The Sevan Podcast - #657 - Rogue Invitational Recap ft. Brian Friend, Saxon Panchik, Barbell Spin, and Hiller

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

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Sounds good. Good morning. Paul, Vindicate, Jeremy, World, Roseview, Photography, and those of you who are addicted to crack. The Sevan Podcast is like, crack, I can't get enough. Who doesn't love crack? Andrew Hiller is like, crack, I can't get enough. Were you sore from the heavy grace, Hiller? No, sir.

No. Nothing. It's pretty cool. Wow. Wow. There's a Sevan subclip station that that is up on if anyone would like to peep it. It was a really extraordinary

thing that Andrew did and then after the show, I talked to him. And I go, what do you think? He goes, I was scared shitless. And I was so stoked to hear that because it was fucking a ballsy move. I was telling Caleb afterwards, it's the first time I've done a jerk since I've had the elbow surgery comfortably. So that was pretty nice. I want to tell you, it inspired me last night at about

10 30 at night at about 10 i got on the assault bike i did 200 calories and then at 10 30 i did uh grace i went overhead with 135 probably for the first time in over a year and i did grace yeah what was your time slight buzz i would prefer not to say didn't you see your buddy cash for his video I would prefer not to say. Didn't you see your buddy Castro's video? No. It was in relation to the swimming workout that he did in Maxel Haj. My guy.

I don't know if I can do it justice because it was rather long. I didn't finish it. It had to do with whether or not if you time a workout, if it's considered CrossFit, I think is a good summation of it. If you don't time a workout. If you don't time a workout, yeah. Did you see it, Brian? I timed it. What Dave had to say?

Yeah, what Dave had to say. I didn't watch it. I just kept kind of an assumption. Savon, you'll be looking shiny today. I took a shower like I do every morning. I'm extremely exhausted. I ended up staying up way, way, way too late. Did you dress up?

Say it again? Did you dress up? Dress up for what? Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no. Yeah, I dressed up as Caleb. I want to make a couple things clear right off the bat, do a little bit of house cleaning.

Rogue did appeal. Sorry. right off the bat do a little bit of house cleaning um rogue did appeal sorry rogue did video appeals on every single overhead squat appeal that the athletes put in kudos to them for that hats off uh and no we'll talk about that more later on okay uh kudos from me maybe not so kudos from brian um and uh just to be uh clear we did did speak quite a bit about the judge in the center lane. And I think we were very honest about it. And we were not in summation at the end. We weren't criticizing her necessarily. We were just concerned with the inconsistencies between the center judge and other judges. between the center judge and other judges. Some of us were like, yeah, you know what? Maybe that hip isn't opening all the way, but look at everyone else. And so it's not an attack on the judge per se.

We were making more of an observation. But Rose did. Well, just in general, in a situation like that, when it's very obvious to everyone watching live and online that something different is happening in one lane than is happening in the rest of the lanes, that's what the head judge is there for. So the head judge is supposed to be aware of that and then make an evaluation or decision and say, is that judge making a bad call or an inconsistent call? And what can I do so that that doesn't continue to happen because

it should never be the case that whether the judge is making the right call or the wrong call that just because you are put into a specific lane that you're at a disadvantage relative to your other competitors if if you want if your goal is to make the competition fair which i believe it is right we should be right right and i believe it is too it's just one it's i don't want to make any assumptions of what people think competition is and is not uh devesh maharaj devesh i always pick your comments just because i like to say your name did brian make out with saxon too? He sounds sick. Who else was he making out with? Did I miss that?

I didn't inform of who else he was making out with. Brian, did you kiss Saxon Panchick open mouth? Well, obviously we were speculating about something might be wrong with him. I didn't necessarily think he would have a top five or even a top ten finish at Rogue, but his overall finish was not what was concerning to me. It was just watching him work out. It didn't, you know, it was like watching Chandler Smith at the Brandon games this past year. I was like, that's not the guy that I'm used to seeing out on the competition floor. And, you know, we didn't know if, or what was going on with him. Now, after the fact, he has said that, you know,

he didn't have the energy that he's used to having in these workouts and finds out that he was sick and so you know that makes sense to me i was pretty critical of him in relation to the handstand push-up workout if i am not mistaken and the other events he usually kind of makes up some of that space which would be like kind of his just pure strength movements which is what j JR was calling that workout a strength test, the straight handstand pushup and dumbbell snatch. And you're right. Yeah, like the hill run workout, he should have done much better on that. Just pure conditioning and typical CrossFit stuff.

Caleb, if you scroll down on that, there's a link to actual Saxon Pancheck's post in regards to that. I did send him a link this morning. He said his voice is pretty darn beat up, but that he would try to make it on for a few minutes. And I would just be curious what that was like for him when he realized it, how it set in. Did you talk to him at all over the weekend, Brian?

No. And Patrick Clark was having some interactions with some of the people from proven so i had asked him if he had a chance to bring it up um but i don't you know they didn't say anything during the competition about it at all um he said he never felt better going into the event that he was just completely prepared but sometimes life throws you a curveball it became more clear to me each day that something wasn't right. Mentally, I was ready and hungry to compete, but physically my body was shutting down each event. The thought of withdrawing has never been a thought to cross my mind, so by the final day I knew something was wrong.

A positive COVID test isn't how I plan to leave the weekend. As an athlete, you tend to think getting sick won't affect you but this is still a tough pill to swallow i'm i'm i'm more impressed by him than ever actually that's pretty badass i hope he's not when i'm on i have a question to ask him uh it's it's not it's nothing bad it's a cool it's a funny question i think okay um it was a pleasure meeting brian this weekend all the real media are real authentic and truly care about the community thanks for all you do uh so many of you have sent us the nicest um uh texts and uh emails and dms by the way this supports me crazy dude saxon what's up brother what's going on man are you glistening is that sweat on you no i just jumped in the shower all right uh we were just looking

at your post a crazy dude absolutely crazy right yeah i mean frustrating but yeah i mean it is what it is um can you tell us when you first were like, when you finished the trail run, what place did you take on the trail run? Do you remember? I took an eighth. Was it setting in there as you crossed the finish line? Were you like scratching your head? Like, or were you happy with that? Uh, no, like I woke up that day a little bit with like a sore throat. Um, and I like had a little bit of a cough overnight and I was just like, you know, just traveling. bit of a cough overnight and I was just like you know just traveling like it was like cold and rainy there the one day um and I was just like that's probably like allergies or the weather who knows what you know what I mean just like switching beds dust I don't know um but like I just like I thought that was my best effort in that it was something that I was like really

working on as to like rucking running um and really just a lot of like my conditioning, excuse me. Um, I thought I could have done a lot better in that workout, but again, like an eighth place in something like that, you know, isn't necessarily bad, but I wouldn't say it was like great either. And, and, and, and when you're in that competition mindset, when, when you get a sore throat or you might not feel good, do you just push that away? Are you like, hey, I don't even have time for those thoughts? You're just like, no. Yeah, I mean, I think every athlete's different. I mean, for me, I'm just like, hey, you know, it is what it is.

Like, I'm going to want to continue competing no matter what. Like, whether you have allergies, like, obviously, like, I didn't know that I had COVID. But, like, whatever it is, like, you know, you're going to continue competing, whether you have like, like rolled an ankle or like hurt your knee or like sore back, you know what I mean? Like as an athlete, you're going to want to continue. And then, and then the second event, Brian was what, what was the second event? Was it? That was a ski bar, the log muscle up. Oh, okay. So then on that one, you take the field for that one. And is it any of it starting to

creep into your brain, into your thoughts at all? Like, Hey, something might not be right. Or did you hadn't quite, you weren't even going to allow that at that point? Yeah, no. I mean, I was just, I wasn't thinking about really at all over the entire weekend, really until like Saturday evening when we got onto DT. I think those other events we saw weren't really like metabolically there i think i was missing like i was kind of really like lethargical that i feel like moving with like purpose and urgency wasn't to where i expected it to be but again like just knowing like hey you're in competition like maybe it's nerves maybe it's you know i'm just sore from the run like whatever it is um but again

really i wasn't thinking that i just felt very like just slow, lethargic again, like even in a workout like that, I, I know that I could have done better. Um, but like, again, it wasn't like a terrible event either. Did you have a headache? Um, that didn't really come until like Sunday, I would say like, like each day it started to progress significantly more and more. I'd really kind of peaked yesterday, I feel like. But I really didn't notice it until we got to Sunday where I would say like, we got more into like the CrossFit style stuff, even Saturday night, like the DT, like DT where it's like heavy breathing. When we got to that, I was like, okay, like it's cold out. Like we sat there for a little

bit, like, uh, biking something that I've really worked on. I was like, um, and then I just got there and I hit the first two rounds, like very hard. And I just felt like I just threshold out very quickly. And like, to be like standing there with my hands on my knees on a barbell movement, um, I can understand like if my bike slowed down, which I think it did a little bit, but just to be standing there on something like that was just like very unusual. Again, I really didn't think too much of that. Um, and then we came to Sunday and, um, really, I would say that muscle up workout was like that peak, um, where I was like, okay, let's just like, try and like ease into each round, get a little bit faster.

Um, and I hit those first two rounds, like I think leading, leading our heat. And I was like, okay, like let's roll. Um, and then like, I started to get up that Hill and just felt like I, like metabolically just wasn't there. Um, and it was like round three, I just like blacked out, Um, and it was like round three, I just like blocked out, peed my pants. No shit. Yeah. But like, I guess. On which movement?

On which movement? I don't even know. I think it was the like last set of muscle ups where it was like, like I did a single and then came down and then just no one to like take off. Like, like, I really don't remember the last three rounds in that workout. Um, but I just, I knew I just needed to make moves in order to like, continue to try to move up the leaderboard. Um, but like, and then just climbing that last hill, um, just felt like I was breathing through a straw.

So at that point you knew something was wrong. I mean, that's pretty uncharacteristic. You were basically just like losing control of your body. Right. Right. Yeah. And the turnovers were so fast on Sunday just because they try and finish those days a little earlier that I was like, okay, we got one more. And race 225. I mean, that's something I've done before.

And I was like, hey, this is my jam. And I think I got like five clean and jerks in and like just hands are on the knees and to take dead last and something like that. And to like just be missing reps and just like really stand there. Like I was I was wheezing a lot on that workout. And like I walked off the floor and I was just like that, like this just isn't me. And like just something just feels really off. really off so those uh someone on the show and i apologize i don't it might have been uh said that um the reason why you didn't do well it was it was hillar it was hillar someone on the show said the reason you didn't do well at heavy grace is because you still have a

prepubescent body no they weren't that harsh they said they said that they said that they were speculating that because you started crossfit so young that you that uh you just weren't putting on the bulk and size necessarily of your brother and the muscle mass that's just complete horseshit that's just just for sure grasping at straws tell us sex for sure no i mean i I don't disagree. I did start at a very young age. And like, I think like the old motto of like weightlifting coming up was like a lot of like isolated movements where you're obviously able to work small muscle groups, big muscle groups and really put on that size. That wasn't something that I really ever went through.

You know, 12 years old. I don't even think I had hair under my armpits and I was doing CrossFit. Um, and it was just, it's just, it was all that I knew. Um, and I just continued that. And obviously it's stuff that like I'm continued to like evaluate and like, that's a big goal for the off season is to be able to put on a little more muscle mass to increase. Like I would say specifically, like you look at the strict handstand push-ups um i need to focus on stronger shoulders and um you know what i mean like and with that standard it's just something that is just going to take a little more time and being able to isolate the shoulders more you know what i mean like strict handstand push-ups weren't i don't know what you mean you look buff as shit to me so i have no idea what you mean. Well, Saxon, everything he's saying makes sense in line with what we were talking about. There were some specific workouts over the course of the weekend that, like you said, barbell cycling, DT, even the overhead squats, and then obviously the finale are stuff that I would always expect you to do very well in.

finale are stuff that I would always expect you to do very well in. And then when I look back at the end of the week, I'm like, man, like he didn't look right on the competition floor and this doesn't look right on paper relative to who I know this guy to be. Right. Yeah. And it, like I said, like, you know, it's, I never want to be one full of excuses or things like that. Even like it was something that I thought about was like more of like, if I could walk away from that and be like, Oh, Hey, that was like, like, I truly feel like that was my best effort. And like that matches up to where my training was up to that point. Okay, cool. But like when that doesn't, and I

know that, you know, I just have to be honest with myself. And like, really, I felt like that started to come out more and more as the weekend went on that like, hey, this isn't who I am. Mr. Hiller. You're strong as shit, Saxon. All right. So I remember the first time I ever stood next to you, I think a lot of Palooza. You had no idea who the fuck I was, but we were. He still doesn't.

He still doesn't. He still doesn't. He knows now. He just doesn't care. He officially knows me as the guy who was talking shit on the live stream about his muscle mass. So the thing that I remember of you is you were with your brother, I mean, your two brothers competing, and you had to do a one-rep snatch on the bay front, and you hit something like 290 pounds. I remember you walked off the floor, and you were like that narrow.

I'm like, how in the fuck did he just pull that off? And that's kind of been a lasting impression that I've had of you, and it's something that carried over into stuff like that straight handstand pushup. It's just something I've always been wondering if you've been trying to throw on some muscle mass. I look at the quarterfinal workout, which was the other total.

And if I had to guess the thing that held you back would have been the bench press. Is that right? A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And at which rate,

that's clearly something you're probably working on right you already said shoulders and upper body pressing for sure and um i think just coming off of the games like my big focus was like hey let's just like i need to i need to um focus just on something just knowing that again like that performance at the games wasn't what i um expected and so I just really focused on, instead of like really hitting a lot of my weaknesses, I focused on, you know, being CrossFit well-rounded. So like now it's time to like, okay, let's take that step back. Let's just focus on some other things.

Let's focus on this next season. And that's just going to, again, come with time. I don't think, I can't expect a bench 335 in six weeks. You know what I mean? Like that's just, it's a slow process and it takes time. 335 in six weeks. You know what I mean? Like that's just, it's a slow process and it takes time. California hormones. 12 weeks.

Saxon sounds like the complete opposite of, of yesterday's Starbucks employee. We did a piece yesterday on a Starbucks employee who was complaining that they're overworked and wasn't taking any responsibility. And this is a enormous compliment is compliment as Saxon takes ownership of everything, which is pretty damn impressive. Go ahead, Hiller. One of the biggest critiques of Hayley Adams is her,

I think she's spoken about it in public, about how she likes to keep on doing backhands, backhand, backhand. It's kind of what she's drawn to. And in relation to you putting on some mass, putting on some strength, have you seen your programming shift in that direction like away from your typical crossfit metcon into some more typical powerlifting bodybuilding or no yeah i'm as you're with proving i'm assuming shame would be putting you down that path for sure definitely but um like the big focus for me was being ready for Rogue. Um, that like our turnover to Rogue was

just so fast that like, I wanted to continue to bring all of my CrossFit movements. I do think like going down that road, you're going to, you might have to take a step back away from a lot of other things. Um, but for me, I just wanted to see like where my foundation was just being under a new program, new coach, new team, new environment. I wanted to see really like what that looked like. And I already obviously started those conversations with Shane as to like what the future is going to look like and training up to next year. Clydesdale Media, Saxon is a class act. He will be back better than ever.

Saxon, did you, are you home now or are you in your hotel? No, I'm home. How was the travel home? How did you, you your hotel? No, I'm home. How was the travel home? You flew home. Yeah, I got back. That's the last thing I want to do is go in a plane. Sick. That sucks.

They pressurized that cabin at 9,000, right? Weren't they arresting people for that at one point? Did you get arrested? Do you think you've turned the corner with COVID? Do you feel any better? I feel like yesterday was really the peak. I'm hoping that last night was a hard time just sleeping and just coughing a lot. So I'm hoping we're on the down climb where I'm starting to get better each day.

Overall, what were your thoughts on the event? The entire Rogue Invitational and the, Bill and Katie and gang, uh, treated you. They always do a great job. Um, and that's why, you know, always want to keep coming back. Um, they, they take care of the athletes. They put the athletes first more than anything. Um, and they hear you out and, you know, any concerns that you have.

So, you know, for something like you have. So, you know, for something like that, an event to be like ran like that for athletes, it's incredible. Yeah. Awesome. We, uh, we received information saying that they listened to every single appeal, um, on the overhead squat workout and, uh, and they ran them all. And I found that, uh, pretty consistent with what you're saying about them caring about the event. Yeah, of course they just, they do a good job. It's, it's a, it's, I don't want to say it's a small team, but like compared to, I think what you see at some of these other events, it's very, uh, the communication with them, um, is very good that, you know, nothing's ever misled to anybody. Was there, from your perspective, was there was there any um concern or problem with that

they rushed you guys out there for the log lift a little earlier than originally planned um i mean yeah we definitely got rushed but i think i would rather be rushed on something like that than a one rep snatch or a one rep clean and jerk i think like it's a log you know what i mean it's like you either can lift it or you can't more more responsibility taken i think i think i think maybe if we start a little lighter i think like i think 260 was significantly heavy i think a lot of athletes were looking at each other i mean no i know my pr up to that point was 245 and i was like dang all right well you're either gonna hit this or you're gonna miss it like like it is what it is uh uh ian adams what if there was a coveted games uh everyone gets it at the start of the week and see who wins well we know who the champ would be uh we're looking at him the champion

of the coveted games uh anything else uh for mr panchick before we let him go back to his chicken soup oh man it's tough it's tough that that happened but uh commend you for sticking with it and trying to fight through and still giving your best yeah saxon you the man and thanks for doing this really appreciated that you came on a lot of course thanks for tolerating me all right have a All right. Have a good one. Saxon Panczyk. Wow. Wow. He was in during the muscle up workout that he was talking about. I was making notes by round because I wanted to see, you know, how often the leaders after rounds one or two would be passed over the course of the workout. And it was very infrequently. But one of the notes that I made was in the middle of round five, Saxon falling back. And so mean it was you know exactly he was talking about he was just falling off the

pace and those last couple rounds were pretty difficult for him uh taylor did you let your kids did you let your kids trick-or-treat they trick-or-treated their asses off and then um we were at a friend's house and when we left late in the evening um they left all their candy there you know what was interesting is my son my son avi when we got back to the house we were at um they didn't have any candy to give out so he just put up his bucket and used his candy to give out to kids who came to the door beast i put a box of granola bars on the porch and that one was taken come on it was like a 100 box from costco i stuck them out there and no one took one you're lucky i didn't come by i'd have taken a shit in your bowl for that granola bars um

you can i i don't take lightly what he said about passing out uh blacking out during those uh final uh rounds i i believe that is 100 true and it kind of it's it's pretty impressive that he went on the peeing the pants it's all uh this is one of the i mean i know he's not one of the oldest guys in the field but he's one of the most experienced competitors that was out there he has been around forever not only has he seen his brother do it he's been doing it and he's you know he competes off season he competes in all the elements he's been doing it. He competes off-season. He competes in all the elements, all the movements. Everything adds up.

It makes sense that this was not the Saxon Pan chick that we usually see. His attitude also is in line with the character that those guys have always had. Unless he's an Academy Award winning actor, he does seem sick as shit right now when we interviewed him.

I thought you were paying him $5 per cough. Yes. Yes. Sevan, did you see the Senate committee report that a lab was the most likely origin of COVID? Tens of millions died. No one really cares. I did. I did, and I continue to watch it.

And it's just all – it's just absolutely batshit and bushed at 9 11 easy hillar just so you know every time now just because i just said that on the show i will get now in youtube uh something saying every single show we do because it comes up in every single show i get a little mark saying that this show has been flagged for monetization i always put in a review i've always put in a review and i'd say 99 of the times we pass the review youtube says okay sorry it was our bad but every single time as soon as you say that word they have something that listens and um and they and they ding us for it they stop monetization on it right away until we ask for a manual review. That's why Saxon put an asterisk in his post probably.

Oh, okay. Yeah, he's definitely smarter than me. Or he could just, you know. You're aware of it too. You just don't care as much. I guess, yeah. That's fair enough. You just don't care as much.

I guess, yeah. That's fair enough. There are some things that I would like to talk to Brian Friend about his biased reporting. I got one minute. At the barbell bend. Then I'll use this so you can help me attack Brian before it goes. Let's attack Brian quick. quick he said he uses the word um he uses the word to describe justin madaris's behavior as i can't i can't even find it in my notes uh that he stole points is that the word you use brian yep is that appropriate why can't you just say that he worked hard? Why do you have to make it so dramatic? He stole points.

He didn't steal anything. Taylor, do you have any thoughts on that? It kind of goes along with his pacing of workouts, no? Look it, by the way. Right at the end of every single workout, it seems like he's just right in the perfect spot to finish a place or two higher. And I'd have to say that's kind of what he's getting at. Right, Brian? In the process, Medeiros also, quote, stole.

Brian looking for a little reprieve from my anger. Close quote, points from the rest of the field. How dare you, Brian? Well, Patrick Belner sure as shit didn't steal any points that's uh so that's the the concept i'm not so much talking about justin taking them away from the other person as that that's right for the other say that one more time you broke up you broke up pretty bad brian say that again at any time can you hear me he's no uh now we can but you are breaking up pretty bad should i come out and log back in uh no yeah take another shot at it

stole points action it's not so much i'm more writing that from the perspective of the other athletes or the rest of the field okay if you think about the final event for example which is very memorable one where you know velner it looks like he has in sight what he needs and then all of a sudden he doesn't and who was it it was madaris again coming in and taking that from him um hill hiller um so for your job you don't for your youtube job you don't right for your youtube job you don't wear a shirt but for your other jobs you do wear a shirt well i'm about to go outside and drive to a client's house it's kind of colder i think it's 45 degrees or something so okay i cut you off

what was your response to brian what did you say in response when i read that the best thing that i hear is madero steals points and Belner gives them away. Okay. Would you say that that's a good summation of it, Brian, or no? Yeah, of the workouts in particular that I noticed this happening in in this competition, in four of those workouts, Belner was one of the guys bleeding the points. Sometimes he was the only guy.

Is Brian sick too? I feel amazing, actually. Thank you. Jeez Louise. Andrew Hillards, thank you for coming on, brother. You're the man. I really appreciate you doing this a bit in the morning. Thank you. Bye-bye. Oh, he said bye, Brian. I cut him off.

Another quote in there. I'm going to close the window okay take your time uh you can find brian's articles at the uh at barbell bend i don't think there's a done it oh bar bend sorry at bar bent why am i why do i struggle with that so much bar bend uh dot com uh i believe it's it would be accurate to say Brian is their senior writer there for all things CrossFit. He is there now permanently and full time. That is the place you want to be to get all your CrossFit daily news. And Brian is quite prolific. And the team is building there also at Bar Bend. Brian is over there as the senior writer and he's assembling a team around him and i think that that is going to become more and more robust if you go up to the hamburger in the left hand corner what you do is you click it and a drop down will come down and you'll see uh crossfit and then you

just click there and uh you'll get loaded up on on all sorts of good stuff yeah it was this it was actually super nice this weekend because patrick cl Clark's working over there with me now. And he was on the ground taking a lot of pictures for both Strongman and CrossFit, but also writing kind of just like the recap events, articles for each event. So that's like, you know, someone's got to do it, but it's more of the busy work. And so he was working his ass off this weekend. And that allowed me to kind of sit back, do this stuff with you guys, but also write some more in-depth or thoughtful pieces at the end of each day. Uh, just to address this barbell spin versus bar bend. If it wasn't for Brian, I wouldn't have even had, um, the barbell spin on, uh, Brian is actually quite generous with his resources. And, uh, he, he is actually the one who introduced me to J.R. Howell, Taylor Self. He's

the one who suggested I have the guy on from Barbell Spin, John Young, et cetera. So I don't think Brian sees it as a versus. I think they see it as a place to team up and get the best out there. I love it. And there have been a lot of people who've reached out to me over the years that, that have some stuff to contribute. Um, some are more committed or dedicated to that. And some of them, a lot of the guys that you've mentioned have just shown to be pretty knowledgeable and hardworking in those, you know, in their areas of expertise. And, uh, I love having, you know, the different perspectives and in the case of barbell spin, you know, he's really, really making a massive effort to get information out to you guys quickly. Um, that's actually a,

is a huge relief for me, you know, because, uh, the, I, you know, if we can get the information, that's great. Then we can think about it, talk about it, evaluate it and put it into perspective for, for those that want to consume it, understand it. So I love the work that he's doing, and I think we're going to even be able to talk about some of the stuff he's done recently later on in this show. Brian, throughout the week, listening to you talk and listening to the rest of the guys talk, if I were to rank the events in terms of ones you like the most and ones you like the least, I think the one you like the least was the dual event. And I think in general, a lot of people, and that was the one that was the rope climb, overhead squat. What was the last movement?

Oh, the sandbag carry across the finish line, maybe across the finish line, maybe not. Yeah, exactly. Would you say that that's accurate? I would say that Saturday in general, the events were my least favorite. Not necessarily from – well, they were my least favorite events. So this was the turtle, the duel, and the log lift. And I didn't like them all for various reasons and i should say that i didn't like them i didn't like them relative to some of the other workouts for various reasons so we can go through them in any order you want oh which was so which was your

least favorite is it because of presentation or is it because of the um actual uh stimulus that was being tested uh what each one's a little bit different. So for the turtle, the reason I was so disappointed with the turtle was because when they put this out, you know, this is something that we talked about throughout the weekend. Rogue likes to give some information, but not all of the information. So when they put out this workout, there are, you know, we said there's a lot more unknowns than knowns here. And, and, uh, you know, Katie was even encouraging of it. She's like, speculate, speculate away. That's what they want. So I love that they put this out here without all of the details, without all of the movement

standards. What is the monkey park traverse going to look like? He'll run bag pull. What is that exactly? And we talked about several different options of what that could be. And then when we saw it in action, what we got was the most basic version of a monkey bar traverse once across on monkey bars we've seen twice before that really was not very critical at all in the flow of the workout for 80% of the athletes. It didn't make any difference at all. No one got a no rep there. A couple of the athletes were a little bit slow across them and that hurt them. But overall, it didn't factor into the workout very much. The Hill Run bag pull with the, and it's called the turtle. So we're expecting to see a turtle, the bag called the turtle that

falls in line of the family that they've created of the snail and the slug and the pig and the worm and all these alpaca, all these animal implements that they've created. And I was excited to see a bag that looks like the shape of a turtle. We talked about, it might have these kind of stubby appendages that the athletes could grab that could affect their grip that could affect the monkey bar traverse on the way back. It didn't happen that way.

The pulling of the bag up the Hill. I did like that. I thought that was cool. But again, there was, you know, it was kind of the opposite of the monkey bar traverse. 80% of the field appeared to do it at the same rate.

And there was a small percentage of the field that was able to do it a little bit better. But when we looked at the totality of the workout, this was just a lunging race. There was very few athletes that came off the first lunge and then gave away any places in their heat relative, you know, on the rest of the workout. So I was disappointed by this one because my expectations were so high that it could be so cool. I couldn't wait to see the monkey bars they built. And if that they were demanding, I was excited for the turtle bag and then what that meant to pull it up the hill and how that would affect the reverse trip. The athletes did say that the last lunge was tough, but we talked about it. Two out of 40 athletes dropped the bar on the last lunch. So again,

if you were in the lead after the first lunch, you basically held the lead. And I just didn't love it from that perspective. So that's what my disappointment was, I suppose, with the turtle. Well said all about Event 5. Very well thought out, Brian. Jethro Cardona, 3701. I love that number. Thanks for the coverage and the analysis for the games and Rogue. You all rock.

Hiller friend for Prez VP, Seve for CEO. Event number six. This is the dual. So we, you know, in general, if you're going to program an elimination style event,

like it's a risk, there's a risky element to programming that. And there are, I think there are a lot of things that should be factored into that equation. First of all, if it's an elimination style event, which means that several athletes will have to do multiple rounds, it can't be a very long workout. You know, 30 seconds to a minute is likely the maximum amount of time that the athletes are going to have.

And therefore, the margins for air to separate themselves based on their fitness from the rest of the field is going to be small and a lot of times what it turns into is not necessarily a test of who's the fittest but it's a test of execution we saw this at the games with the skill speed medley and we've seen it at the games in many variations in the past usually and, and originally, it was with a barbell, snatch speed ladder. And if you go back and watch the 2015 games or games documentary, you see that there are a lot of athletes that are certainly capable of snatching those weights, but they miss them. But it was obvious. You either missed it or you didn't, or you made it. There was no really

gray area. It was really unlikely or rare that you saw someone hit a snatch, stand it up, think they'd made it, run over the bar, and then get called back for a no rep. So it was really, even though execution was a critical component, there wasn't a lot of grayness for the judge to impact the decision of whether you've done it or not. The legless rope climb here was fine. Legless rope know, legless rope climbs in general are, are a movement that I, you know, it's quite obvious that the men are better than the women at those. And a lot of times in programming, you see that the men might have to do four and the women have to do three. And I think that that's appropriate because, uh, that, you know, I think

it's just a, just a, an understood thing. It happens with muscle ups also, or, you know, it's going to be more difficult for the women and that's okay. And programmers can recognize that. So I might have liked to see a little nuance here with the legless rope climb. And we talked about, well, maybe they do it seated from the ground. And even if you didn't want to do two legless rope climbs, if you'd made the men start on their butt and then have to go from the ground in the L-sit position, that could have been just a slight variation that would have allowed for someone in the men's division who's better at the legless rope climb or that variation of it to have a slight advantage. Most of the guys came off the legless rope climb and most of the

women relatively similarly. There were a few that were a little better, a few that were a little worse, but a lot of this workout came down to the overhead squats. So my first issue with the workout is the overhead squat being there and that if you're going to put it there, you have to understand 135 and 95 is a lightweight for these athletes. There's no chance any of them are breaking and they are racing through these reps. There are 10 reps there compared to one on one side and one carry on the other side. So it's, it is the critical component of the workout. It's the opportunity for you to either separate, stay ahead or pass someone that's slightly ahead of you. So they're going to be pushing it.

And what that means is it's very demanding and difficult and critical for the judge. And so as the competition organizer, knowing that in this style of workout with these three movements and that one right there in the middle, and there's only five athletes and it's on display in the middle of the field and everyone's watching it, that one right there in the middle, and there's only five athletes and it's on display in the middle of the field and everyone's watching it. You have got to be like a spot on, on the money, getting that right from the judging perspective so that the athletes have the chance to display their fitness and see whether they can advance or not into the next round. Seconds matter, which means reps matter, which means one rep could be the difference between your workout. And if you look at a guy like BKG, if anyone goes back and watches that,

I think he was, it was the second round. He had advanced through the first round. He gets into the second round. I think he's leading his heat. He gets a no rep or two. I get one no rep and it dropped him down two spots in his heat. And he didn't advance into the next 10 athletes. BKG historically is known as a fantastic mover.

If you watch that back, I don't, this is what we talked about at the start of the show. I don't necessarily have a problem with the bad call or I mean with the call, I'm not even saying it was a bad call, but I saw a lot of other athletes that were moving very similarly to that more frequently than that, not getting no reps. So to your initial comment, if there were reviews coming in about the overhead squats and they were being reviewed, that's a good thing. But what wasn't being reviewed was the athletes in the other four lanes who were not getting bad call or not getting no reps and therefore would never appeal it. And so we weren't we were potentially retroactively looking at the ones who did get called for no reps, but we weren't retroactively looking at those that didn't. looking at the ones who did get called for no reps, but we weren't retroactively looking at those that didn't.

I had made an assumption that Rogue had taken a position of saying, we're not going to review the overhead squat because that's a subjective call on the field of play. That's not what they did. They have now, we've since learned that they did allow for review of those things, but they didn't allow her for a review of the athletes that may have been getting reps that should never have been counted to begin with. Second problem.

Go ahead. I'd like to say something, point out something that two things in regards to just the lay of the workout and defensive rogue. If it is going to be a duel, then I do appreciate the fact that they are just going to be sprints. I like the fact that it's going to be sprints that lead to the elimination. And to further Brian's point, if there was a premium put on execution for and yet it's a judge who is then – or lack of consistency in judging that's causing the outcome of the event to change. It's a tricky point. There's a fight between those two. There's a tension there.

But that's not where the problems with this workout in execution ended because the last thing you have is sandbag carry to the finish. And the first thing that we talked about in the morning, cause this was one of the events that was withheld until late on. And then barbell spin was able to give us an original version of it. We saw the sandbag bag weight carry a change a little bit, but regardless, immediately upon seeing this workout, those of us that were a part of the coverage this weekend talked about what does sandbag carry to the finish look like? Is a sandbag carry to the finish mean you pick up the sandbag and run it all the way across the line? Do you have to run it to a certain point and put it down and then continue across the line yourself?

Is it when the sandbag crosses the line? Is it when the chip timer crosses the line? Do you have to show control over the line? Immediately upon seeing this workout, we recognized that that would be critical because this is going to be a race because seconds and fractions of seconds will matter. We're not 100% sure of what the briefing was, which is, again, something that we accept, covering Rogue, watching Rogue. We know that they keep some things kind of private and withheld, and that's their liberty and totally fine. But the application on the field of play should be abundantly obvious to everyone watching what ends the workout. And in this case, that didn't happen at all. And even though all those other things were problematic, this to me is the biggest problem with this workout. We saw some people whose feet were behind the line, and they let go of the bag,

and it crosses the line. We saw other people dive across the line, head over heels. We saw some people whose feet were behind the line and they let go of the bag and it crosses the line. We saw other people dive across the line, head over heels. We saw others run across and demonstrate control the whole time. And we were never really told or sure. And still, I don't know what the standard that was briefed was and what was supposed to happen on the field of play. The only assumption I can make at this point is that it was not executed consistently and then i would love to have someone from rogan to be able to answer that and enlighten us on that but so far from watching it live and watching it back i don't know what the standard was to finish this workout and i don't think that it was carried across evenly by all of the athletes who did it uh i'd like to read this uh comment here because i couldn't agree with it more the ultimate

compliment to you and the credibility of your show should be katie coming on each day at rogue solid by dude mind-blowing to me amazing mind-blowing i would give the credibility to i would all all of that goes to katie absolutely um does nothing for her or the event and just makes her vulnerable. And yet she took the time to do that. And we're all extremely thankful that she did that. She gave us her time every day. And you could tell that at the end, she had a long day every time. So coming on, that was pretty impressive.

And some of the people who are closest to her at Rogue, her husband, Bill, Drake Sladke is one of the, uh, integral pieces of their team. They're even put up posts on their Instagrams, you know, commenting on how impressive she is as a leader, how hardworking she is. And I mean, she, she's working tirelessly in the buildup and throughout this competition. So to take a few minutes and come and do that is incredibly generous. So I appreciate that you guys recognize that too. In the brief comms that I did have with Bill over the weekend, he did give Katie all the credit. In the very brief, he made it clear that it was Katie.

And it's pretty impressive. The final event on that day. Brian, hi. How are you, Mr. Spinn? Doing well. Good morning. Brian, we're just talking through some of my least favorite events in terms of execution from the weekend. And it was basically all of Saturday.

So we talked about the turtle and we talked about the duel. And now we're talking about the Texas Oak. Okay. I was watching and agreed with pretty much everything you said. Brian, tell me about the Oak. Why does this make it in your top three least favorite events? Well, I mean, in the conversations we had with Katie, first of all, I think I could tell that there was a little bit of uncertainty about it.

You know, she said, I think we got the rates, the weights, right. And it's, you know, one of the, I think one of the things that the sandbag ladder at the games was, it seems like, uh, particularly for the men, maybe they started a little light. Like everyone was hitting bags for a really long time. Few people were being dropped out here at Texas Oak.

We had almost the opposite where, I mean, a couple of athletes in the men's field missed, missed. I'm going to use that. I'm going to use that Brian send and Brian friend. I'm going to use that. That's it.

That's official. Um, where that, you know, somebody, somebody a couple athletes missed the first lift off together i think brian has these stats exactly five men met him missed at 260 six more missed at 270 so you're basically three lifts in and you've lost 14 out of 16 competitors it's like well you probably should have started a little lighter. Additionally, factor in that they didn't get the full warmup time. And you wonder if maybe they'd had a little bit more warmup, if a couple of the guys might've hit a few of those weights, but none of that is the biggest issue I have with this, this event. So first of all, from the perspective of the MCs who work very hard and, you know know they have a long days it is extremely tedious and difficult to be the person who is responsible for the call three two one lift three

two one rotate and to be locked in and focused and dialed in and not make sure that you don't miss that call no matter what the entire time the reason being is because there's a lot going on you know it's exciting there's lifting and in on. It's exciting. There's lifting. And in this format, you didn't have to finish the lift by the time he said rotate. He could say three, two, one, rotate. And if an athlete had just picked up the bar at the row part of rotate, they were allowed to continue to lift. The log lift takes a lot of time, even relative to a barbell lifting. They have to get it up get into that squat work it up onto their shoulders take a few breaths compose themselves get it overhead stabilize in the time

that that takes to happen you know time is still elapsing and it's only 15 seconds from the time he says rotate to the time he says three three for three two one lift and he has to be watching that because i guess there was also the potential that they could say hold and then there would be a time to wait. So it's very demanding on him. And I know Larry Moss and he takes that role on a lot at those competitions because a lot of the emcees are nervous to or don't want to. Like I said, it's very, very difficult and demanding. We did have a couple of times in this workout where it didn't go as planned. Why not make it a pre-recording like they've done at the games,

take that pressure off of him, let the MCs call the exciting parts of the event. And then if you need to hold, you just stop the tape recorder and you start it again when you're ready to go. And we eliminate the human error in that workout. It, what ended up happening is that there were a few times where athletes, because additionally the log was meant to be replaced in the middle of the pads

with the handles up for every heat of athletes, every time they had a chance to go. And because the time was getting tight with athletes lifting past the rotate, and then athletes needed to start again on the lift. Some of the athletes had to go out there and reset the logs for themselves, which took away from their opportunity to have a full 45 seconds to attempt the lift. And if you go back and watch that, there were a lot of athletes that hit their lift on their second attempt within that 45 second window and taking five or 10 seconds away from them to have to reset the log by themselves was a disadvantage. And Brian, I think has hopefully done a little bit of research and looking into here.

But in the case of Jeff Adler in particular on the 270 pound log it might have cost him the win of the overall competition hold uh brian sen hold that thought for a second um so you're telling me if there were four lanes with logs in them or even two and the guy was still in the middle of his lift the commentator would still say lift what would the guy do behind him who was supposed to go what would that guy do what if i was behind someone and it said lift do i wait till the next round i think that this was when they were they would say hold and then they would allow for an you know an unspecified amount of time to elapse before they

would start the next one but it didn't oh okay so all the guys would hold even if one lane was still lifting all the guys would hold yeah there was one moment in particular where they were saying hold and everyone understood what they were saying except for roman krennikoff who doesn't speak the language and he went out there he was even riling up the crowd and he went to approach his log and they're like hold hold hold and his judge is like hold and then finally they got his attention and he realized that he went back so that was an unplanned sequence because what concerns me about this is what we saw happen at the games with the bike when jet when there's when especially when there's a lot of judges right so we never got a clear report where the judge is telling the

guys that they were done with three laps were where they tell him to keep to not come in. And so as soon as soon as individual judges start working the event, things can get confusing. The fidelity coming to the athletes of what they should and shouldn't be doing gets gets less than perfect. Brian Spin, what were you going to say before I interrupt you? Yeah. So Brian had mentioned that Adler on the 270 pound log failed. And so I went back to the video this morning and looked at it. And so like, like you said, there was confusion about when to start and you could see the athlete, the other three athletes start to go and adler paused and he didn't get to his log for 10 seconds and the log was rolled up all the way to the front

of the pads instead of to the middle and uh the handles were upside down you know facing the bottom so he did not start his first attempt for with, uh, until 20 seconds into that 45 second time limit. Uh, he failed, he picked it up again, 38 seconds in, and then he did not attempt to jerk it that time as well. Um, had he lifted that and gotten a successful lift, uh, he would have moved up to ninth place, up six spots from 15 because he had the second fastest tiebreaker of all guys.

That adds 30 points. He moves up to 745 points for the total and he beats Medeiros by 10. To win the event. To win the competition. And the competition and 215 000 yeah he didn't pass anybody you know he didn't move anybody else down that mattered but those six spots would have given him an additional 30 points and he went from

715 up to 745. Sorry, one more time. I know you said already, why was he 10 seconds late to the log? So there was confusion about whether or not their time started. And you can hear on the mic, you know, three, two, one, go. But all the athletes started looking at each other. Two of them immediately went to the log. Oh, is that when Noah went to the log and he was like looking around like guys what are you doing are you guys coming or no it was noah chandler i can't

remember the fourth um and yeah okay wow is this it might be right before this one do you Yeah, it was 10-37-06 is the start. Do you think Adler knows this? Yes. So, you know, these people in the chat, please, Brian and I are not in competition with each other. We're helping each other. We're both trying to push the sport and the athletes' opportunities forward. Adler was the one who told me about this. And this morning I was doing a lot of different things to try to prepare for this show.

And Brian has also done a lot of great work, which is why we invited him on this show. And so I called him and asked him if he could look into this specifically so we could get accurate information to see whether what Jeff had said thought had happened had actually happened. And here we can see exactly this. Okay. And that's the point. Can you, can you roll it back just a few seconds so we can see that? I do remember. Okay, so you see, if you just go back even, I know it's hard on a four-hour timeline, but just, oh, nice. Okay, watch Noah here go up and then look over. He's wondering why the other guys aren't, look it, there's Noah on the left corner of your screen. Caleb is there, and he's looking back.

Okay, and then the rest of the guys go, okay. So there was some miscommunication there, but in all, in all fairness, though, Adler wasn't going to get that. I completely disagree with that. Okay. As I said, well, we don't know for sure if he would have gotten it, but a lot of athletes were unsuccessful on attempt one and were successful on attempt two late in the time window. Keep in mind, the men had less time to warm up than they usually do. And, you know, this is only his second log lift of the event. That's why I would have liked to see maybe a started at 240 or 250

to get the guys some familiarity with a less familiar object and also give them a chance to watch him do more than one or two lifts each. If you go back and watch the sandbag ladder from this summer, we saw that, you know, Justin Madaris looked relatively uncomfortable with the early sandbags and went on to do great. Ricky Gerard had never hit even 260 pounds. He went on to hit 330 pounds.

They were figuring out as they go, these athletes adapt so well. That's why you see so many of them hitting the second lift, not the first lift. And Brian, Brian, in that video, we never saw,

we never saw Ad never saw um adler even attempt to jerk in both attempts no right so but all i'm that i'm saying here is whether he would have hit it or not he should have had the full opportunity of 45 seconds with the log placed in the center of the with the handles up like everyone was supposed to have to see if he could do it and the fact that he didn't get that and that if he had gotten it, he would have won this competition outright taking everything else out of the equation, that to me is not a great execution of this event.

And that is why we've deemed Saturday as the worst day of the competition based on those three workouts we just completely dissected. Yeah. Do you agree with that, Mr. Spin? Saturday was your least favorite day? 100%. It was too slow. dissected. Yeah. Uh, do you agree with that? Uh, Mr. Spin Saturday, Saturday was your least favorite day.

A hundred percent. It was too slow. Um, like I said, I think I made a comment. I went and coached a soccer game, came back and only missed a couple of heats of the, of the dual. Uh, the methodical pacing of, uh, of the athletes who did well. Um, I'm trying to think, talked about in depth about justin medeiros's uh methodical pacing um i can't it was definitely an interview lauren khalil did with jason hopper and she she basically he he gave pacing uh high marks also is why he won i'm trying to remember which one did uh it was, it was the handstand pushup event. He said he didn't plan on winning it,

but it was just pacing. It all just came down to pacing that workout. I mean, like that, that workout in particular for most of the men, the 20 dumbbell snatches at a hundred pounds is not going to be the make or break part of the workout for most of us. It sounds like an impossible feat,

but these guys are moving that dumbbell very well. Jason Hopper is incredibly strong. I'm sure he could do 20 touch and go with 100 if he wanted to, but there was no need to. The only thing you needed to do on that workout was make sure you didn't fail any of the strict deficit parallette handstand pushups. If you go back and watch it, Jason's execution was perfect on that workout. Medeiros' execution was perfect on that workout, and Vellner's was not. He gets in the last round with a lead. He misses a few reps, and that's what you had.

You had another example of Medeiros stealing points from him late in a workout. If you go into Sunday with Justin Medeiros, and you're winning, it's never safe, right? Is Justin Medeiros a Sunday guy? Pull up that article that I wrote about it. I want to make sure I get these right,

but I'm pretty sure from 2021 games on Sunday, 2022 games on Sunday, and from Rogue 2021, there were nine scored events. And in those nine events, he never finished worse than fifth. You know, he had a first, second, third, a third, fourth, fifth, second, fourth, fifth. Yeah, these right here. Come to this Sunday and his best event finish of the three workouts was fifth. So this is the first time in those four major competitions, the four biggest competitions he's participated in in the last two years, that he's had, you know, he's had a chink in the armor on workouts on Sunday. Laura Horvath in five events, she got 495 points.

She sent a new set, a new rogue record winning three consecutive events. It was four consecutive events. Previously it had only been two. That being said, Tia Toomey has won five events at a Rogue Invitational. Thoughts on Laura's performance, Mr. Spinn? at least in this field, obviously. Tia and Mal would have changed this, I think, significantly or at least entered it into the equation a couple of these times. But just winning four alone in an entire 10 events is quite impressive, but four in a row is even more stunning. By the way, I have a spreadsheet that has all of the event performances

from all of Rogue Invitational, and I don't think she's ever won five in a season. I'm looking at 2019, and I see one, two, three, four event wins. I'm looking at 2020, and I see one, two, three, four event wins. In 2021, Tia had one, two event wins. So I think this actually tied the most number of event wins in a single competition at Rogue. Brian did say this in the article over at the Bar Bend, that it was open for Laura to win because Hayley, Mal, and Tia were not there. Are you taking a little bit away from a victory, Brian? Did I say, did I, if I did write that,

I probably also should have included that, you know, Brooke and Christy Aramon were there. Like these are five of the 12 best women in the world over the last couple of years. I'm not, no, no. I would never take anything away from someone's victory. You know, some of the comments on Instagram in response to this are like, yeah, they won because they had the most points. It's like, yeah, of course they won because they had the most points and they beat everyone else who

was there. But I'd like to look a little bit deeper, understand what was it like to get there? Because it's not always linear. Sometimes there's problems that come up. Sometimes there's things that are very impressive about their performances that lead to those results are completely out of Laura's control. All you can do as you're an athlete is show up and compete against athletes that are there. And that's what we always say when you ask me if would these guys have beaten fraser i don't know he wasn't there it doesn't matter it's irrelevant to the conversation it's fun to talk about but it takes absolutely nothing away from what laura did this week uh lord go ahead what this does is it gives laura some confidence going into it right she knows she can beat the rest of

the other women now she has her eyes set on tia um heading into the next year i think she's also got her eyes set on male i mean i i'm guessing knowing laura that she is not very happy that she lost him out the games this year agreed the was it was it last year that laura got No, no. It was in 2019. Laura got DQ'd for that event. She's pretty lucky that there was no minimum work requirement. And I have one. It didn't matter. It didn't matter what?

So the minimum work requirement for the snatch and press, I am happy that they changed that this year. The only reason I'm happy that they changed it is because they didn't implement it for any of the weightlifting tests like the back squat or the log lift. But it wouldn't have mattered. She actually was able to do at least one rep. So when the minimum work requirement last time was one rep. So she would have been fine either way.

I want to go back to the event number. I think it was five. The dual. Six. Six. Did anyone get no rep on the rope climb in either the men or the women's heats i don't think so okay okay worth noting can we uh if you don't mind seven can we go to um brian's article about velner and sacrificing 188 000 sure okay uh okay sure yes yes let's do it

you want to go straight there now yeah because it's kind of in line with what we were talking about with um with adler and the log lifting event that a really you know one or two reps could have potentially changed the outcome of of the podium and the overall competition and that he writes a really nice article here that details how costly like literally costly this was for Pat. But even it could have affected some of the other athletes' eventual finish. I think he's got some more information on that too. Yeah, I mean, you look at this.

Vellner had finished his 25th rep, and he had the points he needed at that point. If it was 25 instead of 30 reps, he wins. He has Smith and Goodmanson in between him and Medeiros, which gives him enough points to leapfrog Justin at the end. And then, as we all saw, he – go ahead. I just want to be clear. We're talking about the final event, and Brian Spinn is explaining where Patrick Vellner made some errors

or wasn't able to do the – he was basically looking like he was going to take first place, and Brian Spinn is showing us where it fell apart at the very, very end. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so he was down down i think it was 10 um going in the last five or ten points last uh i think it was down five but he needed 10 10 yeah because he didn't have the tie break and uh he was on his way and then he had that that failed rep on number 26 and uh you know that that cost him about 13 seconds or so. In that time, Chandler crossed the line.

Medeiros went through. You see Hopper, Gumanson, and Quant all passed Vellner in those last final seconds, last few reps. Those two failed reps, if he would have been able to get those through, he would have been able to get enough points to pass Medeiros on that final workout. And the detail there is he didn't fail the cleans. He failed shoulder to overhead every single time. Yep.

I mean, it looked like the exact same fail both times too. And the trickle-down effect of that is also massive because obviously if he wins the competition, then there's someone else who made the podium who misses out on the podium and the financial jumps from first to second second to third and third to fourth were quite significant it would have been really tight i think that it's even possible that chandler and jeff adler would have tied on points similar to emma lawson nelly turner i would have come down to a tie break that also might have been skewed by Vellner's finish in that particular workout.

And so, you know, in multiple cases here, and it's not a bad thing. It's just something to kind of note and point out that this is how close the men's competition is right now. And even though Justin won again, and don't want to take anything away from him for,

for doing that, you know, a little bit of a nuance here with an execution from the event side in the log lift, a misrep here from an execution on the performance side from Vellner, and things look quite different in terms of the overall podium. And so going into the 2023 season, obviously we still have some more off-season competitions that can give us additional information. We're looking at, I think, even a more competitive and closely contested men's field than we had last year.

When we saw Dani Spiegel fail, she failed it, I believe, on her 30th rep as she was neck and neck with Olivia Kerstetter. I'm guessing that when she went for that lift that she wasn't 100% sure she would get it. I wonder what – and Patrick V velner failed uh his 25th rep you're saying or his 26th 26th and 28th i think it was so so i i wonder has he spoken on where he was at in his confidence as he went for that 26th lift did he know he was pushing it i don't know specifically on that i know he was he was basically just gonna go for it um probably attempt before he was completely ready um because he knew what he needed to do i mean he knew he had to get maderos and he had to have somebody in between him

so he couldn't just keep pace with justin he had to create some separation and he had it he had two a two rep separation at that point and a couple guys in between them um and i wonder how how you practice that oh here we go i'm not gonna lie it stings right now but i'll get over it i made the decision to go for it and i'm proud of that decision um i wonder uh and he should be proud of it. I agree with him. I want, how do you practice that in training? It seems like something so hard to practice, right? Because think where you have to go in order to practice attempting at failure, right? That means you, first of all, have to pick a workout and know before you start, hey, if I'm going to go, if I, as I approach failure, I'm still going to pick it up and go. Do you think they practice this at all? I would hope so. I mean, you, you, you hope that they are, they're training, pushing their limits of how, how much they can go and how

they feel. Um, and if they're able to squeeze out another rep, uh, especially what on the competition floor. I mean, I, I'm sure they do. Just last night at our gym, we had a workout. It was 20 cal bike, 20 clean and jerks, 20 cal bike. And I told even the classes, and they're just recreational athletes. I said, every one of you has some number in mind on that last set of 20 cal echo bikes where you're going to get, you have five left, eight left, 10 left, whatever it is, and you're going to send it. You're just going to go for it and finish the workout hard. My challenge for you today is to add two calories to that. Instead of going at five, go at seven. Instead of going at 10, going at 12. And if that's something

that we're practicing and talking about here, it's insane to think that the elite athletes aren't also having opportunities created for them by their coaches in training to go for it a little bit more than you normally would, or to go into that zone of uncomfortability a little earlier than you'd want to. Felder went for it in the second set of 10. He was even with Justin after 10, he pulled ahead in the middle, and he was just trusting his fitness that he could hold on for the end. It didn't pay off for him this time, but I still commend him for doing. Uh, do you think that there's any validity to this statement? Uh, Elisa car redoubt, if they hadn't done the log the night before,

Pat would have won that last game. The thing that is notable is we have seen Pat have a little bit of an exposure this season in terms of his shoulder to overhead pressing strength. We saw it at the games. We see it here. The last four workouts were the log lift, which is the pressed overhead is critical. Deficit strict handstand pushup. The press in the handstand pushup is critical.

49 ring muscle-ups, which he's amazing at, but you still have to press out of every rep of those ring muscle-ups. And then finally clean and jerks at the end, where the only thing that ever really stopped any of the athletes was the jerk. So four straight workouts at the end of this competition where pressing was being tested. It really hadn't been tested at all prior to that. Yes were some shoulder to overheads in dt but they were pretty much negligible um and so the cumulative effect of those three other events leading into that certainly would affect not just pat but all the athletes pressing strength and capacity and in

his case it ended up costing him those were three of his four worst events were shouldered overhead 17th 10th he got first on uh on the goblet and then 10th on the final event so wow uh how did he do in the handstand push-up event 10th 10th wow and he gave away some spots there too in the last round of handstand push-ups uh despite her 19th place finish horvatvat average was better than Medeiros'. If you take all the events, 10 events, add up her scores, and then divide it by 10, she got a 5.8, and Justin Medeiros got a 6.3. I do believe I got that from Bar Bend, Brian's article at Bar Bend. The best ever – go ahead, Brian. Not the best ever, but last year.

Sorry. Go ahead. Go go ahead you do it this was i mean this was kind of wild because uh you know last year at this same competition tia and madaris both averaged better than a third place finish across the seven scored events i think there were seven and maybe eight last year. Were there eight last year? Anyway, and Medeiros actually had a 2.25 average, which better than Toomey's 2.75. Again, this is just lending to the conversation. We know in the case of the women, some of the top women were missing

and therefore there was a little bit closer than we're used to seeing where Tia generally has dominating performances. But this is, Pat wrote about it in his Instagram and all of the stats are pointing to the fact that the field is narrow. He's closing on Madaris and it's really, really setting up for an incredible, what should be an incredible 2023 season for the men.

Yeah. Pretty amazing last year that Madaris's average was a 2.25 and two minutes, a 2.75 hats off to justin for that if you scroll down just a little bit more you can see in the article brian continues to say no single athlete managed a top 10 finish in every single event it's hard to point to another crossfit event in recent memory with such large swings back and forth and at that point if you were to um uh you can you can piggyback off of that and go over to the barbell spin it's almost like it's uh you could just add it to the next sentence here uh brian

spin says both the men's and women's leaderboards saw four different athletes atop the standing at some point over the weekend and for madaris and horvat who both ended up the champions both had two event finishes outside the top 10. And then to add on to that, there were eight different people on the men's side who were in the podium position throughout the weekend and seven on the women's. So there were plenty of athletes that were in the podium position. What does that mean in the podium position? Top three. Crazy.

Brian, does that speak – from a super high altitude perspective? Does that speak to how great the programming is that just the. Oh, it's a different kind of programming. I talked to Bridges a little bit about it Sunday after the competition. But, yeah, I mean, it is, you know, first of all, there's only 20 athletes and the scoring system is five points all the way across the board. So, and these are 20 of the best athletes in the world, especially on the men's in the men's field. So we're looking at, at, uh, very small margins for air that have very, very big implications on the leaderboard.

I can't, I really cannot think of another competition of this caliber where we would see the leaders take 60 point hits and then make 70 point rebounds and then have 50 point drops. And it happened to Vellner and it happened to Madaris and it happened to Roman and, and obviously it happened to Laura. Uh, and it was wild. I mean, it, it, if nothing else, it makes for an incredible excitement and entertainment value for the fans. Uh, I would like to show you a perfect example of passive aggressiveness. Why aren't we talking about Roman's bad event and the impact? I think what you mean to say, Adam, if you'd like to get along with your wife better,

what you mean to say, or your husband, whichever, can we talk about Roman's bad event and the impact? Or please, please, because of course we can. So maybe even more poignant in your questioning, if you'd like to become a world-class reporter like myself, Brian, any thoughts on, I don't even know what he's talking about, but I'm sure both of you guys do. You do know what he's talking about because Snorri came on and enlightened us about this ring muscle-up workout for Roman. He basically described it as a lack of ability to recruit

energy and having a carb dump or something like that. Yeah. Watching Roman do the ring muscle-up workout was the only time in the weekend where he didn't look like the athlete, frankly, that we saw all throughout the entire competition at the games and throughout the Rogue Invitational. Someone might say, oh, well, he just didn't have the capacity to handle the volume of the program. Could not disagree with that thought more. He finished second on heavy grace right after that. And he showed that he had plenty of capacity at the games to have good performances on Sunday. So that makes sense.

The reason why it's more difficult to assess how a good performance from him there might've affected the overall leaderboard is because if he was operating at max capacity, we don't know where he would have finished. But in the case of Adler, if he hit one lift, we know exactly where it would have finished. And if Vellner had hit two reps, we can project it much, much more closely where he would have finished. Yeah, we could say, ah, maybe Roman finishes eighth, but we don't know.

Why couldn't he finish third or 13th, even if he had a perfect run? Uh, uh, Brian spin, do you believe this? Is this, would Saxon Panczyk use such an excuse? Do you believe that he didn't fuel up? He's not a fucking car. You always compare the athletes to race cars. I mean, day four. Come on, suck it up, buttercup.

I mean, day four, Come on, suck it up, Buttercup. I mean, day four, if you don't feel yourself the previous three days, you can definitely feel it. And I know that these guys were feeling, you know, I think they came in probably expecting seven, eight events, and instead it was 10. There's never been a long trail run like this before. Vellner hadn't prepared and hadn't been running leading up to this. He finished 10th on the first event,

something you wouldn't expect to see him that far down. So if he had a certain training program ready, he wasn't maybe tapering as much as he normally would for the games and didn't fuel. Entering in Sunday, he could have been more beat up than we used to, you know, compared to other athletes. I didn't eat right. And I lost the event. OK, but you know what? If you know, Roman does have a lot of competition experience. He has a very experienced coach in Nick Fowler. And it seems it did seem bizarre watching that workout.

Something didn't look right with him, but you, and you never know, maybe something's not feeling good in the shoulder and he's struggling on the muscle. Maybe he's just beat down from the weekend. Maybe he's tired. When I look at the competitions that I've seen him compete and excel in

going all the way back to his regionals in 2018 to Dubai in 2019, where he took third place to Fikowski and Vellner, looking at the games this past year, looking at Rogue Invitational. This workout stands out amongst the totality of the work that he's presented to us at the highest level as something that didn't look right. If it starts to happen over and over and he's regularly giving excuses, then I'm going to have less credibility or give him less credibility in that regard. But for this one, I'm going to have less credibility or give him less credibility in that regard. But for this one, I'm going to take him at his word. I have no reason to believe that wasn't the case,

especially considering the fact that he came back and got a second place in the last workout. A truer statement has never been said by Jay Hartle. Sevan, you just haven't trained hard enough to realize how drained you are when not eating. That is 100% true. But maybe is that a failure on Roman's fault on his part or on his team's part? And maybe he should keep a snicker bar in his bag. I mean, yeah. Joking, not joking.

No, fueling for competition is a critical component of it. We talk about it all the time, and that's what makes the games so significant. And it adds to the conversation of why we don't like to see cuts late in the competition for the most part is because what how you're able to manage in between events in between days will have an effect on what you're able to do in the events late in the competition i would have to say yes that this is on him and his team and something didn't happen as it could ever should have happened leading up to that event he had a good performance on the one before.

Well, it was not the best performance, actually, 12th. And he had a great performance right afterwards. And this looked like the anomaly. So, yeah, I would say that's something that they should look at. The one caveat is I wonder if doing ring muscle-ups in a capacity amongst other elements is not his strength. Why I say that is you look it up and over. He finished 15th.

In the games against 40 athletes, it doesn't look too bad. You finish 15th against this field, and you lose the points. I can't remember exactly if the muscle-ups were what was limiting factor for him, but you know, uh, no, it's a great point. And I did, I, uh, in an article I wrote for morning chalk up that looked at both Roman and Ricky's performances over the course of the weekend. That was one of the workouts that stood out from the games as not being his best. And watching that workout back, he was giving away ground to the field on ring muscle-ups. That workout we've talked about many times is, I'm not so confident looking at that workout in a vacuum because of how

critical the capital was in terms of affecting the athlete's potential performance on that workout, but it is now two workouts of the last two competitions that we've seen where he's had a bit of a slip on a high-volume ring muscle ring muscle workout. He's competing at at least 220 and possibly upwards of 230 pounds. And we talked about how, you know, moving your body through space can be very difficult at that weight. And, uh, so yeah, that may be something else to consider an excellent point to bring up. And another thing that I'm sure his team will look at, because if he wants to achieve his goal, which is to win the CrossFit games and to be the fittest on earth, he's going to need to do a little bit better on the ring muscle workouts, whatever the problem was. Uh, coach Mike McElroy, seven on do 10 minute assault bike test at the end of your weekly 24

hour fast 36 hours and compare it to another day when you're fueled normally. I do do that. And your point is clear and I hear you loudly. 100%. I don't even, I just drag ass. So I hear you loudly. Thank you. Are we going to go to the other Barbell Spin article before? Yeah, this is the best for last. This kind of talk right here is some of my favorite stuff in the space. Mr. Spin over at the Barbell Spin has done a look at what the correlates are, what workouts best, which events were most and least correlated to the overall standing.

First of all, obviously, if we can pull it up, it would be great. And Brian, thank you for doing this. Thank you. Thank you. And I think it would be also helpful, Brian, if you could kind of walk through the like math or the process. Yes. Use to get these numbers on page. Yeah. So what I was thinking. So for those who are not familiar with statistics, essentially, the correlation is, you know, if you take first through 20th place on the overall standings, you compare the rank rank the finishes that have every event so if you know maderos was first overall um followed by smith and adler you you know all the way down you would think that say texas trail to be a perfect correlation you'd have the exact same finish in the event as you do in the overall standings obviously the events uh you have different

rankings and things and then they shake out to the best average and so what this is looking at is you see texas trail ski bar back attack actually had the the closest matchup between how the athletes finish in those events to how they finished overall standings uh the texas oak and the goblin man by the way he's speaking specifically about the men specifically about the men go on um versus uh the texas oak and the goblet had the least correlation um which was almost when you see something near zero it's it's kind of almost like a random piece because you could have technically a negative one correlation on this which would mean that if you finished first overall you'd finish 20th in that event and kind of reverse the

the order and that that 0.07 on texas oak like that is a massive outlier the next lowest one is 0.35 can you i wasn't able to follow how you did the math how do you do the math for that so if you if you think about just take the overall standings first through 20th right if you and a perfect correlation would be that that same order is for the same order for the event so so we look at event number five the turtle holy shit it matches up one through 20 with the standings at the end of the day incredible perfect it would say 1.0 perfect perfect correlation. They're the exact same. You could say that the turtle at that point would be, you know,

that is really the workout that kind of matched. It's a perfect predictor of overall finish. But it wasn't. Yeah. Which, you know, looking at this, it's really interesting, right? You think of Rogue as being the the strength biased competition where they're going to you know throw out the highest the heaviest weights out there and obviously the guys that are the strongest are going to end up winning so you'd think texas oak

would be one of those that that's there i think as brian mentioned earlier in the show there's quite a bit of issues with with. Could have started lower weight. And he mentioned that only five weights were scored. 260 to 300 was the highest. And the top two was Roman and Chandler. So outside of that, there's 16 athletes that fell within three scored logs. And, you know, if you go back and listen to our pre-event conversation about that one, There's 16 athletes that fell within three scored logs. And if you go back and listen to our pre-event conversation about that one,

that was the thing we were most concerned with. We're like, okay, I hope that there's some way in here to have something that actually distinguishes these athletes from each other. And we were speculating about what the tiebreak might be. Brian has the stats on the tiebreak too. And basically, I think we're in agreement here that the tiebreak was not really appropriate for this particular event. Why is that? I mean, the jerrycan, I mean, the separations were within hundredths of seconds and you'd have five, six, seven athletes on some of these logs, and then you're separating and placing them and ranking them

based off of a 10-second jerrycan sprint. It wasn't really a full test of strength because if you have one mistake on the lift, you can move back six spots. Leterry can. You move back six spots. Let me tell you why I think maybe it's not a good test. But it has nothing to do with the jerry can test. It has to do with the fact that there's only four logs and that you know that there's going to be a massive bottleneck.

Regardless, there's going to be a shitload of ties. There's no way around it. And so because of that, the more thoughts should have been put into the tiebreaker is what you're saying. If there were 10 logs, then maybe not. Then maybe the jerry can would have been fine. I think if you had started at a lower weight. Or maybe had five pound jumps instead of 10.

Right, right. I have no opinion on the Apple Watch it's the new one is significantly cooler looking than the old one it's really thick and and robust it's the first uh kind of man watch um that they've ever made but i don't need it but but when i went swimming the other day it starts telling me how deep i am in the pool i was four i went four feet underwater with my kids i i don't know i i don't even know why i have it but but i so you're completely submerged standing up yes i was four feet underwater in a six-foot pool um while standing i don't i don't have any i'm not even a watch guy i think watches are dumb i have an iphone i don't

know why but but it is thick and robust and if if you're a watch guy and there's features you want on it, don't fuck around with the other one. The screen's a little bigger. It is what it is. I'm not a – I still don't understand how we got it. Maybe I'm going to need a lesson off air. When I don't understand how the math is done, I understand what you're looking at. You explained that well, 1 through 20 versus if the workout were one through 20, but I don't know how, how good 0.72 is unless I know how the math is done, but I'll take your word on it is 1.2 is 0.72 pretty impressive. Like,

holy shit. Wow. Or is it just because the fact it's a run and it has such a strong, uh, and, and what, what's the takeaway here? Should, should all the athletes be running more? I mean, generally you're going to see positive correlations on this just because uh and and what what's the takeaway here should should all the athletes be running more i mean generally you're going to see positive correlations on this just because at the end of the day that the athletes that are winning the overall competition are doing well in these events um so you know you see in the women's side the turtle was 0.83 i think you're going to generally see the ones that are are most correlated are going to be in that 0.7, 0.8 range. Um, if you, yeah, you know, I think there's too many specialists outliers, if you call them that are going to go

in on, uh, and do well in certain events that are not going to make it closer to a 0.9 or one. Um, and to the, just before you ask this next question, you know, Brian mentioned that we would expect weightlifting tests to be strong correlates at Rogue. The reason being, if you look at all of the workouts that were tested, there were four monostructural implements integrated into the workouts. There were seven gymnastics implements integrated into the 10 workouts. There were 15 weightlifting implements across those 10 workouts. So it's more than the gymnastics and the monostructural combined. And therefore, you would expect events that have,

where you need to be strong or good at weightlifting movements to have high correlates. On the women's side, it's more along that line. They're not all highlighted here, but DT with the spin, big weightlifting component. Turtle, the lunge was critical, weightlifting component. Texas Oak, obviously weightlifting component turtle the lunge was critical weightlifting component texas oak obviously weightlifting the dual the overhead squat we talked about as being critical if not that then it was a sandbag both weightlifting heavy grace all weightlifting so this makes

more sense than the men's relative to what the programming at rogue is i would love to see to see this i know there's no way we can but if you you would have had Tia, Mal, Brooke Wells, Christy, Arama, O'Connell, Haley, if we would have had all of them in there, if it would have lined up more with the men's, the boys' numbers, being that the boys really had all the best guys in the world there and the women did not necessarily have that. Impossible to do, but a great thought uh we talked about pat velner losing 188 000 uh dollars still can't get over that i i wonder if he had to sleep on the floor uh one of the other one of the other things in the article that mr spin wrote is that uh in the texas oak adler madaris velner finished 15th 16th and 17th on that event um four athletes tied at the 260 pound log, six tied at 270 pounds and six tied at 280 pounds. These are great articles, by the way, they're just dense with just, it's just all candy to me. It's all candy.

Yeah. You know, this is amazing. And, and in the case of Adler, Madera, St. Vellner, we know, and we don't know how, how much it necessarily impacted that there was an element of each of them on the lift that they ended up being eliminated on where they, the timing was confusing to say it in no other way. It was confusing. And there's 30 points up for grabs or more for each of these guys with one lift. Last night in a semi buzzed stupor,

I got on the assault bike and I went over to morning chalk up and I started watching all of Lauren Khalil's videos that I hadn't finished as she did a recap on the event. I'd like to bring up some of these things. Feel free to jump in guys and talk about, she does the, uh, short interviews with the athletes. They're little vignettes anywhere from one to four minutes. minutes um at this point some people are aware that man man man and anganese missed out on the semifinals in 2022 due to failure to submit a video um oh maybe that was from your article this is an article that i wrote that uh it might be up on barbend already otherwise it will be later today so my question is what happened there why didn't she submit that video what i don't remember that story this was and there isn't if you search manuel nangani's morning chalk up you can read all about it but there is uh there was a time change in the united states uh daylight savings time that affected the submission window and a few of the athletes specifically manuel and yela hoste both from belgium wow um didn't get these their last i think

it was their last workout submitted on time if you look at her performance across the quarterfinal workouts uh no question she would have made the semifinals if you look at her performance historically i mean all the way back in 2018 she was 12th at regionals last year she was eighth at one of the semifinals online i think it was lowland throwdown she finished sixth in the last chance qualifier last year. She's competed at Dubai several times. We've never seen her at Rogue or Wadapalooza. We've never seen her at the games as an individual.

I think everything in her resume, especially considering the fact that you don't have Annie Thorzada, Kristen Holta, Emma Tall, and Emily Lepinen, four of the 11 qualifying athletes from Europe women's field in 2021 in semifinals last year, she would have had a fantastic chance to make the games this year if she women's field in 2021 in semifinals last year, she would have had a fantastic chance to make the games this year if she'd been able to compete at

semifinals. Ultimately, it's on her. She didn't get it in on time, but because of that, we didn't get to see her compete at the semifinals or the games. She did do some off-season competitions. All this will be in the article. She competed at French Throwdown. She was 10th. Madrid, she was third. She qualified for Dubai. She'll be there. I think she qualified for Rogue. She was first in online qualifier for Rogue. And she did the best of the online qualifiers for the women, finishing 11th. So I talk a lot about her in the article and basically all to say that next year in the super semifinal of Europe, she's going to be relevant in the equation for one of the potential game spots for the ladies.

This is not what happened with Annika Greer. Annika Greer, basically, hers was, she thought she had uploaded it and she hadn't. And although for all the previous uploads, she had followed the protocol of this one, she was so excited she uploaded it and then turned her back to her phone. It is interesting.

I don't want to, I'm not taking any responsibility away from Manon Anganese, but for, it is pretty brutal to have an online submission around an international or where some places are changing their clocks. And I know that's been a problem back in the past. That has to be avoided. Years past in the open and stuff, yeah. That has to be avoided if you're an event organizer. Yeah, that has to be avoided. Or don't tell people and give them an hour

uh grace like they do in the ufc they give you like a half pound grace there's got to be something that that's not something that's not right uh jorge fernandez last year placed 28th out of 37 at waterpalooza with his best finish being 15th um that was on the i already misread it should they improvised oh okay good on the improvised you knew exactly where i was stuck i was like oh shit what have i written here it was called dale it was the second to last workout there was a rain delay they had to redo the workout but the the point about jorge fernandez is we have very little information or data of him competing at a high level as an individual. He's actually not that young. I think he's 29, but he's relatively young in terms of

competition experience. His team did great this year. He had some great individual performances for his team at the games. We knew he was strong. I was excited to see him in this field. I took a risk and said, I thought he might be able to do as well as 12th. He finished 13th. And, uh, so I just write about him a little bit here. I think that he will, I think their team intends to go back and run it as an individual next or as a team again next year to try to improve on their third place finish, which they might have a good chance to do, but a lot's left to be determined on the, uh, team side with the new rules that we know about. Either way, I think that he will eventually try

to make a run in the individual field and so it's nice to see him here to see kind of some of the things he could do he had four pretty good workouts on some of the strength uh or maybe had three pretty good workouts on some of the the strength focused events but obviously also they have the fitness to make it through the qualifier so pretty good for him and another guy just to kind of he didn't get a lot of attention necessarily on the weekend but to keep him on your radar maybe not for next year an individual but the year after that uh go ahead that's what he's told me he's he's the team staying together for next year and then if all goes well he's he plans on making a run in uh 2024 i mean he's only been doing crossfit for three years crazy what's What's his background? Do you know?

Baseball. He actually tore a ligament in his elbow, throwing elbow, uh, his junior year, um, came back, did all kinds of rehab, pitched his senior year, um, with that tear. And now he's, he's doing CrossFit. Crazy. I think he played some football in high school as well on uh sunday night i i got a chance to see him and he's like dude my body is destroyed i can remember like one or two high school football games where i felt like this and otherwise this is the worst i've ever felt after an athletic event he's a big dude it's a lot of man to move around uh brian saves the show for the second time while i fumble around in my notes thank you brian uh jason hopper from the interview uh she he did with lauren

khalil over at the morning chalk up uh he was saying that pacing and keep moving and breathe that was his description of how he got through the handstand push-up workout he says the back fatigue he feels is real he did not expect to win uh are we see is hoppers um was matt fraser a pacing genius i mean you could say yeah like you could say yes but he was just it was basically a genius at everything in terms of you know competitive crossfit uh i haven't like do you think hopper's getting significantly better is basically what I'm saying up there at HWPO. He also said in that interview, I know the first round is bait,

meaning don't take the bait. Are we seeing a more mature Hopper? Is it like evident? Is it, is anything standing out? Wow. This he's real. I mean,

I would say 100%. I feel like he's evolving as an athlete, every competition we see him and it's, you know, this competition is tough when you're looking at guys that are like 5 through 12. They don't get a lot of notoriety over the course of the weekend because we're regularly looking at the top guys. But I think if you were to go back and watch as much of Hopper's weekend as you could see on the broadcast, I was watching him for several events,

and I noticed just little things that are significant improvements from what we saw even last year at Rogar at the games. And I think that, yeah, he's in possibly the hands of the guy who's done it the best ever. And if he can communicate that effectively and Jason can take what he's hearing

and apply that into certain workouts, which it sounds like he definitely did on that snatch and press workout. Obviously, he has some tremendous gifts and skills. He has a great athletic background. He has a very, very strong mindset and desire to be great at this. I think we're still going to see better and better versions of him to come. Is he too big to be the CrossFit Games champion, Mr. Spin?

I don't know if it's that. I'm looking at his scores here. I mean, he had two event victories this weekend, but he's, you know, he got 19th on the second event with the log muscle ups. It feels like he needs to kind of

shore up some of those weaknesses i mean i think he does well overall but i mean like a lot of these guys it's it's where are you weak um what i what i see with that poor performance there is that maybe something that he's not great at and who knows if he'll ever be good at it is adapting to the newness of things you know that log muscle up like is it something that if he had had a month to practice it, he would have done a lot better at, but just with the first chance at it, that's not a skill of his of like, of figuring out really quickly on the fly. You know, that's kind of,

we'll have to get a little bit more data for him over the years to see that. But if that's the case, like that's something that will be very difficult for Matt to teach him. And so, you know, it's just, that would speak why he's here and Mel's not because the competition experience will go a long way for him. Yeah. From the morning chalk up Lauren Cleo's interview with Alexis Raptus, Alexis, Alexis says, we work with dumbbells a lot.

I am wrecked and sore and it feels like the CrossFit games. The parallettes were narrow. And she uh and when she said that i think she was insinuating they were too narrow for her um maybe not maybe no maybe maybe she was insinuating that but maybe just an observation and she knew that she was rep for rep with annie because she could hear the commentator uh any thoughts on her performance, gentlemen? Over the course of the weekend? I mean, yeah. So she falls in that range that I was just talking about, you know, that six through

12 range where you can be doing actually very well over the course of the weekend and not get a ton of attention or spotlight on you. She reeled off event finishes of second, sixth, fifth, fifth, fourth in a row in the middle of the competition. You know, she finished a row in the middle of the competition. You know, she finished 10th at the Games. We've talked about her as being an athlete who can start to threaten into the, you know, top 10, maybe pushing towards top five equation at the Games eventually. She's 23 or 24 years old.

She's obviously in a training environment that's working very well for her with Adam Rogers at Training Think Tank. And, yeah, like the string of five event finishes in a row of six or better against this field is a great thing for her and something that she can build again going forward. You weigh it against the other events, which are all basically 13th through 16th finishes. So she's not in the bottom, you know, 25% of this field hardly at all. But there's certainly things there that she's going to want to improve upon. And again, similar to Hopper, similar age, similar experience level. This is a great experience for her that she can go back to the drawing board with her coach and her team and say, okay, we're doing pretty well on these things,

and these are some areas that we're going to continue to push forward on. Well said. Patrick Vellner, the winner of the Goblet, he says that the event was longer than you think. It required a lot of discipline he knows he has good muscle ups and that gave him confidence he said he recovered on the run he tried to relax his body and prepare when he was going downhill and then just prepare himself for the transitions onto the flat surface uh he was happy to pace off of r for the first four rounds before Ricky sort of died off and faded away.

The log put a lot of stress on his back. He said it was scary. He ran worst case scenarios through his head. He said he did hear a pop, but in the morning he was sore and not injured. And the invitational became a war of attrition. Sounds like he's talking about the CrossFit Games. I talked to quite a few athletes that said that they were more sore Sunday morning than they were on Sunday at the Games. Lauren, thank you for that fabulous interview with Pat Vellner.

Emma Lawson, she also won the Gob and, and she talked to Lauren Khalil. She loved the crowd and she loved the energy of the event, which is cool to hear from someone who's so young and she gets in front of more and more big crowds. Uh, she loved the ring muscle ups. Uh, the hill is big and tough, but not long. She also said she could recover on the way back down. And, uh, she said, uh, I think she said she wasn't prepared for event 10, but she was out there having fun. It sounds like all the shit you want to hear, right? I mean, yes, but also it's cool that she's having fun on the final event, but there was a lot on the line. She ended up winning the third place, which is several tens of thousands of dollars by a tiebreak.

If she finished one spot worse on that she loses out on the podium she loses out i mean i know that somebody's mean the jerry can are you talking about the jerry can no no event 10 heavy oh oh she finished 13th if she's 14th she's off the podium she loses how much money brian like 30 grand 30 grand it was 10 it was 10 30 or 40 to 30, 40, $10,000. And,

you know, I know that in some of the athletes contracts, if you win a major event, if you podium in a major event, there's some good incentives. There's more exposure. You get to stand up there. You only want to three,

they get to do it. So it's great that she was having fun, but also like, that's a moment to make sure that you finish the workout really well. Get your best possible finish and give yourself the best chance to stay on the podium because up to that point of the weekend, she'd been great. Coming into that event, I told you guys I was worried about her maintaining her spot on the podium.

I thought that 10th or 12th was a very realistic finish for her. Ellie Turner, I thought, could have a top three. Ellie took fourth. Emma took 13th, and it was almost enough. Ricky takes 10th place at the 2022 Rogue Invitational. I don't think this means anything in regards to how he's going to be at the games. I think we're going to see him on the podium again at the games. Your guys' thoughts?

I mean, I think he's going to do better at the games than he did here. You just see so many more monostructural running type events that are paired with strength versus here where, you know, he can kind of minimize that damage when there's more running, you know, a bike event in there. You know the best thing about this picture? Roman, look at that smile, man. That is so genuinely happy for his buddy. Yeah, happy for Ricky, yep. That's very cool. Brian's right.

Ricky, his skill set will set up better for the games. Savan, if you think he's going to podium next year or not, I don't know. I think that the programming and in particular the ordering of the program this year at the games was very favorable for him because he needed that confidence coming back into that environment so he got off to a great start he obviously held the leader jersey for a long time but in the case of we i wrote about this with laura and mal if you inverse the events then laura is in the lead for four or five events consecutively instead of mal she never has a placing after any individual event worse than fourth. And the narrative totally changes. We've heard Adrian Bosman say, guys, you think I put all my tricks

in year one, but I have not. There's decades worth of ideas that are up in my head and I'm going to bring them some out in year two. And I'm going to bring some out in year three. And I think that, you know, Ricky and Kotler's perspective following his coach, Justin Kotler, following this competition is exactly what it should be. This was a great learning opportunity for us. We got a ton of experience, I guess the best field in a test that we knew might not be up our alley, but it's just going to light that fire to go back and improve in those things. I think he will need to improve on some of the things that he didn't excel at at the games last year, if he wants to come back on the podium this year, because I have a lot, I mean look like jeff adler has now earned the right to be in the podium conversation pat

velner i think will come back and have a better games next year than last year who knows what fukowski is going to do who knows if sam quant can replicate that performance or improve we talked about the fact that hopper is coming lazar jukic is getting better we might not see gee this entire off season Will he have an opportunity to improve on some of those things? The men's field is so fun, so competitive and so deep that nothing should be assumed in terms of who's going to make the podium next year.

And let's not forget about Samuel Cornwallet. Yeah, and we won't get to see him at all as an individual this offseason, but certainly could be a factor. I don't know about podium, but i think a top 10 threat uh finally uh in in closing uh lauren over at the morning track i did an interview with justin madaris uh like a wise man he knows it's not over till it's over he loves getting the

competition uh experience um it is his first competition ever with two wins. And it's the first competition that he's won where once he ascended to the overall lead, he gave it away and then took it back. And that sounds like it's all good training for his mind, by the way. And it sounds also like Justin is done and we will not be seeing him again until the CrossFit open. I would say that's definitely true in terms of individual competition. There's always the chance that I'll have a fun experience with the team at Wadapalooza. So we'll see.

Interesting. Any final words from you, Mr. Spin? I mean, I think this was great for the women to have a shot at showing what they can do without Tia and Brooke and Mal out there. I think it'll give Laura some more confidence heading into it. Same for Emma finishing on the podium. And on the men's side, I think it's going to be tight next year. This just shows that Justin's not unbeatable. A few places here or there or a lift here or there, it's a different podium. Blasphemy. Blasphemy. And since we haven't mentioned her the entire show and she did take second place overall, really cool to see Annie Thorisdottir back out in the individual field. Some people were concerned about what would happen to her fitness or her competitive spirit or her capacity to hang with some of these younger women after not doing it this season.

And here she is right in the mix meeting everyone but Laura Horvath. And we'll see what she decides to do next year. I have a suspicion based on nothing other than that, that she'll go individual and she'll be right back in the conversation for top five at the games in 2023. None of this would be possible none of this would matter we'd be all sitting at home with our thumbs in our ass if it weren't for bill uh and katie henniger throwing this amazing event uh there's nothing that we can possibly say that doesn't make this uh one of the greatest events in in in basically in the community all time that i can say that

with a hundred percent confidence, we're so happy to be able to do this. We're so happy to just sit here in our chairs and be critical. Thank you for giving us something to talk about. Thanks for, uh, throwing in, uh, an event. That's an inspiration to everyone who watches it. And we will see all of you guys tomorrow.