i appreciated that he brought them up gotcha okay all right let's look at the uh let's look at the worldwide are we done can we look at the worldwide sure so this will be if crossfit mayhem freedom wins the games this year they will be if, if CrossFit mayhem freedom wins the games this year, they will be six times.

They've won it. Yeah. And all six times rich has been on the team. Yeah. Do the teams have to declare a team captain? You know, they used to, I remember in 2016,

it was actually was, was kind of cool that they brought the captains out on the floor of the top 10 teams for the announcement of the final workout and it was of course there were some men and some women that were the captains of the of the teams but it was just kind of cool to see i mean i'd watch the team competition in person that year more than any other year um and uh you know i don't know all the teams as well as obviously the top teams, but like just to see which representatives that they chose after watching him compete was kind of cool. So I actually wouldn't. I like the fact of having a team captain. And I also like the fact of kind of knowing who it is in a situation like that.

Is Yami coaching? Is he the official? Like, have you heard anyone say he's the coach? I think everyone says he's the coach. OK, so he's the coach okay so he's the coach and is he also katrin's coach coach also it seems like he's coaching katrin and bkg for the most part right now they're all seemingly training together and who is bkg's um bjorkvin's uh coach last year do we know what i that's a good question i don't know who his coach has been was that guy um the guy uh i can't believe i can't remember his name christian gabby magawa's coach john singleton oh see why do i always want

to call him christian john singleton was he ever bkg's coach maybe i mean he helped coach sarah for a year or two and i know that b PKG and Sarah have trained together a lot. It's like, it's like bothering me now that I don't know who's PKG's coach formally or who has it then. I apologize. I retract the question, your honor.

I pulled the question from the someone, Patrick Clark will tell us in a second. Yami was last year as well. See, look, there he is. Patrick, please go to the seven podcast website at the bottom you'll say job openings and apply for uh games and analysts please thank you head over to barbelljobs.com oh is that where we

i'm just trying to fit him in i'm just here we go again with brian assuming people's gender i don't even know what you're talking about but i just like it divert all your attacks to brian please enough attacking um okay so worldwide leaderboard um of these teams uh who are on can we go all let's scroll down really quick to the bottom so we were wondering i had a couple questions did anyone in a tell me if you see anything from asia or africa yeah 28th is the that's the russian team but i think you're asking about south no no the 28th is that's europe though right that's asia asia okay but i think you're asking about africa and south america okay africa and south america right 41 is also Asia, and there's nothing,

otherwise there's nothing in the top 50 from those areas. What about that flag right there? That green and black one? That one's from the That's Dubai, UAE. And what region are they? Africa? Asia. Okay. Go to page two. Let's see

when that happens. I want to see when South America pops in here. South America and Africa here. Okay. South America and Africa. When do they come into the story? There's South America. I don't know how. 65, 65.

Brian is sitting there wondering why he still does this podcast. It's funny. That's my mantra in my head constantly when I look at Brian. That's why I try not to look at him. I'm like, okay, don't look at him uh okay 65 that okay no oh yeah okay and that's south africa so that's the first time we have a team from either south africa or south america 65 but and and how many teams go to the games? 38? 38. Africa gets one. Okay. And South America's top team is in 98th.

Okay. Let's see where the next South African team is. Okay. It's fine. I don't need to go past that. Interesting. Okay. So that team's going right there from South Africa.

No, not necessarily because they were pretty – I mean, they did win all five workouts, so you'd think that they're definitely the favorites. But the two teams behind them were basically second and or third in every other workout. So those three teams will be the only teams that have a chance. Sevan is too pussy to have Andrew on the show. Did they spell two right? Two, two, two. I don't think that was the right one.

Oh, wait. Yes, it was. Christy, girls don't use words like that. Yes, that is the closest. Thank you for sponsoring the show, Andrew. Yes. Okay, let's go back up to the top. Let's go back to number one. Ma'am. Okay, let's go back up to the top. Let's go back to number one. Man.

Anything stand out on page one for you, Brian? Anything you're worried about? I know you already kind of said, hey, for the best teams in the world, this is kind of the quarterfinals are kind of just like the open for them. They're checking the box. They're fine-tuning the machine. So we still don't know anything, right? I look at the top 20 or 30 teams,

and there's a lot of different countries represented. And that's what we saw last year in the team competition was about half of the teams in the top 10 and maybe a third or 40% of the teams in the top 20 were international teams. And it's cool to see that there's a variety of different flags on the leaderboard, and all of these teams are very good on the top 10 or 20 here. And I think that although the order might shift around a lot, these are, you know, this was a pretty well-programmed series of workouts that these are generally going to be the teams that are going to be most competitive at the games too. A couple will drop out and a couple will probably move in, but I'd say like 16 of the top 20 teams here are probably also 16 of the top

25, at least 25 teams in the world. Okay. Let me propose this idea to you. And I think I got this from Tommy and Sean. And if I didn't, I'll take the credit, but, but if I did get it from them, I want to give them the credit. Often you've said that there are athletes who perform well in person live shows, and then there's people who perform well through these online competitions. And I think you've more than alluded to the fact, but we'll get it clear right here, that most athletes, it's better to do live competitions. They prefer that.

That's what you want to speak to. Yeah, if there's an athlete that tells me they'd rather do an online competition than a live competition, then I'm just not that interested in that athlete. They're cheating. I know. People want to see live sports. You want to be great. You need to perform under the pressure.

When it lights around, when the audience is there with a limited amount of time to prepare, that's the atmosphere. That's the environment. And that's the athletes that I want to see. For sure. and that's the athletes that I want to see. For sure. I think that, I think one of the subjects, and I like this topic that Tommy and Sean were talking about,

and I don't want to misrepresent it, and I apologize to them if I misrepresented it, but they were basically saying that it will be different for the teams to do this live with each other, these things that require synchronization. And so I got the impression that live is even more impactful for teams, but actually the opposite. It's actually more of a chance that they'll fuck shit up.

Whereas an individual might thrive with the crowd, a team might, that might be where they come apart. Like they get out of sync. Like bad shit can happen live that wouldn't necessarily happen with online a team might that might be where they they come apart like they get out of sync they like like bad shit can happen live that wouldn't necessarily happen with online or online would give them another chance and i bring this up in relationship to the fourth place team this crossfit selwyn because this is pretty crazy right this is a team out of new zealand who's sitting fourth place in the world and i have no concerns about this team There are other teams all around them that I have more

concerns about. About showing up live and being able to sink the worm and all that shit. That's a legit team. I think so, yeah. That's cool. Coming out of this... I might want to get on their bandwagon. Do they have anyone cool like Colton Mertens on the team or anything?

Yeah, I would 100% recommend inviting the girls from that team onto your show. Not the dudes? They don't have a dude who's 4'4"? cool like colton merton's on the team or anything yeah i would 100 recommend and inviting uh the girls from that team onto your show not the dudes they don't have a dude who's four no they'd be fun too but i just don't i don't know them as well but the marnie and madeline are very they're awesome they have they have fowlers on there yeah they have two fowlers right yeah you could invite the whole team why not are those guys married luke i like i think they're like 21 and 19 years old or something like that

so they got married young together no i mean are they married together are they a couple can't can't assume anything i can't get you on track tonight at all it was completely reckless. I've had COVID twice this month. I've had COVID twice this month. You've had it the whole month. Okay, let's go back to the list. I'm excited about the teams more than ever.

Even though you think I'm being reckless, it's crazy. These shows are ruining me. They're making me more and more interested in I'll say this I wasn't that interested in the quarterfinals team competition but I am interested in some of the semifinal competitions and I will definitely be interested come the games

right but you kind of have to be interested now if you want to be interested in the games don't you you have to start now the reason I wasn't interested in the quarterfinals is because, as we talked about, such a high percentage of them move on. So for me, it didn't feel like a lot of drama around the cut line. And then you don't know the makeup of the teams necessarily prior to the quarterfinals. After the quarterfinals, now we have a good picture of what the team competition will look like

continent by continent as well as globally. So now, for me, this is the time to start investing into the team competition. Okay. Those scores have changed since we've been watching. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I'm sure that they're reviewing videos and making… Because didn't we come on here earlier and i said that they had three teams that were in the top seven maybe that was in north america north america okay so they here they have three

teams crossfit mayhem has three teams in the top nine and this crossfit move fast lift heavy that's christian harris's team he was on the podcast right yep they were uh him and will carter are back they've revamped the women from last year I think I think it's Nicole Soto and Winter Nicolette Rodriguez this year how do you know all of this I don't know I mean if it were on every weekend and you were hearing people talk about it I could get it. But that means you had to go through and look at their teams. Yeah, and it's really crazy. I can't explain how some of this stuff just sticks in my head.

But sometimes I'm like, oh, he might ask me about this. Let me look at it. I look at it once and I just remember it. All right. Brian, can I ask you some questions about semifinals? Yeah, definitely. Especially, it's a great day to talk about semifinals because they sent out the invites today.

They did? They did. What does that mean exactly? Tell me, what does that mean, they sent out invites? So, the leaderboard was announced as finalized. The worldwide leaderboard. No, for the quarterfinals for individuals, the worldwide and continental leaderboards were announced as finalized. And then CrossFit began contacting athletes who were in qualifying spots.

And my understanding is they even contacted some athletes outside of the qualifying spots that would be likely backfill candidates. And the main reason that they contacted them initially was, my understanding again, it was to ask two questions. One was preference for semifinal for North America and Europe, where they actually have multiple semifinals that they could choose from. And secondly, to ask if there were any travel restrictions that the athlete had for whatever reason. And a good example of that would be if you're a United States citizen who has chosen to not get vaccinated. I don't think you could compete at the Atlas Games. I think that you have to have a vaccine, probably all the vaccines to travel to Canada.

to travel to Canada. So that was a good move by CrossFit to reach out to the athletes and ask for that so that they wouldn't end up in a situation where they accidentally seed someone in that semifinal who will be unable to travel there. You know what I hope? I hope that there's so many athletes that aren't vaccinated

that no one can go to the Atlas Games. It's like six dudes. You know what's fascinating, Brian? I had Davidlor on today he's a gold medalist uh in the 2021 tokyo olympics he's a penn state ncaa champion uh high school champion all four years junior high champion stud wrestler right gold medal in the olympics they didn't make him take he didn't have to get the vaccine to go to tokyo would you have ever thought that?

I don't know. I don't know what to think. I mean, I don't know what's, you know, if you, if you know the right people, like, can you just make it work? Like, if you have enough money, can you just pay it off? Like, I'm sure that if you're flying on a private plane and you take a COVID test when you land, maybe there's ways around it. So who knows? But I mean, it's, yeah. Possibilities are endless.

Right. I bet the Atlas Games doesn't happen again. Well, I think the Atlas Games will happen. And obviously, everyone wants them to happen. It would be... I talked about it when they first made that announcement that it was risky to choose that

competition this year. Not that Canada is 100 was risky to choose that competition this year. Not that Canada is 100% deserving to have a semifinal, but this year there were inherent risks of having one there that don't exist in certain parts of the United States. But as we said, it's difficult to find someone who can actually run these events, especially with short notice. Where are the Atlas Games? Montreal, and I think it's Alexis LeBlanc-Bazinet, Camille's brother, who runs that event. Wow. God, it's a small world. Awesome. Good on him for doing that.

Montreal's a cool town, or it used to be. Yeah. If they're able to put it on there, it'll be a great competition for sure. Very well run. No. Just no. Just no, Peter. competition for sure well very well run no just no just no peter uh opened up there's a there's a word for that i don't know what it is peter's inviting us to canada oh shoot i started playing the brawler's girl again okay um so so brian how many semi-finals invitations how many semi-final individual

athletes worldwide are there 300 men 300 women okay and do we think that 600 and some change invitations went out the change being the backfills? So those were the thing I first talked about. That was like a survey. Where's your preference for the, and that was not for all the athletes because the ones in the minor continents don't have to answer that question. And if there's any travel restrictions, so that happened, then some kind of seating process happened. And this is, I think, something that a lot of people are asking questions and wondering about. And I'm working on some things in relationship to this as well. But this is in section 4.03 of the CrossFit Games rulebook.

It's basically three sentences. And it says, more or less, well, it says that the seating and placement of athletes will happen prior to invitations being sent out. and placement of athletes will happen prior to invitations being sent out. And so that would imply that when the invitations are sent out today, that you're not being invited to just semifinals, but you're being invited to a specific semifinal. And that happened. It also says that the seeding process will happen in a fair and equitable way.

And it says that the main factors they'll consider are quarterfinal rankings and geography. For ranking? Quarterfinal rankings and geographical location are the two primary things that they'll consider when making sure that the distribution of seedings and placements is fair and equitable. Seedings and placements? For semifinals. But you're talking about in the roster, you're not talking about seedings and placements in terms of which semifinal you'll go to you're talking no that is what i'm talking about oh okay okay yeah makes sense okay yeah makes sense they're not going to send someone from florida up to montreal why not from because that wouldn't be fair and

equitable fair and by including the words fair and equitable there you're basically just uh appeasing someone it doesn't actually mean anything oh thank you thank you brian come to the dark side dark side it's just a real side i know that's what we say real shit okay um so i'm trying i'm trying to think how far we how much what, what is the date for the first semifinal? This is a question you ask every time. May 20th. May 20th. I have to ask every time. That's the best part of the show that I don't know anything.

That's why this show gets so much good information. And those are three weeks long this year? Four weeks. Four weeks. You were hoping it would be three weeks. That was one of the- I would love it to be two weeks. Feedbacks you gave look there's someone um there's someone from a company called bone media

carlos bone media okay and um why didn't why don't they just send them out to everyone why are they doing this are you still talking about the surveys or now you're talking about the invitations? Both, either or. I'm having trouble distinguishing between the two. They take a survey of the athletes that could potentially be competing in semifinals. They factor that into the seeding process. They place, let's just talk about North America. There are 120 men in North America.

They place 30 of them in each of the four semifinals. The main factors that they're considering per the rule book are their quarterfinal ranking, their geographical location, and then we can assume that they're also factoring in the survey answers that they sent up. And what are those answers? The only two questions that I know of that they were asked is what's your order of preference for semi-finals rank one two three four and are you back do you have any travel limitations so are you vaccinated no you could not have a passport you can be an american citizen that doesn't have a passport hey do you need one of those special driver's license to fly now? I don't know. Do you know what I'm talking about? California?

All states, I think. Do you have one of those? Brian? Yes. Do you have one, Sousa? One of the new licenses? Yeah, a license that's like you need it if you want to fly. I got the old license. What are you, the cops or something? Why are you asking me these questions um and and brian um is there anywhere online where we can see who started landing where you should read this quote you should read this quote so i

might have been wrong about that or misinformed about that uh patrick velner is this a real patrick velner i don't know this is the problem this is the problem with these please identify yourself patrick velner i need to see'm going to need to see some digital ID. The survey they sent to athletes as part of an unofficial invite did not have the order of preference as a question. But it did have the travel limitations question. Okay. Thank you, Patrick Bellman.

Oh, the real ID. That's what you're talking about. I think we're supposed to have that now. It me. Oh, he's drunk. Oh, no. a minute hold on wait okay what's going on here is that the real brett fukowski how do we know how do we know? How do we know? Okay. Do we see – have we seen – has anyone landed anywhere, Brian? Brian just saw something very interesting.

Has anyone landed anywhere? Like, can we know for sure that – Yeah, so basically this is cool, actually. You know, CrossFit's updating the leaderboards for the semifinals as athletes presumably register. Or, you know they i assume they have to accept and register i don't know which of those two things makes their name appear on the leaderboard but names are populating and names have been continuing to populate as we've been doing the show which i just saw one which was mitchell stevenson who registered for the mac which was surprising because i thought he would compete with his team but it appears that he's not how do i do that i

go to semi-finals yeah and you just you can just go to syndicate crown it's the first one and it's in they're in um chronological order of how they'll happen okay during this the month of semi-finals wow fantastic and so so okay so these if the if their names are in here, that means that these people have responded? Yeah, they've responded yes to competing at this semifinal. Wow, that's awesome. Kudos to CrossFit for doing this. By the way, CrossFit raised its prices today. I'm going to talk about this tomorrow for the L1.

First time ever? As far as I know. It's about time. I did the math1. First time ever? As far as I know. It's about time. I did the math today. And if the L1, if they would have raised it 3% every year for the last 15 years, it would be $1,558. And it's still only $1,150. I highly recommend everyone take it. You have to go out and take your L1. You have to. But I'm going to to tell you raising the price isn't a big deal but it's someday that thing gets in the wrong hands and they're going to tell you not to squat below parallel and the whole thing is going to be ruined they're going to tell you to have a monster energy drink wow look at these people this is awesome james sprague

james if you send james if you want to wear one of my shirts in semifinals, you would have to send me a text and beg, and then I might send you a couple of them. I don't want to be like Andrew. Andrew Hiller was frowning upon the fact if you ask athletes to wear your shirt. Matt, pull up the MAC North American men's list. Obviously, these lists are not full yet. There's still going to be people who accept these invitations.

But already in this field, we have – we can start at the top there. I mean, you've got – What city is this in, Brian? The MAC? Is this Nashville? Tennessee and Knoxville or Nashville. Okay. You already see a lot of good guys, but primarily Cole Sager, Spencer Panchik,

Dallin Pepper, Noah Olsen, and Saxon Panchik. Wow. That's already five guys that if they make the games, all five of them have top 20 potential at the games with a strong likelihood of maybe two pushing into the top 10. And possibly more. Is that chase smith's guy is that the old mayhem guy no the old mayhem guy oh the guy who competed last year with rich no that's chase so this chase smith actually he was one of uh i thought he had a chance to make

the games when he was 2017 and he was one of the guys who injured his peck on the ring ring dip workout he had some really i bet i think he had some like incredible uh open finishes in his career yeah he was 10th and 16th and back-to-back years in 2016 and 17 and though anyway is dylan pepper gonna beat um jake berman yeah i mean that's what i'm saying guys like jake berman jake Marconi, there are a lot of other good athletes in this field and it's not full yet, but if you enter in just one more

guy into this field that hasn't responded yes yet that's of that caliber, then you're already looking at Spencer Patrick and you're saying, oh my God, are you going to get sixth again? Oh, damn. Oh, thank you, Brent. Okay uh send me your address in the dms thank you it's definitely not brent vikowski what size do you think he is he's a large

i'm a large large hey so it's saxon noah dallin pepper spencer and cole there's still a bunch of great guys there's there's there's several spots still left open um and only five go from this is that what you're saying only five go from here yeah and i'm telling i mean i have talked about before how how stacked the women's field is in some parts of the world north american men and european men this year it is insane like there's easily twice as many guys who could qualify for the games and do well there than have spots available. It's very competitive, which is good. I'm clicking.

I'm going over to the Atlas games. Okay. So some people have already signed up for the Atlas games too. Oh, and Mr. Vellner is one of them. Patrick Vellner. Of the athletes who signed up for the Atlas game so far.

Yeah. He's the clear favorite here, but there's some guys that are very interesting to me on this list, primarily Jack Farlow and Benoit Boulanger. Benoit Boulanger. Jean-Simon Wallamer is interesting too. He's coming back after a pretty nasty injury last year. I don't know if he'll be in contention to get a game spot,

but he was very good several years ago. How about Damien conciatori i don't know much about damien conciatori he just wanted to say the last name yeah yeah dude how is that how is that canadian okay so right now pat and how many people go from this region also five wow oh pat's getting the pack can go there high on fentanyl wow look obviously if you wear a shirt obviously you should have a good chance of making it through regardless of what the field is you're only seeing we're seeing just over a third of the field here and but excuse me there are a lot of good men in north america that haven't populated into any um into any of

these leaderboards yet so we don't necessarily know where everyone is gonna wind up well i'm not sure where i'm gonna go either um crossfit hq sent me a email yesterday offering me access to all of the semi-finals they're like hey we know that you bring so much value and attention to the games and that we're gonna i know where you're so much value and attention to the games. I know where you're going to go. You're going to the Granite Games because listen to the people who are competing at the Granite Games. Yes, tell me. Phil Toon. Yes, love him.

Colton Mertens. Love him. Travis Mayer. Wow. Holy shit. Orgy. Orgy. Orgy. Tim Paulson. Wow. Anthony Davis. Oh, wow. And, well, those are the ones that are populated on leaderboard. How is Anthony Davis doing?

I mean, we know he's the strongest man alive, but does he have, is his game going to, is he going to be able to do it this year? I think he will be better than he was last year. There's some guys that I think are in this field at the Grand Games that aren't on this leaderboard yet. This is going to be another tough field. I think he could have a perfect weekend

and still struggle to make it with the field that's going to be there. Has Marquand Jones ever been to the games? Yeah, he placed, I think, fifth in the the 2018 east regional and qualified he was either fourth or fifth wow in in the at the games no no at at the regionals no has he oh okay and then you and i were there together covering that yeah i for some reason i didn't think he qualified that was albany you said yeah He did make it that year. He did? That was the year with the triple threes,

and they had the Essel Air Runner malfunction on that one. I was a little intimidated to interview him. Is that the year? And who's the cop from New York who got sick? I always forget his name. Vigneault. He's not from New York. He's from somewhere in canada

yeah that's what i meant outside of montreal those two guys i was kind of intimidated to interview both of them but marquand's really cool i hope he makes it i really talking about you were interviewing alex while he was throwing up in a trash can the athlete there i know well in a pinch you got to overcome you can't be a pussy you got to go over and stick a camera in his face hey what happened to joe joe scally he just got old and tapped out or i actually he's another guy that i keep thinking is going to pop up in a master's category one year yeah what happened but so far he has i don't know if he's even 35 yet but i wouldn't be surprised if he's turned if he ages into that category and and shows up on the 35 to 39 leaderboard in one

of the next couple years he was such a great character for the sport. It was too bad that never got developed. Okay. So, so I want to, I want to stay here and look one more time at the, at the Granite Games because I'm concerned a little bit about, um, so I want Phil Toon to make it and I want Colton to make it and I want Travis to make it. Do you want Tim Paulson to make it?

I do like Tim Paulson. I'm going to put him on to make it. Yep, Tim Paulson. Oh, no. Patrick informed us that Chandler Smith is competing here. Oh, no. Do you want him to make it? I do, but I also want Marquand Jones and Anthony Davis to make it.

Yeah, and there's some other guys I think that are still going to be on this leaderboard at this competition. Okay, fuck it. I only want Colton to make it and Travis. Not Phil? Nah, I can only pick two. The rest of you guys are out.

Not Chandler? I don't know. It's too hard. It's too hard. It's crazy. Okay, and by the way, Nick Matthews is also in this competition, and he missed the games.

They were like two points last year behind Mertens. Crazy. But this is confirmed. So if you want to go to – what event is this? This is – where are Granite Games? It's the third week, June 3rd to 5th in Minneapolis. Okay. So if June 3rd – Very nice. Vikings Arena there. and there's some fun disc golf courses

nearby and who's the director over there that's uh that's loud and live loud and live okay so we don't know who the director is it's it's not matt o'keefe i think dylan dylan let's give me the the primary guy there okay and he's a great dude as we all know okay so if you want to go you go on june 3rd and you have your heart broken because there's so many good guys how about girls let's look at girls i just thought we were going to do the men and then the women but that's fine we can do sydney wells hey does she have a chance of finally cracking into the games actually with what we see here for this field right now, so Amanda Barnard's in this field, Emily Rolfe,

these are obviously, it's not a full field. There's a, and Danny Spiegel's in this field, which are three people that you would have to say like, yeah, if you know, you probably give them an edge, but there's a bunch of women in this field that I think are really close. This particular field that I think are close. Alex Willis down there at the bottom, I think she placed like 12 or 13th in the quarter. sydney won't be feasting off either right 20 is fee on

this list yeah at the very top yeah oh she just she must have registered since we started yeah sydney wells is a good up and comer fee is obviously very good watch out for chloe wilson uh and also kelly stone so there's a lot in alexis. So there's some, you know, and I think there's some opportunity. Oh, Oh yeah. So Chris, the staff was supposed to be on that. I love it team also.

So they're definitely not having a team this year. So the, the, they're going to this individual route. Okay. Interesting. We just tapped into Brian's brain. Did you guys see that?

We got a little, we got a little self-talk in there. He was, he was, he was restructuring the matrix. Anyway, this is what I'm saying is there's going to be some opportunities for new North American women to make it through. And I think that although the field looks pretty top-heavy here,

that battle, like four through nine in this field, is going to consist of some up-and- in the sport for, for North American women. Brookwell's qualifying is insane. I agree. I agree. Brian's not so surprised though. He's not so surprised. He knew.

Oh, where, where would we, where would we check to see if Sarah's landed? Oh, where would we check? She has landed. Yep.

Same spot as Laura and Gabby. Oh, okay. Can we, can we look and has, has Roman landed anywhere? Yeah. Oh, okay. Can we look? And has Roman landed anywhere? Yeah. It's Far East Throwdown.

And Tia's landed in Oceania, which is good. Wait, so Roman's going to fly, go, he's going to leave the United States to go somewhere? Looks that way. Man, I don't know if I approve of that. Okay, so Europe, we just have, the only name I recognize on there is Katrin. Oh, this is Strength and Depth? Yeah, there's – they haven't – well, you know, it's later there. So I expect that a lot – this will populate a lot throughout the day, tomorrow, or even maybe while we're sleeping at night.

But Taylor Howe, you should definitely know that name as well. She'll have a chance, an outside chance to make it. And some of these other women are – I mean, I know this girlia from poland and silvia garcia izquierda from spain um when did those letters go out brian do you know earlier today i want to see what i want to see what time it is in iceland right now what time is there an urge it's 3 or 4 a.m. So let's say even if they went out 12 hours ago, that would be 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. That would have been 3 p.m. in Iceland. Why would Katrin decide so quickly? Is there an urgency to it that the places could fill up?

No. No? I think it's one of those things. Like if you know, you're going to do it, you get the invitation, you go through the process, you feel it's done. You move on the nice, like the, the thing is in Europe in particular, they have two semifinals. One is the first weekend and one's the last weekend. So this is a big deal because obviously if you're having a training cycle and you need to prepare for May 20th compared to June 10th to be in for a lot of these athletes this is it like this is the only weekend opportunity for you to qualify so you say you want to peak for the games you got to get there first so semifinals is your

peak and to find out on April 11th whether you have to be ready on May 20th or June 10th that's a big deal coaches for those athletes are now probably restructuring their their training cycle their deload weeks they're tapering to coincide with when that will be. But up until this morning, they couldn't have made those plans. They could have only speculated about what, which one it could be. Say those things in English for me, but basically you, you, you, you want to peek at the event and you say you have to deload and those things. are you basically saying that it's basically to maximize all the energy systems and your strength, right? So basically in the next four weeks, you have to try to show up there with the ability to do the best three minute, 12 minute, 22 minute workouts

and be strong as fuck. Exactly. Yeah. And I think, uh, it's an okay amount of time to give the athletes, but I think there's of time to give the athletes, but I think there's a way to streamline the process and give you even more heads up in future years. Okay. All right. Um, when,

so soon the teams will get there within a week, the teams, uh, uh, semifinals, or do the teams do semifinals? Yeah. I sent, I sent you guys a picture of the

upcoming dates that are important. Oh, that picture that had... Darius was on it. Darius, okay. But soon, there should be within a week or two or three weeks, then the teams will start getting their invitations

to the semifinals and their boards will start filling in. Yeah, April 18th. Is there anything else happening, Brian? So the next thing – there's nothing really to talk about. Oh, the Masters. Do the Masters have some shit coming up? Two weeks will be the age group quarterfinals and the occupational games. And those people go just straight to the games.

They don't have a semifinal? They do have a semifinal. And those people go just straight to the games. They don't have a semifinal. They do have a semifinal. So they're cut down from 10% per age division to the top 30. Now, this is another situation where it will be very interesting to see. It says semifinals are top 30 for every division. But let's say Masters 60 to 64 women, only 40 people participate.

And then you're going to cut 10 and have another competition with the remaining 30. Like I'm, I'm guessing there's going to be such huge variety of participation with some divisions having a ton and some having very few, but they all get 30 to the semifinals. And then from the semifinals, they all get only 10 to the games this year, which I'm not a fan of.

And are all the master semifinals on one week. They don't spread it out over four weeks. One virtual weekend. I think so, yeah. Okay. It's a virtual competition prior to the games. What about the teenager? Oh, it's virtual. So the Masters never get shit live until the end?

I believe so. They don't die. And what about the kids? Same thing? Same thing. Age group is referring to the teenage divisions and the master's divisions okay anyone who's not good enough to be an individual what do we know what about oh okay let's look at this where's olivia kerstetter

is she going kids or did she drop into yeah so she will have gotten an invitation today as far as i've seen so far she hasn't uh registered for any of these competitions um but i'm assuming within the next 24 hours we'll know what her plan is and uh it's definitely relevant because if she competes as a individual uh i mean as a teenager then you know she's probably the favorite in that division. But it also depends what Emma Lawson does. Which one would she compete at? We don't know. Oh. I'm not even sure.

I don't think the athletes knew today until they got their invites which one they were going to be invited to. Oh, okay, okay. So there's four. You'd have to check all four North America women and scroll up and down to see if – what was her name? Emily Lawson? Emma Lawson. Emma Lawson or Kerstetter has got a spot. Yeah, I haven't seen them though. Are they the only two people who have a choice to go teenager or adult?

Teenager or adult. Oh, there he is. He found her what what region is that she's atlas atlas games okay well she's wow it's good and brian when does she have to choose no she's chosen by by seeing her name on this list she's chosen so she can't go kitty she's not going she's not going teenage. How about that? Danny Horan. Yeah. It's a name we haven't seen in a while.

Wow. And so she trains in New York, so Atlas Games is close enough. She just jump drives, just goes over the border. Man, I would just think that's so stressful going to Canada. And then scroll down, Allison Scudds also. She trains in Vermont, not New York. Yeah, close enough. Hey, Scudds, isn't she training in Vegas with Danielle Brandon? Yeah.

And so she's going to Canada too. Fascinating. Do you have any thoughts on that? How does that happen? She chose that, right? No. That's where she got invited to. that's where she got invited to um that's where she got invited but pat pat informed us that there was not actually a preference uh selection option available this year and so this was done based on uh well probably not geography possibly quarter final ranking otherwise so you did unknown so you just shit the seat how does that mean

you just you just getting processed to canada or dubai or the seating process is unknown it's very ubiquitous arbitrary and secretive and no one understands it and um and that gives crossfit the freedom to kind of manipulate the seeding process if they wanted to. And what I mean by that is what I did last year and Tyler Watkins did this year for me, which was really nice of him, is we seeded all the athletes based on their quarterfinal rank. 1, 2, 3, 4, and then 4 with 5, 6 with 3, 7 with 2, 8 with 1, and just kept snaking back and forth for all 120 placements. And when we looked at that, he's working on another metric that he calls the relative strength index. And so we applied a relative strength index to those four fields. You could see whether they'd be balanced out or not. And it was, you know, in that system, like you're going to get some, what you would call like in the world cup, like a group of death. Like you'll see a list of guys and you'd be like,

Holy cow, there's eight killers in that group. Like eight guys that may be our top 20 at the games. And in this one, I only see three or four. Right. It's not a perfect seating system. I'm not saying we have the perfect.

you don't know. You don't know if it is, but what I do think is that CrossFit should. Oh, soon, you know, obviously I haven't do this yet. I think that it would be wise if they had a pre communicated seating system so that the athletes knew what the process was and weren't just kind of.

Why? What would that help? Well, I need to pee, but I need to come back and ask you a question here real quick. I want to ask you about uh why you tell me what do you think is more fair and equitable to have a pre-communicated system that's then applied to a group of athletes after they compete or to say uh we'll make it fair and equitable just trust us guys well here's the thing here's the thing here's the thing and maybe i'm thinking about this wrong so unfuck me if i'm if i'm thinking that's wrong but you you're at my you're 20 people are at my house and i'm gonna order four pizzas four large pizzas six six large pizzas i always over order i don't ask anyone what the fuck they want i don't give a fuck what you want if i ask you what you want someone's gonna have their feelings hurt

because it's not gonna come the way they want so i order a pepperoni a cheese and don't get upset people a pepperoni and olive and a pineapple and ham okay and and they come and either you eat one or you don't and you should just be thankful that you got the pizza and like in there's ranch and red pepper there and the fights are on did you get how many 24 liters of coke um but my point being is why tell the like i understand what you're saying the importance like like will you go back to that one leaderboard that had tori dyson on it i think i think that's her name that was katrin daughter's uh old training partner over at ben bergeron's place it's kind of i was kind of fascinated to see her name that she's still in the game.

It's pretty cool. She's tiny. Do you know who that is, Brian? Yes, I do. She's tiny. So, like, is this the Atlas Games? Yes. I just can't see sending Americans up to Canada to compete.

That's the part I'm tripping on, the geography. Why not? Because they're crossing the border's ass. It's a shit show. It's just trouble. It would be a problem if they sent someone there that doesn't have a vaccine and communicated to them. Or if you have a DUI. Or if you have a DUI. Or if you have a DUI.

But unless. Yeah. But unless. I don't allow Americans who have DUIs. Really? No. I didn't even know that. Yeah.

Not driving across. You can't drive across. All sorts of shit. Dude, it's crazy. The stories of people getting turned back at the border are crazy. Canada's tough. Well, this is why. I've been in secondary there. Every time I've been there, I've either gone to secondary or someone I'm with has gone to secondary.

One time Dave went to secondary. Me and Greg and Dave flew there, and Dave got taken to secondary. I'm off subject again, but it was pretty funny. Subscribe to our newsletter to hear that story. He started twitching and shit. Okay, sorry, Brian. funny subscribe to our newsletter to hear that story he started like twitching and shit okay sorry brian so so brian you think it should be transparent yeah i think you know and i and i have some ideas but i don't necessarily think they're the only ideas but i think yeah you should say this is this this is the seating process and do you think the athletes should have a say so that they can game it i don't mean that disrespectful or i'm that's not loaded either

i don't have a i don't have a problem with them gaming it but you know what i mean by gaming it you you you're you you you pick the weakest region so that you can go how do you know what the weakest regions i don't know because i think what's I think what, it depends on who you are. If you're a top athlete, if you're actually, think that you have the chance to podium or maybe even top five

at the games, then you just want to go to the first one. You just want to get it out of the way and move on with the training and preparation for the games. And that's a huge advantage.

The rumor has it that Justin Medeiros is going the first week in a syndicate. And if he's going there and he qualifies from there, and we know that Pat's not going, Pat Butler's not going to the Atlas Games, which is like 30 days later, 20 days later. Yeah, 20 days later.

So that means that Justin's got a 20-day head start on preparation for the games over his next closest competitor. Yeah, that's huge. It's a huge advantage. It is? A month more for sure. No, no, because the other people get the month ahead of it. It's not like they lose those days.

But it's a different training, and then you still have to consider the deload and the travel and everything else that comes with it. Once you punch your ticket, you're solely focusing on training for the games. And knowing that and then having it in your back pocket and having 20 more days than all the other athletes is a massive advantage. back what bring back regionals

you guys are talking about deloading again what do you guys think about this they should put all the names in a hat and shake them up what i think they should do is is have some kind of seeding process that seeds them into four groups and then randomly draw the groups into each other i love it. So that way we don't get all the best people in one. So when you say break them into four groups, these are the best people. These are the, so there's 300 in each.

These are the 70. No, no, no, there's not 300 in each. So let's just, just for simplicity's sake, let's talk about North America. There's 120 men. Okay. So a potential thing that you could do, let's just say you take the top 40 people from quarterfinals and you just rank them one through 40. And then so that you know if you place in the top 40 that you're not going to have to compete against any more than nine other guys that can place in the top 40 at quarterfinals.

You're just ranking the top 40 and separating them out in the snake style or whatever it is. Yeah. You look at the – Top 30 because there's four, but go on. Because there's four? What? There's four semifinals. So four doesn't go into 30.

Top 32? 30 goes into – 30 times four is 120. Anyways, we're off subject. Anyway, whatever the number is, right? You look at the, what I think would be cool is you look at the rest of the people who qualified and you pull out anyone who's qualified for the games more than once.

Cause qualifying for the games once it happens qualifying for the games twice. To me is like, that's a different caliber of athlete. And let's say there's 10 other guys in the field that have two games qualifications, which is probably high. Most of those are going to be in the top then you might just distribute those as well everyone else you just can sit like almost no ranking you just however you want to do it oh oh i see what you're saying okay okay okay now i

see why okay i thought you were going a different direction with it that's why i said yeah it's good but whatever it's like i said, yeah, it's good. But whatever. Like I said, I don't have the perfect answer, but I don't think that then you are factoring in the quarterfinal ranking. You are accounting for the fact that there could be guys like, let's just say, Ben Smith or Travis Mayer that don't place in the top 40, it just randomly be that they finished 68th and 72nd and 76. And they're just, every fourth guy is just this, you know, huge name because it's also a draw, you know, you know, Travis Mayer is going to get more attention than a guy who's his first time ever making it to this level of competition. And if they all just end up in the same one, then that'll be the one everyone wants to go to as a fan. So you're just distributing the top, distributing the established athletes in the space. So they may have done that.

They might have done something like that, but it's not known what they're doing. Just like it's not known what you're ordering. Except now it's known what you're ordering. Thank you for recommending that ahead of time. I'll factor that into my decision when I come over for pizza. Brian is struggling with stuff.

That's why you watch the show. That's why you watch the show that's why you watch the show the show should be called try to hear brian talk about quarterfinals we'll seve on pervs out uh okay um well that's exciting to see them loading up i feel like we're getting closer you know what i mean it's it's like it's cool yeah the semifinals is the first competition as far as i'm concerned i i've expressed this already i'm bummed about the open in the quarterfinals i wish the quarterfinals would just go away i i wouldn't even care i i to tell you the truth i'd be even happier if people just went straight from the open to the games at this point i i'm just not a fan of the quarterfinals in the open i think they

they're just fucking each other up there's just no tension for me but the semi-finals daniel brandon just uh registered for the mac ah let's go are you sure she wasn't hacked that's actually her yeah brooke wells will be there sydney mccullish and emma gardener who's training out of uh cross new england now kira milligan who trains in vegas with daniel brandon rebeccaelier, who someone in the comments asked about. This is shaping up to be a pretty good field, too. And so, what we

think happened is that they sent her something, and they said, hey, we're sticking you here. Do you have any issues? And if you say no, you go. We're speculating. We're speculating. We're speculating. All right. Well, cool.

I'm glad Daniel Brandon's going to the semifinals. Oh, and Sidney. Sidney McAlation. Brooke Wells. Those are three already that I want to go. Yeah, so Sidney McAlan is a great example here. I mean, she qualified last year through the Online Atlas Games semifinals. Obviously, she's moved out to CrossFit New England this year

and is training there in probably what's a really good setting for her. And now we get to see her compete live. She did pretty well at the Games. She didn't make the top 20 in her rookie year. I think she was 26th or 5th. But I'm excited to see her compete live. You know, she did pretty well at the games. I just didn't make the top 20 in her rookie years. I think she was 26th or fifth, but, uh, I'm excited to see her compete again.

It's got a text from one of our friends. Thank you. Uh, well, I'm going to, well, I, well,

I'm going to say I could send, uh, let me send one more guest a, um, who's it going to be? I sent it to one surprise guest, and I just got a text back. I got turned down. Oh.

Sent it to one more guest. That's disappointing. That's like when someone tells you, like, oh, I was going to buy you this, but then I didn't. But you know what? The fact that I invited this person on the show and they text me back,'s still like i may have not like gone to bed with them but i still got a handy you know i mean they text me back no that's still nice that's better than nothing right right totally totally better than nothing um brian brian what events are you going to some semifinals what are you doing where can people follow you see you unknown as

of now you don't know i haven't committed to any of them yet okay me neither do you have a favorite what do you mean do i have a favorite do you have like would you like do you want to stay in the united states like would you like to do like all like all the ones in the states no i would actually would i would love to be able to go to the lowlands throwdown i've been trying to go there for a couple years now and it hasn't worked out and where's that one it's in the netherlands i'm not making any attempt to go to it because i think it's insane to go there but i think it would also be fun to be at the torian pro event in australia

i agree i think that would be awesome too oh look where's that oh it's happening this is really cool to watch in real time so by tomorrow will this be full brian i mostly full um there will still be a trickling process as backfields filter in. I wonder if Brian makes a good. Gabriela McGuilla. Oh, yeah. Let me look at this, too. Holy cow.

Lowlands throwdown. Laura Horvat, Sarah Sigmund's daughter, Gabriela McGuilla. Yeah, that's going to be fun. That would be fun to go to and just not work it just just hang on yeah just a flask just brown bagging it that woman from spain elena caratela sana huja is she's pretty good too i think she's got a outside chance the last chance qualifier chance look at that last name san juja all right i think we did i think we did a good job tonight brian i think you and i and mr susan deserve a good pat on the back i think we killed taylor and taylor oh yeah he was on the show when was he oh that was today oh bruce wayne always love to see you patrick clark thanks for checking in jiggy josh

the dick butter cory leonard seven a new a new athlete just signed up for the granite games that i think you'll you'll be interested in as well so it'll be right at the top of the list a woman just read it off for us granite games oh oh sierra is that a silent t i don't know gemel and gemel and sierra gemel and what a name hey guys you can't have two consonants it's a rule um all right guys thank you so much uh tomorrow morning 7 a.m we will be back brian always awesome thank you for being here and uh thank you brian we are you coming on the comporter one brian let me speed that up okay no because i got removed from a monday to a wednesday all right we'll still get that fucked it up all right guys ciao good night adios