This week we’re once again joined by Justin Rementer, owner of CrossFit Raid, who shares the skinny on everything from the recent affiliate fee hike to his programming style.
This week we’re once again joined by Justin Rementer, owner of CrossFit Raid, who shares the skinny on everything from the recent affiliate fee hike to his programming style.
What up dogs After a short holiday break. Here we are back with another awesome guest for you. Over that holiday break, crossfit headquarters announced a couple of changes to the format of how they'll be running affiliates, including an increase in the yearly affiliate fee. This week we're joined by returning guest Justin Rementer to talk about some of those changes and, if he feels that CrossFit will offer a value for this increase in the pay, I should actually just listen to our last episode. That'd be the most helpful. It's funny because you talked about one of the things you're hungry for is pushing to add competitive track into the programming over there for people that were looking for that stuff, and now we're going to talk about the next year of competitive season.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What's up, justin? How are you feeling? What's up? I'm feeling good, dude. So what's your program and look like today? Tell us, first thing, what's today's workout.
Speaker 2:Today we're in the middle of a deadlift volume cycle, so we have building up the five reps at 85% of a five rep max that they tested, and then they go five at 85, six at 80, 10 at 70, or, I'm sorry, eight at 75, 10 at 70. So, increasing reps, try to focus on that barbell speed as the weight goes down, keep that same intensity that you had with the heavier weight. And then we have just a straight through nasty little couplet 30 cal ski or 30, 25, 25 ladies, 30 for the guys. 50 toes of bar, 30, 25 on the ski. Just hammer that midline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Love that. You know I had a partner workout last week that we did. It was essentially 50 GHDs and then 50 calories on the ski for the some like that. So some like quick, like seven minute partner workout like that. I was jacked up from the GHDs for literally four days afterwards.
Speaker 1:I haven't done that in a long time and it's that GHDs and, just like you said, it's a straight midline thing, like you're folding up and down the whole time, and the precursor to that, the actual workout for the day, was a strength of a three rep max snatch, which is essentially the same thing.
Speaker 1:Also, you know, just with a heavier load that you're doing it with now, like you're folding down to the ground and then extending all the way with your arms overhead. Yeah, so I just got over it. It was the last Wednesday. I just got over it on Monday, like just get it back to it. Stuff like that hurts.
Speaker 2:So that's a perfect place to start.
Speaker 1:You guys do cycles for things over there. Like you will have a key focus for like some like preset amount of time in your programming.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Mondays, mondays we do Olympic lifts, wednesdays we do just your core strength workouts. So deadlift, front squat, back squat, overhead squat, mondays will run. I mean, we've run through cycles for both that I write up. That's just like I think kind of more like the old school mentality and me is to stick with sickles, cyclical things, percentage work, all that stuff. It can vary. We, you know one rep max, three rep max, five rep max. I'm starting to really lean more into the three and five rep max is. I think it's a little more applicable to what we do in CrossFit, but it's still good to find that top end strength every now and then. And then with the barbell work, throw some complexes in there and whatnot. Try and give people kind of because I know your weight, let the coach shy of a little bit of a background weightlifting, like there's so much more nuance to it than we can really fit in that hour class.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's super hard, ben, I know everyone loves to do it. You know, like the people that love to do a good squat snatch every once in a while or a clean complex that you were talking about, like I know. But I would love to pour everything I have to you, but it would be like longer than 60 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like we can't, we can't be doing, like you know, snatch, lift off plus hip snatch plus whatever complex is in a class realistically, With more than two people in it, you know you won't get.
Speaker 1:The feedback you really deserve is what it is. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:So trying to get like at least a little bit of that in there as best we can. And then we do gymnastics more of like a I call it like a block focus, where it's not like a cycle, like a test retest, but just a skill session. On Tuesdays it's focus on gymnastics will take like four weeks at a time, focus on a movement, and I just make sure that all of our other gymnastic movements show up throughout the week, so we're not just, you know, all of us were doing this toes apart for four weeks. And then Friday's upper body strength. So push, press, strict press, push, jerk switcher, all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1:So you have a strength support component and then a like that comp component every day three days a week and then Tuesdays.
Speaker 2:Monday, wednesday, friday, tuesdays, gymnastics, skill and then Thursday we do a mix. Throughout the year Could be just straight like we just got done just straight up echo blake sprints every day with a little bit of GPP at the end, like no Metcon. We've done rowing cycles. I do this like dry triathlon kind of thing. We've done a couple summers where we do a. What do we do? A mile run, a 2K mile run, 4k, 4k, c2, and then we, you know, work on that a little bit and then retest it. That's always fun. So more cardio based stuff we're right now. It's a little section of just like kind of longer and raps and emoms on Thursdays that's like not meant to really crush you but get you moving for, you know, steady, long period of time.
Speaker 1:Get a good sweat in, like I heard. I heard Baz say I forget what podcast, and maybe the Adrian Conway one that he calls, will work out like a strength one or a puff and pant, because you're just breathing really heavy.
Speaker 1:So I've been like calling all those like long E-mom, and like long, that kind of things like that, since I heard him say that. I like what you said about the three and five rep max too, cause like something that I've realized recently, honestly, is that I only have a set amount of true one rep maxes in my life. You know for how long I'm going to be touching a barbell, you know, so I want to make them like really matter when I do them Like. As a more weightlifting focused guy, I can go in a CrossFit class and generally hit like a heavier volume on a regular basis than probably like the average CrossFit or like, but going over like 95%.
Speaker 1:you know I only have that in me so many times over my whole lifetime on a barbell and I'm starting to realize that now, like eight years and two, like lifting essentially for probably four times a week for 60% of the year, like there's.
Speaker 2:if I want to lift like 20, 30 more years, then I want to save some of those one rep maxes, you know yeah, and between like the physical demand on your body if you're going 95% plus, like the place that you have to get in your head to truly be able to do that is like it's taxing, like it takes it out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then imagine you, you, you miss one of those right. So then the place you have to get mentally and emotionally to come back to it yeah, I will see, like a lot of the time this is for my athletes listening out there, that like if one of my athletes could be in like a 95% range if we're working one on one, or like even if it's in a group setting and they miss, and then they come back and hit it. You know, like after that and they think that I'm just kind of cuddly that when I say I'm proud of you for making that after missing. That's a big deal. It's hard to make after you miss something like I've been in the situation before.
Speaker 2:Huge deals especially for you. Like you coach weight lifters, like if you're in a meet and you miss one of your attempts, you either have to go up or you have two minutes and like to come back and, just like you know, goldfish memory just forget about what just happened and get right back on the bar. It's not a lot of time to make that decision and then get back on the bar, so being able to do that in training sets you up huge. It is a huge. That's a huge deal, yeah.
Speaker 1:So for everyone out there, if you miss something that you're able to come back and make it I mean like sometimes if it's a really shitty make after that, then like you should like be like okay, maybe I won't take that one again. But if you make, it and it's pretty damn good. Like you should be proud of yourself after that, you know. Absolutely. So on this program we talk right. Do you guys do some sort of open, open prep cycle leading up to it? Because we're 78 days away from the open right now?
Speaker 2:Not necessarily an open prep cycle. I don't. I don't know if I love like the thought of an open prep cycle, because the open is CrossFit and if you're doing CrossFit year round, you should be ready, you should be doing it exactly.
Speaker 2:But now, that being said and it's funny because just last week I had a handful of members more than I thought would kind of start to pick up on in the program I have been making sure to add more wall balls, burpees, thrusters, toes of bar dubs, just like those there's there's that list of movements that we see pretty much every year. It's almost like exposure therapy, just like hammering people, and last week we've been doing a lot of burpees. We always do At least once a week. I get burpees in there but people are like phone ring people doing like burpees every week, like I said. But yeah, people have started to notice the wall balls and the burpees have been adding up. So just to make sure everyone's like really, really ready. But if you have a complete program throughout the year, there shouldn't really be any to for like a specific open prep cycle.
Speaker 1:You should be able to get right after it, right, yeah? What does the CrossFit Open look like for you guys over at CrossFit Raid? Do you guys do a Friday night lights kind of deal?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do Friday night lights. We've done that for I think when I first opened in like in 2014, we would do Saturday mornings. We did that for like two years and then we've ever since that. We've done so. For the past eight, seven, eight years we've done Friday night lights and that's always like my most favorite time of the year and I always get I always like hear myself sound like the corny CrossFit guy when I start to talk about it. But because, like I mean, you've been doing this forever.
Speaker 2:I've been like we're like the old guard of CrossFit at this point and like when we got into it, it was, it was like the other thing. It's more mainstream now, but it was like that other thing. So, like the open was like the celebration of that. I always felt like and you get the PRs, you get the, the cheery moments and you get like all the, the real community stuff. So every year I I test their people to sign up for the open, trying to get as many people in here, in here on Friday nights as we can and it's great cause a lot of times we're like it'll be someone's first time and there I've had a handful of times. People like you really hype this up, like I hope it lives up to it and after the first week, or like dude, that was fucking awesome, like you were right, like this was incredible.
Speaker 1:It doesn't. It doesn't disappoint. I mean all the, all the negativity that's got. There's no way that people could have said that any year has disappointed in the things that it's yielded for the communities itself. Right, like man, when you were just talking right there, I'm thinking it was definitely weird for a big group of people to be giving up their Friday nights to go exercise in like a long form kind of sense, because you're going to do the workout and then 80% of the community is going to stay for the next two hours, for the next heat to go, and that's going to be the night and that's what they're going to do with their Friday nights. And then for that to be happening, and thousands of other affiliates too, that's like a special kind of thing and for that to be going on for years and years is it's crazy.
Speaker 2:And even even in like the, the, you know, down years like I think 2018 was the peak affiliate participation, and then it kind of had a little bit of downslope, with like everything getting all wacky when they went to like the, when they went away from regionals and people got like weird about it.
Speaker 1:and then COVID obviously, I'd say you know it was, it was when they open. When they had that second open in the same year, people did not like it and it went down. And then COVID hit right afterwards and it was like all right, this is a reset time. So it's good that it's kind of good because that that happened, that it reset a little bit of things. But that second year open it was, I remember, like organizing at the gym and it was so hard to get buy-in because it was March and then October.
Speaker 2:It was a quick turn, but even then I was, just like I said, pestering people, making Facebook posts, sending out emails, talking to people in the gym like yo, sign up, sign up, sign up Like I don't care, sign up that one's ever. I mean not that I've ever talked to, like I've never talked to, a member that did the open was like I wish I didn't do that. You know, I regret signing up Like never. That doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:The only workout I regret was that that that dumbbell front squat and burpee over the bar.
Speaker 2:That's one of my best open finishes ever.
Speaker 1:I love like I love the workout. I PR my clean way back in the day. Yeah, my PR clean was like 225, you know like at that time period. But like I remember that workout hurting so bad, like cause. There's nowhere to hide. You're just doing two very simple movements, you know.
Speaker 2:I did that one twice to test to see, all right, if I slow down a little bit, what does it look like? And then, if I just go full send, what does my clean look like?
Speaker 1:I blasted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was that was. Yeah, that was a fun one. That's one of my favorites, I think, actually.
Speaker 1:That was at the time period when I did redo open workouts, like I was redoing all the other ones but like I was so happy with that because I like finished fast, that thought and I had like a PR about my clean.
Speaker 2:I was like oh, I got to touch that one, you can't beat that yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, oh man, so that's that exactly right there. What we're talking about is why the open is great. You know, like I was happy with how that had gone, I blasted it out on the first part of the workout PR, my clean. I was like this is what you're supposed to get out of this. You know, like that right there was worth my $20, $25, whatever it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, and how many times have you, how many times have you been like you know, just having that crosser conversation where you're like, oh remember, you know 19.3 and you say, like you say the numbers, and everyone like knows exactly what the workout was, they remember exactly how they felt like. It elicits so much memory. I think that's really cool too.
Speaker 1:You get some smiles, you get some groans like all those different things. The whole lexicon of emotions is like a part of the whole experience. It's great to happen. So you're talking about. You pester a lot of people. Do you get a lot of buy-in for the open over there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we typically get, I want to say, between 50 to 60 people to sign up like pretty consistently every year, which for me I think that's great. It's just about half of our membership, a little less total members, but it's a good amount of people. It keeps the energy high on Friday nights so we typically get a good for the people that are here consistently, like three or four days a week. It's a good percentage of the people that come here, so it's good.
Speaker 1:I mean for everyone out there. You've probably been here. We make this CrossFit Open 5K analogy for the past few weeks and probably months maybe. But just think about if your neighborhood had a 5K right and 50 to 60 people were out there at the starting line about to run. That would look like a lot of people. And if all the different affiliates were, which are representations and like the demographic of the township that you live in or run, of these different 5Ks, that's a lot of people out running. Yeah. So when you put it in that terms, it's like this is a great thing that we've got this many people active, and why would we not try to push to get more people active?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And we even have people, like their friends and family, come in and watch and do the open workout. People that have nothing to do with CrossFit are never going to. As much as we can try and spread it to everyone, like they just it's not their thing, cool, whatever, but they want to come and watch. They're people that come and watch their grand pop, you know, son, uncle, whatever, whoever come and cheer people on, so we get like a crowd. It's great.
Speaker 1:I would say that's so cool when I see that Like I remember my mom came to like my open workouts like way back in the day and like posted a picture and I was like, oh, that's so embarrassing.
Speaker 1:And then I saw all the people's parents doing it. I was like, oh, that's really cool, because they are like really in an uncomfortable space right now, like the person that's doing the workout. They had no idea what this workout was going to be until six hours ago and now their parents are here watching them do it. Like, yeah, damn, that's, that's like deep. You know, it's crazy how that looks. It's funny. Oh man. So we were talking about quarterfinals a little bit and old regionals. How did you feel when regionals went away and they announced quarterfinals? What were your initial thoughts on that? Another online competition.
Speaker 2:When regionals went away in, originally in 2019.
Speaker 1:They added the let's skip that part where they added sanctionals or whatever yeah. And then they added to like the modern era, call it yeah, where we have quarterfinals, now semi-finals. What did you initially think about that, that setup?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of my initial thoughts on it. I tend to be a little bit pessimistic and then I will sit back and kind of like, take a step back or calm down, let's think about these things. So I would say I was probably right away like oh, this is you know. So this is stupid online because it is tough with the online stuff, with the video validation, like we've seen problems over the last however many years of the you know, certain scores getting upheld when the video was right there.
Speaker 2:that what is said was done wasn't done and all that stuff. I like it. I think I I appreciate how it's done now. I like how it's done now. I think for the most part you get. You know who was supposed to be there gets there. I do think it sucks that every now and then you see someone who's on the bubble kind of get screwed over by one of those you know awkward or not awkward. One of those Dodd-man outscores that like probably shouldn't have been validated or whatever. I think that's happened like a handful of times.
Speaker 1:I like we had a dude who input his thruster weight wrong from KOP and it was like I think he put what his shuttle run score would have been in his thruster, which was like a crazy number of that point, and he was like top five in the world for fricking I don't know like 24 hours, 28 hours, something like that, before we went in and adjusted it. It's like for that, for that to happen, you know if that happens and then, like you see, someone it's like you know, out of the three or four scores, they scale.
Speaker 2:Like they have all these scaled workout numbers but then, like somehow they did you know 20 muscle ups or whatever, really fast. It's like all right, that was obviously they forgot to click scaled. Can someone adjust this? And then it just sits there. But that's not just exclusive to CrossFit. If you've done water pools of qualifiers, fitness experience qualifiers, like there's always, like though, that doesn't belong there, it's very clear. But you know. But I think I do like quarterfinals, I like semi finals. It's. Semi finals, I mean, semi finals is regional, it's. It's just got a different name and, like everyone always wanted regionals back when they went away, we had a team go in 20. Time is so weird 2022, I guess summer 2022. We had a team go to semi.
Speaker 1:Who knows what year it is.
Speaker 2:It's going to be 2024.
Speaker 1:I'm freaking destroyed about that. It's great.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, and and watching the, I will say, but the quarterfinals does put a lot of pressure on whoever the affiliate manager is, um, to get that stuff set up correctly Because, like I know, when we were doing the quarterfinal or when those guys were doing the quarterfinal workouts and I was getting it set up and helping judge and making sure the camera angles were right in, the tape lines were right in, the measurements were right, um, that that's a lot of pressure because one you can get in trouble if you know in trouble if you validate an incorrect score and then you don't want to, you don't want to be known as the affiliate owner that you know cheated, helped help their team cheat their way when it could have been an honest mistake, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of pressure where not only, like, you want them to succeed, you want CrossFit to know you did it the right way, but then, like the public scrutiny that's very prominent right now, where you know one person posts your video on Instagram and all of a sudden you're just getting yeah, you're done. Oh my.
Speaker 1:God, I'm just here. I'm just here in like the suburbs of Philly trying to get people fit and then all of a sudden, you know, you thought, you thought you were just clicking, like I accept on some form, and then that right right when I read the morning chalk, chalk up articles like I do think sometimes like damn that affiliate manager or whoever that was in that position, that guy could have just been like thinking it was a regular day. He didn't went nothing malicious behind it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Someone else, Some jerk was like just used him. Yeah, Yo, do you remember seeing that guy? Man, I don't even really want to make this about race, but that Asian guy that stole from the affiliate at the CrossFit Games. Yeah, Uh-huh, nothing ever happened with that. They just exposed him and then it went away.
Speaker 2:Then they said I saw one of their. They were like they got the gym, got ahold of them and they talked to him and he was either like whatever, returning it, sending the money, and they were like you know. They said like please leave him alone, kind of thing, which I think is big on their part, sure, like very mature of them being like not leave this.
Speaker 1:They don't want that on their souls. You know this guy having something happen to him, because he's a dickhead, you know?
Speaker 2:Because yeah because who knows what you know person's going to hear that and be like, nah, fuck this guy. And they show up at his gym, you know. And the next thing you know, the guy got beat with a kettlebell because he stole some stuff from a gym.
Speaker 1:People are people on the internet are not mentally well right now so they will make irrational decisions if they have some like false reason to do that. It was nuts but like I bring that up because I remember when that came up, people were like found out what gym he went to and then they were trying to hold the affiliate owners like responsible for it, to like do something.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm like they probably don't want to thief in their membership. But then, like you just expect them to wake up, email this guy, be like you're no longer on that property anymore. Yeah, Like what they're going to be like, bro, I don't know if I can, even legally, just tell this man that he can't come in here. Right, they most likely don't want him to come there anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, people found him fast. It was like five minutes later. People watch him. If you went to, you know they speak in the open. They probably post those open scores like this dude's not even good anywhere or something, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Like I saw his open scores. I remember like clicking on that stuff. I remember seeing the first video pop up and then like 15 minutes later like they had his whole everything posted up there.
Speaker 2:I'm like damn the internet's fast.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. So, speaking about all that stuff, like that's the quarterfinals there how do you feel about the expansion of the people that are going to let through? Right, we talked about it's good that they we have like a five K kind of thing and they'll cross it open, but then we're supposed to be like making it a more elite level. How do you feel about them letting 15% more people through?
Speaker 2:So, again, my initial reaction was like pure negativity to this, the more I like sat back and looked at it. I think there's very few, and this goes for like probably a lot of things we're going to talk about. Very few things in the world are black and white and you know just either there's a good idea or a bad idea. There's going to be gray area all over the place. I think it's good One. They cross it as a business.
Speaker 2:You know, at their last like town hall that they said they that they broke even as a company and a lot of the things that the people were saying that you know, commenters on morning chalk up and whatnot. It's cash grab, cash grab, cash grab for to get that morning many more people involved. But then at the end of the day and I think, like again, me and you being at old school across it we don't want to look at it as, like crossfit, you know, is this business that cares about making money? But it's a business that cares about making money. At the end of the day, that's their goal, I mean you need money to do things like general in life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like they. Are they trying to, you know, make the world healthier? Absolutely. Are they trying to make money? Yes, they are trying to make money, but I think that's really exclusive and one's kind of necessary for the other. So I understand it if it is just a, you know, kind of a revenue grab like cool, whatever. The thing that scares me is, even when it was 10%, that's a lot of people, top 10%, still a lot of people.
Speaker 2:And the programming for quarterfinals takes that huge leap where, you know, we had people here that qualified for quarterfinals, that did quarterfinals.
Speaker 2:And then the one workout that was 54321, burby Box Shunbovers and Clean and Jerks at 275. A lot of people can qualify for quarterfinals and not be able to do that bar for one rip, let alone reps, in a workout. I know of another woman at a local gym that the first year quarterfinals there was that workout that had like 150 GHDs, 150 pistols, rope climbs. It was wild and she qualified for quarterfinals. So like that would tell her that she is qualified to do this workout and then got rad though doing that workout. So like, I'm curious to see how they handle the, the programming aspect of it, and if it's just going to be like, because top 25% is and I do not want this to come out the wrong way but if you're in the 75th percentile or 76th percentile whatever, then you make quarterfinals Like that's so far away from what the programming the last couple of years of quarterfinals, like your capabilities are so far from that that it's like it's really hard.
Speaker 2:Until you are that person. You go to do that workout like you can't really grasp how far that is and I don't want to see. I don't want to see anyone from this gym in the position where they get super excited, they qualify for quarterfinals and I'm like hell. You have to sign up and then the workout comes out that's got handstand walks and ring muscle ups and you know the only you know they were just able to get in at the 76th percentile and like those things are out of the question for them, which is, I think I mean it's going to happen Like you have to have those high skill and high like heavier weights in the quarterfinals to weed people out.
Speaker 2:So that's the one thing I'm like still in the fence about and I'm a big wait and see person. I don't want to jump to any judgments, so we'll wait and see and I'm like I'm going to go, yeah, have a good one. Yeah, but yeah, like I think it's good to get more people involved if the programming's done right. I don't even really know how the programming could be done quote unquote right to make that work. But the more people involved is never really a bad thing, you know it's just an extension of the open. Like the open, you know, used to be five weeks, it's three weeks now.
Speaker 1:So now it's like open part two.
Speaker 2:We kind of already thought about it Right and I saw, I saw another I forget which website it was, whether it was Barbell Spin and Warranty Chalk one of them when it was 10%, I think only like three or 4% of the 10% signed up anyway. No, I had to go työkenzäger, Exactly. I don't know what that's going to look like now that it's expanded to 25%, If that number is really going to jump that much.
Speaker 1:I mean, even if it's like a relative jump, right, then that still takes it to like 12% if you double it, or like 9 to 12%. Maybe somewhere in there is what they're going to actually predict. But just like you were talking about, I mean, I'm sure the fittest people in everyone's gyms, whatever that looks like, are the ones that make it to quarterfinals. And we still see the people that are the 91, the 90 to 91%ile struggle with those workouts. Yeah, absolutely, I mean some of my fittest friends in the gym they can't clean 275 and like 185. I think it was the correlated number for girls. Yeah, that's their one-rat max. Yeah, exactly, those are kind of like benchmark numbers.
Speaker 1:So to ask them to go hit it nine times or 11 times, whatever how many is in the workout, it's like it's not going to happen, right, I'm talking. I just had a conversation with someone this week about like the 125, 185 snatch, right, that's not really heavy. But then they put that in that in that quarterfinal workout people are like what I have to do, that with the burpee box jump over, is that's what it was like 2021, you know last year of the quarterfinal. They're like amazed that that could be something. So do you think that? Or I should ask you, how do you feel if they dumb down the quarterfinal programated to relate to that jumping percentage? I think that positive or a negative.
Speaker 2:I think it's a negative. I think I think again, your top whatever, your top 10 people, top 20 people are probably not going to change regardless. But there are those people that, like you know, if they just have like, like the shuttle run, burpee pull-up workout was for the open, was a workout that can really skew a leaderboard. Because I could have a guy that comes off the street here and has a running background, who's, like you know, in somewhat decent shape, probably just crushed me in that workout because his aerobic capacity is just like off the charts and that gap in the leaderboard is going to put him in a position where, you know, overall he's that much higher. So I don't want to see.
Speaker 2:I guess, at the end of the day, if you're the, you know you're the fittest, you're the fittest. But I feel like it could really skew the leaderboard if it's like dumbed down a little bit and a lot of the high skill heavyweight stuff is left out, Cause then you're not really I don't think you're getting who you you're supposed to be getting through to the next level and then, if God forbid, if someone qualifies for semi-finals that way and then they show up and you got to do like three, 15 cleans for touch and go reps or something like. We joked about it, cause when our team went to semi-finals, I was the reserve with, like you know, the quote unquote reserve, cause they just had to have a reserve. Like I'm not. I'm not at that level.
Speaker 1:You're like, I'm not going to go out on the floor. If really need me to guess.
Speaker 2:Well, I said like I'll go out. It's going to be funny, cause I'm just going to stand there and stare at the bar Like they ended up having to do. Like I think the one workout that guys had to do 255 hang power cleans for reps or something like that. Like I could do that for maybe a rep or two, like you know what. I mean, but I'm not doing that with a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1:They say one of those things Justin, how many, how many you got? Justin? I'm good for one. Yeah, I got one.
Speaker 2:You got the rest All right. Great, coming last place Cool. So if someone gets in, it's probably an outside chance that that happens, like a very small chance. But if they dumb it down like there is the chance of that happening and then someone's just going to be, they're going to have a very bad time at semi-finals and when someone else is sitting at home that like could be able to do those workouts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we don't even have to say that it's a very slim chance, because we've already literally seen it happen when they dumb down things to Hunter McIntyre, and I love that guy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think he was great for the sport.
Speaker 1:I think he's fucking astronomically fitter than I am. But you go out there, you head forward to be to run at the games and then you get, you can't even make it through the first block of snatches. Then that's exactly what you just said, but, like yours, at the semi-final level he made it to the games, like that you know. So now let's talk about it on the affiliate side of things. Right, there's changes over there too. They're raising the affiliate fees. Before I even ask you how you feel about that, do you think that your membership feels, feels or or thinks about the larger CrossFit community? Like, do they think about being a part of HQ? Or do you get that vibe from your community? Absolutely not. So how do you feel about HQ raising the affiliate fees? And how do you feel if they raise the price for the open? Like, do you think you're going to get value from them?
Speaker 2:Again this because I knew we were getting to this. Like the whole, like there's very few things in the world there are black and white, a lot of gray area. I think this like screams gray area. I think they have been doing more for the money over the last couple of years. There's more on, like the affiliate toolkit. When you log in with your affiliate owner and you log in on the website. There's more there. There's more resources for you. They offer the CAT programming, which is I don't. Like I don't use it, but it's there and it's of. It is of value. Like for someone if they don't, if they're not familiar with programming or don't want to do programming. Like you have that free option to program for your gym, which I guess at that price isn't crazy.
Speaker 1:Like it's a good value If you give some people so like a crash course on doing things if they're not like, if they don't have a me or you around, someone that knows about programming and that outside fitness world you know.
Speaker 2:And there's other and there's plenty of other. You know a lot of the competitive programs now offer affiliate programming. So it only makes sense for CrossFit, Like they are there across it, to offer.
Speaker 1:They are there originally, yeah.
Speaker 2:To offer the affiliate programming out there so you get that like that's included with your affiliate fee. I don't hate the price going up. I understand that we were supposed to be grandfathered in his new ownership and with new ownership, anything can happen in any business and again, at the end of the day, it's a business Like their goal is to make money. So for them, like the prices haven't been raised since 2011, I think something like that. It's been a while and, as we know, like everything's more expensive right now and as it's going to be over this over the course of 12 years, things you know, things go up. So I don't hate it.
Speaker 2:I understand it from a business standpoint. I don't think it was presented in the best way. I don't think the timing of it is great, because some people are going to have like pretty much like a month to figure it out because it kicks in in January. But from now, from what I understand, it kicks in at your renewal time in January. So for us it doesn't go up until November, the first week in November in 2024.
Speaker 1:So, based off what you came in that calendar. Yeah, that calendar.
Speaker 2:But for I mean, if there's someone that affiliated in January like, and there's prices going up that much, that could be a lot.
Speaker 1:You know that's a lot of money.
Speaker 2:I do like they're doing the installment payments. They're cutting fees out of the installment payments. So typically you would normally pay an extra 600 a year on top of your affiliate fee if you do installment payments. So they're wiping out that extra fee, so you're just straight up paying the affiliate payment over the 12 years, which I think that's cool.
Speaker 2:I think it really I mean Amy's and OG, where I started a generation Barry like OG. So I know I know what they pay and their price is going up a lot more. I think they have a stepping stone year where it goes up a little bit and then it's gonna kick up to the 4,500. So it's a huge increase for them. But I think again, I think this is something where we kind of wait and see like are they gonna bring more value? And then, even looking at that, like I know Nicole Carroll is now the chief brand officer, which I think is a great move Like who's more of an OG person than OG Cross and person than Nicole Carroll? Someone who's been in the affiliate, been in the training, like she's been ahead of training, like she knows, like what makes a gym work, what makes an affiliate work, what's good. But then at the same time you have, like I know, like the new guy of like VP the VP of a global affiliate operations like very recently had denounced CrossFit and said it's dangerous and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:It's no idea about it. No idea about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and not to say like in every profession you need to have. Like you look at the NFL, like, do I think Jeff Stoutland can block as good as Lane Johnson? No, but yeah, obviously you notice how to teach someone how to. I think it's a little different with this. Like, if you've never been in an affiliate and owned an affiliate and run an affiliate, how are you gonna be the VP of affiliate operations when you've never actually operated an affiliate yourself? You might have all the business experience in the world, but CrossFit's such like a unique niche thing that I feel like you need to have that experience in the thing to be able to like run it on a global scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just keep thinking if we really think that we have the cure to the world's most vexing problem and we wanna bring everybody in, why are we always so mad when we bring outside people in? You know, yeah, I'm mad at the beginning too, but then I'm like, wait, well, we wanted more people to do this. You know, yeah, we've kind of passed the point in time like I think about this all the time when I'm trying to market the gym. We've passed the niche point of CrossFit. Like there was a time period where, like you could say, you did CrossFit in a room like, oh, you know, a little bit interesting, maybe annoyed for the most part, but a little bit interesting because it was so different, you know.
Speaker 1:But there is where CrossFit came from. There's five other CrossFit gyms within a couple mile radius, you know. Like there's some that we haven't even heard of that are around. You know that people are going to so like it's not like you could just drop the bomb of CrossFit and everyone's going to go run into it anymore. Now you need to get people that don't want to get a lead level of fitness but they do want to get off the couch and off the carbs, you know. So we're living in that gray space like you keep talking about earlier, like, okay, I would love to keep seeing Patrick Velner and all of them keep frushing it at the games every year. But now I want to get the other people that when I walk in the grocery store they need to go ride in a little wheelie thing, because they literally can't walk around the grocery store. How do I get that person in here? You know?
Speaker 2:And that's, at the end of the day, like that's like the sport is the sport. It's awesome. I'm a big fan of it. I still like to like compete at local competitions, all that fun stuff. But, like, the lifeblood of CrossFit is the person that's trying to get shape and trying to get healthier and that's going to be 90% of any gyms membership base.
Speaker 2:And I was having a conversation with an affiliate owner from North Carolina that dropped in and we were talking about, like the master's games athletes and I think promoting the games is really good and it really gets the CrossFit brand out there in a certain way. But like seeing 60 something year olds do like those rope climbs, like with the master's games athletes, like I think that not that it's like, not that it's incredibly relatable, but it's more relatable saying like all right, there's this person, that's someone who's grandma, who's deadlifting, you know, 200 pounds and able to do all this stuff. Like, all right, if that person can do it, then you know, you get rid of the excuses of like I'm passed out on to old, on whatever, and it makes it more accessible to people, makes it more of a realistic thing, cause I'm sure you've heard people like I want to join your gym, but I need to get in shape before I do CrossFit. It's like the most insane thing that people can say.
Speaker 1:It's just like no, no, no, no, no. That's what we're trying to do for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think if people see more of that, more of the everyday person, more of like the you know soccer mom or the accountant or whoever who just like comes in after work, you know, takes off their suit in the changing room and comes out like Superman change and they're able to do all kinds of stuff and they're just here for the hour class and they do things that like a new person think is like superhero stuff, like that's so much more marketable than 80 people with eight packs at the CrossFit Games. Like I said, I'm a huge fan of the games and the sport, but it's just not yeah watching every year, but it's just not what's going to keep growing it, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, it's got enough of us us being you watching it. Like we watch it cause we saw Rich Frode in freaking fall off the rope and clean 225 unbroken for however many reps. Like it got us already in by watching that. Like now the other people that, like we may not have the immediate out like resource to reach out to, you know how do we get them into the gym. So we talked about the cat program earlier and, like you don't utilize that, you don't really utilize either. I'm sorry out there for the cat people that are listening. Have you ever gotten any like resources, emails, like stuff like that from CrossFit that you're like, oh, that's cool, and you actually do utilize it?
Speaker 2:The affiliate partner network. We utilize a couple of things from that. So if anyone's not familiar, it's a group of probably like 20 to 30, they've added a good amount of other businesses that affiliate owner can use and you typically get some kind of discount, like we get our, like our paper products from a company that's on the affiliate partner network and you get like a 20% discount. There's a couple like beverage companies like that are popular with CrossFit that offer discounts. It's funny because there are a couple like the big, big names, like Rogue is on there, but you don't get a discount. It's just like hey, buy from us, like you don't get anything for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So like that, I think that's a really good one. I think there's a couple like courses that you can take like best hour of your day or best hour of their day, healthy steps, nutrition's on there. So there is stuff that you can utilize. Get a discount. That's gonna like make your business better in a way.
Speaker 2:I know they just updated the map, which I was like kind of happy about, but at the same time, I don't think it's gonna get utilized a lot. I don't think, if people are looking for a CrossFit gym, that they're gonna take the extra steps to go to crossfitcom and then find the affiliate map and then zoom in on their area. They're just gonna Google CrossFit here, mate. Yeah, so I did.
Speaker 2:Right before we got on, we got an email from our what are they called Like the regional Affiliate rep? Affiliate rep yeah, yeah, yeah, and she had a. There is a very long email but stuff that they're trying to do to give you more value for the money, and one of the things was like SEO, optimization and stuff like that. So if they have like anything on the website, any kind of resources or they do cause I know they already do town halls but if they do like more webinars on how you can, you know, get more lead generation and enhance your business, and stuff like that which it looks like they're adding. I think that's gonna give great value for the money, because right now, like, even though there is a lot of that stuff available, I think, like, what most people just pay for is the name and like, not If I went and told you, hey, for $4,500, you can get, you know, 20% discount on paper towels, that's not a huge yeah, not a huge selling point.
Speaker 2:But if they're gonna say, hey, we're gonna like, you're gonna open this business under our brand name and we're gonna coach you up on how to run a successful business, because, like at the end of the day, it's a reflection on them too. If the name CrossFit's on there, they should want to look good. Now, I don't want a franchise where I'm being told exactly what to do. Cause again, I think that's what separates us from a lot of other like fitness companies, but I think like the business coaching aspect of it, cause, like when I opened the gym, I was a 25 year old bartender and I had been doing CrossFit for four or five years and I just really liked that. I wanted to open the gym and I wanted to like help people get healthy.
Speaker 2:But I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Like that would have been great to have at that time.
Speaker 1:But that is what like separates you right Like there's the cream will rise to the top. It's gonna be the people that love fitness that just open the gym because they want to do that and then, once they get into it, it's like, okay, I can do this in a better way, though. You know I can have like people's fitness at my priority and it's like my true North, but I can do it in a better way that I'm able to like readily give access to it to a lot of people.
Speaker 2:you know Right yeah.
Speaker 1:So on that note, right With the, also changes to what's gonna happen to affiliate ownership. They said that you're gonna have to have your level two now to remain an affiliate owner. Do you have any thoughts on that? I love it.
Speaker 2:That's one thing I like I really like ever since I took my L2 back in like 2018, I felt like it should be required because the L1's great, like teaching the history and the methodology and like what CrossFit is. But even if you open a gym and you have no intentions of coaching, you should know what good coaching looks like and know how to like identify it. And the L2 like very much teaches you how to coach, which is obviously a very important thing if you are gonna be coaching. It definitely made me a better coach. There's I don't think there's anyone out there who has never taken the L2 that wouldn't benefit in some way from taking it. No matter how long you've been doing this. If you've never taken it Like, I think you would learn at least one thing. So I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker 2:Like I said, even if, like you said, like you know, we're like I'm part of a certain breed, we're part of a certain thing where, like we started this because we wanna help people, there's people out there that open gyms and not there's anything wrong with it just as a business venture and look at it as an investment opportunity. They're gonna hire people to run it and that's great. But if you don't know again, if you don't know what you're looking for in a good coach, then you're not gonna have a good product for people. So I think, even if you're not coaching, going through that experience is like nothing but a positive. It's another investment that you have to put out the money for. They are giving a $500 voucher or something like that towards it for people, so they are getting a discount on it if they have to get it. But I think it's great, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I mean people talking about the prices. The $500 voucher is big Dude. Nasa is like a long-term study course you have to go to a place to take a test and it's more expensive. So people going for the weekend to the level one, level two, I mean, go and enjoy the experience and learn from it. That's the only thing that people say about the level one, level two, when they're talking about prices and stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure how, if it's only for the level two, that voucher. But I have my L3 so I could stay up on my CUs. So I don't know if I can take that and apply it to some of the Xs. I already have it. So, because that'd be great, because they aren't Suspensive, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can, because they're doing that CrossFit. Well, they were doing it. We hosted two at KOP and then they kind of went away. They were doing the CrossFit fun course and then, which is like a one-day level one essentially, you know potential for it, but they were giving free ones out of that and if people took it they were supposed to get a voucher for a CU also Like some other courses you're supposed to be able to take. I do know the CrossFit does try to give back in those terms. You know they want people to be educated, like that's the one thing I will definitely say about the brand. You know, everything I've ever accounted, it's been like they want you to go learn.
Speaker 2:You know, like the L2, like that's because, like you said, like it's a weekend course, the L1 and the L2 and you know a lot of other like methodology will knock that. But like you go to the L2 and no matter how good of a coach you are, you get broken down and nitpicked In the best way and it's so necessary. But like the age is, we sent a couple of people last summer and I was like look, they're going to rip you, Like don't feel bad about it, it's for your own good. Like I know you've been coaching a while, but like they're going to get after you and it's like that prepares you so well. Yeah, so like it's very in depth.
Speaker 1:Frickin' Keith Whitstein man, coach Panda. He told me that I didn't do anything when I was doing like the one-on-one breakdown of the overhead squat. You know what my fricking person was? It was, I just had him on the podcast. Also. It was Andrew, I think Raymond, the owner of Kratos Performance, and he was the guy that I had and he's got a great overhead squat. He was an athlete I was working on and Whitstein told me you didn't really do anything, you didn't really make any changes because his overhead squat was damned, your perfect level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you want me to do? It's funny I never had. Panda On day one. That was day one.
Speaker 1:And then that night I wrote the best fricking like lesson plan for the movement that I had for day two.
Speaker 2:But I've never done.
Speaker 1:The shit was like two pages long. I was like that motherfucker is never going to say that to me again. Yeah right.
Speaker 2:I never had Panda, but I think everyone who from this gym, who has their L2 besides me, has had him and they all say like that dude was ruthless. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had Joey Dill. Yeah, I had Joey Dill and he was funny because he smiles a lot and he's like a very kind person, but like he smiles while he's telling you how much you're doing wrong and it's just like it's like this, like sadistic, and almost turns like a sadistic. Look, he's like that wasn't good and he's like smiling at you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I run into Joey Dill all the time because he does the course of the KOP. Yeah, so I'll be there on the weekends when they're going out. All right, dude. So we talked for a long time about all the stuff going on with CrossFit here Last year. You told us that you were working on implementing some new things to the program in here. So what are you working on now? What are you hoping for?
Speaker 2:After this year, the competition season, like we hosted it. You were there when we hosted ours back in 2016 or whatever. It was Hell, yeah. And you sent me that picture and that like we talked about it hosting a competition here, like here and there and you sent me that picture and then, just after doing a couple of the comps this year and like I think I want to try and get one going here Hell yeah.
Speaker 2:I think we have the space for it. I think I could write some fun workouts. So I maybe not this like spring summer, but like sometime in the next year we get the ball rolling out. Because I know like I mean, I only did it once. You do it three or four times a year. That's a lot of work that goes into that. So it's going to take some planning. But and me and my business partner have talked about it a few times he's a little more nervous than me. I think he threw up in his mouth, like on the opening announcement of our workout here, of our competition here, so he might not like hearing this, but I think that's something that. And then Casey, former friend of the show, recently reached out to me about something with a charity that wanted to do a competition type of thing.
Speaker 1:So we might have something to get the ball rolling, so don't do that on the notepad there. That's funny Thinking about when you did the first announcement at the COMP. Man, I will never forget my first time running a COMP at KOP as I was walking out about to do the announcements. I'm like, damn, do I even know how to do this? I know I plan the workouts and everything and put it on COMP quarter, but do I know how to run this?
Speaker 2:right now, I feel like if you're about to do anything that you're like, that you do for a living and you're our age and you don't for a one second think like am I faking this? Do I know what I'm doing? Like you're not a millennial?
Speaker 1:if you don't feel that way, like every time.
Speaker 2:I've been doing this 10 years, or I've been doing CrossFit for 14,. I've been coaching for 10. To get up in front of the wipe. We're like am I about to just like ramble bullshit? I want to explain this, or do I know? Or do I know what I'm talking about? And then you give people cues and their movements get better and you do a good job. I'm like okay, cool, it's all tomorrow.
Speaker 1:If you don't second guess yourself, like just most of the time, or have these moments, then you're not trying hard enough. It's just what's happening.
Speaker 2:Right, you know.
Speaker 1:But all right, dude, this has been a great conversation again. Man, Awesome to talk about all things at CrossFit. Hopefully we'll have you on again soon.
Speaker 2:For sure, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And dogs. Be on the lookout for the announcement for CrossFit Raider, the next competition man. Hey, hell, yeah, all right, dogs, peace.