The Sevan Podcast - Dear Dave Castro and Adrian Bozman… | Shut Up & Scribble Ep 11

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

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That's BetterHelp.com. meeting with friends before the show we can book your reservation and when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash y amex benefits vary by card other conditions live boy oh yeah ladies and gentlemen this is the main event of the evening so keep the political commentary to yourself or as someone once said shut up and dribble It's time! Worst program CrossFit Games ever? Jeez, dude. Or best. Hey, hey, come on.

I'm just kidding. No, definitely not the worst. My mic stand broke, you know, before you. What? Were you sitting on it? Were you trying to sit on it, dude? Yeah, dude. No, the screws came out and there's only one left and I lost it.

So I'm just going to be that guy that picks it up every time. What's up, everybody? We're back from the games. All three of us were there jr had to leave early i know he was uh bummed out but he's a good family man got back to his family and he was there coaching noelle henderson an adaptive athlete how'd she end up doing yeah she won really cool multi-extremity 2023 champ get to add another banner to the wall so it's cool that's awesome and then taylor and i were there together we got there on sunday after we missed the flight and we were there all week and taylor was coaching michelle and uh we had a lot of fun it was a blast honestly great experience it was cool to meet everybody. Meeting Savon was awesome.

Getting to hang with him, getting to hang with Sousa, Caleb, Hiller, getting to hang with these guys. It was awesome. So really cool week. Had a lot of fun.

Felt like there was a lot of excitement in the air. People were excited about being there. People were, it was packed even on Thursday, as soon as the game started. Yeah. Yeah. The first event, their pig chipper in North park stands was packed even on thursday as soon as the game started yeah yeah the first event uh their pig chipper in north park stands were packed already on thursday it was cool

it was really cool felt like everyone was really excited greg was there for a day it's cool seeing dave back dave and boz working together uh cool seeing it on espn i was telling send a text this morning a guy someone an account manager i work with got on our call this morning. It was like, Hey, he was like, I was watching the CrossFit games this weekend on ESPN. I saw it, saw it there and watched it for a while. And he was like, I'm just so amazed by CrossFit. It's so awesome. He went on to make a metaphor about our work in relation to CrossFit, which is kind of funny. It doesn't do CrossFit, but that was cool. So today we're going to do a kind of recap show of the programming. Well, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to sit here and these guys are going to talk because that's

what you're here for, but we're going to recap. We're kind of going to set it up doing kind of three things that they both really liked that Taylor and JR really liked about the programming this year. And then three things that they would have liked to see changed or modified or could have that they think events could have been better if they made these tweaks or whatever it may be and then let's kind of give their overview of the programming and we'll wrap it up our goal is to do 45 minutes so let's go and get started jr you want to do the first thing that you liked yeah well and i think it's really important for people to um know that we are going to break the whole season down maybe on another episode maybe next week's where we actually start from beginning to end and we go

how do we like the entire year right open quarters semis games because i think when we get into that will be really good for us to get into like how collaborative is the programming effort now moving forward when we see the games being programmed when we see the other three stages of competition being programmed did we see clear progressions throughout the year did we really not see clear progressions did we see some regressions did we see some things that maybe didn't fit along the way were there things that were programmed for the age groups and other uh levels before the games and then at the games we're expecting to see things that we didn't see at all like i think we need to try to stay away from that kind of stuff today but broad thoughts taylor well based on what you said about worst program deer ever did you like the programming and what are some

just overall thoughts yeah i liked it i liked this year a lot um in a way it seemed after last year in a way it was it went from like crazy complicated complicated is maybe not the right word um out of left field all this new stuff holy shit never would have expected that to extremely simple almost um it's to me was like a pretty stark dichotomy which maybe uh is a bit due to dave coming. It just seemed like in terms of simplicity and what we can normally expect, this year was kind of right up the alley, typically, of what you could expect from a CrossFit Games,

whereas last year was different in a lot of ways. But real quick, we could probably do a whole show on this, but I think I just found out who Trish is. Manti Teau's girlfriend. Dude, have you seen that documentary? That's you, Trish. All right. Got half a smile from JR, so that's cool.

You? Yeah, I mean, I like the programming. I was a little bit frustrated with the programming a little bit because there were a lot of things. There were a lot of progressions. There were a lot of things that I thought would be revisited that were not. And it's easy to make guesses because that's all that we do. That's all that I do is like try to make educated guesses. It's not really, they're not really predictions, right? They're just going to shock you. But when you see workouts come out and you think about what workouts might come out later

in the weekend and what fits and what makes sense and then they don't, you get emotional about it. I know I get really emotional about it because, you know, that's what I like to do. It's my art too. So when I see things like age groupers doing handstand hold for max time, teams doing ring support hold, and I'm saying, okay, it makes sense for individuals to do some kind of a static hold this weekend at some point, whether they do it, whether they do a gymnastics hold in a workout where they do it in like a skill setting, whatever, and then it doesn't happen, I kind of freak out. And I know I shouldn't freak out that way because it's like it doesn't have to be uniform like that. But it just made a lot of sense to me to see things like that and didn't. There were points of the weekend that I thought

to myself, that really looks like a boss workout. Like I can tell Adrian wrote that workout. And there are other times in the weekend that I kind of scratched my head and was like, that doesn't feel like a boss workout. That kind of feels like a Dave workout, like based on the past. And I think the effort was super collaborative. And Dave mentioned that they tweak some things and all that kind of stuff. But I would, I would give so much to know, Hey, what were the first iterations of all these workouts? How were they, how were they changed as you guys went on? How did they change with testing? How did they change even all the way up into the execution of the work?

What would you give specifically to know? Oh my, uh, an amount of money that mattered to me, like that may or may not make my family pay rent or pay a mortgage. That's a lot of money. Cause for you guys that don't know, that's a lot of money. I'm a gym owner. My wife works very hard so that we can, we can live in this house. Um, yeah. So you want to just start out with the three things that we really liked? Yeah, I'll, and I'll go first, I think. And this is, it may perplex some people cause it's very simple, but for me seeing it in person,

it was one thing that really stood out to me and was one thing over the course of the week. I was like, Oh, that was pretty cool. And it was the, and was one thing over the course of the week. And I was like, oh, that was pretty cool. And it was the – I'll start general and get specific. It was the way they made the test heavy without a barbell. And that really stuck out to me on alpaca. When three, two, one, go, everybody lined up to push the sled to start.

And some of the biggest and most powerful athletes in the field just got fucking stuffed. And some of the biggest and most powerful athletes in the field just got fucking stuffed. Um, and pushing that sled, the first, what, like 10 yards is it, or 15 or 20 yards was like a fucking grind and people going to their knees halfway through that first section. Um, and I know they did alpaca at that weight last year with the sled. Um, but seeing it in person was just a little different and was insane. And love that so that's one of the things that you liked yes okay um mine is along the same lines but mine was the uh perceived bias of odd object use i love that in the competitions that i program i try not to be super barbell centric. And we only saw two barbells. We saw it for the total. And then we saw it for the thrusters at the end. So like, to me, that, that put a smile on my face because I just love the use of all the odd objects. They use the

sandbag twice. You know, they used it once to throw kind of up and over the logs with the carry. And they used it again for the heavy squat test um you know they they use dumbbells they use kettlebells they use sleds i just really enjoy all the odd object use yeah and that's a question would you consider you know it's interesting how biased crossfit has been toward a barbell at least at the games in years past but it makes you wonder what is the practical application in terms of like making a movement as functional as possible you would think a sandbags a bit more functional than a barbell um it's a lot more like something you would do in everyday life and so you'd almost make the argument why aren't we doing more odd object as we lead up and then at the games we use more of the

traditional no no i think the odd object is appropriate at the games i yeah i wasn't thinking in terms of just the game specifically but even in your standard class how often do you use how often do 99 of affiliates use a sandbag versus how often do they use a barbell? I know you're special and we are maybe half special because we use sandbags a bit, but not a lot of affiliates use them. And it's like picking up a bag of mulch with fucking concrete in it. Would it make you kind of like, eh, I don't really like that? would it make you kind of like, eh, I don't really like that, or would you really enjoy it

if the equipment list came out for the entire 2024 season, including the open quarterfinals, and you saw kettlebells, dumbbells, sandbags, and maybe another Concept2 machine or two, or like an Echo bike, and it just said, hey, you need to have all these things,

so that the tests earlier on that more people participate in the entirety of the test is more broad. I'd care less about the machines, but I think a sandbag would be an extremely easy way for affiliates to get something new and different in their gym for cheap, their fuckload cheaper than dumbbells and kettlebells. And again, extremely practical. So I like that as well. Second thing that I liked was, I think the, the way that first event, reading it to start when they announced it as a 40 minute AMRAP, I was underwhelmed. And I was like, man, I don't like that. And then when we saw the course, and then some of the races playing out and how to, you know, I guess, to my perspective, experience on a bike was less important as important for sure. But just having massive amounts of muscular endurance and stamina

on the bike, you had to have confidence, I think, to the degree that your experience, to the degree that it contributed to your confidence was important. But it wasn't like it was this crazy technical course. It was if you have the balls to push on the bike, go. It was if you have the balls to push on the bike, go. I liked that event. I liked it as the single modality test, and I liked that they didn't have swimming. I think you have to have it every year.

Yeah, along the same lines, I really liked the single modality tests in general. Like I think I said when we picked out our program, CrossFit games, the one that I picked had lots of single modality, not necessarily just one movement, but a workout that was all carries a workout that was all weightlifting workout. That was all gymnastics. And I think if you can do that and make it to where it's not super noticeable, or you can do it and where the test is still pretty balanced, that it just shows you that you have a really good grasp on programming. And we've talked about before,

I think at the games is the best time to do it because you have 12 to 15 workouts. So I think doing the 5k run, doing the bike, doing the Olympic total, doing the gymnastics medley. I just, I really enjoyed the single modality.

And you think it's okay that they tested single modality twice with modern structural elements and the others one-to-one i definitely do not and i'll save that for the three things that we didn't like okay um and then the third thing that i liked wow did it just i think it slipped my mind um well i guess that explains how much I like this year's programming. It'll come back to you. Yeah, go. It'll come back to you.

I can go again. So I'm actually going to piggyback on your bike and say that when that came out, I rolled my eyes at the fact that it was an AMRAP 2. And while I do think that it could have been changed a little bit and still gotten the same stimulus out of it. The fact that they chose to have everyone do that was really cool. And I'm wondering what you think as someone who's really experienced, especially in the water. And if I ask some other swimmers, this, do you think that handling a bike, handling a mountain bike for that long is just as much

skill limiting and skill dependent as when they do a swimming workout? Because I know athletes that can do things on a biker that no one else can do. And I watched those same athletes struggle when they had to actually handle a bike and deal with people in their way and all that kind of stuff. Do you think that that's legit or not? So yeah, yes. Long story short.

Yes. But I think it's less skill dependent and more confidence dependent. If you grew up playing in the water and your fucking brother held you under for 20 seconds, trying to drown your ass like every other week and you're just super comfortable in the water, you know how to swim. You can be in the water out of breath and uncomfortable.

Huge advantage of the CrossFit Games. Similarly on a bike, if you grew up riding a bike every day, mountain biking at all, even riding a dirt bike or like racing through the woods, I did a lot of that. And I wouldn't say I'm a technical bike rider, but I've eaten shit on a bike a ton enough to where I'm not super scared of it. Like I've wrecked so many fucking times and had done a bit of mountain biking. And again, I don't consider myself a skilled mountain biker, but just having the confidence to push and not be scared of the turns or scared of being tight in the pack or scared of wrecking.

I think that's a massive advantage. I think that's a massive advantage. So I would, when, when you say, when you say how important is it familiarity wise, I think very, but I don't necessarily think. Like when you compare something like a long swim or a long bike versus like a long run or a long row, do you think that how much less capacity dependent is it i would say a lot like it it makes a huge difference because the amount of the amount that you the amount that you have to make up for someone growing up in the water swimming swim team in elementary school middle school high school and then just stopping and they get back in the water and they're like oh i mean it's like like theial, it's like riding a bike.

Like it really is for them in the water where they don't really have to do anything and they can still beat 90% of the field. Yeah, that's, it is important. And I would just say that it's less, you have a lower barrier to entry with the row machine and a run, whereas it's what's your mental capacity and psychological tolerance. Whereas on the bike and the swim, it's what's your mental capacity and psychological tolerance whereas on the bike and the swim it's are you actually comfortable doing it and have you done it enough because not a lot of people have and it is and in that sense i'm not sure that i i mean look at that

level if you're not comfortable on a bike as much as they biked your fault so i'll be just not prepared yeah i i thought that the placement of that too was perfect because if you have watched any of like the videos that have come out or you've watched any interviews with people afterwards, I mean, obviously there were physical repercussions as far as injuries and crashes and stuff go, but like what that did to people like legs for the rest of the week, it really set the tone in a way that a lot of people probably weren't used to. I'm going to go out and ride a bike for 40 minutes, basically as hard as I can on flat grass. And then going out in the hot sun and doing a hundred wall balls and doing

the pig flips, just that people really felt the bike cramping, cramping right after the bike cramping during the pig chipper. Like it really seemed like the placement of it was just like put everyone in a hole from the start, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. And I think what contributed to a lot of that fatigue was that again, the course was not massively skill dependent. There was a lot of straight, there was a lot of flat, there was a lot of grass.

And I thought the part where they got off and they were interrupted and having to run with their bike was like, was really was like maybe made it like the hardest part of it. And I think just added a lot of mental to it. Like I know every lap that I got to get off in a second, like I got a good rhythm now I got to get off. I think if there was a part on that course to me, aside from some of the tighter turns where it showed athletes who are most comfortable with the bike it was there dismounting and mounting the bike going fast um my third thing i remembered it was just the gymnastics or the inverted medley as a whole i don't know if people thought it was gimmicky but i loved the 360 pirouette on the box down the ramp i thought that was fucking cool i typically hate

freestanding handstand push-ups i just think they're one of the most gimmicky forms of a handstand push-up ever but for whatever reason i loved it and that workout i like the bar pullovers um the only thing i didn't like about the workout was one of the standards during the briefing and that was just kind of muddy water but aside from that i i thought that the box like like press to handstand or kick to handstand on top of a box do a pirouette down the ramp was so freaking cool straight into freestanding handstand push-ups um one thing i dislike were a couple of the standards there yeah that's good and we can get into the things that we really didn't enjoy because my

first one kind of goes along in line with the single modality tests. It does. Does it have to do with the 5k run? Um, kind of. So I would say that it's different. So you go first or I can go first.

Mine's really easy. I don't think that, I think that to have all of the athletes do the 40 minute bike and to do a gymnastics only test and to not have them all do a weightlifting only test is, was a huge, um, I don't really want to say mistake because the way we talked about the workouts when Pat came on before anything came out was,

Hey, the way they're doing the cuts Thursday and Friday have to stand alone. Saturday has to stand alone. Sunday has to stand alone as well-rounded tests. And the order of events does matter when you're making cuts. So when you do certain events throughout the course of the weekend will inevitably reflect and change the leaderboard as you go. And you may have people that are still there on Sunday that wouldn't have been eliminated on Friday. But the fact that the workout came out that would

have exposed the hole didn't come, but it happens. So if you're going to have single modality tests, awesome. I love them. But of the six, why not have those three? So half the tests are single modality. Everyone lifts lifts heavy everyone bikes long everyone shows skill it is tradition maybe it had to do with what they wanted to put on espn i don't know but the fact that all of the athletes in the field did not lift and only some of them lifted to me was like a big miss from just from a programming design standpoint. Yeah. It was either do three of the single modality tests before Saturday or all three in a different modality on Saturday, weightlifting, monostructural, gymnastic,

single modality Saturday. I thought was the only way that that was going to play out where I was like, all right, that's perfect. Um, either save them all for the people that proved that they had, they, that they had the fitness to do things in a single modality setting and save them all for Saturday and do them or do them all Thursday and Friday when everyone has to do them. Yeah. I, and to be fair, the level of thought I've put into that as minimal being enveloped in coaching, um, for at least the first half of the weekend. And when it was playing out, I guess I, you know, I personally wasn't very upset about it. Um, I wasn't upset about any of the workouts because I liked all the workouts. But it doesn't make sense. I'll say this. After the unique perspective that I have, I think, as an athlete who has competed against several of the people there at a relatively high level, and then also coaching someone there.

I changed my mind about the cuts and I think the cut from 30 to 40 is completely appropriate. And I don't necessarily think that the first six workouts, as long as they're relatively varied and CrossFit in a general sense are super important to me. It seemed like the people that were cut from 30 to 40 after the first six events, um, we're not going to be able to compete the rest of the weekend, regardless of the tests that showed up that being said. And, you know, on the other side

of that, you saw the women like Abby Domet and Caroline Stanley who were in a bubble spot going into that first cut and fucking sold out and made the cut. And girls like that and guys like that live on to fight on Saturday. The cut from 30 to 20, at that point in the weekend, I think the only thing you look to say that is like wrong to me after nine events is there's only been barbell in one of them. And at that point in the weekend, there had been, Oh, there hadn't been sandbag. There's only been one sandbag as well. So, you know, I, I don't know. I, my perspective of the cuts

completely changed at the games. So that's a hard one for me to, to disagree with at this point. On paper, when you say cuts and you say, these are the first six workouts, then we're cutting to 30. It's like, God, why are you doing that? Because there's a discrepancy in single modality tests. But in application, when I was there, I don't know, did not seem to make a difference or a big one at that. Okay. What's your, what's your didn't like first didn't like was that the 5k run was 4.5k and how thousands of people potentially logged a 5k score that's not actually a 5k i just uh makes me cringe i don't like do you yeah i think some yeah i think like uh one of the it didn't make my top three but the fact that they they tried to incorporate the community to the extent of hey on your profile log this

let's let's let's have let's have the games athletes do variations of or do things that like we all do as everyday people like we all go out and we have to run the 5k even though we don't want to and look they have to go out and run a 5k too we all have done helen before they're going to do a variation of helen um you know i thought that was creative and and while some of the athletes probably didn't enjoy coming and just doing um like classics like that it was a way to engage the community and get people to go out and participate which is fun but i'm with you on knowing that when you go into a workout that has any kind of distance, I mean, there's all competitions will, will inevitably have something that's a little longer than they say it's going to be, or a little shorter, whether it's a swim, a run, whatever. But when it is a benchmark,

and when you're having a lot of people participate in the community on site, and you're having high level athletes do it where people are going to text their mom and dads and say, Hey, did you know that this person ran this time that would have made my cross country high school team or college team versus, Oh my gosh, look how slow they ran comparatively to the best. Like you want to be able to say that. And if it's not the same distance, yeah, it kind of, and to me really the biggest gripe that I have about that is at one point during the broadcast that I was watching, sorry, I fixed my mic. Um, Chris Hinshaw goes out of his way to say, and J Mac, one of the head judges has wheeled this

course several times. And each time it's exactly five kilometers. I remember that specifically. And just to go out of your way to say that when it's like, now we have over 10 athletes who've tracked the course on their run with data and multiple people, you know, I'm sure a shitload of people did in the community vision and it comes back as 4.5 K like, dude, that just seems like so classic CrossFit. I just think it's like the crossfit cringe i said it it's like crossfitters did a kipping 5k it just kind of adds into like the crossfit hate if you're going to do something that everyone knows it's recognizable everyone

knows what a 5k is most people a lot of people know what their 5k time is and it's just kind of cringy you look at crossfit like wow crossfit didn't even actually run a 5k no the thing and there are a lot of people in the comments oh what do we think happened like did they make a mistake no they fucking knew it wasn't 5k that you don't go out and measure that thing and run it and test it and not know it's not a 5k until fucking 30 athletes submit their garmin data and it says 4.5 like they just knew it wasn't a 5k. I feel like they didn't know because it's an, it was an easy change because I, even I went on Google earth and just mapped it out there. I did the course.

They actually did lined up to 4.5 K made a few adjustments on turns. They took like take a different turn on the RV park, take one different turn on the field and it lines up to about 5k. So you think they did 5,000 yards instead of instead of meters yards or just because of the gravel whatever they were using to wheel it out was bumpy and they didn't get an accurate measurement something like that well anyways i dislike that a lot agree second one jr um yeah i'll stay on the topic of the 5k um i thought that that run needed to be fast it needed to be a sprint so even if it was still single modality you already had a long single modality monostructural with the bike and we saw you have to run sustainably hard efforts

helen for three of them but they were very much submaximal they weren't a dead sprint so i thought that that 5k run to me where it was like placed in the weekend even could have easily been i'm not saying to repeat the 550 meter run that they did in 2021, but more so something like that, maybe some change in direction and then a sprint to the finish, something like a sprint effort. I think we talked about that in last week's show before all the workouts were out or two weeks ago, we said, Hey, based on what's come out, like, what do you think they need in there? And I was waiting kind of all weekend for maybe the hurdles to come back or maybe the pylons to come out where they have to do some kind of a zigzag obstacle sprinty type thing.

I really thought that that 5K didn't add a whole lot to the entirety of the programming. I thought that it would have been better to have it in more of a maximal effort run instead of a not long and slow, but like hard and sustained effort. Copy. Apparently a lot of people in the comments are saying that 5,000 yards lines up to 4.56 kilometer perfectly. So maybe that's what they did what they did and then they can't lie 5k yards um my second thing that i heavily disliked kind of is in hand in hand with something i really liked you know i like the inverted medley and i loved the freestanding handstand push-ups but i hated that they did not test handstand push- in a capacity-based sense, just a skill one. I don't know. I just like handstand pushups. So I would have liked to have seen

a dose of strict or a dose of parallette or a dose of deficit at some point in the weekend. I'll push back a little bit on you. Do you think on the way back through after the pullovers in the 360 that a lot of the athletes would argue that it was stamina limiting and it wasn't skill limiting like not any of the ones i talked to like so michelle getting to the fourth one of she lost balance yeah the 16th so you don't just think it was because shoulders and triceps were just fried getting to that last one her words specifically to me where my shoulders felt fine i just kept losing balance i went down on my head and fell over backwards three times their equilibrium as chasing grim was saying on the broadcast

yeah it was not in balance right i mean i don't know i'm sure for some of them but i also think for most of them it was way more skill to capacity total reps. It wasn't that much time on your hands. I mean, what it was 30, 30. So 90 feet of handstand walking one way, 90 feet, the other 180 feet of handstand walking and 16 total handstand pushups. I mean, I think at that level, I don't think that's very. Yeah, I mean, we'll get to the programming weeds a little bit now. So you squat in many different ways throughout the course of a competition. Typically you press in different ways with different implements.

Who's to say you can't body weight press overhead twice. So do you think the competition needed a strict handstand pushup somewhere else in the week? Do you think that it even could have had like a parallette handstand push-up kipping and still like would you have said i don't think they should have done handstand push-ups twice like why why is handstand push-ups twice a like taboo thing yeah yeah but but you do bar pullovers and bar muscle-ups and the finish bar and the finish position is the same and it's still a dynamic pull why is that not scoffed at but yet uh they

already did handstand push-ups why are they doing them again but why why are they not doing them again yeah i don't know why that is such an intuitive thing to cringe at because i do when you say handstand push-ups twice in a 15 test event i think ah 12 i think i don't know but i also feel the same i i don't feel the same about the pullovers and bar muscle-up i guess they're so different but a parallette handstand push-up against the wall is so different from a freestanding um i i think i would have been okay with it and i would have i felt like it needed a inverted capacity test rather than just skill. It was so skill-based, only skill-based.

I think we need the capacity as well. I mean, I thought in general, the amount of pulling and hanging was far and exceedingly how much pressing there was in general. And there are some sneaky pressing reps there in the competition, right? There's a, there's a lot of burpees in that interval workout, which wasn't the limiter,

but there's still a lot of getting up off the ground. There is a good bit of tricep and pec activation in the P bar pirouettes. There's a lot of the heavy overhead jerks with the kettlebells right they still went overhead heavy on the snatch and the cleaning jerk for maximal low there is there are some places in the competition they still did 35 dips on the ring muscle-ups there there was a lot of pressing but still i think was trumped by the amount of hanging and pulling there was and like if you have them do singles four in a row freestanding handstand push-ups with a handstand walk in between and then have them back on the brick doing wall facing strict deficit handstand push-ups like i don't think there's anything wrong with that because those movements

are so different, just as different as a seated legless rope climb and a bar pullover. They're both pulls, but they're just very different or a seated legless rope climb and the hand over hand sled pull. Yeah. That's probably where we diverge a little bit with like i thought having both of them and i thought having both of them especially um with the amount of pulling that there already was no

i disagree that that that was a question mark yeah i didn't why are we doing hand over hand that's the third thing that i didn't like but what i meant is if you're gonna do that why wouldn't you double up on the handstand pushups? You're going to use a rope twice. Yeah. So that takes me to the third thing. And that's, I thought the hand over hand sled pull in that 11th workout of the competition was just unnecessary. And I would have rather have seen it been maybe a deadlift. Um, it watching them do the hand over hand sled pull with their feet on the platform and pulling it's a similar movement pattern um obviously less axial loading when you're sitting on the floor like that but you add another barbell so people don't gripe as much

about not having a barbell you do add another pull from the floor which you know with the same there wasn't a there wasn't a ton of hinging there i mean there wasn't especially from the floor, which, you know, with the same, there wasn't, there wasn't a ton of hinging there. There wasn't, especially from the floor, there wasn't a lot for sure. It was, you know, I think you add that, you add a barbell again and you keep a movement that's a relatively similar movement pattern. It's still a pull, but it's not as much of an upper body pull. Um, and just make them advance the bar down the floor. I don't know. I thought, I thought that would have been fine there in some capacity, maybe a double kettlebell deadlift the bar down the floor. I don't know. I thought that would have been fine there in some capacity, maybe a double kettlebell deadlift advancing it down the floor. I don't know.

I just would have rather seen a weightlifting implement that wasn't hand-over-hand sled pull, upper body pull. Yeah, that's interesting. Let's stay on that for a second because I had, I thought just in a vacuum, each event standing on its own, that was that one or the ring muscle up with the sandbag carry up and over the wall. What were the two best work? What were the two best workouts of the competition? Like were my favorite workouts. I loved that P bar pirouette with the hand over hand with theette with the hand over hand with the with the heavy double and i just thought it looked really cool on the floor

you could see the progression they used two different sleds um i just thought it was awesome but what i thought that it did it wasn't no one did hand over hand no one it was too heavy they just put all their weight into it and like you said like you would when you're doing like max effort rows or deadlifts you had that same movement pattern where it was who is really heavy and who can put more counterweight into their foot hold and lean back and get the sled to move the most yeah it i would have loved to have seen that with a requirement for hand over hand so they were not allowed to do a straight arm in concert with all the upper body pulling just just to just just to not just to see who had because obviously the workout is all upper body pulling and pushing stamina i would have liked

just seen it be that and not just, Hey, here's another heavy odd object who can get it to move the easiest. Because I think that did play a lot more into the bigger athlete versus, Oh my gosh, they're at pulling failure. They can't hand over hand anymore. They just have to sit there. Yeah. I disagree with you there because I think in competition, especially in that regard, I like the element of here's something move it from point A to point B. It doesn't matter how you do it. I, I, I, I kind of think that's cool, but I get what you're saying. I think that if they had mandated a hand over hand, it would have sent the pulling even further over the top. And I know a lot of people, a lot, a lot of people like the alpaca and they like test and then the alpaca was a heavy test so you had two out of the six that were still dependent on how strong you were i would still disagree and just say anyone that watched it like it was still how did you manage the legless rope climbs people that fell off in that workout didn't fall off because of the sled or the kettlebells now was it the compounding effect of those things

on the on the rope climbs sure i'm sure it was for a lot of people where they were just locally blown up and their heart rate was out of control. And maybe they missed the tape line at the top because they were just really tired. But to me, that workout was still, no, it's just like the linchpin is the rope climb. The P how, how you got through those reps was determined where you finished. Yeah. And to this guy's point last year, when it was wet and raining, pushing a sled on wet turf, a hundred percent way easier, especially compared to a hot day where it's baking down, everything's hotter, frictions increased.

I have one bonus thing I didn't like, and that is the lunge to finish. I didn't think about it until I, I messaged the group chat on fitter for self-made training program and asked everybody what they thought. And one of the guys was like, I didn't really like another overhead lunch to finish. It just felt kind of like meh. And I thought about it and I, I didn't have that perspective until he mentioned it. And I think they've only done it three times to end the competition of the games fibonacci final 2021 this year i don't remember them doing it prior to

that yeah like to end the games uh you said fibonacci and then what the other one besides 2021 the rochester bar lunge yeah the three variation i think you're right there's there might be another one um i just think that's a little, you've done it three times. Cinco's Cinco's two axle overhead lunge. Was it? I think so. To finish. Yeah.

That was the finale that year. Cinco's one was handstand walk after deadlift and pistol. And then I think that rich did 2014, right? That would have been his, that would, I think 2013 cause 20, 2014 was double grace that was his last year okay so yeah i mean it hasn't happened it's happened a lot lately but yeah i mean i didn't

really think about that i thought it was cool to see a lot of people have to break it up because i'm sure a lot of people like 66 feet that's not going to be hard after all those thrusters but think about how fried everybody was at that point in the weekend and there was actually not as much of a race there as you would have you know hoped i don't think the competition played out for that to happen so i think at this point in the game banking on the final day you're going to have enough of a race and a close enough of a points gap to make the final workout the overhead walking lunge to finish there's other ways you can highlight a race um with a movement to me that's really low barrier to entry and everyone can get intensity and at that point

it's how bad do you want it at that point in the weekend i think is cool um just one other small thing um my last thing and i've kind of argued with myself a little bit on this so just shows you how confident i am in this argument. The intervals work out the way that they did it on the floor. Do you think that's enough agility for it to stand alone as the only workout in the CrossFit games that required that kind of athleticism? Because there isn't any other one. I don't know if you can call a box, jump over to that degree athleticism because there isn't any other one i don't know if you can call a box jump over to that degree athleticism and i know where you're going to go with this and i don't know if you can call

like i think the burpee get over is way more athletic really athletic movement and like if you watch pat and how low he stayed like it was really cool to see like there were some it wasn't just that he's 45 seconds fitter than everyone else it's just like his efficiency on way more movements was just like head and shoulders when we were watching we were watching on the coliseum and leslie was like who do you think and she was making her picks i was like anyone who goes to a fucking knee on top of the box has no chance um and a lot of the field did that. And it's just, if you're listening, bro, learn how to do burpee box getovers without going to a knee, please. Um, anyway, like where I'm going with that is like the jump all the way over. test these workouts they test different variations right and then they put like a highlight reel up where they announce the workout and earlier in the weekend a master's competitor ruptured their

achilles doing regular rebounding box jumps um so i don't think that that workout was initially jump up jump down open the hip at the top but if we show this picture of William Leahy doing clears I wonder why they didn't leave it that you have to clear the box so it's not mandatory step down which still blows up your legs and I'm sure maybe blew up people's legs even more so than jumping all the way over I don't see the landing on the other side of the box being something that's going to be dangerous and I think it would have added some more agility and athleticism with the get over than it did with the step down. And what do you think about that?

Because one of my biggest things too, is still that like balance, agility, coordination, like the bottom of the 10 skills wasn't hit anywhere close to how it was last year. You don't think inverted medley tested a lot of athletics? Sure. Okay. You're just thinking more of the more so I would say more so the balance and the coordination aspect. That was absolutely the balance and coordination. You know, when, when you're dizzy, can you still do these things?

Yeah, sure. But the, especially the agility aspect aspect like that was this workout yeah it was just nasty intervals but it was still like can you move fluidly and aggressively when your legs are bricks yeah i i think box jump all the way over so would have been cool um will can you pull up that picture i texted it to the group just so everyone can see what we're talking about, like jumping all the way over without touching the box. We can talk while I pulled it up. I don't think it would have taken away from the event at all, and I think it would have added to it.

You think it would have slowed people down too much? I think they would have had to change the reps, but I think 15, 12, 9 would have been fine. 15 box clears, 12 calories in a row, 9 burpee box getovers. I don't think those extra three calories are that important to me and that workout especially if you make the box make it a box clear and not just a box jump over step down um i don't know maybe they just really had a hard on for the 21 15 9 rep scheme in that case i thought the workout was like brutally elegant and simple like i thought it was it was it but maybe you make

it maybe you make it a 21 calorie row 15 box clears and nine get overs i i don't know yeah i mean the fact the fact that who is that william leahy he looks a little fucking thick around the middle buddy can we zoom in there the fact that um he signed up for crucible i'm excited to see him compete in person i've never seen him compete better lean out a little bit and he better not ghost ride his rower on the um on the programming as a whole were you oh shit we're at 46 minutes go to how surprised were you that there, shit. We're at 46 minutes. Go, dude. How surprised were you that there was only one interval-based workout?

I wasn't surprised because I think that's the norm in years past. Like I said at the beginning of the show, I was way surprised last year at how many there were. Four, I think. Yeah, whereas this year, it's like, oh, okay. Everything seemed pretty normal-ish, which I think lends weight to

us believing that dave had a big role in the programming or at least a big role in making adjustments yeah and i mean we kind of alluded to this at the beginning we could spend maybe three more minutes just kind of briefly explaining ourselves when you see progressions and at least for me and we've talked about this individually when you see crossover double unders come out and single unders and pirouettes and mandated unbroken pistols and you see the obvious trickle down and you see in the and you see in quarterfinals they do crossover single unders and you expect okay maybe at semis they'll revisit crossover doubles or maybe they won't and they'll wait for the game so they'll do triple unders in the games or whatever and it doesn't happen and you see at semifinals

pirouettes and then at the games we see pirouettes again but on the p bar instead of inverted okay yeah that makes sense there's a good flow there but you get to something like the jump rope and we don't see it at all we We just go back to weighted double under. Yeah. That doesn't, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Yeah. And I wonder if that's a small thing where it was like a,

I really want to do crossover dubs here, or I really want to do a progression on round one. I want to do single round two. I want to do double around three. I want to do triple unders. And it was just like a nine and I, we're not going to do that. We're going to go,

we're going to go with just heavy rope. We're going to go with just heavy rope. We're going to go back to heavy rope. And you see these natural progressions and you see these styles of tests where they're not all engine-based and they're really just more execution-based. And then you get to the games and it's like, what happened? Where did everything go? happened? Where did everything go? Where are all these things that we've seen all year long, where you're limited by something other than how bad you can hurt or how much you can tolerate or how much your hands can take before they tear? Like, and then we, and then we don't get that. Do you think it's purposeful? And the thing was, Hey, I got you guys. Like you guys all thought

that you had me figured out, but you, you haven't figured anything out yet. Or do you think it's just a product of having more than one cook in the kitchen? I think it's a product of having more than one cook in the kitchen. I don't think Boz is as concerned as Dave was about, oh, you got me figured out. And I was as surprised as you are, maybe less so, because you had more invested to what we expected to see at the games and what we didn't end up seeing. And I think that was a product of too many cooks in the kitchen.

Is it too many? I don't know. More than one cook in the kitchen. Yeah. I mean, I, I joked around with people about this when they said, you know, how involved do you think Dave is? And all the names of the workouts came out and I said, just look at the names. And they're like, what are you talking about?

I said, just look at the names of the workouts. And they're said, just look at the names. They're like, what are you talking about? I said, just look at the names of the workouts. And they're like, I still don't know what you mean. I said, bike to work, you know, instead of back to work, ride,

ski bag, ski bag, rinse and repeat, like look at the look, shuttle to overhead instead of shoulder to overhead like that's super clever only total like guys look look just look look at the most basic of things of the naming of the workouts like there is a lot of there there is a lot more collaboration, I think, than like, people want to maybe think or that people can see just looking at the workouts themselves. How much is how much is collaboration, though? Versus how much is it now we're gonna call it this? I don't know. I would

again, like I would say, man, I would have I would have loved to just been at the table, dude. Like, hey, this is my idea. I don't like that. Well, this is my idea i don't like that well this is what i want and like okay well let's compromise like it was there a lot of that or was there just a lot of like hey um the skills test i want you to program that like just do it and it was like okay cool i'm gonna take this one dave i need something with a pig write something up for me like i i I just, I would love to know that. Like how much, how much, like how much did they just storm out of the rooms and like, I just can't work with him today. Or if it was, I don't think it was that. I think it was probably Dave coming back in as a boss and his role. And he talked about it on his weekend review,

how, or maybe it was in the press conference and how he's more in a role in positioning, positioning himself to groom his successor, which he didn't get a chance to do before he was fired. And saying I'm grooming someone insinuates that you are the master and the other person is the apprentice, or you are the boss and the other person is your employee, and you're teaching them how to fill your role. And so he's like, we're going to call it this, ski bag, tea bag.

You think that there's movements that we'll never see again in competition because dave just didn't like them and how they looked on tv or how they were presented or just that he's gone yeah until he's gone so like do you ever so so do you think that crossover double owners will ever be programmed again i don't know and I would be really pissed if they don't show up. I think that's stupid because Boz did something to the community that we haven't experienced in a long time. He brought you something new that almost no one could do.

Everybody learned how to do it, and now it's a fucking cool, fun, new skill that we have. Let us use it. And I would argue that he understands the trickle down to the community maybe more so than anyone has when he talks about getting back to basics and getting people facing the wall and learning how to move properly on a handstand push-up instead of just like getting their hands as far away as they can within the box and just slamming their head down into the dolomer yeah i think that those kind of things i hope stick around because i

think they have been good for the community. I think this is the difference between Dave and Boz in a nutshell. Boz, deficit wall-facing strict handstand push-ups. Dave, 100 kipping handstand push-ups in a weighted vest. Echo Press versus Atalanta. I don't know. just that's there's a that's a big that's a big different man like to think that it's huge i think it's huge to think that two programmers i mean you and i have things that we definitely don't agree on that we differ about but we generally generally we're we're pretty lined up on things and there are a few things that we differ about, but generally, generally we're, we're, we're pretty lined up on things.

And there are a few things that we just, you know, agree to disagree. I just wanted to see like five straight years of just, Nope. It's like a hundred percent. It's him a hundred percent. It's him. And then we can take a step back and say, okay, we've got this 10 year sample size and this five-year sample size. Which one do we like better? How has it affected leaderboards? How has it affected training? How's it changed the way that you program for competitors? Like I think it would have been a really good juxtaposition. So dope. Yeah. Don't know. We're going to get that.

All right. I'm awake. Yeah show i'm awake yeah i'm awake that was fun that was good uh we all good end it can i end the show on a toot just cancel it sign up for the sign up for the charlotte classic and crash don't say mine and not yours you fuck when you sign up for the charlotte classic and craft basketball don't say mine and not yours you fuck when you sign up close for your online qualifier so they're gonna stay open all the way until the submission submission window closes the submission window will actually open on saturday at noon local comps just making sure that the link to upload videos and everything is ready to go for you guys so you can do the workouts today tomorrow saturday sunday monday but you won't actually be able to go in

and put scores next to your name until saturday and it'll stay open for registration all the way until monday night at 8 p.m cool yeah so if you want to sign up for the online qualifier for crucible it's at local-comp.com and that's the same place that you can sign up for the Charlotte Classic. And if you want a seven day free trial self-made training program, go to selfmadetrainingprogram.com. Sign up for that. And I guess we don't have the graphics for his online qualifier workouts, but they're pretty sick. So if you haven't checked them out, go to – Yeah, they're on both CrossFit Crash and Crucible's Instagram handles. Minimal typos. There was a pretty big one today that we went back and fixed concerning the female deficit for the kipping handstand push-up.

So we got that straightened out otherwise um everything looks pretty clean we've gotten a lot of feedback from athletes a lot of questions um keep those coming don't do the workout wrong just because you're not reading it correctly they're sick workouts they're awesome love them awesome thank you everyone for listening thanks for the fun in the chat enjoyed it as always get to the chopper Peter