The Sevan Podcast - Gemma Rader | Games Bound

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:00 it's a sebum podcast show it's a sebum podcast show everybody's welcome peace and love it's a sebum podcast show bam we're live a hundred percent my fault i forgot to send j Gemma a link. Jeez Louise Seve. Jeez Louise Seve. Oh no, I did send her a link. Let's party. I did send her a link. Okay. Not my fault. Good morning! Marissa, hi. Christine, hi. Augustus, hi. Audrey, hi.
Starting point is 00:00:38 Marissa Hinojosa. Hinojosa. Good morning, guys. Holy cow, 15 viewers. It's a real big show today. Cayman. Cayman. Cayman Cider.
Starting point is 00:00:51 Good to see you. Draw Your Deck. I get it. I get it. Sarah Cooper, what's up? Justin V. Happy birthday, America. Yeah, happy 4th of July.
Starting point is 00:01:02 I didn't even know. Except for the fireworks. Fireworks stands. I'm always even know. Except for the firework stands. I'm always surprised to see firework stands in California. I don't ever see them in nice neighborhoods. Only shitty neighborhoods. I only see firework stands in shitty neighborhoods. Gemma, what's up?
Starting point is 00:01:17 Hi, how are you? Good, how are you? I'm very well, thanks. I've never known a Gemma. Haven't you? No, just on TV. I'm your first then. Hi. I've never known a Gemma. Haven't you? No, just on TV. I'm your first then. Hi.
Starting point is 00:01:29 I love a first. I love a first. How's it going? It's been a while since I've had a first. Me too. Where are you? I'm at home in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. Oh, that's home for you. Okay. God, there's so much to learn about you.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Yeah, no, I've been here for four years, almost four years now. This is my fourth year. And how old are you? 32. And you're going to the CrossFit Games. I am. I still kind of feel like I have to pinch myself, actually. First time as an individual? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Crazy. Congratulations, man.
Starting point is 00:02:10 Thank you. Yeah. Like I said, I kind of think back to the weekend and I'm like, who was that person on the competition floor? You know, such wild. You didn't have expectations to go? Well, actually, like after the event, I've obviously been thinking a lot about that. And there's been two times in my, I would say, like my CrossFit journey where I've written down like tangible goals. And one was in 2022, funnily enough.
Starting point is 00:02:40 And one was this year, just after the Open. And I wrote down, I am going to qualify for the CrossFit Games. And both times I did. So I've never been one to journal or one to write down things, especially to set like such heavy goals on yourself. But it's been really crazy that both times I have, I've kind of pulled through with those those so I guess I didn't expect to qualify but I put every measure in place this year compared to say last year which um kind of set me up for like if I didn't if I didn't qualify then hats off to the girl who beat me but I felt like that was probably the most prepared I could be to do it 2022 is with the teams yeah yeah 2022 is with the teams. Yeah. Yeah. 2022 is with the teams,
Starting point is 00:03:25 but like I went into 2022 with like, I needed to find three other people to get me to the games. Um, because I wanted, I knew we could qualify if we just had three people that were good enough. Uh, Gemma in 2022 is your last name Raider. Raider.
Starting point is 00:03:42 Yeah. I'm pronouncing it right. Okay. Gemma, when in 2022, when you said you had to find three other people, so that was your ambition? Were you sort of the team captain? You organized that? Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:52 It was a bit of a weird dynamic, actually, because I did organize it because I was working at Vogue Fitness at the time. at the time um and my uh there was no one really at Vogue at the time who was I'd say fit to be in the team other than Paolo Russell who ended up being one of the teammates um and that towards the end of the year there was three new coaches coming in to Yass and before they even arrived um I was told Martha Cook is competitive. I heard of Michael Macare, and I think I DMed them all on Instagram before they even got to Abu Dhabi, and I was like, so listen, next year are you keen to, like, jump on a team? I'm really keen to give Asia region a go. What are your thoughts?
Starting point is 00:04:39 And they were all kind of like, oh, like, we don't even know Abu Dhabi. We haven't met you. We don't know how good you are. But, yeah, we can chat when we get there. And, yeah, that's kind of how it started. Hey, where are you born? Where was I born? In Johannesburg.
Starting point is 00:04:56 Okay. But when you went team – sorry, I got a little confused there. One because I'm just just confused person in general but um so when you went as team you didn't go from the africa region no so by this point i was living in abu dhabi i'd been in abu dhabi for a year um was it 2021 yeah yeah i'd spent i i got to abu dhabi in 2021 beginning of the year and i did that year because it was all covered crazy that year so i did the online semi-final um german or lowlands i can't remember which one but i competed did that one and then i was like now i want to give team a go for the following year so yeah good that makes me
Starting point is 00:05:38 happy because for a second i was like oh my god i have no idea who i have on the show good okay well that's good i'm glad glad I... Proud person. First place in Africa. Yeah. No other option. Say that again? No other option. First place in Africa.
Starting point is 00:05:57 Born on the African continent. Yes. But I am half Italian. Hey, you know what's really weird is you don't... don't, um, you don't, you don't, I mean, I'm not, I don't hang out with a lot of people from, uh, South Africa, but you don't sound like you're from South Africa. You sound more Australian than, uh, I guess when you say, yeah, but, uh, you, you, I didn't mean that as a dig. Uh, I wish I did, but you sound more Australian than, um, South African. Cause sometimes South Africans can be hard for me to understand. than South African? Because sometimes South Africans can be hard for me to understand.
Starting point is 00:06:32 So my family is English. And my grandmother and my mother have always proud themselves on like being more English spoken than South African spoken. Okay. So from that point of view, I guess, when I'm around my family, my my South African part of my accent is a little bit less. But if I'm around like my friends, I get very South African. Coming to the UAE, I actually, I'm in a relationship with a guy who's Australian. So that's probably why I sound a little bit more Australian because I'm like talking like him when I'm with him. And then all my friends are like Brits.
Starting point is 00:06:59 And you have to speak very clearly as well when you're talking to different nationalities. Like in my gym, I'm coaching the locals here and people from Germany and all over the place. The more clear I can pronounce my words, the easier people understand me. What's the deal with Abu Dhabi? What's going on there? I live in a sleepy beach town in California, 70 miles south of San Francisco. Most that we don't have like an Apple store.
Starting point is 00:07:31 We're not a major metropolis. The people who were born here end up staying here. There's like never anything new here. It's just like, you know what I mean? It's just, it's kind of, it's weird. It's just kind of just a normal place that for you know the 10 years i've been here i haven't seen any change what's going on in abu dhabi it's a unique place right it's a trippy place yeah like it's probably one of the most
Starting point is 00:07:56 i mean okay listen i'm not very well traveled i've only traveled for crossfit really um but you said you're 32 yeah okay yeah so i pretty much a lot of people who grow up in south africa stay in south africa um because like number one depending on what job you get like it's quite it's quite expensive to travel anywhere else in the world so anyway when i got out um in abu dhabi i probably when i moved here is when i've done most of my traveling but what i can say is it's like it's such a melting pot of cultures um I'm in South Africa you you know Afrikaans people and you know every other African um culture that South Africa has you don't really see much other many other types of nationalities there so when I got here I was like I didn't even know that the Welsh the Welsh had their own accent
Starting point is 00:08:42 like when I met some guys from Wales, I was like, they speak weird. And then I realized, oh, wait, that's actually what the Welsh accent sounds like. Because I thought it was just this guy. And when you say Welsh, that's like basically just a country that sits on the island on the United Kingdom, right? It's just like one of the adjacent, I guess, a state. Is it a country? Is it even a country? Yeah, I think it's.
Starting point is 00:09:03 Oh, no. Now you're speaking to the wrong person. I'm going to embarrass myself. It's okay. But they share the Island with the United Kingdom. Yeah. Yeah. They're in the South there somewhere. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, so, so I didn't realize they had their own, that's how they spoke. Like, you know, British sounds like British.
Starting point is 00:09:20 I didn't know the Welsh accent. So the, from the, from that point of view, it's such a, such a culturally enriching place. And then you have the locals who also, like, they love foreigners here. Like, they just like to immerse you in their culture. And they're so welcoming and understanding. Because for a lot of us, like, it's so new and and um foreign that like it's very difficult to sometimes understand and like we like I coach ladies only classes I get to mix with them and like they're all just such beautiful people like um as a coach I just feel so like looked after here
Starting point is 00:09:59 like they really respect me and um yeah I absolutely love it. So from that point of view, the people, it's a lot more open also than people think. Like I know there are other Emirates and other parts in the Middle East that are a little bit more conservative, but Abu Dhabi and Dubai are very open, especially Dubai, Dubai way more. But you can pretty much live life like normal as an expat. There's nothing really, um, I would say that I can't do or don't do. And then, um, yeah,
Starting point is 00:10:30 it's just safe. And for me, like, that's a big thing coming from South Africa. I didn't realize the anxiety I had just living life until I left. And then, yeah, because as a kid,
Starting point is 00:10:44 like that, um, that awareness of your surroundings and the constant like um what's the word like when you're you're always like just vigilant about your lock in your house and like you know being aware that you don't put your your handbag where it's visible or you know you were born you were born in cape town i was born in johannesburg johannesburg okay yeah i lived in cape town for five years yeah so i'm we'll get back to abu dhabi in a second uh abu dhabi is the capital united arab emirate sits on the main uh land on an island in the persian uh gulf it's the focus and oil experts and commerce is reflective okay thank you
Starting point is 00:11:23 uh from wales for fuck's sake it's a country you dip shit thank you i oh bye you got to hear that last one it's a country you dip shits okay thank you um uh is canada country no canada is an experiment for the world economic forum but thank you for asking um let's see uh okay that's a bit that's it for the abuse when the um johannesburg has a a major airport there i spent a lot of time in africa months and months in africa all over the african continent and um anytime i flew anywhere we had to go back to johannesburg it was a trip we like even if even if i was just going to go like north let's say i was in malawi and i was going to go an hour north for some reason you had to fly back down to johannesburg because the airport is such a major hub and i was actually mugged i was attempted to be mugged in the airport there even though it's a beautiful uh airport
Starting point is 00:12:17 massive international with a gucci store but the actual tsa there i don't know what you guys call them there but the actual security there when i went through there they surrounded me and tried to uh take a bribe from me it was it was absolutely fucking crazy because it seems first world is all get out you know it's like it's beautiful and modern um but the actual employees there tried to uh mug me it was it was crazy yeah it was it was nuts – A little opportunistic there. They see a foreigner and they see Target. It was nuts. You know like when you fly from one country to another country, even if you stay in the airport, you got to go through like the international security area?
Starting point is 00:12:56 It was in there. The guys who were supposed to be there to protect you for your safety came and surrounded me and started yelling at me and calling me a fucking moron and asking me to give me money out of their wallet and it was just in a small and there were other you know passengers there but it was in a small little narrow area where they could surround me it was wild yeah but i was so ignorant yeah it was it was a little scary but i was so ignorant that i didn't realize they were trying to like get me until i was out the other side i was like oh shit yeah they were trying to fucking they were trying to fucking mug me they were trying to take my wallet yeah and then of course and then of course Cape Town unfortunately has the scary name of rape you know you hear
Starting point is 00:13:36 a rape town and so and when I was in when I was in South Africa I can't remember where I went but I was downtown and it was beautiful and there were skyscrapers everywhere and I was in South Africa, I can't remember where I went, but I was downtown and it was beautiful and there were skyscrapers everywhere. And I was like, where's the cafes with all the people sitting outside? And they're like, no, you can't do that here. You can't just sit outside with your laptop open at a cafe here. Someone will run by and take it or take it from you. And I was, it was a trip. So when you say that you left there and the the stress you didn't realize how stressed you were I can't I can relate like I can be like oh yeah that's and and it's funny because my family I go back home I went back home obviously for the semis and my family doesn't uh they don't know
Starting point is 00:14:19 because they they've just been there their whole life so they don't know that like um the difference between like going and going somewhere that's actually safe versus South Africa. Like I was staying in, I stayed with my brother when I went up for semis. And he's living in like a really beautiful area, like a gated community, because a lot of the suburbs are gated off in Johannesburg with booms and security. Like you have people monitoring that. And at nighttime, they close certain roads so that there's only one entry and one exit point for the street. So this area was obviously a lot safer. So I would walk or run to the gym from where he was staying because it was like maybe a kilometer and a half or so.
Starting point is 00:14:58 But it took me like a couple of days to get the courage to do that outside. Because I saw a lot of other people in the neighborhood running every day so I was like all right if everyone's running that's fine but then I'm like can I wear my watch can I wear my earphones um I just didn't know so yeah in in Abu Dhabi it's uh beautifully safe and I feel very comfortable here which comfort's not always a good thing but for now it's it's a good thing yeah um and we definitely have places like that in the states also but the country's so big that if you wanted to there's tons of safe places you could go i mean there's like you know what i mean like in in the united states we do have very dangerous spots but you can't always get away like you could you could easily just drive
Starting point is 00:15:42 you know 100 miles from pretty much anywhere and be like, okay, I'm in a place where someone will stop and fix my flat tire. I can't remember where I was. I think I was in Dubai. And I was staying at a hotel there, and I left my cell phone in a cab. And the cab drove off. And then like six hours later, I was just in the lobby talking to my friend to my friend. It was actually Greg Glassman. And I was like, let's go to the store and get a new phone. And there was a hotel employee there. And he goes, oh, you lost your phone. And I said, yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:15 And he said, oh, we can get it for you. I'm like, no, I left it in a cab like six hours ago. He goes, no, no problem. Where were you? Where were you standing when you got in the cab? And I go right there. He goes, OK, I'll get it for you. What hotel room are you in? And two hours later, he got me my cell phone back. So I was asking him, I was like, hey, how did you do that? He's like, dude, this is the safest place in the world. No one's stealing shit. He said, you could travel around with a wheelbarrow with a million dollars worth of cash and just walk around with it.
Starting point is 00:16:41 And no one would take a thing from you. I go, really? He goes, dude, you could just leave it on the sidewalk. No one is stealing here. I'm like, wow. And it felt that way. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it felt that way.
Starting point is 00:16:54 I think I went – I did Waterpalooza last year in a team with my friend Evie and Martha, and I think on our first day in Miami, we were – not Miami. Was it Miami? Yeah yeah miami we were walking to like try and find a coffee shop in the morning and uh the first thing that happened was we got followed by this homeless guy on drugs and we had to like run into a um like a hotel building and um the guy was like why are you guys coming in here we're like no there's this guy following us and then um the guy came straight into the uh the hotel and we were so shocked and then afterwards that whole trip we were like oh crap like we're not in Abu Dhabi
Starting point is 00:17:31 anymore you know yeah yeah Miami can be Miami can be dicey yeah yeah so it's very fortunate yeah and when you're born somewhere like South Africa you like you said you just didn't know any different it's just it just is like multiple people in my family have been held up at gunpoint outside their houses and stuff like that i don't want to paint south africa in a bad light because it doesn't happen everywhere but there's probably majority of south africans could tell you a story of someone close to them or themselves that have had that happen i don't know how common that is everywhere else but certainly yeah i uh where i live i i know no one who's been um not a single yeah not a single person fascinating are guns legal in south africa they are right uh you have to have licenses for them and it's quite tricky to get i know that
Starting point is 00:18:22 because my old boss was trying to get a gun license and it was difficult. But hunting is big there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Big. So let's go back to that. So do you know how your family ended up in South Africa? No, actually, I don't. My dad, because he's from Italy, his dad was working in South Africa. And then they moved
Starting point is 00:18:47 when he was a little kid, they moved on. And I think my mom was born in Johannesburg, lived there. And how did they meet? Do you know? On the phone, actually. Yeah, both were coming from like divorced marriages. And my mom knew some girls that knew my dad. And they said that we think you'll like this man. And they put them in contact because at the time my mom was living in this like, jeepers, this tiny, tiny town that takes about two minutes to drive through in the Eastern Cape. So she was living there. And my dad was, I don't know, working somewhere because he used to work like all over Africa and put them in contact. That's how they met. And he just quartered her like that, like old school. Yeah. Hi, how are you? Do you want to go for a cup of coffee?
Starting point is 00:19:35 Pretty much. And then do you have siblings? I do. So I've got quite a big family because of my dad's previous marriage. He had two and then my mom had three and then my mom and my dad got married and had my brother and I. So seven kids. Yeah. But we like what we call in South Africa the late Lamakies, which means like the late children. A Lamaki is a little lamb. So we like the late kids of the family.
Starting point is 00:20:03 And yeah, there's quite a big gap i think between me and my youngest sister is like eight years and how about your oldest oldest sibling she must be like 45 now my dad's daughter actually i'm very bad with the birthdays i can't keep up with how old people are so like a 23 year gap though that's 20 23 years if i did the math like between your youngest and your oldest yeah yeah big gaps and and what did your dad do what was his vocation um he was a geologist so he used to work all over um the world like um up in africa he used to work in south america um yeah like he did mostly uh field work so he loved to go out and like find the his speciality was gold and diamonds so he was like you know wherever that was
Starting point is 00:20:54 he was there for months at a time actually so he how people would survey land to find like oil and water he would survey land and be like okay yeah the characteristics of where there would be diamonds or gold this this spot got it start digging here yeah exactly and he was um so back then as well like the technology wasn't as sophisticated as was today as it is today so a lot of the stuff he did what had to be like um you know using paper maps and you know all these kind of things like it was a lot more hands-on than it is today, but he absolutely loved it. Yeah, it sounds like a really cool job.
Starting point is 00:21:31 How old is he? Well, he actually passed away in 2019, I think. So he was 72 when he passed away. I would say just probably factors of lifestyle, to be honest, was his reasons. So five years ago and you were 27. Yeah. Yes. You click maths. And thank you. I'm very good at math. And is your mom still alive? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She lives in Port Alfred, which is where I grew up.
Starting point is 00:22:04 And then so you're born in Cape Town. And what was it like growing up there? What did you do there? Was it just you went to school every morning, came home, stuff like that, just a regular life? So I was born, I was born in Joburg, moved to Cape Town in 2015 or 2016, 2015. Okay. 2015 or 2016 2015 okay um but i i was born in joeberg and then we lived on the coast about 10 hours away from johannesburg and that's where i stayed pretty much my whole life until i moved to cape town um so i mean it's small town vibes like uh as a kid i used to horse ride um and that was my like main sport and then i pretty much try to do whatever else I could. Um, but I was never in like a, a very competitive environment from like my family. Like my, my mother never pushed me. My dad had, um, educational expectations of me, but not
Starting point is 00:22:56 physical. Um, my like physical drive all came like intrinsically, like I wanted to be a professional at something sporty and my both my older sisters were sports were horse riders and they actually reached quite a high level in horse riding um but they lived in a city like an hour and a half away from where I was so I didn't see them that often they lived with their dad um but I looked up to them massively so that's kind of why I started horse riding and then yeah I pretty much spent my childhood horse riding and doing odd sports when I could. It was great growing up there. And what is horse riding?
Starting point is 00:23:34 Are you jumping over stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I used to do like show jumping and I used to do dressage and a bit of like very little little bit of cross country type riding, like jumping and yeah. So I really, really, when I was a kid, my goal was to be like a professional horse rider. But that dream was soon shattered when I realized I didn't have the money. I didn't have the support and I didn't have the time when I moved schools.
Starting point is 00:24:01 So a very unique culture in that sport. It's its own world. It is, but it's, um, as a kid, it's like, I don't know, you develop like such a beautiful relationship with, you have to love it to do it, you know, and you just like get so close to your animal. Um, yeah. So I was attached. I had my own pony and I was, I was in the farm almost every single day. Did you go to school or were you homeschooled? No, I went to school. I was in a public school and then I moved to a private school for my last three years. Is horse riding a physically demanding sport?
Starting point is 00:24:39 Was it physically demanding? You know, at the time, I didn't think so. But if I had to go and get back onto a horse now, I would be extremely unfit. Because there is an element of fitness that you need to like, you don't realize it when you just get fit riding, you know. So to a point, yes, it is physically demanding. You have to be a lot stronger than you think, you know. Kind of like a motocross. People don't realize how fit those guys are. And then it's like, they're holding on for dear life on a motorcycle doing laps. And then
Starting point is 00:25:11 yeah, you realize, holy shit, like it's a seriously physically demanding sport, but you just don't see it because I guess people are looking at the horse and in motocross, people are looking at the, the bike. Yeah. And you don't realize like the amount of force you need to exert continuously to perform all the top the jobs that you're doing because you make it kind of look a bit effortless yeah yeah yeah yeah uh horse girls have fat asses a big big glute workout on the horse um i used you know what's funny is that um i used to actually think that as well um i don't like i love i mean now you're the ultimate fat ass sport uh crossfit i mean it's funny you say that machine everyone's a glute machine i mean even the boys like if you
Starting point is 00:25:58 don't have a big ass you're fucked well it's funny you say that because the other day i was measuring myself because um i wanted to buy a swimming costume and I measured my ass and I used to do it a lot back at uni. And I remember it was like around 101, 102 centimeters. And I measured it and it was 94. And I was like, oh, shit, my butt's actually shrunk since university. I was quite shocked. Shame on you. You are no longer allowed to represent CrossFit.
Starting point is 00:26:22 I'm doing something wrong. How do you measure? When you measure when you measure your ass you're basically measuring your hips you take like a tape and you go around your hips yeah from like around the thickest part yeah and you called it a um a costume um i hadn't i haven't heard the word costume it was like that but you mean like you were like it was a swimsuit like you would actually use like you'd go to the beach in. Yeah, like a training bathing suit. I don't know. Yeah, we call it costumes in South Africa.
Starting point is 00:26:48 Oh, OK. Training bathing suit. So a bathing suit that's like you're going to swim in. You're going to something you would compete in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, that makes more sense why you'd measure it. If it was just like one that you just went to the beach with your friends, you wouldn't you just go in and try it on. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:27:03 OK. friends you wouldn't you just go in and try it on yeah exactly okay um and um and so when was your first sport you played outside of the uh the horse riding so alongside horse riding i loved field hockey like hockey was one of my favorite things um so i would play field hockey is hockey with you're just in your shoes. You run around on a field. Yeah. With a stick. And yeah, you hit the ball. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:27 Okay. Okay. I absolutely adore, like that was like one of my favorite sports at school. I love the, the speed and the agility and the, like, to be honest, I don't think I was that good with the ball, but I was fast. And, uh, I just, I was, um, very like tenacious. Like if the ball went past me, I'd run back for that ball, man. I never used to let shit get past me.
Starting point is 00:27:50 So I loved hockey. And then I played squash. I played tennis. I tried a little bit of netball, except I didn't really fit the profile of a netballer. And I did athletics to a small degree. What degree what's that athletics is that track and field yeah like actually funny if i'm only one 1.61 but at junior school um i was one of the best at high jump which i thought was pretty weird because i was definitely one of the smallest kids but in in um do you think horse riding helped that from just being in that? When I think of horse riding, you're basically just standing in like a half squat.
Starting point is 00:28:27 True, to an extent. But as a kid as well, like I was obsessed. Obviously, I was obsessed with horse riding, but I was obsessed with playing horse games. So as a kid, I used to jump over everything in the house. So I would build courses for myself to jump. And then I would run around for hours just jumping over shit and like i'll jump over the furniture um i remember my i once actually snapped one of my mom's coffee tables in half because i jumped but my knee came down on the coffee table and
Starting point is 00:28:57 then the coffee table head snapped off so i don't know you get in trouble for that do you get in trouble for that yeah my mom told me to stop doing that. And I nearly actually, I broke my pinky toe doing that as well because I ran around the sofa and my pinky hooked on the corner of the sofa and I, yeah, I broke my toe. But I love jumping. So I think maybe that's where I got the, that from. You're only five foot three? Yeah, one six one. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:25 Oh my goodness. If we talked, I would be looking down at you. I never look down at anyone. 5'3". I wasn't blessed with the tall gene. I went through your entire Instagram account. I didn't see anything that made me think that you were 5'3".
Starting point is 00:29:39 You look tall. You look tall on Instagram. It's good to know. Someone else said that to me. They thought i was taller i can't remember who it was hmm but yeah i know i'm short this uh this field hockey uh how old were you when you played it so i played it i think i started she is not taller than me she is not taller than me easy easy i'm staying i'm a five foot five. Okay, go on.
Starting point is 00:30:11 Five foot five still got a way to go. No, I started in my, my first year of high school, that was probably when I properly started playing. And I played the whole way through high school, I think I ended on like second team. But I always had a little bit of imposter syndrome when it came to my sporting ability. So as soon as I reached a bit of like a higher level, I all of a sudden started to doubt my capabilities and have a little bit of like self-sabotage of like, oh, maybe I'm not good enough to be here. And that probably has been like something throughout my CrossFit development
Starting point is 00:30:41 that has been one of the biggest things to overcome for me because i saw i've seen how many times in other sporting things that it's like held me back because i know it's not my ability it's just my head um so yeah like from a competitive point of view crossfit was the most crossfit is the most competitive i've been been in any kind of sport, I guess. Are you married now? No. Do you have kids now? No.
Starting point is 00:31:12 No kids, not married. And when you played this field hockey game, what would be the longest you would run? Is that basically like you run 20 or 30 meters explosively and then that's it and then you get a few seconds break? Yeah. I mean, it depended on how strong the team was that you were playing like if it was a really strong team and they ended up making you run back and forth back and forth you do a lot more running i remember being pretty damn exhausted like playing hockey um especially when i moved from a defense position to a forward position um because then you do do a lot more running up and down. But I actually wouldn't even know how long we ran.
Starting point is 00:31:50 But I used to run a lot outside of sports. So when I joined, when I started high school, I became like addicted to gym. So I would do all my sport and then I would go to the gym and then I would do whatever I thought I needed to do in the gym. I would run on the treadmill, I'd do a million abs try and get a six-pack and um yeah just like play around in the gym for hours and that kind of persisted after school into university I would spend hours in the gym but mainly to uh to balance out the partying lifestyle because otherwise I would have got really fat. Um, yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:29 Who, um, uh, Gemma, who introduced, did someone introduce you to the gym? Like, do you remember the first time you went to a gym? Was there someone like, Hey, let's come to a gym. Let's go to a gym. So my mom, my mom used to go to these like aerobics classes with this lady and she was, I used to think she was so cool and so i started going to her like i used to like taibo i don't know if you've ever seen yeah yeah yeah yeah it's hard it's hard as shit so hard but also like yeah so i used to go and do taibo classes um in the evenings and then um i used to do spinning i was like addicted to spinning and then the spinning ladies opened up like a body con class and then i used to just do like i would go and do spinning in the morning and
Starting point is 00:33:09 body con in the afternoon and if i didn't have a spinning class i'd do cardio so i don't really remember being i remember the taibo lady being like oh man i want to be fit like her but i don't know how i got she have an amazing body yeah she did and she was really pretty what was when when you see like what what stood out for you for her like her shoulders her arms her hamstrings what did she have that you were like oh that's a cool muscle did you remember a curve on her body and you're like damn that's the one no i just remember her looking in shape and being like really toned like nothing like what us crossfit girls look like i would say the first CrossFit girl I probably looked at and thought that's what I want to look like, look at was Brooke Ence.
Starting point is 00:33:51 And it was, I think, 20, 15 or 20. That's a pretty high bar. That's crazy. Right. Because she's a genetic freak, too. I mean, I don't want to take anything away from her hard work, but she's I mean, if you see her family, like her mom is a genetic freak. Yeah. Well, she, she was one of the first people I remember seeing and being like, oh my God, I want to look like that girl. Like, how did she get like that? And that probably like stuck in my mind more than anything else. And then CrossFit wasn't really an option where
Starting point is 00:34:20 I was living. Like we didn't have a functional fitness gym in my university town. We didn't even have a CrossFit. So like it didn't really occur to me to do it. And I didn't really know what it was. Up until, I don't know if you know Dave Levy. Have you heard of Dave Levy? Yeah, yeah. Why does that name sound familiar?
Starting point is 00:34:39 Was he a games athlete? Yeah, so he competed through Africa. i think he competed at the games through africa oh yeah yeah yeah i know who this guy is he's also done masters and like come second or third yeah he's a cool looking dude he's a really cool looking man yeah hardcore so he came to my uni and did a whole um like CrossFit seminar and like explained to us what CrossFit was, had us all doing power cleans. And then I remember thinking, this is a freaking cool sport because I spend about two hours in the gym anyway, doing God knows what, like, if I think about it now, what the heck was I even doing? And, uh, and then Dave Levy comes
Starting point is 00:35:22 along and shows us this. And'm like this is competitive gym like does not get better than that now I can do the gym but I can do it for a reason so I'd say like Dave Levy kind of opened my eyes to what CrossFit was which was pretty cool was he um was he a um he was an African Games athlete because it's weird because normally African Games athletes wouldn't stand out to me but i fully remember this guy he's qualified multiple years and he's also qualified as masters i mean he i think he qualified this year uh through africa yeah let me see if i can pull up there's not a lot of pictures of this guy on the internet this isn't this isn't this isn't a a very good one and when i tried to pull up his instagram i just got a little kid
Starting point is 00:36:08 i want i want to go back to that uh in one second so you so you don't you don't really have a uh a seminal moment when you introduced to the gym you went to you were just your mom went and then you just became comfortable in that space and like you were just comfortable just in gyms in general because it was introduced when you were little just training and working out yeah like which i also thought was weird because like none of my family actually went to gym other than my older brother but he's like a bean sprout he's so tall he's like six foot something he likes um endurance sports and he would go to the gym um but none of my sisters or my even my younger brother used to really gym and i i just became like super obsessed with the gym like um yeah i was actually more obsessed with weight loss to be honest but not very much me too me too me
Starting point is 00:37:00 too seriously me too yeah i wanted to be i wanted to look I wanted to look like Mark Wahlberg in the Calvin Klein ads. Yeah. No, listen. I want to look like Brooke Enns, so we have the same ambition there. Hey, why do you think you're so normal? Why am I so normal? Yeah. Like when you talk, you're not embarrassed and like like you're you're so you're so well adjusted why are you so well adjusted is that from is that from because of the did the horse world require you'd like to talk to a lot of people because of the politics like why are you so normal i think it's because i'm a crossfit coach oh yeah like listen i make i make uh i'm not i'm not um i wouldn't say like
Starting point is 00:37:50 i'm a prim and proper person like i'm very much what you see is what you get and yeah i love you you're cool as shit you're this is easy i'm like fuck i don't want to interview some fucking kid from africa who's fucking embarrassed at every third thing she says this is you're amazing yeah oh thank you yeah i know i cross this is you're amazing yeah oh thank you yeah no i crossfit coaching you weren't like that till you started coaching cross you think like it forced you were you all were you ever shy or oh okay i still am very very shy if you talk to me about something i think i don't know enough on so um if if i know that i've like maybe under researched something i'm not confident in what I'm speaking about, I get really nervous.
Starting point is 00:38:27 So I was really bad at public speaking, really bad. But from a coaching perspective, every time I moved, so when I first started coaching, I shadowed a lot. And I said to my boss, I was like, listen, I'm not going to coach until I've shadowed enough to feel confident enough to give a class. And the same thing when I moved to Cape town, the guy made me shadow 80 hours before I actually took my own CrossFit class. What a dick. I mean, what a great coach. Well, I was like, yeah, I'm going to get my 80 hours. And I think I was in the gym from 5am when the first CrossFit started until 7pm. And I did every single day, when the first CrossFit started until 7pm. And I did every single day, shadowed every single class, I was just like, I need to be a sponge because as much as I am competitive, and I love being an athlete, like my passion lies in coaching. And before I started thinking or like seeing the
Starting point is 00:39:27 um, thinking or like seeing the, the slight pathway towards maybe an athletic ambition. Um, I wanted to be like on CrossFit seminar staff. Like the first thing, when I did my level one, I was like, I want to do this. I want to be those people giving the CrossFit seminars, you know, traveling and doing that and teaching all these people. So like for me, these people so like for me coaching is like a passion and it's a purpose and um yeah genuinely makes me really happy do you still want to be on seminar staff yeah i would i would love to be on seminar staff like i um i just so many people have told me oh it's who you know like you know and and i'm not well i could introduce you to i could introduce you to the guy you would be great they would love you i mean you're you're made for it yeah yeah after this i'm gonna after this i'm gonna connect you to my buddy my buddy runs the uh seminar staff
Starting point is 00:40:15 over at crossfit oh that would be amazing because like i still like now i'm coming up to actually renew my level two and i'm thinking like do I take this further like this CrossFit role that I'm that that was initially my goal when I started um do I pursue like going level three level four or is it like a dead end because the chances of me even getting in is like so minimal that I shouldn't even try so that was kind of where I was sitting because like being an athlete is not forever and like i do have such a passion for like the coaching side of it um so that's probably why i'm a little bit more open when it comes to speaking um and i have a great record i think i've recruited probably at least
Starting point is 00:40:58 30 seminar staff in my career and all of them flourished oh yeah yeah so so you're in good hands hey i want to go back to dave levy how where did he come that he introduced you to crossfit like where did he show up so i went to university in a really small town called gramstown and gramstown is about an hour and 30 minutes away from port elizabeth where dave Levy owns a gym. Okay. And I don't know for what reason why he came to Grahamstown. I think he had just won the Africa regional and maybe went to the games for the first time or something like that. But he was coming to my, I was, I studied human kinetics and ergonomics,
Starting point is 00:41:40 which is like a facet of sports science. And he came and offered a talk to our department and then whoever like it was open to members of the gym as well um and a talk and then like an activity where we did like a wad and um yeah that's how i met dave for the first time and i was like wow this guy's freaking impressive and like i I said, competitive gym, what gets better than that? How many people were in the talk that he gave? It was quite big. Like there were quite a lot of us.
Starting point is 00:42:13 I think a lot of my year in uni was there. I don't really remember all too much. It's like a little bit hazy. I just remember. Was it like 50 or 20 or? I think it was over 20 for sure. And they were students or students and professors. No,
Starting point is 00:42:31 mostly students. And then I think like our postgraduate students. So like, yeah, the guys who were our tutors and stuff like that were there. They were all like more physically involved and practical um do you was there obviously he's physically impressive but do you remember anything that he said that caught your eye either like hey this is the greatest way to get adaptation or hey um
Starting point is 00:42:57 you have to stop eating sugar or um uh you know god didn't or none of these movements were created by man. They're part and parcel with your DNA. Like, was there anything that you were like, Whoa, what, what did you say? Uh, I don't remember words. I just remember how I felt after my first wad. And I was like, Holy crap, that was cool. You know, that's what Greg used to say. He'd be like, if anyone ever asked you what CrossFit is, be like, Hey hey do you have an hour tomorrow morning on i need to show you yeah no that that was that was it and then and then yeah like after that uh i had just enrolled in like a master's program at my uni and a friend of mine who actually competed with me at semis she was studying studying the same as me, the same degree as me. And we used to
Starting point is 00:43:45 go to this like local coffee shop and get coffees in between classes. And on the wall, because obviously Instagram wasn't really a thing and Facebook was a thing, but people weren't as active with advertising and stuff on there back then. There was a little flyer on the wall with those little tags you could rip off. And was a an advert for crossfit and it was um crossfit gramstown opening this time get your first like on-ramp class on this date um and then take the email how long after was that then that you met dave levy uh so i met dave levy in 20 i think 2013 and this was 2014 okay okay so this was 20 at the beginning of 2014 because i think i just started the master's program and me and my friend were at
Starting point is 00:44:34 the coffee shop and i took the tag and i said you're gonna do this with me um i told her i was like you're gonna do crossfit with me because we were like really good fitness buddies we did athletics together athletics training together and um yeah so I dragged her along to CrossFit and we did our first on-ramp class before and I um and I was like one of those people that couldn't um couldn't do the push jerk I just couldn't get the timing right and I was also the first to fall on the box jump so could you even do one pull-up oh no way no yeah yeah i hung there like yeah i know couldn't do couldn't do anything really do you remember your first pull-up do i remember my first pull-up no but it was probably a kipping pull-up yeah crazy it's those are the most amazing journeys someone who can't do one pull-up or has never done a pull-up in their whole life
Starting point is 00:45:33 and then now they're a games athlete where it's just like i could wake you up in the middle of the night and you could do i could wake you up at three and you could do 10 and go back to sleep in in 30 seconds right i mean it's just yeah no it's it's um it's crazy like i remember we had to do the spartan race as like a it wasn't a it wasn't a spartan race like why what do you think spartan is it was like run on a field our field at university we got into like teams and we had to push like roll a tire and someone had to do 50 push-ups someone had to do 20 pull-ups and you guys had to run in this thing and anyway it was called like this little Spartan race and I remember like uh one girl could do a
Starting point is 00:46:12 pull-up um one like a couple of pull-ups but I couldn't even do a proper push-up yeah yeah you're gonna do the push-ups I'm like oh my god I can only do like five you know um and I thought I was strong and I thought I was like fairly fit. But like, yeah, joining CrossFit, like made me see. All right. No, you're not really either of those things. So 2014, now it's been 10 years. So at 22, you find CrossFit and you dip your toe in after you after you go into that gym. Do you become obsessed? Like, do you immediately start doing it five days a week, six days, seven days a week? Yeah. So me and my mates, Emma, we used to go, um, before uni started, we would go to the
Starting point is 00:46:56 seven 30 class or the six 30 class. And then we would normally train and then stay after and do like, I don't know, whatever else we felt like doing. And pretty soon after joining the owner at the time, it was only her and her husband, and she needed coaches. So I, I don't know, I stood up to her, I guess, and she offered, she was like, we'd love to have you come for an interview with us and whatever. And then we'd love to have you, you know, working with us. Would you be interested in being a CrossFit coach? And I was like, we'd love to have you come for an interview with us and whatever. And then we'd love to have you, you know, working with us. Would you be interested in being a CrossFit coach? And I was like, hell yes.
Starting point is 00:47:29 So that was when they then decided to send me to Cape Town to do my level one. Yeah. And that was. What year was that? That was also 2014. So I hadn't even been doing CrossFit. I think it was like the middle of the year because I started CrossFit in the beginning of the year. And then by the middle of the year,
Starting point is 00:47:47 I got my level one and then started coaching there at that gym. But it's crazy because the perception or our perception of CrossFit then is so different to my perception of CrossFit now. Like it's probably the reason why I'm dealing with so many injuries is because how stupid i was back then you know oh oh oh yeah yeah um yeah uh chris beecher field is uni free listen don't ever use that word free you don't even know what you're talking about it you mean do the rich people pay for it yeah no it's not okay so the rich people don't pay for it don't ever use the word free
Starting point is 00:48:23 it's one of the dumbest things they say in the United States. Your health care is free. No, you fucking moron. Someone's paid. Yeah, someone's working really hard to take care of your ass and make them dependent on you. Yeah, no, there's not many things you can, I guess, get for free in South Africa. It's all from your pocket. free in South Africa. It's all there, you know, from your pocket.
Starting point is 00:48:53 Hey, you know, when Americans meet Australian people, they're kind of like blown away by it, because they seem so much more gregarious than us and free and open and like less judgmental. It's always like, wow. And especially you probably we probably notice it in the women they just seem more fun i wonder if that's what i'm picking up from you i wonder if it's like that in south africa too you have more of a culture of just um like you guys yeah you just seem like yeah you seem like you're having fun in life like like the box that they force you to grow up in isn't as um constricted and by box i mean uh the the the cultural or psychological aspects of it yeah yeah well it's funny you say that about australians because i actually thought the same thing like they drink out of a shoe
Starting point is 00:49:37 yeah we drink out of shoes yeah that's what i mean Shit like that. Like Americans will be like, oh, that's gross. Like, like we're so close minded. from a training point of view but like I was I used to have a lot of fun like I used to go out quite a lot I was very social I definitely don't feel as social anymore um but uh yeah I just I just think for me as well I've always been like what you see is what you get and I don't know if this is an unfortunate thing but but like, I fairly regularly embarrass myself not intentionally, but it happens. So I've had to learn to get like, a bit of a thick skin when it comes to that and like laugh at myself and not take myself so seriously. And, yeah, I don't know if that's probably
Starting point is 00:50:39 contributed to me being a little bit more forthcoming. Because fuck shit happens, you know, like. Fuck shit does happen. Yeah. It's one of my favorite things that happens at my house. Fuck shit. But I have three little boys. There's not it's been reduced.
Starting point is 00:50:55 OK, actually, just on that three little boys thing, I think I realized I think was yesterday or today that I actually followed your boys and not you on Instagram. Smart. That's probably the best way to go. In fact, your kids are probably the reason why I would have children. And if I did, I'd want them to be as cool as your kids. Oh, they're so cool. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:51:14 They're so cool. Honestly, I have watched so many of the videos, just like can't get over like how incredible your children are. I'm like, these kids are going to be who knows what they're going to be. They can do anything, you know? So cool. Thank you. It means the world to me. I'm so, uh, I'm so lucky yesterday. I just, it was seven o'clock at night and I just sat down for an hour and watch them play with each other. And it's just, it's, they're such good boys. God, they're such good boys. It's so,
Starting point is 00:51:42 it's so easy. Kids are so easy. Um, if you love them, I tell my kids, I love them a lot. And then I just crazy rules. There's just crazy discipline, you know, just crazy discipline and tell them you love them. And then they, they're free. They can just, yeah, it's great. Thank you. That means the world to me that you said that now I like you even more. You already had, you already had me. you already had you already had me um so so you go you go uh you you meet dave levy you're already but at that point in uni you're already uh into um uh what'd you call it human ergonomics yeah human kinetics and ergonomics ergonomics and um and then and then you start moving and you're introduced to all these new movements and you get obsessed with it. And then they, your coaches see it there. So then they asked you to be a coach. And what about the competitive side? When are you like, oh, I'm going to turn this into something competitive for me?
Starting point is 00:52:35 Well, this is the thing. Like, um, I feel like because I never had a real direction with what I wanted from CrossFit as a sport, uh, the process just took so much longer than it needed to be. Like if I had have got maybe my own coach soon after finding CrossFit, like my progression would be so much better. I wouldn't have been so stupid by like training myself into a hole because you think when you start CrossFit, it's just about killing yourself in every session and hurting as much as you can. And your body obviously tells you otherwise in some way shape or form so for a good few years that's what i thought i needed to do to get better at crossfit um and uh it was only really okay obviously i got
Starting point is 00:53:18 i think in 2019 i hurt my shoulder and then i realized, oh shit, you have to actually, I have to be a lot more smart with how I train. And yeah, moving to Abu Dhabi, I got my own coach, but just going back to the competitive side, I did a couple of local comps in Cape Cape Town in like 2017 2018 and then in 2018 I qualified for regionals in a team uh in the Meridian Regional um so it was myself and then uh my boyfriend at the time Mark Timlin he was there with me and um one of my boyfriend now I do yeah you do oh because someone really I think this is my favorite candidate for tyson bajan yeah you would be a great you would be a great girlfriend for tyson bajan who's that am i gonna lose out now uh he's a guest that comes on the show frequently he's
Starting point is 00:54:17 he's young he's very young i think he's only 23 but he needs but he needs someone like you that's not in my age category. You see, I've tried younger and I don't really, I understand. I understand. I prefer the dad type now. Yeah. I, I, I totally get it. Yeah. I totally, I totally young, young men are a mess, but, uh, but, but man, but man, he, he would flourish with you. Someone with a rock solid head like you. Okay. You can look him up afterwards and
Starting point is 00:54:45 he's gonna he's gonna be filthy rich he's the quarterback for the chicago bears we have a for it's an american football team yeah yeah yeah yeah okay um okay so let's go back uh um so so uh 24 years in you do first a couple local comps then you qualify for a team on the meridian and then also you threw in there that like hey it, it didn't have to be this way. You probably could have gotten better, faster and healthier. If you would have known your goals and maybe gotten a coach or someone more knowledgeable in the beginning. Exactly. But I think because where I was living, the, if I looked at the caliber of athletes and then I looked at myself, it was kind of like, if I looked at the caliber of athletes and then I looked at myself, it was kind of like, I would never get there, you know, like, yes,
Starting point is 00:55:28 I'm competitive. Yes. I love this. I'm going to put everything I can into training because I did, I trained a shitload. But if I looked at what those other girls could do and how far, like I couldn't even do a muscle up when I moved to Cape town. I could, yeah. Like I couldn't handstand walk. Like I couldn't even do a muscle up when I moved to Cape Town. I could yeah, like I couldn't handstand walk like I didn't see how I would get there. But yeah, and then going to regionals and seeing also like how far I was away from like, just even some of
Starting point is 00:56:00 the team competitors. And also not having the resources like in in cape town i wouldn't have even known who to have as a coach let alone be able to afford a coach there yeah um like because i yeah it's expensive i mean you had a pretty legendary guy the jason smith you have jason smith over that he's south african right yeah but he's in johannesburg so i was in cape town because he's because he's the the weird thing about him is is like anyone who knows anything like who's dug into crossfit or been around i mean africa does have that's the guy in africa right i mean everyone in the in the crossfit space knows who he is he's a great guy but i
Starting point is 00:56:40 guess so you're saying too far away yeah And then there was another gym that was super competitive in Cape town. It was the one that did that used to run the seminars actually called Cape CrossFit. Okay. Oh, who's the owner of that? Chris, Chris Oman, Chris Oman. Okay. It's not, it's not who I'm thinking.
Starting point is 00:56:59 Cause there were also two level one staff there. I think they were a married couple, super hot, tall blonde girl. I want to say. Super hot. Tall, nice. Crazy nice. And I want to say she had a boy. Is the man's name Chad? Oh, Chad. Yeah, Chad. Again, Johannesburg. CrossFit Josie, I think. Oh, okay. That was Johannesburg. Okay. Yes. Do you know his wife? Do you know who I'm talking about?
Starting point is 00:57:29 The tall blonde lady? She looks like she's a movie star. No, I haven't met his wife. I've only met him. And I don't even know. Maybe they're not even a couple. I just assumed they were a couple because I would see them on the seminar staff together. I mean, just totally just.
Starting point is 00:57:44 Yeah, I don't like um she looked like charlize theron yeah i haven't i haven't seen her okay i'll keep my eye out now though now that i know what to look for okay well you're in dubai you're not gonna see her um i saw chad though when i was in back in south africa now so but what was his last name now i want to say chad theron but now oh then maybe they are then maybe they are married and maybe she did maybe that's what i'm thinking that she looked like charlize theron and let me see who charlize theron is i don't know is charlize theron a tall blonde lady yeah but i don't think she would be charlize theron because are you talking about the actress yeah oh yeah yeah she did look like charlize theron yeah and maybe her last name was theron is charlize Theron because are you talking about the actress yeah oh yeah yeah she did look like Charlize Theron yeah and maybe her last name was Theron is Charlize Theron South African no shit
Starting point is 00:58:28 she is she is our claim to fame all right maybe they're related I never even thought of that and he's really handsome too he looks like a like a buff Ken doll does actually yeah yeah okay sorry sorry um uh two so so uh 2018 let's go do you remember help me out here okay let's go yeah so we actually qualified for that regional remember when um i think you can still do it but if you have a roster and uh those scores go and get you into the regional yep so we had dina swift you know dina swift does that ring a bell she's competing masters this year um 35 category is she um is she australian she's in australia currently actually uh she's just relocated there i know i know a swift in australia she just, yeah, she qualified now through Masters, and she was going individual and did the Open
Starting point is 00:59:30 and then had to have knee surgery, but did really well in Africa. So with her score, we were able to qualify a team to regionals. I recognize her. Yeah. Okay. So sorry, so you went on a team with her in 2018? No, we used her score to get onto a team ah ah okay okay yeah yeah and and then and then and then you were hooked your your trip to the regionals got you hooked yeah so that was that
Starting point is 01:00:00 was a really fun experience and like we ideally i would have wanted to do team again but then the following year was when crossfit went crazy and they did the two opens i think that was 2019 but the first open i i hurt my shoulder just after fittest in cape town um and so then i was out for like a few months i couldn't do anything on my shoulder really and i missed the open. And yeah, I didn't think I didn't really think too much. I just wanted to get back to training and being mobile because one of the biggest things that frightened me over that point was the fact that like I couldn't coach properly with like having one arm, you know. So I remember
Starting point is 01:00:40 that was the first time where my mindset around like wanting to be the best and having such a big ego in such a small gym where like, obviously as a coach, like I was going to be good. But I used to get real like upset when people beat me. I know it sounds so stupid, but like I was really struggled to be happy for my friends when they were doing better than me in workouts and watching the open and having the injury. when they were doing better than me in workouts and watching the open and having the injury. And then it really humbled me and made me think like, I don't want to be that girl that can't cheer people on in workouts. If they're beating me, like if someone beats me, I'm going to turn around and be like, fuck yeah, you deserve that because I gave my all and you you're better, you know? And so that was a big learning curve for me, um me from like leaving your ego at the door and also just being a better freaking human and being able to be happy for other people's successes. And then after that, I think I was okay by the next open.
Starting point is 01:01:38 That was 2019. And then COVID came around in 2020, hey? Yeah. Yeah. And then I was off like obviously no one was competing 2020 spent most of the time at home just training out of the garage and didn't stop at all and then at the end of at the end of 2020 we decided myself and my boyfriend at the time again Mark Timlin who moved to the UAae with me we decided we needed to leave
Starting point is 01:02:05 south africa like we hadn't got a salary increase in five years um i didn't move to be competitive i moved to like be exposed to better people better athletes better coaches to be a better coach myself and then i thought why uae why not australia or the united states or somewhere else why uae had other people blaze that trail for you like had you heard did someone tell you hey this is the spot that's a good oh yes actually so I would never think of going there I've never heard of anyone from the United States in my life being like hey I moved to the UAE yeah well I think um it's not for everyone that's for sure but when you find your place here, like it's really good. But what happened was you want to train her six days a week. She wants to do CrossFit. She works out with a South African
Starting point is 01:03:07 lady in Abu Dhabi, Megan McDermott. So she was getting trained by Megan McDermott here in Yas. And she was like, do, um, do I have space for her? So I was like, yeah, sure. So she came in and trained with me for five weeks. And at the end of it of it she was like you need to come to Abu Dhabi you would love it there it's so amazing um the gym is amazing we have like really good athletes there and I was then when I looked into what Vogue was and CrossFit Yas and then I saw oh my god there's Jamie Green there and Elliot Simmons and Anthony Monks and I was just like holy shit this place looks so cool so I actually got in contact with Anthony Monks' wife, Sabine, who was on the team with them. And she was like, we started the interview process. But then my boyfriend got like fired and rehired in one week.
Starting point is 01:03:59 So when he got fired, he was like, we need to get out of the country. And then he got rehired and he was like, all right, let's stay. And then thank God we stayed because COVID hit. And I definitely would not have had the financial capacity to look after myself here in the UAE. Like living is so expensive if you're not earning. And it was just a bit crazy. So, yeah, I revisited the Abu Dhabi thing after COVID when things settled down. Sorry, sorry.
Starting point is 01:04:22 Where did you end up during COVID? Where did you do COVID at? In Africa or Abu Dhabi? No, in Africa. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so, but, so he said, let's leave when he said, let's leave. You weren't already in the UAE. I got a little lost there in the story. No. Okay. You were in, okay. You were here. Yeah. I was, I was in Africa and then he was like, let's go's go let's let's see if you can find another job and then maybe i'll come if you get a job and so i looked and then he got fired and rehired in the same week okay then because he got rehired we stayed but then covid hit and then it was actually a saving grace because if we had have come here we would have like crashed and burned had no money
Starting point is 01:05:03 and hadn't been here long enough to form clients and stuff like that. So when we came in 2020, 2021, again, I didn't actually have the athletic ambition per se. It was more like, I'm going to train my ass off. If that's good enough to be competitive, then cool. That was kind of my thinking. Be the best coach I can be. Be the best. Train as hard as I can and then see what happens. And then now 2024, here you are.
Starting point is 01:05:35 You're going to the CrossFit Games. Yeah. So you went home to Africa to compete in the semifinals there. Yeah, yeah. And did you know the semifinals there. Yeah, yeah. And did you know the field pretty well there? Like when you looked at the leaderboard, are you like, okay, these are the girls, I have a chance? So, yeah, I would say I definitely knew.
Starting point is 01:05:58 For instance, like going into the final event of day three, I knew that. Which you took first. Which I took first, yeah. Yeah. Which going into that event, I knew Christina was exceptionally good at gymnastics. Like she proved it in the handstand walk. Last year in semis,
Starting point is 01:06:21 she did all those rock muscle-ups unbroken and I couldn't freaking string like one complex together properly so that was very stressful um but yeah Christina um I knew she was good at muscle-ups and so actually I'd say the Wednesday before the event like even started Before the event even started, I started visualizing my final. I started imagining myself. I knew Christina was good, so I knew I had to be just as good or better. And that meant that I had to do 15 muscle-ups unbroken,
Starting point is 01:07:03 which I'd only ever done once, and that was when I was fresh. Wow. So, yeah, I was like, my friend said to me, um, my coach and also my, one of my best friends in here in Abu Dhabi, she was like, we sitting on the bike after event four. And, uh, she's like, listen, do you want to hear the points? And I was like, yeah, man, tell me. I was like, I'm not going to be one of those people that sees the leaderboard and freaks and cracks under pressure. I was like, only one. Does only one person only one person go yeah only one so if you don't take first you don't go yeah so leading up to this event this is what now we're discussing on the on the assault bike so i'm sitting there and she's like uh listen if uh you want to hear the points or not and i was like just
Starting point is 01:07:40 give it to me i was like tell me what i need to do, you know, to win this. And she's like, well, listen, if Christina wins this event, you guys will tie. But she will have three event wins and you'll only have one, which means she'll go to the CrossFit Games. So she was like, you need to win. And I was like, okay. And then we went down to the, like, athlete chill area. And Evie was like, she's like, do you want me to stay with you here or can I go train I said no go like go I need to think of a plan oh we called up my coach as well and he was saying
Starting point is 01:08:10 like what do you think you can do and I said I was like listen aunt like I've just been visualizing wait who's your coach Anthony Monks oh okay okay yeah so um I said I said to him I was like I've been visualizing myself performing 15 muscle-ups this workout for the last like maybe four days. So I was like, I'm going to go for it. Like, I'm just going to go. And he was like, all right, mate, like we can maybe call, like have a break, have a chill, and then we can maybe call before your events. I was like, sweet. And then Evie left me and I lay on the beanbag and I just, again, sat there visualizing.
Starting point is 01:08:46 Because funnily enough, out of all the events that I did over semis, event six was the only one I never practiced in full. It was the only one I never did. That was the salt bike and then 15 muscle-ups and then carry the dumbbells with the lunging? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I didn't practice that one In its whole format At all
Starting point is 01:09:06 I didn't even know like What I could hold on the bike Going into the The master laps Because Yeah I hadn't really done it Um
Starting point is 01:09:13 Why hadn't you done it? Why had Why was that the only one You hadn't done? Um So The Before the
Starting point is 01:09:22 After quarter finals I had like something Going on in my shoulder And Same The same shoulder that had bothered you before. Yeah, the injury like I had a shoulder injury in 2019. And then, yeah, I've got another one. So just noticing that at the moment, but the shoulder was being a bit weird and I didn't really know what was going on. So I was just being very conservative leading up to the semis. And I didn't want to do too much high volume muscle ups and stuff. Because with Toaster Bar,
Starting point is 01:09:51 it was fine. And the only thing that really, really bothers my shoulder is butterfly chest bars. So when I saw the workouts coming into semis, I was like, thank freaking God, there's no butterfly chest bars. Because if there was, I would have to kip them. I kip them in the open. Like when I did the open workout, I had to kip. And, yeah, so I hadn't done the muscle-up one just out of conservation for the shoulder. But then also the week before semis, the Saturday,
Starting point is 01:10:23 so Saturday and then we were competing on the friday i twisted my ankle oh wow yeah so i twisted it like quite bad i couldn't walk on it for two days on on a runner on an air runner no i was doing box jump overs and i stepped off the box step normal like like a normal person and then i was turning to walk towards the wall to get to go to the war balls and i don't know what happened my foot just like went on the side and i i felt a pop like a normal person. And then I was turning to walk towards the wall to get, to go to the war balls. And I don't know what happened. My foot just like went on the side and I felt a pop in my ankle. What shoes were you wearing?
Starting point is 01:10:52 What shoes were you wearing? Nanos. Yeah. But what I noticed the nanos have got quite a, like a rigid border around them. And if you turn your foot, it's quite like rough. I don't know if that's normal in all shoes, but anyway, I felt this pop in my ankle and I looked at my foot and I quite like rough I don't know if that's normal in all shoes but anyway
Starting point is 01:11:05 I felt this pop in my ankle and I looked at my foot and I was like oh shit I was like I think my ligament is gone like I did have a little panic it wasn't painful which freaked me out even more because I was like if a ligament pops sometimes it's not painful um and so I was with one of the other girls who I was competing against. And she like, I lay down and I sat there and I got some ice. And I was like, Oh, my God, I messaged my coach, I messaged my chiropractor. And I was like, I think my ankles fucked up. I don't know if I'm going to be able to compete this weekend. By this point, I called with my mate Evie, who was coming as my coach to support me at the event. And I said to her, Listen,
Starting point is 01:11:44 I don't think you need to come i don't even know whether i can compete i was like it's so bad like i can't walk on it it's a little bit swollen um i don't know how i'm gonna do 70 box jump overs eight 4ks of running 500 double unders and 70 where were the semi-finals were they in johannesburg yeah okay yeah so anyway i Johannesburg? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, I took like some anti-inflammatories the week before and then, um, like that week of, and by Friday, um, I couldn't really, I could feel my ankle, but it didn't not enough to distract me and obviously all the adrenaline and stuff so yeah that was that was that and um that's why i couldn't really then practice that lunge event because i didn't want to lunge with those heavy dumbbells on my ankle so you get out there um and only one person goes you have 560 at the at the
Starting point is 01:12:40 end of the weekend you had 561 and she has 555 when you went into that event it must have been closer yeah she had just taken first in event 5 so you guys were probably like just how many points were you separated going into the event oh flip I can't even I don't know less than 5
Starting point is 01:12:58 it was it was really tight the whole weekend was tight like me so she would have beat you. Is each place five points or ten points? Anyway, you only beat her by six points. So you knew you had to beat her. Yeah. No, I knew I had to beat her.
Starting point is 01:13:16 But you know what was funny is that when I was lunging down the floor, because I don't know if you actually watched the event, but I'm lunging down the floor and the crowd is going crazy and out the corner of my eye like I can see a person but I thought it was this other girl Tana Tana so I'm going and I'm wondering why is everyone going crazy like I could see all my family there my friends everyone's screaming for me and I'm like what why is everyone going so crazy like if Tana beats me it's fine I was like as long as it's not Christina yeah but I didn't know it was Christina but I couldn't see because I'm like, what? Why is everyone going so crazy? Like if Tana beats me, it's fine. I was like, as long as it's not Christina. But I didn't know it was Christina, but I couldn't see
Starting point is 01:13:48 because I was like, I didn't want to look around and lose my balance. But she was in the lane next to you, right? She was, but she was just enough behind that I couldn't see who it was out my side. And when we got to the muscle-ups, Tana was next. I could see Tana jump up. So
Starting point is 01:14:03 I assumed that Tana had finished the muscle-ups before. She was next. I could see Tana jump up. So my, I assumed that Tana had finished the muscle-ups before. Um, she didn't even finish the workout. No, I know. And then that's why when I turned around after putting the dumbbells down on the mat, I saw Christina and I was like, holy shit, Tana's over there. And it didn't click to me that it was actually Christina that was like on my tail the whole time. That's why everyone was going crazy. Gemma, were you first off the bike? I think I was like third off the bike. Did you know if Christina got off before you? I got off before her.
Starting point is 01:14:33 So I actually won the workout on the bike. Oh, okay. And then you did all 15 muscle-ups on broken? Yeah. Did you get any no reps? No. Because one no rep would have fucked you i know there my last maybe five reps of the the 15 were like a bit of a struggle um and i just remember thinking
Starting point is 01:14:55 you can't i just actually didn't think you can't fuck out now because every other event i've had ring muscle ups i always failed the last rep um so I knew that I couldn't think that going into this event um I knew I had to think you're going to get this muscle-up and yeah got it so that was that was really that was really exciting and probably one of my most proud moments from a individual um growth point of view um just to back myself and um like do the work that needed to be done yeah people poo-poo africa but 15 muscle-ups unbroken is world class there were women high-level women all over the world who weren't able to do that yeah i was did you put the did you put the dumbbells down no no shit good job that's crazy
Starting point is 01:15:42 that was a do or die moment for you it was and like yeah i would have rather died clearly but um i looked at that was also one of my workouts that i looked at the time and i was like holy shit like actually that was a competitive time in the world which was really exciting for me like obviously the tears and the lauras are all under three minutes but like the still like a few high level girls, like I was up there, you know? So that was really exciting. The bus foot in the water there.
Starting point is 01:16:12 Yeah. Uh, I'm looking over here at the, uh, yeah, that would have been, that would have been third place. That's what the, the girl you would have beat the, you beat the girl in, um in Abigail Domet who took first in California on the West Coast. Yeah, that's crazy. It's an insane time. So then the event's over and they do that thing, at least here in the States. I don't know what they do in Africa, but no one knows who won.
Starting point is 01:16:49 So you must know it's really close you think you won but you're still waiting for them to say something right well we kind of i kind of knew because uh i was obviously leading the whole time and then if i got the hundred points or the hundred the the first which means i would have stayed ahead so um so you knew yeah i knew was christina crying did you see christina was she crying no she was she was really good like a really good sport um i think both of us had like higher expectations of ourselves last year and uh we we definitely have improved how we navigate our expectations coming into the competition this year. Yeah, because I could definitely see a difference in her demeanor compared to last year. And I felt a difference in my demeanor this year compared to last year. And you could sense hers.
Starting point is 01:17:40 You could sense her demeanor was different too. Oh, definitely. Yeah, okay. hers you could sense her demeanor was different too oh definitely yeah okay um uh when you win do you know that you're going for sure or are you like oh i don't know if i'm gonna make it out there to the united states what what a journey uh no i pretty much know i go i i'm going for sure i'm just like i don't think i celebrate really well as a person in general. That's when I get shy, I guess. I get shy when all of a sudden the attention's on me and I don't know how to be.
Starting point is 01:18:13 I think there have been multiple occasions in competition setting where I've won a lift or something, and then I just drop the bar and walk away like I did nothing. And I kind of felt like I stood after dropping and everyone's going crazy for me. And I'm kind of like, Oh, okay. Uh, yeah. And I kind of like did the celebration, but like, it wasn't how everyone else celebrated when they were all so happy. I don't know why, I don't know why I couldn't be more happy for myself, but I kind of, maybe it's that expectation of like, that's what I expected myself to do. Why, why but I kind of, maybe it's that expectation of like,
Starting point is 01:18:45 that's what I expected myself to do. Why, why am I happy about it? You know, that was what I needed to do and I did it. And now, you know, like, I wish I kind of, I look back now and I wish I kind of celebrated a bit more. Um, were your parents there or was your mom there? My older brother and his wife was there. Uh, my mom, no, she couldn't make it, but she was there the year before. So she visited me just before I competed this year and then had to go back home. So, yeah, but I had my brother there, which was nice. And who will you come to the States with? I'm bringing Evie with me again.
Starting point is 01:19:21 Just the two of you? Yeah, just the two of us. And when do you arrive? I actually still haven't booked my flights yet. Oh, wow. I need to get on that. Are there any issues with coming to the States for you? Is it easy?
Starting point is 01:19:37 No, it's fairly easy. I get an ESTA visa with my Italian passport. South Africa would have been a different story i would definitely probably not had not had made it here because the wait list for visa um meetings is so long um but yeah i haven't i've just uh you know i just need to get on it i've booked my accommodation and everything i just haven't booked the flights i need to do that and and um and what what's the plan um when you come come will you come early around probably the 28th 29th okay of of july um yeah i don't i just don't want to have that's early i mean that's a week early yeah i don't want to get like jet lag and stuff the
Starting point is 01:20:21 flight's really far um and i would rather also have a little bit of time to just adjust there like travel can be quite stressful um so yeah we're going to come up a little bit early and it's also it's like such a long way to come like why would i why would i this person ask you is evie the friend she started crossfit with no i started crossfit with emma holiday oh that's a great name yeah she she competed at semis i think she finished sixth this year so you'll come a week early you'll go straight to texas you'll go straight to uh fort worth so everyone well initially one of some of the guys at my gym they said like i should stay in dallas for a while and train there and then go to fort Worth. And then, um,
Starting point is 01:21:05 yeah. And then I get like a little bit of exposure of a little bit more of Texas. So I'm, that's, I'm still undecided as to whether I want to do that or not. Um, you know, I don't really know.
Starting point is 01:21:15 And then, and then how about afterwards? Will you stay afterwards? No, because I can't, the gym that I work at now, there's only three of us coaching. So when I'm gone,
Starting point is 01:21:23 there's only two and yeah I can't leave them for too long yeah um and then the the heat um being that you're in Abu Dhabi I'm guessing you have no concerns about the heat yeah I mean hopefully it can't be worse than this um I don't think I don't think it is I mean it's bad but i don't think it's like i think you have them beat uh yeah i i'm not too bothered by the heat to be honest like obviously it's shitty sometimes and and like everything's air conned here so i could say that i'm not really exposed to training in the heat however um i train out of vogue Fitness occasionally still because I don't work at Vogue Fitness. I work at a gym called Sandbox.
Starting point is 01:22:09 And Vogue, the open gym doesn't really have like a proper AC. So when you're training in there, it's like you're training outside. Like it's really humid in there. So I don't know. Hopefully that's enough. Hey, Gemma, what about your boyfriend? He's not coming with you? I don't really know yet what his plans are he's um he works between uh uae and australia
Starting point is 01:22:32 so um if he can get off work because he's just come back for his next contract here and um yeah if he can get off work he'll come if he can't get off work, he'll come. If he can't get off work, then he won't come. Is he a CrossFitter? He has done a fair amount of CrossFit. I wouldn't say he's a CrossFitter. How did you meet him? In the gym. The only place I meet boys.
Starting point is 01:22:56 Oh, so he's a CrossFitter enough, meaning he came in there. Yeah, but to the open gym to do weightlifting. He loves weightlifting. So he was doing Olympic lifting and all that. And how did you guys meet? Did you go over and say hi to him or did he talk to you? No, I had to go over and say hi. You did. Did you know you were like, okay, I'm going to talk to this boy? I did. I saw him. He came in with a bunch of his friends and they were in the open gym. And I actually never train late in the day. I always train in the morning or the early afternoon because I'm normally working.
Starting point is 01:23:33 But this day I had run out of time. So I was in the gym real late and he came in with all his friends. And I saw this guy and I was like, I need to go introduce myself. And he was actually the shyer one out of the other guys, out of the guys, but he caught my attention the most. And did you know, like, I'm guessing because you're there, you know, everyone there, like you knew he was new. Like it was his first time there. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And like, yeah, definitely.
Starting point is 01:24:01 They stuck out a little compared to the type of people we have in the gym so yeah i knew i knew i was like yep i gotta make the move here and then what do you say you just walk over to him and say hi and then you like pretend like you were i mean you do work there but you introduce yourself as an employee and let them know if they need anything they can ask you yes is that really that's the move that was it yeah that's good yeah yeah you you could have written the the playbook there um and then like were there sparks right away uh i don't know i still say that like i tell him that there was like this look in his eye when he like looked at me but um i don't know whether i was just seeing what i wanted to see to be honest but um
Starting point is 01:24:45 but yeah over the course of a few weeks i was like always waiting around in the gym to see if him and his friends would come in and uh yeah and then eventually one morning i was on a morning shift and i came up the stairs and i saw him in the gym and he was on his own and i was like oh like a weak like a weak gazelle just by itself. Exactly. So I was like, all right, snapped up at the waterhole. Yep. I was literally thinking if I'm going to ask this guy for his number, because neither of us had really done that. I was like, it's going to be now when none of his friends are around.
Starting point is 01:25:16 And that's the only second time you'd seen him. No, no, no. We've been in the gym and I'd spoken to him like many times before. Did you have his name yet? Did you get his name yet? Yeah, I did get his name. So although I couldn't, I remember like there were a few of them in there. So I couldn't hear properly and the Australian accent is quite strong.
Starting point is 01:25:40 So sometimes they would say their names and I actually would get confused. So what I had to do was go to the front desk and ask the front desk person to tell me what the member's name was because I couldn't hear when they introduced themselves. Anyway, so yeah. So then did the front desk person know that you were crushing on this guy? Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so that was pretty much the rest was history after i got his
Starting point is 01:26:07 number and then you're like hey uh and then you just text them hey you want to do something yeah this was the hard part because i was like what do i even say to this guy like it's not like it's not like you meet them in a bar and it's like open and casual and you're just like hey you know i was like now i gotta think of something to say i've asked him for his number so yeah i think i was probably really cringy actually i was like you guys look like you could be fun to hang around with or something like that very lame um you could have been like hey i couldn't help but notice that uh your second pool is off do you want to come in and i'll help you with your lifting? I should have. That would have been better. But this is where I get shy, you see.
Starting point is 01:26:47 I was like, oh. So anyway, so I ended up, I think, going to like hang out with him and his friends at like a pool. And then we all went out for dinner. And then pretty much the rest was history. And how long have you been dating? A good few years now like two years oh wow that's wild and he comes back and he comes back and forth does he come back and forth for work or comes back and forth to see you ah for work but like it ties in quite well um yeah it ties
Starting point is 01:27:22 in well with with working and being here and and when he's away, I can just focus on all my stuff and when he's back, then we have that time. It's worked out really well actually. Have you been to Australia? Yeah, I went in December. Oh, and you met his family? No, we didn't go. Australia is huge, so we weren't where his family
Starting point is 01:27:45 was we were just kind of like tasmania yeah yeah so i was in tasmania and a little bit of like malban area but his family is all like on the other side but he stays on that side and is he he's pretty mature and well put together yeah yeah yeah i mean i mean yeah i mean he's got a job he travels back and forth he sounds like he's got his shit together yeah i mean i mean yeah i mean he's got a job he travels back and forth he sounds like he's got his shit together yeah i would say so i mean we all we all in some ways don't have our shit together but we make it worth yeah i mean look at me i'm 52 years old and i think i'm a fucking youtuber yeah shit and no one's perfect yeah no so we're we're, we're happy. He's here now. And, um, so it's been quite nice having him back. Well,
Starting point is 01:28:28 cool. Hey, absolutely awesome meeting you. I can't wait to, uh, see you in person and, uh, cheer you on and put the camera in your face.
Starting point is 01:28:34 Thanks for doing this. I know this was really last minute. What time is it there now? Oh, it's only half a seven. Uh, in the evening. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:28:42 Are you morning? Yeah. It's eight, eight 30 here in the morning oh yeah okay oh so you're like 11 you're uh what's the date for you is it is it the fifth no it's the fourth oh you're ahead hey no i'm we're behind so it's the morning for me okay okay yeah so we're still on the same day um yeah no i'm glad we actually got on the call because when your person was trying to set us up i um every evening i was actually working so yeah it was a bit hard to i knew i
Starting point is 01:29:11 knew suza told me he's like hey you got to look for her whatsapp in the evening because she's because i was like hey did we get this set up and he's like dude she's sleeping yeah yeah i know um yeah but it's yeah for having me. Um, it was a surprise. Very welcomed one. Yeah. Awesome to meet you. And, um, I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Cool. And don't forget about the CrossFit seminar thing. I'm going to hold you to it. Oh yes. Send me, send me, send me, send, remind me on WhatsApp so that it's there. Yeah. Okay. You're smart. Okay.
Starting point is 01:29:41 Good job. Okay. Well have a wonderful day. All right, dear. All right. Cheers. Good job. Okay. Well, have a wonderful day. All right, dear. All right. Cheers. Gemma Raider. Wow. Cool chick. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:29:51 Crazy. Cool. Make you want to leave, uh, or the fuck you're hiding in Morocco or wherever. Uh, Mike, Mike pool boy.
Starting point is 01:29:58 I'm leaving for Australia today. I'm going to have so much sex with my girlfriend. Oh, that's awesome. Congrats. Uh, Just got here to learn these guys don't know how time zones work.
Starting point is 01:30:12 It's hard to understand when you think the Earth is flat. When you're flat Earth, you don't understand time zones anymore. Okay. Who's this? What is this? Yeah, she'd be great seminar staff right she got her shit together oh yeah cool anola kai sweet uh let's see if we can get a no back on uh no akai Souza. Souza. Can we schedule?
Starting point is 01:30:56 Anul. Saturday, $2,000. Kill Taylor. Crazy. Two grand. $2,000. Kill Taylor. Crazy. Two grand. $2,000. All right. I'm glad she was so cool.
Starting point is 01:31:22 I had built this whole story that this was going to be the hardest podcast ever and it was so fucking easy in my head like I was expecting like yeah I was not expecting someone like that I don't expect it ever to be anyone who can talk
Starting point is 01:31:40 but then especially when I think of a young. CrossFit Games. Athlete girl. I just think like. Like. Can't talk. Then divided by two. She's awesome.
Starting point is 01:31:52 Her boyfriend's stoked. Can we get behind the scenes. Of your firework display. My fireworks display. I'm going to. I'm going to this., I'm going to this, um, this,
Starting point is 01:32:07 uh, this, I should show you her. I'm going to this chick's house, uh, tonight. Uh, she's a professional fighter.
Starting point is 01:32:13 She's my kids, uh, striking and jujitsu coach. One of them. And, her dad lives on a ranch with a giant swimming pool and horses. And I think we're going over there at four 30. I don't even think I'll be awake when the fireworks go off last night i went to bed at midnight which is late for me and like at 1205
Starting point is 01:32:34 i hear this crazy sound that i've never heard before in my house so i go out the door i have these doors double doors in my bedroom that go out to the backyard and i walk out there and i'm fucking barely clothed i'm in my underwear and there's a the biggest fucking plane ever flying over my house like a big huge military jet my wife's like what was that like i guess i'm guessing it's a military jet i said it was some giant plane flying over our house. Massive. And when I mean over our house, I don't mean close either, but I mean, close enough to where I could see it's a giant plane.
Starting point is 01:33:12 No, it was not the sound of a female orgasm. My whole house was rumbling. I'm like, Hey man, we've lived here eight years. I've never heard that or seen a plane fly like that over the house. She goes, me neither. It was a trip. Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy.
Starting point is 01:33:44 Oh, what is this? Someone just sent me a... I'm watching Alex Ghazan videos. Someone sent me a link to her story. You know, usually this time of year I'm like panicking. Like, I'm shit i gotta get more athletes on more athletes on i'm kind of just winging it now just one at a time i interviewed like like uh or interviewed i invited danny on i invited daniel brandon on i invited jeffrey adler on i invited justin madaris on i think who Adler on I invited Justin Medeiros on trying to think who else I haven't invited Lori yet I'm trying I just went through kind of all the names that I thought of
Starting point is 01:34:29 people oh I invited Tia on I kind of went through all the names that I thought like would not come on first just to kind of like get them out of the way and then now I'm just I don't know how I'm picking them but I think Enola Kai just popped up in my feed yesterday and jemma just popped up in my feed so i'm just like okay pick them up start picking them off one by one i thought of alex the other day we did alex right who else have we who else do we need to do who else are we done uh sporty beth uh if sebon says big military plane i'm guessing it was a private two person charter plane. This thing was massive.
Starting point is 01:35:12 Massive, massive, massive. Like bigger than a 747 massive. But it was night, so I couldn't see what color it was. Oh, yeah. Do we have Hattie Canyon on? I think I have to have Hattie on again. Oh, that's a good idea. Try to get Danny and Danielle on together and brand it The Healing Show.
Starting point is 01:35:43 I guess Danny did a podcast with Bryce Smith. Someone sent me a link today. Oh shit, I got a YouTube manager for my channel. Oh shit, this is crazy. Congratulations and welcome to the YouTube Partner Manager Program. I'm Gerardo Leandro. Oh, I wonder if I can check this guy. Can you just like, wow, that's nuts.
Starting point is 01:36:20 Let me check this guy's uh this guy on instagram oh his name is a what is that a good thing that makes me feel like i'm big time now uh Hmm. hmm all right shit i wonder what suze is gonna say about this hey all the behind the scenes are i think out from the west coast classic i watched the final episode last night holy shit it's good it's an hour and 14 minutes i think i think that at least one episode's free now too has come out from behind the paywall you will not be disappointed absolutely beautifully shot and beautifully edited with fantastic audio. I'm so fucking impressed with myself right now.
Starting point is 01:37:49 Oh, Zach Jones. This show has really taken off. Go figure. I think I'm just going to have to call Laura Horvat. Maybe now is the time to do it. time is it there where does she live hungaria or bulgaria what is she uh what time is it in bulgaria 6 38 p.m. What time is it in Hungary? Is that the name of the country? Hungary? 538.
Starting point is 01:38:31 So, oh, she's in Virginia? How do you know that? You got to go to her Instagram account? Laura Horvath. Laura Horvath. Um, how do you know? Like you go to her stories or something?
Starting point is 01:38:51 Like, how do you know? I thought she was at Ben Smith's gym. Instagram. Is that his gym? damn that's a cool video was that her biking look at her lats jesus criminy really a turtle where does ben live so this is Ben's gym where's this each day with the family when's this posted 22 hours ago what are those names up there something Nelson and something
Starting point is 01:40:07 cross Oh CrossFit Krypton up on the wall left-hand corner all right shows just not as smooth flowing without C Beaver but we're not trying to professionalize this podcast. Dude, Chesapeake, Virginia. So you're saying Caleb makes the show better? That's weird. I had him on to make the show worse. I thought the show flowed fucking amazing just now.
Starting point is 01:40:50 What the fuck you're talking about? 25 governors visited the White House yesterday. How's that? Is that weird uh did you guys see president biden painted himself orange that's always weird painted himself orange he dyed himself orange did you guys see that to try to like jump on the trump bandwagon you can't make this shit up You can't make this shit up. First of all, this is not your father's Republican Party.
Starting point is 01:41:31 This is a different. No, sir. A different group. This ain't your father's Republican Party. Not not a joke. This is not your father's Republican Party. This is not your father's Republican Party. This is a different deal. They are not. They are not who we are. They're not who America is. Because this is not your father's
Starting point is 01:41:57 Republican Party. This, I call them the new Republican Party. This is not your father's Republican Party. I remember working with Republicans. Republicans. And by the way, this ain't your father's Republican Party. This is not your father's Republican Party. This is a different group of folks, ladies and gentlemen. Not every Republican is a MAGA Republican. Not every Republican embraces that extreme ideology. And not all Republicans, but the radical right in the Republican party. First of all, this is not your father's Republican party.
Starting point is 01:42:35 This is 20 years of the same shit from this guy. I can't wait to see what's going to happen this is so fun do you guys think that does anyone here think that non-US citizens can vote in our elections does anyone think that that story's true? Is there anyone who doesn't think that story's true?
Starting point is 01:43:10 Is there anyone who's like, no, that's bullshit. Non-citizens can't vote. That's just Republican propaganda. What do you guys think? Can non-U.S. citizens vote? Can non-U.S. citizens vote? Can non-U.S. citizens vote? What city, if you were to think, if you were to think of a city in the United States
Starting point is 01:43:37 where not only they could vote, but they were encouraged to vote and that they already hold uh high level offices in the city what city would you guess let's just say let's just say and that's chicago great guess what where would be the last place you would want illegal immigrants to vote? Let me help you out. Washington, D.C. Yeah, San Francisco, fully, fully, full campaign, San Francisco, completely legal and local and state elections for non-U.S. citizens to vote.
Starting point is 01:44:29 It's a full-on blitz here. It's on. It's on like Donkey Kong. You can just go. Washington, D.C., non-U.S. citizens, it's not only legal for them to vote, non-U.S. citizens D.C. non-U.S. citizens. It's not only legal for them to vote non-U.S. citizens
Starting point is 01:44:45 D.C. voting. Not only is it legal, but it's fully fucking encouraged. Like fully fucking encouraged. Does that make fucking any sense to anyone?
Starting point is 01:45:14 House passes measure to repeal D.C. non-citizen voting. They tried to take it away. They failed, by the way. They can fully vote there in Washington, D.C. San Francisco they can fully what if I told you that the person in charge of elections
Starting point is 01:45:35 in San Francisco was a fucking Chinese national the person in charge. A Chinese immigrant has been sworn in to serve on San Francisco's election commission despite her lack of U.S. citizenship, raising national security concerns. Man, it is...
Starting point is 01:45:58 I was digging into this story last night. Oakland's next. She hopes to increase voting engagement among immigrants and non-U.S. citizens. Sevan, but how long do you have to live in the United States before you can do that in these states
Starting point is 01:46:23 and cities? 30 days. You can live in San Francisco for 30 days and vote in all local elections. No, if a community has a huge percentage of non-citizens does it make sense to have them vote in the local elections that's exactly where you don't want them voting why wouldn't why wouldn't someone just send over a hundred thousand chinese to fucking baltimore and fucking vote and take over the city and then san francisco and then new york and then dc what kind of fucking question is that? A non-U.S. citizen gets to vote in our fucking elections? That doesn't even
Starting point is 01:47:10 fucking make any sense. Uh, Clock, uh, no, they're illegal. They're not entitled to representation, not entitled to influence our politics. Go fuck yourself, Garrity. Doesn't mean anything to be our politics. Go fuck yourself, Garrett. He doesn't mean anything to be a citizen. Yeah, I agree. Even you asking that deserves a fucking slapping around, Daniel.
Starting point is 01:47:34 Hope you fall in a dildo today. It's fucking nuts. it's fucking nuts uh that's what omar somalians did in minneapolis yeah oh good for you oh no get the fuck out of here's how i read it Get the fuck out of here is how I read it. Yeah, that story is unfolding crazy. The Omar Illion story. The progressive chick.
Starting point is 01:48:14 Have you guys looked at her background? Her dad worked for one of the most vicious dictators in the world. It's nuts Vermont, San Francisco, DC the shit's fucking happening everywhere 10% of the people surveyed admit to this if this percentage holds 2024 election will be in jeopardy
Starting point is 01:48:41 this is in I think North Carolina non-US citizens admit to being registered to vote dude it's fucking happening man we're watching it fucking happen but i'm concerned about the reversal of roe versus roe roe v wade or i'm concerned about the reversal of Roe v. Wade, or I'm concerned about a January 6th. Oh, okay, cool. Stay focused on those things. That's smart. Today we are calling on all of you to declare independence from foreigners deciding our elections. The evidence you are about to see relates to illegal aliens being registered to vote. This is a problem national in scale.
Starting point is 01:49:26 The United States of America is for Americans, and our elections only should be decided by them. We come with a group that's trying to register people. Are you currently registered? Are you registered? Yes. Are you a citizen? No. Are you registered to vote? Yes. Are you a citizen? No. The apartment complex 220 at Branchview in Charlotte, North Carolina,
Starting point is 01:50:10 is occupied primarily by non-citizens. We visited the apartment complex to ask residents two questions. Are you registered to vote? And are you a citizen? Shockingly, four of the 41 people we asked confirmed that they were a non-citizen and registered to vote. What the fuck is going on? I can't even believe this is fucking happening. Can't even get our own fucking people in the country to vote. Ken Walters, buckle up. It's going to get wild in november if you thought cities weren't upheaval over a felon just wait uh when dawn wins
Starting point is 01:50:52 a peaceful protest peaceful protests uh the liberals up here just lost a vote in toronto that was held for 30 plus years to the conservatives yeah canada is going through some shit i think i mean they but they have a i mean they have a world-class piece of shit there i mean their country was taken over by fucking carl schwab it's different than charles schwab and then Charles Schwab. All right. I'm pretty excited. I'm getting my,
Starting point is 01:51:32 I'm having my wife look into flights to Fort Worth. What a great day, huh? I found a new superstar for the... Listen, the L1 team is fucking amazing. But Gemma's amazing. Don't you think she'd be a great addition? Smart, beautiful, hard-working knowledgeable passionate tons of experience variety of affiliates she's worked in did i mention hot like where i mean like fuck jemma jemma jemma jemma jemma i wanted to ask her about her last name that's kind of a wild
Starting point is 01:52:24 last name raider right like i wonder if her last name. That's kind of a wild last name, Raider, right? Like, I wonder if her family comes from, like, a history of people who raided, like, other people's homes and shit. you yeah I'm glad you picked that up pink lady casually dropping you're going to the games. Yes. Yes. Very casual. You don't want a coach that dates members, though. Listen, listen. Of course you do.
Starting point is 01:53:14 I got fit and I banged a coach. No, listen. He wasn't even a CrossFitter. He's in a different section of the gym. It's fine. It's fine. They're illegal, anything non non citizens illegal all of them none of them
Starting point is 01:53:30 can vote put the rock down put the rock down put your hands up turn around and walk out of the room slowly my ex-girlfriend only fucks coaches in her gym what's a non-citizen you jonathan you uh ken walters i dated and married my boss so marrying a coach is no biggie oh what's your boss's name what's his name hey listen remember yesterday i was it was it was
Starting point is 01:54:16 awesome remember yesterday i was telling you about i hate it when fucking uh the least attractive thing about a woman is when she makes everything a man woman uh engagement and fucking i saw one on the internet like right away when when i got off the show yesterday there was a there was a it's on that thread with um uh that andrew hiller has going and someone said to um i don't know who's writing the post but someone said to the crossfit book or to to i don't even know to be honest with you i writing the post, but someone said to the CrossFit book or to, to, I don't, I don't even know, to be honest with you. I can't even remember, but someone pointed it out to me as the example. Um, someone wrote, Hey, I don't think Greg Glassman would be happy for you talking like this, um, from his representing his business or someone.
Starting point is 01:54:58 And I don't know if it was Emily or who, but the person responded, Oh, you think I belong in the kitchen? Um, uh, pregnant. You think I should be in the kitchen um uh pregnant you think i should be in the kitchen cooking and pregnant see that like dude no no one even like first of all no one even knows if you're a man or a woman who's who's posting from this account no one mentioned whether you were a man or a woman and now all of a sudden it's gone to like you playing the victim like so you automatically thought that someone was talking down to you. Because you were a woman. And it's like. By the way that is a.
Starting point is 01:55:32 You can't have a relationship like that with someone. That's just crazy. I just couldn't believe what a great. That was like a museum quality specimen. It would be like if you honked at a woman. And she yelled at the car. Oh you don't think women can drive. It's like the car, oh, you don't think women can drive? It's like, no, you dumb fuck. I don't think you can drive.
Starting point is 01:55:50 Yeah, it's just such victim shit. It's like crazy. But I just couldn't believe I saw it. It was such a classic specimen. You think I belong in the kitchen pregnant? It's like, what? Where the fuck did that even come from? classic specimen you think i belong in the kitchen pregnant it's like what where the fuck did that even come from it just screams like hey look how insecure i am about my vagina
Starting point is 01:56:11 it's nuts i cannot imagine seeing going around like that that shit sucks hey and when i if i do have things like that i push them down i would be embarrassed to show them you know what i mean like i would like i like like i'm embarrassed to be embarrassed it was crazy it was it was a perfect specimen someone sent it to me right after the show was over they're like oh i got an example for you i got an example for you look at this this person's fighting with this person this person said oh you think i belong in the kitchen with kids it's like dude no like no one can even tell if you're a man or a woman the person who's posting I can't unsee the picture of Sprague
Starting point is 01:57:07 that Juan Zombie posted did you guys there's a funny funny scene with James Sprague in the behind the scenes holy shit it's so funny Jordan Jason speaks sign me up for the kill Taylor scaled workout I don't think we do scale I think we just do ass whoopings
Starting point is 01:57:28 Maybe you have a mental health issue I don't know what you're talking about Let me see Wad zombie Wad zombie By the way that was really cool that you posted Fidhead yesterday. I appreciate it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is from the
Starting point is 01:57:50 this is from the this is he called himself James Spreagle. This scene was amazing. And I really like it because his fiance didn't get the joke, which just shows how cool she is. Look at that thing dump truck
Starting point is 01:58:16 no cr uh the real stuff on college oh yeah thank you look at the wad zombie is just like a fool this this this website just turned into a promotional campaign for the Sevan podcast. If that doesn't make you thirsty. the way you can get 40% off See upper right hand corner Scan me What else is going on here No No. No, man.
Starting point is 01:59:13 Shit, no, man. I believe you get your ass kicked saying something like that, man. Now we are going to enjoy this meal. No one can stop us from enjoying this meal, so enjoy it! Stop crying! Wow. Oh, Justin looks good. No.
Starting point is 01:59:50 Yeah. All right. Let's have our own tier beer fest cup. The VIP section. Tier water, please. So Cal VIP pass VIP. The top Socal spectator experience including single and three-day vip tickets found hey um at the uh at that socal event
Starting point is 02:00:12 we're gonna do a live kill taylor and at least that's the plan i mean that's what we're throwing around but i think i actually think it's gonna happen we're gonna do a live kill taylor taylor will go out into the center of the stadium. He'll do the workout. And then people from the stands can come down and try to beat him. If the first person beats him, they get 500, and we'll take up to 10 people, and the prize money will double every time a person comes out. So if the first nine people don't beat him and the 10th person beats him,
Starting point is 02:00:41 that's five grand right there. Bam. Oh, I like that. That's a good response. Someone DM me and said, if they taste like Flintstones vitamins with a nine volt battery. I like that. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:01:14 I like that taste or more well cat's out of the bag i was actually talking to gabe about this idea each person will have to do a shot of espresso before the workout that's what will start the workout you'll do a shot of paper street coffee three two one go hawk two eight three two one hawk two we'll do a shot of espresso and then you go shot of espresso paper street coffee uh can athletes come out for it yeah anyone can come out for it but the thing is is like you don't get to wave your hand and then like uh just because you're jeffrey adler you get picked plus those people i don't think any games athletes are too scared yellow host is like a rare a rare animal they don't want to put their shit out on the line oh this is what i wanted to talk about this was fucking hilarious this if you If you're ever like, man, Seve's so out of touch,
Starting point is 02:02:05 you couldn't be further from the truth. It's saying shit like this that makes it so that I might not be able to film the behind the scenes. But this shit is fucking wild to me. Look at this. No offense, Lena, by the way, Miss Raker. You're beautiful. You're cool. Go get some. But this shit's crazy
Starting point is 02:02:25 Someone recently told me they don't see team athletes Competing at CrossFit Games as games athletes And that hurt What a great opportunity Listen what a great opportunity listen there's a guy in the united states like named michael jordan and so many people look up to him and he's done fucking shit all with his fucking life he fucking bounces a ball around and runs around with other men and has perfected throwing fucking a fucking wad up piece
Starting point is 02:03:05 of paper into a trash can and he can put it behind his back and he can run up and throw the trash in the trash can he's world-class at throwing trash away and people call him a fucking professional athlete that's what you want we have a sport here we pay millions of dollars for people to play baseball you do you think those people like they're professional what no offense but the whole shit lot of you can go fuck yourself like you're fucking dancing fucking monkeys at best and we appreciate you for it And we appreciate you for it. And those of you who fucking perfected the craft of saying hut, hut, hike and throwing the ball at other people.
Starting point is 02:03:53 Cool. Good on you. But if you take yourself so fucking seriously that it fucking hurts to say that you're a fucking team athlete and And it fucking hurt. You have fucking way bigger fish to fry. Than worried about being called a fucking professional athlete. I don't consider any of the people out there. Fucking professional fucking athletes. I don't even fucking know what that means. You mean your life is so fucking good. That you don't have to worry about fucking.
Starting point is 02:04:24 Collecting food every single day. just survive and getting clean water? Like, go fuck yourself. Team athletes, the best team athletes at best is a fucking community event. At best, I'll give fucking Rich Phoning, he can be the cheerleading captain for all of CrossFit for all the fucking team events he won. For all of CrossFit, for all the fucking team events he won. There's like one professional CrossFit Games athlete. Her name's like Tia Toomey. I don't even know why I say that.
Starting point is 02:04:52 But, I mean, fuck, she's impressive. I'll fucking throw her a bone. But the NBA is a fucking joke. There's not one fucking professional anybody in the fucking NBA. The only fucking professional NFL player that's worth two fucking cents is aaron fucking rogers are you fucking kidding me do you know the social fucking damage that those fucked hearts did in the last two years with their playing fucking along with the fucking pandemic and then fucking hating on black people straight for two years under the guise of loving them and you're worried because some it hurts your feelings that someone didn't say you
Starting point is 02:05:25 were that a games athlete's not a professional athlete jesus fucking christ man get a real fucking job i respect someone that fucking scoops ice cream and puts gives ice cream cones to kids then i do fucking 99 of all fucking athletes. Play cricket for a fucking living. Yeah. And you know what Tyson Bajan does? You know what's so fucking cool about Tyson Bajan? Because he comes on here and he uses the fucking platform.
Starting point is 02:06:00 To show what a fucking great man he is on the fucking straight and narrow. He's open minded. he speaks his thoughts he fucking brushes with metoothian yeah get a real job like podcasting thank you jonathan and i like you lena and i'm fucking stoked and I'm glad you guys do all your shit but dude this this this line here someone it hurt man that's all on you you gotta unfuck that like just just be whoever you want to be just be whoever the fuck you want to be you want to be like like hey, Hey man, the coolest athlete, the coolest athlete out there would be someone who like just accidentally stumbled into the games. Hey man,
Starting point is 02:06:50 that's why fucking everyone loves Ariel Loewen. She wanted the sign. They all put in the work and qualified. She said, that's awesome. They inspired me. That's awesome. If you think that the individual athletes are the only one with privilege to inspire privilege,
Starting point is 02:07:09 I mean, just like another sign that something's wrong with you, dude. Something's wrong with you. Red flag. Red flag. red flag red flag if you think if you think you're the only one with privilege to inspire i think you're wrong dude there's inspiring people everywhere why are you looking outside yourself at all to even talk about this hey it never ends if you keep looking outside by the way it never ends if you don't look inside if you want it to end, look inside. If you're happy with the mental illness and the pathology, then keep looking outside for confirmation. But it never ends.
Starting point is 02:07:55 Either you are a professional athlete or you're not, and only one person knows that. The validation is not going to come from anyone else and dude listen and the validation and the validation you want comes from fucking idiots that spend money to watch the fucking nba the nfl the nhl i mean just think of how fucking retarded fucking hockey is those dudes put on all those pads put on skates and skate around on ice and hit a fucking puck around now i'm not I'm not saying that there's not like with crazy practice you can't do some cool Cirque du Soleil shit and they've honed their craft but let me tell you they're so high on the precipice of fucking being useless like when shit hits the fan we're not keeping the hockey players we're keeping the farmers it's fucking nuts kids kids dancing at a school dance are more valuable to fucking society than fucking any professional fucking athlete i just don't put any value in that Miss Richter that's free like who gives a shit
Starting point is 02:09:11 yes you're inspiring yes you work hard but dude first of all your cohort is some of the least intellectually inspirational of any group of people I've ever met. This sport has the least intellectually inspirational people
Starting point is 02:09:36 of any group I've ever interviewed. The slap guy was a thousand times more interesting than 99% of the CrossFit athletes I have on here. Fucking nuts. Worried about someone saying you're privileged to inspire. My garden is more inspiring and what my plants do in my garden than fucking matt frazier rich froning and tia toomey put together Rich's commitment to his kids is more inspiring than anything and more valuable than anything He's done in crossfit. Although rich is kind of a weird outlier because His value doesn't come from the fact that he's so good at crossfit His his value comes from the fact that he wears his values on his sleeves.
Starting point is 02:10:34 Uh-oh. Hey, good morning. Hey, this is – I think your YouTube – you got to turn your YouTube down for a second. Hi. Yeah. It's just an extension of the Roman Empire. Professional athletes are just the extension of the Roman Empire. Oh, you mean like just like
Starting point is 02:10:55 catapulting people over the wall and letting lions eat them? You know, entertain the people and you can control them. sure sure so that they validated professional athletes to this level of stardom goddom whatever you know deification and you know people look up to them but for what because they could they could throw a ball through a uh a hoop yeah you know it it's nuts uh but it's it's just you know the you know the the Roman Empire, they had these gladiator games and they entertained all the people and they kept them happy and until it all fell apart.
Starting point is 02:11:33 And I like entertainment and I am inspired by it, but it's not a it's not some pivotal component to happiness or as a contributor to society in any way it contributes to people sitting on their couches eating potato chips and buying stupid products that they don't need correct you know it's it's just part of the the whole decay of western society i mean we've seen this cycle happen you know many times uh and uh and it continues because people aren't waking up. But eventually, I hope they'll wake up and turn it off. But you look at the amount of – look at colleges, for example. example right you know people people spend tens of thousands of dollars you know training their kids to to become great athletes so they can get a scholarship to college well if you instead of spending all that money on on club sports teams and travel teams and hotels and all that if you
Starting point is 02:12:37 spent that time on tutors and and sitting with your kids and educating them, well, they don't need an athletic scholarship to go to college. You know, I mean, they just glorified all these athletes to the point where people have forgotten about what's important and what it takes to do well in life. And it starts with your brain. And I don't want to say, I know some people are going to mistake this. I don't want to say that there's no place for sports, that there's no place for a lot of physical activity. There's a place for all of that. But to find your self-worth in it from your fellow citizens, you've gone too far. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that.
Starting point is 02:13:28 Go to the park and pick up trash for an afternoon. You'll feel great. It's a great contribution to society. Yeah. You're absolutely right. But the people are still hypnotized by it because they've elevated these people by paying them, you know, tens of millions of not hundreds of millions of dollars to go out there and, and, and dance for them. And, and, and they, they, and wealth, I mean, and the damage, the damage is done to the, you know,
Starting point is 02:13:59 black community is, you know, immeasurable, you know, because you get to a point where people you know where people in a community think that that's the only way they can get out right of their economic situation right and they're devoting themselves to you know bettering themselves you know mentally intellectually uh or learning to trade or you know just developing a strong work ethic you know they they play sports and when it doesn't pan out for them and for 99 of the people if not more it doesn't pan out for them because the competition is so great uh they they you know they end up back where they started
Starting point is 02:14:37 with nothing and and i want to emphasize this too i don't mind the hundreds of millions of dollars that they make i I don't care. But the sad part is, is when they take like someone like LeBron, who's taking the money from Sprite and then selling it to little kids. That's when it's like, Hey, fuck you.
Starting point is 02:14:53 Your value is done to me. Like, I don't know. Now you've taken all of this fame and all of this money and used it to hurt the people around you. That's where I start getting, but like, I don't,
Starting point is 02:15:01 I liked it that, uh, I don't know who the rolando guy or rolando guy who went uh he he took the monster energy drink or coca-cola and threw it under the table and said drink water like fuck yeah right then he earned whatever money he ever made in life he earned it right there for me thank you you know what i did the best player from the celtics uh no it was a soccer player oh oh oh that guy oh yeah yeah yeah do you remember when he did that a couple years ago he threw the some drink under the table and told everyone hey drink water don't
Starting point is 02:15:30 drink this shit that was awesome for me that that was worth a hundred million dollars that was great well well you know think about this seven uh years ago i don't know when the when the laws changed but you couldn't you know't advertise prescription drugs on television. They had more than like three side effects. That's how Europe is, right? I don't know. But nowadays, that's all you see advertised on television. You turn on a football game, boy, they got Viagra and they got beer.
Starting point is 02:16:00 on television. You turn on a football game, boy, they got Viagra and they got beer. Yeah. Right. If you eliminated the, you know, drug advertisements on television,
Starting point is 02:16:13 these sports franchises would collapse because they couldn't get the TV contracts because, you know, the drug companies are spending, you know, billions and billions on these, on these contracts to, to promote all this stuff.
Starting point is 02:16:25 It's all, it's all interrelated. Hey, did you get a football scholarship? No, I had brain surgery, dude. I know. I don't remember if that happened in high school or in college. No, that was high school. I was recruited by Michigan and Michigan State and some other big schools. But after that, football was done. Not worth it.
Starting point is 02:16:47 Yeah. You don't want to take another hit. No, I still don't. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, with with a head injury in football, you know, chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a is a big deal. And you don't necessarily see the effects immediately. It can evolve over time, over 20, 30 years. And a lot of NFL players suffer from it.
Starting point is 02:17:15 The NFL had a settlement with the players regarding it. Your injury happened on the field? The initial hit took place on the field and then uh three weeks you know for three weeks i was having these bad headaches so i ended up having a a cat scan done and i didn't find anything mris were really new back then uh and uh but i collapsed on the field i you know my eyes are going in different directions they took me to the hospital you know my dad was a doc and he knew you know you know they they knew you know what was going on and he called his friend we had hadn't spoken to in 30 years and said he had to operate on my son and um they did the surgery and
Starting point is 02:17:56 uh i woke up the next morning uh in a hospital bed um stayed in the hospital for 10 days and, uh, got better. Um, but yeah, it was all a result of a, uh, I took against, uh, Ann Arbor Huron football team. Well, it was actually a hit I delivered. Did you and I have the same surgery? Did I have the same surgery as you? Do you know? I think you had an epidural hematoma where the, the, the blood, uh, accumulated between the dura matter and the outside of the skull, I had a subdural hematoma, so the blood would drain, actually. I think yours was more dangerous because with an epidural hematoma, the pressure builds up a lot more quickly. hematoma, the pressure builds up a lot more quickly.
Starting point is 02:18:46 So, you know, faster action is required to alleviate that pressure because there's not that much space between the dura mater and the, you know, the bone, the skull. They cut your, they cut your scalp open too, like mine. They opened up the side of your head. Yeah. I've got a big Omega scar on the side of my head. Yeah. My kids were looking at mine last night yeah yeah yeah my my show is through when uh when i cut the uh you know the hair short on the sides but uh um you know i try to comb the part in properly and whatever
Starting point is 02:19:19 what a trip that we both had that uh head injury that's so weird and our names are so similar what a weird uh yeah well what's crazy is that your sister and i have the same birthday yeah that's weird too and you know and you know i have the same birthday as my um uh cousin on my dad's side tamar no toline oh i did not know that i got my cousins mixed up yeah i did not know that. I got my cousins mixed up. Yeah. I did not know that. But, but yeah, no, there's, you know, there's so many things that are going on in this world that are interconnected that people can't connect the dots to, but they, they, they have to wake up and you know, I, I, I love, I love your, your toothy and you know, for the toothbrushing because, you know, the fluoride, yeah, we don't need that.
Starting point is 02:20:12 It harms us. And, you know, I think there are some efforts out there going after the states and the other water companies about fluoride in the water. You know, are you performing a medical procedure here without our consent? And, you know, people are waking up to a lot of these issues that you talk about. And it's good to hear you out there every day consistently, you know, going after these things. Well, thank you. All right.
Starting point is 02:20:43 Well, thanks for calling, dude. All right, man. All right. Well, thanks for calling, dude. All right, man. Take care. Bye. More of you should be praising me like that. Sons of bitches. All right. What's today?
Starting point is 02:21:06 Thursday? Do I have any more shows today? Oh, Shut Up and Scribble is coming on. Oh, shit. Wait. Hi. Hi. Did you see my text?
Starting point is 02:21:17 No, I'm doing a show. I'm a professional. How dare you? I'm a professional podcaster. I don't read text while I'm on the show. Oh, that's weird. I could have sworn I saw you do that. It must have been a professional podcaster. I don't read texts while I'm on the show. Oh, that's weird. I could have sworn I saw you do that. It must have been a dream or something.
Starting point is 02:21:29 Hey, is Nico coming over at 9.30? No. He texted back and said not today. Oh, are the house cleaners there? They're on their way. Okay, I'm going to get off the show and I'm going to take the boys out then. I don't want to be here when they're here. Okay. Don't forget to turn your computer off. Unless you want me to the boys out then. I don't want to be here when they're here. Okay.
Starting point is 02:21:45 Don't forget to turn your computer off unless you want me to do it right now. Oh, yeah. Will you turn it off now? Thank you. And will you unplug that whole thing from the wall after it turns off? Yes. Okay, thank you. You're welcome.
Starting point is 02:21:58 All right. Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye. All right, guys. Got to go. All right.
Starting point is 02:22:07 Oh. Alright guys gotta go Oh Kenneth DeLapp speaking of Shut Up and Scribble HGRCBD is having 20% off discount for the 4th of July That's cool they sponsored Kill Taylor Good dude Carl's a good dude Enjoy working with him all you guys are fucking good dudes Enjoy coming here every morning man You guys are great
Starting point is 02:22:26 Friday kill Taylor. No Saturday kill Taylor Friday across the games update show. It'll be a fun one. I'm gonna spend Tomorrow What's today Thursday? No today actually today tomorrow. I'm gonna go through and watch all of Dave's videos I'll take a little clips from them. I'll bring them up on the CrossFit Games Update show. John Young will be here. JR will be here. I'm trying to get Billy Grundler. Maybe Tyler Watkins will be here.
Starting point is 02:22:52 It's going to be a good crew. All right, guys. Love you guys. Talk to you later. Lena, thank you for letting me use you as an example. I think you're fucking wonderful. I'll call you whatever the fuck you want. You can be a professional athlete or not.'t don't look to the outside for uh fulfillment um yeah
Starting point is 02:23:11 as cancer would say you're world-class beaver just accept it okay love you guys bye

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